Kevin

That was "Ultralife" by Oh Wonder on WNYU. I'm super excited to be joined here in the studio by the band themselves, Anthony and Josephine. How are you?

Josephine

We are amazing! How are you?

Kevin

I'm doing really well. How are you doing in New York? It's a beautiful day right here. Have you done anything particularly fun?

Anthony

Yeah, we've been around Manhattan for the past eight hours.

Josephine

Yeah.

Kevin

Just walking around?

Anthony

Walking to work.

Josephine

Doing laps. [laughs] It's been amazing but the sun fooled us though because it was quite cold yesterday. So, I've layered up today and now I'm just sweating.

Kevin

As long as it's not humid, it's pretty decent. Were you out in the morning? It was pretty uncomfortable.

Anthony

But we love New York.

Kevin

This is a hard-hitting interview talking about the weather! [Anthony, Josephine laugh]

Josephine

We're British, we have to! [laughs]

Kevin

What brings you to New York? You’ve just come back from California but you're not doing any gigs, at least not right now.

Anthony

No, we're just kind of here en route on the way back to London.

Josephine

Yeah, it's our favorite city so it breaks up the flight a bit but it's also an excuse to come and eat in New York.

Anthony

And we're going to the theater.

Josephine

Oh my gosh!

Kevin

Aladdin.

Josephine

Headline news, we're going to see Aladdin!

Anthony

How did you know?! Had she already told you?

Josephine

Oh, no, the AOL thing.

Kevin

Yeah, the AOL interview.

Josephine

We did an AOL interview yesterday so it's all that I can really think about. I've just got Prince Ali going around in my head.

Kevin

Because it's been like a lifelong dream of yours, or at least for a couple years?

Josephine

Yeah.

Anthony

She wanted to be a musician and she wanted to see Aladdin.

Josephine

Yeah, I had a Princess Jasmine costume as a six year old. So this is a big deal.

Kevin

Don't you have Aladdin on the West End? Is it not the same?

Anthony

We do, we couldn't do it though.

Josephine

Yes, exactly the same. [everyone laughs] I watched it on the plane here just to prepare.

Anthony

That's pathetic, did you actually?

Josephine

[laughs] Yeah, I probably did. No, it's because I've had tickets to the London show, like so many times, but because we're always touring we always miss it so I have to sell the tickets. So, fourth time lucky.

Anthony

It'll be a good excuse for me to sleep as well.

Josephine

No!

Kevin

Not a theater fan, are you?

Anthony

Not really. [laughs] I'd prefer to be at a gig.

Kevin

Well you just played a real monster of a gig at Coachella, you did two weekends there, right? How was that?

Anthony

It was great. Yeah, we played at sunset, which was pretty beautiful.

Kevin

I saw those pictures. I mean, it's unreal.

Anthony

Yeah.

Kevin

People as far as the eye can see.

Anthony

It was pretty amazing. I felt very lucky being up there.

Kevin

Was that a dream of yours? Did you ever envision playing those huge festivals?

Anthony

Yeah, but we didn't really expect to.

Kevin

You're kind of songwriters more than – not more than you are performers but you're really a songwriting team, first and foremost.

Anthony

Yeah.

Kevin

So, is that a bit surreal that you're playing songs that maybe you never envisioned playing in front of 50,000 people?

Anthony

It's a weird one, isn't it? Because we just started off as writers at home and the plan was for Oh Wonder was never to write outside of England, let alone tour outside of England. So yeah, it's all very new to us and we love it.

Kevin

I know that you just announced a gig recently at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey, right at the end of May. How did that come about? Did you pick that in particular? I hope I'm getting that right, right? You are playing there?

Anthony

Yeah, we are. Yeah, we toured a lot of America. We've never done New York as a state before. So, we're very excited to kind of venture out and see the rest of the state. So is that like an infamous venue?

Kevin

Oh yeah, that's where Bruce Springsteen got his start.

Anthony

Oh, wow!

