The UK band called Telegram has all of the power and ingredients for a very tasty brew that can knock your socks off and leave you three-sheets to the wind. They have the new-wave slick, the post-punk roar, the smooth pop-star good looks, but they also clearly have more driving their good taste than just the normal pedestrian cocktail. This foursome have finally made it to the Big Apple to play a handful of shows to revel in their sharp and anxious debut album Operator that just recently got dropped. We at Pancakes and Whiskey got to sit down with frontman and guitarist Mattew Saunders, bassist Oli Paget-Moon, guitarist Pip, and drummer Jordan Cook in the back room of Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn before their midnight show, to have an intoxicating talk about everything from art, inspiration, touring, and even politics over some beers and food.
Telegram
P&W – How have you enjoyed touring America?
Oli Paget-Moon – Well, we just got here on Saturday night straight from South By Southwest, so we’re pretty exhausted already.
What did you think about SXSW?
Mattew Saunders – It was like organized chaos – absolute chaos. It’s not like British music festivals, ours are not so city based.
Oli – The UK has tried to do some stuff like that, but it is still different, not nearly so massive.
Jordan Cook – If you look at the scale, it’s inherently different. It’s just so densely populated with dive bars that all seem to also be venues, that even without a festival there would still be an immense amount of shows all the time.
Oli – We also don’t have the grid system in Britain, which would make it impossible to navigate a festival like that and find your way around, especially if you’re an outta-towner.
Yeah, NYC also has a few of those too, like CMJ, Popfest, and Northside, but we have the grid thing too. I Imagine it’s easier playing several times at one of those than travelling cross-country.
Pip– Oh yeah, we’re gonna be back for CMJ, we’re already really looking forward to it.
Oli – Yeah, and we flew in this time too, so travel wasn’t too bad. We were on the plane with Bob Rock on our flight from Austin to NY, which was also pretty cool.
Jordan – Yeah, you get to hang with people like that and it makes it worth it. We had a whole bunch of these Telegram lighters made up which we gave to Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age and a whole bunch of other people…
Oli …and Christian from The Black Angels…
Saunders …and the lighter being an object that travels around in people’s pockets with them…
Oli …you’ve gotta spread the love…
Jordan …you kind of spread it and pass it along, kinda like…(laughter)
Pip – When got to meet Josh Homme after a talk he gave that was full of press and we just kinda snuck into, he really talked with us for a while and gave us great advice. He was a really great guy, very down to earth…
Do you have any suggestions for younger bands out on the road for the first time in a foreign land?
Oli – Yeah, moon landings are very relaxing…(laughter)…that’s my answer to everything now.
Saunders – Devices don’t do it all…
Jordan – If you’re lucky enough to acquire a shower, don’t expect it to work (laughter). Yeah, just cause you think you’ve found the shower – that is actually only half the battle.
Saunders – People seem to think we sat around twiddling our thumbs, but we’ve been recording hard ever since then trying to get this album done. The producer of our first single was going to be there originally, but that fell though. Our first guitarist moved away to Australia, which is pretty much why we now have Pip, thankfully. Then, we had this deal with Sony that was strung up for nine months that ultimately fell apart. We ended up taking this different route, just getting up the money to put it out ourselves, but that has been great, as we have had control over that process without label support. Not that were opposed to that support, but I think it helped us doing what we needed to be doing and really put out something we were proud of. To the outside world it seemed like were kicking back and taking it easy, but we were actually working hard the whole way through. Plus, we toured Japan and went through Europe and I think we really honed our live sound…
Pip – Yeah, I think that’s one of the most exciting things about being in a band is playing live. It’s great releasing albums, but you really need the live energy to spark everything, and with this album we had enough to fill that 7 inch, but we just needed a few more in the tank, good ones for this, and that touring definitely helped with that. It helps you to get to know yourselves and what you what to do.
How did you guys get to know each other and start playing?
Oli – Me and Pip have been really good friends for ages, for like 13 years, so when it came time to change guitarists, Mattew was an oh so simple move. Mostly, the three of us have known each other for way to long…
Jordan – But yeah, the three of us just met up at a party, and we all said “fuck it, we should start a band!” (laughter)
Oli – Then we tried with a few drummers, but none of them really fit the bill. Then there was a mutual friend of ours, Jordan, we liked a lot and we tracked him down to London, and he’s been our drummer ever since.
What are your musical influences?
