But that’s not for a reason, that’s just how they happen to form. We didn’t realise it and then our friend pointed it out – they’re all really self-assured and demanding, and all from a first-person perspective. “It’s quite funny, there’s a kind of sadboy triumphalism about all the lyrics. Vocals are sketched out, with Llewellyn forming the words around the sounds almost subconsciously. “We’ll quickly have shared ideas rather than it being totally directed by us three.” It’s a process of improvisation and repetition of a basic idea that the band build around. “As time’s gone on I feel like we’ve developed a kind of shared style together,” notes O’Malley. Llewellyn, Hughes and O’Malley remain at the core of the project, but Hughes is keen to emphasise that the others are “band members, not session musicians.” They’re increasingly involved in the writing process. But then we didn’t want to lose that texture from the band, so it just turned into a permanent fixture.” “When we wanted something else, we got someone else in to do that thing. “It was definitely a case of necessity,” Llewellyn admits. They decided to introduce a violin player when writing ‘Dark blue’: “I was listening to a lot of Christopher Tignor,” recalls O’Malley, “– music where violins were being incorporated but not in a neo-classical sense, more as drones and stuff.” Another violinist followed, originally as a stand in but they “couldn’t bear to play without either of them.” Then came a second drummer, after Llewellyn brought in a cello (he’d learnt as a child). “I remember that being a constant reference point, like, ‘If we can get our drums to sound like that, the band will be amazing.’ It hasn’t happened yet.” “When we were first playing there was one Mogwai song – not even that, the sound of one, like, snare on a Mogwai song that we were just desperate to emulate.” Hughes laughs. Early influences came from country, emo and post-rock. They roped in O’Malley – a teenage friend and bandmate of Llewellyn’s – in 2017, and then a bassist, and played privately as a four-piece for the best part of a year. When Hughes and Llewellyn, who met while studying in Manchester, moved down to London for their master’s degrees, they began experimenting in practice rooms, wanting to develop the time spent playing together at uni into something more formal. Watching ‘Dark blue’, it’s hard to imagine caroline as a “conventional guitar band”, but for a while they were just that. It’s a remarkably polished debut, and a bold statement of intent. The song itself is almost meditative in the way that Slint were, building over eight-and-a-half minutes, slowly introducing new instruments and a sole, melancholic vocal until it reaches a climax a cacophony of creaking strings and clattering drums. The clip shows the eight-piece band playing in an abandoned swimming pool, the camera shifting from super close ups – of mouths or ears or cymbals – to distorted reflections in a mirror. Then came a live video for a track called ‘Dark blue’, released to announce the Rough Trade deal. The gigs themselves were often held at “secret locations”. The only clues arrived as images accompanying gig announcements: train window vistas, a power plant, a submerged car, shopping trolleys slotted together in a perfect circle. There was nothing to stream, nothing on YouTube. Before the group signed to Rough Trade at the beginning of this year, their online presence was as ambiguous as it was minimal. Silliness isn’t necessarily what I’d expected from caroline – but then I hadn’t known what to expect at all. “Michael, put it down!” Bickering descends into laughter. “What is that noise?!” “Is it me?” asks Casper Hughes, one of caroline’s two guitarists. Jasper Llewellyn, the band’s drummer/cellist/vocalist has headphones on and is bearing the brunt of it. Our interview has become a video conference, but after about a minute we resort to audio-only so we can talk over each other in real time, rather than with a 30-second delay. In a scene that has played out across the nation ad infinitum these last four months, three members of caroline and I are trying to work out whose computer the tapping sound is coming from.
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