Tribes return in 2023: “Everything in your early 20s seems more significant”
2023 has been a stellar year for music, the icing on the cake being the return of Camden heroes Tribes. After bursting onto the scene in the early 2010s, the quartet established a dedicated fanbase, releasing two albums, Baby in 2012 and Wish to Scream, the following year. However, things did not pan out as fans or the band had hoped.
Their first album sparked a fire of hope, only to be extinguished by a comparatively mediocre sophomore effort. Recorded in Los Angeles, the group let their mass of influences wash over them, and, in addition to other familiar variables, they created a record that lacked the punch of their debut and resulted in Tribes being dropped from Island Records. With this miserable reality, in November 2013, Tribes announced that it was the end of the road.
Fast forward to 2020, and things had changed. Each member had followed different paths since the split. Frontman Johnny Lloyd enjoyed an acclaimed solo career and had a daughter, Tallulah, with actor Billie Piper in 2019. Meanwhile, guitarist Dan White became a production whizz, and bassist Jim Cratchley plied his trade with Leeds’ alt-rockers Dinosaur Pile-Up. Accordingly, when the group announced a one-off reunion for a December charity show that year, onlookers were surprised to see the quartet back together for one last spin around the block.
The wheels were set in motion for the reunion at a 2019 Dinosaur Pile-Up gig when the band had all individually gone to watch Cratchley perform. The crackle of connection begins to pop in the ears of the band members. After a couple of weeks, Lloyd texted White, informing him that the tenth anniversary of Baby was on the horizon and that they should perhaps do a show. Everyone agreed and booked to play at London’s Lafayette for the one-off celebration.
With the rust of a decade-long hiatus a constant threat, the group scheduled a couple of warm-up dates in Manchester and Sheffield to prepare. In a testament to the gravity of their first chapter, all three sold out quickly, with the London event taking only seven seconds to do so. Duly, the hometown show was upgraded to the Kentish Town Forum, and at this point, Tribes realised they should give it another go. They had unfinished business and collective pain to dispel.
Galvanised and offered ample time over the lockdown, the four started writing together, and the material flowed. It resulted in the group’s first album in a decade, Rabbit Head, undoubtedly the most distilled version of Tribes yet. Underpinned by a group of individuals happy to be back together and without the extraneous noise of the first time around, the quartet are now firing all cylinders, with the tank refilled by a wealth of experiences and maturity. Now is the perfect time for them to finish their story.
Now that Tribes have returned with Rabbit Head and are back on the live circuit, with a recent in-store run under their belt, I caught up with Johnny Lloyd to discuss the band’s current status. He was in good spirits as the group looked forward to their homecoming show at Camden’s KOKO later this month, a night promising to substantiate the significance of their return.
“It feels great,” Lloyd commences, setting an assured tone for the rest of the conversation as he looks forward to another future with Tribes with a new album already under their belt. “It’s felt good since, I mean, I’m not sure how many people know, but we actually got talking again in 2020. So, we’ve actually been back together as long as we were around the first time, which is fucking weird, isn’t it?” After a brief burst of laughter, he clarifies: “But no, it’s just great to have those guys back in my life, and it’s just been so much fun. We’re a lot more grateful for it and having more fun. It’s less stressful than it was the first time. Not that it doesn’t mean the same this time around. It’s just that everything in your early 20s seems more significant.”
I was lucky enough to catch Tribes playing an intimate show at Camden’s Dublin Castle in March, and there was a tangible sense of optimism shared between the figures on stage. An extended period away from the limelight and a collection of life experiences, including fatherhood, have affected the group’s focus. Lloyd wasn’t the only one who became a father during this time either; “Everybody did,” he reveals and agrees that the journey into adulthood has “massively” influenced operations.
“It makes you more mature to deal with each other, and it makes any obstacle in your way seem a bit trivial compared to the greater things you have in your life, in terms of kids and that sense of responsibility. We were completely lawless when we first met. So it’s a nice feeling to have, you know, ‘I’ve got to go, mate, I’ve got the school run.’ It’s like ‘Fuck’, it still shocks me. It’s very, very different affairs to what it was in early Camden; it was wild compared to how we live now,” he says with a wistful chuckle.
