Marsicans: ‘We wanted this to be a distinct album’

Leeds band Marsicans seemed to be building up a head of steam just as the Covid-19 lockdown hit.
Marsicans. Picture: Sodium FilmsMarsicans. Picture: Sodium Films
Marsicans. Picture: Sodium Films

Having rounded off 2019 with a sold-out home city gig at Stylus, a number one single in the UK 7in vinyl charts and an appearance on Later with Jools Holland, the indie four-piece had scheduled a trip to Austin, Texas for the annual South By South West festival when in March the music industry began shutting down.

“We were thinking, ‘Should we just go anyway?’ because we had flights and everything and we were going to lose all that. At that point the severity of what was happening wasn’t apparent,” says the band’s frontman James Newbigging.

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“We were all blinded a bit to how long it was going to go on for, so we were probably a bit naive in thinking we could still go out there. But then the day before we were meant to fly out it had got a lot worse and we thought we’d better not. The day after, when we would’ve been arriving in the States, that’s when the flights got cut off, so we would’ve been out stuck there. It was a great decision on our part, but a tough one.”

Since March, Newbigging says, it’s “been a blur”. The release of their album, Ursa Major, was moved from May to August, and festival dates were all pulled.

“That’s been one of the bigger kicks,” Newbigging says, “because festivals would have been pretty much every weekend. Playing live is our favourite thing of being in a band. Festival season is amazing because every weekend you’re playing in a lovely place. Rob (Brander, Marsicans’ bass player) came round thee other day and said, ‘I’ve just realised this is the first time in 11 years that I’ve not been to a festival’ and then we sat there going, ‘Urgh’.”

Instead band members shot a video for their single These Days in isolation. “Then Phil (Barber) at Sodium Films, who we’ve been working with throughout the whole campaign, made it look as though we hadn’t shot it on our phones at home. He did a great job there.”

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Another video, for the song Someone Else’s Touch, was recorded on the night Britain went into lockdown. “We got home about 15 minutes before the announcement was made,” Newbigging recalls.

The singer admits the last few months have been frustrating. “We try our best to keep each other in check because at the end of the day the album is still coming out and we’re still very proud of it,” he says. “You have your odd day where you’re thinking about what we could’ve been doing or how things could be different, but I think everyone is right now. We’re trying to remember that it’s not just us that have been impacted. It almost helps to know that you’re not being dealt an unfair hand. Everyone’s got to adapt.”

The first line-up of Marsicans formed while at school a decade ago. Brander joined while they were at university. “That’s when we thought, ‘let’s do it properly’,” Newbigging says. A string of singles – and a high-profile mention on social media by Coldplay singer Chris Martin – followed before they recorded their debut album at Rockfield Studios with Embrace keyboardist Mickey Dale as producer.

The tracklist for Ursa Major was chosen “from about 28 songs”, says Newbigging, adding: “We wanted all new stuff. We didn’t want to re-record old singles; not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we thought if we could avoid that we might as well give people more music. We hit the studio last January and we played all of the songs in a room with the producer and our manager there, then we had a listen back and took the songs away for a couple of weeks and we ended up doing what we always do, we had a very democratic voting process of what we thought the best songs were. Luckily we were all in the same boat.”

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The album is carefully structured, with interludes, with a view to it being listened to as a whole. “We’ve done quite a lot of singles, we wanted this to be a distinct album,” says Newbigging. “We wanted it to have a purpose and structure. It doesn’t tell a story from start to finish but there’s certain musical themes that we’ve put in throughout the album to reference back to other songs. It all flows, which was very important for us.”

Ursa Major is out on August 14. Marsicans play at Leeds Beckett University on April 17, 2021. www.marsicans.co.uk

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