Two months ago Datura came into the world. It’s a passionate, gold-star-worthy record and a moment in Boston Manor’s career deserving of all of the weeks-worth of accolades and heartwarming reception as an ever-evolving, always curious band.
The UK-based rockers that are Boston Manor have been making waves in the scene for some time now and dropping a few of the most concise and cohesive albums we have seen to date. When people say “rock’s not dead,” Boston Manor are one of the bands I attribute to that truth and its success. With so many musicians in today’s climate feeling like they’re an industry-produced carbon copy, Boston Manor defies that stereotype and displays true artistry in their medium.
This isn’t a band that is attempting to make the same record twice – the metaphoric clock-in and clock-out. They have written, and are currently writing, extremely complex albums with unique themes and tones. Every release pushes the band into entirely new territory, from art rock to grunge to pop punk and back. It takes a special kind of fearlessness to change your sound completely with every record cycle.
I got the chance to sit down with frontman Henry Cox to discuss the band’s new album Datura. He is an artist, alongside his band, that is four records deep, yet still evidently enthralled with the songwriting process, as well as all of the exciting things the group have planned around that. They have a passion in regards to their art which makes them not just one of the most talented bands in the scene, but also the most genuine. In the last 10 years they’ve taken every bit of success and expanded on it.
While Datura is one of Boston Manor’s greatest releases yet, we have to admit that the only thing more tremendous than their albums are their gigantic live shows. Every time we have seen Boston Manor live they paved their way to the top of our ‘best concerts of the year’ lists. If any of our readers are unfamiliar with the band, do yourself a favor and check them out immediately. It may just change your life.
Let’s just dive right in! New album, Datura, is out now. How are you feeling?
Feeling amazing! It’s all been a bit of a blur really. The fact that it’s been out for weeks now, nearly [two months] actually… I have been able to play it live around Europe and the UK, which is so fun. The reception has been great – better than maybe I even expected to be honest. It’s been lovely. We’re just waiting for someone to say something horrible about it [Laughs].
Well, we’re not going to do that here! I love the record. I think it’s phenomenal.
Thank you!
You have been playing the record in full which is something the band has never really tackled before when you’ve dropped a new release.
That’s the shows in December. I’m really excited. It’s a great point – we have never done anything like that before. We’ve long since talked about it. I think the fact that this record is so short means you can do that without too much disruption and still play other stuff afterwards or whatever. I’m really excited because there is such a sequential nature to this album. We’ve talked quite a bit about how, if possible, it is good to listen to it in order… and it’ll be nice to actually play it in order. We haven’t actually gotten together and played every song in the order that it appears on the record. We’ve played everything, obviously, but we haven’t sat down and run it through front to back yet. That will be happening in rehearsals in the next few weeks which is exciting.
I’ve got to say, I’ve known you for at least four or five years now and what’s crazy is, I love Boston Manor, but I never shuffle your albums. Sometimes I can shuffle artists, but this is probably one of the only albums I can’t do that with because every time I hear “Datura,” I need to hear “Floodlights” right after and every time I hear “Crocus,” I want to hear “Shelter From The Rain” right after.
That’s really cool. Thank you for saying that.
Of course! I know what you mean about the sequential order.
It’s so cool. It’s not to say that everything has to be listened to in album format, but you know, we’re nineties kids. We’re definitely fans of the album format. It was a large reason for us doing this short record: so that it could be listened to as such. It forwards a lot of creative opportunities that a playlist style or a mixtape style release doesn’t give you, really. It allows you to kind of make it like a movie with the three act structure and all the good stuff like that. It really builds a world.
Yeah! You mentioned this being the shortest album yet. I want to ask about, obviously Desperate Times Desperate Pleasures came out in 2021, but were any of those songs considered to be on this album? Or were these two separate writing processes?
