My Vitriol- Q&A

Q&A with My Vitriol

Putting pause on proceedings at the end of 2002, My Vitriol have bounced back with a string of smaller venue shows across the UK, many which are now sold-out. I caught up with Ravi, Seth and Som at their Southampton leg of the tour to chew some tasty My Vitriol fat.

How is the tour going thus far??

Ravi: The tour has been going really good, its been good to get back on the road again. We played in Leeds which was the first show last Saturday and it was great, had an amazing crowd. It was funny, the gig was a late addition to the tour and we were surprised at the turnout.

Som: Then we went down to Liverpool, where we hadn’t played much at all before. In fact, I think we haven’t played a lot of venues in these towns for years.

What’s it like playing small venues again?

Seth: I really like it because it’s very intense, you really sort of feel the audience right there, getting into it. Some of the bigger festivals we’ve played, you can’t even see the audience’s faces, they’re a big blur. You kind of get in touch with the crowd all over again.

Som: There is actually a level that we take out that maybe a bit too much for these venues!! We bring in a lot of lights, fry the PA’s. We tend to fry a lot of retinas too!!

How has your sound progressed since Finelines?

Seth: Well, I guess it’s bolder and bigger, but you have got to remember that within Finelines itself was a sound that was still growing. We signed after having played just seven shows so I think we were still growing into what we are now, we were still only in the puberty stage back then.

Ravi: It was really just work in progress in the limelight if you know what I mean, and it’s still work in progress now, were still always developing our sound, trying to inspire ourselves with new sounds and gadgets.

What new sounds and gadgets have you been working on?

Ravi: We’ve been using a lot of synthy stuff on the new record.

And when will that be coming out?

Ravi: (Huffs.....then laughter) Hopefully, this year.

Som: We’d like to have it out in Japan before we actually release it here.

I didn’t realise you were big in Japan..?

Som: Yeah, we did pretty well there. They have a major radio station out there called J-Wave which play-listed every track on Finelines. So Sony were quite thrilled about it, because we booked a small 500 person show which sold out, then we upgraded to a bigger capacity, then that sold out. It was quite an interesting vibe. You feel like you’re in the Beatles or something – you arrive in Japan and there are all these kids at the airport and at the hotels, giving you presents and stuff. I don’t even know how these guys found out what flight we were on!!!

As artists of a high(ish) calibre, do you feel a constant weight of expectation on your shoulders?

Som: Well I guess that different people expect different things. And I think that was one of the troubles we had when we started out. Early on, there were a lot of people who expected us to be a punk band and we had ambitions slightly more left field than that. When we started playing with effects, people started calling us ‘shoe-gaze.’ We weren’t a shoe gaze band either, we were much louder than that, especially with the drumming. So following that I joked to the NME that we weren’t a ‘shoe-gaze,’ but you could probably call us ‘Nu-gaze.’ (Laughter)

We were actually going down an electronic route with a song called ‘My whole world implodes’ which was very MV but was a million miles away from our first ‘Always’ demo that we initially did. And that was the vibe that the second album was going down, but Warner Brothers weren’t very keen on that as they didn’t believe that electronic rock would sell. They asked me to go along the lines of Alien Ant Farm and Papa Roach. Frankly, by that time I’d had enough. I was trying to push things forward, keep things fresh and exciting and they just wanted us to move into a certain box.

We went from being band who just played seven shows to playing Top of the Pops, and Reading main stage , then moving to a major label in America and Japan and the rest of the world with Warners. This all happened in the space of two years and other bands spend decades to reach that status.

Aside from the obvious influences, what other art forms are significant to configuration of your music?

Som: Depends on what mood I’m in really. I used to do a lot of painting when I was younger and tended to prefer a lot of classical works. As I got older I got more into abstract stuff- Magritte, Escher, Dali- it was a natural progression, like when you listen to music. I started off listening to pop music and my favourite first band was The Beatles and then through them I got into other bands; Nirvana were my Magritte of the other world.

What’s next for MV?

Seth: Just progressing what we need to finish the album.
Som: Playing to the fans, trying out some new material. We want to go play places we haven’t played in years.