(Continued...)

Does toning down the look do anything to dampen the message that your music is made for movin'?
We're not gonna get pissed off at people if they don't dance; we're not a dance band. That was the funny thing about being on the indie rave tour; all the other bands were sort of electronic and were all dance bands, so people would go to our show and sometimes didn't know what to do.

"It was amazing that we could really infiltrate the mainstream pop world with songs about riding on horseback to the apocalypse"Does that mean, then, right here, half-way through this interview, that you're proclaiming New Rave dead?
We kind of toured the world and people wanted to start this non-existent genre, and we told them we're not a part of it and we don't give a fuck about it. We just toured Europe for a month and we were like in this bubble. We didn't really live anywhere, musically, and it's enough to make us all go mad, but it's something that we found quite exciting, too.

So you're not a dance band, nor are you New Rave. How do you want to be classified?
It's funny. We always wanted to be a really big pop band. Here, the Guardian, the most artistic left-wing paper, said that our album was a pain to listen to, and then the Sun, the real celebrity paper, named us album of the month and wrote like a huge three-page thing on how much they loved us. I think that for the people's newspaper to name us album of the month, that was a huge deal—it was like making it for us. It was amazing that we could really infiltrate the mainstream pop world with songs about riding on horseback to the apocalypse or about William Burroughs.

Does that give you any inkling as to whether mainstream American crowds will take to you?
It's really quite baffling. Now that America has opened its doors and Rolling Stone hates us [the magazine gave their debut LP just two stars], that's just another bit of excitement and confusion. The great thing is we have no idea how we are going to be perceived in America or how the shows are going to go. We were packing our bags today, and it was kind of like jumping into the unknown again.

What's exciting you musically right now?
I'm more excited about Britney than anything. We did a TV show with Bloc Party yesterday, and I'm not sure how much of the truth [singer, guitarist] Kele was telling us, but he was saying that he heard one of the new Britney Spears tracks, and it was life-changing. So that's more exciting to me.

So will the follow-up to Myths be produced by the Neptunes?
We've written the opener of the next album, the opening track ... We're thinking of making a prog album—like a huge, tribal prog album.

Is this where we declare the coming of "New Prog"?
No, no. I'm being completely serious. We've all been listening to bands in England like Caravan, so we're definitely going to make a big, heartbreaking prog album.

So how long will it be until Gwen Stefani—or maybe Moby—makes a New Rave record?
[Laughs.] There was a gossip magazine yesterday that had this whole double-page feature on how, like, Sienna Miller was New Rave now, and it was insane ... I think Gwen Stefani will make a New Rave record within a year.

All photos courtesy of Biglife Management

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