Dexters released their brilliant debut album last year and celebrated through relentless touring and taking the time to bond with their fans like any real band should. We caught up with frontman Tom Rowlett last week as he prepared for the release of their phenomenal follow-up ‘We Paid For Blood’.

Hi Tom, how are you and what have you been up to this week?

I’m good thanks mate, not been up to much this week so far, just finalising some stuff for an album launch party which we’re looking at sorting. We’re gonna go up to Rockfield in Wales where we did the album, so that’ll be a nice little trip before the actual tour kicks off.

‘We Paid For Blood’ was released September 25 – how have you found the reaction so far?

Yeah good! All the feedback we’ve been getting so far has been really positive so long may that continue. We seem to be knocking down doors that were previously closed to us, we got our first Radio 1 play the other night, we’ve been getting a lot of love from the likes of Steve Lamacq and Radio 6 music so it’s really good.

Would you say it’s somewhat ‘darker’ than the debut?

Yeah, I think that’s what we were going for, I dunno maybe like a bit more angry that we didn’t get any money of the first one and we’re all skint – still skint, still pissed off young men so maybe it’s coming out a bit more.

How would you summarise the album to those who haven’t listened yet?

Like we’ve said it’s definitely a lot darker, the lyrics are deeper, it’s not as ‘wishy-washy’. We took our time with it more, we had a lot more time to do it and sort of listen to it back and be a bit more critical. It’s definitely more us and where we are now, like we’ve been plugging away for so long and I think it mirrors that if you know what I mean?

What would you say is your favourite track off the album?

Ah fuck. It changes all the time, but I’m going to say the track ‘Your Lovely Wife’, we wrote that when we went there [Rockfield Studios] and it’s about some bird killing her husband, it was so different and fun to record, like there’s no drums there was just a load of pots and pans and we were jumping on things and there was weird keyboard solos, so that track was definitely my favourite during the recording process.

I really like the title track ‘We Paid For Blood’ because I’d say that probably means the most to me at the minute. I was quite pissed off when I wrote that and I just wanted to get that out there, it just made me feel better writing it.

You’re touring extensively across the U.K once the album is released. Are you excited to get back on the road again?

Definitely. We’ve been doing a lot of festivals recently but it’s always great to get out on the road and do your own gigs. We’re doing a few new places that we’ve never been to before so it’s going to be cool to go out and see some new places. I’m a bit worried about the stretch where we play eleven shows on the bounce, a little worried about my vocals but other than that all great towards the tour yeah.

What’s your favourite way to past time when you’re on the road?

Playing poker, but we play with haribos – your tangfastics, that’s the big money. Your starmix and all that it’s the bollocks. I also like picking up the guitar and playing and working on tracks whilst we’re out on the road as well, but the other lads get a bit bored of that after a while.

You also got to cover the Soccer Am theme-tune, what was that like?

Yeah it was cool, it was a very quick turnaround because we didn’t know we were going to be doing it until the night before, we got a call asking if we could do it the morning after and we obviously said yeah, we hadn’t even started to rehearse the thing at this point so we just booked a rehearsal in the morning and did it for like two hours and then went and recorded it. But yeah I really liked it, even though I had nothing to do, there were no bloody lyrics in there so I brought this megaphone and screamed, it was quite fun.

Are there any other bands or artists that are catching your eye at the minute?

Yeah there’s quite a few, it’s quite good at the minute I think. There’s a band called Storms who are fucking awesome, they’re really good. Trampolene are class, those two are probably my favourite at the minute.

What would your desert island disk be?

Bloody Hell. I dunno! If I had to pick just one song, it would probably have to be ‘I Am The Resurrection’ by The Stone Roses, at least you get your money’s worth with that one, and obviously it’s great.

Following the album release and the tour, what’s next for Dexters?

After we do the tour we’re going straight back into the studio. We’re going to work on around another four tracks and record them and hopefully put those out in January, we don’t want to hang about and stay still, we want to keep going. So yeah, a little EP that will hopefully be out around March. We’re going at it, nothing else to do so we might as well – we’re not good at anything else either.

James Cummins.

@CummyBear