They sort of blurred into one in a sense. We knew this record was coming as we were wrapping that EP up, but there wasn’t any tracks that were written during the same sessions. We like to try and draw a real line under projects before we begin another one. We’ve never been one to go back in the demo folder and try to renew songs. It feels a little bit reductive. We decided to finish the record, but we’re always planning ahead and our minds are kind of going. We love writing music so we’re always writing. We talked about what the next release would look like. We decided we were going to do this two part thing. Desperate Times Desperate Pleasures was very much in a sort of free form, “Let’s just dust the cobwebs off and write as many cool tracks as we can and put out an EP,” sort of thing. We didn’t want to jump straight into an album after the pandemic and all of that. It was an exercise in just playing, having fun, and putting together some cool tracks. I love that EP, I’m really proud of it. Datura was a much more focused effort. We knew more or less what we wanted to do. The subject matter was more serious. It feels like an album, or, at least, I hope it does.
It’s interesting to hear you say that. Some band’s probably do dip into their demos that they didn’t use on their last record. With Boston Manor that would just feel out of place. No songs off of Welcome to the Neighbourhood (2018) sounds like Glue (2020), and no songs off of Glue sound like Desperate Times, and Be Nothing (2016) is it’s own entity. I feel like it’s so different. Every record is a totally new chapter.
Yeah, definitely. You always want to be moving forward because it really all is a document of where you’re at in time; whether that be your musical goals or interest in that moment, but also where you’re at in your life. At least for me as a lyricist, I’m afforded this wonderful opportunity to document the last 10 years of my life through albums we’ve put out. When you get to album four you do have a bit of a musical photo album to look back through. Staying true to that is how you keep things kind of genuine and authentic. That’s why we move from project to project and things do sound a little bit different on every album because we’re different really – you’ve grown up a little bit, you’ve traveled around the world another time, you’ve gotten married, you’ve discovered this whole sub-sect of the music scene you’ve gotten really into. Whatever it is, you’re changing all the time. Particularly with America it has to be so… we have a lot of American fans who are really into the first record. Occasionally you’ll hear people say,”I just wish Boston Manor still made pop-punk music and stuff.” It’s like… I totally get that. There’s artists that I’ve loved their first record and had a sound shift and I’m not into the newer sound. It’d be a bit like asking you to dress or wear all your clothes from high school. It’d just be weird. You know what I mean? It wouldn’t feel right. It would feel unnatural. It’s just part of the musical career experience I suppose and part of the life cycle of a band. We always hope that fans enjoy everything we do and we always try to keep them in mind. It would do them a disservice if we wrote to formula for them and just wrote what we thought they wanted to hear. I don’t think they would want that. I don’t wish any of my bands did that, because they’re not giving you genuine art, they’re just giving you a product at that point.
Especially the pop punk scene. I love pop punk, don’t get me wrong. It’s one of my favorite genres, but that can get old quickly. I feel like I can’t listen to pop punk music for more than an hour just because it all is very similar [Laughs]. Whereas, with Boston Manor, by evolving, you’re pushing your band forward. I think if you kept doing Be Nothing over and over, you wouldn’t be nearly as big as you are now.
Well, yeah… thank you. I think the main thing with it is that, with genre specific stuff, there are bands that do it way better than we ever did. If pop punk is your thing, there are a bunch of bands where that is their sound and they are really good at it. For us, growing up, some of us were quite interested in that. I personally never thought that Boston Manor was a through-and-through pop punk band, but we certainly were a bit of a stalwart of that scene for a short time. I think if you like our band, what we have to offer is that we sit between – we’re a bit of a venn diagram. We sit in-between a bunch of different things. For some people it’s a great thing because we marry certain elements of genres they like, but if you’re after something that is in a genre, then we’re probably not going to be for you.
