From Noise11:
CHVRCHES and Robert Smith join Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss their new collaboration “How Not To Drown”.
CHVRCHES tell Zane how the collaboration came to be, what it was like
to work with one of their major musical influences, and the emotional
experience of hearing Robert Smith on a CHVRCHES song.
Robert Smith talks to Zane about how he approaches collaborations,
and provides an update on when fans can expect new music from The Cure.
Robert Smith Tells Apple Music About Collaborating With Other Artists Like CHVRCHES and Gorillaz…
I mean, I’m not quite sure now how many years I’ve… There’s not that
many over the years, but I think once you do one, people sort of think,
“Ooh, hang on.” I went through a period of just listening to a lot of
different kinds of music, and I was really intrigued by the idea of me
trying something else without taking the band with me, just doing
something. I’ve never liked the idea of doing things on my own, like a
solo artist. I’ve always railed against it because I like the idea of a
band. I think it kind of suits my character and it’s much more
comfortable to have… It’s like, “Us against the world.” That sort of
mentality. I’ve never wanted to kind of step away from that. But as I
got more confident, I suppose, maybe starting about 10 years ago, I just
thought, “Well, rather than take the band with me whenever we do these
kind of weird things…” I started doing some weird things. This isn’t one
of them, obviously. This is not a weird thing by any means. But yeah,
it allows me just to kind of try other things. And I mean, I’ve only
done things with people that I really like a lot. So, unfortunately,
it’s one of the hardest things saying no to people, because sometimes
there are people send me stuff and I do really like it and I like them,
but I think, “This isn’t going to work.” I think the collaborations that
I’ve done in the past, very few of them, I can’t really think off the
top of my head, have been collaborative in the sense that there’s
someone else singing with me. I think that’s what made the difference. I
mean, with Damon, he was just kind of burbling away in the background. I
didn’t know he was there. This is very different because, I mean, it’s
Lauren singing and then I’m kind of like… So it’s more of a duet. It’s a
kind of old fashioned sort of way of doing things.
Robert Smith Previews Forthcoming Music…
Probably in about six weeks time I’ll be able to say when
everything’s coming out and what we’re doing next year and everything.
So it’s at that point where I’m finishing up stuff. The reason I was
doing something on my own was for exactly the same reason I was doing
collaborations; I’ve always wanted to do an hour’s worth of noise, and I
didn’t want it… The Cure, you wait 10 years and then we bring out an
album that’s just noise. So it was just like, “No.” I mean, apart from
the… That was me doing the rest of the band. That, “No,” was a band no.
So I’ve been just having fun with that really. And so we were doing two
albums and one of them’s very, very doom and gloom and the other one
isn’t. And they’re both very close to being done. I just have to decide
who’s going to mix them. That’s really all I’ve got left to do. So yeah.
Robert Smith Tells Apple Music About Nearly Not Showing Up For The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Ceremony…
I mean, we did actually discuss it for weeks and weeks and weeks when
it came up. I mean, I always… At the start of the process, I was
completely against the idea of us accepting. I thought, “I want to be
the…” I thought, “No, I don’t want that admiration from people that I
don’t know.” It doesn’t really matter to me. But then I was kind of
like… And we talked it through, and I came around and I thought… Well,
honestly, the ex-members of the band were going to go anyway, and I
thought, “Well, they’re going to turn up, I may as well turn up, and we
may as well play, and we may as well make a point. It’s why we’re
there.” And we actually turned it into something which I was really
proud of. I thought we did really well, actually, on the night. And so I
was pleased about the whole thing. There’s something about it which is
kind of silly. But it’s okay. I don’t think I aspired to be in the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame when I started with The Cure. The fact that other
artists reference us a lot, and particularly artists that I enjoy, is by
far and away the best thing that can happen to you as an artist is that
other people doing what you do appreciating what you do, and in turn
inspiring them.Because for me, when I look back to when I started and
the people that I was inspired by, I was lucky enough to meet a couple
of them. And it meant everything to me. So I still have that in me. I
still feel that I’m responsible in some way to kind of keep this
going.And it’s always, in the main, The Cure have kind of… Even though
we’ve done really well, we’ve kind of existed outside of the mainstream
as much as possible, which has been a choice, because I’ve never really
wanted to… We’ve played the game when we needed to, but we’ve never
really kind of whole-heartedly gone for it. But I like the idea of
people succeeding on their own terms. That’s always been the thing that I
admire most about other artists, regardless of what they do or how they
do it. I think if they do it and they really mean it, then that’s
everything.
CHVRCHES Tell Apple Music About Collaborating with Robert Smith on “How Not To Drown.”…
Lauren: Well, it was a song that we had already been writing for the
record, and then our manager had been technically sniffing about trying
to see if maybe The Cure were going to tour again and maybe we could try
and get a support slot or something. So he was like, “I wonder if
somebody could put me in touch? How this would happen? How would we ask
for this?” And then he got in touch with Robert and the conversations
kind of started from there. And then we sent a bunch of songs over and
you were kind enough to listen to them, and we had to figure out where
we might be able to collaborate and where there would be space to do
something really interesting and special. And hopefully that’s what we
did. I feel like that’s what we did.
Martin: Genuinely, please, close your ears, Robert, I wouldn’t be in a
band if it wasn’t for Disintegration and Pornography. They’re the two
greatest albums of all time. So when Robert got back to us and said that
he was interested in collaborating, we thought that it would be… We
never truly thought that it would come to fruition. And this is no word
of a lie, after it had gone quiet for a little while, we get this demo
out of the blue, on Halloween no less. From Robert. With him singing.
And it was everything that we hoped it would be and more. And so the
process continued.
Martin From CHVRCHES Tells Apple Music About His Emotional Reaction Hearing Robert Smith on a CHVRCHES Song…
It was like a more intense version of the electricity that I heard
the first time I heard Lauren singing on one of our beats. It was like
I’d gone right back to the first day of being in a band again. And it
was that feeling bottled up and intensified. But I know it’s so hard for
me to speak… I’m so embarrassed to say it in front of Robert, but I
can’t overstate how much of an influence The Cure are on my music, on me
as a producer and me as a writer. And so that one moment, it was
emotional, and it was really intense. And then after a few listens, I
was able to disconnect a little bit, but at first it wasn’t easy.
Lauren From CHVRCHES Tells Apple Music That The Title Of Their New Album Was A Band Name They Didn’t Use…
We were talking about this recently that we had the album title
before we started writing, which we’ve never had before. And it’s weird
to think… Because it was a band name that we didn’t use. We had a big
list of band names, some really terrible. So every time someone
complains about the actual band name, I’m like, “It could be f-king
worse, guys. It could be a lot worse.”But yeah, so we had this idea to
write off of that. And I do wonder what it would have sounded like if we
hadn’t all lived through this thing that we’ve all had to live through.
And I do think, yeah, being locked inside with your own thoughts and
nowhere to go and nothing to distract you from that is a horrible thing,
but a good writing workshop. Once you survive it, you’re like, “Oh,
that was probably good to not be able to leave when I got
uncomfortable.”But I don’t know. I think, for me, the thing that… The
only thing I’ve ever regretted about anything we’ve ever done is if it
doesn’t feel like it’s been fully honest or that you were performing
something rather than doing it. And I think this one, it’s honest, for
better or worse.
