This month I got the chance to talk to one of Scotland’s finest young songwriters, Declan Welsh. Welsh is the frontman of Declan Welsh and The Decadent West, an indie-punk quartet hailing from East Kilbride who have been dominating Glasgow’s live scene and releasing music frequently, each new tune maturing in sound and style.
Would you like to say a few words to introduce yourself to our readers at Dead Good?
I’m Declan Welsh. I’m a songwriter and singer and I’ve been doing this for probably too long, would be the length of time I’d say now, but we’ve got an EP coming out in June and a Barras gig coming in November.
You seem to be having a brilliant run of success, from TRNSMT and SWG3 last year onto three sell-out shows at Tuts and now you have the Barrowlands coming up later this year. How does it feel to be headlining Glasgow’s most iconic venue?
It feels good and I’m so proud of myself and all the other crap that everyone says when they do something good but the reality is that I’m shitting myself because it’s a lot of people, a lot of tickets and a big massive venue. The performance side of it I’m not nervous about at all, I’ve been doing it long enough that I know as soon as I go on stage it’ll all be fine, but it’s the build up to it and the stuff that nobody talks about. According to every single band they’re about to sell out Hamden in a week and every gig is sold out within 30 seconds of it being announced but the reality is very different. Most of my time is spent asking for updates. It’ll be amazing when we play it and the actual night, I’m so excited for and I can’t believe we’ve got there its just a bit of stress. It’s always stressful, it’s like having a birthday party, like an 18th and you’re stood there and its ten minutes to go and there’s no one in the hall yet. Its probably just my own neuroses more than anything, not to put too much of a downer on it, it’ll be amazing and I’m really looking forward to it.
You also have a brand-new EP coming up which I’ve had the pleasure of listening to already. I love that it’s a slight change in sound, more experimental and dancey but still authentically you. Can you say a few words about the record, its influences and inspirations?
I would say that its basically the product of me learning how to use production software in lockdown. So, its less directly inspired by something like me say listening to an album or whatever. This is more about me finding out how to use different ways of writing music, so stuff like ‘Aw The Time’ and ‘Slack Jaw’ and that, and even ‘Impermanency’ sounds remarkably similar to my original draft of that to this now. They’re all things you wouldn’t write unless you could programme drums or use synths or whatever, so I’d say they come from me experimenting with sounds and even lyrics. ‘Slack Jaw’ is less of a narrative than I’ve done before and less ‘about’ anything, it’s much more like a kind of word game thing. I think they’re all good songs and as you said the danceable side to its nice because I think the most fun I have listening to music tends to be dancing to it. Yeah, I like them and I hope other people do!
So, you mentioned you started producing over lockdown, is that something you taught yourself?
Yeah, I was lucky enough to get a wee grant so I could get the equipment I needed right at the start of lockdown and because we couldn’t play live or even rehearse, I thought right, what am I going to do here? So, I went on YouTube and watched videos and now I can make demos. I’m not a producer by any stretch of imagination, Duncan in the band who plays guitar is much more accomplished at that kind of thing but I’m at a level now where I can make demos that I’m happy with and we based every song in the EP and every song in the album that’s coming up off my sessions so I’m getting somewhere with them, it usually just needs a bit of a polish. But yeah, self-taught. It’s not that hard to get to a level where you can make noises and record them its just a bit intimidating at first because there are a lot of buttons, but I ignore about 75% of them.
And do you have a favourite track off the upcoming EP?
I think that ‘Impermanency’ is maybe my favourite but I have been listening to ‘Aw The Time’ recently and I do really like that. I tend not to listen to them until they come out and then I’ll listen a couple of times; because you’re so involved with them when you record them you need a wee bit of space so this is the first time I’ve listened to the EP as it came out, I like all of them and I’m happy to release them. I like the ending of ‘Whatever Forever’, the solo and the harmonies and how it all comes together. It’s a really soppy sentimental big love song, isn’t it? They can get licenced to be like five minutes long. I think ‘Aw The Time’ is cool because its one of those songs where there isn’t a single instrument you can hear clearly, it just makes this one weird noise and I like that. I’m always prouder of lyrics than I am of anything else for whatever reason, and ‘Impermanency’ I’m quite proud of the lyrics so we’ll go with that one.
I’ve also heard talks of album two coming next year, can you give us a hint on what fans can expect this time around?
It’s going to be different to the EP, different to the previous EP and different to the album. I think we’re just trying to grow a little bit; it’s got enough big singles, there’s also a bit more of a chilled out mellow vibe to some of the tracks. People will hear it and think whatever they think, I’m never good at guessing what tracks people will like or what people will think it sounds like. The more I do this the more I realise its cool if people take something completely different from a song. If I mean a song to be one thing and someone takes it to mean another thing that’s totally fine! People will make their own minds up about the album but we all love the tunes more than we’ve ever loved any tunes we’ve written. We’re buzzing about it and we recorded it in a cool way with a cool person so we’re excited.
