Wunderhorse: “That’s where these songs live, on that scrap heap of forgotten stuff”

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Shedding self-consciousness, Wunderhorse channel frustrations into bullish defiance with their blistering second album ‘Midas’.

Words: Finlay Holden.
Photos: Derek Bremner.

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Wunderhorse may have started as a solo project, but to describe it as such now would be a gross misunderstanding of how the group operates. Once a ringleader in the London punk scene, vocalist Jacob Slater exploded out of a disorderly world and into a far calmer alternative, retreating to the coast as whispers of an incoming virus began to arrive in the city. Pensively forming new ideas whilst rekindling an ever-present passion for surfing, it became increasingly evident that walking his creative path alone was no longer an option.

Recruiting a live band from old circles – the live unit have known each other since their teenage years – Jacob was soon joined by Harry Fowler (guitar), Jamie Staples (drums), and Pete Woodin (bass) in the shared mission to manifest his ideas. However, they did remain just his ideas; the resulting product, 2022’s gritty and energetic breakthrough LP ‘Cub’, is a tight exploration of a singular young adulthood that didn’t yet offer room for additional contributors.

“You have to put in the hard yards and play a lot of shows together before you can even think about creating with someone,” Fowler begins. “We were all mates beforehand, so there wasn’t too much ice to break, but it takes time to create a cohesive bond with people, creatively speaking.” As each musician brought along their own storied past in rock bands – which Harry says, “starts with copying a lot of other people until you figure out what you want to do,  and who you are” – the fusion of established personalities could now add up to something greater than the sum of its parts.

“When you do then go into the studio, there’s this chemistry below the surface level that you hadn’t even been aware of, but it can bring forth some good fruit – and it did,” Jacob recalls of the early period which began sporadically generating material for the group’s next endeavour. “We are all creative people, but I was surprised by the potency of the creativity we experienced. We were hugely prolific in a very short space of time, bursting with loads of ideas, and it was a bit of magic that I still don’t quite understand.”

“You put yourself on the line time and time again; then, eventually, people have to take notice”

Jacob Slater

Touring ‘Cub’ extensively alongside Irish provocateurs Fontaines D.C., Geordie icon Sam Fender and the legendary Pixies, connections formed and the bones of songs to come were quickly penned in the back of splitter vans, during down moments in dressing rooms, or in one case, even in a bathtub. Wunderhorse developed in every sense of the word, their reputation flourishing as listeners discovered their material retroactively.

“It happened quite naturally,” Jacob remarks of the intensifying spotlight. “Instead of it being some industry-made, brown envelope, golden handshake bullshit, it came from bands who had heard us, seen us live and took us on the road on the merit of our work. You put yourself on the line time and time again; then, eventually, people have to take notice. Just do it until you’re unignorable. We’re still on that road. We’re still playing that game.”

Crowd sizes continue to grow, with their London shows growing from The Lexington to Kentish Town Forum and, on their upcoming headline run, Brixton Academy. The self-confidence boost is welcomed, but the band emphasise that keeping themselves on edge ultimately makes for a better show. “The inevitability of things going wrong in front of a crowd of people forces you to improvise a bit,” Pete states. “We were able to create moments in our set where we could fill some space, get a bit looser and actually jam with each other between songs.”

“Early on, we made the conscious decision to have a slightly jammed element to our set,” Jamie adds, “whether that be how we approach the songs or extending sections, crafting our own segue… it keeps things exciting for us, too.”

“We love the gigs, but there’s always a danger that playing the songs we care about so much would gradually become a chore,” Jacob warns. “Not that it has, but to keep that from happening, you need to introduce an element where no one knows what’s going to happen, not even us. Playing songs like ‘Purple’ – I’ve kind of moved past that, but people want to hear it – in the middle 8 we can stop it, draw it out and instead of being on autopilot, suddenly everyone has to engage with each other as musicians again because fuck, there are 2000 people out there listening. That’s fun, and that’s how it should be.”

Dynamic attitudes weren’t limited to Wunderhorse’s live exploits. Although they enjoy turning up the heat on stage, the studio approach was to relax any projections of what could be and capture their liberated spirits as close to reality as possible. This is easier said than done, as Harry describes. “Managing expectations with writing and recording music is even harder because there’s a lot more pressure to deliver something, and you always want to be delivering something better than the last, whatever that means. You can easily get stuck in your head with that stuff; it’s best to try to avoid it completely and create something different.”

“Play what feels good rather than playing to the gallery and thinking, ‘Based on the songs from ‘Cub’, what would people want from a second record?’ Fuck that, everyone loses in that scenario,” Jacob voices. “We went into ‘Cub’ a bit wet behind the ears; it was the first record we ever made, and there are things I would do differently now. The production is a bit ‘classic indie band’ – which is fine, but that’s not how we feel or how we sound live.”

Knowing that they wanted to definitively turn a new page, Jacob, Harry, Pete and Jamie began looking for a new collaborator to enter the fold and facilitate their high ambitions. Keeping Dani Bennett-Spragg’s engineering work consistent, the studio talent was able to share some ideas for where to take the production next or, more specifically, to whom.