“So, we’re more structured in terms of when we work and our work ethic,” he adds. “It was always quite intense when we were recording or rehearsing – we took it very seriously – but now, it’s like we’ll do 15-16 hours in the studio and then hop on the bus and the tour. It’s totally different.”
Regardless of the intensity of recording and rehearsals, Tribes moved at a slower pace back then. While the school run may pose the odd issue, in reality, early mornings and structured schedules have allowed the group more time to dedicate themselves to their craft. Avoiding any unhelpful romanticism is clearly important; however, for Lloyd, returning has been like “regaining a family” as well as a satisfying sense of self. In a twist of self-awareness seldom heard from successful musicians, he adds: “For me in particular, I will always be Johnny from Tribes. It doesn’t really matter what I do.”
It’s something that affected his solo work, too. He rarely played a Johnny Lloyd show that people weren’t shouting ‘Sappho’ or other Tribes song names at him. “It feels full circle and that we’ve come back as adults,” he posits. Additionally, the music industry has starkly changed since the first time, meaning things are different outside of interband relations too, which has also impacted their new approach.
Tribes have got the “bug again”. This fever has been so unrelenting that they’ve amassed a wealth of material, which ticks over onto album four. “There’s a lot more songs to come,” I’m informed as he excitedly extols the promise of the new music to come. He used to punch in the dark for his songs, he concedes. However, the group are now much better musicians and songwriters than they were before. His whole process was picking up the guitar, and if the track came immediately, he’d keep it. “It was like rolling the dice every single time I tried to write something,” he reflects.
Now that Lloyd is writing closely with White as a duo, a fresh dynamic has breathed new life into Tribes. Regarding the production aspect – which is a significant player in the success of Rabbit Head – it was something White, aside from his songwriting abilities, had honed in his time away from Tribes. This is a new thing for the band, too, as the green-haired guitarist was never seen at the controls in their first chapter.
Exemplifying how quickly things are now moving for Tribes, Lloyd says: “We can spend all this time in the studio constructing the songs and not worry about being on the clock or having people come down to rehearsals, A&R or whatever; it just doesn’t happen anymore. The song is almost finished the day after we’ve written it, which was exciting about making Rabbit Head.”
Now that the gloves are off, the frontman thinks fans are to see a more distilled version of Tribes moving forward. A part of this is that there’s no defined scene anymore, meaning that the four can fully express themselves without the limitations of a homogenised sonic aesthetic. “It doesn’t feel like there’s any scene around the band stuff. We don’t have to sound like The Libertines or The Strokes anymore. You can really do whatever you want,” he says before outlining how this has opened them up to new pastures. “We also don’t care about what other people think as much as we used to. It’s been great to get the good reviews this month, but we weren’t expecting those. It’s been a nice eye-opener in like, ‘Oh fuck, we can play like Wyld Stallyns in Bill and Ted,’ or just mess around in the studio and get those sounds that we grew up with when we were kids, which is a little bit of hair metal here and there, amongst a shitload of R.E.M, and for me, ’90s Alanis Morissette and Nirvana.”
“All of those things that really shaped us, we can lean into. Whereas before, I think we would have been a bit scared – I don’t think a lot of those songs on the record would have made it the first time around because it wasn’t quite the sound of what we were going for. Now, you just throw everything at the wall and whatever sticks, we take it. There were about 50 songs on this new album, and we got it down to 16, so there’s a new record in there somewhere… I think.”
Tribes have managed to create their most all-encompassing album yet by not giving a damn. On the new record, there are flecks of traditional indie, touches of 1990s nostalgia and the odd od to classic rock of the 1970s, but it seems like the group is trying to shut out any direct inspirations: “Because we did such a stylised second album in LA – it was like making a country record almost – and because we got it so wrong on that one in terms of letting our influences dominate what we were doing, this time we left it at the door a little bit,” he laughs.
