Courteeners On Album Number Seven ‘Pink Cactus Café’

One of the most cherished bands in Britain, across their sixteen-year career, Courteeners’ have had consistent commercial success. Pink Cactus Café is the band’s first new music since 2020’s critically acclaimed More. Again. Forever. and more recently, a reissue of Courteeners’ debut St. Jude, which reached No 1 in the UK Album Charts in 2023, fifteen years after its original release.

The highly anticipated Pink Cactus Café includes previously released Solitude Of The Night Bus plus current single and album title track, which have both received widespread radio playlist support in the UK, plus the sublime Sweet Surrender featuring rising star, Brooke Combe. With Liam Fray co-producing all tracks and featuring additional contributions from friends of the band such as James and Ian Skelly (The Coral), Pixey, Charlie Salt (Blossoms), Ola Modupe-Ojo (Bipolar Sunshine) and Theo Hutchcraft (Hurts) amongst many more, Pink Cactus Café is pop-leaning, exploratory and the band’s most collaborative forward looking record yet. Liam Fray talks to Hi Fi Way about the album.

Congratulations on album number seven. It’s an absolute ripper. You gotta be pretty stoked with how that one turned out?
Mate, we’re buzzing, you know. It still seems a bit weird saying album seven, but here we are, still going strong. I’m feeling strong as well. Yeah, feeling like we’ve got plenty of ideas, and it’s fresh. We did the reissue of the first album, which was good for the fans, but you don’t want people to think that you’re just relying on past glories. It’s like, no, no, we are ready to go. We’ve got new stuff.

Does the fan reaction and response, and what you read on social media and stuff like that, does that lift the spirits as well and make you pretty excited about getting out there and touring it?
To be honest, one hundred percent. You actually never know. You can play it to a few friends and play it to your family, but they’re gonna say it’s good, right? So until it goes out in the wider world… It’s been really nice. We’ve been playing these album shows, and the album’s out one day, two days, some people are singing it. Then even a week into release, so much more of the audience are getting it. It feels so old-school to actually see it day by day grow, because usually you do a tour three months after it’s out. To play shows just days after it’s out, there’s a few people singing, then a few more, then a few more, you’re like, wow, people are getting it. So yeah, it’s been pretty nice, man.

Do you still have faith, particularly with what you just described, in releasing albums? The current climate is all about drip-feeding singles, then bundling them together into an album. But it sounds like this is completely different for you guys, kind of going against the grain.
Yeah, it does feel a bit like that, I have to say. When I started to write these songs, probably going back to lock down, March 2020, it was the first time ever it wasn’t “this is gonna be an album.” I was just writing songs because I thought, you don’t know when we’re coming out of lock down, you don’t know when live music is coming back. So I thought, I’ve never done this before, but I’m just going to write songs and see. Well, in fact, it was quite nice, because it wasn’t even about seeing where it goes, it was just about keeping on writing. Some of them were upbeat, some were on the piano, some were a bit more electronic.

Then, by the end of it, maybe January 2022, after two years of that, I realised there were quite a few that were all quite up and quite, well, “single-y.” But all of them sounded like singles! So I thought, stick them all together and make an absolutely shit-hot album, where every track could be a single, no down moments. I usually love that acoustic moment, or the piano one with the strings, but I just thought, no I don’t have any of that. Make it all up, make it bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. It’s hard to fit them into the set list with the other six records, but it really does feel like we made a deliberate choice to go all-in and vinyl sales are going through the roof! I don’t know what they’re like in the US, but in the UK, it’s amazing. People want to hold it, open it, read the lyrics. Don’t get me wrong, I stream all day long, but I still buy albums. It feels like we might have gotten over that hump. Well, again, it’s different because different things work for different people. I think we will always be an album band, whether that falls in and out of favor or not who knows.

Do you think eventually people will revolt and keep demanding CDs and vinyls? It seems like at the end of the day, while that can be an expensive process, it generally delivers a better outcome for artists. Yeah, I think music fans know they’re investing in the artist. Like, if I buy a National record or a Laura Marling record, I know I’m investing in them. Whereas, if you’re paying for a streaming subscription, you don’t really know where the money goes. So, I think people pull their favorite artists in a bit more, you might have six or seven that you really love. I’m okay with that. We don’t want to be the biggest band in the world, we want to be people’s favorite.

In terms of the way you wrote songs for this album, does that set a bit of a blueprint for how you might approach the next one? Or do you think it’s better when you have all the guys around the table, jamming songs out in a room?
Well, we’ve never really done that. I’ve always written on my own, then taken it to the band, and we develop it from there. I guess having external voices was just a different way of doing it. Maybe, subconsciously, because it’s album seven, I wanted to try something different, to inject a bit of freshness.
With anything, whether it’s a football team or whatever, sometimes you just need new ideas. I also liked that collaboration, even though I’d previously stayed away from it. Maybe it was because I didn’t trust other people, or maybe a bit of imposter syndrome, too scared to share my ideas in case they weren’t good enough.

