Sam Sanders from Hull-based indie-alternative slacker kings Serial Chiller sits down to answer a few questions for us about grinding away, creating tunes and staying creative.
S] How are you lads, been a while?
We are good! We’ve just completed a mini run of dates this weekend just gone, hitting the sunny sites of Bridlington, Sheffield and Grimsby. We’re tired but we’re happy. The last time we spoke to you will have been in 2020 when our EP came out. We’ve had Covid and all sorts since then.
S] What on earth have you been up to?
It took the reality of a world shattering experience to realise being in a band is the thing we really want to do. It was time to take it seriously. So we spent a lot of time collecting our songs together. I was creating a lot of home demos. And then when it was time to meet up again, we put together a collection of songs that would become our debut album.
In January of 2023 we began playing shows up and down the country, just hitting as many different places as we could to spread our music and build our following. By April 2023 we were ready to record our album. We worked with Stew Baxter in their studio, the Moon Factory, in Hull. What was an abandoned industrial building, now houses all sorts of bands and their projects. Over the course of five days, we laid everything down live.
S] Talk us through the new tracks, ‘No Pay’ and ‘Interest’ – what ideas and thoughts inspired those?
Interest is a tongue in cheek look at the way the music industry has changed since the rise in social media and streaming services. It’s a bit like shouting into the void. We weren’t expecting an answer to our questions. “Interest on the Internet, how do we get some?” It’s a rhetorical way of stating our frustrations with algorithm dictated content and success. But if anyone does know, please feel free to send us an email.
No Pay tackles dead-end work and its monotonous grind. It’s structured a bit like the working week. The chorus is a post-shift beer. A somewhat ironic celebration of a temporary fix to the problem.
If it sounds like we like to complain a lot, it’s because we do.
S] Has your attitude to success as a band changed since we last spoke?
Success in music is always a hard topic to approach. For us, success would mean making just enough money to live on, to keep on creating our music and sharing it with the people who dig it. The reality of what it means to “make it” has definitely changed our perceptions of success. If you don’t have money, you have to work a job on top, we all do. Balancing a full-time job with the band is an art form in its own right and record deals don’t fall out of the sky. It’s not about being famous, it’s about maybe one day going down a shift at work to focus on the band, until maybe you can drop another. And so on. It’s acknowledging the reality of what is available for a band like us and working towards it.
Being a rock-star with loads of money is overrated anyway, I’m happy with own-brand red label tea. That’s what I tell myself anyway.
S] What does Serial Chiller mean to you all now, as you’ve changed and developed as artists?
It’s three best friends creating the best music we can, and smashing out the best live sets possible, whilst having a laugh. Having fun and making the music we want to hear. That’s the formula.
S] How do you look back at ‘7 Quid’ and ‘When It’s Party Time’ now?
They’re like a time capsule. The EP especially. It’s a snapshot of how we lived our lives in our late teens and early twenties. Lots of booze and cigs, lots of takeaway pizza and hangovers. The anxiety has remained since then, but it’s focus has shifted. If the EP was a student house, the new tunes are a flat you rent out from the money you made working the job you hate.
7 Quid will always be relevant, it’s a song for the bands. Everyone in a band has been paid next to nothing, to play to an empty room. It just gets more sad the older we get.
S] What’s motivating you outside of music nowadays – think film, TV, places?
Lyrically we’ve always been dictated by time and place. Rooms in houses, venues, workplaces. The cities we’ve lived in. The jobs we’ve worked. The tiny pieces of fabric that create the jigsaw for the society we live in. It’s all real life that feeds its way into the lyrics and the music. And a big part of modern life is sitting and watching TV and scrolling on your phone. I love reality TV but I know it’s rotting my brain. Being aware of wanting more than just sitting and watching TV, yet also remaining conscious of the fact it numbs anxious thoughts and is the easiest crux in which to stave off intrusive thoughts. It means it’s so easy to rely on it.
Also Pulp Fiction is good.
S] Is there a message to friends and family who have supported the band, and will continue to?
No. Only kidding. Thank-you for sticking with us, I’m sure it will all be worth it in the end.
S] Is there anything I’ve missed that you’d like to plug before we finish?
We have another new single dropping in April, called Handsome Dad. As well as a couple of shows. The BBC Introducing showcase in Hull at Wrecking Ball Press on the 10th May is definitely one to look out for.
S] Thanks so much for your time, as always!