Jordan – Well, Roxy Music is obviously a big thing with us, early Eno, a lot of proto proto punk stuff…
Pip…and a lot of NY rock stuff as well~ NY Dolls, Television, Richard Hell…
Oli – Devo too, of course…
What kind of inspirations do you have for lyrics? I’ve noticed some political and artistic themes there…
Jordan – It starts, well, for me, I’m dyslexic for these things, so I kind of phonetically sound things out, which is important to me. It starts with an image, or a sense, or feeling; something that I just try to describe abstractly, and then add in some more literal things. Politically, if you try to hammer it home continuously through the song, you’ll start to loose the attention of the listener and of what you’re talking about. Leonard Cohen did a really good job of that, having his abstraction and then having that one line that’s really linear to the narrative, like obvious, keeping you in the present. We also love Kurt Vonnegut and J.G. Ballard and a lot of kind of Sci-Fi kind of things, so our stuff can get deeper by inspiration, but, of course, there’s also a lot of songs about of love. (laughs)
Oli – We are all very politically minded. It doesn’t come across so obviously, but it’s definitely the feeling behind a lot of our sound, a tone so to speak…
Jordan – We’ve been asked about that stuff a lot about here in the states. We don’t get asked about it a lot in the UK, so it’s been nice to talk about it more. There’s definitely a lot of parallels between UK and the States right now politically.
Oli – It’s mostly about how badly our government treats young people, poor people old people, and disabled people…
Jordan …continuously cutting from the bottom, like there’s so many tax breaks and re-written rules for that top cut of people. There’s been like seven budget cuts recently, and it’s all come from the bottom. They’ve been killing disabled benefits that disabled people are living on by as much as 30 pounds a week, which is like 50 dollars a week, which has been taken away from those who need it most. Whereas, the expenses of MPs are astounding, like spending 50 quid on breakfast everyday, which is more money per day just for breakfast than someone in a wheelchair is gets to live on all week. It’s madness…
Oli – It’s like the opposite of Robin Hood…
Jordan – There’s very little middle class and that’s used politically as a demographic to appeal to. They don’t have to appeal to the top, the bottom are kind of disenfranchised and clueless and politically wrecked, with their hands over their heads or ears, a lot of the times because they need to pay attention to things that are more important, like day to day surviving. Politicians are constantly selling to the this middle class that’s not even really not there, or not many of them at least any more. It’s a very, very strange and very, very sad age.
What do you guys think of the political climate in America?
Jordan – Trump is a git! (laughter)
Pip– We’ve got a nice ‘Bernie for President’ sign.
Oli – Yeah, we went to his campaign center in Austin and picked a sign while we were there and kept that with me since. I’m glad they didn’t open my bag at the airport in Dallas, cause they probably would have held me behind bars there. It seems pretty conservative there.
Jordan – The thing is Ted Cruz is I guess behind him, but are the regular right-type people going to be voting for Trump? I mean it doesn’t seem to make sense for what they usually say they want…
Oli – From what we’ve been seeing in coverage in the UK so far, it seems to be almost all Trump on that side, but if it’s a fight between Sanders and Trump, are a lot of people still going to vote for Trump?
Jordan – I don’t know, but we have still seen a lot about both Clinton and Sanders lately there, but especially a lot of talk about Sanders in our circles, and his message has definitely resonated over in the UK as well. I don’t know how Republicans could put Trump in charge over that big red button when they still have a great choice on the other side rather than not vote at all. Or, are they going to vote against what we normally vote for and vote for Bernie Sanders because he’s a fucking human.
Oli – It really feels like a knife’s edge right now and it could go either way. I feel as though Trump has yet to get out his big guns, like he’s just getting warmed up. I think he is keeping under wraps some of his more evil thoughts, because he knows he can’t rock the boat so much.
Pip– Yeah, and people must remember that Hitler, he was only light in his hate talk at first too, and didn’t really start going after the Jews until he got drunk on his power…
Oli – Yes, that’s right, we ARE comparing Donald Trump to Hitler…
Jordan ..and he hasn’t got nearly as nice of a hairpiece either… (laughter)
Oli – Still, Bernie is the man for the youth, because they’re hungry for change. They’ve just been downtrodden for most of their short adulthood. I mean, everything he says just makes a lot of sense.
Matthew– I think it says a lot when a man of his age wants to go for it, become the President, and with all those other fingers in the pot, it is an old man which has potentially less time to fix it or enjoy it, and yet, he still wants to make things better for the young of the World, for the next generation, you know, to really leave a better World. It’s a very selfless appeal for the Presidency I believe. He’s saying a lot of things that haven’t been said in politics in any recent times. Yeah, Obama said we can change things, but Bernie’s being honest with us, he knows he can’t change everything, but he’s saying corporate America is the only one with any power now and until we get that out of our system of government, nothing is ever going to change in any real significant way, which is so true. It’s good to hear that refreshing honesty. We just hope he’s the one that gets through, for all of us…
Oli -That’s right America, do the right thing!
Article: Dean Keim
Photos: Alx Bear
