A two-headed phoenix from the flames of Norfolk! Esteemed makers of alt-rock bangers Deaf Havana put the band on ice in 2020 as a four-piece, but have returned in ‘22 as a brotherly duo of James and Matthew Veck-Gilodi. Shortly touring the resulting album, including a Cardiff date, The Present Is A Foreign Land, the pair spoke to Carl Marsh.
I think The Present Is A Foreign Land sounds like your most heartfelt and honest album of songs to date, one that has proper meaning to you both. A cathartic experience, perhaps?
Matthew Veck-Gilodi: Yeah, definitely. I’d concur.
James Veck-Gilodi: It’s the most meaningful record we’ve made. I find it a lot easier to write a song about an experience I’m going through than to actually talk about it because it’s just how my brain works, I guess. But yeah, it’s helped a lot. It reminds me a bit of that time when I listen to it, obviously, but I can use that to perform it better. But yeah, for me, it was a load off.
Deaf Havana fans will appreciate that this new album exists, and the continuing existence of the band: before COVID took hold, the plan was for you to go your separate ways. So what was that olive branch moment that got you back together, albeit now as a duo?
Matthew: Well, we didn’t speak to each other for about a year. We were still set on not being a band, and thought we’d have to close up shop, pay debts off, things like that. But we thought it’d be nice to put a song out to finish on; I’d just written one that was me trying to come to terms with what had happened and how we’d got to here. That’s 19Dreams on the new record.
James and I got into the studio and worked on that, which worked really well. And even then, it lit something in me.
James: That song, in particular, was the catalyst. We’d basically decided to break up, and then COVID happened, so we couldn’t do anything anyway, but we had some obligations – a couple of shows we needed to play – so we initially started talking again when stuff started to open up, at the beginning of 2021. We just started talking very sparsely, like when Matty asked me a couple of questions about if I had any recording tips.
Matthew: Hence the monstrosity you see before you! [points to a huge microphone visible in the Zoom video, to general laughter]
James: Matty was like, “If we’re gonna finish, we might as well go out on a song,” gave me 19 Dreams, we recorded that, really enjoyed ourselves, and then it snowballed from there. We asked the other guys [bassist Lee Wilson and drummer Tom Ogden] if they wanted to carry on, but they had other stuff going on.
Something I noticed in your discography is that previous Deaf Havana albums have never had a title track – but you’ve done that this time with The Present Is A Foreign Land, which features towards the back of the album. Anything to take from that?
Matthew: It’s just a little phrase that started bouncing around my head that describes, pretty perfectly, how I feel about everyday life – feeling alienated, not fitting in. Just sometimes finding things quite difficult that I think should be pretty easy. We just put it as the title for a bit, and it seems to work really well. And then the more we’ve sat with it, the more it seems to make sense. Whether that’s looking at the news, or anything, it just kind of takes on a bunch of different meanings. Which I really enjoy.
Deaf Havana, Tramshed, Cardiff, Tue 8 Nov.
Tickets: £22.50. Info: here
words CARL MARSH