Some people are just meant to end up in the music industry, Young*Husband singer/songwriter Euan Hinshelwood is definitely one of those people. Growing up in house filled with music, he was lulled to sleep each night by the dulcet tones of psychedelic rock, grunge, John Lennon or even experimental dance music, and left their mark on the young musician.
Still only 20 years old, Euan has been in numerous garage bands, starting off with CCTV, then onto Noble Wilson, Kenton & Clarke (a folk outfit) and finally onto The New Shapes, a band who made a name for themselves with their eclectic brand of punk and indie.
Dee Massey dragged Euan away from reading an Elliot Smith interview for a few minutes to find out what Young*Husband’s all about..
Firstly, thanks very much for taking the time to have a chat.
That’s alright!
Now, we don’t know an awful lot about you – so can you introduce yourself?
Well, I go under the name of Young*Husband, and it’s usually just me playing, but sometimes its with a band but they’re all in other bands [eg Emmy The Great] so it’s usually just me playing on my own.
You were in quite a few bands before Young*Husband, so what was behind your decision to go solo?
Well the last band I was in split up for numerous reasons, and I’d always written and recorded my own songs so I thought it was maybe a good time to start taking it all a bit more seriously.
And do you prefer it on your own?
I kinda do prefer it on my own, but I miss having the noise of a band, and that launch into a noisey gig but hopefully that’ll all come in time. Although I do play acoustically some of my main influences are heavy American rock and indie from the early 90s, like Dinosaur Junior and people.
Talking of influences, what bands are you really into? What’s your main inspiration?
I truly like American music, like Elliot Smith, Dinosaur Junior and Pavement, bands like that. So it’s quite a conflicting mix of genres – like I like the Beach Boys as well so it’s just annoying when I’m playing and I want to hear noise, but all I’ve got is my acoustic guitar.
But the noise will come!
Yeah [laughs] the noise will come one day!
Right, so you’re releasing your first single on Culturedeluxe, how did that single deal come along?
It’s weird actually, my best friend’s girlfriend started a new job and one of her colleagues had this label, and we just met for random drinks, and I introduced myself as a singer/songwriter and he got round to listening to it about 3 or 4 months later, and sent me an email saying ‘sorry it took so long to listen to it, I quite like it…want to do a single?!’ And was like…ok!
[laughs]
A good lesson in perseverance! And did you rerecord it for the single or just remix?
We re-recorded parts of it, because we’d recorded it about a year ago and it was a bit of a rusty demo, so we put some drums on it and re-did the vocals.
And who engineered it for you?
A guy called Pete Baker, at the Bakery…[laughs]
And do you enjoy the recording process?
I love it. It’s one of my favourite things. I’ve got a studio at home, just a little studio in my bedroom, kinda got all this old equipment and I find it amazing how much a song can change in the recording process, it goes from sitting on your living room floor writing a song to taking it into the studio and changing it completely…
Are you a great believer of digital and pro-tools or are you an analogue fan?
Well, I’m not anal about it. I’ve got an analogue 8 track, and that’s what I record on. But digital definitely has it’s benefits, I can transfer analogue into digital afterwards and play around with it.
Am I right in thinking you’re releasing your single on download only? What do you make of the whole digital revolution, do you prefer digital or good old 7″ singles..
Yeah..well I love 7″, and I’ve never really bought CD singles but I have bought 7″, I would’ve liked to have released the single on 7″ but Culturedeluxe were a small label before called Prank Monkey, and they were like a bootleg label. They released a few things but this was their fresh start, so I guess I’m like their first proper release.
You’re their guinea pig ..
Yeah [laughs] and I think they just wanted to do something that wasn’t going to break the bank for them, but I’d love to release a 7″ with maybe a code in it that meant you could download it form iTunes as well or something..
Have you got any follow up singles planned? What’re your hopes for the next few months?
Oooh I don’t know really. It depends how this goes. It might be that I release another single but I think it’ll probably be an EP, and record it all at home.
And how would you describe your sound to someone that’s never heard you?
It’s made up of…um…well I don’t want to describe it as lo-fi cos I don’t really think it is…but…it’s kind of like psychedelic acoustic indie scuzz [laughs]
I think that’s a whole new genre – NME will trademark it!
Yeah [laughs]
Where would be your dream venue?
Dream venue? Probably…I suppose The Astoria, just because it’s going to be shut down so I’ll probably never get the chance to play there, but it would have to be there, The Astoria.
Better get in quick! What’s your most played CD at the moment?
Oooh wait a minute, I am looking at it just now…it’s probably ‘The Madcap Laughs‘ by Syd Barrett.
What album changed your life?
It was XO by Elliot Smith.
What’s the most embarrassing CD you’ll admit to owning? Come clean!
Um…probably it has to be..This really band bad in the mid to late 90s called 3T – remember them? They were three young guys doing really bad RnB [laughs] and the worst thing was that day in the shop I couldn’t decide between 3T and Celine Dion..[laughs]
You should be ashamed!
I know, I know …it’s bad! But I redeemed myself, I got Bob Marley The Legend album a week later.
You saw the light and recovered..
Yeah!
So what’s been the most embarrassing thing to happen to you on stage?
Probably when I was in the New Shapes, I was a bit of a youngster, I fell down to quite a few clichés of being in a rock band, and we were playing at Kings College, at a freshers ball. I got really drunk before we went on stage and I had a bass amp that had wheels on it, so in the last song I decided to sit on my bass amp and wheel myself off across the stage. It wasn’t embarrassing then…but God it was embarrassing the next day when I sobered up.
And lastly, what do you want for Christmas!
I’ve seen these little hoover things right…and it’s a robot hoover, with a little disc, it has incredible sensors in it and it can sense dirt, so you just basically press go and leave it in the room, come back half an hour later and it’s all hoovered. So that is what I’d like!
Well if you’ve been a good boy, I’m sure Santa will bring it to you. Thanks for taking the time to chat Euan, good luck with the single!
Cheers!
For further info on Young*Husband check out www.myspace.com/younghusbandmusic
The debut single ‘Could They Be Jealous‘ is available to download now!