Loft - Interview

  by Denzil Watson

published: 17 / 4 / 2025

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The Loft first rose to prominence via their appearance on the first ever Creation Records release, 1984’s ‘Alive in the Living Room’ compilation LP, and their contribution ‘Your Door Shines Like Gold’. Formed back in 1980, ironically, as The Living Room, by Peter Astor (vocals, guitar), Bill Prince (bass), Andy Strickland (guitar) and Dave Morgan (drums), the four-piece indie band sensibly changed their name to avoid confusion with the venue of the same name. Their debut single, ‘Why Does the Rain’, issued on Creation later that year, was followed the year after by ‘Up the Hill and Down the Slope’, garnering both band and label critical acclaim. Then, just as the future looked bright, the band imploded on stage at Hammersmith Palais in the Summer of 1985 while supporting Terry Hall’s Colourfield, bringing their short-lived career to an abrupt halt. Astor and Morgan went on to find critical acclaim with The Weather Prophets, releasing two long players before the former went on a long and illustrious solo career. Guitarist Strickland went into music journalism, alongside forming The Caretaker Race, while bassist Prince established The Wishing Stones, releasing the album ‘Wildwood’ on Heavenly Records in 1991. With all four parties remaining in music, the band unexpectedly reformed in 2006. Having played a handful of gigs and released the comeback single, ‘Model Village’ (on Static Caravan) they once again disappeared from the public gaze. Almost a decade later, they reappeared again in 2015 to celebrate 30 years since the release of ‘Up the Hill and Down the Slope’, playing gigs in New York and London. Sporadic gigs followed in 2022 and 2023, before the band decided to put the reformation on a more permanent footing and turn to the unfinished business of recording a debut album. The fruits of their studio sessions from the Summer 2024 with Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ Sean Read have just been released in the shape of the ten-song strong ‘Everything Changes Everything Stays the Same’. Released thirty-nine years after that acrimonious split with the original line-up all on board (a feat in its own right). Pennyblackmusic caught up with singer-songwriter Peter Astor and guitarist Andy Strickland for a chat on Zoom prior to the album’s release. PB: Morning both. Where about whereabouts are you? PETE ASTOR: I'm in London. PB: Is it warm or cold? PA: It’s cold but it's nice. Sunny and a bit misty. Looking out over the Post Office Tower. PB: It's clear here but really, really quite cold. PA: Where are you? PB: In Sheffield. PA: Okay Sheffield. I was in Sheffield at the weekend. PB: What were you doing in Sheffield? PA: I was playing a show with The Attendant which is my spoken word/electronic thing, at Bishop's house. PB: It's quite cool place. PA: Yeah, it's really, really nice. PB: Okay, let's crack on. How are things in The Loft camp at the moment? ANDY STRICKLAND: Busy! PA: We've got lots on, which is good. Lots of interest, which is lovely. PB: You've got the original four of you, haven't you? PA: Absolutely. It's quite unusual to split up and make an album 41 years after you split up as well. PB: It's well documented that on that fateful June evening back in 1985, you split up in in front of three thousand people, while you were on tour with The Colourfield. What was the argument about? PA: Inability to communicate, basically. It's a typical thing that I think I'm certainly guilty of. I think maybe men are more guilty of it than women and maybe young men even more so. I certainly had that in spades. So, the inability to just properly negotiate a situation. Being in a band is a very difficult situation. It's a compromise, isn't it? [Journalist] Michael Hann said something, which was that it's probably the worst psychological thing that anybody could ever be involved in. But it's so appealing or something like that. He did a piece about bands splitting up [The Independent, 29th October, 2024], and in that brilliant way with The Loft, he had a list that included Oasis, Pink Floyd, The Zombies, Crowded House and The Loft! Which is great. But yes, that was it basically. That inability to negotiate. But if you are going to split up on stage, you might as well do in at Hammersmith Palais. PB: As opposed to flouncing off in front of ten people at the Clarendon, which isn’t quite as dramatic, right? PA: Definitely. I remember very clearly somebody smashing their guitar up at the Falcon [Camden] in front of about eight people. I was thinking, ‘Don’t do that’. And it was a nice guitar as well! PB: Let's come up-to-date and last year’s sold-out gig at the Moth Club. I bet you were really chuffed to come back after a while and sell your gig out. AS: Yeah, that was lovely. We promoted it ourselves so there was all the usual angst about will anybody come? But it was a really lovely night. It's just a really great atmosphere in the place. You could tell that people were on our side and we kind of rose to the challenge. We all said afterwards that there were times during the gig where you felt you were hanging on to it by shirttails and just going for it