FOXES Magazine #0.1 - November 2015

“[‘Smile’] was written at, like, six in the morning, and everyone else was asleep in the flat,” he explains. “So I just sung...quieter.

“I lived with one guy,” he goes on, “and I liked him a lot. I just don’t speak. He had a go at me because I never told him what I’m doing.

He’s like, ‘Oli, you had a gig last night.’ ‘Yeah, yeah.’ ‘Well, why didn’t you tell us?’ And I was like, ‘If you’re really interested in the band you’d know when we’re playing. I don’t need to tell you—it’s not like I’m having a birthday party!’ He’s like, ‘God, you’re fucking weird.’”

Whether it’s for birthday parties, then, or for The Birthday Party—a self-admitted Yak influence—Burslem is as nice and enthusiastic as they come. It’s just that when it comes to his music, the twenty-sevenyear-old would prefer to leave formality at the door.

“You see so many bands and it’s the same kind of set every night and it’s the same tempo,” he says. “It’s more like we didn’t have any ambition, but just wanted to get up there. I’d write some songs quick and we’d play them quickly and whatever they were, they kind of just were.”