Kevin

I remember reading an interview with him in the early 80s when he was blowing up – are you a big Springsteen fan?

Anthony

Kind of.

Kevin

So, right after an album called The River, which was kind of his first number one mainstream hit, he started to do really well. He was very nervous about playing stadiums, not that he couldn't sell them out, but he didn't want to lose that crowd connection because he played for years in very small clubs, including that one, The Stone Pony. Do you have any trepidation about that? Like, with playing Coachella? Do you feel like you might lose a certain connection with the crowd that you might have if you're playing a smaller gig? I remember reading recently that Ed Sheeran said that when he plays Wembley or the O2, he feels like he's playing to just a big blob of people.

Anthony

Yeah.

Kevin

Is that strange when you played to like five people in one of your first shows and now you're playing to a mass of people?

Anthony

The small shows are always amazing, aren't they?

Josephine

Yeah, they are, yeah.

Anthony

Yeah, as soon as you go into bigger venues, it's harder to see people and feel their energy. But, also when you're in – we played Terminal Five in New York and that was probably the most energetic show that we've ever done.

Kevin

I can't believe I didn't go to that gig. I just never heard of it. Somehow I completely missed it! I've seen you twice, like we were talking before we went on the air. At the ICA in London and then at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. Somehow, literally the day of, I was wearing my Oh Wonder t-shirt and my friend said, "Hey, are you going to the gig?" and I said "what are you talking about?" and he said "Terminal Five!"

Anthony

We would've dropped you on the guest list!

Kevin

But I heard it was amazing. Anyway, at that gig that I went to at Music Hall of Williamsburg about 14 months ago, back in the winter of 2016, you mentioned that you were going to record part of your new album, right here in New York in Brooklyn. Why did you decide to go to New York as opposed to a more conventional music city like LA or Nashville or just to stay in London?

Josephine

Yeah, so we decided to pick New York, I guess, because it's like our favorite city in the world compared to any other place we've been. We feel super at home here. I guess it's very similar to London in the respect that there is so much going on. It's a city of culture and life and multiculturalism and I guess we're just really inspired when we play here. I wanted to put ourselves into a new scenario because, to write and record another album in the same place, I don't think we'd have necessarily got anything creatively different. So we wanted to push ourselves into new realms.

Kevin

Did you avail yourself of the 24 hour lifestyle? I know when I was in London, the thing that amazed me the most is that things shut down very early by New York standards.

Anthony

Yeah.

Kevin

Do you have any stories of being out late at night?

Anthony

Yeah, London closes at like 11pm. New York doesn't really have an off switch, which is awesome.

Kevin

Where were you in Brooklyn?

Anthony

In Williamsburg, it was very cool. So we grabbed some pizza at like, 2am. Grab a slice and write some songs. It's pretty cool.

Kevin

You're practically New Yorkers now!

Anthony

I know! We wish. [Josephine laughs]

Kevin

So, the first album was really more of a collection of singles effectively, right? I think it was the tracks that you'd released on SoundCloud plus I think a couple other ones in addition.

Anthony

Yeah, so we released 12 songs on SoundCloud, [one] every month, basically.

Kevin

Yeah, I think there were 15 on the record, right?

Anthony

Yeah, so it was really cool. It's a good way to just make sure that we're releasing constant music which is quite hard to do as an artist who doesn't have deadlines like normal jobs do with handing in a piece of work to your boss. This is very much, we had to hand in our work to our building fan base, which is really cool. It's a great opportunity.

Josephine

Yeah, for sure.

Kevin

Josephine, I know you're a fan of Carole King, right?

Josephine

Yeah, big fan!

Kevin

That's sort of similar. Like, it's a modern interpretation of what she had to do when she was writing for who she was working for. But, they basically said, like, you have to have X number of songs by this time, right? She had that very strict time limit. Is that beneficial creatively that you have the pressure of – you can't just go off and take forever to write it. You had, at the end of the month, you had to come up with something.

