Posted on January 26, 2010 - by Editor

Thinking Back and looking Forward: Failsafe

Simon © Emma Stone

Words and Photo by Emma Stone
Failsafe represented by Simon Humphries (Guitars)

Emma: 2008 saw the release of your second album “The Truth Is…”.  In hindsight how happy are you with the record, and what would you change if anything?

Simon: I think “The Truth Is” as an album in itself came out really well and captured the essence of what we were trying to achieve at the time. We were going for quite a raw, live sound and trying to stick to a more cohesive songwriting style while still being diverse whereas the album before I think had too many different styles going on.  It’s easy to look back on an album with hindsight and think we could have changed this and we could have changed that but I think albums are a snapshot of a band at a particular point and its best not to dwell on them too much or you can easily make an album worse rather than better. The only think I would have changed is to have had the chance to have done more touring to promote the album. We changed agents (amicably I might add!) just as the album was being released which restricted the promotion of the album initially.

Emma:   You supported the Living End towards the end of 2009.  Were you surprised to be asked?

Simon: Yeah we were surprised actually, I don’t think they’re the kind of band you’d automatically associate with us and to be honest, with the exception of Matt and our sound guy Owen, the rest of us hadn’t really listened to The Living End a great deal. However we’d obviously heard of them and were excited when we found out we’d been asked. But yeah it was great, it was a short but sweet tour and then from watching them for five nights I really got into their stuff. Particularly from their newest album which is a lot more rock sounding than the older material.

Emma:  Rumour has it that there are new tracks being written as we speak!  Can we expect a new album from you this year?

Simon: We are indeed in the middle of writing new songs, we’ve written quite a lot of material so far, maybe ten songs or so but it still doesn’t feel like we’ve finished yet. I think there’s a lot of ideas floating around and a lot of musical ground we’d like to explore. The writing process has been quite different from the last two albums, whereas before we would just about write enough songs for an album before going in to record, this time with quite a few songs we’ve essentially been doing rough sketches of songs and fleshing them out later which means we’ve got a lot more ideas to work with. We’re hoping that we can release a new album later on this year but we’re unsure exactly when it’ll be available and what label we’ll release it on, we’re still in the middle of sorting out all these finer details!

Emma:   Any plans for a different ‘direction’ with these new songs?

Simon: Yeah the new songs we’ve been writing are defiantly different from those on the previous two albums, I hate to use the usual cliché’s but ‘natural progression’ is a phrase I feel is pretty apt. However there has been more of a conscious decision to write ‘songs’ more than specific parts or riffs and make the music and melodies more interesting rather than the structure of the songs. I think stylistically it’s even more influenced by straight up rock and indie although there’s still going to be a punk element to our sound which will always be there to some degree.

Emma:  You’ve shared the stage with some really amazing bands over the past few years.  Who do you think your favourite band has been to tour with?

Simon: The first band that comes to mind straight away has to be A Wilhelm Scream, a band that we all had a massive respect for and loved their music way before we toured with them, who also turned out to be great guys and amazing live so I think we have even more respect for them now than before we played with them. It was also a full tour which was ideal, even though it’s great to be able to do big one off supports it’s even better when it’s a full tour. The two factors that make touring with another band so great is how well you get on with the other band as people and how much you like their music. There are actually so many bands we’ve toured with that fill that category that it’s difficult to name them all, however the most recent couple that spring to mind are Twin Atlantic and Uncommon Men From Mars from France.

Emma:   Ideally, who would be your perfect headliner to tour with?

Simon: There’s a few bands I can think that I think we would all like to tour with, the first band who I think we’d fit with stylistically pretty well and who we’re all into is Billy Talent. Then there are other bands that we’ve been fans of for a long time including Thrice, Rx Bandits, Beatsteaks, and Hot Water Music who we’d all love the chance to tour with too.

Emma:   Two tracks off “The Truth Is…”, ‘Hope’ and ‘A Common Goal’, were released as singles via download.  Do you think it helped sales being available by download only, or would releasing it as a hard copy contributed to higher sales?

Simon: I think the way things are now, and especially with a band of our stature, releasing actual physical copies of a single might have meant a few more sales but not enough to cover the cost of printing and duplicating those cd’s. I think it makes more sense to spend that money that you might have used to print the cd’s to put into promoting a single release (music video etc) which has way more chance of leading to higher sales. I don’t know weather making the single’s download only specifically helped sales but I think given the option, most people would choose to download singles now, rather than actual cd singles.

Emma:   Is 2010 looking as though it’ll be a hectic touring year?

Simon: I definitely hope so, however we have no real plans yet as we’re still busy writing the album but I’d like to think once we have a release date for the album sorted we’ll be keen to tour as much as possible.

Emma:   When looking back on the past decade, what gigs/festivals/events have been the most memorable for you?

Simon: The past decade! Wow! Well, we played at Leeds Festival in 2007 which was really memorable and the first time we played a major festival. We also got the chance last year to play a few festivals such as Sonisphere, Guilfest and Newquay Boardmasters which were all amazing. The first time we ever toured in Europe in 2007 was also really memorable, we’ve toured there quite a few times and every time is great but the first time we were out there it was for five weeks, it was a long time to be on tour for at once but as a band we really stuck together. Also things like doing our first Radio One session and doing our first music video stick out in my mind too.

Emma: What bands have really stood out for you in the past few years?

Simon: As far as having an influence on the band as a whole in some way or another I guess I’d say the same ones as I’ve mentioned above A Wilhelm Scream, Thrice, Rx Bandits, Beatsteaks, and Hot Water Music. There loads more bands personally that stand out too but of course everyone in the band would probably have their own list as well so I’ll keep it short and sweet