Kent-based band, Get Inuit, are out and about getting fans hyped for their new debut album with a new single as a sneak peak. Comprised of Jamie Glass, Oliver Nunn, Rob Simpson, and James Simpson, the band have spent the last 3 years perfecting their infectious sound; but before becoming acquainted with one another, they didn’t have a clue on what they were doing (just like the rest of us).
Get Inuit was formed in 2013 after songwriter Jamie Glass crashed his car into a curb outside of a Domino’s Pizza while with Oliver Nunn. Luckily, Rob Simpson was in the area and helped them out with a spare tire, car jack, and drumming skills. Soon Rob’s brother, James, joined the group, thus completing the four man band. Since then, the lads have released EPs, been busy working on their highly anticipated debut album, and touring around the UK.
Fans have been on their toes awaiting their new record, but as a teaser to all their hard work, Get Inuit have surprised everyone with their latest single, unusually titled “Teriyaki.” Gelling nicely with their other critically acclaimed tracks such as “Pro Procrastinator,” “My Oh My” and “I Am The Hot Air,” “Teriyaki” is a short and sweet tune that will leave fans hanging on for more. The song is a complete riot from the start, with a punching guitar riff, pulsing drumming, and raw vocals. It’s a fast-paced track that’ll surely be stuck in your head all day.
Jamie’s vocals are an instant reminder of Marty Larson-Xu’s, vocalist and guitarist of Rock N Roll Soldiers. Hearing “Teriyaki” brought me back to my high school days, where all I listened to was grungy and angsty rock. Soon, I found myself humming and head banging to the boys singing “I can’t remember who I was before.” Get Inuit not only are a band who plays music and performs together, but also self-producers, videographers, photographers, and designers of all their work. The multi-skilled group’s show-stopping stardom is only climbing from here. Starting their extensive tour lineup with Reading Festival, Get Inuit will be traveling alongside Spring King, The Big Moon, and The Magic Gang and Kagoule.
We got to sit down with Get Inuit’s James Simpson and Ollie Nunn at LeeFest ahead of the release of their new single, “Teriyaki,” to talk about the new single, touring as a support act, and converting bandmates into festival lovers.
You’ve got a new single single coming out soon called “Teriyaki.” You’ve gotten support from Radio 1 in the past, do you think we’ll be hearing this new single on Radio 1 as well?
Ollie Nunn: Hopefully!
James Simpson: I mean, if you were a statistical person, you’d say our chances were pretty good because we’ve released ten songs and had 11 played on Radio 1. We had a Maida Vale session they played that had an unreleased song. So you’d say it was pretty likely, but we don’t want to count our chickens because that’d be stupid.
ON: Yeah, because they haven’t hatched.
JS: We’ll see, they’ve been absolutely lovely to us.
You work with BBC Introducing Kent a lot, don’t you?
ON: Yes, they’re wonderful in Kent
JS: The BBC Kent team is incredible, when we first started the band about two and a half years ago, the producer in Kent was a guy called Jacob Rickard, who ended up moving to Huw Stephen’s show, and now he’s at Annie Mac’s show. He moved from Kent to Radio 1, and then Abbie McCarthy is now doing Live Lounge at Radio 1, so clearly the Kent team really knows what they’re doing. They’re really switched on.
ON: And they’re passionate too, which is helps a lot
JS: Yeah, they always want to discover new stuff
ON: Not saying that the other sections of Introducing aren’t, but from my experience they’re the best. I think we’re biased, but I think they’re the best. They’re like a family, they bring musicians and bands together, it’s great. It’s nice to be playing in Kent where there are all these other Kent bands.
Do you feel like Kent has a strong music community?
ON: Kind of, yeah.
JS: Yeah, I think so. It’s this weird thing because Kent barely has any music venues. Compared to Yorkshire where you’ve got three or four towns with humongous numbers of music venues comparatively, and Kent’s got Tunbridge Wells Forum and Ramsgate Music Hall. As far as like weekly venues go, that’s it.
