Interview: Frantics

Yorkshire band Frantics have managed to establish themselves as one of the most exciting new bands to emerge in the past year, despite their entire lifespan as a four-piece being overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

We spoke to the band about what it’s been like getting started in lockdown, what inspires them and their future plans.

I hate to ask, but how’s lockdown going for everybody?

Just been frustrating – it felt like we wasted a year that we could’ve progressed. We’re all spread out across Yorkshire, and we haven’t been able to meet except for during the Tier system, when we recorded some videos on Youtube, including our music video for End of the Line. It hasn’t all been bad, we luckily recorded three songs in the studio last February, and if we hadn’t have done that we wouldn’t have had much content to get out there this last year.

Have you been able to write any new material?

Yeah there’s an abundance of songs that we’ve all written separately over lockdown, we just need to record them, but we can’t get together right now.  It’s like we try to be creative and use the time we have now as much as we can, and the thing is we have the time for once, but it works against you because you can’t be as creative as you are when there’s other people around you – it’s a catch 22.

We’ve done a couple of zoom open mic nights – one that was acoustic at Joe’s flat, and one with a full band in a music room. We tried out some new songs on them, ones that haven’t been recorded yet, and that was a great opportunity to try out new material in front of an audience – we felt as nervous then as we do at a gig.

You mentioned you have a music video out?

Yeah, we filmed it on our phones around York in the summer when we were allowed to meet up in tier 2, so hopefully people will be able to recognise some key areas around the city, and Frazer edited it. We’re proud of it, it’s on Youtube, and it’s one of the best things we have been able to do over lockdown. We bought a children’s drum kit and carried it around the city centre, with people stopping us asking what we were up to, which was really cool. We’ve also managed to record some acoustic live sessions and posted them on Youtube. We’re hoping to be able to film another video for our new track Beehive once we can get everyone together again, and we’ve roped in some of our film student friends to help us make it more professional, now we know what we are doing – we’ll do that when we can.

What music or artists do you like to listen to, or inspire you when you guys are song-writing?

So, we’re all big football fans, mainly Leeds United, and a good thing about lockdown has been that Soccer AM has been back on the television, and they broadcast a playlist each week – a lot of the bands on those playlists inspire us, and one day we’d love to be on a show like that; Jimmy Bullard would love it. There’s also a big community of Leeds United football fans who support us and other Leeds-based bands online, and we love Skylights and Apollo Junction; they’re definitely inspirational to follow their model with how they have become popular.

What inspired Frantics? How did you all meet?

Well Joe and Frazer met at high school, both went to York St. John to study Music, and met Elliot on the course. Joe met TJ on a university ski trip, and all of us were already in a ska band called ‘Skanage’. When that came to an end, Joe decided he still wanted to gig, which heralded the start of cover band ‘Solar Bats’, who’s band members included TJ. After a decision to start a new band with which to make original music, and the addition of Elliot and Frazer, Frantics was born.

You’ve released two singles so far, what’s next for you?

Yes, our next single is called ‘All That’s On My Mind’. We’re just trying to make this third one as good as possible, which is difficult when we can’t all meet together.  We’re working towards getting this out into the world by March. We’ve been blessed with help from Tang Hall Smart where Joe works in York, and that’s got a nice little studio, and there’s people there that have helped us record, shout out to Neil – he’s done the production on the songs and writes his own stuff, he’s been a massive help, he knew what he was doing and was an inspiration to us. We wouldn’t have been able to build our online presence our record the songs as well as we have so far without him – he is the band at the minute. 

It sounds tough to be working on a band through a pandemic.

It’s hard being a start-up band, because we haven’t got the material recorded and ready to go out into the world – we’ve had to spread three songs out over a year and a bit, when we actually recorded these about a year ago. We’ve got so many songs written and ready to go we just can’t do it properly.  We had a gig booked for April last year, and maybe we weren’t quite ready for it, whereas now with the material we have written, with any gigs that happen after the lockdown, we are ready and raring to go, we have so much of our own stuff to perform now. Before, we found it hard balancing working, writing songs and practicing together, whereas now we’ve had the time, put in the work, we just need the time to record and we will be ready. But, it’ll be reet – that’s our band motto.

Words: Emma Bailey

Listen to ‘Beehive’ on the Only A Northern One playlist here.

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