“We met with Craig Silvey for him to give his thoughts, and he said he thought the first record played things a bit safe – and that was music to our ears,” Jacob admits. “People talk a lot of shit in the industry, and you often don’t know who’s telling you the truth, so when someone criticises something to your face, you know they’re honest. That’s a great foundation on which to build a working relationship; you know that when it’s good, he’ll tell you that as well.”

“You make plans, and then they fuck up, and you have to make new ones on the spot”

Jacob Slater

All parties were aligned that whatever came next had to be something entirely holistically different. The debut closed off a period now long in the past, with Jacob sharing that, “by the time we finished ‘Cub’, I couldn’t even recognise the person who had written half those songs”. Attentive audiences were already starting to notice new songs arriving during live shows, such as the ill-fated ‘Oprah Winfrey (Is This Love?)’ and lauded fan favourites ‘Silver’ and ‘Arizona’ which survived the trials through to the final version of ‘Midas’. 

However, any notion that the project was clearly visualised years in advance can be put to rest, with Jacob’s own idea of foresight being continuously reset. “You make plans, and then they fuck up, and you have to make new ones on the spot. I think we did have an idea of, oh, we have all these songs for the next record, but then the further you go with them, the more you realise that they can’t stand up on their own two feet, and you have to try something different.”

The clock was ticking down to Wunderhorse’s big studio sessions with no precise picture of what was to come. “People were asking me, ‘You know, all this money is being spent on going to America to record. Have you got the ideas ready?’ Yeah, yeah, I’m full of ideas! Meanwhile, I’m lying awake at night…”

“As far as the label was concerned, we had literally nothing until nine days before,” Pete asserts. With a quick demo session proving to Communion Records that the slate wasn’t entirely blank, a relaxed approach came somewhat close to proving disastrous. “The pressure of spending money going to this prestigious studio was fucking nerve-racking,” Jamie continues. “We’d just been on tour; we’d had no time to sit with the ideas that were coming up, but thankfully, as soon as we got there, we settled right into it.”

The aforementioned prestige was gifted to Wunderhorse in the form of an opportunity to take residence within Minnesota’s Pachyderm Recording Studios. The brainchild of the recently passed Steve Albini, a loss felt by champions of individualism across genre boundaries, this remote location continues to expand on his strong legacy; prioritise the band’s desires, fuck anything and everything else, avoid distractions and don’t tamper with things too much. These commandments were made famous during the conception of Nirvana’s third and final studio album, ‘In Utero’, and the vividity of their following hasn’t diminished since. In fact, not much about Pachyderm has changed at all.

“The guitar in one of the photos of Nirvana is still in the house, and you can just pick it up, play it, and feel the history,” Harry reminisces. “You do go in feeling that sort of novelty knowing Nirvana and PJ Harvey have recorded here, but what made the album so great is that the novelty wore off pretty quickly, and we made it our own.” The band have honoured this rich environment without seeking to recreate its output. “I now look at Pachyderm not as the ‘In Utero’ birthplace but as the ‘Midas’ birthplace.”

Starting the day by playing through a classic album, be it ‘Beggars Banquet’ or ‘Rubber Soul’, old favourites were subconsciously examined until their charm seeped into the work. “Working with Craig definitely changed how we all listen to music,” Jacob confirms. “We’d listen to songs that I’ve loved my whole life, and he’d point things out that demystified why they worked in ways that I hadn’t seen before.”

The retreat from modern existence, with only a small local bar to retire to, allowed the four-piece to re-examine how they approach their craft. “We’ve been playing our instrumentals for a while, so sometimes it becomes easy to hide behind a level of musicianship in place of being honest,” Fowler acknowledges. “There were times when Craig pulled us aside and called us out on making things too pretty, almost too good.” As Pete highlights, “It’s never been easier to make the perfect record with the technology we now have.” As such, perfection becomes the enemy.

“If you want something strange, something uncomfortable that makes people sit up, then you’ve got to feel uncomfortable doing it too”

Jacob Slater

‘Aeroplane’, the elongated album closer, is one example of Wunderhorse fleeing flawlessness. Jacob gleefully recalls the nine-minute live take which made the final LP. “Harry did this beautiful solo, and Craig came in and said, ‘You know, that’s great if you want to make a record for people sitting on the beach drinking margaritas’. That was a staple comment for him, and he’s right. If you want someone to put on a song in the background while doing their homework, you’re on the right track, but if you want something strange, something uncomfortable that makes people sit up, then you’ve got to feel uncomfortable doing it too.”

“I think you have to be out of your comfort zone for the good shit to happen,” he ponders. “The best work comes when your feet can’t quite touch the bottom. The minute it feels carefully considered and nice, there are already a million records like that, and you’ll get lost in the mire of nice sounds. You can hear it in music that’s been overproduced; it becomes so polished that you can see your face in it.”

‘Midas’, the titular cut and lead single of their second full-length, earned its place as such by defining the spirit that would go on to underpin all ten tracks. “That wasn’t planned,” Jamie declares. “It was almost a forgotten idea at the time, which we started messing around with. In the control room, Craig and Dani were always recording; it was maybe the third time we’d ever played it through together, and Craig said, ‘That was it’. That energy then became the blueprint for the record.”

