Words With: Hope of the States

They’re coming to the end of a busy year on the live circuit, having played a sell-out UK tour and headed up a summer of festivals, but it’s not over for Hope of the States – up next is a 15-date US tour to help promote the release of their debut album, the critically acclaimed “The Lost Riots” which hits the shelves Stateside this October. After latest single, “Nehemiah,” entered the charts at No.30 last week, Gigwise caught up with HOTS drummer Simon Jones to chat about their experiences.

G: You’ve become a bit of a staple on the festival circuit, having appeared at Leeds, Reading, Glastonbury and the V Festival in just one extremely busy year. Tell us a bit about your experiences.

Simon: I used to go to loads of festivals when I was a kid so to have the chance to play them has been great. Playing-wise it can be pretty difficult sometimes as you don’t get the chance to soundcheck, and we are a six piece band so that can sometimes lead to problems. Everyone else who plays is in the same boat I guess - you have to battle through them I suppose.
 
G: You’ve been compared to a host of other artists, Radiohead and Mercury Rev to name just two. How do you feel about being labelled the “I Am The Resurrection” of this generation?

Simon: It is all very flattering and I do have a genuine love of those bands, but I fail to see the similarities - maybe it is just bands who are out there doing things very differently in the name of music... I like the idea of that. As with being the “I Am The Resurrection” of this generation, we are all young and have got a lot in us still to discover and we want to inspire people and do something different. I guess we know in our hearts we could be that band.

G: Your single “Enemies/Friends” reached number 25 in the charts and landed you a spot on Top of the Pops. That must have been surreal.

Simon: Yeah, surreal to say the least! We had recorded that single before we got signed and it was great that it went in so high after absolutely no airplay, so we owe our fans a great deal. As for Top Of The Pops itself - it was bizarre, and we were so shellshocked by that whole week that we just looked like pissed up fish out of water on there... but I guess it’s something to tell the kids! We made up for our performance on Jools (Holland) anyway.... we can play our instruments, honestly!

G: MTV banned the video for your single “Black Dollar Bills” due to its political content. It later reached just number 71 in the charts due to low exposure. Are you worried about the media’s reaction to the nature of your songs?

Simon: We released BDB off of our own backs and only did 2000 of them which sold out in an hour or something anyway! All of that kind of thing we still find funny - you can’t show an animation of apocalyptic scenes, but after 9 o’clock you can show programs of people nailing their genitalia to planks of wood... I just find it laughable to be honest. As for the media in general they’ve actually been quite good - they tend to try to find out what the songs are about instead of just making their own guesses.

G: How about your fans, do you worry that you might alienate those with alternative views?

Simon: The thing is that our songs have a certain ambiguity to them. We try not to sloganeer and tell people what to think, so I can’t see where any alienation would come from. The main idea we are trying to put across is hope - we are not politicians or an army - we just want to bring a sense of hope and community across in our songs.

G: You’ve been plagued with onstage difficulties recently, with your July T in the Park performance cut short by security mishaps and your big moment at V riddled with technical errors. Both times you continued playing an acoustic set despite the circumstances – how important is it to you to keep your fans happy?

Simon: Our fans mean the world to us - they are the reason we can do what we do. As for V and T in the park - I guess you could say that we felt people had been short changed so no one was gonna stop us finishing our set - even if we had to do it on acoustic guitars!

G: And finally, tell us a bit about your future plans.

Simon: We are about to head off to the states for our second tour there, and then back home for our biggest ever tour here. We are constantly writing at the moment too so I hope at some point we can get in to do some work in the studio. We will probably be getting drunk a lot too!