In the mess of the backstage chaos of Download XXII, Boston Manor are disarmingly normal. It’d be easy to forget that Henry Cox and Mike Curniff had just played the Apex stage two hours before, the vast crowd braving the sun to catch their new favourites. “It was an absolute dream, yeah,” Cox beams, “so much fun. We're super grateful for the opportunity. A lot of people watching us play for the first time. Yeah, you know, everybody grows up watching videos of Download Festival, and the main stage, it's pretty coveted, so [we’re] very grateful. I think that our goal was just to play the local pub. It's true, I'm not being a dickhead when I say that we never had any huge grand designs. It was kind of like, let's play some shows outside of the town that we're from, because that's all we'd ever done, you know? We were playing in bands together, supporting each other, playing shows [in Blackpool], and we just wanted to play other towns and cities. I suppose the most ambitious thing that we ever had at the time was just playing London, and we did that, and it's just been baby steps from there.” Boston Manor’s music follows the same spirit of ‘take it as it comes’, which might be why their flexibility has led to a fanbase that grows as they do. “It's a ever-growing process, you know,” Cox explains, “if you listen to our early work, it's very, very different. We've been very lucky that our fan base has been very generous and kind of came along with us on the ride, because a lot of bands don't get afforded that opportunity. I feel like now we're starting to kind of settle into what we are, but it took us a little while to figure it out, you know?” Curniff jumps in to agree. “Yeah, to be honest, it's just been really fun because we've just always been doing things that, music-wise, just things that make us stoked, selfishly in a way. We write the music for us, and I think that probably reveals the best results, you know? We write stuff that we want to hear.”
It’s been nearly a year since Boston Manor’s last record, ‘Sundiver’, came out, and Curniff’s appreciating it more as the months have passed: “I love it. I mean, it was a massive undertaking, it was a lot of pressure because there was so much that we wanted to do with this record, creatively, but when it was done, and I think I speak for Henry as well, I think we listen to it every single day. Like I said, we make music for ourselves, and it was an absolute joy, and I still stick it on, and I’m just going to listen to it every now and then. It’s awesome to be a fan of your own band, I wish more people would do that.”
“You listen to most records a lot when they first come out,” Cox nods, “and then you get a bit more of it, but this… we had a bit of a window between when we finished it and when it came out, and [we’re] just so proud of it, and the last one. I love all our records. Every record is a moment in time, and I’m still incredibly proud of our first album, our second album and our third album. We stand by them all, and they were made in a very genuine way of where we were at the time.”
How much of Cox’s writing comes from his own life, though? “The first record is incredibly autobiographical, and after that I started to kind of use imagery and stuff to blend little bits of my life and our lives a bit, but a lot of it is our thoughts and ideas about [what’s] actually going on around us, you know, so it’s all a bit of a mess. I’ve never been a great literal writer, quite difficult to do that, and I’d like to try and do more of it in the future. I think a lot of it is a reaction to, quite honestly, some of the things that Britain has undergone over the last decade. You go from ‘Welcome to the Neighbourhood’ until now, there’s [a] clear chronology of Brexit Britain, but it’s also [that] we’ve travelled all around the world, we’ve met such incredible people, and we’ve been told a lot of stories, and we’ve experienced a lot. We’ve grown up together, we’ve experienced deaths, births, all sorts of things, so it’s all channeled into the reason.”
Cox’s political flag was flown proudly during their Download set as he took a pause mid-set to offer his support for the people of Gaza. The responsibility of an artist to share their platform for good is a weight he mulls over. “I think there can be a reaction whereby everybody wants their artists to say the thing that they want in a moment, and I also think that artists are just people, they’re not elected officials, they’re not representatives of any wider governing body. So quite honestly they’re just expressing their feelings. So I think that can go down a dangerous route. For me personally, with something like today, I knew that I was going to play in front of about eighty thousand people, and it’s something I feel very strongly about so I felt the need to use that platform for what I felt was a good cause, even if it made no difference. It’s still something that I feel very strongly about. In certain circumstances, yeah, I would like to see artists say more, but I also think that demanding artists say everything at every time in a very quickly changing news cycle is a bit of a slippery slope.”
Curniff concurs. “I think sometimes as well, you can make a statement just by leading by example, and sometimes you don’t have to say anything at all. I think Turnstile are a really good example of that. There’s definitely a place for that, there’s always been a place for that in music, but also music can be an escape from all of that as well. I think Henry said it the best way. To be honest, you know, it can be a slippery slope.”
“I think you’ve got to judge each artist and each case on their merits, you know,” Cox continues. “I also think that like whether it’s football or it’s music, this like ‘keep politics out of it’ is fucking bullshit. You have every right to say whatever the fuck you want if you believe it on stage. The line between what is politics, what is morality and what is reality have completely blurred now and the time has gone to be able to stick your head in sand and say, ‘I want to live in my dream world.’”
“Whether you choose to speak out on it is your prerogative and that’s certainly fine, nobody should be judged on that but none of this chastising footballers, athletes, artists for their beliefs. You have every right to say whatever you want.”