The Bad Shots: ‘It’s a bit of something for everyone – songs about loss, hate, desperation, marmite and trousers!’

Paris-based alt-punk rock newcomers The Bad Shots have released their supercharged debut EP ‘Powder Keg’.

The group consists of Duncan Crawford (lead vocals, guitar and piano) from Northwich, in the U.K., Stefanie Audreux (bass, violin and vocals) and Adrien Lloret (drums and vocals), both originally from the suburbs of Paris. The British-French trio got together after a chance meeting in a Parisian bar: ‘It is called the Condor Bar and it is the best bar in Paris,’ Crawford said enthusiastically. ‘It’s down near the bottom of Montmartre, not too far from Gare du Nord. It is a bit rough and tumble but the woman who runs it is called Eva and she is very good at creating drinks. We go there quite frequently now and even created our own cocktail, which we’ve written a song about. It’s not on the EP but it’s called ‘Ketchup Cocktail’ – it’s gin, crushed ice, lemon juice and some ketchup!’

They didn’t let the language barrier at the time deter them: ‘Adrien, who’s the drummer, he was friends with someone I know, so we got chatting,’ Crawford said. ‘I say we got chatting, this is a few years ago and Adrien basically didn’t speak English back then and I didn’t speak any French (laughs)’. Audreux and Adrien have been friends since high school; he used to work as an usher at a theatre and she worked in the theatre’s jazz bar.

The band’s music is a jumble of power chords, pogoing rhythms and singalong choruses, which combine alt-rock-punk-synth sounds and catchy melodies. Crawford describes their EP as ‘alternative rock, punk rock, and we’ve got a piano ballad on there’: ‘It’s a bit of something for everyone – songs about loss, hate, desperation – marmite and trousers! It’s the result of two days of almost killing each other in a studio but being gallantly steered by punk rock producer Josh Hudes, who is a very kind, lovely, beautiful man who is incredibly patient with all of us because we’re not brilliant musicians, put it that way, so trying to record things to time in a studio environment was a challenge for us.’

‘We wanted to have a song which you started a concert with, where people think, “Oh what’s that?” and then it’s something entirely different’

‘Quarrels’, the opener, is a fiery sugar-rush of distorted guitars and calamitous rage, making it a great introductory track, reeling the listener in from the hauntingly crisp guitar tone before the distortion is cranked all the way up. You’re half expecting it to be a ballad before the drums come crashing in around the one minute mark and Crawford’s punky vocals set the tone for what comes next. Think Pixies’ style growling guitars and catchy pop hooks: ‘That song probably started with the chorus, the “I want to fight, let’s fight one more time again”,’ Crawford said. ‘I got the riff and screamed some words (laughs). I know that for a long time we didn’t have the verse. Usually songs happen really quickly, but this one probably took six months. We wanted to have a song which you could start a concert with, where people think, “Oh, what’s that?” and then it’s something entirely different.’

I ask what guitar he’s playing and say I love the tone: ‘For the recording, I use this Danish Baum guitar, which is fairly unusual,’ Crawford said. ‘It’s got a decent Bigsby on it, the sound’s got a load of reverb and a bit of delay on it. It’s the same guitar I’m using later when it’s really distorted.’

The song touches on quarrels in the broadest sense. As Crawford puts it: ‘It’s about fighting, it’s about arguments. It’s about the disintegration of a relationship, which can be interpreted in different ways. There is no personal backstory to it. I mean, I guess it’s personal for everyone because it’s about something that everybody can feel.’ As the track kicks off: “I wanna fight but you don’t wanna. You wanna fight but I don’t wanna. Let’s fight, let’s fight. One more time again.”

Instead of having one motif that interweaves throughout the EP, the tracks feel more like a collection of very different postcards: ‘It’s partly because – and Stef can correct me if I’m wrong – we’ve got loads of songs, probably at least 30, and we have to choose what to record, and one of the reasons why the songs sound so different is that some of those songs have been written in different periods,’ Crawford said. ‘Recently, I’ve been writing lots of songs on piano, and that song ‘Repentance ‘at the end, we’d never played that live, and that was a real challenge to record.’ Audreux weighs in: ‘The EP is a ‘panache’, like a collection. I wouldn’t say coherent, but the thing is, we want to make each style of song we do as good as it possibly could be. That’s why it looks a bit de-synchronized.’

‘I created a loop with a shedload of delay and a glitch that’s looping round and round’

‘Synthetic Lives’ offers us enough reverb to get the speakers shaking. It almost sounds like a distorted sitar at the start, giving the track a slightly psychedelic vibe: ‘I created a loop with a shedload of delay and a glitch that’s looping round and round, and then you’ve got, on top of that, me going up a whole octave, like 12 frets, and sliding up with a load of reverb and delay on that as well,’ Crawford said. ‘The main effect is a synth-o-matic, it’s like a synth which I’ve mixed with a distortion.’ For someone who enjoys cranking it up, there are several guitars that he’s coveting: ‘No one guitar is enough but I like the look of the Kauer Banshee or I’d get a Strat from the 60’s.’ Audreux, for her part, is hankering after a Rickenbacker 4003 bass.

As the song goes: “Reach for the sun now. Don’t let the hate win out. Feels like the sky falls down. You gotta beat self doubt. Just do it. Synthetic lives.”

