Exclusive Ex Wives Interview

by Stephen McLeod on Wed, 2010/01/06 - 2:58am Post to Twitter

We reviewed their newest EP just a few days ago, and now Alastair of the Ex Wives has given us some answers to spurious questions.

Artrocker.com Stephen:
Hello there. You’ve been kicking about for a fair while now - when and how did Ex Wives actually start? Give us a bit of your story.

Ex Wives:
It all started three years ago and is a story of lust and wanton sexual desire. Anyway, Chris and I were in a band a few years ago with a girl. Cutting a long story short, she got pregnant so we kicked her out and then eventually found Colin working the streets. His cockney charm won us both over and, barring Christmas day ’08, we’ve never spent a night apart since.

Artrocker.com Stephen:
What sort of things inspire/get you going - in the musical sense that is - no dwarf fetishes here.

Ex Wives:
Usually if it’s loud, noisy and clever then we’ll get wet for it. My Disco’s Paradise album has been played a lot recently. It’s repetitive, harsh and minimal to the point of famine, but all in way’s I’d never have thought of. Cunts.

Bellini’s latest release and all those new Jesus Lizard reissues have been touched up more than I care to admit as well.

Artrocker.com Stephen:
Where do you see the band ending up, what sort of things do you envisage yourself doing? From experience - it’s fairly frustrating being in a place where you’re an unsigned band - getting the balance between the right number of gigs and releases to avoid disappearing, but also to avoid over-saturation. What’s your take on all of that?

Ex Wives:
I’d really like us to do a Christmas song this year. I mean, if we started working on it now I’m sure we’d come up with something half decent by then. We could be part of another ironic Facebook campaign to usurp X Factor and Charlie Brooker and Stephen Fry would write on Twitter about the length of my cock or whether I buy organic. Know that Ex Models song “That’s Ok I Don’t Feel Like A Shithead”? It would be like that, but Christmassier. All Shane McGowan and shit.

Outside of that we’re looking forward to sorting a small European tour. We get offered a fair few gigs in France and Germany so it seems rude not to, if only to feel vindicated in my choice of racial stereotypes.

It can be hard keeping a balance between playing enough etc and oversaturation. We tend to play less rather than more, simply because I’d be more likely to go see a band I liked once every two months or so than every bastard week. I’d rather it was more “who’s that?” than “fuck, them again”. Plus, we’re exceptionally lazy.

Artrocker.com Stephen:
Glasgow’s a bit of a musical mecca, and underground wise there is often some really quality bands that come out of it all. With the exception of We Are the Physics, who else is worth checking out? (and don’t say the likes of Frightened Rabbit kthx.)

Ex Wives:
PVH. Technically not a Glasgow band but they all live here now and have just started gigging again. They’re a careful blend of Lightning Bolt and those preset demo’s you got on the keyboards in school - bossanova five or whatever. I like them anyway.

Artrocker.com Stephen:
Do you find yourselves keeping abreast of happenings in the musical world, or does it just wash over you? Both locally and in the wider spectrum.

Ex Wives:
Locally, I tend to avoid it all. The “credible” music scene seems to be compromised of the same few groups of people who’d fuck a fisherman’s dog to get in the NME. Unfortunately they don’t have to. They just all shoot their load on the floor for each other, regardless of what style of music it is or if it’s any good, until someone slips and gets a mouthful. Bands playing their first gig at Optimo or being the next big thing before having even played a gig happens more often than feels comfortable.

Artrocker.com Stephen:
I have a vague recollection of seeing you at the Barfly where you sang about a horse, and how he was ‘massive’ - I could be totally way-off, and it end up being Titus Gein or something - am I?!

Ex Wives:
No, that was us. It was about losing your privately educated lover to her show horse and the subsequent realisation that you should have known all along this was how it would end.

It was rather imaginatively titled ‘Horses’ and received an Ivor Novello in 2007.

Artrocker.com Stephen:
Your newest release is entitled ‘Fucking Dutch’ - what have you got against the Dutch in particular? It seems a bizarre focus of vitriol when there’s surely so many other targets more deserving.

Ex Wives:
It’s called Fucking Dutch but alas it’s not about the country of Anne Frank’s capture. It’s more about cockfighting and the lengths some of us go to get off. Actually, scrap that. It’s about Holland and how the age of consent there is nine or whatever and you can buy smack at school off of your bicycle riding, prostitute teacher who lives in a windmill and pleasures herself with tulips. Sort of.

Artrocker.com Stephen:
Any plans to release any full-lengths at any point?

Ex Wives:
Yes, in between the constant sackings and personal tragedies that seem to follow us everywhere, we’ve started writing an album. Hopefully, it’ll be between eight and ten songs - all of which will be wonderful - and should recorded by the summer. Radio Is Down want to put it out for us so we really need to do that before they change their mind.

Colin wants to call it Amistad.

Artrocker.com Stephen:
I want to start a band. Will you start one with me?

Ex Wives:
Only if we call it The Rodney Trotter Handjob.