Photo by: Theo Swaddling
This piece was originally featured in AM01 — Issue One of Ascribe. Click here to read it alongside the rest of the issue.
Boston Manor are no strangers to all the meticulous pieces included in writing and recording an album. They’ve been doing it for years (since 2014, in fact) and have consciously put out solid records.
Maybe that’s why they find themselves changing up the formula time and time again and try something different. Or maybe, it comes from a place of awareness that the scene is changing and music is more than just songs now.
Datura, their fourth studio album, certainly proves that this Blackpool band is always effortlessly creating something innovative.
The album only being seven songs and twenty seven minutes long is the first sign to that. The second being its narrative theme of how much damage can be done to oneself in just a single night.
But the third, and most interesting, is singer Henry Cox’s insight into the inner workings of the project.
So we definitely wanted to talk on Datura. I just wanna know where it sits in your universes because you do have a lot of different storytelling elements in your other albums — Welcome to the Neighborhood being a fictional version of Blackpool and GLUE speaking on like a broken world kind of aesthetic. So does Datura fit in the universe or is it its own kind of world?
Yeah, I guess kind of both. In terms of the universes, we’ve sort of made a very conscious effort to kind of do a lot of world building on this project, because it is sort of a concept record.
I think there was a little bit of an over-emphasis on previous records of like, the kind of “fictional version of Blackpool” and this, that and the other thing. Those were by no means concept records, and we didn’t envisage them having a physical setting per se.
Blackpool is very much at the center of kind of everything that we do in terms of our aesthetic and where the music kind of sits —if it does sit in a physical space. We’re very much inspired by where we come from, so that’s always kind of been a big factor in our music.
I of read back some of those kind of interviews I did at the time, and it kind of reads as if we imagined it to like, have a physical place and a story to that record, which it doesn’t necessarily have. By a fictional version, what I meant by that is, is we definitely take some artistic license with the aesthetic of it. We kind of give it this shadowy, neo-noir kind of feel to it. And that’s very much inspired by the music that we like, the movies that we’re all into, and to some degree the place itself.
It’s a lot of bright lights, and flashing signs, and nightclubs, and a kind of scuzziness to it. It’s a little rough around the edges, but in this record, there actually is a physical place because it is a concept record.
We kind of expanded on a lot of the feel of Welcome to the Neighborhood. And similarly, it has a similar sound on some of the records. So, It harks back to that and it evokes the same feelings. And visually in the music videos, there’s a similar vibe as well I think, but this record is definitely its own thing.
Well, it’s a two part record, so the next part will be, you know, the same book.
Datura is definitely a natural evolution, but I think it has its own thing going on for sure. But if you’re a fan of the previous stuff, particularly Welcome to the Neighborhood, then this’ll feel familiar, you know?
Oh, for sure. It does. I definitely noticed that as I’ve been listening to it. Speaking on the second half, I heard that you haven’t started it just yet, or you don’t know exactly how it’s going to go, but how has writing the first half influenced writing the second half?
I came up with this analogy on the fly in the previous interview I did a couple of hours ago, and I thought it’s quite a good analogy. You know, when you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle and you put the corners in place first, and build the edges, and then you tend to work inwards? That’s what we’ve done with this project.
From the beginning of the process of making Datura, we sort of knew where the second part of the project was gonna go. We conceived them both at the same time. We have an idea of the structure of the record — the beginning and the end, the middle, how it’s gonna flow, and the three-act structure of the story. We just haven’t could done the coloring in yet, so to speak, or the middle of the jigsaw. And the reason for that is that it’s about real things in life, you know? It felt disingenuous to write about things that hadn’t necessarily happened yet.
We’re writing that record at the moment, and it’s very exciting, but we wanted to square Datura away before we really started the writing sessions. Datura was about the last two years, and this next part is gonna be about the next two years. We wanted to start writing it as it as it happened. That’s not to say that it’ll take two years to come out, but you know what I mean. From now and beyond.
Speaking on Datura and the dusk/nighttime narrative, what steps did you take while writing and recording to make sure that you nailed down that concept?
If there was like a whiteboard in the room — a metaphorical whiteboard — that would’ve been the word that would’ve been written on it.
