It might not be possible to describe the hard-hitting UK alternative rock group in one word, but if we had to, we’d say ’emotionally-charged.’ (Just ignore the hyphen, ok?)
When Boston Manor dropped Datura in 2022, fans did not expect just how dark the band could get. The intro of the album was oozing with dread and created a deep unrest that continued through every track. It felt like walking alone at night under the hazy glow of the city, and it was a powerful album even in how it felt borderline bleak at times. It embodied the sadness of the night; that feeling after the party has ended and everyone has gone home and you’re just… there.
In 2024, we finally get the long anticipated sequel album Sundiver, out September 6th. An extremely bright and sunny contrast to its predecessor. It really did feel like dusk slowly turning into dawn. Right from the start, from the lead single “Container,” fans knew the band had evolved once again into something new. This is a new iteration of the band and their sound, although the now classic Boston Manor synths are still found alongside the new and overarching positivity found throughout. This feels like the transition from My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade to Danger Days, which means that Boston Manor is ready to drop their warmest, most ambitious, and exciting record yet.
The Aquarian had the amazing opportunity to catch-up with Henry Cox, Boston Manor’s frontman, to discuss the new album and its tonal shift, as well as the making of a guitar pedal and the building of a family.
Sundiver is out today, September 6. What are you thinking going into this?
Feeling really excited! It feels like we’ve been waiting for this moment for such a long time. I checked the calendar this morning and it was like, “Oh shit! We’re pretty close now.” I’ve just had this record for so long now. It’s a bit surreal that it’s coming out. It’s been such a long four years of our life that we’ve been working on this record. I’m excited. I’m eager to hear what people think of it.
When you were writing Datura, the first part of this, did you have any riffs written for Sundiver? This new album is the sequel to Datura.
We didn’t have any songs written per se, but we had kind of sketched out a blueprint of how we wanted both records to feel, how they were going to work together, and as we were making Datura we were like, “We should call back to this on Sundiver in this sort of way.” The intro on Datura is kind of repeated on this record, but it’s flipped. We knew we were going to do that so we put these sort of building blocks in place before we actually started writing the record,but we didn’t want to try and write the record before we’d gotten to that point, if that makes sense? We wanted to make Datura and put all our energy/focus into it. When the time came to write Sundiver, it was current and relevant.
When we talked two years ago, we were discussing how, lyrically, you didn’t want to write about demons you hadn’t beat yet.
Exactly that!
Tell me about the sonic shift. This is the happiest you’ve sounded since Be Nothing.
The real lynchpin of the record is the sound, the craft of it. Without trying to sound pretentious, we were trying to tackle some big themes and be personal, but also quite conceptual. It is hard to do both of those things at the same time. We put all our focus on the sound – particularly the guitar sound. We knew what the themes of the record were and how we wanted to bring that across, and it’s interesting you say that, because I think it’s a really positive, triumphant record. We wanted to steer clear of adjectives like ‘happy,’ because when you think ‘happy,’ you think major key, cheery, like most popular music; those chords sound happy, so to speak. The hard part was that we were trying to get this positive sound and this triumphant explosion of energy in the feel of the record without it feeling like a cheery thumbs up.
That was the real challenge: getting this guitar tone that was positive and vibrant, but not emotionally flat. We wanted to have room to ebb and flow and underlay throughout the record. It didn’t feel like one note, one cherey ‘hooray’ that we reached our destination on track one. We wanted a bit of a story in there, so I think we achieved that. It was about getting this sound right, though, and it took so long. It took a couple years, really; we were troubleshooting stuff for ages and it wasn’t sounding right. It’s like what most people have when making records – there’s normally a couple songs you write where you figure out you cracked it. From there you’ve got the keys to make all the rest of the songs on the record. Once we nailed it down, it was like, “Oh that’s how you do it!” It took a lot to get there.
For sure! It’s not happy like pop music, but at the same time it’s not emotional pop punk like Be Nothing was. It’s more sunshine-y, though, if that makes any sense?
For sure! Absolutely! We described the feel of the record like on a really hot day – and it’s pretty uncharacteristically hot here today, actually – when you look down the street and the horizon is waving and all blurry, the heat coming off the pavement. That’s what we wanted the record to feel like, how that [heat wave] looks.
Do you have a song in mind that when you wrote it, you nailed that image?
Yeah! I think “Heat Me Up” is a big one for that. It just feels so positive and beautiful. “Morning Star,” which is the middle track on the record, is this ambient piece that feels like that, and it sort of feels like you’re leaving your own body and flying around for a [second]. I don’t know, but I guess the record is a sum of its parts really. The last track is very similar to that, as well; it’s trying to hold two thoughts in its head at the same time. It’s trying to be bittersweet and capture two or three emotions at the same time. I think that’s an interesting idea. Sometimes you get that way – you feel happy and sad. Other languages have really cool words for those feelings. We’re pretty binary in the English language. Feelings like saudade (a Portuguese word which we named an EP after), means feeling loss, but there is a happiness that you have for the thing you lost. We wanted to play with these emotions and things like joy, and also fear of losing that thing that you feel you’ve been gifted with, feeling like you have to protect it. These complicated mixes of emotions… we try to let the music do the talking necessarily over the lyrics. I’m not very good at writing literal lyrics. Things like that are best felt rather than said. We’ve been trying to stir all these things in the pot and hopefully it comes out in a nice gradient rather than a weird gloop.
