Interview: The Heartbreaks
In between travelling from city to city on their album launch tour, Matthew from the band was good enough to speak to Sound Rev about what it means to be a Heartbreak.
How do you feel the run up to the single and album release has gone?
It’s been a lot of work, but it always will be for us. We’re never going to be one of those faddy, flash in the pan sorts of bands that the press generally write about. We’re going for something bigger than that. What matters to us is that people like the album, and take us into their hearts.
NME recently premiered the music video to Delay, Delay which was filmed in your hometown of Morecambe. Is it important to you to incorporate Morecambe into your music? To what extent has the seaside town influenced your work?
It’s part of us. Being from somewhere that didn’t have a music scene, or even a musical heritage as such, meant that we had to seek out influences ourselves and were free to be quite diverse, without any particular lineage of guitar bands or whatever, breathing down our neck. The Heartbreaks couldn’t really have happened anywhere else and I think it’s important to celebrate that.
Where did the name Funtimes come from?
It was the name of this run down, old arcade on the promenade. We liked the irony of the word ‘Funtimes’ being written across a derelict building like that. And I guess the irony of calling ten songs of generally loss and pain, ‘Funtimes’.
The album release has been long awaited by fans, what’s your favourite track?
POLLY, I think. It nearly didn’t make it on but thank God it did. A future number 37 hit, perhaps.
You’re touring Britain with your album launch party, where’s your favourite city to play?
Manchester. Always Manchester. When you’re in a guitar band from the North West, that’s the place you go to really cut your teeth. It always has and it always will be a sort of adopted hometown show.
What artists are you currently listening to?
No one. In particular, Spector.
What do you have planned for the rest of 2012? Any festivals booked for the summer?
Touring until the wheels fall off. We’re going to Japan for the first time this summer to play with the Roses too. Couple of sakis that night, perhaps.