ON: There are a few other places that put on some gigs every now and again though
JS: Yeah, but they’re not an every week kind of thing. There are a few that pop up and go for a little bit, but I think that makes it harder to create a music scene. Across the entire county everyone has to work together otherwise it just wouldn’t work, which is why LeeFest is really cool.
You went on tour with Spring King a little while ago, and you’re heading back out with them for their October tour. Are you looking forward to it?
JS: Yeah we did a few dates, I don’t know how many it was
ON: The next one is a lot bigger
JS: Yeah, the last one was like their just beginning of the album but it hadn’t come out yet, and this tour is now that the album’s out so there are much bigger venues
ON: We’re really excited because they’re just great guys
JS: They’re really lovely people, and that just makes it way easier to go on tour. We’ve been a support band for most of this year, we haven’t really done that many headline shows, so we try to just get our stuff done and out of the way and hype the crowd up and get out of the way to let them do their headline thing as quickly as possible. We try to make things go as smoothly as possible and they return that to us in different ways, like they don’t take ages in soundcheck, they actually give us a soundcheck where some tours you get nothing, so they’ve been really reciprocative.
ON: Their whole crew as well, most of the time the bands get mentioned and the crew doesn’t, but the crew is so vital to the band. The guys in their crew are awesome people, it’s just great, you become like a little family for a while.
JS: A little touring family.
I imagine it helps a lot to tour with bands who you’re a fan of, but would you go on tour with a band whose music you didn’t enjoy?
ON: Yeah, that helps
JS: It definitely helps.
ON: We’ve been really fortunate with that actually.
JS: I think depending on how big it was, you’d kind of have to from a business perspective. You’d have to look at the audience. The thing is, if an audience would like our band, then we’d probably like the band that we’d be touring with anyway.
ON: We’re really fortunate in the fact that there’s like a collective of genres in our music, so it puts us in a good position.
JS: Yeah, and to be honest I think the music scene in this country right now is pretty good. There aren’t many bands you wouldn’t want to go on tour with right now.
You recently ventured to America for SXSW, how was that?
JS: That was awesome
ON: Sensational yeah
JS: I think some people in the band were a bit nervous, not me or Ollie because we’d been before, but some of the other guys are a bit apprehensive about flying so far. Going to a place that’s so far, where you’ve got no idea of the culture besides what you’ve seen in TV shows or movies or the music. The product version of America is what we get here rather than what it actually is. What it actually is is kind of that, but it’s for all the good reasons if that makes sense. The whole point is freedom of choice, and having that is a really interesting thing. They always go on about the freedom thing and we’re like yeah, yeah whatever. It is an interesting point where you give everyone the freedom to do as well as they want or something as stupid as they want, it’s quite interesting.
ON: I think America is just so many different countries in one as well. State to state laws, that’s just so crazy
JS: It’s very convoluted, but I’d love to tour America, like if you can sleep on a bus and go to bed in one city and then you wake up in another city, that’d be amazing.
You’ve got a few more festivals lined up this summer, are you big festival goers?
JS: I like them!
ON: I am a big fan, I think we’re slowly converting Jamie as well.
JS: He’d never been to one before he made a band, so like, he’d been to a couple of gigs
ON: Yeah and he’d been to a couple of smaller things
JS: He loves music, he’s constantly listening to music, but he’s a headphones guy absolutely
ON: I think it’s just the people, and how there’s so much going on
JS: Yeah, like, me and Ollie love the vibe of festivals, like sitting in the sun if there is any-
ON: Yeah, like before we were in a band we were going to a bunch of festivals every year
JS: I think Jamie’s coming around to it more because he can just go sit in the van if he wants, camping might be different.
ON: Yeah, and the more festivals we play the bigger our mate circle grows, so it’s an excuse to hang out with friends.
What’s your favorite song of yours?
JS: That’s a good question, of ours? I guess my favorite one to play live at the moment is probably a song called “Barbiturates” which has been in the set for a long time.
ON: I think we’ve only not played it once
JS: Yeah, but that’s live. Live is different I guess. For recorded songs I don’t know. I like the new single a lot, I’m excited about that one.