We were very focused on nailing that aspect of it, and on a few songs didn’t quite get it right. [We] went back, rehashed it out, and just always try and picture, you know, how you would, visually accompany whatever song you are working on.
I think for our band what’s been very helpful is picturing if it was a movie, what scene would be playing out right now, or what would you do in a music video, et cetera, et cetera.
And it was written and recorded at a similar time that it was released in, kind of autumny-winter time, so it was very vibey. You could feel in the same sort of mood that we were trying to portray in the music. For me [it’s] quite helpful to do that, I think.
Do you have an example of how you feel you guys didn’t nail it, and changed a song to make it feel more in your narrative?
Well, the interludes do the job of really expanding on that. They were written towards the end stage of making the record. You’ve physically got stuff in there, like rain sounds, that are supposed to put you in that place.
“Inertia” went through many stages of sounding different. It was like, a weird cowboy song at one point. It had all these weird — what’s he called? The guy that did the Fistfull of Dollars trilogy, whatever he’s called —the western guy. It had that kind of cowboy-sounding guitar. At one point I watched in the studio they were trying to sample an eagle, and I was like, “I think we need to go back to back to basics of this one.”
The synth work that we do on this record helped put it in that world, because our bread and butter is always gonna be guitar music. It’s always gonna be, like, 75% of the music. We like to try and use synths more as a texture than a linchpin of the song. But I think a lot of the pad sounds and some of the sequence stuff on “Crocus” gives it this kind of Blade Runner feel at times, which to me always evokes the neo-noir nighttime vibe.
But yeah, all the songs went through many, many iterations. We didn’t write loads of songs for this record. Sometimes we’ll write, like, twenty for a ten-track record, thirty — we’ll write a hundred ideas, but we’ll actually finish twenty ideas. This one we probably only had an extra two or three tracks kicking around. Two of them we actually recorded and then sacked them off ‘cause they were just not the right vibe.
But yeah, we kind of got the ideas of the songs together not quickly, but more quickly. And then we spend a lot of time just perfecting them, really, and redoing them and stuff, which can be pretty tedious to be honest. That is the hardest part, I think. The fun bit is when you throw in all the paint at the canvas, and then the hard bit is when you’re there with a tiny little paintbrush trying to do all the little detail bits, but it pays off in the end.
Speaking of interludes, I was really impressed and interested in “Shelter In The Rain.” I absolutely love all the scenic elements. It sounds like there’s rain on roofs, and cars passing, and strangers talking —it feels like you’re in the song. Like every time I listen to it, it feels like I’m physically there. I know you just spoke on that, being a part of adding it to the narrative. I just wanted to know what was the intent behind, like adding an interlude that has no words, but is literally a story on its own.
Thank you. It’s one of the bits I’m most proud of in the record. We talked about doing interludes before we’d even written a single song, for that reason. We wanted the record to be digested as a record, if possible. That’s one of the reasons why we kept it so short; we want people to be able to listen to the album in one sitting. I think the reason for that is because we wanted to do all this sort of worldbuilding and [for the album] to feel like a movie — like, to have a three-act structure and to really create a world that you could touch and smell and taste.
A lot of the records that we grew up listening to used to have a lot of interludes in them. Like in the nineties — it was more of a thing in hip-hop, I think —but a lot of the nu metal stuff that we were big fans of really embraced that side of hip-hop, and would have loads of like skits and bits at the end of tracks.
It just made the record feel a lot more 3-D. The song came together in like, a day. Used this on a lot of it actually — this synth here [Cox holds up a synth]. Then we went around Blackpool and just recorded loads of sounds at night. You know, people walking past us, people in the street, and rain sounds. Some of it’s actual rain sound from Blackpool. I’ll break the spell — there’s layers of rain sound ‘cause it’s pretty heavy rain, and some of it’s just samples. But, you know, cars going by — that’s all just stuff, just recording with phones, and there’s a lot of that in the record as well.
There’s some stuff that you won’t hear on more, like, main tracks — whatever you wanna call ‘em. Then obviously there’s the outro in “Inertia,” and we’ve tried to put little bits of ourselves and of the environment all over the record to make it fully three-dimensional.
