Chester pop-rock four-piece Above The Underground released their debut album ‘Sonder’ in February 2014.
The band have played over 300 shows since forming, including three UK tours and a two month tour of the United States.
With just one listen of their lead track ‘Return To Point Pleasant‘, we had to find out more about the group.
Sit back, relax and let us introduce to you Above The Underground….
Can you tell us more about how you guys formed?
We started out in 2009. We were all playing around the same area in various bands before that and decided that we wanted to start something new. Before this band started, myself and Al played in a punk band and Nick played in a post hardcore outfit. It took a while to get to grips with the type of music we wanted to play, but we all became best mates in the process and I feel that’s the reason we’re still around today.
Where did the name of the band come from?
Honestly I don’t remember, I think it was an EP name that was never used from one of our previous bands or something. We just thought it sounded cool at the time.
Which bands do you take the most inspiration from?
It’s difficult to say because we all have fairly eclectic music tastes so I don’t think I can really say that there’s a handful of bands that we get most of our inspiration from. We just try to write what from the heart.
You mention there is no structure to the songwriting process in terms of ideas, do you feel this allows you to be more creative?
I think so yeah, but it can be really time-consuming. We’re pretty wasteful when it comes to songwriting, most of the ideas we come up with are never used. It always takes us forever to write, but I think that we put out better quality material as a result, even if it means our releases are slightly shorter than you might expect.
How do you find translating the acoustic ideas to full band songs?
It’s never much of a challenge because I always try to write with the final product in mind. Sometimes a lot of our acoustic drafts or ideas don’t always sound quite right in the early stages because they’re written in a way that would make more sense when played full band. It always comes together in the end though.
Which track from your debut album release should we check out first?
I’d say “I Was Never Lost“. I think it sums us up pretty well.
If you could pick one song from the album to listen to on repeat, what would it be and why?
I really like the interlude “Cheer Up“. I think Matty (the producer on the record) did a great job with that one and everything turned out exactly how we’d envisioned it.
Which venue in the UK would you most like to headline?
I like small venues. I’d say a small local venue somewhere in Cheshire. I think that would be better than playing the MEN arena to sixty people!
What can we expect for the rest of 2014?
We’ve got a lot of tours in the works and music videos coming out soon. Hopefully we’ll be back in the States. We’ll be touring on mainland Europe quite a bit and going over to Russia towards the end of the year. We’ll be doing a few UK runs too.
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