The Unpeople train never slows down, and why should it? They’re about to drop what could be the album of the year, and the London four-piece have been omnipresent across festivals this summer. “We've really enjoyed playing for lots of amazing crowds. Lots of people have been really excited to come and see us, and we're excited to go and play for them. So that's just a lovely cycle, really,” smiles drummer Richard Rayner. Opening the Download main stage was a highlight for guitarist Luke Caley, as it would be for any band yet to release their debut album. “We'd played the year before, so we felt confident that if there were people there, the set would feel good. The big part of that show was that we were playing the main stage, which was, when we all start playing our instruments, the sort of stuff that you dream of. Like, ‘imagine if one day we could play on the main stage’. I think our only concern was how early it was and whether people would be out their tents by then.” “And the rain.” “…and the rain to factor in, but everything else we felt pretty confident about. We walked out and there was a bunch of people there, loads of people singing along, and there's not much more we could have asked for.”

We’re chatting less than two weeks before ‘We Are Unpeople’ releases, and Caley is confident in how it naturally evolved into a record without relying on genre labelling. Their goal was simple: “Just make an albums worth of Unpeople songs, which is exciting in itself. There wasn’t any box that we were looking to check thematically or conceptually, or even sonically going into the record. Everything about this band is such an organic process, and it’s the sum of the four people that are in it. We were just like, ‘we don’t need to reinvent the wheel here within the world of Unpeople, we need to just keep doing what we’re doing because that fulfils us artistically and creatively, and and gives us the music that we want to hear’…” “And we don’t know what that necessarily sounds like,” Rayner continues. The duo tend to finish each other’s thoughts and sentences. “We’ve been improving the studio and the sounds and our process and how we collaborate together since the the very first tracks that we did with the EP. It just keeps getting better and better, and that’s exciting to me personally.”

Their latest single in advance of their full-length release, ‘Blueprints’, has nearly universally been called ‘the ballad track’ in reviews, and Caley is fully aware of that. “Well, it’s funny because the impetus for that song existing was literally we were X amount of songs deep into demos, and the album was really started to starting to come together, and our AR from Sharp Tone messaged me just being like, ‘where’s the ballad?’ That kind of sparked that song to come into existence. I sort of had a little bit of a mental spiral, and then a song came together, and then we all finished it off collectively.” The video features the band playing in the park, and it’s a joyful antidote to a mellow sound. “That’s the happiest I’ve seen Luke in ages,” jokes Rayner, “there’s nothing to worry about when you’ve got some chickens between your legs!” “I think it’s in one of the opening shots where we’re all lying on the field,” says Caley. “If you actually pause the video and look, there’s a little chicken that’s literally curled up and asleep in between my legs. It’s such a subtle detail, but it was so cute. The video was a bit of a bucket list for me, because I’ve always loved the Spike Jonze video for [Weezer’s] ‘Island in the Sun’. It’s such a great concept. Surely it’s been enough time that a band could come in and do their own version of that? As soon as there were animals on the cards, everyone was in.”

‘Bottle It’ has to be the sunniest single on ‘We Are Unpeople’, and also reflects their spirit of total determination. “Jake [Crawford, vocalist]’s the main source of lyrics in this band. For him, that song was just essentially about if you love this, be prepared to grind and die on that hill. There’s a lot of people, not even in music specifically, that they think they want to do something until it actually comes to the crunch and you realise how much you have to sacrifice to do perhaps the thing that you really love in life. I think it’s a bit of a tribute to how much we still love doing it. I guess there is a sense of underlying optimism for that. But in regards to how the song started… I don’t think we’ve ever had a song where the lyrics have come first. We’re quite reactive, where we’ll start playing and then ideas will come together, and then we’ll get a structure, and then some melodies will go down, and then usually Jake will come in and start going into his head and his notes and lyrics will start coming out and then they’ll get refined. But ‘Bottle It’ is, I think, a personal favourite of all of us.” “It was really really great one because we were playing it live way ahead of everything else,” Rayner explains. “That one is one of the few ones where we were playing it live before it’s really written, like it was basically all there, but it meant that we started the album recording process with ‘Bottle It’ as well. Yeah, so every time we started a new thing, whether it was drums or we started guitars or we did vocals, we’re like, ‘okay, we’ll start with ‘Bottle It’ so we can get all gremlins out of the way because we just felt really at home. That’s really like an anchor track for all of us, I think.”

So far, we haven’t really mentioned Unpeople’s sound, largely because it’s near impossible to pin down to any one genre or description. It’s everything we like stuck in a blender, and that’s what the band were going for all along. Rayner explains further: “I really feel like when you’re creating music, it’s a sort of regurgitation of all the stuff that you’ve eaten. So, it’s like you consume this, you consume that, and then you fart out this music. When you’re really creating music –  really creating rather than trying to fulfil a manifesto or something or ticking boxes – when you’re really being creative with it, you don’t try to control what comes out. It’s a surprise to us as much as to anyone else when we do hear it, and then something like ‘Clouds’ comes along, and you’re like, ‘bloody hell, yeah!’ That is the result of all of the previous things that you’ve consumed as a child, as a teenager, all the things that you practice in your rooms, all the riffs you’ve learned, all the beats that I’ve learned.” Caley agrees. “It’s funny because I think for me personally, I feel like Unpeople sounds like the music I’ve always been trying to write my whole life. If you go right back to my very first band, just like the concept of a heavy alternative rock band with lots of vocals and harmonies and vocal arrangements and stuff. ’lots of voices’ is I think been something that personally I’ve been aspiring to for a long time, and then it was just each evolution of that with each project. It feels like it’s been able to be realised the most it ever has. I think that there’s there’s certain people that would have followed my mine and Jake’s previous band and then my band before that. There’s been a couple comments I’ve seen where they recognise the sonic consistency across those projects, which is something that I would personally bring to the table.”

Some people would take a break after dropping their debut record, but not Unpeople. They’re heading out on tour with the mighty Don Broco this autumn, and in fact we’ve interrupted their rehearsal for this chat. “It’s super exciting,” grins Caley. “Mine and Jake’s previous projects were lucky enough to tour with them as well, and they have some of the best crowds, like consistently. It’s literally just people turning up that, from the moment they hear music, want to jump around and have a great time. Any crowd that wants to jump around and kind of get a bit rowdy is like giving us our favourite meal.” Not only that, but they’re also on the road with Royal Blood before their first headline tour in 2027, which has nearly sold out already, much to their surprise. “We were in Finland. It was so it’s funny because we had a flight into another flight that was like a little rickety propeller plane…” Caley starts, and Rayner continues. “Yeah. And we landed for the first one, and we had a message like these shows have sold out, and we’re like, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa!’ And then we went up in the air for an hour and came down, and then another two or three had sold out. We took a bit of a gamble and a risk in playing by far the biggest venue we’ve ever headlined in London, and to hear that they all sold out instantly was just so incredibly humbling.”

How do they keep rolling at such an incredible pace though? “You just keep doing it, keep going. If you leave us in that studio over there,” Rayner gestures behind him, “we’re just gonna do just keep doing it.” “Yeah, me and Jake always just say we’re just gonna do more band stuff,” says Caley. “We’re just gonna keep playing shows, keep writing, release the music until we either are genuinely sick of it and don’t want to do it anymore, or we die. I think we’re all four of us don’t take for granted that even being able to go and play and function as a band and be in an active band is a privilege, you know?” With that, Unpeople speed off for their next commitment, leaving a virtual trail of dust, a list of sold out tour dates and high hopes for their first full length album in their wake. 

KATE ALLVEY

‘We Are Unpeople’ is released on 9th October on SharpTone Records.