“Inertia” very much feels like the protagonist at the end of a movie having a sudden realization. But that last minute where it all changes, it’s very much a contrast from —in my opinion — what the song is speaking on. It’s an interesting contrast. Then when you add the birds in the end, it adds that element of mystery even more.
What was the purpose behind doing that and what do you want people to take away from it?
Well, it is sort of meant to be this swirling, chaotic ending of this dark experience and this night, you know? I wanted it to have a bit of a climax, and not to sort of peter out. It builds and builds and builds.
I guess there’s always a little bit of a psychedelic element to our music — not overtly so — and the fact that Datura is psychedelic is completely consequential. That’s not deliberate.
We play with the surreal a lot. We’re into that, so we put a lot of that in there. There’s also loads of coded messages in that sequence too that kind of give you clues about the part two. But, you know, [it] crescendos and then it leads, [then] it just cuts out.
I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but what I feel is quite a powerful contrast there. It cuts the bird song, which obviously is the signal of dawn. Bookending the record, dusk and dawn. Part two will start with Dawn.
That bird — I stuck my phone out the window one morning and recorded that bird sound. It’s a nice way to end it, I think. And it does sort of leave a lasting impression. I hope it does, anyway.
For sure. For me, it seems like a promise of better days ahead. So, it does allude to whatever is coming next?
Yeah, there’s loads of sounds in there that — I don’t wanna give too much away, but if you were so inclined, you could put some of that musical information in a computer and extract stuff from that.
The idea is that it’s hopefully the dawn. In not so subtle terms, the relief; the resolution to this protagonist’s strife, and a hopeful glimpse towards the future, which has a positive resolution. I think it’d be a little bit cheap to suggest that everything is sunny and fine at the end of the record, but it is meant to be a hopeful conclusion and a glimmer of a light at the end of the tunnel, if you will.
It does seem that mental health has a really important part on the album. Does that come from your own experiences?
Yeah. I’ve been in this band for nearly ten years. I was a kid when we first started. We started heavily touring pretty quickly; we’re a very hardworking band, and a very hard touring band. So, pre-pandemic we would probably tour for like, eight months of the year, sometimes ten months of the year when I was a bit younger. And we love it, we love touring, but you kind of live in this weird, childlike bubble when you’re on tour, you know? You have reduced responsibilities, you’re going all around the world, and it is really difficult. It’s challenging and it’s hard work, but obviously I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t super fun.
You’re hanging out with your friends all the time and you’re playing a crazy gig every day, which is incredible. It does allow you to kind of live like pirates, just going all over the world and never in one place more than one day. And it does let you run away from your problems a little bit.
I think there’s a lot of things that I hadn’t really dealt with, or really even knew that was there, just ‘cause I was always out on the road. And the pandemic hit, and I had some time to sort of sit back and reassess, really.
I started going to therapy and realized that I was having problems with drinking and things, just because it’s there every day and you’re on tour all the time. Just not really taking very good care of myself, mentally and physically. It kind of like floored me a little bit.
I realized that I didn’t really have a great deal of control over who I was and what shape my life took, and my own ability to kind of navigate reality — not reality, that sounds very deep — but, you know, navigate my way through day-to-day, and my wider life and career at large.
Not to try and be cheesy, but that’s what the song “Passenger” is about. I felt like I was just a passenger and not in the driving seat, so to speak. This record was really quite eye opening in that it was the first time I’ve been particularly vulnerable, or even very personal, on an album lyrically. I used it as like, a form of therapy to try and sort of figure it all out. It was mad helpful.
I’m one of those people — I can’t remember the name of it. There’s different types of learning, but I learn by doing and saying things out loud, much to the dismay of my wife. It’s kind of like, writing a lot on paper and sticking up on the wall and looking at it. It’s very, very educational. So it was a way of processing and learning a lot about myself, and yeah, it was awesome. It was great. It was a little tough at times, but I’m very glad I did that.It’s very, very educational. So it was a way of kind of processing and kind of learning a lot about myself and yeah it was awesome. Iit was great. Like it was, it was a little tough at times, but I’m very glad I did that.