Josephine

Yeah! There is a tendency, I think that, if you're creative, a lot of our friends seem to experience it., where because there isn't a finite deadline or a goal or, you know, you don't have a boss breathing down your neck going, "I need this now on my desk, you know, Monday morning," that you just kind of then self doubt and then over question and over analyze everything that you produce, because I think, you know, if we'd have maybe written some of those songs and not released them yet, I'd probably look back at them now and go, "Oh, they're not good enough." You'll just never release anything. So, I think part of the joy of being creative is creating something in a moment and then releasing it and then going on to something new because you can just get bogged down by overworking something.

Kevin

I think there is a security in always being able to fix something or being able to tweak it. If you have the ability to, you'll never get something out.

Josephine

For sure!

Anthony

You can edit it forever, whereas there’s a point where it's good enough to release and that's kind of where, for us, the music should be released.

Josephine

Yeah.

Anthony

It's just when it's good enough for everyone to hear.

Kevin

How did your writing process differ on this new album, Ultralife? You had a little bit more time to write it and didn't have that constraint of needing to have something every month plus you're obviously, as we've talked about, in a different place. Was there any particular differences in how you approached the songwriting process itself?

Anthony

I think we were a bit more chilled about it, right?

Josephine

Yeah, it's overwhelming beginning. That was a scary thing, because it was like, "Okay, we have to write a whole album."

Anthony

That's why we started quite early on, I think. We started writing like six months before we needed to be writing. It took a lot of pressure off.

Kevin

Did you feel the pressure of having the first album be so unexpectedly huge that you felt like you had to follow it up with something bigger?

Josephine

It never felt big to us. It was just quite an overwhelming feeling that people were listening and then anticipating music. That's weird. But, because you're then not writing in a vacuum and you're not writing just for yourself, you're writing for other people. There's people going, "Oh, I can't wait to hear the new music!"

Anthony

That's the real pressure is other people's expectations, like fans.

Josephine

You don't want to make bad music because –

Anthony

Because people will stop listening! [laughs]

Josephine

Yeah, well, no, not in that way. In like, you know, you don't want to let people down. That's it.

Kevin

Talking about the AOL Build talk that you did yesterday, you mentioned that it was really more meant as a songwriting portfolio for you.

Anthony

Yeah, yeah, it was.

Kevin

To pitch to other musicians?

Anthony

Exactly, which is why we both sang on it.

Kevin

But isn't there a pressure there that you had to come up with songs? You're talking about that there's a pressure to deliver music to people. But, isn't it in a similar way that you had to deliver music to people but they were musicians rather than fans?

Anthony

Yeah, yeah.

Kevin

Is that a different kind of pressure? Is it more demanding that you have fans waiting for new music than having a musician say "no, that's not really my thing?"

Anthony

Yeah, because a lot of the time when you're writing for other artists, you're actually going through layers of people to get to the artists. It's like, management needs to hear it, labels need to hear it. So, what you're actually doing is writing a song and then [laughs] 50 people have to open the gate for someone to be able to actually hear, an artist or something.

Kevin

Have any of your songs been picked up by anyone? Are there any that we wouldn't know were you?

Josephine

I actually used to joke, I had the most incredible New Year's Eve experience once in a tiny, tiny, tiny bar in London. And um, what was the song? Oh, what's that Rihanna song? The massive one she did with Calvin Harris?

Anthony

Oh, it's got 'love' in the title.

Josephine

Oh, anyone?

Everyone in studio "We Found Love!"

Josephine

"We Found Love." Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you! I remember, when I'm drunk, for some reason, I pretend that I have a different job.

Anthony

You need to see a psychiatrist. [laughs]

Josephine

It's just a different career because me and my friends have funny things, like, we put you in it. So I'd be like, "oh, yeah, Anthony here. He builds rockets for a living. He works in a department of the aerospace engineering center of London" and then Anthony would have to be like, "Yeah, I love my job." I just remember, one New Year's Eve, "We Found Love" came on by Rihanna and Calvin Harris. So, I was like, "I wrote this song!" and then everybody around me was like, "Oh, my gosh, this is the girl that wrote "We Found Love"" and I was like, "Yeah, I am!" [laughs]

Anthony

You were probably drinking like a $1 beer.

