“It couldn’t be anyone else”: W.H. Lung on how to capture a unique live sound on record
A couple of months ago, I took a train from Leeds to Todmorden to celebrate the 25th anniversary of one of Manchester’s most well-loved indie labels, Melodic Records. Between party bags and Pad Thais, the event acted as a celebration of the label’s artists, past and present, with sets from long-standing signing Strawberry Guy and newcomers Lili Holland-Fricke and Shaking Hand. But the undisputed standout performance came at the end of the night from synth enthusiasts W.H. Lung.
The Golden Lion was packed in as tightly as possible as the Mancunian five-piece took to the stage. Making it to the bar at the back of the room would prove to be no easy feat, but, fortunately, it was a journey few of us would have to take. Soon into their set, singer Joe Evans popped a bottle of champagne and presented it to the crowd, encouraging us to pass it between audience members. It’s an easy way to get people on-side, but it wasn’t just the bubbly that left us all collectively reeling over W.H. Lung’s performance on the train home.
The band, and their frontman in particular, harboured a truly palpable energy on stage. Their performance was confident without veering into self-indulgent, euphoric, but polished. Joe had the audience in his vintage back pocket, and he knew it, too. It was the kind of communally awe-inspiring live set I can only compare to the live energy of LCD Soundsystem, which is, quite possibly, the highest of compliments available.
W.H. Lung are a live band through and through, so it came as no surprise when a chat with Tom Sharkett, the band’s guitarist, leant heavily in favour of discussions of playing and performing. The band didn’t get to tour much after the release of their debut, 2019’s Incidental Music, so it was only after their sophomore offering, 2021’s Vanities, that they got into the swing of touring and realised how essential it was to W.H. Lung.
“Joe was always confident,” Sharkett explains, “But not in the same way that he is now.” If the guitarist had to pinpoint the moment things shifted, it was at South By Southwest festival in 2022. The band played about seven gigs in a week, but their first didn’t go quite to plan. “I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, or if he’d even remember this as a significant thing,” Sharkett commented, “But I remember him dropping the microphone really early on into the first song and it making this clanging noise.”
Rather than giving in to the blunder, Joe took it in his stride. “He just was like, ‘Right, I’m not gonna let that define the performance’,” Sharkett remembered, “And then he just really just went for it.” It wasn’t just his bandmates who noticed Joe’s energy shifting on stage; audiences felt it, too. “People responded to it well,” the guitarist remembered, “I think he just fed off that.”
Two years later, W.H. Lung are one of the most exciting live bands in the north, and it’s not just down to Joe’s magnetic stage presence. He might be their “secret weapon”, to borrow Sharkett’s description, but it’s the synergy of the band as a whole that makes them so thrilling to watch. Second vocalist Hannah has an equally impressive voice, and Chris Mulligan’s arpeggiated bass is essential to their sound, a classic W.H. Lung move, according to Sharkett.
W.H. Lung know that their live presence is stellar, which is why they’ve tried to closely emulate it on their upcoming third studio record, Every Inch of Earth Pulsates. To do this, they’ve shifted a couple of processes from their previous albums. Rather than starting out with synths and electronica, as they did on the second album, W.H. Lung are refocusing, placing their attention, first and foremost, on great songwriting.
Sharkett explained that the band sought to create songs that could be played acoustically if required: “Not that we would dream of playing them acoustically in a million years, but you could do if you wanted to.” The guitarist certainly isn’t snobby about musicality or instrumentation, but he has discovered a new appreciation for going back to basics.
Touring with folk artist Julie Byrne and listening to old disco classics prompted a desire to create something “timeless”, which Sharkett believes is much more achievable with a voice and an instrument than any computer-based production. It also spawned a sound that belonged entirely to W.H. Lung. “I feel like there’s a couple of moments on the album that sound really unique to us,” Sharkett commented, “Which is one of the things I’m most proud of.”
