Why you need unpeople in your life: “I’ve never been scared that a crowd is gonna hate us”

Colourful London-based noisemakers unpeople are already making a splash with their unique blend of alternative sounds, even bagging a spot opening for the biggest metal band of all time. Ahead of a summer spent at the festivals, guitarist Jake Crawford and bassist Meg Mash dive into their high-contrast world and explain why it’s all about doing things their way.

When co-founder Luke Caley sent Jake Crawford a list of potential names for their new band, unpeople jumped out immediately, not least because some of the others Jake “probably can’t even say in an interview setting…”

Jake Crawford (vocals/guitar): “When I started looking into the meaning of unpeople, it’s a very all-inclusive term. It can be seen as quite negative, and I guess the actual meaning is more broadly on the negative side, but [we’re] trying to spin it in a positive way, like, ‘We are all unpeople and we’re all in it together.’ The actual definition is a group of people who are considered politically unimportant or without rights – and if you haven’t got a certain amount in the bank, that could be attributed to pretty much everyone (laughs).”

Even though they might not be the most moshy of bands, unpeople give everything to their performances – sometimes a little too much…

Meg Mash (guitar): “I broke my foot at our last show for the sake of the performance. It wasn’t even a violent show, I just like to get in the crowd and get in the pit, and someone charged into me – it’s a hazard of the job sometimes. I think that you haven’t really experienced the band until you see it live. Even just the small following we’ve acquired so far, a lot of that came from people seeing us at shows. The first couple of tours we did we had no music out – all people had to take away was the live performance. It’s massively important to us.”

Jake: “In the writing process we’re constantly thinking about how it’s going to translate live. We use backing tracks, but we also pride ourselves on the fact they’re just enhancement, and if they went down we could still play a show – which is not the case for a lot of bands now.”

With such a kaleidoscopic collision of sounds and influences, unpeople are perhaps the only band able to play the denim-and-leather Mecca of Bloodstock and the middle-class indie-fest Kendal Calling in the same summer…

Jake: “When we’re writing the stuff, we’re not really thinking about how much of our influences we’re pumping into it. But when we started getting offered those disparate festivals and looking at the music with a bit of hindsight, you think, ‘Oh yeah, that makes sense.’ I don’t mind being the lightest band at Bloodstock and the heaviest band at Kendal Calling. That’s a tough thing to straddle but I think it makes sense. We’ll play those festivals and I think there’s something in there for everyone.”

Meg: “I’ve never been scared that a crowd is gonna hate us. We’ve been [in bands] for so long that we’ve experienced playing to rooms where people don’t like it, we’ve experienced playing to rooms that aren’t interested. We’ve got pretty thick skin. If we play Kendal Calling and people are crying and screaming and covering their kids’ ears then I’m not going to take it personally.”

Jake: “I see it as a win!”

Amongst a summer playing more than a dozen festivals across the UK and Europe, unpeople have managed to attract the attention of none other than Metallica, and in what feels like a fever dream, they opened for The Four Horsemen in Vienna in June…

Jake: “It’s pretty unbelievable. My stepdad played me Blackened from …And Justice For All when I was seven years old. When I told him that we got that show, he had tears in his eyes. It was a big deal for me personally, but I think it’s a big deal for anyone in a burgeoning rock act.”

Meg: “I think Enter Sandman was the first song I learned on guitar. It’s a jumping-off point for most people our age or our generation – you have to listen to Metallica. We still have jobs and when you tell people at work that you’re in a band, they probably think you’re playing the local pub on a Friday night, but being able to say, ‘By the way we’re supporting Metallica,’ it’s like, ‘Oooooh, you’re actually a proper musician!’”

