The Xcerts interview: 'We want people to listen to our band and feel invigorated'

The Brighton-based trio are serving up the spirit of heartland rock with a modern twist for their fourth studio album, Hold On To Your Heart

The Xcerts, from left to right, Jordan Smith

The Xcerts have been playing their own distinct brand of alternate pop n’ roll ever since frontman Murray Macleod and bassist Jordan Smith bonded at school over some shared trouble that saw the unruly pair sent to the deputy head’s office. The band have always held a modest yet impassioned following, but the stage is now set for Hold On To Your Heart to become the biggest record of their career, with its singles already eliciting extraordinarily enthusiastic responses live. In many ways, it’s unsurprising that the new material is being greeted as warmly as their old favourites; Hold On To Your Heart contains some of the most infectious, effervescent songs in The Xcerts back catalogue, simple paeans to living life to its fullest no matter the hardships one suffers. A packed out show at London’s 1,200 capacity Scala and a triumphant showing at last year’s 2000Trees Festival are strong indicators that the band’s status as underdogs is soon to be relegated to the past.

“For the first time, it feels like people are on side and want us to do well,” says Murray. “We’re very fortunate to have an incredibly loyal following who want us to succeed, it feels like people are really rooting for us. I think they know how much this means to us and how hard we’ve worked. The three of us have stayed hungry because all we’ve ever wanted is to be in this band playing these songs. That hasn’t really changed since we were teenagers and I think that’s quite special in and of itself. We’ve stayed very much committed to not taking our eyes off the prize.”

"Daydream" was the song that provided the catalyst for the direction The Xcerts took with their new material, a joyous and jubilant ode to focusing on the light when all one sees is darkness. “I remember us saying in the rehearsal room ‘this song feels like our spin on Cheap Trick and Rick Springfield’” Murray recalls of the song’s creation. “We had so much fun playing it and it dictated the direction that the rest of the album would go in. I think we used to be under the illusion that records need to be dark but life isn’t like that. Hold On To Your Heart to me very much represents the light and the dark, because that’s life, sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down. I think it’s the first time we’ve been aware of that whilst making a record.”

The band focused in on the collective influences that first stoked their passion for music, songs discovered in their youth that evoke feelings of nostalgia and a longing for simpler times uncomplicated by the trials and travails of growing up. The simple, infectious vocal lines of Petty, the optimistic story-telling of Springsteen and the lyrical romanticism of Waits all had a strong impact on the song writing of Hold On To Your Heart, but the band were adamant that they’d bring their own sensibilities to them and update them for a modern audience. “The whole style of the songwriting on this album feels very organic to me” says drummer Tom Heron, who joined the band in 2006 when Murray and Jordan moved from their native Aberdeen to Brighton. “When you’re young and writing songs, you tend to concentrate on the music that is influencing you in the present, there’s a focus on being relevant or ‘current’. This album feels like we’ve remembered the music we grew up with, stuff like Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen that have always been there because our parents played them and we listened to them from a very young age. They’re the foundations of our musical education, we’ve merely adopted our own take on them.”

Hold On To Your Heart also took inspiration from the optimistic, coming-of-age yarns spun by film-maker John Hughes and set about attempting to capture the intangible feeling of hope and idealism that permeated the likes of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or The Breakfast Club. “It’s useful to have a visual reference that drives the songwriting” Jordan explains. “Visualising those films in our heads drove the songs much further than if we’d just been shooting for some ephemeral concept of hope or longing. There was always a positive strand to his films, which is exactly what we wanted to find with Hold On To Your Heart. It’s our attempt at capturing that feeling of triumph over adversity.”

Whilst the record is an exuberant cacophony of major-key melodies, joyous saxophone and jubilant piano chords, there is a dark centre at its core. These optimistic paeans to carpe diem and taking the bull by the horns couldn’t have been written in more trying circumstances. A number of events prompted Murray to feel detached from the world around him, the breakup of a long-term relationship, the death of his Grandmother and, shortly after that, the death of a mutual friend of the band. “The songs are coming from a really bad place,” Murray says. “I’d become a really empty human being’; it felt like my wires were all lined-up perfectly and colour coordinated and then someone yanked them all out. I couldn’t really relate to anyone, I was struggling to talk to people, I just couldn’t go out and face the world. Fundamentally I just felt completely worthless, I just didn’t know who I was and I didn’t really care about who I was either!”

