Meet The Guest List, the band tackling big themes and even bigger sounds
Just don't call them a Manchester band...
By Nick Reilly
“We want to steer away from being a Manchester band,” says The Guest List’s lead singer Cai Alty early on in our Play Next interview.
It’s a bold statement, given that city’s rich and endless musical lineage, but it’s easy to understand what he means when you listen to this Greater Manchester band’s latest EP, When the Lights Are Out. It’s a thrillingly ambitious statement of intent that takes in sludgy desert rock moments reminiscent of Humbug-era Arctic Monkeys and even heads into dream pop territory after they headed to Bergen to work with pioneering producer Matias Tellez.
With lofty themes such as male suicide and climate change tackled within this collection of songs, it’s an EP with incredibly big things to say too. Their name, it’s fair to say, is a reflection of where this group are heading. The guest list for, err, The Guest List, is about to grow at lightning speed.
Check out our Q&A with the band and listen to them via our Play Next playlist on Spotify below.
How’s things, Cai? We’re speaking about a month before your latest EP, When the Lights Are Out, drops.
It’s been a mad time, man. I’m excited for it to come out because there are songs we’ve written recently and ones we’ve held back for the right moment which are finally getting their moment. Songs like ‘Mary’ and ‘Weather Man’ and the title track have been on the back burner for a good two or three years. We’ve always really believed in them and believed that they could be, not necessarily big, but we wanted them to reach the right audience.
Where does the EP land sonically? I could hear shades of Humbug-era Arctic Monkeys on ‘Plasticine Heart’…
Yeah, and I think the main priority for us is that it comes across as thoughtful, and that it has depth. We also want to steer away from being a Manchester band, if that makes sense. We’re incredibly proud to be a Manchester band and we have grown up listening to Manchester bands, but it also sometimes feels like a bit of a label. So we’ve tried to use sonic touchstones which have helped, like working with our producer Matias Tellez in Bergen which helped add a dream-pop element to it and we’re really happy with that.
That’s an really interesting dynamic. What was Bergen like?
The first song on this EP that we did was ‘Plasticine Heart’ with James Skelly and when we mixed that song we found it didn’t gel as well as when we’d done some of our early stuff. James is really good at coming up with ways for new bands to bring out their authenticity and it was through that that Mattias was suggested. We couldn’t really believe that that was being suggested but it was amazing. It’s so peaceful, clean and you feel like you’re in such a safe environment to create something special. We got to do a Fjord cruise too, which was amazing. It was in the summer too and they only get about 2 hours of darkness, and it doesn’t even really go dark, so you’re in this weird dream state where you’re never really going in the night.
There’s a lot of heavy themes on the EP too. ‘Mary’ tackles domestic violence, while climate change is tackled on ‘Weatherman’. That’s before we get to the title track, which looks at the reality of male mental health and suicide statistics…
I’ve been lucky to have had decent mental health, but my family is quite an anxious family. That’s not necessarily unique and I think that’s something that a lot of people can relate to, but on the more extreme side of it, when I was about ten there was a couple of men I knew relatively closely, the dads of friends, who took their own lives. That felt like such a big thing, especially when you’re in school and that young and no one really knows how to deal with it.
On ‘Mary’, I wanted to write something about this statistic that abuse repeats generationally. That really stuck with me. They’re big topics, but they are the three oldest songs on the EP as well, so it’s taken quite a while to get them down and to get them into a place where it feels like we’re doing the topics the justice that they deserve.
And going back to the start, when you have a band name like The Guest List, is that a sense of putting it out in the universe and hoping that’s the thing people will be asking your band for?
To be honest, when we came up with the name, we were 15, and that’s the beauty of a lot of bands nowadays. You set up an Instagram and a TikTok when you’re 15, then you’ve got to have a name, and then it feels like three years down the line once you’ve built up a following that you can’t change it. But The Guest List has a lot of positives to it and like you say, we can play on that guest list angle and there’s definitely a exclusivity for our fanbase in knowing about us too, which is nice.
And just finally, you have a big backer in Rhian Teasdale from Wet Leg who met you at Glastonbury. Are you pals yet?
No, we did shyly walk past her the day the next day at Glastonbury and thought maybe if we walk in her vicinity then she’ll recognise our faces and say something, but it didn’t really work out. She did stay and watch us, when Pulp were on. She was probably one of about 50 people in the audience.
That’s commitment though, that’s great!
I hadn’t seen her the whole time we were playing, which is quite impressive because she was sat on this massive inflatable sofa and obviously has the big bright blonde hair now. But apparently she came in and whoever she was with was saying, ‘Should we go watch Pulp?’ and she convinced them to stay!