“Life is boring without it”: The Goa Express on their driving forces and debut album
Things for The Goa Express are pretty simple. Born in the most organic way possible, developing over time and rolling seamlessly through various achievements with not much more than friendship needed to power them; they’re a good old-fashioned band in the best way.
The Goa Express feel like a name that has been around forever, always buzzing around the arena of the next big things of the indie scene. Maybe that’s because the band themselves have, actually, been together a long time. “My brother Joe is in the band, so we’ve known each other all our lives,” singer James Clarke says. “And then I moved school from Todmorden to a school in Burnley and then bumped into all of them. I got moved into Joey’s form for being disruptive so we saw each other every morning and eventually, we all started hanging out”. More like a family than a band, Clarke says sweetly, “It feels like we’ve lived all our experiences together.”
Starting out as nothing but a gaggle of gobby teenage friends, the band was merely a mission to kill the small town boredom: “We didn’t really have much to do,” they say. “There’s only so much time you can spend outside and Burnley isn’t the nicest place to be hanging around when it rains a lot, so we started playing music. We’d sneak into our music room in school and mess around, which we got in trouble for.”
That used to be the only origin story you’d ever hear: a band brought together by friendship and a mutual love of music. Lost in an age of industry plants and label-built outfits, rocket fire quick shot to the top is prioritised over a slow burn build, even if the latter will shine longer. The Goa Express, comprised of James and Joe Clarke, Joey Stein, Naham Muzaffar and Sam Launder, make a great case for the old ways of doing things.
“None of our friends or families have ever been involved in music or anything like that, so we’ve literally carved a space for ourselves,” Clarke says, sharing that the decision to take the band seriously and really make a go of it was actually a somewhat recent decision. “We weren’t going to start a serious band off in year 11. So we had to wait naturally for our age to catch up with what we were doing,” he added.
Now older and wiser, with years of playing and writing under their belt, the band won’t let that distance them from where they began. All still remaining in the north, split between Manchester, Todmorden and Burnley, the group have defied the London-centric odds of the music industry. “It’s a surprise we’ve done so well to grow, especially from such a small place,” Clarke says.
But the distance from any distinct scene or industry hot spot could be part of their recipe to success. “I think it’s worked really well; we’ve been better off just being left to our own devices,” Clarke says as the band kept things tight, only inviting in a small handful of collaborators when it came to finally recording their debut album.
It’s strange, when talking to Clarke, the topic of their self-titled, long-awaited debut album feels oddly anticlimactic. Not because the album is a letdown, delivering a blistering ten-track tour of foolproof indie. Not because it’s not an exciting moment for the band, as a debut album obviously is. But simply because all of this is second nature to the band.
“This is just sort of what we do,” Clarke explains. “There’s not really an end goal; we just play shows and write music together. And whatever comes with that comes, but it’s not like we’re trying to do something to reach that next level or the next stage. This is just what we’ve been doing for so long.”
The breeziness of their creation and action as a band translates into a unique ease. When asked if they’re nervous at all about the release or if the move to make their debut album packed any pressure onto songwriting or recording, Clarke doesn’t even take a beat before he says, “None. Not at all”.
With a confidence in his voice that feels so seasoned and solid for a new artist on the brink of their first LP, he adds, “I don’t think we really felt like we were competing with anyone. So why would you feel pressured about releases?” Even when it comes down to how the album is received, Clarke’s answer comes back cool: “If people like it, they like it. And if they don’t, they don’t have to.”
The Goa Express seem to live in their own little world. Built when they were just kids in a music room, the band firmly still live in their little bubble that no external pressures, isolated peers or industry stakes could penetrate. Not even future goals seem able to break the surface; “It’s a continuous rolling ball. There aren’t moments of what’s next? Or what’s in the pipeline? We spend all our time hanging out or gigging or writing; things and opportunities pop up along the way, and we take them; we just keep on going. It’s always an ongoing process between us.”
Just a bunch of friends that started a band as teens and have never really gotten out of the habit, The Goa Express feels more than a personal archive or a memory box than a high-stakes debut. For the band, seems to represent nothing but years of time spent together, the way they all taught themselves and each other to be better musicians and the fun they’ve had with the band along the way. With no future goals to work towards or grand plans for what they’d like to do next, I ask Clarke a simple question, “what’s the driving force then?”
“Because life is boring without it,” he responds. “There’s not enough to do. But travelling is really fun, making stuff is really fun and doing it with your friends is even more fun. It’s a really simplistic drive, it’s not based on continuous growing opportunities. We just enjoy writing, we enjoy travelling, we enjoy hanging out, and that’s literally all there is to it.”