What’s your typical song writing process like?
I will hear something and then pick up an instrument if I’ve got one near me or speak into my phone if I don’t. It’ll be like a melody or possibly words and then I will take that and kind of just riff on it with every instrument and something will come together. It used to be I’d do that but with an acoustic guitar and now I’ll go into my computer and add layers and layers of stuff until I’ve got like 14 tracks of vocal harmonies and it’s a file that breaks your computer if you play it. I just sort of hear stuff and mess about on the guitar, its usually quite spontaneous and luckily, I haven’t run into writer block yet (touch wood). I just keep trying to write as much as I can so that the day when I forget how to play and write I have a bank of stuff I can go back to. That’s coming for everyone who writes I think, everyone who writes music is one day not going to be able to write music anymore.
I remember you said at Tuts you’ve got a huge backlog of songs ready to go. Where do you find your inspiration from, do you find songs just fall out of the sky?
It’s a little bit like that, we could release five albums tomorrow if we wanted to. I teach a song writing class now and a lot of the stuff I’m trying to pass on to people is more recognising patterns in what people do than it is saying “you have to do this”. You can write a song any way and it will work; you can do anything with it. I do think there’s an element of luck in that I’m lucky enough that I’ve got both the confidence and self-belief but I’m okay with it being crap. I’m fine with writing something and it being bad because I don’t need to show it to anyone, and that probably only comes from doing it for a while. I think the one thing I’ve become obsessed with over everything else is being a better songwriter every time because it’s the only thing you can control. Who know if anyone is going to like this next album? I don’t know, you don’t know and no one has a clue! I could think it’s the best thing ever and everyone else could hate it and we’d all be right. In terms of needing to make it or wanting to be the best band in the world I don’t think that’s something you can control so I don’t think it’s something you should put your belief into. But what I can control is I can get better every album, so it’s been about that. There are things where you go right, lets edit the lyrics a bit more or let’s think about layers being more important for example the Fontaines DC album, the last one, I adore it and I think its so good. I think what they do is often their songs are like two chords or three chords so that layers and other things are captivating, other than the chord arrangement of the song and I quite like that idea. There’s also Stevie Wonder that does 8000 chords in a song and that also sounds good, so aye, in terms of where the inspiration comes from its much more internal now. It used to be about things that happened to me or places I went, but now we’ve all been locked in I’m also very settled so when I play a gig, I want to come home to sit with my girlfriend and watch telly. The person I was when I wrote ‘No Fun’ is not the person I am now so that same inspiration for writing tunes isn’t going to come about, but there’s plenty of interesting topics to discuss and I think we do in these four tracks in the album talk more about internal feelings and stuff.
One of my favourite things about your music is the great standard of poetry that the lyrics carry. Do your songs ever start out as poems or vice versa?
I’ve not written poetry in a while, I always thought poetry was better performed than read. To me really good spoken word poetry was always a bit more like stand up than anything else, I’ve not done that in a while so its probably meant that I’ve wrote less of it. Plus, I know the medium less and I’m less sure on how to improve, you’d need to go and really study poetry for a bit and I’m much more interested in music so I kind of pivoted I think to it being more about song writing. It’s the same thing really, poetry and composition is what song writing is. They almost always start as melodies and chords and a musical thing of some kind. Sometimes I get words into my head, like the chorus “whatever forever is, wherever it is we go, whatever is left of me, is yours to keep you know”- that was something I just wrote down because it came into my head and I thought it might be useful one day. We were trying to change the chorus to that song, and before it was fine, everyone else on planet earth would have been fine with that chorus but the way that I heard it, it sounded slightly possessive and so I had to record new vocals and change the whole song and annoy everyone because it didn’t quite exactly reflect how I feel. Sometimes I just write down words that sound good but almost always it’s a musical idea first and words will come after. I feel like it puts you in a mood, music, like ‘Impermanency’ is a grand song about serious stuff, ‘Aw The Time’ is a bit murky and grimy and weird.
Another highlight of your music for myself and many fans is that a lot of the tracks convey a message about equality. Do you think art can change the world?