Maybe it’s about getting older, being more confident. Confident in my ability, but also confident in not caring as much about what others think. When you’re twenty five, you’re trying to be all things to everybody. But maybe now, we feel more relaxed about our position in the music landscape. We know what we do, and we’ll do that.

I was bowled over by those covers, some of my absolute favorite bands. Blossoms, Australia hasn’t quite caught on to them yet, The Coral, I go right back to their debut album, and they’re so underrated and then you throw in the DMA’S, that’s just wow.
It’s a good roster, isn’t it? Oh, it’s really nice, man and we’re all friends, we’ve known each other for a long time. It wasn’t some exec saying, “Get this band on, it’ll stream really well.” We knew them, they knew us. We asked, “Do you fancy doing this?” and they all said yes! It was special. I said earlier that I was lucky, because I didn’t want to be the guy who asks his mates to be involved, only for it to turn out bad. But luckily, everything we did turned out pretty damn good. I’m proper stoked to have them on it, and I’m really proud, proud to call them mates first and foremost. The fact they all said yes, they’ve made it a great record.

What was the energy like in the studio, particularly as these songs were starting to take shape? Was there a real sense of excitement?
Do you know what? There were lots and lots of tiny, “This is great” moments, but it was never, “This album is going to be amazing,” because I don’t think we knew at least, I didn’t. I didn’t know until quite far in, maybe after a couple of years of writing, that it actually was good. I was just writing, thinking, “Maybe these are for other people, maybe for a side project, maybe for Courteeners record.” It took quite a while to realise, “Oh no, this is Courtneers definitely.” That was exciting. But then you have to be slightly more malleable with some songs shave the edges off some, give others a few more edges.

Then you’re into stage two, whittling it down. There were a lot of tiny exciting moments, but it was recorded quite sporadically. Some in Manchester, some in Liverpool, some in Wales. I wrote some of it in New York, some in Paris. It was fragmented. It wasn’t like some bands who go to LA for a month and say, “Right, let’s get it done.” There were four producers working on it. So, you’re going in with somebody on a Tuesday in March, they don’t know what you just did in December with the other guy. That’s exciting, too, because they’re not trying to make it fit with what you did before. If you work with one person, they tie everything together. But this approach brought its own excitement and challenges.

What was it like when you put the headphones on and listened to the album start to end, like a fan would?
Really special, man. I have to say, really special. I’ve got family in London, and quite often, when I’m on the train, I can almost remember the moment, because when you get mixes and masters, they’re drip-fed one by one. But when they’re all lined up, when the track listing is set, wow. Yeah, really proud, man. Proud of everybody, proud of the band, the team. It’s a long time working on something. And everybody feels pressure. Look, we make rock/pop songs for a living, it’s not real pressure. But you put your own pressure on yourself, don’t you? So, when you finally listen front to back, you go, “Oh no, okay, we did a good job here.” Then it’s just about getting it to everyone else.

How was the whole process of unboxing the vinyl and seeing it for the first time?
Pretty special, and then someone delivers nine thousand of them for you to sign, and you go, “Oh, this is gonna take a while!” But I love it. It’ll never not be special. It’ll never not be a pinch-me moment. Even the cassettes, I’ve got the translucent blue one, and I’m like, “Oh, I love it.” Still seeing our logo on something, it’s surreal. I’m really involved in the design, the merch, everything. My sister helps a lot with the merch, it’s quite a family affair. The full package is important, it always has been.

Was whittling it down to the final track listing an agonising process? Figuring out what to include, what to leave out, what might be a B-side or something later?
Yeah, there are a couple like that. But, like I said before, I think we have more strong songs that could be their own thing, maybe an EP. There’s enough for another album, and I think it would be quite different. Still collaborative, but sound-wise, it’s too early to say. But some tracks feel bigger and better than just B-sides. That’s exciting. You usually have a couple left over that become bonus tracks on a seven-inch. We did a special seven-inch called Precious, super cool, a bit PJ Harvey-esque. We got in and just went for it on the bass. Then there’s The Unexpected Rise of You and I, which was vinyl-only, a bit of a throwback, but I love that approach.

So, the tour starts this week, you must be excited to finally play these songs live?
Yeah, it’ll be good. We were in rehearsals today. That’s what it’s all for. We’re playing six UK arenas, those nights mean everything. Eleven thousand people in Birmingham, all staring back at you, that moment when you go, “Wow, this is it.” People book hotels, take time off work. Money’s tight, going out isn’t cheap, hotels aren’t cheap. We’ve always appreciated everyone who comes out. When you’re in that moment, it’s not just ninety minutes, it’s more and with DMA’S, Mystery Jets, that’s awesome.

Are you guys planning on coming down next year?
Everything’s crossed! We’re raring to go, we’d smash it. We’re tapping up a few agents in the next couple of weeks, fingers crossed we can make it happen. I honestly can’t believe we’ve never been over. We get so many messages from people. Honestly, more than anywhere else in the world by far. So, fingers crossed.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Purchase Pink Cactus Cafe HERE