If you’ve ever wanted to experience dopamine whiplash, just ask Kieran Shudall what it feels like to go from 5,000 people screaming your lyrics to falling asleep on a tour bus mattress that smells like feet. “You play in front of 5,000 people, and then an hour later you're in silence needing to go to bed,” he tells me. “It’s quite an odd thing.” Welcome to the glamorous, soul-flattening paradox of being in a band in your thirties.
Shudall—frontman of Circa Waves—is calling to talk about their album Sad Happy, a record written in a flurry less than a year after What’s It Like Over There? and born, apparently, from relentless compulsion. “I write so often and so much that to do an album close to the other one does not feel that crazy,” he says, casually dismissing the idea of album cycles like a man who wouldn’t even blink at a double LP.
This one’s different though, he assures me. More cohesive. More realized. Less Radio 1 indie bait, more “artistic honesty,” whatever that’s worth in 2020. “It’s our fourth record, so you’d hope I had some inkling by now of what Circa Waves is,” he laughs, only half-joking. Turns out, Circa Waves is “quick escapism”—summery songs from a grey Liverpool upbringing. “It's uplifting sad euphoria,” he says, giving the band a genre all its own.
And if the title Sad Happy sounds like a therapist’s Instagram account, that’s kind of the point. “Touring is the most extreme pendulum of emotions,” Shudall says. “You’ve got the dopamine highs and then you're completely alone. It's no wonder a lot of musicians drink more than they should.” He talks candidly about the mental health toll of being constantly online, constantly compared, constantly expected to make content out of your own soul. “We still don’t know what this is doing to people,” he says. “When this generation is 50, we might be totally broken.”
For someone who clearly has a lot to say, Shudall doesn’t like wasting time. Most of Sad Happy was already demoed by the time studio time was booked. “We can’t afford to just mess around,” he admits. “We do it quick so we can spend the money on lights and stuff.” He’s proud of the blend of real and electronic drums, citing Move to San Francisco as a highlight, where live kit and Queen-esque samples coexist in a way that sounds bigger than your cousin’s wedding DJ's entire career.
He’s not shy about politics either. Circa Waves were Corbyn guys, so the logical American crossover? “I’m almost certain I’d vote for Bernie,” he says. “The world shouldn’t be putting up more borders.” He laments the media's role in spreading lies, in feeding anger, in “splitting the classes more and more.” A proper working-class Liverpudlian, Shudall has no patience for Boris Johnson or the capitalist genius of destroying a city’s culture to build more luxury flats no one actually wants.
Which brings us to CircaFest, the band’s homegrown festival meant to spotlight Liverpool’s musical lineage and, more importantly, its endangered venues. “We’re shutting down small venues just to make room for luxury flats,” he says. “But if you destroy the culture of a city, then no one’s gonna be there to move into those flats.”
He sounds like a man who’s thinking about legacy now, and maybe that’s because he’s a new dad. “Everything I do now feels like it’s for my son,” he says. “But I’m not trying to make commercial stuff just to pay for his university. I want to make music he can look back on and be proud of.”
Circa Waves might be making summery indie-pop, but there’s a layer of melancholy and a whole lot of politics under the surface. “I hope people can see that these aren’t throwaway songs,” he says. “I hope they’re like good, wholehearted pop, in the way Prince or Bowie was.”
Not throwaway. Not forgettable. Not easy. Just sad. And happy.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