Kevin

You're like, actually no, but here's our song!

Anthony

Coming up next!

Josephine

No, I don't know if you would have heard necessarily anything new.

Anthony

Often the stuff you do is ghost write. That's the thing. So no one should know.

Kevin

Have you been to karaoke?

Anthony

Yeah, actually I was at karaoke the other day with a friend and our song came on and I walked out the room. [Josephine laughs] Actually, it was with Lewis Watson! [Anthony laughs]

Kevin

What song was it?

Josephine

"Drive"?

Anthony

Yeah, "Drive" in a little Japanese karaoke bar.

Kevin

At what point did you leave the room? Right at the beginning?

Anthony

As it came on the screen and Lewis started singing. [Josephine laughs]

Josephine

The only karaoke – do you know a woman called Lianne La Havas?

Kevin

Oh, yeah!

Josephine

So, she's obviously incredible and has the most ridiculous voice and the only time I've ever been to karaoke, I was hanging out with my friend that plays with Lianne. After her show, everyone's like, we're going to karaoke so it was me and freaking Lianne La Havas and all of her backing band and backing vocalists. She was like, "oh, there's a Beyonce tune. Josephine can sing that" and I was like, "oh my god, I can't believe I'm trying to sing karaoke in front of Lianne La Havas who has like one of the best voices in the entire world” and all her band are like slotting in with all these harmonies. It was so bad. I left it to her after that.

Anthony

After the first note.

Kevin

Did you have a more spontaneous writing process with this new record? I mean, I know there's a disco inspired track that you were talking about at that [AOL] talk –

Josephine

Oh yeah.

Kevin

– that you got in one take. Is that very different from how you wrote the first one which you talked about recording to voice memos.

Anthony

Yeah.

Kevin

It's very, like incremental, as opposed to just doing one take and saying that's the track.

Anthony

Yeah, I think with our first time we had limitations of having a home studio so it was very much like, well, we can't really record those drums. So, we weren't really doing live takes as it were. A lot of the piano is obviously live but yeah, just being in the studio and having amazing musicians at your side is unbelievable because you can just record actual takes and feeling and emotion within.

Kevin

Did you have a band with you on the new record? At least on tour?

Anthony

Yeah and on the record so we got them in the studio

Kevin

When did you decide to do that?

Anthony

Probably midway through touring [the first album], we were like, "wow, alright, the second record needs to have this great energy" because our live shows were a lot different to our first record anyway. It's got a lot more energy at the shows.

Kevin

Speaking of Lewis Watson, I had him in here a couple of weeks ago and he was talking about how he's known you for quite some time, both of you, actually. He said, Josephine, one of your songs was his MySpace song.

Anthony and Josephine

Wow!

Anthony

That must've been years ago!

Kevin

I think the tendency is to think that somebody's most successful project, which I imagine would be Oh Wonder for both of you –

Josephine

For sure.

Kevin

– unless you have some music we don't know about.

Josephine

I've won Grammys with my solo career. [laughs]

Kevin

Under your pseudonym. [laughs] But, the most successful project is kind of the beginning of somebody's career for most people. Going back to Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run is his first record even though it's not and he had two records before then and played for probably 10 years before that.

Anthony

Yeah, yeah!

Kevin

How long have you both been professional musicians?

Josephine

About 10 years each, I guess?

Anthony

Yeah, at least. Touring musicians for probably 12.

Josephine

Yeah.

Anthony

Since we were kids!

Josephine

It's funny, people say, "Oh, you've come out of nowhere” and for us it's like –

Anthony

No, no, we've been working hard. [laughs]

Josephine

I loved it when we did our first Oh Wonder show at the ICA [in London] back in September 2015, people were like, "yeah, you seem so natural on stage for your first gig" and between us, we'd probably paid 1000 shows or something. But we were still nervous.

