Northern Light Exposure interview

After the recent release of second ep 'Parting Shot,NLE are a non stop band,from supporting Chameleons vox to teasing new material .NLE are ready to take the stage. I interviewed Andy Glenn about the past,looking forward and the story behind 'Parting shot'.

You recently released your second ep,what was different about creating this ep compared to your first?

I think we approached this record differently from our first release An Honest Way of Living, which was more aggressive in some ways and came much more from the gut. Our new record comes from the head and has a more mature take on things. We spent a lot of time on the songwriting aspects than we had done before, chipping away to reveal what we thought were the best arrangements to support this particular group of songs; adding in little nods to our influences, and mapping out exactly what we wanted to say sonically. I remember in the initial stages there were a lot of demos flying around with different verses and choruses. I never like to settle on the first thing that comes into my head, or even the second. Sometimes I’ll often try out 3 or 4 versions and send these to the band and see which one sticks. It’s a process of adding and subtracting to get the right balance of ingredients, and then when we think we’ve got it in a place that we’re all happy with we go in with the meat cleaver and trim out the fat.

There are 4 tracks on the ‘Parting shot’ what is your favourite track and why?

For me it has to be the concluding track on the EP ‘Further’. I think it encompassing everything we’re about; angular guitars, lush strings, pulsating synths, a melodic bassline, and a real foot stomping drum beat. I like a song to take you on a bit of a journey and to end up in a completely different place to where we started. It also gives us a chance to let rip and express our musicianship as a band. I remember it was the first track that we mixed at Youth's studio that made me sit up and think ‘this sounds like a record’.

What was the story behind your recent single and ep title track ‘Parting shot’?

I tend to find myself more and more interested in abstract storytelling these days, a feeling, rather than a narrative, which I think keeps the meaning of the songs more open to interpretation and gives them a more universal quality. The record as a whole is about loss I guess, a letting go of things, like missed opportunities, but finding peace from it somehow in have lived through those experiences. Parting Shot follows on that same theme. A darkness at one end of the tunnel balanced with finding light and hope at the other. We all want to be heading towards some kind of light, whatever that may mean to you.

If you could support any musician on tour who would your ideal artist and why?

Well if you’d asked us that a few years ago we would have said Chameleons Vox (current live version of The Chameleons), but then we got to tick that off of our wish list when we opened for them on two legs of their UK tour a couple of years ago. That was a pretty amazing feeling. Now though it would have to be Echo & the Bunnymen. They were at the heart of where it all began for us as musicians, and we would probably sight as one the biggest inspirations. They’re really the glue that holds us together in terms of influencing our individual styles, and is one of the reasons why we approached Youth in the first place, off of the back of producing their 2014 release Meteorites.

What would you tell 2014 NLE? What has changed since then?

Well apart from a couple of lineup changes we’d probably tell ourselves to trust our instincts. There was a time when we’d second guess everything we did. But you can’t control those things, you can only turn up, plug in and leave the rest up to fate. Listening is so overlooked in a band, especially when we’re in a writing phase. There’s got to be a collective spirit of compromise. The freedom to bring your own interpretation to the table, otherwise you just end up with 4 people in the room fighting over who thinks is best. There is no right or wrong, there’s only the trying.

What are your ambitions and plans for 2019?

To keep doing what we’re doing. We’ve had a really good response from fans on the new EP so far so we want to do as many live shows around the country as we can. Our next date is at Lounge 666 in Camden on 29th March. Other than that we’d like to get over to Europe to play a couple of festivals if they’ll have us. We’ve started to drop some new material into our live sets and I think we’re all excited with where that is going and are just waiting for the right time to record a full album of new material. We’ve spent a long time finessing our sound, now it’s time to take that to the stage.

You can stream 'Parting Shot' by clicking the picture below: