Gigslutz Interview: Horse Party

Horse Party are Ellie Langley (guitar/vocals), Seymour Quigley (guitar/vocals) and Shannon Hope (drums). Formed in September 2012, the Bury St Edmunds three-piece recently released their debut album Cover Your Eyes. We caught up with the trio to discuss influences, horse smegma, and getting drunk in churches.

Gigslutz: Hello Horse Party. Where are you and what have you been up to this week?

Seymour:  I’m at home at the moment, feeling sleepy. We’ve not had a very rock and roll week, just enduring day jobs and being excited about festivals.

Ellie: Yeah, it’s been quite uneventful… I’ve been trying to teach myself to whittle, but that’s not really newsworthy.

Shannon: Record shopping in Norwich; can’t complain about that.

Gigslutz: According to your press release, you got together after spending a boozy night together in a church – tell us more…

Seymour: It was a gig in a church and there was a bar, so it wasn’t that weird, apart from the fact that we were drinking in a church. I was drunker than Shannon and wouldn’t shut up about starting a band, so in the end she said “yes”. I’ve no idea why Ellie agreed to be in a band with us, she’s relatively sensible.

Ellie: I was living in Manchester at the time. They texted me in the middle of the night while they were at this gig, and to be honest, I think I replied pretty instantaneously so they would let me go back to sleep. So, on that basis I essentially joined the band because I was tired.

But I moved back to Bury a couple of months later, we got in a rehearsal room together and it all just clicked immediately. At that time I was still looking for a day job, so we spent a lot of time practising and going to the pub. It was glorious.

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Gigslutz: I was playing your new album in the car the other day and my mum said it reminded her of Fleetwood Mac. Are they one of your influences and which bands do you take inspiration from?

Seymour: We all love Fleetwood Mac, and I can’t get over how enduringly sexy Lindsay Buckingham is; I want to fall into his eyes. I had a curious musical upbringing; my Dad’s a Beatles obsessive and my Mum bombarded me with 80s pop. She forced me to join a church choir ‘cause it meant I’d get free singing lessons, even though we weren’t Christian. The end result is that I ended up loving everything that isn’t shit. That said, if I had to pinpoint the bands who had the biggest impact at any particular time, they’d be: Eurythmics, Pet Shop Boys, Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, Nirvana, Tori Amos, Faith No More, Manic Street Preachers, Blur, The Verve, PJ Harvey, The Clash, dEUS, Popular Workshop, Fever Fever, Savages, Daughter. And The Rembrandts of course, those guys rewrote the rule book.

Ellie: I’m a big Fleetwood Mac fan. There’s an incredible video on Youtube of Stevie Nicks singing ‘Wild Heart’ backstage that everybody should watch. She looks amazing, sounds amazing, and it’s just totally effortless. I’ve seen it countless times, but every time I watch it I’m blown away. To me, influence should never be about actually wanting to sound like anybody else, it should just mean listening to loads of great music (because it’s a joy, and why wouldn’t you be doing that anyway?). Then, when you sit down with a guitar, you will have taken in all that stuff somehow, and you’ll use it in an instinctive way, rather than thinking too much about what you’re doing. I’m a big believer in creative things having to feel very natural; you never find your own voice if you’re trying to impersonate somebody else. So there are loads of people who have influenced me in that sense. I’m quite an obsessive listener too, I tend to have a particular artist or record on repeat at any one time. Some longstanding favourites include: Prince, Pixies, Fleetwood Mac, A Tribe Called Quest, Patti Smith, Nirvana, Springsteen, the Stones, Aretha Franklin, Elliot Smith, Kate Bush, Dylan.

Shannon: I completely agree with Ellie:  it’s best to not focus on sounding like someone else, but you can’t help let your influences slip in there somewhere. Generally I listen to a range of stuff, from punk to more ambient electro stuff and anything in between.

Gigslutz: What’s the most rock n’ roll thing each of you have done?

Seymour: I once leapt from a second-floor window into Regent’s Canal, thought that’s less rock n roll, more completely idiotic. In 2003, I left my underpants up a tree in Cardiff. Then there was the time I spent an entire interview talking about horse smegma. It looks a lot like cornflakes, horse smegma. Not many people know that, but it’s true.

Ellie: I’m pretty sure I haven’t done a single rock n roll thing, ever.

Shannon: It’s best to ask the staff who work at The Hunter Club in Bury St Edmunds.

Gigslutz: John Peel once described your hometown Bury St Edmunds as “the New Seattle”. Was he taking the piss?

Seymour: John Peel said everything in that wonderfully dry fashion, and it was obviously an exaggeration, but he lived just up the road from us so I suspect he wanted it to be true. We probably wear the most plaid of any band round here. By “we” I mean Ellie and Shannon; you wouldn’t catch me dressed like some scruffy American. I do own a stripy jumper from Target, though.

Ellie: We should point out that Bury St Edmunds is awash with bands in a more general sense, though, even if they aren’t wearing plaid shirts. There’s a really good music scene around here; none of the bands sound the same, which is ace. I think coming from a small town is actually really good in that sense. The old cliché about there not being much else for young people to do rings true, but we’ve got a good venue (the Hunter Club), and the people that run it are really supportive of lots of gigs happening there. And personally I don’t think there’s anywhere better to do creative stuff than a sleepy little place in the middle of nowhere; it’s kind of a blank canvas of a place, and I love that. People are always looking to certain cities to produce great things – the places that already have a reputation, but actually sometimes that can all feel a bit jaded and self-conscious.

Shannon: Yup, smaller towns/cities usually have a real homegrown, DIY approach to arts/music. You can’t really rely on your local council to provide you with a music scene, and would you really want them to? The best stuff happens when friends get together and make stuff happen for themselves. I think that’s what’s happening in our town.

Gigslutz: You promote a music night in Bury St Edmonds – which three bands would be your dream bookings?

Seymour: That’s really hard. I want to play with Savages and Daughter more than words can say. But I’d settle for Chas & Dave.

Ellie: Almost all excellent choices. Would make for an incongruous bill perhaps, but I’d be pretty keen to book Patti Smith and Prince.

Shannon: Yeah Patti Smith would be unreal. I’d like to see The Breeders, I love the new Eagulls record and think they would tear the roof off.

Gigslutz: You’ve claimed that one of your ambitions when forming the band was to “make or lose a million pounds”. If you were given £1m and had to spend it all in one day without investing it or buying any property/possessions, what would you do?

Seymour: Besides the obvious – by which I mean hiring the London IMAX to watch the 1987 animated masterpiece Transformers: The Movie with beer and pizza – probably just give it all to charity. Or, hire a submarine and fill it with helium to see if it can fly.

Shannon: Seriously, I would love Bury to have a really great record shop. I think that’s something that’s lacking in our town.

Gigslutz: What’s next for Horse Party?

Seymour: We’re doing lots of festivals and finishing our second album.  We want to make sure that each new album comes out less than a year after the previous one, on the grounds that it’s what the Rolling Stones would probably have wanted. If only Mick Jagger could speak, he’d have so much to tell us.

Paul Sng

@sng_paul

Paul Sng

Paul Sng

Editor-at-large, Brighton. Likes: Lee Hazlewood, Lee Hazlewood songs and Lee Hazlewood's moustache Dislikes: Celery, crap nostalgia and people who raise their voice when speaking as if they're asking a question?