An Interview with... Treeboy & Arc

Treeboy & Arc have achieved a lot in ten years: joining the Speedy Wunderground singles series, releasing two exceptional albums, and writing anthemic tracks soon-to-be bellowed by packed crowds. Even so, the band have chosen the release of their second album, Goose, as the time to draw the curtain on their noir-ish, hook-laden post-punk – after performing since their school days and looking to new horizons.

James Kay (bass, vocals) and George Townend (guitar) discussed writing Goose, favourite second albums, and whether we’ll ever see them return!

What are your favourite support acts from your lifespan as a band?

James: I loved the Shakamoto Investigation, they were a great Leeds band.

George: Fossick are amazing. I would say, best thing in Leeds right now.

James: We played a lot of shows with friends: Egyptian Blue, they’re the London version of us.

Why was this the right time for the band to finish?

James: We've been doing it for ten years, we're wanting to do different things. After finishing writing ‘Goose’, we didn’t write any more music. So we thought, “maybe there’s a reason, let’s do the second record, tour it, and see what happens” – a natural reaction for us was to just knock it on the head.

George: We’d done what we wanted to do. It felt like a nice way to bookend it with ‘Goose’ – ending it with autonomy.

James: I definitely will do music in the future, but nothing’s on the cards now. One of the most fun things about Treeboy was writing ‘Goose’, because it was the first time in the lifespan of the band that we had a regular practice. The whole problem-solving and being with your mates, that part of writing music is fun, so I want to do that again.

Is it an open-ended finish to the band?

George: If the circumstances were right, if we all had this burning desire to start writing more music, I don’t think any of us would say a definite no. We’ve been in this band for so long – me and Jim started playing music together when were 15, 16.

Did the artwork or album title come first?

George: We were struggling for a while with an album name that would fit, then we realised that Ben had been writing about geese a lot.

James: Our friend, Joel Burden, did the ‘Goose’ artwork, then George formatted it.

George: I was struggling to get the Goose logo right, then one day I baked a cake, lifted it up and underneath it was an oil splatter that just said ‘GOOSE’ perfectly – so it’s a tracing of that.

How did the greater prominence of groove-based songwriting and “more influences from electronic and industrial artists” play a role in comparison ‘Natural Habitat’?

James: Prior to ‘Goose’, we’d start with ideas mainly from guitars or bass. Writing ‘Goose’, ideas mainly came from Sam, which were normally arpegiattors – it’s easy to write to an arpeggiator with that fundamental part already there. It was easy for me to think about what it could evolve into.

George: None of us were listening to much noisy industrial stuff, but it seemed like the natural way for the band to go, so we got some of our heavier songs but also some of our softest songs. That’s a blend of all the different things we were listening to. Everyone was into folk and country, which I don’t think is massively apparent, but the extremes have come from the softer things we’ve been listening to, and then the louder stuff. I’m really into ‘90s noise rock, which I’ve tried to emulate on this album, but it feels like a proper melting pot of how our tastes have branched out over the years, condensed into one record. 

It seemed, with the heavier tracks, to branch off from the final track on the debut.

James: That was a good one – you wrote that.

George: It was probably the last one we wrote for the first record, and I think 'Red' was the first one we wrote for this one, and it was probably a few months in between – that’s maybe where the link comes from.

George: We were a lot more cut-throat with what we kept this time and what we didn’t, whereas in the past we’d just start jamming and that would become a song. We might start like that this time, or it would start with one core point and we’d strip-back. I don’t know if that was informed by the first record or if it was our song writing style maturing.

James: I think the synths do more in this record as well, so there’s less space for that high frequency range for a shrill riff.

George: Why ruin a great arpeggiator with a mediocre riff?

James: There are more grooves than there are the riffs from the first record.

On ITK, the guitar sounded like a technique I’ve seen Ben Parry use in Fuzz Lightyear, plucking the strings on the neck instead of the frets.

George: It's not the same but it comes from a similar thing: with being into ‘90s noise rock, it's one of those weird intervals where you play two notes that are next to each other, but two separate strings; the most dissonant note you can make but done in quite a mellow song.

How did you respond to the lyrics?

James: With ‘Natural Habitat’, the songs were written, and the vocals went on top, which is quite hard to do, because the song’s done and the space for vocals is already filled. Writing this record, Ben ad-libbed while we were writing songs, fighting for space.

George: The songs grew together rather than building them in layers. It was the most cohesive song writing experience, especially from the standpoint of the lyrics, because this was the first time he’d had a huge bank of lyrics ready to go. The way we’d written the first record, he’d realised, ‘I’ve got to be proactive and bring what I want to the table first’, then we can work around that. I think it informed some songs, in the way he delivered the lyrics. It gave us something to feed off, rather than just rely on each other.

George: Bands like Preoccupations – who we grew up listening to – I couldn't tell you a single lyric of theirs, but they're one of my favourites. The delivery and phrasing makes the vocals more like an instrument rather than a vehicle for a message.

James: Ben’s very good at placing words in certain places, syllables, and making a good vocal phrase. He’s also a great lyricist, but when I wrote the lyrics for Treeboy – there would be somewhat of a subject matter – I’d tie what I want to say in the verse and chorus. But more important for me is phrasing.

What are the biggest differences between your first and final recordings?

George: I think they were very juvenile, because we were teenagers. Concept will be the earliest recording you can find.

James: We did the albums at the Nave, everything else we didn’t do there; we’re more equipped with knowing how to use our instruments. (Band are shown their very first recording by Stub)

Both: 'Plastic Front'!

George: We’d even forgotten about that one! Just three minutes of nervous energy. We played very fast, very full on, everyone playing at the same time.

James: I think one of the main reasons we started the band was for live shows, so that was a good foundation to want to be a good live band.

When do you think you became the version of the band on your two albums?

George: It was probably in between the Speedy Wunderground single coming out and the first album, because there was COVID in the middle. Prior to that, we'd actually had an album recorded and ready, which we scrapped – some songs remained, some we reworked. Evolving that album into 'Natural Habitat' is probably where we found the format for where we are now.

Favourite second albums?

James: Shame’s second album and Cate Le Bon's.

George: Protomartyr’s second album is unbelievable. I think the concept of ‘difficult second album’ is nonsense. So many bands’ second albums are better than the first one – Tribe Called Quest as well.

Words by James Kilkenny (@jameskilk1499). Picture pilfered from the bands insta (@treeboyandarc).