Alt-Pop Duo Honne Reflect New Album ‘Ouch’

Deep down HONNE has always been about two people, and the friendship between them. Sure, the UK alt-pop duo have reached incredible heights – from those initial humble recording sessions in Bow, East London they’ve notched up more than three billion streams, selling more than 210,000 tickets for their live shows. But alongside this, it’s been a story of growth, maturity and kinship. On their enchanting new album – the playfully titled OUCH – James Hatcher and Andy Clutterbuck are ready to tap back into their foundations and realise the kind of melodic effervescence and heart-tugging songwriting that only HONNE can provide.

OUCH is impeccably detailed, and wonderfully entrancing, it’s also informed by profound shifts in their own lives. Andy Clutterbuck has become a father to two young children, balancing his commitment to the group to his own burgeoning family life. For James Hatcher, too, adulthood has come calling – he got married to his long-time partner just before sessions began. James and Andy talk to Hi Fi Way about the album.

Was there a real sense of excitement leading up to the release of album number four?
Andy: Yeah, there was. It all built up nicely and was very exciting.

Being an independent artist this time around, has that loosened a lot of the shackles allowing you to be the artist that you want to be?
Andy: Definitely, even though we were signed to a big major for the last ten years, we’ve kind of kept under the radar and slightly sheltered, we had quite a lot of freedom throughout our career and so that’s always been nice. But yeah, you are right in saying that without the big major label above us, I feel like there’s less pressure, which is really nice. With that comes more freedom to write however we want to write and all these things that you don’t really see, it’s like an invisible layer that’s there that sometimes affects what you do and you don’t realise that until it’s not there. It’s very freeing and we’re enjoying ourselves being independent.

Did you need to take time out after the last tour to work out what you wanted to do sonically with this album?
James: We always do, there was quite a lot going on between the last album and this one, so we obviously released that and then the touring cycle was on and off for two years. Andy had a second baby.
Andy: Our first was born basically around the time that we released our last album and then during that time we’ve had another one. So, I’ve been quite busy with that and James got married as well. We’ve had a bit of time to work on our personal lives, which is good for our wives and that keep them happy.
James: We put it off for eight years or so, so it was about time we did something for our personal lives.

Do you think your approach to music has changed given that your life circumstances have changed as well?
Andy: I think there’s like a few switches that have changed inside my head. What I mean is firstly the new album is about becoming a father. It’s about my kids and still it’s about love and positivity, just like all like the Honne albums past and probably future will always cover that topic. I was going to say that it is changed. I think I just feel now I’ve got kids and this may sound like a cliche, but I feel like I’ve ticked that and life is always complete. I feel that if there’s mistakes that happen or if the music that we write doesn’t go down well or whatever, it doesn’t matter because I’ve already achieved what I set out to do. I’m less worried about things, in the past I would be like what if people don’t like our music? Whatever happens will be will be and that’s it.

Does that make the creative process a little bit harder to navigate find the time to block out to write songs?
Andy: A little bit. You just have to squeeze in writing when you can. I’m sure you know how it is with having children, there’s always something that crops up, but we’re lucky that we’ve got a studio space, in Deptford we’ve hired a room there where we can go off and write music and be one step away from children, which is quite useful to have that little quiet room where we can go and write and record

Or maybe have a bit of a sleep?
Andy: Yeah! Exactly!

Do you think you’re a lot harder on yourself now with the songs that you’re writing compared to, when you first started out?
James: I don’t know, I think we’ve always had very high expectations of ourselves. I do sometimes think if we wrote some of the songs that we don’t use now, if we’d written them back at the start, we’d have been like, oh, this is the best song we’ve made. We should definitely put this out. Maybe our stand standards are very high I would say for what we allow to continue to be released. At the same time, I think we’ve released quite a lot of songs and a lot of albums now, and some of them we’ve been shocked at what has done really well. One of our songs was just an acoustic version of a song called Location Unknown, and that’s been the most successful song we’ve released, but we were kind of hmm, should we release this? Not entirely sure this is the best it could be, but we released it and it went really well. So, I think we’ve learned to have high standards for ourselves, but also understand that a lot of it is out of our control and sometimes things just hit a nerve with people in a good way that we can’t predict.

Do you feel in some ways that song writing a song feels like winning the lottery it what resonates with fans?
Andy: Yeah, definitely. The music industry is a lottery, you just never know. I think that’s what makes it exciting. It’s a bit like gambling! You, never really know when something’s going to take off, any day, someone could post about a song. There’s a trend at the moment on Instagram, with people randomly going up in the street saying, what are you listening to lately? We were tagged in a reel where some guy said, oh, Warm On Cold Night by Honne. Just that has spiked up our numbers. It’s just fun little exciting things like that that keeps us going, keeps us addicted to it all.

So was the process of making this album as challenging and drama free as you anticipated?
Andy: Yeah, I think making the album was drama free, but as I mentioned, becoming a father and the period of time that encapsulated there was certainly some dramas with childbirth and, and that kind of stuff. So, those stories are written about in the music. There wasn’t any drama with that, but the stories that are told in the music, yeah, there’s a few dramas that will all become clear when you listen to the music. I don’t know how it quite came about, but we wrote a song called Girl in the Orchestra, and I think because of the title of the song, we thought would it be quite a cool idea to make that song in particular, or to start with sound a bit like a school orchestra. So, we thought, yeah, it could be cool. James went to our local music shop and bought a cornet, a recorder, a tin whistle and a clarinet and started recording these instruments, which he doesn’t know how to play but just gave it a go and it sounded really cool. It had this character to it and quirkiness and from that point we decided to put some of those instruments across the more broader album and across more songs.
James: That was a little bit of a challenge, like, Andy is going to go and have a baby and I’ll spend a couple of weeks playing these instruments that I don’t know how to play on all the other songs, then he’ll be back.

What was the story behind Back Seat Driver?
Andy: When we finished our deal with Atlantic, and I’m not sure it’s anything to do with finishing, but basically they offered us some therapy sessions, which we gladly took, not sure we either needed it, but we were happy to try and just talk about things with a therapist, which we did. They were separate sessions, like independent ones and I wasn’t with James and James wasn’t with me. For me personally, because I’m an introvert and don’t really talk about my feelings too much, it was a nice space for me to open up to someone without being judged or anything like that. It came out and we talked about being an introvert and for a long time I felt like it was something to be ashamed of and I felt slightly embarrassed about it or awkward about it in the fact that I’m a musician and perform on stage, half of a front man of a band, but still feel quite awkward in social situations. As a result of the therapy, they were like, you know, you’re fine. Don’t worry about it! So, that’s how it all came about.

Are you looking forward to going on tour and will that make it to Australia?
James: The challenge is designing the next show and what the next tour touring cycle will look like. We’ve been working with our wacky friend called Theresa, who is very artistic and comes up with kind of crazy ideas for what we can do on stage visually with a whole new light show. We’ve got new musicians, so we’re going to be touring with brass players as well as the full band. We’re trying to like up the ante, we’ve got big rehearsals and production rehearsals coming up, so we’re excited to take this one on tour. As for Australia, we’re in talks like figuring it out at the moment.

Interview By Rob Lyon

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