Kevin

Are you glad that you had a little bit of time before you were successful? Like, if you were 18 [instead]? One of the themes on this new record is the emotional strain of touring and you look at people who are very young, I mean, Justin Bieber is kind of the obvious person to reference here. But, a lot of other people as well who have hits when they're 18, 19 years old. It can be quite a whirlwind in a positive way, but can also be a bit destructive. Do you think a bit of maturity is good?

Anthony

Yeah, I think having those years of having to work hard with not a lot of success grounds you, literally.

Josephine

It does and I would say to anybody that thinks that they've missed an opportunity because, goodness knows, that there’ve been so many points in the last 10 years where I've gone, "Ah, if only that had happened I'd have made it." It's really easy to focus and weigh in on the missed opportunities but actually all of those things make you strong and make you value your own opinion, I guess.

Anthony

Also, when you eventually make it, whatever it is, for you, when you eventually feel like you've been successful in some way, you feel like you, you know, deserve it a little bit as well – not deserve it. But, everything was worth it. Definitely feels like, to have those years of frustration, the payoff is even better.

Kevin

Josephine, I know that you're a classically trained piano player.

Josephine

Mmhm.

Kevin

We were talking about this just before, it was just announced that you'll be supporting a band called Walking on Cars, who are an Irish band from Dingle in the south of Ireland and their piano player is a woman named Sorcha Durham, who is also classically trained. I remember listening to an interview with her recently in which she talked about how she needed to adapt her piano playing to fit more of a pop style. Did you find that your piano playing has changed with playing from Oh Wonder from what you did when you were a kid, presumably, to now?

Josephine

Yeah, oh, hugely! In an interesting way. I mean, I think having a classical foundation is such a privilege when you're writing pop songs because obviously pop songs are based on chords and you get to grips with scales and chords and progressions and in theory, you know, you can play anything then and write around anything. But yeah, playing the same songs every night for two years, my piano teacher would be killing me right now because obviously, you don't really get time to practice classical piano.

Anthony

In between touring, Josephine did another grade and learnt even more piano just to brush up. Very respectable.

Josephine

Yeah, I took lessons again for a year or two back.

Anthony

We have this thing as well, when we're writing Oh Wonder tunes – she's got a tendency to play the piano like Elton John. You’ve got bigger hands than him –

Josephine

What?! [laughs]

Anthony

– but he's got a certain style, he always plays with his right hand heavy.

Josephine

That's how I learned Elton!

Anthony

I know, it's amazing. So, when we're writing, I'm like, "Alright, yeah, less Elton."

Kevin

Do you want to hear a story related to that?

Anthony

Yeah.

Kevin

Like I was saying, I'm a music major here at NYU and I'm terrible on the piano. I never played it but I have to play it for a class that I'm taking. I was talking to a musician friend of mine and he said that, "well, you know how Paul McCartney isn't really good at playing the piano but [with] Elton John and Billy Joel, you can tell that they're classically trained." He's like, "I'm kind of like Paul McCartney." So that's what I tell people now, I'm Paul McCartney on the piano. [Anthony, Josephine laugh]

Anthony

Not bad!

Kevin

But I'm not Elton John! Do you like the constraint of pop music though? A lot of people complain about pop music and say "oh, it's a couple of chords together" whereas classical music is very, you know, noble and all that kind of stuff. Do you like playing pop music – not necessarily more than classical – but do you like the constraint that you only have three minutes to write a song?

Josephine

Yeah, I think.

Kevin

That's my favorite part of pop music is that you have a very finite amount of time to do it. People say, "Oh, pop music is really easy." Like, then go write some. If it's very easy, then everyone should be writing hits but obviously people aren't which I think is proof that it is more difficult than meets the eye. Do you like the constraint of it?

Josephine

So, I actually think that the constraints of pop music actually facilitate even more creativity and a wider range of expression than classical music, actually, because the best pop songs in the world are so difficult to write. It's so hard to write like a catchy melody, with a catchy, lyrical riff or something like that. The other thing that's incredible is that a lot of pop songs like the greatest songs in the world revolve around four chords, right? So, how insane that four chords in the same order can create such a multitude of varying songs? Like that's incredible.

