Categorizing their music as “twiddly-shouty rock music”, UK-based band I Feel Fine’s unique and powerful music is catching ears all throughout the indie rock genre. Having just released their latest EP, Long Distance Celebration, that features five highly crafted and incredibly relatable songs, we caught up with the band to talk about their influences, the recording process behind Long Distance Celebration, and their upcoming plans this year.
What is the story behind I Feel Fine? How did you form and what is the meaning behind the band’s name?
Joe Kool (guitar): I’m actually the newest member of the band. I joined after the guys posted an ad on Gumtree. After we met for a delightful beer in town, I swiftly went home and learnt all of the hardest riffs they’d recorded in the hope of proving myself at practice. I’m actually not sure they had any other offers because I’m still here!
To my credit, though, I did come up with the band name… with that, I think we all knew we wanted something to reflect how none of us legitimately feel like we’re adults, so in the end, I think what we went with is perfect.
What made each of you want to become musicians and form a band? Do you come from musical families and/or backgrounds?
Antoine Mansion (drums/vox): Yeah, totally. Both of my parents are musicians. They were kind of “one hit wonders” in Belgium (where I’m from) in the late 80s, playing synth’y French funk/disco pop. My dad is still doing music nowadays as a living. Music has always been in my life as early as I can remember, and that’s definitely what got me into it. I saw my dad playing a lot of different instruments and, when you’re young, your dad is your hero. You just want to do the same thing.
Nathan Tompkins (guitar/vox): To pale in comparison to that, none of my family are really all that musical at all – meaning that, to my knowledge, none of them know their way around any instruments. My dad’s pretty obsessed with classic rock and all its god-awful guitar solos, but that’s about it! He spent a lot of time trying to turn me onto some of it when I was younger, so maybe that just festered long enough to push me into looking elsewhere.
Scott Rogers (bass/vox): I learnt to play the trumpet at a young age and played in a few stage bands, but never felt it really suited me. There is a music festival in the park behind my parents’ house, and so every year as a kid I was able to see massive bands like The Rolling Stones and The Who. I was even able to watch Foo Fighters play from backstage when I was about 12. That was just so exciting for me that I had to start playing guitar instead. I busted the trumpet out once again in front of the rest of the boys in the band, but I was terrible at it.
Joe: I had piano lessons for about three years when I was a kid, although I have absolutely no idea why I thought this would be a good idea. After a few years, and probably quite a lot of wasted money on my parents’ behalf, I decided that I wanted a guitar for my 13th birthday. I had a band with some friends in my class, and I used to teach myself by working out how to play Nirvana and Funeral for a Friend songs. I would even make my own tab books out of stolen exercise texts from school, and I’m pretty sure that somewhere at my parents’ house there’s still a copy of Casually Dressed & Deep in Conversation.
You just released your new EP, Long Distance Celebration, last month. What was the overall writing and recording process like for the EP and how long were you in the studio for?
Nathan: The songs themselves were written individually over a period of years, most pretty far from one another. I can’t really say that there was a plan to fashion a record out of it all until Joe joined later on, which is when we started to move forward as a fully committed unit. As the songs evolved from there, gradually we were able to picture something.
Joe: As for the recording process, that was both a lot of fun and completely terrifying at the same time. We wanted to make a good first impression on any future listeners and hit the ground running, which is why we went to The Ranch with Lewis. Apart from Antoine, none of us had any real experience of recording and working to a schedule, so it was definitely a bit nerve-racking. Speaking for myself, though, I couldn’t be much happier with the end result!
You recently released a music video for “Beached Community” that features a narrative personal to the band. How did the idea for the music video treatment come up?
Nathan: We originally weren’t all that bothered about doing a video. Maybe because we thought back then that nobody would ever see it, so there’d be no use, haha. It was the labels’ idea (Failure By Design) to put something together – they’ve been good at that: spotting opportunity at times we’d be otherwise stubborn or naive.
Conceptually with “Beached Community”, I wanted to project the changing faces of a family, and just kind of open up a bit on how tough it can be not to fall out of sync with one another as time passes. Yet, also, you’re learning to recognize the harder truths of as to why that same separation may have started in the first place.
Antoine: Knowing what the song was about, I remembered that my mum had asked a friend to digitize our old family tapes to a hard drive a few years back, so I asked her to send me a copy. I knew there were some good bits from memory and figured that maybe there was an idea there, so I spent 2 days watching literally everything (there was 40 hours of footage altogether!) and cut it down into 20 minutes or so of all the bits I liked before showing it to the band. Obviously, it affects you more when it’s you on screen, so at that point, I had no idea whether they’d like it or not. Then I remember Nathan came to me (we’re housemates) and said, “man, this is great. I got quite emotional at points”, and from there, we began to plan the final idea – mixing the family archive with us playing in a house and then have the two worlds meet at points.
We did everything ourselves with the help of 2 friends (James and Josh) who helped us film and colour grade it. Then, I edited it myself. I guess we were quite lucky that I had the family footage available with the topics of childhood and growing older being such a chaotic and fascinating process, and something we always go back to as a band.
Being from Brighton, how has the UK music scene and history influenced the music I Feel Fine makes?
Nathan: I think, other than Joe, neither of us have actually lived in Brighton all that long (or even live here at all!). I myself only relocated here 5 or so years ago, by which point I was already writing this type of music.
I grew up in Kent (maybe 50 miles away) where there was a decent little scene going on way back then, particularly in places like Canterbury and the coastal regions. I had friends in bands there that were trying out the whole Midwest, Kinsella-worship thing, which hooked me. In fact, it became my entry point into that entire world of punk and emo. I know that’s not exactly a valid answer given the music they were emulating was born out of the States, haha. That’s just how I came to it.
Scott: I grew up on the Isle of Wight where there is little-to-no music scene, so I was dying to get somewhere where I could see band’s more regularly. When I moved to Brighton, it opened my eyes to an awesome music scene and really changed my idea of what success meant. I’ve seen some friends try out some really unique stuff and it goes down really well there. So, it was only natural for me to want to be a part of something as well.
Joe: Yeah, I mean I don’t think being from Brighton directly influences us other than the fact that there are so many great bands and venues here. It can be quite motivating to see local bands do so well outside of our town, and it gives you the sense that success – or at least our idea of success – is achievable. It really helps as well that there’s some great promoters in town that are always willing to give new bands a chance.
What does I Feel Fine have in store for the rest of the year?
Nathan: Quite a bit, fortunately! We’re heading over to mainland Europe at the end of June for a run of shows spanning France and Germany. Following that, I think the primary focus will be on readying new songs for both the set and the studio.
Joe: I think also for all of us this band is a vessel for us to see new places and meet like-minded people. So, whilst there aren’t any concrete plans just yet, I imagine after this tour we’ll already be thinking out our next trip, too. At this stage, it’s just about playing as much as possible. The more time I can take out of work to do just that, the better.
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