I hear it on a song like “Sliding Doors,” where it’s heavy and screaming, but it has an upbeat nuance to it. I wanted to ask about writing those lyrics – mixing positivity with fearfulness. The last three Boston Manor records, and the Desperate Times EP, are very dark. Was it tough to get into a more positive mindset for this?
Yes, actually! That’s a really good question. I’m not very good at writing positive lyrics. My wife kind of takes the piss out of me. She’s like, “Anyone that’s listening to this must think you have the worst life ever,” [Laughs]. I’m quite a positive person normally; I think I use our music as a way to work through some stuff, or at least think through ideas and negative feelings. Generally, I’m a pretty cheerful dude, but, yeah, I suppose that was quite challenging. At the same time, I’ve got a lot to be happy about. Since we’ve made Datura, I got married, have had a little kid, and I’m much healthier than I was at that time. My life has turned a real corner and things are going really great. A lot of the record is about celebrating that and being really, really grateful for it. I think the rest of the band would echo that. They’ve all gone through similar transitions in their life as well in the last couple of years. In a sense, it was difficult – I guess a habit of how you’ve always written. We always write angsty music and that’s not to say we won’t write angsty music in the future. This record is just a celebration.
Our aim with all of our music – not just this one – is to let other people imprint their own feelings and experiences into the music. I’m not the most special/interesting/exciting person. I’m pretty normal. I would rather people listen to the music and get something out of it from their own perspective – and they do, which is really awesome! I hear so many beautiful stories from fans when we meet them about how songs hit them at a certain point in their lives and what it means to them. Even just their interpretation of the songs – those are all valid. I hope people listen to this and hear it comes from a place of struggle and born out of a time when things weren’t so clear. The resolution of the record is that everyone, if they search deep down, can find something to be grateful for.
Getting married, being a parent, all these things are naturally going to impact your writing style.
Absolutely. It’s hard to write a miserable song when you’ve got a little baby that’s laughing their head off at you in the next room. [The music] is definitely is a product of its surroundings. To be fair, my daughter wasn’t born yet when we wrote the record, but she was on the way! It definitely was part of the whole psychology of making the album. Other people in the band have had kids around that time, as well, so it’s definitely been a huge factor.
We made this album with beautiful surroundings! All our previous records have been made in dark dingy places. This record was made in the middle of the summer and in a beautiful studio. There’s a garden outside where we would barbecue everyday. There was a meadow opposite that, which we would go and sunbath in. The vibes were floating around as the record was being made, for sure.
It’s impossible to make another Welcome To The Neighbourhood [2018] when you’re sunbathing and barbecuing. I totally understand what you’re saying. Now, you guys teased there is a Boston Manor guitar pedal in the works? When is that going to drop? What does it sound like?
Oh, yeah! Funny enough, I’m looking at it right now! It’s sitting on my desk and it’s amazing! It’s called the Bad Machine. Mike [Cunniff] has worked on it with Life Is Unfair Audio for like two years. He’s been making it just because he wanted that pedal. He wanted it, but it didn’t exist. He got in touch with them and was like, “I need this pedal to make this record.” The prototype arrived and we went into the studio a week later and it turned out to be so great that we used it on every track. It’s a big part of how the album sounds. You know that fuzzy, loud guitar sound? That wasps using that pedal a lot of the time. It was so successful they were like, “Can we make a bunch of these and put them up for sale?” There’s going to be more. It’s available for pre-order right now. I have one and it’s so sick. We’re going to be posting about it as the record drops and be doing some demos and playthroughs. I don’t really play guitar, but I use it on all my synth stuff and it’s so sick. I’m really enjoying using it. If you’re into that kind of stuff, definitely go and check it out.
Such a big part of what we are is our guitar sound, which I obviously cannot claim any credit for, but I’m as much of a fan as our fans are. I get to watch our guitarists make these crazy noises all the time and they’re so into it and take it so seriously. The pedal thing is so sick. I just love the idea that you can create a completely unique sound from the choices you make in your pedals. In a world where people are moving so often over to digital stuff, I think it’s great to appreciate the analog.
Absolutely! Going into a new direction, I do want to ask about your vocals. On 2020’s Glue, during “You, Me & The Class War,” that was the first time fans heard you actually scream. We heard it briefly again on the bridge of “Foxglove” in 2022 and it was sick. Now with “Sliding Doors,” we get a full track where all the verses are heavy screaming. It’s the heaviest you guys have ever been. Tell me about tapping into that element of Boston Manor.