Endearingly, discussions were had as to which song on the EP should be the opener, with Audreux in favour of the third track ‘Hiding Place’, which is also my favourite track on the album with its Foo Fighters energy and raw lyrics. ‘I definitely thought it should come before ‘Quarrels’, because all my friends and people who listen to that say the same as you just said. We hesitated and went with ‘Quarrels’ because it is more rocky.’ Crawford interjects: ‘I’ve been hearing this for the last two months,’ he said laughing. ‘The lyrics of ‘Hiding Place’, I guess there probably was some resentment inside me, about some form of breakup of an old relationship. There’s a bit of religious stuff going on there, which is from my past as well. I was the only non-Catholic kid who went to a Catholic school.’

I ask them what their perfect hideaway would actually be. ‘I would just like to sit in the middle of the sea in a boat, they wouldn’t find you there,’ Audreux said enthusiastically. ‘I think I will do that one day!’ Crawford has other plans: ‘Probably somewhere where there’s lots of food, like a chocolate shop!’ It feels serendipitous that Crawford, who is nomadic by nature, has ended up in Paris: ‘I didn’t plan to live here, I lived in lots of different countries, and then I met a French girl. If you ever meet someone from abroad in Paris, and you say “Why are you here?” they all say because they met someone who’s French (laughs). It’s been five years now.’

As a band, their influences range from alternative rock to post-punk and darkwave, from bands and artists including Pixies, La Jungle and Longpigs, with their songs coming together in a myriad of ways, according to Crawford: ‘Sometimes I’ll come with complete songs written, otherwise we’ll just be jamming and we make things up together. Sometimes Adrien suggests songs, sometimes Stef’s got ideas for bass lines.’

‘At the age of 14, my gran bought me a guitar and that changed my life forever!’

They both had very different musical trajectories as kids and Crawford tells me the story of how he got into music: ‘I started learning keyboard as a kid but at the age of 14, my gran bought me a guitar and that changed my life forever! All I’ve done is try to be Jimi Hendrix and failed (laughs)’. Audreux started off playing classical guitar, aged 12: ‘I practiced classical guitar a lot but I also wanted to play the violin,’ she said. ‘My parents said it’s horrible, that they would suffer for three years (laughs). It’s the worst instrument on earth when you begin! So I went for classical guitar, perhaps because my father wanted to play classical guitar when he was young. I really loved it. And afterwards, it gave me the basis to play bass. And later, when I was older and I could pay for lessons by myself, I started the violin – and had three awful years at first!’

‘Repentance’ is an unexpectedly sweet and upbeat closer, taking the listener out on a high. Its haunting piano line could be from an A-ha song, something that is amplified when the strings come in. It’s a life-affirming track with choral vocals in the outro pushing home the “I’m not scared” message: ‘I think it’s Duncan’s ambition to do symphonic stuff,’ Audreux said laughing. ‘That’s why we added more instruments than in the punk rock songs.’ I ask Crawford how his time at Catholic school has influenced the ‘repentance’ theme in the track: ‘There are bits of that in it,’ he admitted. ‘If you look at the lyrics, ‘repent’ and ‘disarm’ and things like that. There’s some stuff about organised religion and the harm it can do. It wasn’t particularly planned (laughs), it could also just be about me and Adrien arguing all the time!’

As a closing track, it leaves the listener both wanting more and wondering which musical rabbit hole they will go down next. ‘We could easily do an album of rock songs or an EP of piano ballads, more along the style of ‘Repentance’, more big band,’ Crawford said. ‘I keep writing violin parts, even though I don’t have a violin and can’t play violin! But Stef can play violin, luckily enough.’ Audreux interjects: ‘It’s one that we can’t actually do live because it has too many instruments, which are all played by us. We don’t use samples or things we find online.’ Crawford grins: ‘I’ve not told you that we are going to play it live – just me, the piano, and you doing violin!’

As the track kicks off: “You lift me up. Like a hurricane. I saw your wrath. I felt your pain. I didn’t wanna leave you to die. Repent and disarm.”

If he could go for a drink with anyone, Crawford picks Kurt Cobain and John Squire: ‘I’d try to stop Kurt Cobain from killing himself and say to him: “Think of all the incredible music you could produce over the years”. I learned guitar, basically, by trying to be John Squire from The Stone Roses. ‘Second Coming’, (1994) the start to that first song (‘Breaking into Heaven’), it’s like a jungle. It’s almost like they’re tuning their instruments up and getting ready to play (laughs) but then it comes in with the most incredible groove. If you can imagine the pressure they were under to release a new album, and they come out with that as an introduction. I know a lot of people don’t rate that album compared to their first album, but as a guitarist, I think that album is incredible. John Squire is absolutely unbelievable on it, there are so many different guitar sounds, there are multiple guitars layered on all those songs. Just the sounds they get. We are so unprofessional in the studio (laughs), our EP is rubbish compared to that. They are so many levels ahead of us!’

Audreux goes with Janice Joplin. ‘Even if it’s pretty dangerous to have a drink with her but perhaps I can make it?,’ she said laughing. ‘I would ask her if she can teach me to sing like that.’ I say that Joplin might be hard to keep up with: ‘If there’s anyone who could compete with her, it’s Stef!,’ Crawford quipped. Audreux laughs: ‘I don’t know, not against Janice Joplin, I think! I might live a bit longer than her!’

(Top photo from left to right: Adrien, Duncan and Stefanie.)