“We captured this song in its very early stages; it was imperfect and would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to replicate in another take – we did try and couldn’t match it. We then tried every song in this same way, but this was the first moment where we truly realised what the album was going to be. We got the sounds right, but it was mainly the process that stuck. There’s a continuity in that, and you can hear that in every song.”

 “The songs are frozen between the embryonic and fully formed versions of themselves, which is often where that magic lies,” Jacob astutely agrees. “As soon as you overthink something, it’s doomed. We made an effort to capture things naturally. Embracing that thing, even if it doesn’t feel like it’s there yet, is the trick. You have to accept that during the process, it will get there of its own accord – you’ve just got to hope the tape is running.”

A refusal to refine, remix, or reproduce the results of their guttural instincts is exactly the ethos on which Pachyderm was founded; the setting was well chosen, muting any inkling of fear that could come from exposing your early drafts. Craig Silvey masterfully played Wunderhorse into delivering the album they wanted to create before they could even verbalise it. Proudly illustrating ‘Midas’ as an “ugly portrait” of the band, Pete says, “It’s not an exercise in bravery, but actually an exercise in trust.”

This foundational song started as a simple chord progression, with Slater belatedly scrawling lyrics together in no more than ten minutes. Off the cuff, the formidably scrappy songwriter can shrewdly express the frustration of being dissected by someone who claims to have it all yet offers you nothing. It is just one of the upward punches thrown across the tracklist, all of which hit with resounding impact.

“The songs come from a place of feeling a bit cast aside by the modern world,” Jacob summarises. “I don’t want to get too fucking deep, but I’ve always thought that a lot of elements of people’s humanity, the things that make us who we are, get left on the scrap heap a bit. That’s where these songs live, on that scrap heap of forgotten stuff. The broken stuff.”

Being buried in time is a recurring dread – “I don’t wanna be remembered / but I don’t wanna be forgot,” opens LP1 cut ‘Atlantis’ – and this record takes a more direct motion towards tackling it. An impressive scope of tones flesh out an experience that serves as the disgruntled, moody older brother to its purer predecessor. The dark imagery of ‘Rain’, longing melodies of ‘Arizona’, and tainted desires of ‘Cathedral’ flip the underdog narrative and place Wunderhorse right at the top of their game.

“You’ve just got to let the music make itself and not get in the way”

Jacob Slater

On the other hand, introspective meditation lingers through impulsive words: “I wish I could show them / The power inside me,” dreams ‘Superman’; “What’s it gonna take / For you to take me serious,” recent single ‘July’ questions. Jacob may have proven to be worth his weight in gold when it comes to creative inspiration and even found a trio of friends to uplift his work, but being perceived so palpably as an artist carries unique complications.

“It is a strange line to walk sometimes,” he muses. “The more I think about that, the worse I feel the creative output gets, so I try to keep that niggling thought way back somewhere and not look at it too much. You can go down a rabbit hole with that; sometimes, you just have to do it without thinking about why. You’ve just got to let the music make itself and not get in the way.”

“If you’re in this industry and you’re trying to create music and get people to listen to it, especially if you’re trying to expand to become a bigger band, then you always have something to prove,” Harry explains of the grudge within their upcoming music. “Some people show it more than others, but if you’re a musician trying to get somewhere, you have something to prove, and there will be some self-consciousness around that.”

The remaining ‘Midas’ sessions would go on to demonstrate something to Wunderhorse if no one else. Three weeks in Pachyderm encompassed the bulk of the work, with the band returning once ‘July’ and ‘Emily’ joined the arsenal. Hopping into London’s RAK Studios to tie up loose ends, the arrival of ‘Girl’ was the last piece of the jigsaw. “That’s when we all looked at each other as a band and knew we had it,” shares Jacob.

With their second record in the bag and an all-killer, no-filler ten-tracker no less, Wunderhorse are straight back on the road to reignite the UK live scene as no one else can. Of their incessant penchant for performance, the inspired frontman says, “When you spot a real young fan who’s come to their first show, and you see their eyes light up… Man, I remember that feeling. I used to skip out of school to go see bands in London, and to see you’ve put that excitement into someone else – it’s powerful. That’s where the core of this all lies; that feeling is why we’re all here, so it’s cool to be a part in that never-ending chain.”

The name Wunderhorse comes from a 1950s western series and is iconised by a drawing from Seb Smart, but you could attach any label or visual to it that you want. As long as Jacob, Harry, Pete and Jamie are making music together, this ball of momentum will continue barrelling forward. “It’s something to hang on to, in a way,” Jacob quips. “Life gets more and more strange and confusing, but a band is a good engine to put some of that stuff into and hopefully get something out that you can point to as: that’s what I feel, that’s what I mean. It’s healthy in some ways and probably unhealthy in others. Did that make sense? Don’t print that!” ■

Taken from the July 2024 issue of Dork. Wunderhorse’s album ‘Midas’ is out 30th August.

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