original photo courtesy of benji wilson
i
it's the mantis
i want
have compulsions
07/24
dearthworms-
noun.
1. architects of sapsucker, a wonderful and frightening kaleidoscope of frenzied, galloping rhythms, sinister introspection, complex and gritty obliques, dank ginnels holding danker secrets, shadowy characters, snivelling men, mantis/human bdsm action (delete/leave as appropriate), unhinged mundanity and vivid, intoxicating beauty that takes your hand through the looking glass into the land of mesmerising surrealism and playfulness.
​
2. a rather good band from sheffield who have made a rather good album
nick potter vocals, keyboards, crowd berater, participation encourager, curmudgeon (not often)
juni rothwell bass, vocals, art, chief counter-to-6, future lyricist-in-waiting ("it was really, really painful")
andy ball guitar, a few vocals hither and thither, humble brag maestro
finn guitar, no vocals (perhaps), infectious/off-kilter conjurer of melodic weirdness
andy sissons drums, hardcore aficionado, temposhifting phenomenon
nick-
We like doing stuff in sort of odd time signatures. It's maybe less on this record, cos we've started doing a lot more of it now, but there's moments of it.
We try to do it without you realising it.
Yeah, we're quite allergic to math rock.
I'm not a fan.
But what I do like is when something seems ever so slightly out of sync, in a way that makes you prick up your ears, but, at the same time, it's also accessible in a way.
giles-
so it feels natural rather than contrived...?
nick-
Yeah, yeah, I mean uncanny valley is the wrong phrase to use, but it's that sort of thing.
The best example I can give you is a song that you haven't heard - it's not on the record -, but it has got this riff, which I think
is like in… oh god, what is it Juni?
juni-
Ah, yeah, the one where I count to 6 but it's not in 6
nick-
It's in like six and three, I think.
But there's enough space in it that it feels normal.
But after a while you keep listening to it and get the feeling that something just isn't right.
So, we like that kind of thing.
We're also really into stuff like pub rock, and just, well, entertainment.
We feel most at home playing in pubs or places like the Adelphi in Hull or places like that, what you see is what you get.
We still want to appeal to that kind of scene.
juni-
All of our best gigs are where there's a decent crowd and everyone's dancing, and you're flinging yourself around on the floor and shit.
Definitely not standing at the back and rubbing your chin and saying
"Hmm, how interesting",
but like one where you actually get involved.
giles-
Without wanting to sound like an old fart, I wonder if crowds are generally a bit more reserved nowadays.
They seem to need coaxing out of their shells sometimes, but some countries, I dunno, are just always up for it.
As an aside, I went around England and Europe with Deaf Club (San Diego) and Fuck Money (Austin), who both play intense, fast, quite experimental, I guess, noisecore - or "annoying" as Justin Pearson describes Deaf Club's music!
I really noticed how the crowd reacts when they are close to the band and feels part of the performance. It felt that they were more liberated and willing to get involved.
juni-
yeah, definitely. And I think when we really nailed that live performance aspect, that was when it really clicked for us.
Obviously we practiced all the songs to death and we've done all this stuff before in different bands, but this is a bit different maybe.
Performances are something you have to get right, and I think for us, it came together a bit more slowly.
nick-
I used to play guitar in my old band as well as sing. I didn't really interact much with the audience at all.
And then when when we started doing this, like Juni says, it, slowly came to a point where I'm wanting to start really berating the audience. I mean I play keyboards, but not very much when we play live. It's very minimal, and we quite often drop stuff. That allows me to be more present in the room, like drop keyboard lines, because they're not that important. They're just padding in a way.
We got asked to play a gig in town, and we were practicing that night anyway, it was like a really last minute thing.
And we turned up, and then it turned out that they didn't have a sound engineer either. And we're all quite involved in Hatch, which is like a DIY space in Sheffield, and both Andy and me are relatively competent sound engineers - not in a proper venue, but if you gave us a mixing desk, and some mics and a band, we could deal with it.
So, we ended up doing the sound and it also ended up with us doing the door as well. And then they asked us to headline it!
So we're kind of taking over this gig, so by the time we got to play, none of it really made any sense whatsoever.
So we're kind of riled up.
