Words by Cameron Cook
Photos by Cameron Cook and Abbey Braden

The Cribs are, without a doubt, the best live band of the past five years. Yes, there are bands better bands out there, lyrically and musically, but in pure beer-chugging, pogo-dancing, rocking-your-face-off-your-skull raw energy, the three brothers Jarman are where it’s at.

Lots of the songs on The New Fellas seem to be aimed towards hipsters and scenesters. What’s with the angst?
Ryan: The whole point if the record really was to make it a little bit more sarcastic. With the first record, it was just pop songs, but with this one we went that much further. We were playing all these indie nights up and down the country, and obviously, they’re populated by hipsters. It’s not like we’re saying they’re bad people, it’s the attitude of a lot of them is really snobby, like ‘I am the coolest person in the room, therefore I’ll just stand here looking cool, and I won’t do anything else.’ It’s like, not everyone is fashionable or cool or whatever, and we’re just trying to get in their paths. The people who are interested need songs for them. We’ve never been part of any scene, really. It’s not just what we’re like. We’re from a really small town. Where we live is so small, we had no idea [a scene] was going on until we started going to London. It’s a natural knee-jerk, the action against what we found out.
Gary: People are too cool to clap too, as well. Not interested at all.
Ryan: Cooler than the band. It’s just very funny.

That’s funny, I wouldn’t have thought it was that bad where you’re from. Here, obviously, New York being hipster capital of the world, and it’s always weird to me seeing people just standing there, totally oblivious.
Ryan: Well it never really used the standard. It seems to only have come along in the last few years, all the hipsters. In England, definitely. Nobody’s really had a swipe at them yet, so we though, ‘We’ll have a swipe…?’ You know what I mean? Someone’s going to do it before long, so we thought we’d cast the first stone.

Aren’t you guys somehow attached to the whole Leeds scene?
Ryan: It’s weird–
Gary: We’re a bit of everything though. People try to put us into so many different scenes, like the London scene, the Leeds scene and all that. We just like to not be a part of anything.
Ryan: We like to flow with certain scenes. Find out what’s going on there, and then leave it before everyone gets all attached to it. What happened in Leeds, we were the first band out of Leeds to get signed, and at this point-I mean we’re not actually from Leeds, we’re form Wakefield, which is just outside. And everyone in Leeds was like: ‘What? I don’t know who they are!’ So a lot of people got pissed off. But then Kaiser Chiefs and that lot got signed, and other good bands from Leeds like Black Wire and 10,000 Things started getting signed, and we got on really well with them. Leeds was shit for years, nothing going on there, and now it seems pretty good. A lot of the venues shut down, which seemed like a really bad thing at the time, but I think that really made people go out and scout venues and small bars. Independent promoters just started coming up.
Gary: People in Leeds got really pissed off with the already established scene. We’d already established venues and websites and really crap stuff. Just this commercial indie-
Ryan: Fashionable.
Gary:–and you had to sell a certain number of tickets to get gigs. Everyone was reaching into their pockets, it was really shit. Bands were getting really pissed off about it. They went of and started their own club nights and their own venues just so that everyone could have a better time, instead of hanging out with these clueless assholes who basically destroyed Leeds. Because it wasn’t up until a couple of years ago when people took some incentive. Now it’s really good, people are doing what they want. The scene was just born out of frustration.
Ryan: But as I said, we were never really part of the Leeds scene. We’re from Wakefiled. But as far as people like Kaiser Chiefs, they say that they were influenced by [the birth of that scene] to a certain degree, the fact that we didn’t really care what we were doing. I think that even though we weren’t really part of the Leeds scene, I think we definitely helped kick-start what’s going on there now, which is cool, you know what I mean? It’s cool that things are starting to happen outside of London. It’s a really good thing to be part of.

You said the Kaiser Chiefs were influenced by what you guys were doing, and certain other bands have cited the Cribs as a direct inspiration. Do you consider yourselves to have a sort of cult status?
Ryan: Well, that’s kind of what we have in England really, which is good because it’s like, we’re on an indie label, and some bands you know, they have hundreds and thousands of pounds of advertisement. We don’t have that at all, we just tour all the time. We kind of had a thing where lots of bands liked us, and bands were talking about us in the press. So that did help get us more of a cult status, because people would come to the gigs because [these bands were into us]. Our fan base really grew. I mean, it’s really good that they like us, I’m not bothered about being massively famous. We seem to have respect in England, which is way more important than fame. You have gain more through respect than you do through hanging out with actors and models, and stuff. We do have a good following, and our fan base is kind of devout. It’s a good sign. I’m really happy about that.

Yeah, it seems like an ideal, “best kept secret” sort of thing.
Ryan: Yeah! The thing is, I always had bands like that. Like, ‘they’re my band’ sort of thing. I’m really happy to be in this situation.

The album has a little bit of resemblance to Orange Juice, which is even more awesome when I discovered that Edwyn Collins produced it. What was it like working with him?
Ryan: It was really, really cool. We kind of feel like underdogs in England, and that’s totally how Orange Juice felt. Think that’s probably the reason we were winding each other up, he actually helped us be a little bit more sarcastic, and a little bit more astute. We got on really well as a guy, you know, and musically as well. Our first record was really lo-fi, and that’s still what we want to do, but he kind of helped us, not be too professional, but make it sound better than the first album. It was just a really good laugh. A lot of people don’t enjoy recording, but we just lied and said. ‘Oh, the record’s not finished, we need a couple more weeks,’ and just messed around for a bit. We didn’t even really do any recording while we were there in the day, we’d just drink and talk through the day and then record at night. So it was a really natural kind of vibe. I really enjoyed recording with Edwyn, he’s a really good musician and a really good guy, the perfect person for us to work with.

I was listening to the song “Haunted” on the album, and talking of lo-fi… it’s really, really lo-fi.
Gary: I was actually recorded on Scarborough Beach, we took all the gear down from the studio. Everyone was like, ‘Oh, you must be mental, this is never going to work.’ We took the stuff down to the beach-
Ross: It was raining as well. We were really drunk, tired, and no one thought we could pull it off. We wanted to record it on the beach because we decided it would fit perfectly.
Ryan: We’d been in the studio for ages and ages and we kind of got a little bit crazy. “Haunted” kind of sounds like an old-fashioned song so we were like-I still don’t know why we did it-but we were like, ‘We should record this on Scarborough Beach.’ Scarborough was a seaside town in the ’20s or whenever, and everyone used to go out there for holidays. Now though, it’s in total disrepair and no one ever goes there. Once we had decided to do it, we couldn’t stop thinking about it, so we had to drive 300 miles from our house and record it. We set up, and we all got fish and chips and ice cream. It was good to get out of the studio. It was freezing cold, but still good fun. I’m really glad we did it and put it on the album.