Anthony

Yeah,. the only trouble is when you hear songs that do sound really similar. When, basically like, I think there's this thing of like, Justin Bieber had it. He's got a massive tune –

Josephine

"Sorry" is an incredible song

Anthony

– "Sorry" is amazing, yeah. Then, we got sent briefs as songwriters being like, cool, we want another "Sorry." I think for two years, everyone just tried to write another "Sorry." So, you get so much, like, just noise, just loads of rubbish tunes [Josephine laughs] based on a Justin Bieber song. So yeah, occasionally there's groundbreaking, amazing songs like Sigrid's new tune.

Josephine

"Don't Kill My Vibe"! Oh, my goodness.

Kevin

I was literally playing that last night.

Anthony

Amazing song.

Josephine

So good!

Anthony

It's one of the best songs of our time, I reckon. It's amazing.

Kevin

But, I think that's proof that, to come up with something unique in a pop framework, proves how difficult that actually is, like you're saying. Anyone can string together four chords but it's just very difficult to connect with people and the fact that you can just play something that sounds nice doesn't necessarily mean that it's gonna be a great track. So, no, I definitely agree. I was talking to Lewis when he was here about your production of his new record, which is really great, by the way.

Anthony

Thanks!

Kevin

How important is the role of a producer on the second record for an artist because, when Lewis was here, we were talking about Gabrielle Aplin – do you know her?

Anthony

Yeah!

Kevin

She worked with a producer named Luke Potashnick who produced her second record and I was a big fan of the work that he did because a lot of artists on their second record can maybe get a bit lost. With Coldplay, I think it happened on record three with X&Y and he brought in [Brian] Eno –

Anthony

Yeah.

Kevin

– for Viva la Vida. Did you produce this new one yourself?

Anthony

We both did, yeah.

Kevin

Was that a difficult decision? Or did you debate bringing somebody else in to get a different take on it?

Anthony

No, we didn't really feel we needed it. It's just that thing of, our sounds come from us initially so we didn't really want to. There might be a point when we need another ear on it but that would be the only reason to do it. I feel like it's in us to keep making records and that's why people like our band, it's not just the songs, right? I think it's everything that surrounds it.

Kevin

Is it difficult at all to be objective about your own songs? Obviously, producing for other people, you have a certain amount of distance that you can have from it, because you're not the one creating it. Are you able to hear something that you've written and say, "No, that's not very good."

Anthony

That's the easiest. With songwriting, it's quite easy to be like, "Oh, that doesn't sound very good. Let's move on." But, with production, it's a bit harder to judge whether something's good, I think. So, you have to wait a while and kind of listen over a certain amount of time.

Kevin

Josephine, I read a quote from you that said that the band was ever meant to be a live project to begin with. So what was the goal of it?

Josephine

To be a songwriting duo, purely. We just wanted to sit at home and write songs for other people. So, for us it's a complete miracle that we're now touring, it's incredible.

Kevin

But I mean, isn't this the dream to play the sunset stage at Coachella and have people as far as the eye can see? I mean, was the dream really just to be behind the scenes for your entire career?

Anthony

I just don't think we even thought of it as a possibility.

Josephine

It's impossible. But, I think for any kid in their bedroom, touring the world is impossible. Like, I always thought it was.

Anthony

We've always toured around England and Scotland and all that but to think that we'd be playing Coachella...

Josephine

Oh, yeah. and I feel like to admit that that's something that you want is so terrifying for most people.

Anthony

It's a good attitude to have because now everything is a bonus, essentially. Everything that happens to our band is just pure bonus.

Kevin

Thinking about people who started out primarily as songwriters, like Carole King who we mentioned already, and somebody like Bruno Mars who would be a more recent example where he was behind the scenes for years really. But, I think they probably – actually I think Carole King had a bit of trepidation, didn't she, about planning her own material live?

