Music

Alt-J: ‘10 years ago we were thrown into a tailspin that never stopped’

Gus Unger-Hamilton reflects on decade since the band’s Mercury-winning first album

Alt-J: 'We now know for certain why we love the job we do so much'

Tony Clayton-Lea's face
Tony Clayton-Lea
Sat Aug 13 2022 - 05:00

Alt-J’s keyboardist/vocalist Gus Unger-Hamilton could hardly believe his luck when an alt-J song was chosen not for a niche, low-budget arthouse film beloved of Sight and Sound readers but for the 2016 Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster Captain America: Civil War. Left Hand Free, from the band’s 2014 second album, This Is All Yours, is hardly the kind of testosterone-heavy tune that you might expect would feature in such a movie, but he and his band certainly aren’t complaining. While waiting on the money from publishing and sync rights to drip-drip-drip into their bank account, they sat back, slipped off their boots, sipped a premium cognac, and lit up a big fat cigar.

“No one ever knows how anyone’s life in music is going to turn out,” says Unger-Hamilton, an unperturbed and genial presence across a crackling phone line, “and you’re never really aware, at least at the start, how something like that could happen. Very few young bands are aware of the intricacies of publishing deals, which even to some experienced musicians are like a closed book. That said, I think alt-J have always been very open to opportunities like that, and the other thing is that it’s a way to earn money without actually charging individual people. We would rather big film companies pay us than people who stream our music, for which we effectively get nothing.”

Marvel movies are, of course, a long way off from the humble origins of the band. Formed in 2007 at Leeds University, Unger-Hamilton recalls their early ambitions as simply wanting to be played on late-night specialist radio shows and to make an album. “The album was very high on the list, to make the artwork for it, and to get a few reviews in certain publications. We had thought we could achieve those things, and we also thought it would be unhealthy for such a young band to think we could achieve anything more.”

Such modesty might be unbecoming for a music act, but within five years (following a move to Cambridge, after they graduated) restraint turned to jubilation when their debut album, An Awesome Wave, won the 2012 Mercury Prize. The band would later declare the win as life-changing and that their view of themselves as ordinary guys from Leeds who scrambled through five years of winging it and somehow swiped a Mercury award was radically altered.

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“Some things can happen so quickly it’s out of your hands,” Unger-Hamilton says of the Mercury win, cautiously adding, “yet it wasn’t that we woke up one day and everything was there. At the time of the release of An Awesome Wave, it felt natural and exciting to be working with professional people. We had also worked our way up playing venues that had started with about 50 people, then to 100, 300, 500, 1,000, and so on.

“We were doing all that was expected of us, I suppose, but perhaps quicker than usual. It’s only in the past year or two that we have had the time to take stock of what has happened, the how and the why, to express the amazement and gratitude of what has taken place, and the fact that it is all going so well. However, winning the Mercury also meant that as a band we were thrown into a tailspin that never stopped. It seemed as if we were always touring, always working, and rarely was there time for reflection or self-congratulation.”

Alt-J have had plenty of time to contemplate such matters during the pandemic (or, as Unger-Hamilton terms it, “the Great Pause”) as well as using the time to make this year’s The Dream, their fourth album, “a lot better”. It also gave the band, he says, “the opportunity to miss playing shows. When we finished our third album [2017′s Relaxer] we were all ready to take some time off, but in the end we had more than three years away.” Being back on the road, touring across Europe (which includes an Irish show later this month) is great, he adds, “because we now know for certain why we love the job we do so much”.

Perceptions still persist, of course, and so because alt-J make music on their own somewhat capricious terms — terms that can alienate rather than engage — they are more often than not regarded as a highbrow music act. Unger-Hamilton admits that alt-J “like to sometimes push the proverbial creative envelope, and you could probably make a playlist of songs of ours that are perhaps less acceptable, more left-field”, but he says with a laugh, “we also have songs that are used in superhero movies”. The implication is that one style pays for the other. “Ultimately, we’re in a lucky position because we have, perhaps, niche respect and credibility, yet at the same time we have songs that are heard by millions.”

Regardless of perceptions, the band take whatever criticism that comes their way in their stride. Some newspapers, he says (“naming no names… The Guardian”) claim alt-J aren’t “cool enough or that we don’t fit easily into a box, but the other side of that is when you play gigs and know there are many people that have paid money to see you. To us, that’s what it’s all about, not the opinion of one person or a few people.”

It further highlights, he emphasises, the path alt-J have taken in the past 10 years. “Our debut album celebrates its 10th birthday this year and it takes you back to what we were like in 2012 and which bands we were rubbing shoulders with. For whatever reasons, some of those bands didn’t last the course. We know we could have been one of them, but it worked out well for us. To be honest, 10 years on, we feel very lucky to be here, to still be allowed to do this for a living. Actually, lucky isn’t the word — it’s amazing.”

Does the moderately sized anniversary of An Awesome Wave mean much to the band? The more time has passed, Unger-Hamilton says, the more he realises just how much the debut album means not only to him but also to the band as a creative unit. They had no major plans to mark the anniversary, he outlines, and were initially of the opinion “that 10 is just a number, but the more we talked about it the more we thought how cool it was that the album was still being viewed as a good piece of work”.

In 2005, he says, when he was 16, “the record for me was Oasis’ Definitely Maybe, which was released in 1994. As a teenager, I loved that album, but it felt very old to me. Alt-J are now in the same position, and I’m sure there are teenagers out there listening to An Awesome Wave and thinking how old it is yet also how cool it sounds. So, you know, it’s happy birthday to that album, and if we’re feeling overly nostalgic about it, then good for us.”

From a school barbershop group to alt-J

“My school had a barbershop group that I was in — we did two tours of Thailand, and we paid for the tours by fundraising and putting on concerts, and so on. It was quite incredible — it was my first time ever in Asia, although I’ve since been back with alt-J — and you could say it was one of my first jobs in music as well as an early experience that paved the way for what came next. It was important also as it gave me the sense that if I worked hard at it then I could travel to the other side of the world, that I could do something amazing with my life. The performances included traditional barbershop-type songs, but it was Glee before Glee, if you know what I mean, arrangements of not so much pop songs but a variety of different styles — spirituals, gospel, standards. The one song I particularly liked singing was Don’t Fence Me In, which is an American western song co-written by Cole Porter and popularised by the likes of Bing Crosby and Roy Rogers. That’s a tune right there.”

Alt-J play the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks, Dublin, on Thursday, August 25th