and extending passages, but it was quite a special night. PB: What was the demographic of the crowd? Was it old fans with their kids or was it a mixture? PA: It was a mixture, but you know, you can pretty much guess that the demographic. It wasn't 20-year-olds, but there were some younger people. I remember we did a gig in about 2005 and the demographic of that was very young and I remember that saying that was the purpose of the comeback. There was a lot of people in younger bands, looking back at what we're doing. AS: Yeah, we also did a gig in New York around 2015, and we played to quite a young crowd, which was astonishing. PB: With The Loft, did you feel that there was some unfinished business as, despite being on the go for four or five years and releasing a number of singles, you never record an album proper? PA: Absolutely, that's exactly what it was. It felt like the right thing to do. Life is this big, long arc and you’re parts of the arc. So far, I don't seem to have a memoir in me, which people are probably very relieved about. I’m not going to write a book about the rock’n’roll trenches or anything like that. But maybe that’s part of it as well. Coming together and rounding stuff off and doing things. One thing I think that is really interesting about us is that when we start to play together, it kind of sounds like ‘us’. That’s something that we really notice, playing together. That's the way with a lot of people, but it's quite particularly us. And that feels kind of quite valuable. PB: And the album title, ‘Everything Changes. Everything Stays the Same’ ties in with that, doesn't it? It’s got a really fresh sound to it, but it's very much The Loft. One thing that doesn't seem to change, Pete, is your voice. It sounds just as youthful as back in the day. PA: Well, that's good! Obviously, I've made a lot of other albums, both solo albums and different band albums, over the years, and when I play solo I tend to sing quite low. For this album, me and Andy had been playing the songs for quite a long time and spent a few weeks and months working them all through. And I was like, “Andy, I know you've worked all these brilliant guitar things out, but I want to change the key of every single song. You know, for all these bits that you played, you're going to have to buy yourself a Capo or you're going to have to re-write them”. Which is obviously interesting, but it was a bit like “Everything’s great but could you just move it like five-foot to the right?” I think the reason I did it was because I realised that we're a band and I think it needs the singing to be a lot higher than say compared to my last solo album. With the last solo album, the singing sits in the middle of the sound and it's a singer-songwriter album. The vocals sit at the front, but then you can pitch your voice lower. With the band, you've got lots of higher notes and stuff like that, so that’s why the vocals fit better when they are a bit higher. AS: Yeah, I'd also add that, I don't think Pete's voice has ever sounded better. I think he sings fantastically well on this record. And if I remember correctly, I think Pete did all the vocals in one day. That’s some feat! PA: I've sung a lot, you know, that's the thing. I think all the vocals were done in one afternoon. I've been doing it a lot and I’m ‘match fit’. I did do some of the vocals the day before and they were crap. But props to our producer, Sean Read, as the way it worked with the vocals was I did two takes of every song. I never listen to them and the next day he just comped them. And so that's why I could do ten vocals in an afternoon. And it was quite clear as well. I mean, no disrespect to anyone but I didn't want any feedback. I was like , “I'm doing the singing and I know Sean will comp them together, and if they’re crap we'll know that when they are comped together. Do you know what I mean? Two takes, then on to the next two takes. PB: You recorded it in Hackney last August, didn’t you? How did you approach the writing? Did you have the songs gigged and ready to go in? PA: Obviously, I write songs, so there's always songs. One thing that did seem to happen was the songs ended up being very much songs that fitted for The Loft. Initially, when the idea came up, it never occurred to me what the best songs that we can do that I've written. Several people said to me, “So, do you write different kinds of songs for The Loft?” and I'm like ,“Um, I don't know, I never thought about it.” Then I was like “Well, maybe I do.” So, I was a bit more thoughtful about, maybe, the right songs that fitted. Also, it kind of evolved, because you don't start off saying, “These are the ten songs on the record”. You start off with maybe fifteen or twenty songs and see which ones live and which ones evolve and which ones work and it even comes down to the studio. There was one track on the album that I remember, and this was always a standing joke one, where I’d go, “This is a total donkey. This is never going to work, this one,” and then it actually became one of my favourite songs on the record. But that’s often the way with songs and with music. Something that looks like the B-side forever, or the extra track, ends up being the one that works. It’s