And then I just ended up calling the audience all virgins and going off on one, but it kind of cemented something. I'm not an aggressive person in the slightest, but I do like to play a character on stage.
It's fun.
I don't know if you've ever seen that band Lice?
giles-
I know of them but haven't heard their stuff
nick-
The guy that sings for them is really mild mannered and really sweet. But on stage, he will just spend the whole set saying "this is the best thing you'll ever see in your life."
juni-
​
Do you remember the frontman from The Shits when they played at Hatch?
He was like, throwing beer at people just being like a complete dick to the audience {laughs}
-paul
I mean I don't go that far, but I do enjoy a bit of interaction!
-giles
Just putting some ideas out there!
juni-
Haha, there's a spectrum: at one end there's telling the audience how much you love them and how happy you are that they're there and at the other end, there's throwing stuff at them {laughs}
giles-
I remember reading an interview with Karen O, years ago and she was saying about how her stage performance and costumes were obviously quite extravagant. And she said that it felt like she had two personas - this onstage, gregarious, outgoing woman, and offstage one who was incredibly shy and socially awkward.
nick-
I think there's a real thrill and exhilaration in doing that, which I think is why people perform.
I think it's probably really, fun to, you know, put yourself out there on the stage and be very real, you know, this is who I am.
It's even more fun to destruct something else.
giles-
Just thinking back to what we were talking about a few minutes ago -about the tempos, different time signatures, and things like that. I don't like comparing artists to other artists - it sort of feels a little bit disrespectful - but I don't think our brains can help it in a way - you know, looking for that reference point of your past experiences - but the common thread with a lot of those artists and you is that the thing of beauty in the music is in the unexpected. Like you said, Nick, that thing of "Oh, I didn't expect that" and also when those moments take you to a different time and place - that's interesting
juni-
It's partly quite conscious that we don't want to do the really obvious thing. But we also don't want to do something that's really, really forced, or, like, deliberately fucking with you. It's sometimes a bit of a hard balance to find something that does make sense, but also isn't the first thing that will come to mind.
giles-
I totally agree with you on that, Juni. And it must be quite difficult to do, because the way that the instruments have their own space so you can really hear everything. Like you must have to be totally locked in and tuned into each other..
nick-
I think it's probably coming from a few things which we're quite lucky to have and one of those is that our music tastes are all quite different - which helps.
So one of the things we have done actually, which you might have spotted, is we started doing these little mixes.
Over the next couple of weeks, we're basically going to put out some mixes of tracks that inspired the record. The remit was for each band member to put together about 45 minutes or so of songs. I co-present a radio show in Sheffield called Two Foot Left, and we're hosting these mixes on Mixcloud. So, Juni's would broadcast on Monday.
So, I've been playing them and recording them. And the difference is quite noticeable - but in a really nice way.
And I think that works really well. For example, Andy and Finn - the two guitarists - are a little bit older and were really into grunge and alternative rock. Andy, our drummer is like, he's...
juni-
...he's really into hardcore
nick-
​
Yeah, he started as a hardcore drummer, like, that's his thing. We have been a band for quite a long time now, but within the band, he's really grown into, like, doing lots of other stuff that he's now really interested in. And then I think me and Juni have got maybe more - it's gonna sound so cringy - but like, avant garde. We're interested in really experimental music, I really like jazz and post-punk. So it's quite a nice melting pot of loads of different things. And I think the other things is that we're very much a hobby band. We enjoy playing together, we enjoy practicing. And we also enjoy going to the pub and playing gigs. We kind of do it for fun and there's no pressure. So we've allowed time for the kind of osmosis between everyone. I mean we're quite slow at writing songs, but having said that, we've written quite a lot since all this album stuff started kicking off.
juni-
Yeah, we've got like nearly another album's worth We recorded Sapsucker a year and a half ago. It's just been a very slow process to get it finished and towards production.
giles-
Best things are worth waiting for. I mean, you do it in your own time, which is how it should be
nick-
Exactly. Some people, when they watch us live, they're like "Wow, you lot can really play". And yes, we do play together a lot and we do get each other when we're coming from different angles. I think the guitarists, Andy and Finn, are good in that neither of them are jostling for space. Andy very much wants to be the rhythm guitarist and he likes filling the space. I think that's fair to say, isn't it, Juni?
