British Indie Rock outfit Band of Skulls is celebrating its 15th Anniversary by releasing a limited-edition deluxe box set called Cold Fame, which arrived on June 27th, via Artist Royalties Collective. It closely follows their first North American tour in several years, part of which they played in support of the Australian Rock band Jet. Both events are landmarks for the band’s sole original member, Russell Marsden, which led first to a time of reflection, building the box set, and then to a time of current déjà vu as he realized the memorable quality of a returning North American tour.
For the collection, Marsden pulled items from his personal archives, including interviews, photos, and plenty of behind-the-scenes ephemera that recreate the world of making the albums Baby Darling Doll Face Honey, Sweet Sour, and Himalayan. While the box set includes the first three albums, B-sides, rarities, a coffee table book, and more, what Marsden is most excited about is sharing the band’s prehistory that emerges through demos and documents. This is a story that’s widely unknown, the time that often goes into building great music before a band becomes a breakout success. I spoke with Russell Marsden from the road about his experience of returning to North America to tour and unearthing the first steps of Band of Skulls through archival material.
How are you finding your North American tour?
We’ve gotten off to a great start. It’s been great being back in the States as well. The songs are propelling us, and we’re throwing a couple of new songs in there, as well. It has all the symptoms of a great tour!
You can’t beat the positivity of a live show during the start of the summer.
It’s nice for us. Though we’ve had all kinds of weather, including wind, rain, and heat! We’ve played some amazing venues, and we’ve got some beautiful ones coming up as well. You get to tick some things off the bucket list on every tour, and there are a few this time.
I saw that you have two shows at The Troubadour coming up, which is a very special venue. Have you played there before?
Oh, yes, I’ve played there a couple of times before. That feels more like a homecoming show, really. I’ve got some history with that world-famous venue. It’s bringing my songs back to that room, really, after they’ve been out in the world for this long, and people still seem to love them. The circus comes through town one more time! [Laughs]
What do you have in mind for your set in that venue? Do you try to choose sets by venue?
Yes, I think so. We’ve been doing support for Jet, but that’s our first headline show, so we’ll play longer. The discussions about which songs to play are already there. You want to bring some new things, but also honor the history of the band. And, of course, the fans have got their favorite songs. It’s really hard to please everybody, but there’s too many songs now to play them all. We have to ask about the significance of what we’re doing and the songs that are speaking to us right now. It always evolves like that. We’ll be doing “Cold Fame”, I know that. We’ll be playing that at The Troubadour.
Nice! That one’s off your first album right?
Yes, and it’s an emotional song as well. It has this in-built nostalgia. It was nostalgic the moment that we did it. We knew the breakthrough moment would be one we’d remember. Sometimes, when something really amazing is happening in your life, it’s almost like the nostalgia is happening in real-time. You can tell. It’s almost like you need to press “record”, because here we are, 15 years later, still talking about those moments, and that was mine.
I think I know what you mean. It’s those “Wow” moments, where you look around when something’s happening and think, “I’m going to remember this. This is going to be a landmark.” It’s surreal.
It’s a bit like déjà vu, but it’s not uncanny. You know it’s one for the books. I’m having that feeling now. Lots of things have changed in the world, and also in my world, but to be back in America playing my music again is not something I’m taking for granted. It’s the audiences, and people remembering, and people being interested in what we’re doing now, is something I’ll never take for granted. I’ve got my brain on “record” right now, taking it all in.
When I look at the Cold Fame box set, I’m aware that it’s not a small thing to curate 15 years of your life into a package like that. The process of doing that must have made you think and feel differently about everything in the past, and then you’re taking those perceptions on this new tour with you.
It’s interesting. It was quite cathartic, actually. It put things into a context and made me take stock. I’d forgotten a lot of the memories, the collaborators, and the people along the way. Those who kindly contributed to the book reminded me not only of my perspective but of other peoples’ perspectives, which is what really opened my mind. It made me realize that we really did come from a very small scene in England, which was almost just ourselves. We would have a club night, do little gigs, and play in London, and that was kind of it. But we had this bigger ambition, and then this opportunity came along.
