Internet Forever – ‘Cover the Walls’
They’ve only just released their first single, but in a weird way, no band better exemplifies underground pop music in 2009 than Internet Forever.
Meeting via the comments section of vocalist Laura Wolf’s blog, the British trio (Laura, Craig a.k.a ‘Heartbeeps’ and new member Chris) make home-brewed pop that sports the same combination of catchy hooks and noisy context as Blank Dogs, Times New Viking and No Age, but with a dizzy feel to their songs that’s like a headlong rush into sweaty euphoria. They’ve been described as “sounding like falling in love as it happens”, and one listen to debut single ‘Cover the Walls’ should make you agree.
FACT caught up with Laura before Internet Forever’s London show at The Social to talk about blogs, chopper bikes and kids with guns.
So you guys met in the comment box of a blog – what blog was it? What were you discussing?
“Well, I was in a few bands, and I used to write this half-arsed blog, where I’d blog about doing shows and stuff like that. And my band were going on tour, so I’d wrote about that, and Craig – who I knew online from his own blog, and the music he used to record as Heartbeeps – just posted a comment saying ‘I want to form a band called Internet Forever!’. And I replied ‘can I be in that band?’, and he said ‘yes’. And as it happened, my band were playing in Cambridge the next week – where he’s from – and I went to his house, and we recorded a song together. I know it probably wasn’t the smartest idea to go to some stranger’s house off the internet…”
It’s only Cambridge. I don’t think there’s anyone that nasty in Cambridge.
“Yeah, but I did meet him outside the Grafton Shopping Centre, which is this really grotty mall type thing. Well, grotty for Cambridge. I recognised him though; he was standing there with his 1970s chopper bike. Anyway, we went to his house and recorded a song called ‘3D’, which is about how people seem different when you meet them in 3D – in real life. So yeah, that’s the nerdy story of how we met: we’re pretty much the coolest band ever. Or not.”
I was gonna mention ‘3D’ – it’s a really cute subject for a song. What’s ‘Cover the Walls’ about?
“[laughs] Well, that one’s about breaking up with someone. It’s not so cute: if you listen to the lyrics, it’s about ‘we could cover the walls with you’, like, you know, we could come round and sort you out mate. And it’s just me singing the verse, but then for the chorus everyone joins in, like ‘we could cover the wallllls with you!!”
Power in numbers.
“Yeah. Not that Internet Forever like, go round to my ex-boyfriends’ houses beating them up or anything.”
Well if the band doesn’t work out it’s something you could try. What’re you and Craig’s backgrounds in music, anyway?
“Well Craig used to – still does – record solo stuff under the name Heartbeeps. It’s like, experimental solo noise pop stuff, it’s really good. And I was in like five bands, who mostly made riot grrrl type stuff. But I’ve had to leave all those now. I wish I could still be in all these bands at once, but when Craig and I started putting songs on our MySpace, the blogs picked up on it really quickly – 20jazzfunkgreats and all these great blogs like that. We started getting booking requests for shows, and we only had three songs! So we had to turn down those bookings and focus on writing more songs for Internet Forever.”
That riot grrrl thing really comes through you know. I was gonna ask if that’s what you were into…
“Yeah, I guess prior to Internet Forever I was in that, er, scene. I feel a bit pathetic sometimes, because we’re a lot more poppy than the bands I was in previously. Like sometimes I feel like I should be, you know, rocking out more. But maybe that’s something we can incorporate into our sound as it goes on. Plus my solo stuff is quite cheesy electro-pop type stuff, so Internet Forever’s a good balance between the two.”
It’s quite noisy at times though. Did you intend to record quite lo-fi when you formed the band, or was it just done out of necessity?
“Er, it’s a bit of both really. I don’t think we got together thinking let’s make lo-fi, but the main two bands we were probably into at that time were Times New Viking and Casiotone [for the Painfully Alone]. So we did probably want to make stuff a bit like Times New Viking. But a lot of it was through necessity: when we were recording songs together it would be over the internet – me in London, Craig in Cambridge – sending parts back and forth, making the tunes on Garage Band. And all the vocals were just us singing into the mics on our Apple Macs, so it obviously ended up recorded pretty roughly – there was no studio time or anything.”
Is that still how you make tracks now?
“Not so much now. When we started focusing on Internet Forever, and we realised we would have to play these songs live, we had to rethink, because obviously we’d just layered the parts on Garage Band previously. That’s when we got Chris [Internet Forever’s drummer] in, and so it changed the whole dynamic: he’s a lot more musical than us, and he needs space to play, so now we’re spending time in studios and stuff – it’s mainly pulling in favours from friends though.”
What other bands do you think are echoed in Internet Forever’s sound?
“Well, we were both listening to Los Campesinos! a lot when we wrote a lot of these tracks. I think that comes through. We both really like the Unicorns…God, I can’t think of any other bands.”
Yeah, that question sucked, sorry. I put you on the spot.
“Yeah, I always blank in situations like that.”
It’s why the Internet’s better than real life – if that was listing bands for your MySpace influences or your Facebook profile you’d have typed a hundred by now.
“Probably. I’ll email you with a list of MySpace links tomorrow.”
So where are things going for Internet Forever? Like is there an album on the way?
“Yeah, I guess that’s our main focus, to have an album out in 2010. We’ve been working with a few different people, and we’ve got a few offers from labels, but we’re taking our time over it for now, trying to weigh up the options and make sure we sign to the right label.”
Cool. This question sucks too, but it’s the stupid sort of thing us journalists finish interviews with. If you, a member of Internet Forever, could only be one website for the rest of your life, what would it be?
“You’re asking the wrong person. Chris and Craig are much more into the internet than me.”
Come on, you had a blog.
“Okay. Well, there was this one website someone showed me the other day. It’s called something along the lines of ‘Why The Fuck Would You Let Yourself Have Kids?’ And it’s full of pictures of kids…er, not in a paedophile way or anything, but pictures of children of parents who just shouldn’t be allowed to have them. Like there’s one image of a woman pole-dancing while her kid’s just sitting there watching, another of a dad letting his kid hold his gun…stuff like that. Let’s pick that one.”
Tom Lea