juni-
He said recently that we are four people all frantically showing off in different directions. And he's the one actually serving the needs of the music, which I think is probably the most egotistical thing he's ever said. It's like, such a fucking humble brag {everyone laughs}
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
nick-
I mean, it's true. We'd be pretty lost without him, I think.
juni-
We tried practicing without him a couple times, and it just does not work at all, it falls apart immediately {laughs}
Because of the way we play, we're all constantly listening to each other for cues, or at least I am. You know, this bit's coming off the drum, this bit's coming off Nick's singing, this bit here, I just have to lock in with the guitarists or come in between them when they're not playing. So it's a very intuitive way of playing, and I think it really relies on us all trusting each other when it comes to performance.
giles-
​
I was just gonna say that it sounds like intuition plays quite a large part in how you work, certainly in live performance, does that intuition also exist when you're composing, practicing, bringing it all together?
-juni
We've got some songs that one person's written and brought to the rest of the group and everybody's learned them or maybe altered a bit. But it's quite collaborative, mostly. Like, we're all in the room and all asking "what if that instead?" Or "what about if we put this here or made that bit longer?" It all kind of grows very organically.
giles-
I'm really interested in how people work together and get consensus on things like this. I just think it's such an important part of our everyday lives. How do you bring all your ideas, opinions and wishes together?
nick-
I mean, we get on pretty well. I do think again, it's that thing of coming from different backgrounds and having different interests. It wouldn't work if we didn't. And we do have quite a lot of arguments, not like heated arguments.
juni-
Disagreements, I'd say.
nick-
Yeah. The loudest voices in the room, which are probably me, Juni and Andy the drummer, we're very much coming with very different opinions on what a good song sounds like. And I think we do rely on those different opinions quite a bit. It's important, because if you're just agreeing on something, you're not having a dialogue about how something should sound. I mean - and this is a classic lead singer thing - but my main role in practicing is probably to be really stubborn and cause arguments about stuff. But the point I'm trying to put across is often so abstract and intangible that it's very hard to get to the bottom of what I'm trying to get to, but I do know what a good song sounds like to me. And I have good intuition on where things should go, but it's sometimes hard to put that into words. Having those conversations is, fundamental to what we do. If Andy wasn't there, for example, I think I'd probably have too much sway over things and all our songs would probably be about six, seven minutes long. It's been really nice to have someone to go "No". I mean a classic conversation is where I'd say "we should do this eight times now". And he goes "no, we should do it two times." And then we've kind of settled on four. {Laughs}. But then the recording process was really interesting. I think we got really lucky with Lyndon (Hobson - producer) - we'll hopefully be doing the next one with him as well. We just met him through chance. But he got really involved in the process of recording. It was fraught at times, and we were having conversations about how we didn't like how it sounded. But again, I think it's that process of having the back and forth, and just having to discuss it means you ultimately end up with something that I think that we're all really proud. He put a lot of time and effort into thinking about what it should sound like.
giles-
I'm definitely an introvert and have found it hard over the years to speak up in certain situations, even where I feel strongly about something. I really feel the importance of creating an inclusive environment and the point that Juni mentioned about trust, I think trust is so important in building that environment where you can speak up and feel that your ideas and opinions are valued
nick-
Because Lyndon hadn't known us for so long, it was a bit more difficult for that to happen. So we kind of ended up in the situation where he'd sent us about three tracks and they're all quite different. And we were like, "What's going on? This doesn't sound cohesive". And he basically said "Look, can you just trust the process? Leave me alone for two or three months? There's so much going on here with all your ideas" - and I don't think we really recognized that at the time - "there's so many different sounds and it is going to sound incohesive until the whole thing is together. So let me go away, I will do the whole thing, rather than send you a track at a time. And then when I get back to you, then you can have an opinion". And actually, that worked really well. Because when we got it back, we could see where he was coming from him. There's still more tweaking, but it worked really well. And I think it took us took us that to realize, you know, what he was on about.