Pulling on all the different threads that make up the unpeople tapestry has given the four members more creative freedom than ever before, so they can fuck with your expectations…

Jake: “In mine and Luke’s previous outfit [Press to MECO] there was never really any focus put on [the aesthetic] whatsoever – it was all about the music – but the visual is just another string to the bow. If you can grab someone’s attention just by how you look and a name, it’s going to give them impetus to actually listen to you. It’s been a tremendous boon in giving this band a bit of its own identity. Having that coupled with the fact that some of our music is incredibly heavy, I like that semi-ironic juxtaposition. It’s okay to like a band with a pink background – it’s fine! I can wear a lovely yacht shirt and listen to Cattle Decapitation. I do and I will!”

Bored of the stock look to anything remotely heavy, unpeople are embracing their originality in glorious Technicolor, and the fact they are all individuals…

Meg: “I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a part of it – not wanting to be the generic rock or metal band – but I do think for the most part it is unintentional. We’re a bunch of goofballs and we don’t take ourselves very seriously, so why stand looking super-moody in front of a garage door? It’s just not us and we’d be selling a bit of a lie. If you come to an unpeople show, we’re not going to be standing super-moody onstage – we bounce around and have a laugh with the crowd. That’s no shade to bands who have that aesthetic – the majority of bands I listen to are like that – but it’s just not us. We’re not trying to look like a metal band or look like a pop-punk band. We’re just being ourselves and that inherently creates something a bit different.”

Jake: “Which ties into the broader theme of being an ‘unperson’ – you’re the only one of you, but there’s billions of us. Just being yourself is a big part of it.”

On recent single going numb, unpeople examine the detrimental effects of bottling up negative emotions and not talking about how you’re feeling…

Jake: “That came from me personally allowing myself to have a bit of a breakdown as opposed to fighting it. Bottling it up – in the long run – will do you more damage. If your body is telling you to let it out, you should probably let it out. It’ll do you some good. Have you heard the phrase ‘toxic positivity’ – just being positive all the time? That is unsustainable. If you’re feeling like you’re going have a breakdown, you should just let yourself have that cleanse and then reassess. And not be ashamed of it. You’ve obviously got some stuff going on, so just let it happen. No-one can be positive 100 per cent of the time, no matter how many info-graphics tell you it’s attainable. Let yourself have a good old cry.”

These lyrics don’t exist in a vacuum, and in the short space of time unpeople have been around, they’ve formed a powerful connection with their fans who find solace in their words…

Jake: “The day [debut single smother] came out, someone got a tattoo in the typeface of the single because they said the first lyric immediately connected with them. That for me is huge, because I remember writing that line – ‘Are you being honest with yourself?’ – and thinking it was quite cool and engaging, and to have that confirmed almost immediately by someone was quite a nice feeling.”

Meg: “It’s funny, the other day I was sat on the tube and really stressed and had a lot on my plate with work and the band, and I felt like I was under so much pressure, then I was like, ‘Oh, just like the song smother.’ I put the song on and it gave me chills – it’s quite helpful to know I’m not alone. If I’m having that experience as someone who’s in the band and heard the song a million times, I hope other people can feel like that too when they listen to it.”

While the opening track to their self-titled EP, waste, may or may not be about Brexit, unpeople stress that they’re empathetic, and “you can’t just call people idiots, regardless of what they may have done to the infrastructure and economy…”

Meg: “We’re all – especially me and Jake – quite politically-minded. We like to educate ourselves on what’s going on.”

Jake: “We’re from dumps in the Midlands where we saw all our community centres get closed when we needed them the most.”

Meg: “But we exist in an echo chamber, right? People who, let’s say, voted for Brexit, I can’t put myself in that person’s position because they exist in a different echo chamber to me. The idea of that song with the line ‘Shoot yourself in the foot with the starting gun’ isn’t coming from a place of, ‘You’re an idiot, you shouldn’t have done that.’ It’s more, ‘I hate to say I told you so…’”

Jake: “It’s not my place to say, because why does my opinion matter more than anyone else’s? And also it’s very easy to get sold a lie on the side of a big red bus.”

Meg: “But we would like to say, on record, we hate the Tories.”

unpeople’s debut EP is out now via SharpTone. The band play Bloodstock, 2000trees, RADAR and ArcTanGent this summer. This article originally appeared in the summer print issue of the magazine.

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