The View on being indie survivors and that series on the series: “Being on The View can be volatile at times”

The View frontman Kyle Falconer spoke to NME about “Exorcism Of Youth”, their first album in eight years, as well as his return to the band after a long hiatus and the stage fight that led to the cancellation of the concerts at the beginning of the year. the years.

Before returning to recording, the Dundee-based band re-emerged with a series of concerts in Scotland last December, after a hiatus of several years.

“When we put the tickets on sale, we got a bit nervous because we didn’t know how it was going to go,” Falconer told NME. Falconer explained that the band’s management only wanted to sell out one night at Glasgow’s O2 Academy, but sold out all four nights at the venue. “That felt good because he was like, ‘Fuck you, you thought we were going to do only one.’ But it’s kind of [volver]It is brilliant”.

In May, The View returned to the UK with a concert in Manchester and another planned in London. However, the latter was cancelled, and the former left before the end of the performance, after Falconer and bassist Kieran Webster hit the stage.

“It was personal stuff,” Falconer explained. “We’ve already made up. It’s too deep to explain. Everything is going well again. I think we’ve improved. Now we’re best friends again.”

He also explained that fighting among the members of The View was nothing new. “These things have happened many times in every country in the world. Being on The View can be volatile at times because everyone has their own ideas. But we’ve dealt with worse. We take our both apologize and nothing happens, otherwise we wouldn’t stay in a group.”

Perhaps its survival is at greater risk due to its penchant for short stints, but the band is approaching its 20th anniversary, in 2025, and continues to go from strength to strength, and there are others who have come to heads two decades ago have fallen by the wayside. . Describing The View as “the last of the Mohicans”, Falconer says it’s hard for others to understand “what it was like to live during the ‘indie sleaze’ period” if they weren’t actually there. “There are still some bands left, like The Cribs and The Horrors, but those were crazy times,” he says.

Despite this, the frontman sometimes says he doesn’t feel much has changed. “The people who came to our concerts say, ‘They don’t understand what it was like to see them then,’ but for me it’s still much the same. I think the energy we have on stage hasn’t dropped yet. bit.”

Falconer cited the band’s ability to “make up after a fight” as the key to their continuity, as well as the city in which they were born. “You’re from Dundee, you want to get away from Dundee,” he explained. “If you’re from London and you’re in a band, you can leave or get any member and start again. But, being from Dundee, we wanted to get out and do it right and create the wrong people.”

“There were a lot of skeptics in Dundee. It was like ‘fuck you’ to everyone and I think sometimes even the Dundee music scene, or older people, would say, ‘The View are assholes.’ But it’s like: ‘Well, we’ve done better than you’.”

Between 2015’s “Ropewalk” and the band’s new sixth album, “Exorcism Of Youth”, the musicians embarked on various solo projects. Guitarist Pete Reilly toured with Echo & The Bunnymen while Webster formed a new band called WEB and embarked on “a course he’d been wanting to do for years”. Falconer, for his part, released two solo albums, ‘No Thank You’, in 2018, and ‘No Love Songs For Laura’, from 2021.

Meanwhile, the musicians continued to talk about getting together, but “it wasn’t the right time.” Eventually, however, they found a “bunch of songs” to work on and decided to end their hiatus. They teamed up with producer Youth (The Verve, The Cult), who they tried to work with in early 2010. “The record company wouldn’t let us go to their studio in Spain because they thought we’d go wild and a party too much, which may be true,” explains Falconer.

“But we got to do it this time and it was cool to get out and get spiritual – he was still a party but Youth is a spiritual guy so it was all cleansing and fucking a shamanic healing process. It was a class. “

The album not only represents the return of the band, but a continuation of their challenge to themselves and the introduction of new elements in their process. The album’s title track was the first time they sat down to write a song “from scratch” together. “It’s a very important song,” says Falconer. “Even at the end of ‘Exorcism Of Youth,’ we started thinking, ‘Maybe we should include this part,’ or ‘I need to include this line.’ But we finished it.”

As inspiration for the album, the leader looked to two indie giants: The Killers and Sam Fender. “I listened a lot to The Killers’ last album [‘Pressure Machine’] during the lockout,” he said. “Everybody knows The Killers, but I didn’t go and buy the record. Anyway, my partner recommended that album to me in lockstep, so I bought it and I was like ‘Holy bitch’ and I listened to it non-stop.”

He continued: “I also listened a lot to Sam Fender, that kind of simple music. He was an inspiration to me, for example, not to fill too many drums and write good songs without a doubt.”

As for the future of The View, Falconer said “it wouldn’t make sense not to do another record” if ‘Exorcism Of Youth’ goes well. “I love making records. I’ve just finished three other projects, but this is where my biggest audience is and where I feel comfortable. It’s where I’ve been successful and I feel appreciated by the community on me.

“This is my baby,” she said. “I love hearing ‘The View are on fire’ before I go out [al escenario]. It’s crazy, man. It’s exciting”.

“Exorcism Of Youth” is out now.