The Lunar Pull’s Alex Riley Talks About the New Album ‘Louchecore’

Last time V13 met Sheffield’s Alex Riley, he was launching The Lunar Pull’s debut album, The Workings Underneath and preparing for a show at Merseyside’s Future Yard. This time round, the sometime TV presenter, full-time dandy, is launching album number two, Louchecore, a more accomplished release that continues to delve back into long lost stories of failed romantic misadventures.

Alex is the vocalist and occasional songwriter in the band who, as we discussed last time, draws on the likes of The Kinks, Pulp and Blur for their domestic landscapes, but maintains a very appealing originality and humour of their own. Like all great indie bands, there is also a more serious side to their lyrics too. Often, the realization of growing up and facing responsibility. A number of songs on the album recall failed opportunities of love and lust, sadly reflected upon from an older age.

I had a quick chat with Alex in one of his favourite Liverpool pubs, The Corn Exchange, where he revealed some origins of the new songs over a couple of pints of Guinness and, as usual, divulged in some teenage fantasies and fumblings from his past, like a Wirral Jarvis Cocker.

The Lunar Pull ‘louchecore’ album artwork

As for the album itself, I start by asking Alex how it differs from The Workings Underneath?

“Obviously, the last album was the first one we’d done, and we were working out how to do it. We’d never done it before, so we were feeling our way in the dark. The first thing we realised that it would be a good idea to kind of actually play the songs through a few times and get comfortable with them before we started to record.

There was a few songs on the first album that just weren’t working at all. I’d not thought a better way of singing them. I’d change it at the last minute and then Tim Brown (Boo Radleys) would add something in, and it worked. So, this time we didn’t want to be groping around in the dark. We played the songs through, and it would be “We need better lyrics, or a middle eight, something to lift it” so it was a much better experience, and we didn’t have Tim around this time.

The sound is much better this time round, it’s bigger but simpler. And the vocals are a bit higher in the mix, which obviously I’m pleased about.”

How well received was the previous album?

“The reviews were brilliant and V13 were very keen, We also supported The Boo Radleys at Rough Trade in March, and we just did about eight songs that we knew well, so it was like our best gig to date cos we were confident. It went down really well, and we got a review of the whole night that was very, very positive.

Commercially…phhh. There was no physical artefact, it was just streaming, we sold quite a few on Bandcamp, but on Spotify the numbers don’t make any sense because we haven’t got a publicity machine.”

Have you got physical copies this time?

“Yes. When people come to our shows it‘s quite nice to have a physical souvenir, at an affordable price, and we even have a few T-shirts this time. That‘s how band do it these days isn’t it, managing their own physical artefacts, and that‘s how they get number ones and stuff (laughs). We‘re holding back on Spotify for a while, we’re going to give it a chance on Bandcamp first.

I’ve got a bit more confident in songwriting. I’ve got three on this one whereas I only had two on the last album.”

So which ones are yours?

“Sheffield Education”

“When people come to our shows it‘s quite nice to have a physical souvenir, at an affordable price, and we even have a few T-shirts this time. That‘s how band do it these days isn‘t it?”

Yes, this one is very autobiographical?

“It is yeah.”

Its a bit saucy?

“I’ve always aspired to a more glamorous and exciting life to the one I’ve been dealt. When you’re growing up in Sheffield or anywhere in the North, or any ordinary life, you know the exotic… Scandinavia… Scandinavian women… they had a much more free and easy approach to sex, and it was like Oh!  I had this experience where I thought it was all going to happen, I’d waited my whole life for this and now finally… thank the lord its all going to happen… and then it didn’t quite turn out as it should. I’m still trying to work out, what was the point where I should have done something differently? Did she get the wrong end of the stick? Did she regret taking me back to her house? I don’t even remember her name. I remember her mate (who she eventually goes to bed with in the song).”

It‘s a great song and a lively and fun opener. I met a bloke once who claimed that in 1985 he had an experience with two Scandinavian women in a sauna, and said it was the second best thing to happen that year. I had to ask what was the first and he looked at me incredulously and said “Live Aid!”

“Ha ha ha, was it Freddie Mercury?”

>Back to the album…  What else is yours?

“Probably Never See You”. It‘s a straight pop song. You know when you meet someone at a party or a club, and you get chatting to them and it‘s like, ‘Ahhh we’re so connected, it‘s so easy, meant to be, you are my ideal woman, this is amazing!’ Then you find out she’s engaged and getting married in like four weeks. It could be this is potentially the greatest relationship of my whole life. There is a lot riding on this, but maybe if we did get to know each other it would all go tits up…  But then she’s given me her number.  It was kind of like a pleasurable disappointment. I’d not offended her or done anything wrong, it was just a wonderful sense of what might have been.”

It was good while it lasted…

“Ahhhhhh, I just like that feeling.  My other song, “I’ve Had Enough To Drink”, thats about the point at a party, it‘s getting quite late and you know you don’t want any more to drink and you know all you want to do is go home and have a cup of tea. But this is the point in the night when magical things might happen. Everybody’s done their socialising, they‘ve done their posing…”

They’ve sat down…

”Yeah, they’ve done their impressing, most people have gone home, but you might just bump into someone and sometimes something magical happens. You already met this person earlier and they were lovely but there was nothing happening but now a couple of hours later you meet them again and there’s a frisson of possibility. It came along very quickly, I sang the song on my phone and that‘s how it happened.”

“I’ve always aspired to a more glamorous and exciting life to the one I’ve been dealt…”

What else do you like on the album?

“‘How We Got From A to B’, Vin (Vinny Woodward) wrote that one. It‘s about when you are setting out and you’re not really thinking this is the destination of where you were aiming for. How did we get from there, where we had all of these ideas of where we were going to where we are now, but its not so bad, it’s actually quite good. There’s a romantic side but it‘s also about the band. We missed the bus when were younger, the wrong bands we were in, but it’s happening now, as we are older. Is that better than it would have been? We’ve got more experience now and we appreciate it more. We’re still on that road.

“Turn on the Disco Lights” is about having young kids and having to do everything for them, and work, and trying to find a little bit of space to be a couple again, to be lovers again. That’s one of Mike’s (Mike Corcoran) epics.

“Back to the Sea”, Vin, he’s your existentialist, he’s always going back to the sea. He’s got this terrible middle-aged angst. Wrestling with middle aged thoughts and big themes, and what is the point of life. And he’s going back to the sea to get a perspective on the world and not focus on what‘s driving him mental.

“Tonight Is All That Matters” is Mike realising that his life is going to change forever. He found out that his wife was pregnant and then he‘s sat on a beach in Croatia, watching fireworks and its like “Everything is going to change… everything… I‘ve got to stick with it”.

“Viking History” is about when on a Friday night, you’ve been in work all week, you go out and pillage and go mental on the lash, forgetting all the crap. It‘s a hedonistic vibe of becoming a viking, and then wanting to have a break from it. Like looking in the rear-view mirror, going back to the country and realise you don’t have to go totally mental to cope with all the shit you have to deal with all week.”

That is Louchecore.

The album was released on October 3rd alongside their second launch party at Future Yard in Birkenhead, and we wish them the best of luck.