I definitely did massively when I was younger, now that I’m older I probably see its role as much more of a support one than a direct changing thing. I think what art does is it forces you to be empathetic and I think that’s a good thing and that’s a way art can help. See if I really believe, and I do and always will hold the same political beliefs that I have, and they haven’t wavered in any way; but what I’ve thought is if that’s on a press release for journalists what that is, even if I don’t mean it to be, is to an extent using the struggle and the fight as a marketing tool to sell my records and that made me feel very uncomfortable. So, I kind of thought the best way to be an artist is to be confessional and open and honest, and talk about whatever in your lyrics but in terms of how you’re branded I think you’re either deliberately being ignorant or you don’t care. If at some point you don’t go “is this doing anything? I know that I’m standing up here and I’m saying these things and I’m singing these songs. I know everyone is saying it’s so great I speak about these things, but am I doing anything? Or is the only benefit of this for my own career?”. I sort of thought until I know the answer to that question I’ll try and make the activism and stuff something that I do privately and make the song writing its own thing. They’re not mutually exclusive and sometimes there are songs on the album that are about political things, but two or three years ago for a while there every single press release was like “Theresa May watch out! This young Scottish fire band is coming for you” and I just kind of think aside from everything else it’s a bit embarrassing to be like thinking you’re saving everyone. I don’t regret any of the songs I wrote or any of the positions I held, my politics haven’t changed at all, but I think its more that there are skilful ways like in ‘Do What You Want’ and ‘Different Strokes’ to win people over whilst telling an autobiographical story. Both of those things happened to me, I think they’re probably the best political songs I’ve written and they’re both not really about ideology but about me in a situation and why it had an impact on me. I think that aspect of trying to change people is about trying to elicit empathy because that’s what music is really good at. What music isn’t really good at is starting a revolution. I’ve yet to see the proof that there were ever 20 guys with guitars at the front, that’s not how it works. Its more about people who are willing to fight and die standing up for their beliefs. Saying I think my music can change the world I think would be the height of arrogance because it can change people’s worlds, and people have changed my world with their music, that’s the most amazing about music. If you want to change the world become active in a union, don’t pick up a guitar.
You have also recently created a TikTok account which seems to be something labels are pushing more and more for these days. What’s your opinion on the platform as a tool for promoting music?
I have nothing to do with any of our social media so I’m probably the wrong person to ask. I don’t have to deal with the negative fallout of being a person and a platform and having to post. If you’re a label with tonnes of money, or a person with tonnes of money, of if you’re hypey, or one of these industry darlings, or a band with a tune that’s got a million streams in a day; there are loads of routes that don’t need social media to be a key part of it, less and less as you go on. We’ve never been any of those things; we’ve never been they hypiest band in Scotland or the industry favourites. We’ve chipped away and got better and better, and earned what we have due to our songs and live performances. We have to be spinning as many plates as we can in order to move forward and if something like TikTok comes along am I going to be on it posting them dances? Absolutely not. There should be an alarm that goes off if anyone above the age of like 28 starts posting regularly on that, you should immediately ask questions. I think there are people on it who like our music who would like an opportunity to see live videos or behind the scenes or whatever and that’s great, people come up and talk to you at gigs and you get quite a mixed fanbase but there are definitely a lot of young people there that talk to us and they use Snapchat and TikTok. Nobody is on Facebook or Twitter that’s under the age of 20 from what I can see. If you want to connect with people who go to your gigs, why is Twitter any more or less good or bad than TikTok? They’re all more or less the same broadly damaging thing that we all have to comply with.
The Glasgow scene has so many brilliant young bands and artists kicking about at the moment, can you recommend any of your favourites?
We just toured with Dead Pony who are a really lovely bunch of people and a good band. Us, Twin Atlantic and Dead Pony was a really nice bunch of people to be a part of. Lizzie Reid also filed in for them on one of those gigs at the Barras and I think she’s as good of a songwriter as there is. We were meant to play with Uninvited who were unfortunately ill but they’re a cool band. All the bands who supported us at Tuts; Pleasure Heads, The Big Day and Goodnight Louisa were all great to see. I don’t go out as much anymore so I don’t see bands as much but its always nice that there’s a healthy number of bands about. I think sonically there are different sounds going on as well which is always good to see and any young band from Glasgow that does well helps every other band from Glasgow who does well. I don’t think the competitive thing has any logic behind it, I think its just pettiness. If you feel competitive with another band you need to ask yourself why that is because them doing well has no effect of you doing well.
Okay I just have one last question for you- our site is orange themed so we ask everyone- what is your favourite fruit?
Favourite fruit? We could be here for a while! I’m like a smoothie obsessive, I think maybe because in my 20’s my diet was so atrocious now as I come to the end of those years and begin to see adulthood and all its consequences. I love kiwis, strawberries, I think bananas are the only ones I don’t actively love but still eat most days. It’s a very difficult choice for me but I think strawberries might win over everything.