The
Wild Things are a four-piece alternative rock band from West London consisting
of sister-brother team Sydney and Cameron White, Rob Kendrick and Pete Wheeler.
We got a chance to speak to Sydney from the band about their new single ‘I Think
You Can Do Better’ as well as acting and other topics!
What was the inspiration
behind your new single?
A
bad thing happened with one of the band members in terms of their health and I
think it was a big ‘screw you’ to the world kind of song and how we can empower
ourselves. That was the real inspiration behind it.
Does your song writing come
from real-life inspirations?
Each
one comes around different. Sometimes a song will just come about really
organically or another time it’ll be based on a specific event. Usually I’d say
it was more organic as we spend big periods of our day writing. This one was
definitely spurred on by something but it’s usually kind of organic.
As a band you like to be
involved with the production and artwork etc. Does that help you shape the
music as you’d like it to be?
We
do everything in house, from production to making our own videos and visual
content, so I think having that control has allowed us to explore our music and
granted us more freedom to do it rather than having outside influences or other
voices saying ‘we think you should do this’ or ‘we think you should do that’,
and I think the way we have developed is because of the space that we’ve been
given, and the characters we’ve created ourselves, within our own little world.
Do you have a favourite part
of the creative process?
For
me I love just performing and going on stage and putting on a show. There’s
something very cathartic about it. But I guess we all the recording part, very
much so, especially my brother Cameron who basically writes the song and
produces. The videos are always really fun to shoot as we come up with the
concepts ourselves. We know we’re not going to be uncomfortable in any way when
we’re shooting them.
You mentioned about
performing on stage; how does your live sound compare to your recorded
material?
Loud
and energetic!
Have you got any live dates
coming up?
We
have a few. We do our own pop-up festival in Hackney and we’re resuming that in
March and we have a gig in Liverpool, our first one in the north, filming for
The Tube hosted by Janice Long, so that’s going to be fun! We have a busy
schedule.
You recently did an acoustic
session on London Live; was that a good experience?
It
was great! It was our first ever television performance. Myself and Rob, we’re
professional actors [so] we’re on television a lot, but it was a very different
experience for us to be playing music on television in that environment. We had
a great time.
You mentioned there your
professional acting work; do you have a favourite role from your credits?
I
have a TV show out at the moment called ‘Uncle’ in which I play a mean punky
character called Gwen; she’s definitely up there! I just shot a movie with
Michael Keaton playing an FBI agent which I’ve never done before, which was
cool. I’m looking forward to that coming out sometime later this year.
Is your role in ‘Uncle’
based on yourself in any way?
This
is the third series we shot. When we initially did the first series they took
on board a lot of what I was and carried that into the other series’. I love
the writers, and they’re phenomenal, and they certainly write a lot of my
quirks into the character, or maybe I’ve become the character! Maybe it’s that
way around!
You also did one of the BBC
comedy specials for the 60th anniversary?
Yes,
‘Til Death Do Us Part’. That was really fun. I’d never done anything like that
before so it was a great experience to do a period piece.
Is there a video for ‘I
Think You Can Do Better’?
There
is indeed! It’s on our YouTube channel and our social media. We shot it
ourselves under the train bridge. It was a really interesting experience. It’s
a cool video: very grungy; kind of 90s, and a bit Nirvana-y.
Do you have any EP or album
plans following the success of the single?
We
have spoken about it. This year we’re planning on releasing a number of singles
throughout 2017, and each will have a video attached to it, and maybe there’ll
be a through-line. Rather than having an album or an EP out there’ll be
different songs coming out, at a scheduled or specific time, but there’s going
to be a lot of content, a lot of good stuff, a lot of new songs. I think people
are going to be surprised.
Do you have any big
ambitions for the rest of 2017?
We’ve
been really successful over the last few months. We were the BBC Introducing
band of the week over Christmas. We’re going to be on Radio 1 in the next
couple of weeks. There are a lot of exciting things coming up. Obviously we’d
like to play the 02 but rather than saying ‘this is our goal’ we’re just
enjoying what’s coming to us naturally and organically and really enjoying
picking up new fans and the really exciting adventures coming our way!
Finally has your next single
been decided yet?
I
think our next single is going to be released at the end of March or the
beginning of April I believe so that’s really exciting. We’ve already shot the
video and it has been co-directed by another famous actor called Shaun Dooley
and it’s his directorial debut so we’re really excited to get that out there and
show the people what he’s made of along with us!
Find out more about The Wild Things on Facebook, and hear this interview and their single on our radio show on Saturday 11th February at 6pm on bcbradio.co.uk
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