Kev Sherry, singer for the critically acclaimed four-piece Attic Lights (Island Records, Elefant Records), makes a welcome return as he prepares to unveil his indelible new single Wasted Days, out now.
Alongside his backing band ‘Low Fruit’, Kev has produced an uplifting, earnest piece of jangle-pop music juxtaposed with weighty, reflective personal lyrical content. Combining the snappy melodies of contemporary acts like Courtney Barnett and Alvvays with the yearning simplicity associated with classic bands such as The Lemonheads and The Pastels, Wasted Days sees Kev challenge the banal, indistinctive sound of modern indie guitar music by reconnecting with the sound of shambolic, loose guitars, catchy melodies, bare production and raw recording.
Kev’s solo project follows on from the success garnered by Attic Lights with the band appearing on HBO’s Divorce, MTV’s Teen Mom, BBC’s The Culture Show, Hairy Bikers, The One Show, Sportscene, Channel 4’s Wife Swap, Come Dine With Me and ITV’s Scotsport and STV News. He has also collaborated with international artists including Bjorn Yttling, Cerys Matthews and La Casa Azul and his songs have been remixed by Mogwai, Camera Obscura, The Fratellis, Jim Noir and The Vaselines.
In this interview spotlight, I chat with Kev Sherry about the latest music, challenges, technology and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Let’s dive a little deeper into You, the artist and your music. What attracted you to this genre(s) or style(s)?
I grew up on guitar music, especially alternative, indie stuff. With Attic Lights, we played a much more power-pop oriented take on indie music. I wanted to get back to the music that first inspired me, Pavement, The Lemonheads, Pixies etc… and do my own take on that, then see where I could take it with my own personal idiosyncrasies.
What led you into this journey with music? And further, what drives you to push it out to the public?
I often wonder how much of wanting to do this job is just pure ego – and perhaps a lot of it is. But really, as a music fan, you just really want to be involved in this amazing art, these sounds, these feelings, to communicate with people, to make them feel the same way you felt when you first heard Like A Rolling Stone or Wave of Mutilation or Crazy In Love or The Blacker The Berry – songs that just lift the lid off your mind, change the temperature of the room and open your eyes to a bigger world and new ways of feeling, seeing, being.
I remember the day I thought I might be able to do this for a living. I was a little kid watching some music show on TV and my mum said to me, “Do you know you have a cousin who does that?” Then she pulled out Talking Heads 77 and put it on and said, “This is your cousin David.” I remember thinking A) it looked like the coolest job ever and B) If someone in my family can do it, then I’m sure I can do it too!
Who or what influences your creativity? Have your tastes in music changed over time?
I think every single thing in life can influence you creatively, from a conversation to a book, TV show, a dream and any daft idea that pops into your head. I guess I get most inspired when I really connect with the art someone else has made. If an album, novel, comic or movie really blows me away, it makes me want to do something equally as powerful and my mind starts racing with ideas.
My tastes change constantly. A few years ago I was heavily into dance music, techno and related genres. Right now I’m in a very acoustic singer-songwriter phase (Jessica Pratt, Nick Drake, Chris Cohen etc…) Bit I guess I always come back to lo-fi alternative guitar music. It’s my bedrock.
Were you trying to accomplish anything specific on this new project? Creatively or otherwise?
Yeah, I wanted to indulge myself completely and just follow any strange idea I had, regardless of where it might take me – and trusting myself that I could make a good song out of it in the end. This is harder to do when you are one member of a band because people all have different opinions and you need to compromise a lot. I feel this is me just stretching my wings as a solo artist, having played with Attic Lights for over ten years. I also wanted to inject a more personal and political element into my songs – again, difficult things to do when you work with a band who might not share your particular take on things.
What was the last song you listened to?
Ooh. Let me check…. It was…. Multi-Love by Unknown Mortal Orchestra (according to my Spotify)
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
In an ideal world I would say vinyl, but I have more CDs than vinyl so I’ll go with CDs. MP3s kinda piss me off as the sound quality is so compressed and crap. I did an experiment recently with a CD. I burned a copy of an original CD to my iTunes then burned the new Mp3 iTunes copy onto a blank CD (I know, it’s illegal… don’t tell the cops). I then played the original CD and the freshly made CD back to back. You could totally hear the difference. The new copy just didn’t have the same punch or expansiveness as the original CD.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
I use Spotify more than the others so I guess that’s my preference. However, a lot of the stuff I like to listen to is not on streaming services. Rare albums, or just great records (like parts of The Go-Betweens discography) that you just don’t find on streaming services. Spotify is a weird thing for musicians. It’s fantastic as a music fan to have access to so much stuff. As a music maker it’s profoundly unfair the way most of the profits go to big record labels. In terms of helping build new acts, I think the Spotify (and streaming in general) business models need to really improve.
Other than the digital era overwhelming us with access to an abundance of music, what is the biggest challenge you face when trying to connect with or find new fans?
Cutting through the noise. There is so much stuff out there, so much content, so much music, that actually getting noticed is a really hard thing to do. I’m lucky in that I have both a fairly high-regarded history with another band (Attic Lights) to help me get noticed, plus, as a journalist and comic writer, I have other audiences out there who cross over from reading my comics to listening to my music. Maybe that’s the way it has to go now? Maybe we all have to be more than just music makers? We need to be writers performers, artists in the broadest sense.
Where is the best place to connect with you online? Discover more music?
I’m not sure I know how to answer that. Check out my website https://kevsherry.com or follow me on social media. I’m usually happy to chat to anyone who gets in touch.
@KevSherry1 on twitter, @kevsherrystuff on Facebook and instagram and my band Low Fruit has an insta too – lowfruitband. Come talk to us, or hassle us, berate us, offer us alms, good wishes, challenge us to duels… or anything else you want.
Anything else you’d like to add before signing off?
Yeah. I’d like to add that… as we’re all stuck at home right now while this totally unprecedented pandemic brings the entire human world to a standstill we finally begin to see who the truly important members of society are. And it’s not the hedge fund managers or the bankers or the billionaires, it’s the people who serve you your groceries, who take away your trash, who nurse your parents, who disinfect the floors of hospitals, who drive the buses and do all the little ‘unskilled’ jobs that normally we don’t even think about. When this is all over, we might have a chance to build a fairer society than the one we currently live in. So, let’s make sure we don’t forget who really kept the world turning when the human race faced this collective challenge.
Oh yeah… and listen to my music if you’ve got the time!
