Ahead of their gig at Tooth & Claw in April, Gareth and John chats to Chris Lemon of IGigs.
Impressing when they performed on the Inverness Gigs Stage at XPONorth last year and continuing to build on early momentum that earned themselves the attentions of the likes of Vic Galloway that saw them on the list of BBC Radio Scotland’s ‘Bands to watch’ in 2017 . This year promises much for the Edinburgh based two piece, with the release of new single ‘Humming Bird’ leading the way.
So when John asked us if we wanted to have firstly of the video, we had only one answer, but we couldn’t resist asking a few questions at the same time.
When we caught up last time Gareth said “if you’ve spoken to us for longer than 5 seconds you would know we have no idea what we are doing”. Do you feel you have more of a sense of a plan for the band now?
John: Well it was definitely true at the time but it’s hopefully a little less true now. We don’t have any kind of management or anything like that so we do everything ourselves. Lately we’ve been working on a theory that when you’re ready for the next step, it’ll be obvious what the next step is. It means we spend less time grasping for opportunities and more time just having fun doing what we’re doing. Right now we probably know what we’re doing up until October but don’t ask us about after that.
Gareth: I still have no clue what’s going on.
Latest single ‘Hummingbird” was dedicated to your mother and her experience of coping with depression, how important is to talk and refer to themes and issues that are important to you in your music?
Gareth: The songs I write have never directly been about my personal experiences before, Hummingbird is something of an oddity when it comes to this. I was actually quite reluctant to release it, but folks at shows kept saying they liked it and complained that it wasn’t available… So I guess I was peer pressured into recording it. Our next release will be all about how I dealt with that peer pressure.
You’ve just released the video for Humming Bird, can you tell us a bit about how important the visual representation of your music is for you.
Gareth: I think its very important. How you represent yourself feeds directly into how folk perceive you and your music. There is always an element of humour in our videos, and we try to make every music video better than the last, which is hard to do with zero budget.
Your first physical release has gone all retro with a Posable Action Mixtape on Cassette, going against trend, it’s a fantastic idea. Where did you get the idea from?
John: We were discussing the idea of just doing CDs so that fans had something to buy at gigs but then the usual questions, does any actually buy CDs anymore, started cropping up. Gareth made the comment that we’d be as well just making tapes and I can’t say I was sold on the idea but as soon as I googled and discovered we could order pink cassette tapes I was won over.
Despite the subject matters of the tunes, promotion for Posable Action Figures always seems to ooze both fun and creativity, whether it’s the Facebook videos or promos etc, how difficult is it to keep the creativity going?
Gareth: Im pretty stupid and John loves Facebook likes, this combination of being both dumb and needy spurs a surprising amount of creativity. We don’t spend to much time on coming up with anything we post. The “Tour Advert” took 1 hour to do, from the initial idea until it was edited. I think if it was any more laboured than that, the fun would have been sucked out of it.
John: Gareth’s pretty good for that sort of thing. I tend to just prod him when we have something to promote and some social media content comes out the other end.
How is the rest of 2017 looking for you now, what are your ambitions for the rest of the year?
John: We’ve been lucky enough to be asked to do a few festivals this summer which we’re really looking forward to. Unfortunately with most of them, the full lineups haven’t been announced, so we’re not allowed to speak about them yet but you can catch us at Kelburn Garden Party who have trusted us with a fantastic slot on the Friday night. Keep your ear to the ground for the others too, I’m sure we’ll be announcing them soon.
As for after the summer we’re trialling some new songs on the crowds at this tour that might go on to be our next E.P. as long as, you know, people don’t hate them. It’s our plan to book some studio time as soon as the tour is over and hopefully have them out in September… Hopefully.
Posable Action Figures , with support from Silver Coast and The Strives, plays Tooth & Claw, Inverness on the 14th of April.
GET TICKETS FOR POSABLE ACTION FIGURES AT THE TOOTH & CLAW
Currently announced dates
The Tooth and Claw – Inverness – 14th April
The Tunnels – Aberdeen – 15th April
Redd Suite – Dundee – 21st of April
Kelburn Garden Party – 30th June
