Interview with Alexei Berrow by Paul Wade
Firstly, congratulations on a damn fine addition to the elusive subgenre of concept albums about Birmingham. Where did the initial idea for Forwards! spring from and what were your aims going into it?
I guess the lofty end goal was to make a concise and angry record that both reflects where we came from and also the current embarrassing binfire that is being English in 2026. Like all our plans, we don't really know what we're doing till we're halfway in and the opposing edge of the map reveals itself.
Where did you record the album and who recorded / produced it?
We tracked drums and bass at JT Soar in Nottingham, and everything else at The Setbacks, our own space on Gt Hampton St in the city centre. Bob Cooper who did How To Be Hopeful mixed the proper songs and Dominique James who did the previous 3 albums mixed the others. Production was basically them with too much input/impossible opinions from us, and finally Bob mastered.
I absolutely love how your recordings specialise in a kind of controlled chaos that can explode at any point. What is the secret to the JoFo sound and how do you go about capturing that energy in the studio?
Ah man idk the secret sauce. Does a cat even know it's a cat? That's just how things come naturally to us, how we think songs "should" sound. Feel like it's the kind of thing we don't want to open and examine lest we spoil the process. As far as recorded energy, we tend to keep the most "fun" takes and fix any errors that bug us, as opposed to aiming for the kind of perfect take you can make 12 attempts in when the fun has been zapped out.
The album moves roughly chronologically, beginning with the Lunar Society and the Priestley Riots before moving through post-war redevelopment and into the present day. How did you decide which moments from Birmingham's history belonged on the record and which ones didn't?
Idk kinda vibes I guess haha. Sometimes certain chord sequences/riffs would lend themselves to certain subjects but aside from the decline of the lunar soc at the start, and the Farage era protests of today at the end, everything was fair game. Definitely left ourselves room for a sequel though heh.
The Remnants of the Lunar Society and The Sacking of Fairhill House take you into some fairly deep corners of Birmingham history! Were these stories you already knew about? Or was this also a bit of a research project for the band?
A nice mix tbh. Me and Lewes are definitely attracted to doing the research legwork and deep diving obscure library books and sources, but the bones of each story are things you just kinda innately know as a Brummie through local folklore. What was mostly discovery was seeing the parallels between then and now; Priestly Riots mirroring Farage, the influence of the catholic church mirroring Zionist lobby groups etc etc, and this consistent pattern of being manipulated and stepped on by Westminster.
And following on from that did the writing and recording of the album change how you feel about your hometown?
Haha not really, but it did maybe give us more of an understanding of why things are the way they are — the actual events that led to the imbued Brummie opinions we hold. It's always "corruption" btw.
You have described the album as six "actual songs" surrounded by four "cursed field recordings". What exactly are these 'field' recordings and how did they differ from the actual songs?
A piece of media found in the future, a contemporary news report, a seance and some historic personal correspondence. In practical terms, it's 4 smaller and not necessarily Loud Guitar Pop Songs recorded ourselves with all the inherent sloppiness and freedom that entails. We, awkwardly, wanted this to sit somewhere between a full, complete album and an EP.
We all live in this cursed timeline where it feels like nothing gets better and we just have to accept the shitification of everything. The record uses Birmingham as a microcosm of the wider country as a whole. How much of the record is about mourning what we have lost, and how much is about trying to work out what might still be saved? And if so how do we save it?
Oh nah it's all whinging and complaining, no solutions..kinda deliberately so in the grand Brummie tradition of righteously complaining both about The Thing, and the folks actually responsible for The Thing. We, culturally speaking, know our station; we graft and provide and make shit, and trust those we pay to work/advocate for our interests, like local politicians and council staff. That trust has been broken for sure, but it's still their problems to fix. Grim, I know. But that also makes us a relatively resilient demographic; your favourite spot may shutter, but someone will always try to open another. It's people, not old buildings or fairy-light strewn districts or media curated scenes, that make us.
Quick shout out to your last album How To Be Hopeful, which i absolutely adored. I loved how hopeful and emotionally open that record was (thinking of a song like Emily and Alex for example). Was there a particular moment between that album and this one where you felt you had to make a record like Forwards!?
For sure. HTBH feels like a final happy ending chapter in a 6 album run of chronicalling my love life, and noone needs to hear a follow up record that's like, "I am still super in love, sorry...". Also it felt a little weird to come back and release this super positive hopeful soundtrack in an era where the world is measurably more cruel and scary and expensive than it was when we first tried to quit in 2016. We're not a career band, we're not shooting for commercial success, so there has to be a greater point to any given project, something more than 4 friends indulging in an expensive hobby for the sake of it.
Staying in Birmingham, what would be a perfect Saturday there? Where would you go and what would you do?
Maaaan idk, I'm in my 40s, my real life job is constant touring with actually famous acts and if I'm in Brum now for any extended period it's generally for band reasons; I'm consumed by whatever mad shit we're currently on and 100% antisocial. So a perfect Saturday would be finally hanging out with folks that still call me a friend even though I never see them, then reading a book on a late train to where my partner lives, and going to bed without setting an alarm. I know this is not the 5 Coolest Local Spots response you wanted but again, this was always about the people, never the places.
Can you give us a few recommendations for Birmingham based bands our readers might not be aware of?
Shameless Plug for the two awesome bands that feature as commentators/angry mob/backing singers/evil landlords on the record, Luxury Nan Smell and local legend Bryn Bowen's The Real Jobs.
And finally whats the rest of the year looking like for the band? Where can we catch these songs live?
Creatively, who knows. There's ideas and parts and ghosts of plans percolating for whatever comes next but we know better than to try label it just yet. We're playing the final Handmade Fest in Leicester in December and toying with doing a couple of Christmas shows. Can't stop/won't stop...