We don’t really – for better or for worse – fit into any one genre, certainly not anymore. Particularly in the America market that’s to our detriment. America is very much a genre-obsessed country. Everything lives in genre boxes. There are obvious exceptions but it is quite hard to just kind of float out at sea on your own without the support of frameworks that scenes and genres have. That’s really benefited us in the past. The record label we came up through, Pure Noise, we were very lucky to come up with at a time when there was a lot of amazing music being put out in America. We got to do Warped Tour, which was an incredible opportunity. We made a lot of fans and had a lot of fun with that. The only issue is it’s like everything: nothing is going to last forever. New, fresh bands are going to come up in those scenes and do new things. We always kind of felt like the middle child that didn’t quite fit in. I don’t know if that’s being dramatic, but it’s just how I’ve always felt.
No, that makes perfect sense. I totally get what you mean when you talk about the UK scene. Bands like you and Creeper in particular, it has us thinking, “What are you? You’re a rock band yeah but you’re not pop punk. You’re not industrial. You’re not metal, but you’re a bit of everything.”
Exactly, and like you said, that can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on who you ask.
Exactly. I want to go back into Datura and ask about the atmosphere. Boston Manor albums always have a pretty strong atmosphere and this one I feel like is so much more of the centerpiece. I love that. Datura feels, in my opinion, the most like a world than any Boston Manor record so far. Was this a conscious choice when going into the studio?
Thanks for saying that – absolutely, yeah. The world building element of it was huge. There was something written on the white board at all times – the metaphoric white board, that is. It was kind of to make it feel 3D. All the records I grew up listening to, you have all these interludes and skits and things – bits of dialogue and diegetic sound that would come in and out. It gives it its own unique feeling, whatever that is. It just makes you feel like you’re in something. I like you to feel like you’re in a movie when listening to it. If you’re willing to put the time in to listen to a full album I like to reward that experience by making it feel like an experience. I hope that’s what we’ve done well. We’ve tried to do that. It’s been very rewarding for us to do that. We did a little bit on Welcome to the Neighbourhood, but we sort of doubled down on this project.
I get what you mean. You want to reward people for checking out this record in full. For listening to the tracklist start to finish you want them to say, “Yeah, I had to do it this way.” Another question I want to ask about this record, you guys have been very public that this is one part of a double album.
Yes.
What can we even expect from this next release? I feel like “Inertia” is such a closer and an epic finale. I have no idea what’s going to kick off next.
I don’t want to give away too much but it does go one step further than this record does. It’s the sister record to this one and is part of a larger whole. Going back to your previous questions, for people that are really listening to it in full there are a lot of actual clues in this record – little snippets of information that if you listen very closely, you can hear what the next record is going to entail. It’s sounding awesome. We haven’t finished making it yet but it’s sounding wicked. It’s a slightly grander project than Datura is. It’s a little bit more all encompassing. It’s very much the second part of the story. Both parts of it, Datura and the next record combined, does have a three-act structure. Eventually you’ll be able to listen to it all together as one thing and it will all flow together. It’s exciting. Hopefully that will squash any hard feelings some people had about Datura being so short. It will contextualize it when you hear the next part of it.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that I would rather have a seven-song album every two years than one 12 song album every four years. Something about that wait feels a little better. I’ve obviously never written a double record myself, though. Do you write all parts and storyline at once and then start fleshing it out? Or do you just focus on Datura, finish that up, then start thinking about the sequel? How does that work?
For this project, because of the nature of what the songs are about, it felt a bit disingenuous to start writing the second part before the story in our actual lives had gotten there. Datura is lyrically about me dealing with a lot of problems I’ve swept under the rug for a lot of years. I started going to therapy and tried to make improvements in my life and sort myself out. It felt a bit disingenuous to write the next part of me beating these demons when I haven’t actually done that yet.
You want to write about it as it’s happening.
