LIVERPOOL SOUND CITY ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: THE LILACS

Words: Darci Jackson

They’re honest, boisterous and unapologetically themselves. Wigan’s The Lilacs make guitar music feel alive with their festival-ready choruses and stories that make you feel at home. This is their first year playing Sound City, and we sat down with frontman Ollie Anglesea to find out more.

Q: What’s your favourite thing about Liverpool?

O: The crowds really, they’re a bit more lively, aren't they? We did a tour [recently] and the last night was Liverpool, and the whole tour had been amazing but Liverpool was just a different level. I didn’t expect it to be so good.

Q: You’ve got a huge summer of shows and festivals coming up, what’s your favourite thing about festival season?

O: I reckon every band that you speak to will tell you that their favourite time of year is probably festival season. The sun's out, you’re in a field, you’ve probably got a couple of cans, you know, especially if you're playing some of the bigger stages, you know that you're going to get in front of a decent audience to promote yourself and you get to listen to some other acts and the vibes are just good all around, aren't they?

Q: Who are you looking forward to catching at Sound City?

O: Brooke Combe, love her.

Q: What is a Lilacs gig like for people who haven’t seen you before?

O: Very high energy, little bit of rowdiness but not too much. We have a laugh on stage. The thing with The Lilacs is: what you see is what you get. We're four idiots on stage just playing to people, and we're lucky to do that because we are just four lads and we do get shit wrong. There’s no backing track, we play live and we fuck up and stuff like that but people seem to love it.

Q: Why do you think it’s so important for festivals like Sound City to support smaller artists?



O: Well, it's the only way you grow isn't it? Like, one thing that we found is that obviously you've got to have a bit about you, don’t get me wrong, but, it's a numbers game. You’ve got to get in front of as many people as you can. To give people, up and coming bands, opportunities to play in front of those people, is massive for us. How else are they going to grow? How else are people going to find them? I'm really looking forward to playing it for our first time as well for the same reason.

Q: Which bands do you take the most inspiration from?

O: I would say up until now, the obvious one would be Courteeners as that’s the one we almost get branded as being a tribute band of! We’ve just finished recording our debut album and it’s a little bit more mature sounding. There’s hints of The Strokes in there, and possibly bits of Stereophonics and there’s always going to be hints of Courteeners. Sam, our guitarist, grew up listening to Motown and northern soul so if you listen to his individual parts sometimes you will notice there’s a kind of funky feel to them.

Q: What can you tell us about your debut album?

O: That it’s bloody good. It’s had months and months and months of love gone into it and blood, sweat and tears. The album's called Keeping up with the Joneses, if you’re trying to keep up with the Joneses, you’re trying to keep up with next door and what they’re doing and essentially what the next person’s doing. There’s the whole world at the minute trying to keep up with the Joneses because of social media, you’re trying to be someone else and not yourself and that’s the over-theme for the album. Going back to the Courteeners, there’s our producer Joe Cross of the Courteeners and he’s done some of their albums and he did one of Louis Tomlinson’s number one albums. We’ve literally sat for months and written, and recorded and agonised over every little bit and honestly I can’t wait to get it out there.

We’ve got a new single coming out called Girl Behind the Bar. I hate this saying but I think it’s going to make waves; it’s so different to anything that we’ve put out there and there might be a couple of new tracks being played at Sound City so I’ll be excited to see how they go down.

Buy tickets to Sound City here.