This Is The Deep are kind of indescribable – there’s seven of them, their sound could be categorised somewhere down the art-pop and psychedelia route, and everything they do seems to transcend itself somehow. Their debut EP The Best Is Yet To Come (Part 1) is out today, so we thought we’d get to know This Is The Deep a little deeper.
Well, we’re not alone in finding their sound indescribable, firstly – not even the band can quite manage it. “We haven’t been able to define our sound with something snappy yet. Mainly as it’s more or less constantly developing, so it is hard for us to pin it down… Although, it does solidify slightly the more we write and play together. ‘Underwater night-time Orchestral’? If you have anything we are all ears.”
If we delve into This Is The Deep’s pile of influences, will this shed any more light on the intricacies of their sound? Who are the inspirations for this magical noise? “We’ve got a strong shared interest in crafting songs that are direct but feel interesting or experimental. In the studio we work like magpies, taking bits from things that resonate with us and trying to shape them into something else we like or are excited by. A few touch-stone points for different reasons on this record have been Tom Waits, The Scissor Sisters, The Bad Seeds, Scott Walker, La Femme, Randy Newman, Kendrick Lamar, Timber Timbre, Ennio Morricone and Angelo Badalamenti. We’re also big fans of Britney Spears.”
This Is The Deep hold the storytelling as close to the centre of their songs as they do the sound: “it makes sense to us that music is or at least should be a form of storytelling. What you’re describing sounds like the way some of our favourite vocal melody writers – people like Joni Mitchell or Paul McCartney feel to us, so it’s really cool you feel that way! Approaching it is hard and probably something we do best without thinking about it too explicitly and letting the thing we’re making lead us somewhere, rather than the other way round.”
The Best Is Yet To Come (Part I) takes us on a real journey, and especially since it’s a debut, the order in which This Is The Deep introduced us to the world of the EP is incredibly impactful. “The order can be important, like words in a sentence you want them to flow in a certain way or make the next thing feel a certain way compared to the previous. It’s tough though! We’d definitely be tempted to just do albums if we could. Having said that, doing singles does work well to give the track its own identity and bring the world we’re making to life. Especially as we make the artworks and videos for them. We’ve definitely found having a music or visual art outlet helped to keep us occupied during the lockdowns.”
We’ve got to talk Glass – the EP’s most powerful single? Who are we to say. “Glass grew out of a jam we had with bass, synth, and drums in our studio a while ago. It had this driving and slightly foreboding quality and for some reason the melody and lyric idea ‘The bigger they come the harder they fall’ came out when we tried a vocal on it. A dramatic reading of Humpty Dumpty in the style of Edgar Allen Poe was the obvious next move! It is a weird process. Woody Guthrie apparently used fishing as an analogy for songwriting. He said something like, you put a line out (which is your instrument) with some bait (which is your influences maybe?) and you pretty much wait. An idea will either show up or it won’t. You can’t really say where they come from… from the deep maybe?”
With that in mind though – very big questions… what is the favourite track on the EP? “We’re really happy with it all. Mind over Matter is a favourite for its chaos and energy. We recorded the bulk of that one live and it felt really fun when we were recording it.”
So finally – what do This Is The Deep hope people get from the EP? “We hope it takes you somewhere for a little while and leaves you back where you started but in a slightly better mood.”
The Best Is Yet To Come (Part I) is out now!