evolution. PB: One thing that comes across is that it's a very guitar-driven album. So, just to throw some names out there: That Petrol Emotion, in the noisier parts, The Rain Parade, The Velvet Underground, obviously. And Television's ‘Marquee Moon’. They're the sort of things that came to mind. I don't know if I'm on the right the right track there or not. PA: One of the things we did with Sean was we left him, completely, to mix it and edit it. We purposely exited the studio for that week. But Andy and I did keep saying to him, “Don't forget, this is a guitar record.” We knew it needed to have the guitars at the front. It just seemed to make sense. So, I'm glad that you that you've got that and that's come across to you. But yeah, those bands you mention are ones we have listened to quite a lot. The album was kind of evolving and we recorded the whole thing in five days. We rehearsed a lot and we knew what we were doing, so it's very much a band album. I remember on first day Sean was like, “Yeah, maybe we put a little bit of keyboards in here and there,” but a couple of hours later he's like, “Yeah, you know what? You've got everything you need with the guitars,” so it kind of evolved. There are a couple of overdubs on it, but it's basically me singing, Andy's singing with me on lots of the songs, me playing guitar, Andy playing guitar, Phil playing bass and Dave playing the drums. I love lots of music that isn't that, but it felt exactly right to have that kind of set-up. Four elements that fit together. I think Sean got that very early on. This isn't a record where we need a keyboard pad, or a sitar or anything like that. There’s nothing wrong with those type of records and things like that are really interesting, but it's not that kind of a record. It's like a band in a room playing music. PB: Back in the day, I know a lot of the NME’s C86 bands were a bit fey, but this is actually quite a muscular record, isn't it? PA: Oh yeah, I think it is. And that also to me fits with our attitude at the time. I've come to really like a lot of the bands from that time. I'm really not going to use the word twee. Oh, I've just used the word twee! I've kind of come to accept that and understand that a bit more. I think at the time, we were quite clear that we weren't about that. Do you know what I mean? Stephen Pastel [of The Pastels] is still a fantastic person and we're always grateful to see him. A real buddy and lovely guy. But that kind of slightly duffel coat thing wasn't our thing. I was clear about that at the time. I mean, ‘Up the Hill and Down the Slope’ is pretty muscular. And in 1985 it definitely was compared to with a lot of acts you're thinking of there. I don't think many bands could have come out with a record like that. And also records that had a groove, which we were very proud of, but it actually was funky. Dave is a really funky drummer and so was Bill as a bass player, so that that was quite unusual in that world, where you tended not to have a track with a rolling, grooving beat. PB: I was going to ask you about themes, but given I've listened to the album a couple of times, there seems to be a theme of time and awareness of time. The past, the present and the future. Is that a fair observation? PA: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you start to become very aware of time when you get to a certain age, don't you? PB: You do. I thought about this just the other day and we're pretty much going into our last quarter, or our last third if we’re lucky, and you start to think “Well, I’m going to have to do something here.” PA: Yeah, I mean it's a privilege to be able to still make music. It's a privilege still to be upright, you know. So, it's really nice. And trying to live right and enjoy things. When I say that, I’m not falling into a kind of angry thing. You can get quite angry as you get older, but that's not for me, because the young people are coming up behind you and they're the future and we're the past on some level. I think it's letting them in but also accepting that, but also kind of going with it and also trying to be useful to that as well, to facilitate that and help that. I think sometimes there's a tendency when people are older to be like, “Well, the gate’s shutting behind us. That's all done. You can't come in. Keep away”. I think it's very much like that. And music's also become so central, maybe to more people's lives, in some way. The way it has evolved is really quite interesting. I like it. PB: You set your stall out on the first track ‘Feel Good Now’. Is that about enjoying things now, rather than wishing your life away? PA: Yeah, but it's also about 15,000 bottles, piled up on the hill. PB: And ‘Dr. Clark’, I really like that track to. It’s really classic Loft, with its weaving guitars and the sweet melodies. Can you tell me who Dr Clark is? PA: He is one of those charismatic, dodgy people. PB: Is it a real person or is it a pen name for somebody? PA: It's a short story. It's a character. I think we all know characters like that who are kind of charismatic and quite manipulative. There are quite a few people in the world now that are quite visible and that fit that pretty well. PB: Overall, it’s a really good record and really