giles-
I'm interested in this area as well - looking at an album as a whole, seeing it as a cohesive unit, a story perhaps, especially as mainstream music is dominated by singles and playlists. I just find it much more rewarding for myself - and respectful for the artist - to listen to an LP front to back. To get the insight of what you were thinking when you compiled it all. I say all this knowing that I'm not representative of the mainstrem and we've become generally less able to be attentive for long period of time (as if 30 minutes is a long time...)
juni-
Yeah, it's been released that way on purpose. They're not always, but generally put together a certain way for a reason. Not necessarily a narrative, but it's like it's telling a story. I'm the same as you - I'm very much a 'listen to the album the whole way through' person. It was kind of weird putting the album together, because some of these songs were written years apart. And it was like, we've got to find a way to make them fit together and have something to say to each other, which I think ended up working all right.
nick-
Yeah, it did. Doing the next one will be interesting, because I think that will be a lot more cohesive already. It's quite funny - and maybe we shouldn't admit this in an interview, but it's about the title Sapsucker. We were chatting about loads of different stuff and then Juni sent me a link to this book - you'll have to tell Giles what the book is, because I can't remember the title - but it's about an incel teenager who basically drinks so much Mountain Dew he becomes an aphid. And it's like a really amazing piece of literature that's really cerebral and disgusting.
juni-
It's by Porpentine and it's called Honeydew Toxicity Event. It's really horrible and it's also really, really funny, like, half of its written in 4chan green text, that kind of formatting. And it's just one of the funniest things I've ever read. And I knew Nick would absolutely love it. And it's ended up being like, the major influence on all the stuff we're writing at the moment - it's all weird stuff about bugs.
nick-
{Everyone laughs} Well, there are a lot pathetic men on the record, and there's a lot of looking at like weird, pathetic men or other weird characters. And at the same time as trying to pick a title, we were also writing three other songs. We've got three other songs that are more about some really pathetic guy in an office who wants to get ahead but his managers are ants and he becomes an aphid - as you do, you know, normal songwriting stuff {laughs}. We wrote these three songs about his character. And that is this Sapsucker character, so he's not actually on the record. So Strikethrough, is about is about BDSM. And it's about someone looking up to their partner and being like, you know, I want you to hurt me, but it starts from the perspective of a male praying mantis and then changes to the human thing. Again, you know, normal lyrics for normal people {everyone laughs}. So, that became the focus point. But we have then ended up writing loads of stuff around that which hasn't been on the album, but Sapsucker as a title sounded good. And it also sums up that sort of character that we like to get into their head. So I don't really know what we're going to do with the next record where the majority of it will actually be about the character that's on the front of the cover of the first record! {Everyone laughs}
juni-
We'll name the second album after the main character from the third album. {Everyone laughs}
giles-
Getting into those mind bending topics and narratives is brilliant. I love it. I really tried not to compare you to other artists, but failed miserably....so I was thinking about how they would take me into these different worlds, and you're doing the same. Like a very subversive Tales from the Unexpected or Alice Through The Looking Glass (ok, gimme some slack!)
nick-
It's important to create atmosphere. And I think I've got quite a visual imagination, so when I write stuff - and I think this is what David Byrne used to do - basically I write down phrases that sound good as we practice and then I'll take them away and change them or that might be a prompt to then go off into somewhere or something. But I tend to think very visually, so I'll construct worlds in my head that and then that will tend to pull on what the songs are about.
giles-
I know you've been in different bands before, but in Dearthworms, but are you learning more each day?
juni-
Yeah. When I started, I was playing the bass parts on a keyboard. And I just started learning bass during COVID.
I'd never played before. I used to do laptop music. So I'd recorded myself for some vocal samples before, but I hadn't really sung in a band or anything. So that is also something that I've been doing fairly recently, and just sort of figured it out through practice every week. Like, 'what if I tried doing it like this? Can I make this noise come out of my mouth? Does it sound better if I do it like that?' So it's, yeah, like, like, pretty much everything else we do. It's been quite organic, and kind of on the hoof, I guess.
nick-
I think Juni's approach to doing this like, 'Oh, I could try this, or this', because it's exploratory, I think that works really nicely. The thing about creating those visual worlds, obviously, massively helps that Juni's a really amazing artist and that has very much started to intertwine in the band - like Juni, might show me something, and then I'll be like, 'Oh, I like that imagery' and it can find its way into the lyrics from there.
