Following the release of their recent EP ‘Fight To Survive’, we caught up with Cold Summer.
The Leeds four-piece formed in 2011 and have since self-produced two EPs and an album while self-booking their own tours.
Stepping into the studio at the end of 2014, the band recorded their new release with Mike Bennett (Empires Fade) to capture the music they’d envisaged on the road, reflecting their live sound.
With the EP receiving top reviews and their tracks set for the airwaves, find out all you need to know about their new release, their musical influences and live sets.
For those who haven’t discovered Cold Summer, how would you describe your music?
We’re quite a diverse band, I think first of all musically we draw together a lot of influences collectively to do what we do and try to do our own thing. The aim is to write songs and ok they may sound different, but you can still think ‘oh yeah that sounds like a Cold Summer’ song’. I’d say it’s a challenge for the listener and I mean that in a good way as I think when someone maybe reads about you there can be a lot of preconceptions when genres and ‘for fans of’ suggestions get thrown around.
Since forming in 2011, how would you describe the progression in your sound over the last five years?
I’d say we’ve certainly got a little bit heavier over time, subtly there is little things we’ve done even as far as the gear we use live and tunings and that kind of thing. When we started out we also had a bit of a tendency to be a little drawn out, it could be quite easy for us to write say a six-minute plus song without realising, we’ve certainly condensed a lot of the intensity of our earlier work into 3/4 minutes songs now. I think as a band we’ve all improved at playing our instruments gradually too and on record I guess these days we are more polished which is shown by our playing / confidence. I think also we still have the rawness in our recordings which carries over from how we sound live, as I feel its important to carry that side of things over. I think our song writing as also improved without risking being too formulaic and also the dynamics as well, we’ve always had the quiet / loud thing but kind of adding more layers too it I guess as well in the studio.
Have you noticed a shift in your musical inspirations since starting your own band?
I’d say personally I do still listen to a lot of bands that I listened to a lot 5 years ago when we started the band. A lot of those are still putting out new releases which touch on new ground in most cases and on top of that there is always some great new bands and even some older bands I’ve discovered and got into more as times gone along. I wouldn’t say its been a shift, it’s just a progression of being introduced to new things to add to what you already have I guess as an inspiration.
You approached the writing process for this EP in a new way, can you tell us more about your method and why you decided to try something new?
As a band we were a lot busier than we’d ever been around the time of writing this EP. We were out there touring and we did play a few of these tracks live in varying forms. We had stuck to trying the songs live before hand, but out of everything we’ve ever done, this is the most we’ve spent in the studio actually writing, or trying a lot more new ideas that we had away from the tried and tested playing them out on the road first method which we’ve always done in the past.
Out of the six tracks on the EP, which is your personal favourite?
My personal favourite would be ‘Car Crash In Progress’, it just seems to sum up how we all feel about the politics in this country, personal politics as well and on top of that (and on a more positive note), it’s the most fun song to play live.
Have you noticed any fan favourites emerging following the reception to the release?
The last track ‘Something, Nothing, No-one’ seems to have had a really great response, it’s always difficult to gage as the two singles we put out obviously are first thing people will hear (and coincidently are the first two tracks on the EP) so they have been the most talked about with having the visual accompaniment as well
How would you describe a live set from Cold Summer?
I don’t want to sell us short so I’d say unpredictable? I’m not sure exactly what people’s expectations are, we just aim to play tight but also put everything we can into our performance.
When can we expect to see you guys on the road?
We’re hoping to put together a full UK tour in the near future, in the meantime we’re going to try our best to get some weekenders booked sooner rather than later. We’re not a full-time band so it’s obviously got to be done quite well in advance, we’d love to go out on the road again like we did last time supporting someone like He Is Legend.