Exactly! We knew before we started writing a lot of what was going to happen. We had even written parts to the record! You know like when you’re making a jigsaw and you set out the corners first and build in? We’ve set the corners out a little bit but didn’t want to start filling it in until we got there. We’re so focused and detail-oriented on this project. We didn’t want to spread ourselves too thin. For that reason we decided to draw a line under Datura and wait until it was totally done until we started properly writing the next part. We’re in the thick of writing it now and it’s sounding really really cool. It’s a very exciting time for us. It’s the most genuine we’ve ever been. We’re being very lyrically vulnerable and honest, which is hard as I’ve never done that before. We’re trying to put our money where our mouth is in that respect. To do that we’ve got to get there in real time.
I always imagined as an artist that’s got to be a very difficult thing. When you write such a personal piece, then it’s out in the world, you have some kid on the internet who can be like, “Eh, I don’t like it,” and change everything. I feel like that’s got to be so deflating when you put in so much time and energy as you do.
[Laughs] Definitely! I was reading an article about a movie that’s just got onto Netflix that was shot around the corner for me. It got like zero stars. Apparently it’s done really well on Netflix now, but critics panned it! I was thinking that these people have been making this movie, probably, for two years, and, probably, thinking about it for five. They’ve put half a decade’s worth of work into this movie only for someone to be like, “Eh, it sucks.” I always think I’m glad I’m not in the movie business because that must be so heartbreaking. To a lesser extent albums are like that, but that’s the beauty of it: not everyone is going to love it. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure so to speak. I think the cool thing about it is you could send the album to 10 different people and they’ll come back with 10 different takes on it, which is wicked. I’m a big fan of it. It is a little bit scary. It’s kind of like sending your kids off to their first day of school. Once it’s out in the world it’s just, “There you go! good luck!” You can’t do anything about it, but that’s why we do it.
That makes perfect sense. Now, I’m going to switch gears a bit and go into new territory… I want to talk about vocals. You’ve always been a powerhouse in and out of the scene. “Floodlights On The Square“ is, vocally, probably the best you’ve ever sounded.
Thank you very much. That’s kind of you to say.
Of course! I remember hearing the record for the first time in my car on the way to work. During “Datura” I was like “Oh, we’re in for a ride,” then during “Floodlights” I was floored. I want to know if preparing for a song like that is as difficult as I think.
I’ve just been really enjoying singing at the moment. We just did this tour with AlexisonFire, wrapped up a few days ago, and we were using in-ears for the first time. We’ve always only used monitors. That was just such a joy. Once you get over the initial weirdness of how everything sounds different, being able to hear myself sing so clearly and not having to push as hard or sing as loudly to hear myself was great! I narcissistically try and watch little videos the next day after the show the night before. I definitely noticed improvement as the tour has gone on. I think the fact that I had the results we’ve had on the tour I’ve enjoyed singing a lot more. It might sound a bit silly, but for a lot of my career, singing at times has felt like a means to an end. That’s not to say I don’t take what I do very very seriously, but it was always just a thing I could get away with – seeming like I was good at because I didn’t play an instrument. When we were kids and forming bands, I talked a lot, I’m confident, and I would just throw myself around on stage, and everyone was like, “Let’s give him a microphone.” It was kind of like if the shoe fits sort of thing. I think over the last couple records I’ve started to embrace it. I’ve always taken it very seriously and that’s given me a lot of anxiety and that took me a while to figure out. However over the last couple years I’ve continued to take it seriously but really enjoy it. The most important thing is serving the song. I never want to get in the way. I do enjoy doing the delicate small bits and then obviously the big “classic Boston Manor loud” bits.
You need the small moments to make the big moments more powerful.
One of my favorite bands in the world is Deftones. What I love about that band is the dynamics. It’s been a huge influence on us from that perspective. They do pretty small bits and then they hit you with a wall of sound guitars and screams. It’s so cool. That’s what I struggle with sometimes with some genres whether that be metalcore or techno. If it can just be so in your face from start to finish there is no nuance from it. I can get ear fatigue sometimes. I enjoy it, don’t get me wrong, but after a while it can get a little tiring.
DATURA IS OUT NOW ON ALL DSPS! FOR MORE ON THE BAND, CHECK OUT THEIR WEBSITE!