So you would say it was more cathartic than trying to force yourself into coming to terms with things?
Oh, totally. It was like therapy, once I broke the seal of embarrassment about it and gotten over being vulnerable. ‘Cause it’s quite scary. Not only [do] you gotta show the whole world what’s behind the curtain, so to speak. You’ve also got your friends and family reading all this shit and reading interviews and you talking about all this stuff, and they’re like, “I had no fucking idea you were going through this.” When you read about it in a magazine, it seems a lot worse than it is. It wasn’t a desperate situation. It was just a lack of maintenance. Much overdue maintenance that needed to be done —mental maintenance —and yeah, this really helped me do that. And it was real.
Once I’d gotten over that initial fear of doing it, it just kind of tumbled out. It was great. It was super helpful. And that’s not to say that’s how I’ll write all the time in the future, ‘cause not everyone wants to hear me whinge by myself on every record. But for this project it was immensely beneficial, and obviously it will continue on to the second part.
Is there anything specifically that you hope that people are taking away from the songs?
I think, to be honest, it’s the stuff that we’ve always talked about — which is partly why I did this, so that I wasn’t being a hypocrite. But, you know, talk to people and be open and don’t be afraid of being vulnerable to other people if you can, because it almost always only leads to good things.
For me it’s been a sort of a challenge of learning how to tour again and take care of myself. That’s been a real hard thing, ‘cause it’s so easy at home ‘cause, you know, you’ve got everything there. I love my wife, I’ve got a lot of structure, and a kitchen to eat good food and all that stuff. But touring is a different matter completely.
So that’s been something that I’ve been trying to take a lot of care too since — well only in the last few tours, to be honest with you. And it’s hard, It’s a real challenge.
But yeah, I think in terms of other listeners, I’d say it’s always better voicing it out loud. It always helps you process things more. It’s like being able to see the back of your own head, you know what I mean? You can never see it in the mirror ‘cause it’s without your own eyes, but you can kind of look at yourself from outside your own body and see everything. It can be painful at first, but it’s definitely good in the long run.
I’m gonna try and keep this level of — I don’t like using the word “honesty” in this context because I feel that that means that you have an obligation to do that, which I don’t think artists do. And also, if you are more hands off, let’s say lyrically, then that implies a level of dishonesty. We’re getting into semantics there, sorry. A level of vulnerability, a level of openness, I do think there’s a lot of value in that. In this case, I definitely had a lot to talk about.
I’m also quite a lucky person. I have quite privileged life, and I sometimes am aware there’s a lot of things going on in the world and a lot of people even down the street from me that are suffering a lot more than I am. So in this case there was definitely a lot of subject matter, but there’s also a lot of other things to talk about that are going on in the world, very important things. I don’t know that it always has to be the woes of a middle class, white, heterosexual male. We hear a lot about them all the time.
I definitely think it’s a fine line of how much of yourself do you give away, how much do you keep, what do you think is important for other people to hear, and what’s not — especially in the context of so much else going on in the world. What other people find important about you, and then how much you’d wanna say and how much you don’t wanna say.
That’s been the challenge as well, is kind of establishing where those boundaries are and walking that tight line.
I definitely think some songs on the record feel more vulnerable than others. Not necessarily in a bad way, just in the way that you chose for storytelling. For example, “Floodlight on the Square” feels very vulnerable, there’s lot of struggle there. What are the specifics of where that was coming from?
I think it was written definitely with a view for it being the introduction to this theme and to the record. You know, the first lyric being, “it’s all going wrong.” It’s a very powerful place to start, I think. It’s kind of the dissent into this. I mean, we can talk about it in the context of like, a night out on the town binge drinking, where you’ve kind of got nothing to lose and you’re just getting into the thick of it, and it hasn’t quite fucked up yet. Or you can talk about it in the context of the following day, you know? Got a sandpaper tongue, I keep losing my time, that kind of thing. But it is definitely just about feeling like you’re absolutely out of control of your faculties, of your own life and not being able to pull everything together; not being able to spin all the plates, not having any discipline, and then feeling guilty about that and feeling weak and ashamed and scared for the future, because you just know that you [have to] try to control yourself or try to get your shit together, or get your life in order. But you know you’ve failed on multiple occasions, and you don’t know what to do. It’s a song that was penned in a moment of genuine fear, I suppose.