giles-
I'm glad you mentioned that, Nick, as I was going to ask you about the artwork, and your artwork in particular Juni because I do love it. I was really interested in how the aural and visual work together, if they do at all? Cos these days, it's easy for artwork to be overlooked when it's all streaming and downloads.
juni-
Yeah, like relegated to a tiny square on your phone! I mean, it's partly a pragmatic thing. People probably aren't going to have heard of us if they just walk into a shop and see this, or they're gonna say, 'That's weird. What's that? I'm going to look at it, this sounds cool'. So some of it's kind of practical, but also I guess when I make something that we're all happy with all round, something that we can be proud of that's not just 'yeah, that will do' - 'cos as well, there's four other people involved and they all put as much, sometimes more, work into it - so I also want to do them justice because they're also my friends. Um, that's really lame - sorry {laughs}. But yeah, I think cuz I really, really like Nick's lyrics and, because they are quite visual, it does lend itself very easily to the idea of 'What could this look like? How would I represent this visually?', so it works together quite nicely. I think maybe because Nick's also done some visual art before - he painted some of the Blood Sport covers and he's done graphic design, so he's done a lot of gig posters and stuff. Having that kind of background helps, like we can talk about these things. I think the art is more us two, like I'll post sketches in band chats and stuff, so everybody's involved, but it's more me and Nick doing that side of it. Like Nick did the lettering for the album cover on the front and the back, so it was collaborative. And there's definitely a lot of back and forth, like refining the design of what its gonna look like. Not a million miles away from how we write stuff, I guess.
nick-
And I agree with you, Giles, about the whole package and the whole listening to a record from start to end. Because, you know, you're putting all that time and effort in something over multiple years, so to then just be like, 'Oh, whatever order, I don't really mind, just stick a photo on the cover' isn't what we want. I want to create something that I want to have. I'm gonna sound like such a old curmudgeon here, but there is something about physical records being something you can hold and value because someone's produced that, and they've spent loads of time making it into something that is intended to be played in a certain order and that has a beautiful cover. I think that's important.
juni-
I want to make something that people can be really, really, really obsessed about. I've got loads of stuff around that I can't shut up about, because I'm so excited about it. And it would be really nice to make something that makes somebody else feel that weird and intense.
nick-
Even if it's just one person. As long as they don't start writing us letters {laughs}
juni-
Yeah. And don't turn up in a homemade t-shirt. That is also out {laughs}
giles-
Just listening to us there, it sounds quite nostalgic, doesn't it? To recreate something that means something in a world of consumerism. Nostalgia is an interesting thing, isn't it? Well, maybe it's just me {tumbleweed}. My turn to sound like a curmudgeon now: but, you know, that excitement that I used to have when records would come with gatefold sleeves, fold out poster inserts tucked inside. That was just the best thing. I used to gorge myself on the inside covers, and, you know, read the lyrics over and over again - all that sort of stuff. At that time, I was in a time and a place, that I now remember when I listen back to that music.
juni-
I think it's because you've been forced to slow down and engage with the music in a slightly different way. It does change the experience. It encourages you not to see it as something so disposable, I guess. It's not something you listen to or put on for like 10 minutes and then it's gone. It doesn't necessarily have to be the, 'oh, you know, things were better when I was younger and stuff', it can be like, 'No, genuinely, this thing has changed for the worse'. It doesn't always have to be an instinctual thing. Nostalgia can be useful when you can break it down into something material and concrete and you can say 'I think this thing was better than that thing and this is why'. Nostalgia can be something that you can put to a use, rather than just being like, 'oh, you know, kids these days' and stuff. I don't know if that all sounds really abstract.
giles-
I think nostalgia does have that abstract - or subjective - dimension, cos it's a feeling isn't it? I think you're right, it's definitely more helpful if we can be more objective with our nostalgia.
juni-
I mean there's definitely advantages with the way a lot of music is produced and released now - like you can find something that someone's made on a laptop in Canada or somewhere that you absolutely never would have encountered otherwise. And that's really good. But, equally you've definitely lost some kind of tangible engagement with some things. Which, I mean, isn't only music. So much of that was lost during COVID and it's persisted. Increasingly, the world's not something physical and concrete that you move around in and touch and feel, it's something that you experience purely visually, while you yourself are alone and isolated, it's something you look at, something that's happening somewhere else that you are abstracted from.
