Circa Waves: Living the student life on the NME tour

The NME Awards Tour 2014 brought an eclectic mix of bands to Rock City this week in the form of Circa Waves, Royal Blood, Temples and tour headliners Interpol.


The Tab were lucky enough to catch up with Circa Waves before they opened the Nottingham gig on Sunday night.

So you guys all met in Liverpool, were any of you at uni there?

Kieran: These guys were, I was the only one that didn’t go to uni. I just kind of hung around… it seems to have worked out alright though I guess.

Sam: I still feel proper student-y, we had a day off the other day and all I did was play computer games, apparently I’ve not moved on from that kind of thing yet.

Joe: When I first left university I was like you know what, I’ll probably be an adult now… then I started forgetting all about moving towards that goal and started doing this, and I’ve regressed back to what I was doing before. You know what though, I much prefer this – it’s pretty cool.

Sam: I’ve also really got back into drinking again as like a proper hobby, so that’s good.

Big venues for Circa Waves

You’re playing venues similar to Rock City all through the tour, are these the biggest venues you’ve played?

Yeah, they’ve been in quite quick succession too. Brixton Academy on Thursday will be like 5,000 people though so that’s the big one, that one will be awesome. The bigger crowds are fun but when you’re supporting another band you have to work a little bit harder for it.

We just played a couple of sold-out dates before this tour where all the people were there for us and that was pretty special, suddenly it’s like you’re the prettiest girl at the party.

Have you had a good reception from the fans so far?

We’ve got like 30 more Twitter followers since this tour began too so that’s some heavy influence right there. We all know it’s not record sales, its Twitter followers you want. We’re gonna have to buy ourselves a massive following, that’s the future of music. Maybe we should bombard Katy Perry with requests for retweets as well.

As well as chatting to The Tab, Circa Waves took advantage of Rock City’s ping pong tables

So how long have you been together now?

Kieran: We started rehearsing together last June and started gigging in September.

I went to the NME tour last year and I didn’t even have a band at that point. It’s weird, we’ll probably finish this tour and be like, what the hell just happened?

Has getting into such a whirlwind process changed any of you along the way?

Definitely, we’re right little bastards now. On our rider there are loads of ladies shoes actually. Pre-worn. Some very specifically sized satsumas and little set-squares to make sure they’re exactly the right size. Then they all have to be built into a pyramid. Maybe some wafer-thin ham just to throw out the window. But apart from that no, nothing’s changed. We’re all still the same.

Check out our review of the NME tour

Any closing sentiments/ advice for our readers?

Um…stay in school! Yeah, be healthy, be polite. Enjoy kissing. If you wanna be in a good band, be punctual, be really nice to each other, learn all the chords. Do the dishes!

Circa Waves’ latest single ‘Stuck In My Teeth’ (picked as Zane Lowe’s Hottest Record back in February) is due for release on March 30th, by Transgressive Records