Within 12 months, we were playing huge shows, and we were all over the place. It went so fast at the time that we couldn’t take it all in. But we’ve been able to do that now. The real moment for me was when I went to my archives and said, “I’ve probably got some things that we can use.” Then I went and got the box, and it was a box, and I had everything. I had every ticket stub, and every plane ticket, not only from that time, but back even to our school days. I’d somehow collected everything. It started very much in a paper format, then moved into digital memories. It crystallized a time period that it happened in.
I unpacked it, and then I repacked it. It feels nice that it’s now in a place, not only for me to have a signpost of what happened, but to have a chance to share it with people. Especially the chance to share how we got to that first opportunity, since I’ve never really shared that with people before, where the band really came from. There was a lot of work before we got to that opportunity. We were an “overnight success” after ten years of trying. That was us.
That’s a weirdly common story, and it’s often frustrating to see in journalism and even fandom. I’ll notice that a band that I’ve been following for years is suddenly called “new” and a breakout success. I’m happy for them, but I wish their hard work got more of a nod.
The one thing you have as a band, and why debut albums are so special, is that it’s kind of the “greatest hits” of your early years. That’s why the songs work, work. You have a few years to get that together. It’s when you have to carry on, and make other albums, that’s when the cream rises to the top, hopefully. It’s really hard to make those second, third, fourth records, when you’ve had your whole life to prepare for the first one.
Also, when an audience first discovers a band, that’s a unique moment and a romantic thing. It’s like your eyes meet across the dance floor, but it’s musical. [Laughs]
You’re right! That moment of initial connection goes down in one’s personal history forever. That’s also why people call bands “new”. It’s funny when it happens later, decades after a band has made the music, and you’re suddenly in love.
Totally. I’m still discovering records that were made before I was born that I’ve never heard. There’s so much. I also know what you mean about how nice it is to be part of a small fan community following a band, and then, when they blow up, a little part of you dies, thinking, “Noooo.” But, of course, it has to happen for the band to keep growing and be viable. I like it when I’m in early discovery mode, and watching the artists find their audience.
Optimistically, it’s a dual mindset where you’re frustrated by weird public reactions, but also feel happy for the band to finally be more widely recognized.
It’s exactly that. It’s like being proud of your kid, sibling, or friend.
When we look at the box set, and we’ve been talking about the prehistory of the band, before the first album came out, are we seeing music that was recorded during that more obscure time for you? I know there are demos.
Like I said, the band was initially in a small scene, and was then called Fleeing New York. Band of Skulls is Fleeing New York, it’s the same thing. Some of the songs and ideas did translate across that line. There’s a song called “Hollywood Bowl” from the early days of what became the Skulls scene, and there’s a song called “Blood.” The bones of the first album were from this other thing. When I listen back to it, I really can see where we came from. It was a bit more experimental and a bit more Indie. There were no rules.
We had settled on a sound at that time that we then broke through with for the first album. And, of course, that’s what most people know the band for. But we had all those other iterations before that. You become known for the sound that you have when you break through, but we also had lots of other sounds. We all came from an art-school background, and that was the spirit of the day, that every song should be different. There are lots of influences that I still have that do come from those early days, and it’s good to remember them.
I love the sound of the demos on the box set that I have listened to. I feel they are still recognizable in terms of the band and of the final sound. With some bands, their demo versions sound very different, or very stripped-down. The core is present in terms of energy and attitude. For me, this box set is also about seeing what was already there, already formed and on the way.
I had not listened to those demos for such a long time. Every Producer who we worked with received those demos first, and it’s what we sent each other as bandmates to audition ideas. We’d all write together, so if you had a great verse, or a great chorus, and the other part wasn’t so good, that would get thrown in the trash, and the other part would become the next part of the song. That was the spirit back in the day. I love demos, because that’s the moment of inspiration.
Even back then, in 2008, we had the first iPhone, or a digital device, so on the demos, you can kind of hear at their beginning of them, the mouse clicking, or the paper shuffling, but the song is still there. Then we added guitars and stuff. There’s a magic in the first demo of any song, and the trick is not to sanitize any bit of music in a way that you lose that initial spark. It was cool to listen back to those because I had forgotten where they came from. Those songs feel like they’ve been in my life forever. Obviously, we all put a lot of work into them in the beginning, and those are the pencil sketches of what later became songs that I can’t imagine not existing now. They feel like they have always been there.
