O My God, It's Tilly and the Wall

Tilly and the Wall are members of that unique musical breeding ground – Omaha, Nebraska - that spearheaded by the patriarchal Conor Oberst has produced some of the most engaging and raw music to come out of America in the last decade. The first signings to Oberst's Team Love label Tilly and The Wall have spent their last two albums building up a folk dance legacy that has seen thousands of ecstatic kids screaming “I want to **** it up” across the globe whilst getting down to the tap dance groove.

Returning with a third album 'o' earlier this month, Tilly and The Wall are in the London for the final leg of their UK tour. We catch up with guitarist Derek Pressnall who was quick to enthuse about the band's record label: “Team Love are so artist friendly, they really understand what we?re doing as artists, they really believe in what we?re doing as artists and that?s the great thing for us. No matter what, they are there for us to try and make any idea we have, anything we want to do they try and make it happen for us, so it?s perfect and it feels like family...and it is family.”

Family is exactly what it feels like squeezed into London's ULU venue as Tilly and The Wall take to the stage. They are clearly excited to be on the road and it shows. “We've had a lot of fun. We've been out on the road for two weeks and all the shows have been really good, we've been getting really good reactions to the songs and the records out. “It's been a good trip,” enthuses Pressnall looking back as the band prepare for their final few Irish dates on this tour.

It's almost two years since I caught Tilly and The Wall live and watching them fill ULU and listening to 'o' the biggest difference between now and then is just the sheer expansiveness of the sound. Whereas once they sounded like gleeful pied pipers leading an army of lost souls round the camp-fires of the world, now they have a muscular power behind them that you might not expect from the acousto-folkdance they play.

“Well we approached the record in the same way that we had done the last time. We all just got together, sat down for about 3 months and just wrote it, so writing we didn't approach any different with this record but the recording we did because we recorded with Mike Mogis in Omaha and he had a lot of ideas. He is like a musical genius so production wise and sonically it has a different vibe to it,” notes Pressnall.

“Some of the songs were ready to go, totally written when we went into the studio and some were actually written in the studio. Kind of like things are built and taken away in the studio so it's different for each song. 'Beat Control' was, well they were all recorded at the same time, in the States we just released it as a one off single so we wrote the song and it was just like a simple pop song, a dance song.

“It's a departure in sound for us in terms that it's totally straight forward, something you don't really have to think about. Then they put it on the album for the UK and Europe, but in the States it just made sense as something separate,” he finishes.
 
'Beat Control', thankfully included on the album this side of the pond, is indicative of the bands core sense of fun. It?s a celebration of music that I would put on such a themed mixtape right next to Pretty Girls Make Graves' 'Speakers Push The Air' which is a massive compliment. They are not imbued with the faux-seriousness that weighs down some of their peers, perhaps as a result that the band is a happy democracy.