The Future, Now: An Interview with Florentenes

Words: Tom Gensler

The future of indie-rock is in safe and capable hands, if Florentenes are anything to

go by. The young quartet are smashing stages all over the country, with a smooth

rocky-pulpy sound. With a lot of promise and a lot of personality, they have a lot

going for them at such young ages. We sat down with them, in Nottingham’s

legendary Bodega, to chat about their influences, who they like to see and what’s

next for them.

WHAT INSPIRES YOUR SOUND?

W: We really want to come up with something that sounds different from a lot of other

things, which is a really difficult task, because humans aren’t programmed to come up with

original thoughts just like that. So, we kind of just take influence from as many sources as

possible, and try and jam them into the genre of rock music. I think that’s a pretty valid

description of what inspires our sound. We want to sound like everyone.

YOU SAY YOU WANT TO SOUND LIKE EVERYONE, BUT WHO ARE YOUR TOP

ARTISTS?

W: Who are your top artists Liam?

L: Well, I’ve been asked this question many a time-

W: Don’t say something stupid.

L: I’m always scrolling through my Spotify trying to figure out what I’ve been listening to

recently, it's a really pressured question.

W: You’re answering this like a politician.

L: I love Led Zeppelin, and The Beatles, and all that classic rock kind of stuff.

L: I’m going to go with no comment on this one.

H: Yeah Liam’s pleading the fifth.

W: We all are really inspired by classic rock, and early prog rock, early metal-

L: Early heavier stuff-

W: A lot of like the new bands that all the hipsters are listening to, all the cool hip bands

that are coming out.

Liam: Keep it modern.

W: A lot of the bands are trying something different nowadays, we always look up to

them quite a lot, they’ve all escaped my head and I don’t know any of them. A lot of early

rock, and a lot of grunge as well, actually, which we don’t really mention, but we do listen

to a lot of grunge.

L: You can tell when you listen live, though.

W: It's hard to tell on the recordings, I think, because a lot of the songs that are recorded

are, like, really old. The last couple releases we put out; the recording is three years old. It

doesn’t mean it's not a great song, we’re still really proud of it, but it's a really old song, and

our influences have changed since then, you know. We’re not as inspired by, like, early

2000s indie or anything, as much as we were when we started out, as we’re growing and

learning more music and figuring out how to play our instruments.

WHAT ARE YOUR NON-MUSICAL INFLUENCES?

L: Of course we do, because the things we write songs about, you don’t write songs

about music, you write about subjects for music, you know. I guess you could say in that

sense, that most songs are about things that don’t have music in them.

W: Jeff Hardy from WWE, he’s my biggest influence outside of music.

L: Really? I thought it was Randy Orton.

W: No, no, he’s my favourite wrestler, but Jeff Hardy is my biggest influence just because he’s really cool.

W: I like Jeff Hardy. I think he’s a big influence because he makes me want to be cooler

than I am.

H: I like beer.

W: Yeah, I like beer.

L: Queen Victoria.

L: It's like I said, the things you write about aren’t musical things.

W: The people in my life, they are influences on the songs that we write and things like

that.

L: Your experiences.

W: When I write songs about people that I know, I guess they’re influences because

they’ve influenced me writing a song or writing lyrics about them, so yeah.

WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE BAND TO WATCH LIVE?

W: That is a good question. The first times I saw Fontaines live they blew my mind. I

didn’t know any of their songs when I saw them, and I was like “This is insane!”

L: I think Wunderhorse.

W: Wunderhorse are objectively a great live band as well. What was that tribute act you

said was good?

Luke: The Fleetwood Mac one.

Will: Elvana, they’re pretty sick. I’ve seen every great live band. I’ve seen Paul McCartney.

That was insane. It really doesn’t get much better than that, so I don’t know. Wunderhorse

and Fontaines are obviously great picks.

WHAT'S NEXT FOR YOU GUYS?

W: We’re playing Leeds Festival, we’re doing our first gig outside of the UK, we’re flying

across to Madrid to play Mad Cool Festival, that's 9th July, we’re playing Leeds

Festival in August, on the Saturday. Can I say any exclusives? (looks to band) We’ve got

an EP coming out. That’s in May. Coming out in May. You heard it here first.