What was the intention of starting with “Datura” as a intro track and breaking it out into “Floodlights on the Square?”
It was just the idea. We wrote that as that idea. We tend to start albums off usually like “It’s in, let’s go!” We wanted to start with something that set the tone and was very like, vibey and moody. That was quite small but direct with “Datura.” I’d written that poem
a couple years ago, previous to this, and was looking for something to do with it, and it kind of fell into place perfectly. We’d always talked about whatever that intro was — it going into the next track, which kind of plan, so to speak.
My favorite song on the album is “Foxglove.” It’s very similar to previous songs in vibe and structure. It does bring a lot of Datura elements to a familiar place. How do you make sure you do a positive balance for new listeners, old listeners, and people that are looking for similar sounds to old music?
That’s the challenge, really. Sometimes it’s something that you make conscious effort to do. Sometimes you just don’t think about it and it happens naturally, because there’s certain elements to your musical DNA that are gonna happen because you are the people making the songs and that’s what your interests are and your skill set.
I always say that I really struggled to write songs in the major key. All of us do, really, we’re just not that way. It’s why our music always sounds quite dark. It’s just that we are naturally inclined to write in the minor key. Everything that I’ve tried to write in the major key tends to sound like cheesy, like an advert to me. I don’t know. It’s just what I like.
But there’s certain things that are our bread and butter, so to speak. I’m trying to not come across as arrogant, but we know we can do big, high energy choruses. It’s what we’ve always done as a band, so writing them is not necessarily writing outside of our comfort zone. But doing stuff with weird time signatures or weird structures is something that is out of our comfort zone, and that we find interesting, but that’s more of a challenge to us.
You gotta front load the record with some bangers, don’t you? You gotta have some heavy-hitters. I love that tune. It’s one of the first tracks that we wrote, but the riff is this kind of offbeat, kind of groovy thing that took a while to put together. It actually came from a techno track we were listening to. It has this hypnotic — just behind the beat — polyrhythm thing going on. We were like, “that would really be really cool if we could make that a riff.” Inspiration comes from unusual places sometimes.
That was just like “let’s put a song out that makes people want to dance, makes people want to jump up and down” and you know, lead with your best foot forward. Sometimes the single thing is pretty misleading because a lot of people will have input on that. It’s radio pluggers, it’s label people, it’s managers. Sometimes you just hand off the songs and they’re like, “we think it should be these singles” and we’re like “okay.” And sometimes they’re not — “Plasticine Dreams” is a single on GLUE. It’s a terrible representation of what that album actually sounds like, but “Foxglove” I think is pretty in the middle of Datura. Every track on the album brings something different, but this is pretty solid in terms of what you’re getting if you’re buying the album, I think.
Yeah, I definitely agree with that. And then the same breath, “Passenger” and “Crocus”, to me, sound very similar to “Foxglove.” Where do they fit into the narrative?
Well, “Passenger,” as I said is coincidentally pretty on the money in terms of the theme. In my mind “Crocus” kind of has two meanings to it. It’s the euphoric middle part of this night where things are swirling and everything’s getting a little bit crazy, and you’re starting to really lose touch of reality but you’re still not quite ready to call it a night. It’s also a bit of a love letter to my bandmates, as this championing of the underdogs.
We’ve kind of always been on the outside looking in, so to speak, and we’ve always had to shout a little bit to have our voices heard as a group of people — as a band — being from a forgotten part of the world. It’s been nearly ten years since we started this band, and I love them all dearly. They’re my best friends in the world. We’re all original members, you know, and we do everything equally, we write all these songs equally. I just wanted to write these lyrics that fit this industrial, noir, clubby banger that we always wanted to write since we started this band.
We always talked about soundtracking the Matrix club scene. We were like, “it would be really cool if we could write the song that goes with that scene,” and I think we finally did it. It’s the bit before “Shelter in the Rain,” where you stumble out and you’re just fucked and don’t know what to do or where to go. But it also is this “fuck yeah” kind of tune. I was watching them track these guitars and I was like, “these guys are the best. I love them to bits.”