The guitarist picked out a track called ‘Bloom and Fade’, which sounded particularly unique to the band. It’s a song that is still synth-led, driven by pulsing electronica, but it also relies heavily on guitars and the vulnerability in Joe’s voice. “It just sounds like it couldn’t be anyone else, which is the point I’ve always wanted to get to with the band,” he explained, “Stylistically, there’s still a few classic moves that we’ve pulled out, but I would say that it sounds a lot more succinct and a lot more personal, I hope, than previously.”
When it came to recreating their live sound on record, W.H. Lung knew that they needed to pick the right producer. They didn’t have to look far – Sheffield-based producer and engineer Ross Orton approached them after a show at the Brudenell, captured by their live presence just like the rest of us. He also had the perfect producer approach for what W.H. Lung were after. “His ‘thing, I guess, is, like… I keep thinking of the word bombastic,” Sharkett attempted to explain, “He just makes it sound big, doesn’t he? Just vibrant and banging.”
“In a way, we nearly went too far with it,” the guitarist admitted, “There was one song that we worried we’d made sound too big. The first single, actually. We had to remix that a couple of times because we thought we’d made it too big, and then it just sounded a bit too indie. I think we were like, ‘Fuck, we’ve not actually written just like a guitar indie guitar album.’”
Although the band wanted to recreate their live sound with this record, they never entertained the idea of recording live. They wanted the songs to sound big and vibrant, but they also wanted to maintain a sense of polish and precision. This goes both ways — when they’re working on their live set, Sharkett is keen to ensure that things sound as if they have been carefully considered.
It’s not just their sound that W.H. Lung are precious about while touring. Since they first started gigging, they’ve been picky about venues, making it difficult for themselves by deciding to only play venues that are rarely used as venues. Their first show took place at the Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester, where they had to haul their own PA to the venue. Since then, they’ve played in venues up and down the country, but there’s one that Sharkett still longs to add to the list.
“The venue that I went to most when I was a kid was the Apollo,” he remembers, “That’s the one that I would love to do. I hope that we can at some stage. I’ve not been for a while, but it’s kind of perfect, isn’t it? Just where it is and how it looks. It just looks really classy, doesn’t it? It just feels like a great, sort of old-school venue. It is definitely my favourite one in Manchester.”
Unfortunately, W.H. Lung aren’t surrounded by the most thriving underground scene in their home city. “The tale of modern Manchester is aggressive flat development, isn’t it?” Sharkett comments, “A lot of the mills that previously had rehearsal rooms and studios are being knocked down, rebuilt as flats. There have just been less places to rehearse, costing more money.”
Though Sharkett acknowledges that there are a slew of impressive independent producers in Manchester, picking out Joel Patchett and Lewis Keller as just two examples, he feels that the DIY scene for bands is slightly lacking. “Maybe that’s just the modern way,” he shrugs, “Those studios home to a roster of producers are few and far between these days.”
Perhaps the modern band scene in the northwest suffers from the city’s legacy, which seems to loom over it. Manchester has spawned some of the most essential names in indie and alternative music, from laddy Britpoppers like Oasis to fellow indie-synth blenders New Order. Sharkett still feels a sense of connection to this scene, having discovered and fallen in love with the story of Factory Records in his youth, but admits that people can often “fixate on the history.”
“It doesn’t have to define us,” he asserts, “And I honestly don’t think it does, personally. If you go to a club, you might occasionally hear someone chuck in ‘Temptation’ or ‘Perfect Kiss’ or something, but I personally don’t think you’re going around and hearing like the Smiths and Oasis non-stop. But it’s natural that younger generations will, at some stage, kick against those things.”
Even though Manchester might no longer have the infrastructure to support those up-and-coming bands, instead focusing on nostalgia for bands that once were, that hasn’t stopped artists from creating and thriving. As our conversation draws to a close, Sharkett opts to shout out a couple, sharing his admiration for fellow Melodic signees Shaking Hand and synth lover Modema, acknowledging how simultaneously wide-ranging yet intertwined the scene is right now.
Expectedly, W.H. Lung are set to return to the road this November following the release of Every Inch of Earth Pulsates. It’s a record that demands to be seen and heard live, to be performed, to be felt. The second single is out now.