giles-
So...... with that, let's turn to future nostalgia! Where do you see Dearthworms going?
nick-
I mean I know we said we enjoy playing the pubs and stuff, but that doesn't mean we're without some drive. After this chat, I'm going to be emailing people about trying to do two mini weekenders in September. I feel like there's a next level of things which is totally attainable. So, you know, playing a few festivals and getting out and about some more. We've done quite a lot of gigging, but we tend to go back to the same places. So I'm keen to kind of start playing a few more different places. We've played in London a fair bit, but we've only really played in New River Studios. So you know, I'm keen to do some other bits. It'd be nice to go to Europe, even if it's just like a couple of days in France, or whatever. I think in a bigger way, I'm really keen to just keep going with this, keep making music and records and exploring what we else we can do. Like what you were saying about inserts and posters; that is, unfortunately, something we've not had a chance to do. By the time we got to the conversation about the insert, I think Juni's hand was going to fall off from the amount of pencil marks {laughs}. But, we did a short little video, which is really basic, but I really enjoyed doing that. I had a lot of fun doing that. And there's a lot of stuff around that, that I'd like to get back into. I mean, my old band did go really hard for it. It was all consuming and I've come to realize that was pretty bad for me and it wasn't very enjoyable for most of the time. But, I mean that was all many years ago. But there are certain elements of that which I would very much like to get back to. I do agree with the thing about the physicality of stuff and that's something that has been lost. But I also do think there's some interesting multimedia and things like that to have a look at. I think bands like Crack Cloud do that very well, where even in a simple way, like you've got videos for songs, but they're all part of the same story, in the same visual style. That also applies to the record, so you're building like a world of stuff. I think there might be quite a good opportunity to do something like that for the next record. I'm not saying it's going to be a concept album, but maybe there'll be a theme that's tying things together a bit more. I mean, I don't think we're going to do this, but as an example Junie, at one point, was really obsessed with making text based adventures. So, I think there's a bit of scope now that we've got that first record out of the way. We're really pleased with it and we all collectively said that we're happy to go a bit weirder with things. Explore that a bit more. More gigs.
juni-
Yeah. And I think it will also be easier to get more and maybe slightly larger gigs now we've got a recent full length album, instead of just an EP from 2021, that we can point people to. So that will be useful. I'd definitely like to play more gigs in different places.
giles-
I think you're totally right and I'm sure you will do. This record is outstanding. And you have such an excitement for new ideas, for using your imagination and for getting weird, which makes the next record feel excitingly unpredictable. Jeez, even within the record it's gloriousy unpredictable. From a listener's and a fan's point of view, that's really exciting. Or it should be. I mean there'll always be people who don't like change, but they're probably not following you in the first place.
juni-
Yeah, I think we definitely appeal to someone who's happy for it to be a bit strange and unexpected, and go in the direction that you wouldn't think it would.
nick-
It's not going to be a vast change, but we really enjoyed doing Boys in the Wood where we're creating a bit more atmosphere.
juni-
I live in terror that you will subject me to the HELL of having to write lyrics again.
nick-
I will, because they were very good.
giles-
Was it torturous?
juni-
Yeah, it was really, really painful. I think I got there in the end. They're okay. There's room for improvement. It was just extremely painful. I had the kitchen table covered in little bits of paper and I was moving them around and stuff.
nick-
It was punishment because Juni didn't turn up to practice {laughs}. I can play bass to some extent, so we wrote the song and we all came to the next practice, and we're like, 'okay, Juni, now you've got to write lyrics!' Ha! No, I think we've got enough stuff down now for I'd say about two thirds of the next record. And we're in a weird situation where we need to write some, like short, fast punk songs. Which is a bit weird, because the rest of our music comes naturally, but we realized ok, yeah, we need to give people some Strike Low type stuff. I'd really love to get to where we can just play around with stuff. And we can do that. I mean, I'd love to do some stuff where there are more keyboards, but it doesn't really work right now with where we are.
So, I'm happy to kind of put that on the back burner.....
