K&A with Fear The Fives

I'd like to think I have a pretty diverse taste in music, but it's safe to say that lately I've mainly been listening to a lot of indie and folky bands. So, it was a welcome change when the debut EP from Glasgow's Fear The Fives popped up in my Inbox. Three powerful, piano-led songs with a refreshing Eastern European tinge to them. It's a great listen.

Balkan Ekspres

Here's what the band had to say about themselves....

Kowalskiy: Who are Fear The Fives?
Fear The Fives: Three Scots (Tim, Ally and Charlie) and an Icelander (Ragnar)

Kowalskiy: So how did you guys get together?
FT5s: Ally and Charlie went to school together. Tim and Charlie played in Stinky Munchkins and met through Dino from the 1990s - he went to school with Tim. Tim and Ragnar like to play poker.

We spent a week recording demos in Speyside and every evening would end with poker and whisky - 5s seemed to be instrumental in deciding almost all the games so the cry of ‘fear the fives’ ended up getting shouted around the table. It stuck.

Kowalskiy: How would you describe your music?
FT5s: There is a lot of freedom for people to try to play what they find interesting and challenging, so the band enjoys itself and everyone is kept on their toes. Charlie wanted to sometime play big piano parts with both hands in the same entertaining exciting way that James Booker and Fats Waller did (without playing jazz) and with Serbian family, Balkan influences leak in. There is also a prog, metal, thrash influence to the rhythm section which is allowed to come out when it works, and we like songs and good lyrics. So we put all the ideas together and see what comes out - I think we're aiming for a musical flea market: messy, lively, colourful, full of tat.

Kowalskiy: What would your ideal gig be?
FT5s: Anywhere outside, on a hot day, with a drunk crowd and the sun going down or a dark wee cabaret type venue, a barge on the Danube, a bothy in the highlands, anything interesting.

Kowalskiy: What can we expect from Fear The Fivers in the future?
FT5s: We have our Debut E.P. launch on the 6th of May at Bar Bloc – that’s election night. And we really have a huge amount of stuff to try to get recorded – so we will hopefully be going into Chem 19 in the 2nd week of May. We’ve also got quite a lot of gigs coming up and we’ll be trying to expand the sounds we’re using a bit and keep it interesting.

The EP is released tomorrow (3rd May) and can be bought from Amazon, iTunes and all the usual places (links to come!). As the guys said, the launch night will be this Thursday at Bloc in Glasgow. So pop along if you're not interested in watching Peter Snow and his Swing-o-meter all night! Here's the rest of their upcoming gigs:

4th May - Tchai-Ovna, Glasgow (acoustic)
6th May - Bloc, Glasgow (EP launch)
20th May - Stereo, Glasgow
31st May - The Arches, Glasgow (Charlie solo)
18th June - the Captain's Rest, Glasgow