Anthony

Yeah.

Kevin

I think there's a story about that. But, I think pretty sure Bruno wanted to be out in the front. [Josephine laughs] I'm pretty sure. I can't imagine him just staying in the control room for his entire life.

Anthony

No, there's a lot of people who have come just from songwriting and producing.

Kevin

But, when you say that you never really envisioned it – you never had the goal of selling out Wembley or something?

Anthony

Honestly, no. We would've been happy with playing –

Josephine

Yeah, for me anyway, my dream goal is if I won a Grammy for writing a song whether that was my own song or somebody else's song. I'd prefer to do that 10 times over than selling out Madison Square Garden 50 times.

Anthony

Yeah.

Josephine

Yeah, songwriting for me is the real art.

Anthony

That's where you'd feel most success.

Josephine

For sure!

Kevin

Okay, that's really interesting. So, when you're writing with the intention of pitching to another musician, like you did with your first record, in what ways does that differ from knowing that you'll be writing for yourself like with the second one? You knew that these are your own tracks.

Josephine

Writing for yourself is so personal and cathartic and, actually, the moments – I don't know about you – but I find when I write on my own, it's like I've had this feeling and I need to try and solve the feeling. So, whether I'm depressed, and I'm like, "oh, I need to solve this and write a song and get the depression out." That's what the song will be. When you're writing for other people, you create a scenario and you go, "Okay, what does it feel like to be depressed?" Okay, let me think about that. So, for me they're two totally different ways of thinking and being creative and using different bits of your brain and one is way more conscious than the other. So, any song I write for myself, I feel like I look back on it, and you go, "Whoa, where did that come from? That's really crazy." Whereas the first Oh Wonder record was very conscious, I feel.

Anthony

Yeah, we set briefs.

Josephine

Yeah, we set little briefs for ourselves.

Anthony

I feel like the new album is more our take on life.

Josephine

Yeah, it's way more personal.

Anthony

That's just coming from having toured.

Kevin

Conscious in the sense that you were thinking, I want to write a song about characters?

Josephine

Really small, so like conscious, like, let's think of a cool word. So, for example, Ultralife, that was a real, like, let's think of, let's invent a word and we sat and we went through loads of different words, right? We came up with the term Ultralife. Whereas, when I write other songs... I'm trying to think of a personal song I wrote. I made up a word called a heartbeat wake or something. That's not conscious, that just popped out of my mouth and I was like, "Whoa, I'll go with it." I don't know.

Anthony

No, I think in the new album things just fall down from the sky.

Josephine

Oh yeah, of course they can!

Anthony

But "Technicolor Beat," we were just sitting at a piano and that word came out and those things do happen. It's weird. Yeah, there's no formula to how we write.

Kevin

Obviously, streaming has been really important to your own success, first on SoundCloud and then on Spotify. I added up on my iPhone calculator, your total number of streams, and you'll be happy to know you have more than the population of this country in terms of total streams – 325 million and the U.S. is 321 million.

Anthony

That's bizarre!

Kevin

So, congrats, you've got the U.S. onboard. [Josephine laughs] But obviously, there are musicians who have been critical of streaming, Taylor Swift would be the primary one. But, as songwriters more than anything, what is your take on streaming? A lot of musicians obviously talk about royalties and obviously, that's really important. Does it have a particular effect on songwriters? Is it better? Or is it worse than when people were out buying records?

Josephine

I think better and worse. I think it's better because people are now trying to write better songs. They're trying to write one good song that pops out because people consume songs song by song on streaming, right? It's playlists.

Anthony

It's got to be a song that pops out on a playlist.

Josephine

So, I think people are writing better songs but then the album, I think personally as a work of art, is suffering a little because then it becomes less of a priority to write an amazing record. It's more like we need the big singles and we even found that, with this record, like for us, we couldn't pick the singles. We couldn't pick the songs we wanted to release first. Because to us, for all 12 songs on this new album, we can happily play you any of them or make videos for all of them or any of them. You know, we've been playing them to people and go "pick a number one to 12 and that's the song you can listen to" so we don't – for us, we don't have one song that's the best song.

