Who are Manatee?
“It all started first year of college, it was like two weeks
in. I was sat in music tech and had known Sophie (Wickham) before college but
not really, we had never met but I had her on facebook for a while. I vaguely
knew that she was in a band before, and I knew she played bass. It was
literally a minute conversation with her, we had decided albeit a pipe dream at
the time to start being in a band.
So me and Sophie had started it off and then a few weeks went
by and we were looking for a drummer. We found out that Zach (Boakes), who we
had known before hand, did lessons for kids and that sort of thing so he was on
board. I don’t know how long we had been Manatee before Calum (Ellison) came
on, it must have been about a year? Calum joined properly in about January time
this year. He was in a band before, like a folk band and he just didn’t tell
them- I don’t think he is still in it (I hope not!)”
There’s two things that strike me about the band, one of
them is certainly the name. How did Manatee come to being?
“When it was just me Zach and Sophie for a while, through
that year we went through a number of different names. We never sort of came up
with anything- we’d brainstorm every time we would get together and have a
practice but nothing ever came of it. We had some stupid names that almost
happened ‘The Cacti Club’ and “Dolphins Do Maths’ were all non starters.
We were all, not angry, but had got to that stage of high
tension at a practice and Zach just shouted “Right what’s your favourite
animal?”. I replied with “oh a
Manatee”, it wasn’t like a revelation moment where we realised it was the best ever band name. We kind of just went with it “it will do”. With the release of the single on Monday, I don’t have much say in the matter anymore.”
And also what do you feel you would class your own sound was? Do you feel that your
style has changed now?
“I always thought of our sound as quite happy and joyous,
it’s nice to listen to. That’s what I
have always wanted from Manatee. I’m not trying to change the world or do
anything revolutionary. It’s just pop songs and that was the main focus for me.
And there are bands out there that do the whole sad thing really well, you get
the sentiment really well. Listening back to us, we are a happy band. The songs
I prefer on the record that are the happiest, not always lyrical content but
the major chords and the glockenspiel lines.
The sort of initial imaginations of the songs I had in my
head have completely changed. There are songs that are coming out on the record
that I never thought would sound like that. Some things I am happy about,
others I would have like to develop even more. The whole recording process
completely changed us as a band, especially for me- I could work out what
worked and didn’t in terms of our sound. Which will hopefully go to progression
in the next recording.
I never wanted to be just another guitar band”
So your debut single is coming out tomorrow?
“It is a weird process for all of us, it is the first time
any of us have put something out there for people to actually buy and download
and listen. It’s weird to see myself on Itunes. Logisitcs is about, for lack of
a better phrase, just getting out there and moving around. In a daily sense we
have lines like you’ve got a train to
catch and things like that But in a wider and more figurative sense, you’re
not going to get what you want from your existence if you do not go out and
seize it.
We are hoping to release the EP early Summer, of course see
how the single does and go from there. Dictating how much buzz there is going
for the record and the EP. It’s called Hours and Hours and Hours, which is
reminiscent of the opening lines of the EP. Basically the title stems from the
amount of hard work and literal time we have put into crafting what Manatee
sound like.
We have been a while as a band, people asking us how long we’ve
been together and this is only our first release. People are always surprised.
A year and a half, that just reflects the process and how we have tried to make
these songs sound like I’ve always wanted.”
Logistics will be released on the 11th May
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