VICTORIAN HALLS
BE ANS O N TOA ST
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVEN FADELLIN
INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST SEAN LENART BY NICHOLAS SENIOR
INTERVIEW BY JOHN B. MOORE
Chicago based indie-synth-punknoise band Victorian Halls has been lurking ever since its Victory Records debut, Charlatan, in 2011. Fast-forward four years, and they’re on a mission to create startlingly melodic music. Hyperalgesia—due out May 19 via Victory—sounds like a band maturing in all the right ways. Victorian Halls is a danceable force to be reckoned with.
The one man acoustic punk show Beans On Toast is hardly a household name, but he sure as hell should be.
Why the long wait? Vocalist Sean Lenart explains, “We were on sort of a hiatus. We did the first record cycle— release, touring—and then we wanted to reevaluate where the band was. With the first record, like all debuts, that was sort of an accumulation of everything we’d done up until that point. With [Hyperalgesia], we really took a lot of time with it. We actually wrote about two thirds of it and scrapped a bunch of it. [Afterwards], it was a little more focused, which is how we wanted to it come across.” Recording was an organic process. “It was fun recording it, because we did a lot of it in our own studio,” Lenart recalls. “So much of the writing was done while we were recording. […] It was challenging, because we had such an idea of what we wanted to do, and I think that caused the rewrite about halfway through. We had written a bunch of songs, and it felt a little too similar to what we’d done. The only song that survived that initial cut was ‘Firearms,’ but we kept that one @ NEWNOISEMAGS
because we liked the message in it. It captured some of our punk roots, and it was a song that we knew we would want to play every night.” Hopefully, they want to play all of them live. Lenart laughs, “We do, sure, but when you’re writing and recording, you think about what’s going to be engaging live. Some stuff will come across better on record than live. It’s a fun process going through these new songs and finding ways to make them come across best for the audience.” Lenart feels confident about their move away from a guitar-centric sound. “I like the fact that we only have guitar on the record when we need guitar,” he says, “or when we want to get something across that only a guitar can deliver. I like the way that the synth is embedded in the songs.” What is next for the band after Hyperalgesia’s realease? “We have a few shows lined up in Chicago, around the CD release,” Lenart says. “It’s always fun playing our hometown. We’re hoping to hit up some bigger things in the summer, but nothing’s official yet.”
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For the past six years, the distinctly British musician—even his name results in furrowed brows from all but the anglophiles—has faithfully turned in a record each year on his birthday, Dec. 1, featuring everything from catchy rants against “Angry Birds” to tunes about noodle shops. He’s toured with everyone from Frank Turner to Flogging Molly, and is playing with both acts later this year on the Flogging Molly Salty Dog Cruise in support of his latest album, The Grand Scheme of Things. You’ve put out an album a year since 2009. Was that a conscious decision? The idea came about pretty naturally, originally spawning from the idea of throwing a birthday party and album launch combined to get more people to come to the show. The following year, the next album was ready to roll, so it felt right to put it out on the same day. Since then, it just became a bit of a thing. My years now work on a cycle of tours, festivals, more touring, recording, putting out album, and then repeat. This is perfect, because it means I’m nice and busy. The new album features a song titled “Wagamama.” What is “Wagamama”? [Laughs] It’s a ramen restaurant chain that is all over England. The food is actually really nice, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that every restaurant is identical and owned—obviously—by the same company; they—along with property developers, supermarkets and shopping centres—are on a mission to make the whole country look like one big, bland, boring identikit town, and that sucks balls. Once
it’s the only noodle bar, I bet you the food isn’t all that nice anymore. What’s the story behind “Fuck You Nashville”? I didn’t wanna be the guy who went to Nashville and didn’t leave with a song. However, in the middle of a fantastic tour, we ended up just having “one of those nights” in Nashville where it didn’t go to plan. Then, played a gig to an empty room and wrote the song off the back of that. I hope it’s not taken too much to heart; I intend to go back as soon as possible and write a new song called “It’s Not You, It’s Me. I’m Sorry, Nashville. Can We Give It Another Shot?” What surprised you the most about the U.S. when you toured here with Frank Turner? It’s fucking massive isn’t it?! I know it’s cliché for Englishmen to talk about the weather, but I find it insane when you play a show one night in the snow, and the next day, after a bit of a drive, you’ve got shorts and a t-shirt on. That’s nuts. Are audiences in Europe different than in the U.S.? Can one take a joke better than the other? When I was planning my first trip out, people at home kept asking if I thought American people would “get” my music. Personally, I didn’t give a shit and was over the moon at the opportunity to find out. I love playing [in the U.S.]. Some slight things might get lost in translation—Wagamamas, for example—but I think the overall vibe is perfectly understood. That said, nobody gets the name Beans On Toast, which comes from a cheap, easy, and traditional English dish, so I’ve started to call myself “Hot Dog.”
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