immediate. PA: We haven't had a lot of feedback really, so we're kind of like “I hope people like it”. We're still in that phase a bit, so it's nice to hear that. PB: It's really quite pure in that it's not masked by lots and lots of production effects. It's a really beautiful guitar album and very melodic. That's how it comes across to me. AS: I think as Pete said earlier, when we started, only a couple of days into the recording it seemed to be obvious that that was how it should be. And not have stuff layered on it. It didn't need it. It sounded fresh and it sounded right. So, we just sort of carried on with it, going down that road. PB: And that's the sort of parallel I drew with Television’s ‘Marquee Moon’ album. It's very much in that vein. PA: Again, it's back to Sean, and us, as well. When the records are played on the radio, you gather all that up on the socials and things like that and I'm like, “God, it sounds good on the radio.” It has the thing that bands always want, which completely fucks up every mix, which is like “I can't hear the drums. I can't hear the bass, I can't hear the guitar. I can’t hear my vocals”. So, you end up with this awful ‘democratic’ mix, but actually everything's really dynamic, You can also hear everything, but it also really leaps out when you hear it. PB: I know you lecturer at University of Westminster, Pete, but Andy, do you have to balance this with other stuff too? AS: I took early retirement from the NHS last year, so I'm free and easy. PB: And talking of balancing things, I’m guessing the set will be a mix of both the old and new? PA: We balance the old and the new, definitely. The new album is so fucking good and we did initially go, “Let's just play the album in order.” Then we woke up and thought that would be bloody stupid. There's loads of the new album when we play live, of course. Why wouldn't there be? We really looking forward to playing. It's very energetic when we play. Not in the sense that anybody's doing a cartwheel or anything, but it's kind of full-on, which I think we're proud of as well. It's not punk rock in the sense that there’s distorted guitars, but in terms of the push of the thing, it's not sitting back in its armchair. PB: So, we can expect a hefty slice of the album and some Loft classics. And the odd Weather Prophets’ song, given there was a bit of a crossover between the two bands? PA: Yeah, ‘Worm in my Brain’ was a song that I did another version of with The Weather Prophets, but that was always a song that was part of The Loft set. Other than that, no, don't we. We don’t do ‘Almost Prayed’, for example, because that's The Weather Prophets. But ‘Worm in my Brain’ is maybe the crossover one, because that was a song that was very much part of the Loft set. PB: The other song I was thinking of was “Why does the Rain” PA: Yeah, we did another recording with The Weather Prophets, which is always slightly confusing as people go “Well, the bass line's different.”. We play the original version, obviously. PB: You are touring up to the end of March. What does the diary hold for you beyond then? PA: Well, it's getting quite busy. We're going doing a couple of smallish festivals in the Summer and then we've got some more dates lined up in the Autumn, which we can't announce completely, at the moment. So, some much bigger gigs are coming later in the year. It's just nice that people are interested, because we certainly don't take it for granted. People haven't heard the record yet and we certainly don't take it for granted that people are going to actually put their hands in their pockets and turn out, but so far it’s looking good. PB: It’s funny, isn’t it? There are some bands who don't write any new material, do very little, announce they’re playing all the old material and sell out. Some bands do nothing new and sell out stadiums and then some bands can produce brilliant new work and are still playing small venues. It's really weird. PA: I completely understand people and why audiences want to revisit that old stuff, but it's not for me, not for Andy, not for Bill and not for Dave. The past is a massive part of anybody's life when they get to a certain age, so I'm not denying the past. I’m also not denying the future and the present. So, it would be kind of daft of us not to play the old songs as we're proud of them, but also it would be daft for us not to play news songs. I wouldn't be interested in doing a Loft tour that played only old songs. PB: As a songwriter, things come into your mind and you want to write songs about them and then you want to get out there and play them, don't you? PA: Yeah, I mean we're working musicians and that's what we do, you know? PB: Just a couple more questions. Andy, your favourite song on the album currently? AS: I'll say ‘Killer’. PB: Okay, Pete, how about you? PA: Oh, gosh. I don't know. It changes all the time. Maybe ‘Story Time’ as I’m really pleased with the words. Or “The Elephant” for the same reason. PB: Thank you.

Band Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/p/The-Loft-100088074349802/
https://www.instagram.com/the_loft_uk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Loft_(British_band)

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