Anthony

We've definitely been conscious about writing an album and not just writing a couple of good tunes and –

Josephine

– filling it up.

Anthony

Yeah. It's that old Sum 41 All Killer, No Filler. I think there might be too much filler around these days.

Kevin

What do you think about how John Mayer released his new tracks in three batches? It's an interesting way, kind of halfway between an album and a single.

Anthony

Yeah, yeah.

Kevin

Do you think it's a positive thing that people are focusing more on singles as opposed to albums? Older people tend to say "Oh, back in the day, [we had] great albums." But, just looking for tracks to play on the radio here, I always look forward to Fridays because music comes out then and you can find one [great] new track from a musician. I don't really necessarily think, “oh, I want to hear a whole album.” What is your opinion on the attention span – I'm doing air quotes right now – because a lot of people talk about that in a critical way.

Anthony

I think that goes with the whole, like, culture of kids these days is their attention span of everything in life is tiny. The fact that they, every five minutes – we found out a fact about Instagram that people open it on average 79 times a day, which is crazy. So, they're also going, attention's gone, so I'll open up another app or I'll go back on it. It's just, that's just what it is so that's culture these days. So, you can't really blame it on kids to now just listen to one song because we've now put them in a society where everything is short and everything's quick and everyone wants everything really quickly and instantly.

Josephine

The one thing I do miss, which I used to do as a kid when I can consumed records, is you'd listen to an album from A to B, start to the end, and you would define what your favorite song was and that wouldn't be based on the number of Spotify streams it had or whether it's put on a radio playlist or whether it's on the New Music Friday playlist. You would sit there and go, "I love track seven. That's the one that speaks to me." You're not told what the best song is and I miss that.

Anthony

Because the culture now is, on Spotify, to go on the top song of an artist. When you find their page, you're like, "oh, what's the second one? What's the third one?

Josephine

That's really weird. Even on our page, we have no control over that but people will go on to our page and they'll listen to the top song and I don't necessarily think that's the best song. That's not the song I think that represents our band best. It's really weird. But, that just perpetuates because people go on and go "oh, that must be the best song because it's got however many plays."

Anthony

Yeah.

Josephine

So, it's bizarre. So, you're just making one song massive? I don't know.

Kevin

Do you like to buy physical records?

Josephine

Yeah, we buy records.

Kevin

I love looking through liner notes because I want to know who's playing bass on that track and all that kind of stuff. I mean, you can find it online but there's something about it. That's my one nostalgia bit right there.

Anthony

The credits?

Kevin

Yeah, I love looking at the liner notes. You mentioned earlier that there was a bit of a discrepancy between your first record and the live shows and that the live shows were a lot more energetic than the record was even on more chilled out tracks like "All We Do." Did you try to resolve that paradox on the new record?

Anthony

So, to have –

Kevin

– to have the actual record be more in line with what the live show is.

Anthony

Yeah, I think naturally having played loads of festivals, especially in America where we've played a lot, you're in front of a massive crowd and then you'd play a slow song and people, once again, have short attention spans [laughs]. At festivals, it's that pressure of they could be going and watching someone else but they've chosen to watch you so you need to try and grab their attention for as long as you can. So, I think a song like "Ultralife" we wrote knowing that we wanted to have an energetic song in the set and it just kind of popped out.

Kevin

Speaking of playing live, can we expect any New York City shows within the next year without revealing too much?

Anthony

Yeah, we are coming back in the fall.

Kevin

When is the new record out?

Anthony

June 16.

Kevin

Can you throw to your brand new single that just came out?

Josephine

As in you're going to play it?

Kevin

Exactly!

Josephine

Oh sweet! This is Oh Wonder and you are about to listen to a very special song of ours that's called "My Friends."

Kevin

Thanks so much!

Josephine

Thank you.

Anthony

Cool, thanks, dude!