The negativity that shrouded Murray’s sense of well-being began to infiltrate the band’s rehearsals as well, with early sessions proving strained. “Murray and I were going at each other head to head for a while there,” Jordan admits. “It was difficult. Both of us would be in tears and Tom would be sitting in the middle looking awkward. We would always talk about rehearsal as work, this idea that it’s a job that you had to put the hours in to, which is true, but it’s glib. You’re taking the joy out of it when you look at it like that.”

Murray smiles, like a man recalling troubles that are now long behind him. “It wasn’t fun! Some of those writing sessions were heavy, it was more like group therapy then it was practise. When me and the boys go into that practise room, we should be having fun. We’ve always said rock n roll ain’t rocket science; it should be simple and pure, just three friends getting together and getting loud but it was pretty hairy for a while there.”

Sometimes things get worse before they get better and Murray’s lowest point came after he moved into a decrepit bed-sit that came to be ironically known as ‘the mansion’. No attempt had been made to rid the house of the black mould that covered the walls, the owners deciding instead that simply painting over it would make for a suitable living space. His window looked out on to a gothic church, a view which seemed to echo his oppressive mood. Sometimes he would wake to screaming from other residents on his street and there was one incident when he returned home from playing a show only to discover that a man had been stabbed practically on his doorstep. “If it were a script, Hollywood would have snubbed their noses at it for being too dark,” he says with a laugh.

But it was despite these dark surroundings, or perhaps because of them, that the songs that made their way on to Hold On To Your Heart began to take shape. Murray recalls the genesis of ‘We Are Gonna Live’, an upbeat, joyful anthem about escapism that was written within this oppressive, mould-infested habitat as an example. “It stems from a night where I was laying on the floor thinking ‘this can’t be it. This can’t be me, this can’t be my life and I ain’t going down like this!’ It was really beneficial for me to experience though because it was a dark place, the mansion was really rotten but it inspired me to move on and start again. I wanted to bring myself back and make myself feel better; it inspired me to find hope in the dark I’d been hiding in. I started to romanticise my negativity and that was the beginning of many of the songs that ended up on the album. It’s a very important record to me, I think if we hadn’t written these songs, I would have been lost at sea.”

Murray may have been in the gutter, but his romantic optimism directed his gaze towards the stars. Songs such as Daydream, Feels Like Falling In Love and We Are Gonna Live are rousing odes to living life with a full heart and an open mind. “I really wanted to transport the listener to a certain time and place. I want people to be there with me on the street corners or in the bars or in the mansion, the places where it all went down.”

Reconvening with his bandmates with the bare bones of these songs in tow proved to be re-invigorating. His environment and these songs forced a shift in Murray’s attitude, lighting a spark that ignited fire in the band’s bellies to create something that would fill their lives with light. Their renewed hunger and dogged determination is palpable throughout the record. “The 3 of us needed to create what felt like a life-affirming record,” Murray says. “There was a real sense of hunger and a drive in wanting to make the songs explode out of the small room we were creating in. The outside world was completely forgotten about each time we stepped into the rehearsal space and in there, it was vital therapy. There were emotional breakdowns and moments of despair, but as always, love and distortion conquered.”

As a result, The Xcerts have produced the most life-affirming collection of songs in their career to date, the bulk of which showcase the sheer, gutsy determination of a hopeless romantic who never learned when to quit. It’s a record of defiance, a celebration of life including all its pitfalls and a resolute middle finger to depressing thoughts and negative feelings. “There are already a million amazing sad records and at the moment, we’re not interested in adding any more to the pile,” says Murray. “We want people to listen to our band and feel invigorated. We want to make people dance and sing and feel free, to show them that they’re worth so much more than the pain they’re going through. It’s an arm around the listener and a voice saying no matter how bad things get, they will get good again. Those clouds are going to part and the sun is going to come glaring through. We want people to put on their headphones and feel like anything’s possible.”

Hold On To Your Heart is released via Raygun Records on 19^th January. They begin an extensive tour of live shows and in-store appearances throughout the UK on the same day