The Futureheads

The Futureheads are a canny young Sunderland band, named after an early Flaming Lips song 'Hit to Death in The Future Head' and have had a very good 2004 thank you very much.

They consist of Ross Millard (vocals/guitar); brothers Barry Hyde (vocals/guitar) and Dave Hyde (vocals/drums); and Jaff (yes, just Jaff, no more questions please) on vocals and bass.

They combine punky assaultive guitars with four person melodies, and wrap up their cynical and abrasive lyrics neatly into two minute explosions of songs, leaving the listener dazzled and disorientated.

With influences as diverse as Fugazi, Devo, Queen and the Pixies (what a roll call) they've spent the past year gigging all over the world and have proved to be worryingly good support for Franz Ferdinand and The Zutons.

Their debut album 'The Futureheads' came out on 679 recordings last July, and their current single, a rousing version of Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love" is Jo Whiley's Radio 1 single of the week as we speak. Not bad going….

I managed to catch the chatty and philosophical Ross just before they started the super-fantastic NME tour with The Killers, Bloc Party and the Kaiser Chiefs. A tour which will take them all over the UK, followed by another stint touring in America and Canada.

You start the NME tour soon. What do you think of the bands you are playing with?

I'm a fan of the Kaiser Chiefs, really liked the single 'I Predict A Riot', and I bought 'Oh My God' when it came out last year.

We've met up with them before. They run that club night in Leeds called Pigs and we played a gig there in October 2003. I remember they gave us their demo then.

Bloc Party I have respect for as they are another ambitious band who won't compromise and just put out an average record.

They are really quiet lads who don't just shout their mouths off about how good they are, which makes a change compared to a lot of bands.

In your music you seem to experiment outside of the verse-chorus-verse structure.

We all like music that doesn't stick to the confines of a typical indie band.

We like slightly more avant-garde and underground music and so that helps us out a lot.

We try and make music that is a little bit more interesting than just a straightforward four part vocal structure.

Bands like the Pixies have influenced me - they always made great pop songs but they did it with a twist.

You've been asked on a few occasions, or emphasis has been placed on the fact you sing in your Sunderland accents. Are you tired of people making an issue of it?

It's probably because we are the only North East band singing in our natural accents that are out at the moment - apart from Kenickie [cracking mid 90s indie girl band fronted by Lauren Laverne].

There hasn't been a lot of bands coming out of the North East.

With the accents I think people find us quirky because of that.

It's good as it demonstrates that there are little pockets of regional music out there, and it gets recognition then.

It really helped us being in Sunderland, being left alone and being able to just play gigs and not think about what is happening next.

That way you don't have the pressure of being on in London and playing in front of loads of A & R people.

We got to play in front of all our friends and do stupid stuff like have gigs that only lasted 15 minutes and theme nights were everyone had to dress up as robots just cos we felt like it.

Didn't you play the US last year with Franz Ferdinand?

Yeah, we got to play in 3000 seater venues and got some tips from them as they are a great live band.

They had thousands of people just eating out of their hands.

Initially we were really sceptical of them because of all the hype that they've had. But when we met them they were good lads and were up for promoting all the bands from their Glasgow scene - they had all these unsigned band stickers on their drum kit.

It's really good to meet people who are down to earth and try to mention all the little bands who haven't had the break yet. Not many people do that.

You've said in earlier interviews how playing live is the opportunity to get away from the music industry bulls**t and just basically rock. Is that still the case? And what can you expect from a typical Futureheads live performance?

I absolutely love that hour you get on stage, where you become completely focussed on playing and nothing else can distract you at all.

So long as you've got that gig to look forward to in the evening, everything else will be ok.

You'll spend the day travelling, doing interviews, and have to take up two hours listening to someone going on from radio about playing a set for them - not that it is a hard life I'm not moaning - but its getting all of that out of the way and playing.

What you hear on the record is how it's going to be live. There aren't really any other extra little tricks on the record that we can't do live.

Playing live is what we are best at, and the most important thing for us at the moment I think.

We are playing better than we ever have done.