After gaining recognition by winning Glastonbury’s prestigious New Talent competition in 2008 and subsequently performing on The Other stage that year, Golden Silvers are no strangers to hype. Now after a hectic NME Tour, Golden Silver’s frontman Gwilym Gold (apparentely the surname is just a coincidence) reflects on their busy year and a half, from orgies to dark rooms and everything inbetween!
What’ve you been up to today?
I’ve been listening to Marvin Gaye’s I Want You album and working on some new songs.
There’s been some weird comparisons of you ranging from Super Furry Animals to Wham to Elvis Costello…just what is it that makes your sound such a hard one to pin down? How would you describe yourself?
I think maybe as we don’t have a template everything ends up sounding quite different, half the songs on our first album were nourished in clubs and half in the studio. I will leave the describing to you! I will say…we wouldn’t belong to a genre that would have us as a member!
Do you ever get tired of the hype that people make of new bands?
Yeah, I think the constant slew of hype bands gets a bit strange to be honest. It seems like people are falling over themselves to call everything the next big thing with no real value to their word…a lot of pages to fill I suppose! I do think it makes it harder for bands to be given the chance to grow and develop.
You’re one of the few bands I know of who also run a club night, The Bronze Club. How did this start?
We started our night because we were finding it hard to find good gigs in London and felt that a lot of “promoters” were a bit of a rip off.. It also allowed us to put friends and like minded musicians on and create a good environment for them to play in. Also we wanted to put on a good party!!
If you could get anybody to play at your club night, who would it be and why?
Probably Prince, because it would make Alexis’ [the band’s drummer] day.
Michael Eavis compared you to Oasis and Coldplay after you played in Glastonbury; what do you think about that?
Um…they’re definitely two of the biggest influences on the band! Nah, we’ll take it as a compliment though because he means it in a nice way. Both bands do their own thing in their own way. The thing is I don’t think people would instantly think that we’re a similar band to those two in terms of sound but songs-wise, we’ve got the songs but we just play them in a different way.
Would you ever like to play the main stage at events like the recent Reading and Leeds festival you played, or do you prefer the more intimate stages?
We’d love to play the main stages…there is nothing better than thousands of people singing a song, although it seems a lot of the really special shows at festivals seem to happen in the smaller tents.
What’s the best band you’ve seen playing at a festival so far?
I saw Radiohead at Leeds and it was one of the best festival shows i’ve ever seen, the sound was beautiful. I saw Thom Yorke having it large back stage later, I think an orgy ensued soon after. [Mus. Ed. : Thom Yorke may or may not involve himself in orgies, it is not our place to say..!]
Your new single True Romance has got a real ‘80s vibe to it, is it a salute to that era?
It kind of wasn’t, to be honest. A lot of people pick up on that, and I suppose it’s because we’ve got that synth line which is kind of ‘80s and the video has a certain visual element to it. But it wasn’t really meant to have an ‘80s sound; it was almost more like a talking blues spoken-word thing, then we just put the music over the top. People seem to pick up on the ‘80s thing, and while it wasn’t intentional it’s alright.
You’ve just recently been headlining the NME Radar Tour. Did this present a new challenge to you or after playing festivals or did it all seem a bit of a breeze?
It’s quite different playing at the festivals as you have to set up your stuff super quickly and don’t really get to check everything is working before you start. I enjoyed getting back into dark rooms because I think that is where our music works best.
Did you get any ideas from the Tour for your future performances?
Yes, we’re going to be doing new arrangements of the existing songs with extra harmonies, tambourines and dancing girls!