So it kind of has a few meanings. The video shows you this fictional — you don’t even know if this is necessarily even happening or it’s all in the protagonist mind — but this sort of fictional, everything is sleek and sexy and awesome club scene, when in reality what’s going on on the outside is just a horrible, crumbling environment. An alleyway at 5:00 AM and it’s raining and you’ve got no money and your phone’s broken. It’s the back and forth dichotomy of the record, the dynamics.
Both Crocus and Datura are flowers.
And Foxglove!
Was it purposeful to give them all a double meaning?
It became a bit of a motif that I quite liked. Starting off with “Datura”, the reason that we named it
that is that it’s a flower that only blooms at night. It fits in with this whole aesthetic of this record, the whole feel of it. But also, there’s this little side meaning — I think I mentioned before — but it’s highly hallucinogenic.
And then “Foxglove” was just the demo name. I think Mike [Cunniff] made the demo and just put the file name “Foxglove,” and it sounded sick. We just kind of kept it going, really. Like with “Crocus.” I don’t know why I’ve always like that name. I’ve always wanted to call a song “Crocus.” There’s a painting by this French painter whose name currently escapes me, and it’s od all these purple, dark-looking flowers, and they’re illuminated by moonlight. That image was always kind of in my head while we were making this record. I always thought it looked very evocative. I suppose a sort of subliminal, but happy coincidene really, the flower thing. I think we’ll probably end up carrying it over.
I love that. I think it’s very interesting. It’s one of those things you can find if you’re really looking for it.
Thank you. We tried to litter the record with that as well. There’s other stuff there that people haven’t even found yet that we’ve tried to carry in some
of the tracks.
I love that whole subliminal thing, and like adding in a mini game, almost. You can really tell like who’s listening and who’s paying attention.
So, the lyrics to “Datura” were actually printed on some joggers that we did, like, two years previous. Somebody was wearing them and was like “wait a second,” and then put them on Twitter. Everyone was like, “no fucking way. I own those joggings!” Then they dug ‘em out the closet and [were] like, “oh yeah!”
You seem to do that kind of stuff a lot, where you wanna make things interactive. You guys posted that you’re doing a remix of “Passenger” thing. Have you listened to any of those submissions yet?
A few of them are coming through. I haven’t listened to them yet. There’s a bunch of people that keep messaging us all the time being like, “it’s coming! Big things coming soon. I’m working on this remix!” I’m kind of waiting for everyone. I don’t wanna rush people, but I’m kind of like, “come on guys,” like I wanna hear these remixes!
We just did a bunch of meet and greets as well, these HMV in-store acoustic signings, and about seven or eight people there were like, “I’ve got this remix and I’m not done with it. Please listen to it, ‘cause I’m working with on it.” So I’m gonna wait until they all come in, and then have a little sift through. We were originally gonna try to do a thing where every stem for every track is all put up on a database. But we had some issues with like, legality with that and masters and all that kind of stuff. But I thought that would’ve been cool, ‘cause you could rebuild the whole record yourself.
You’ve done a little bit of touring since the record has come out, and you have more shows coming up in December. How have the crowds and the reception been to these songs?
The only tour we’ve done since [the album’s] been out was supporting Alexisonfire in the UK and Europe. They’ve been amazing. I mean, most of those shows had sold most of the tickets before we even got announced. There weren’t necessarily Boston Manor fans at those shows. So it was interesting to kind of see people’s unbiased opinions. They had no preconceived notions of who this band was. They’d never heard of us, they’re just hearing the songs live. The reactions are incredible, and [it’s] encouraging to see the new stuff going down as well as, if not even better than, the older stuff.
I’m really excited to play the record in full, which we’re doing in December in the UK, and to have people who love the record come out and get to experience it and share it with us.
All the acoustic stuff we did was obviously all our fans, as opposed to the tour that we were doing. It was like, the week the record came out, and people were singing all the words — which just blows my mind, you know?
It’s very humbling and I’m very, very grateful to everyone that’s checked the record about it. It’s all very flattering and I’m very grateful [for] how much people care about this stupid little band from Blackpool. It’s lovely.
