Martin Lüscher und Christine Godet haben Ben Gautry (Gesang), Dan Fisher (Gitarre) und Kieran Mahon (Keyboard) von The Cooper Temple Clause zum Interview getroffen.

You haven’t been on tour for quite a while, nor were there any news on what you were doing. What have you been up to?

Dan Fisher: We’ve been reinventing the wheel for our third album. We wanted to take our time, and there are various other things, that happened. We spent a while almost without a deal, rambling over various things we probably shouldn’t talk about - politics of being in a band. Also our bass player left. We had quite a strange year. It got a bit hairy at one point, where we were arguing a lot with each other. But we pulled together. I think now we are definitely a stronger unit than we’ve ever been. We’re really looking forward to being back.

So you’ve been writing songs then.

Dan Fisher: Yeah, we got a whole new album recorded, mixing it at the moment. This is gonna be the first time, we play the songs live. So like I said, we are a mixture of nervous and excited.

When is the record going to come out?

Dan Fisher: I’m not sure. I think probably late summer, early autumn, perhaps September.

One of you once said that you were experimenting sonically on the first record and melodically on the second. What is it this time?

Dan Fisher: I think we’re always trying to get the balance right. This is always the tough thing for us. Trying to make sure, that we keep challenging ourselves we keep experimenting, but also there’s a real craft to becoming better songwriters. I think a large part of that is trying to get a grip with melodies. It’s all very well, being experimental, but it shows a lot of character if you can pull melody into that. That’s what people like David Bowie did very well, being able to experiment and do things that no one else had ever done, but always hinged on great melodies and great pop songs. That’s the kind of thing we aspire to be.

The two songs we heard during the sound check sounded rougher than the last record. Is this a general pattern?

Kieran Mahon: It’s been a while. The ones you heard have definitively like heavy and dark elements, that we were sort of exploring on the first two albums. I don’t think we have made like this huge jump in directions. There are still very much elements of the band we used to be on the first two albums.

Dan Fisher: I think we always try live to make things a bit more raw. Now that we are a five piece, we are a leaner machine. First we were worried, that having one less member, we would gonna struggle live. Our Producer came down and helped us out a few rehearsals. To hear him say to us that we sound better as a band, we sound more together, gave us a bit of confidence, to think yeah we can do this. We’ve always tried to keep the live side of things raw, as raw as we can, without descending to chaos.

Ben Gautry: It’s a fine line, a fine line between raw and shit.

When you’re bass player left, was it a big deal for you?

Kieran Mahon: In our case, we just didn’t see it happening. Personally I think, like everybody else, you loose not just a band member and a fellow musician, but a friend with whom you’ve grown up with for six, seven years. So it’s a huge shock. It’s very much like splitting up with a girlfriend. You have a big sort of space in your life almost that goes missing. But we’ve certainly done our best to concentrate to go over it as a group and not linger about it too much. You’ve gotta push things forward and you gotta get on with everything else really.

Dan Fisher: I was all done very amicably and we wish him the best of luck in whatever he chooses to gonna do. It was strange, but I think it pulled us closer together. We’re functioning as a much leaner unit now.

Did you ever think about splitting up?

Dan Fisher: No, it was never on the cards for us.

When that happened, were you doing nothing, or were you in the middle of doing something and all of a sudden he said I’m leaving the band.

Dan Fisher: We were working on the album. There were a lot of things that happened. He had a child in London and we were still based very much in Reading and recording in the West Country in Bath near Bristol. I think it was difficult for him to balance the family life and his life in the band. I think he felt perhaps that he could make things work better having the project he was working on in London. Again it’s one of the things you didn’t see it coming and then it’s too late. These things happen, in bands and in lives. You just gather everything together and then go on with it.

But you didn’t get a new bass player.

Dan Fisher: When he left, we talked about the possibilities of what to do. For a while we were thinking, we might have to get someone else in. But we tried it with five of us. Everyone had to take on a lot of extra jobs. We’ll find out tonight, whether it works. [starts to laugh]

Ben Gautry: It works in our rehearsal room, but as we found out today, playing on a stage is very different to a rehearsal room. So it’s a bit of a shock. We’re definitely excited about playing. On some of the old songs we had to relearn different instruments and different parts. That’s been quite exciting, giving a new lease of live to some of the old songs. It feels like a second era. Personally I’ve been extremely excited about this tour and coming out playing live as a five piece and also going to these countries we haven’t been to. There’s definitely a lot of positivism in the band at the moment.

So you’re doing this tour to test the way you work as a five piece and to test the new material?

Dan Fisher: We wanted to get out to places where we haven’t played very much. Going to different countries and travelling the world is part of the whole allure as a kid growing up why you want to be in a band. It’s very important for us. We like going out on the road to different countries and having adventures. We love the idea of people on the other side of the world, who listen to your music. That’s quite incredible when you think about it, especially for us. We wanted on this tour to get out into Europe and play some places we haven’t played very much or in some cases at all.

Ben Gautry: It seems like it has been too long, since we have been out anywhere in mainland Europe. We have been a lot in Japan, we spent some time in America and Britain. So the mainland Europe which is not very far from Britain, it seems absurd, that it’s taken us so long to get back out there. Hopefully we’ll be back here a lot more often, when the album’s out this year.

Dan Fisher: Unfortunately when you get into the whole business of playing in America, it’s one of the things you can’t do it by halves. To play America you have to keep going there for long periods of time. America is a place where you really have to put in the hard work. I think we were a bit disappointed, that we didn’t get the chance to go to other places, as much as we would have liked.

Did it work in the US?