HOWARD : INTERVIEW IN ENGLISH
It’s about minus 4 degrees outside, it’s dark, we’ve got half a pack of cigarettes left and we’re trying to get a picture of Howard for the cover of this interview as quickly as possible. We don’t want to be responsible for them getting sick – they have a show to do.
After the launch of their new album, Event Horizon, and the party that followed in January, we found Howard playing a low-key gig in Magny-Le-Hongre, thirty kilometres from Paris. The show may be low-key, but when they finally take the stage it is with the same energy and enthusiasm as they did in a room full of their core fans. This is clearly how they do things.
We decided afterwards that it was the perfect time to put a few questions to the band – so thanks again to Tom Karren, JM Canoville and Raphaël Jeandenand for giving K-RPM some of there time and providing us with what turned out to be a collection of interesting and thought provoking responses!
K-RPM: Let’s go back to the start. How did you guys meet? You seem to be pretty close, were you already friends before you started making music?
HOWARD: It does work better when you’re friends! The band was started in 2016 around JM and a drummer friend named Guillaume, who you may have accidentally bumped into in the crowd at our release party. Raph came along very quickly thanks to an online ad and the band started from there. I (Tom) jumped onboard at the time of the gigs the band were playing in September 2017. JM and I already knew each other from a previous indie-folk project, and everything then clicked with Raph as well, so we were off!
K-RPM: Is the sound of Howard something you aspired to play … did you identify bands you like and think, “that’s how we want to sound”, or did it come from the three of you playing together and developing that sound?
HOWARD: The project started with JM going crazy over the Dutch band, Birth of Joy which he discovered whilst bringing a huge sound system to a wedding in a truck! We added a bit of Dewolff, QOTSA, of course The Doors and Deep Purple (because you don’t put keyboards on big rock music for nothing). After absorbing all of these influences, we were able to start refining our own sound, and these last few years have been particularly rich for us in this regard thanks to the increasing contribution of Raph’s electronic sounds. We are happy with the sound signature of the band today, but we are not done developing this style, that’s for sure!
K-RPM: You’re one of those bands who, whenever someone writes about you, they will invariably bring up a bunch of band names as your influences, which is interesting because you really do have “your” own sound. So, do you take these comments as a compliment?
HOWARD: We put a lot of energy into every level of the project’s development to make it stand out, and it often takes time for an idea to infuse, and for it to be really noticeable live or even when listening to the record, so it’s frankly the best compliment we can receive to hear that we have our “own sound”, something unique, something that you don’t hear every day.
It’s always a pleasure to hear mention of big names like Deep Purple or The Doors in an article about us, of course! However, it would be a shame to describe Howard as a 70s revival. Obviously it is necessary to give a framework to the readers to introduce the band, but we trust the intelligence and the sensibility of each listener to appreciate how much we are actually influenced by – or not influenced by – these famous names.
K-RPM: You really dared to face your influences with your cover of The Doors’ Waiting for the Sun. You appear to inhabit that song effortlessly, and with emotion – especially with the inclusion of the radio announcement of Jim Morrison’s death. Was it an emotional decision to record and release that song … did it feel like something you needed to do?
HOWARD: We wanted to cover The Doors because they really fed our band’s sound and were a huge influence on the pimply-faced youths we were just a few years ago. With the 50th anniversary of Morrison’s death looming, we chose to work hard in putting this recording together. It was really hard to decide on which Doors song to record, because there are so many iconic ones, but in the end it was the overall mood, the COVID fog and our need to move forward that made us choose Waiting For The Sun. The setting we created in the Sextan studio
and the speech from the documentary really caught us at the time of recording, it was a more emotional moment than we could have imagined.
KRPM … will we ever hear it live?
HOWARD: We only played it once for a festival near Rennes last summer. You have to think hard to place it in the setlist, there is a special atmosphere that comes out of this song. It’s not impossible that we will play it again however.
K-RPM: You just recently celebrated the release of your new album, Event Horizon with many of your fans at Backstage At The Mill, which was a great night! You definitely don’t appear to have suffered from “Second album syndrome” from what we can hear … it’s a real step forward after your excellent first album, Obstacle. Did you write Event Horizon completely from scratch, or were there some carry-over ideas from the Obstacle period?
HOWARD: Thanks a lot, it was a real thrill to see so many people. We had our heads in the sand organizing this with Angie our manager and the team at Below The Sun and it was a real pleasure to see that everything went well (even better than we imagined).
When we started composing Event Horizon, we had already made good progress on Telescope and some bits of Bankable Sermon. But apart from that, we were starting from scratch – with a mixture of frustration (Obstacle was released the day the confinement was announced, the promo tour was cancelled), anxiety and hope. We trusted in the time is was taking to compose, record and produce without hurrying too much. What was the point anyway? Everything was at a standstill.
We didn’t feel the second album syndrome because we were impervious to any external pressure and we were able to work in perfect conditions at the Sextan studio, which we thank again and again.
K-RPM: The Bankable Sermon video … that looked like you had a lot of fun! Is it something you enjoyed making? You all look very at home in front of the camera!
HOWARD: That’s nice to hear! We’ll pass it on to Laura, JC (and Océane) who put together a really crazy but professional shoot. They worked like crazy and knew how to put us at ease because we were not quite experienced in the process. We remembered our first interviews, our first filmed passages … it was not quite as easy as it is now. The three of us are rather reserved, but we’re getting used to being more comfortable showing off a little after playing rock music around France. It’s a full-on job, I’m telling you!
K-RPM: Do you think after recording two albums that you have found your sound, your style, or are you looking to develop more when it comes time to record again?
HOWARD: Good question! We are eternally curious and unsatisfied, so we will always need to dive deeper into our sound and discover new facets of our world and of ourselves. It’s not over yet!
K-RPM: You sing in English … and it interests me a lot to hear so many bands here in France singing in English. Was that a conscious decision on your part to appeal to a wider audience, or is it just a natural response to the music you listen to and are inspired by?
HOWARD: We don’t think too much about an audience when we write. English is what comes naturally to JM when writing lyrics. The sounds, the rhythm and, as you say, the reflection of his English and North American songwriting influences.
K-RPM: Do you have any personal reservations about not singing in French? Do you ever face criticism for this?
HOWARD: Oh yes! Whether it’s us or other bands, we sometimes hear “great stuff, but why isn’t it in French?” In most cases, it’s a project with a strong identity. There is perhaps the idea that the message will be conveyed more clearly if it is sung in the native language of the performer. There is also the fact that those who ask the question do not necessarily understand all the words. We think that it is especially necessary to know how to juggle with the possibilities and the limits of each tool we have, and language is one of them.
Today a musical project is not only intended for its country of origin. Through networks and streaming, the whole world has access to it. English is the historic language of rock and also the language of a good part of the world. It is therefore the most natural language for a rock band.
As far as personal reservations are concerned, we don’t close any doors, so it’s possible that we’ll end up singing in French… or not. The future will tell us.
K-RPM: What’s next? You have an excellent album to promote, what’s the plan?
HOWARD: Thank you! The plan is to tour like crazy with the team we have and the recent signing to Epic Tour. We hope to be as busy as possible all year long to keep Event Horizon alive and to keep grinding out the show with Arthur and Max by our sides (our technical guys – sound and light respectively). That’s all we can wish for anyway!
K-RPM: Last question, and it’s probably an eye-roller … why “Howard“?
HOWARD: Basically, we like the work of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and his mode of storytelling where characters, aware of their feelings, come up against forces beyond themselves. Worse, they are beyond understanding. Isolation, madness, these are themes that affect us a little too. But after a while, the band moves on and its name is no longer entirely yours …