“I read Flea’s memoir,” Lloyd continues, “And I was trying to circumvent all of the bands from the mid-1980s punk scene, but not really getting it and not really getting into it. So, that was what I had on my mind for ‘Medicine’ and stuff.”
“But really, we left it at the door and just went back to the core, which is almost like a feeling, as opposed to, ‘Let’s make this sound like Aerosmith,’ or whatever. It was, ‘Let’s make this sound rad as fuck, and if everybody agrees, then we’ll just move on.’ So we weren’t pulling on influences as heavily as we have done in the past,” he adds. “When we were obsessed with 1970s rock on Wish to Scream and had a strange opportunity to actually live like that for a while, we were not really considering who we were as a band. I think when we lose that core element, which is the thing between us, it gets a bit strange.”
The group have a new cunning device for detecting the unwanted parts of influence: drummer Miguel Demelo. The percussionist is the filter for the band, and if he doesn’t like something, it will be impossible to get him to play it. He says it’s been like this since the start and that “so much shit got lost” because the South African – who he refers to as ‘Miggy’ – thought it wasn’t cool. Following this, as Cratchley has been in “a metal band” for the past eight years, he’s got a “bigger thump and a whole new box of tricks” in addition to being incredibly tight. It all hinges on those guys, the Tribes vocalist reasons. If they like the vibe, they go with those songs: “That’s where Tribes is really, the rhythm section.”
Lyrically, the group have found a new vein of expression on Rabbit Head. The most apparent slower moment, ‘Dad I’m Not A Tough Guy’, is most pointedly pitched at introspective lyricism with the regretful title and melancholy impression of the main refrain. But not all is as it seems.
“It’s on the nose; it wasn’t necessarily to my dad,” he reveals. “It was an event that actually happened at a football match with my stepson. I was in the crowd and was in the queue for a bacon butty. I just looked like a musician. I have long hair and whatever, and some of the older geezers didn’t like that. So it was just one of those things. I grew up in the Midlands, and that would happen a lot in the Midlands or up North, but never in London. So I thought that’s quite an interesting feeling. So I start minor on the verse and go to major with this confession.”
The song came to symbolise the newfound veracity that everyone learned over lockdown. In one of the most honest junctures in the conversation, Lloyd reflected: “Something happened to everybody in lockdown, and we all got a bit more confessional. We spent more time with the family and had a moment to reflect, but it was also like, ‘What the fuck is going to happen here?’ So we all opened up a bit, and we definitely did in the band. We had to do a lot of working things out before we started recording, so it opened the can for everybody, and we were talking honestly with each other. I think the songs benefitted from that.”
After discussing the state of the music industry and how it has transformed since Tribes broke out, Lloyd named a couple of younger groups he’s into. Fontaines D.C. and Demob Happy are two that stand out for him, labelling the latter’s new record, Divine Machines, as “wicked”.
“Also, I’m in the band with the guy whose band is one of my favourite bands, Dinosaur Pile-Up,” he clarifies before touching on some of the issues of modern music consumption. “Apart from that, nothing’s really shot itself up. My favourite thing to do at these intervals is talk to young people in bands, so I’ve been handed a lot of demos and links and stuff; that’s kind of where I’m receiving it at the moment. I think that’s my own fault on Spotify because I just plugged stuff that I already like on all these devices. I don’t listen to the radio as much anymore, and it’s tricky to find a source that gives it to me all in one.”
The past two years have seen many records that confirm rock music is as healthy as ever. However, having been a fan since the halcyon days of guitar music’s reign, I was comforted to find out that while it may seem to be struggling every few years, Lloyd believes that traditional rock and roll will never truly die.
“I don’t think it’ll ever go anywhere,” the singer confirms, “Because there’s a certain rawness of emotion you can only find with a guitar and voice. It’s so drilled into us from such a young age what those feelings are, because we’ve had them all before with different bands, right? But when you really hear something that is done by a band, and is done well, I think that sends you to a different place than a lot of electronic, dance, rap music or whatever you listen to. So I don’t think it will ever die. It sits there waiting to light people up.”
