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thevampsupdate · 6 years

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The Vamps for TMRW Magazine

Written by Tanyel Gumushan

The Vamps are not the easiest band to interview. They're the kings of digression. Chatterboxes. They're like hyper-active school boys on the last day of term. They take zoomed in photographs of each other, and whisper random and strange words mid-sentence just to set off giggles. Sat in a dressing room with them, though, their boyish charm sort of takes over, and we end up talking about curry for much longer than we should have considering our allocated timeslot.

Tristan is hunched up, hood down to the tip of his nose, complaining about last night's said curry. For most of the talk, he's a million miles away, "I'm just soaking up the energy, man." Maybe 12pm is early for the boys. It definitely is for Brad, who rushes in twenty minutes late, flashing that smile - you know the one - like a kid late to school: all apologies but knowing he's the teacher's pet. Connor bursts into song at random intervals. James restores calm amongst the chaos, he's like the dad of the band. He deserves a medal.

But you've got to love The Vamps. They're not a cliché of a boyband, and they're not deliberately trying not to be. They're just, well, they're The Vamps. They blaze a trail of energy and excitement.

"The thing is that we all act normal, and that's the natural beauty of it. We just do whatever we do." Says Connor, and I'll admit 'normal' is up for debate. But they haven't had a 'normal' life as such, so they're not doing bad for a band whose 'wild phase' peaked at 18 when Connor had one too many and made the pages of The Sun. They show me the image, "I didn't, erm, look my best." Beer bloat is never flattering, though, is it?

The band have always held each other up, quite literally so in that photograph. James explains, "A lot of my friends have, like, finished uni, or have done a couple of years ago, and I think that we missed a lot of the experiences that are learnt from leaving home when you're like 17 or 18, finishing school and moving away for the first time and the things that happen there." Instead, they've lived their own version where moving away from home means being thrown into the limelight and across the world. "Kind of losing those years that are the normal teen years is strange because our perception of the world is different from the people who are our age. Consequently, we've had to deal with long distance relationships and friendships and family, earlier than perhaps people normally do. So we've learnt a lot of different things."

Meet the Vamps, their introductory album, was filled with euphoric songs about puppy love. It was written with zero expectation of what was to come. The following album Wake Up came about "during the hysteria of everything." Having lived and toured with those songs for the past couple of years, The Vamps have hit their prime. Right now. Explaining how they've grown up, essentially, and "now we're at a stage where we can really think about what we want to say in the music." Their latest record, Night and Day (Night Edition), is their best year. The first half of a concept album, made to reflect two sides of The Vamps and as a whole, bring them together. Night rides the very emotional whirlwind of a break-up. "I think, like, we're in our early to mid-twenties now so we're not the sixteen-year-old boys who made the first album anymore. We've been through relationships and we're just more honest and less scared to be vocal about how we actually feel," they explain.

'Sad Song' is a quirky number ripped straight from the warm summer tones of a coming-of-age movie, it talks through the regrets of the aftermath. On the flipside, the calypso-kissed 'It's A Lie' teases with temptation, smooth as anything.

"When we were writing the album, especially the first part of the album, we were in a different head space, we didn't know where we were going to go with it sonically," Brad explains. It was only when they got lead single 'Middle of the Night', a slinky lil electro ballad, that they knew what they had to do. "It was a bit more sultry and a bit more moody and l think that's where the idea of doing a 'Night' album that was a bit more catered to those songs and then a 'Day' album that was a bit more organic [came from]." 'Night' is reflected best through sensuous synth and lyrics with a bite. The lyrics are lip-bite saucy, gleaming cherry red. Brooding an underlying storm 'Same To You', asks 'does he touch like I do?', whilst 'Hands' leads a rosy trail to a bedroom with a rousing chorus. 'Shades On' is automatically an irresistible holiday anthem, lifting of moods and moving bodies harmoniously. Inspired by the likes of The Chainsmokers and Justin Bieber, The Vamps have gone mad for EDM - "It's just bare drops, isn't it? We love a drop." But, ultimately, the third album hints back at the first, they say. It's like an evolution of The Vamps: same heart but different headspace.

Cheeky mannerisms flutter throughout the frocks; Brad's distinctively cool vocal, and choruses made to be sung aloud. The full cycle is fitting for the fact that they've recently been revisiting the venues that they had cut their teeth in. There's something particularly humbling about the boys, who still show admiration for McFly, who took them under their wing, and they reminisce on smaller gigs despite filling out arenas twice over.

It ultimately comes down to the brotherly connection that they share. 'Stay' is gorgeous with their natural harmonies and intertwining riffs. Connor and Brad wrote 'Paper Hearts' together, and the collaboration makes it a firm favourite. "We'd finished a long day writing a song that never actually made the album,' Connor explains, "and then I just played the guitar part and Brad sang over it and then we finished that song in like ten minutes, and that made the album and the other one didn't." Just ten songs made the cut, and they're placed in an order purposely. "Each song has its own meaning that you can take away,' and they were picked out very specifically. think that reflects the journey that The Vamps has had," says James. 'Paper Heart' stands out on the album for this exact reason, it instantly grabs your attention as a gentle, heartfelt confession. The Vamps' approach to song-writing cradles this very delicate imagery, making the song wistful, yet hopeful. Honestly, it's angelic and moving, you know that it just had to be written.

So they've played with futuristic EDM, and pulled it off as "a band doing EDM, but with, like, guitars leading it." Solid. Injected some funk and groovy clapping rhythms, and bared their souls with acoustic moments that drag you back down to earth. In the ultimate bearpit of pop, The Vamps have sharpened their claws without even intending to. Do they care about the pressure of boybands? Do they hell. They don't even acknowledge that it exists. "We just do our thing and the outside perspective, we don't take it into account. For us it doesn't become a thing, though other bands may worry about it," they say with a shrug, keen to get back to talking about conspiracy theories - Tristan would have loved to be a fly-on-the-wail with Winston Churchill, James with JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Connor just wanted to watch Nirvana play live, and Brad would have been massively involved in Beatlemania.

Fans have grown up with The Vamps, we've moved through the motions of life with them. These changes, the experimentation, the lyrics: they're real and they're in the moment. They're The Vamps, and boy are they good.

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