With great difficulty! We started them when playing on tour and stuff and I was like, “Holy shit! I have never screamed this much before!” I have a lot of respect for screaming vocalists who do that day-in and day-out. It’s crazy, it’s super fun to do, and it’s one of those things where it’s so different from singing. I’ve always had such a mad respect for people that do that crazy screaming then shift, you know? The metalcore vocalist that shifts from wild screaming into amazing singing on their own? I don’t know how they do that. I’m just doing my best!
We’ve always loved heavy music. It’s a big part of our inspiration. I’m surprised it has taken us this long to do a song like “Sliding Doors,” really. We’ve been referencing bands like Linkin Park and Deftones since our first record. I’m surprised we took five albums to take the plunge on a song like that. I’m glad that we did! I love it! It’s been going off live and it’s super fun to play.
And Sundiver just has a lot of funky elements. Tracks like “Horses In A Dream,” or even “What Is Taken Will Never Be Lost,” are very groovy. Talk to me about those rhythmic tracks.
To me, that feels the most natural in terms of vocals and the way it comes together. I really love those songs. I can see us doing a lot more of that, to be honest. I don’t know why, but I think, to me, those songs – and then a song like “Sliding Doors” – still feel like they come from the exact same place, even though they sound quite different. They’re based in a similar sonic aesthetic and they all have a groove to them – in a different way, obviously. I think we’ve been doing a lot of that, whether it’s “I Don’t Like People (& they Don’t Like Me)” on the EP or even “Foxglove;” that riff is just one polyrhythm that’s inspired by a techno song, actually. I’m really enjoying that side of our music. “Horses In A Dream” was just a synth demo that turned into an actual song. “What Was Taken Will Never Be Lost” was, we were fucking around with a drum machine and we had an acoustic guitar. That song actually changed from the first demo. I think the vocals on that song are the demo vocals… we didn’t even re-record them and it sounds great!
I look at Track Nine, “Dissolve,” and it is probably my favorite on the record! It is one of the catchiest choruses of the Boston Manor discography.
That’s so sick! I’m glad you feel that way. I love that song, as well. That was the first song we finished for the album. It’s crazy, I’ve not really done that much reflecting on the process of it all since we made this record, and they all kind of came from such random places. I’m so happy with how it came out. I’m really curious to hear what people think of a song like that, actually, with “Dissolve.” It is a little left field for Boston Manor, that one, so I’m really curious. People that just love the first record, they might be like, “What’s this fucking pop bullshit?” I’m stoked on it, though! I’m hoping that people come in with an open mind!
I think there’s something for everyone on this record – if you like Boston Manor that is. Even fans of the first album will find stuff they really like about most of the songs on this record. It’s that weird limbo we’re in. You’ve heard it, I’ve heard it, but most of the world hasn’t heard it. It feels like a little secret you’ve got. In a way, I’ll miss that. I kind of like that part of the process. I hope people love it, but if they don’t, that’s fine. Me? I have not enjoyed a record that we’ve made like this before. This is my favorite, for sure.
You guys have paved the way by experimenting so much that this record is going to be loved by any Boston Manor fan. Imagine you wrote Be Nothing four times and on your fifth album you wrote a track like “Dissolve.” There would be an uproar! The fact that you’ve tackled every genre, it won’t take too many people by surprise.
I hope so! All the bands that I love have followed a similar path. They changed a bit [from] record to record and I think that’s part of the reason that I keep coming back to bands like that. To me, it’s something to feel excited about. “Well, what are we going to get on this one?” But I understand the perspective of people who love an album and want to hear a similar sound. I also think that whenever people do that, it’s really rare that they can capture that lightning in a bottle twice. I don’t think that we could. A lot of people we picked up on the first album, and I hear sometimes on forums, “Oh, I loved that first record, but then they changed their sound after that,” and whatever. When we play those older songs now, no one in the crowd knows it. They came to the band later on. I just think if we had tried to do Be Nothing 2, it wouldn’t be very good. We definitely wouldn’t have enjoyed doing that. I think the fans would have sensed that and they probably wouldn’t enjoy the record either. You just need to make records that you believe in and enjoy making. We will continue to do that, because otherwise… what are we doing? I don’t get paid enough to hate my job!
I’m excited about the future. We made so many records in such a short space of time that I think we’re going to chill a little bit and tour. We released like two and a half albums in like three years, which is quite a lot. You only get to put out x amount of albums in your life. I would hate to look back and wish I hadn’t made a certain record. I just think it’d be a really shit feeling. In a way, I wish we had taken our time more on our albums. Having done it this way this time, though, I’ve enjoyed it so much. I love all the music we’ve made. I just want to find a way to keep doing it and keep making it good.
SUNDIVER, THE NEW ALBUM, IS OUT TODAY WHEREVER YOU LISTEN TO MUSIC! FOR ALL THINGS BOSTON MANOR, VISIT THEIR WEBSITE!
