The Edmund Fitzgerald. Also known as Yannis Philippakis and Jack Bevan’s band before Foals. It was a lot more technical and instrumental than Foals. And according to Bevan, find it was a lot more boring. “Let’s play dance music, play at house parties.”And did they. They even made a special appearance in Skins U.K., where they performed the hit “Hummer” at the “secret party” special. And amidst all this casual fun, they managed to peak on the Billboard charts, win NME awards, and become one of the biggest rock bands out of the U.K. We were able to sit down and talk to drummer Jack Bevan about the success of their latest album, Holy Fire.

Amanda Gomez: Holy Fire’s production seems a lot more human. And what I mean by this is the album [Holy Fire] seems less edited and sounds like you grabbed from more live takes, compared to the previous two. How was the production process different?

Jack Bevan: It was really great this time actually. We worked with Alan Moulder and Flood, our all time favorite producers. Alan Moulder actually mixed our last track, which felt like forever. So, we got to meet him through that. And he is ugh… great, sort of calm, focused presence. So we thought he’d be great as a producer. And going by his previous records, you could tell. And Flood and Alan Moulder together was like the dream team, we really didn’t expect it was going to happen because they haven’t actually worked together since 2005, before this record. They produced Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails. Those are our favorite records. So that’s the dream team for us. And the two of them worked really well together, they are kind of the perfect combination. Alan Moulder is like this sonnet doctor, where he sets in the footing. And by the desk in the recording rink, oversees all the sonnets. And gets incredible sounds, from the drums and the guitars. He knows exactly what he wants.

How many takes did each track require? Did it take awhile?

Well it varies from track to track. I mean, the first month in the studio, they told us-Flood actually-told us we were just going to run through the tracks and talk about how we could do better. We were essentially demoing. And then after a month of doing that, he revealed to us that he recorded it-pretty much all of it! And the majority of the record was actually made up of sessions where we thought we were demoing, which is a really clever idea. We were playing a lot more naturally, a lot more loose. In the past, we realized we were going for a change, so we would be very precise in how we were playing. And we wanted to make it absolutely perfect. And I think in a way, it’s kind of counter-productive to do it like that because you end up with something that doesn’t sound as natural or as organic if you were just going to play with, kind of without giving a shit. Because we were basically playing the tracks over and over again.

Do you exclusively write in one area or do you write in the studio?

This time, we set up a studio in Oxford to do all the writing. That’s good. And we had access to that 24 hours a day. It balanced at first because we kind of worked on in sort of different groups. I would go down with just Walt and Jimmy. Or Yannis would go down with Jimmy or Edwin would go down with Walter. Because we could work late into night as well. Like a lot of cool stuff would go down, like the last track was written by Yannis, and Jimmy. Just late at night they went down with a bottle of Whiskey and a box of cigarettes, and I think the whole track came together in that one evening. So yeah, we also did a bit of writing in Australia, which was fun because your surroundings do definitely include themselves in the sounds of the tracks that you are writing. In the first album, we recorded in New York. And the second, in Sweden. So it was actually kind of nice to record in England, where we were use to it. And it kind of enabled us to work hard and not be distracted by the surroundings we were in.

Yeah I bet it helped to be surrounded with something you are comfortable with. That’s probably where the organic sound came from. What usually came first, the instrumentation, the riffs, or did the lyrics.

I think the instrumentation always came first. I mean some songs like “Moon” and “Late Night”, the instrumentation and vocals came hand in hand. But I think, with our band, it’s always the music first. The process is going to change. We use to write it, the five of us, all playing, all the time in a room. But now, we kind of gave us a bit more freedom and break up. I might do a bit of writing with just Yannis, and Jimmy would do a bit with Yannis. You know, so we don’t all play on top of each other. I think that’s enabled us to open up the sound a bit.

Speaking of “Late Night”, you were able to work with Nabil Elderkin. I loved the video, my friends and I watched it over and over again. What was that like? And the story idea for that- what was the creative process?

Well that was amazing. Nabil is a creative genius. We love that guy. The actual concept came between Yannis and Nabil. I think they kind of started off each other. They wanted to kind of communicate the circle of life. We filmed the whole thing in Romania, in one weekend in December. I mean it was freezing out there. It was like 15 Celsius, I don’t even know what that is in Fahrenheit. There were like stray dogs running around, and all these abandoned buildings, it was really cool.

And Coachella, how was that? You did you see? Who do you wish you saw?

Amazing. It was very intense. We got there maybe 11 a.m. and I think we did promo all day until the show. And afterwards, we did get to party. I didn’t get to watch any bands,  which was a real bummer. I think they top loaded the promos the first weekend, so hopefully next weekend I can see the stuff. I really wanted to see Hudson Mohawke X Lunice, TNGHT. Pretty exciting. I also really wanted to see the Alt J boys, we met them before, they seem really nice.

And right now, your favorite artist out right now? Who would you say?

I have been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s record over and over again.

Oh me too!

Oh yeah, he’s an LA boy isn’t he?

Yeah, a lot of great rappers out of LA. Him, guys from Odd Future.

Yeah.

What got you started in music? Tell me about the Edmund Fitzgerald?

That’s cool that you heard of that band. When I was fifteen, I started playing drums, just because everyone was picking up instruments. And because I would do the same things all the time. When I was sixteen, I joined a punk band, and at the time we were the best band in the world, but in retrospect we were terrible. And we did that for a couple of years, but the guys in that band got serious in school and I didn’t really wanted to be doing that. So I started another band. I joined the Edmund Fitzgerald with Yannis, and we did that for a year and a half. It was very, very different music than Foals. It was really technical, mostly instrumental, like really long songs. It was kind of heavy, kind of post-rock. We did that for awhile. It was three of us, it was me Yannis and this girl named Lina. She left to go to a university. Me and Yannis were like ugh, fuck this boring, brainless, instrumental rock. We were just like let’s just do something that would be really fun. Let’s play dance music, play at house parties. And make it more like this fun experience, rather than this sort of musical demonstration or whatever. We started to get in touch with people and just playing at random house parties. Like there was this one we did in Manchester at a student’s house, and like the floor in the living room was bouncing up and down, we nearly went through to the basement.

That’s so fun. That’s exactly how I was introduced to the band. Because you guys did the house party scene for Skins U.K. with “Hummer.” That’s what I knew you initially as, that amazing house band. Now what do you hope for Foals? I know in an interview with NME, Yannis was saying Foals has no interest in becoming an arena band. But what kind of band do you hope Foals becomes?

I don’t know. I guess we were sort of very different in the beginning. We kind of just wanted to make fun music. And I guess, after doing it so long, we wanted to make more meaningful music and I don’t know, ultimately, we want to make music that connects to a lot of people without compromising any of our artist principles and integrity. I think we are more focused on making sure we put out good records, than getting any bigger. I mean we are happy right now. I think if things do get bigger, I think that’s cool. But that’s not what we are really in it for. We want a band that people really remember rather than a band that plays huge venues.