ON: I’m still a big fan of “Electrify”
JS: Oh yeah! One neglected song is a song called “Electrify.” It was on our second EP and it’s a bit sad because I think we put out too many singles too close together, and so it got overlooked. We released “I Am The Hot Air,” and then I think only three or four weeks later we released “Electrify,” and then three or four weeks after that we released “Pro Procrastinator,” so people only really heard the other ones. It’s a shame because it’s not going to be on the album, so it’s just going to be lost.
ON: We’re fortunate that we write a lot of songs, Jamie’s always constantly writing, James is constantly writing, so we’ve played a fair few of the songs that will eventually be on the album but maybe a year and a half ago because we decided to stop and work on it again. Going back to what you said earlier about who we go on tour with, depending on who we’re playing with we’re pretty flexible now to alter our set to adhere to whatever crowd we’re playing to.
Are those favorites the ones people should listen to as their first Get Inuit songs?
ON: Not really, I think they’re our favorites for different reasons.
JS: Yeah, I think if you’re going to get into the band the first song you should probably listen to is “Pro Procrastinator”
ON: Yeah it’s the one song that got a cheer at our show yesterday actually. That’s my favorite to play live too, it used to be “Barbiturates” but it’s changed.
JS: It’s a good one because it has almost everything that we do in one two and a half minute song. It’s got a massive riff section, it’s got some weird verse with a punky aggressive energy, and then it’s got a catchy pop chorus, so it’s got pretty much every type of song that we write in one song. I think that’s why people like that one.
On songwriting, Jamie said “I’m constantly questioning whether or not the songs are good enough – if I’m not talking then that’s what I’m doing.” Do you think that self-criticism makes for better music, or do you think it holds you back?
JS: We have a bit of a balance in the band. Even yesterday Jamie was listening to the new single we’ve been working on this week. He was listening to it on his headphones not talking to anyone for about an hour I think?
ON: Yeah quite a while, I’d say an hour at least.
JS: Once I’ve got to a certain point with a mix, I just stop listening to it.
ON: To be fair we spend so much longer than he does listening to it working on it
JS: Yeah, but mine’s such a technical point of thinking, like I’m looking at whether or not the frequency is full enough here, or is the space right, whereas he’s listening to it from a songwriter’s point of view. Ollie and Rob are so good for the energy, like you know if a song’s energy is right.
ON: I don’t know, just being a fan of Jamie’s music way before being in a band with him, like I’ll always have songs that I prefer. James and Rob will argue about songs, and me and Jamie will argue about songs, but in terms of what song will do better than another song. I think always critiquing yourself makes you a better band.
JS: We don’t know if it’d be better to do anything else because you don’t know what you’re missing out on.
ON: When someone says that a song is a banger and it’s a song that Jamie and I had a little argument over, I do take that as a victory point. I get quite excited about it. I think he wrote “Barbiturates” in a very short amount of time, so he’s never been a massive fan of it because it was for him easy to write.
JS: The whole band brings different elements to songs as well and it’s a weird thing where the songs morph over time. They kind of change and take on different view points that he maybe didn’t think of in the first five minutes, but they’re brought out with the involvement of different people taking stuff out or adding things in.
ON: We have a load of songs that we’ve written or even performed at a show or just in practice and then we’ll decide to scrap it, and come back to it. Sometimes we end up scrapping it again, but they’re always there.
JS: Yeah, like “Pro Procrastinator” was nearly scrapped. It wasn’t even called that, it was called “I’m Wasting My Life” and we had that demo around for I think maybe six months. Jamie chucked it away essentially, but me and Rob thought there was something in the chorus melody. You probably would only recognize the chorus melody actually.
ON: Yeah, it’s quite a different song now.
JS: We liked that bit and then we completely rebuilt the song around it afterwards. There’s some that will be on the album when it’s finished that have been through the same sort of process.
ON: I think all of them, even “Barbiturates” which we play every show, has changed a fair few times. Not all of it, but some parts of it.
JS: Maybe we are all anal control freaks, I don’t know, but because we have that freedom because we’re not on a major record label we don’t have someone telling us how it should be. Our album was funded by Spotify and PRS, and that allowed us a sort of freedom that a lot of bands don’t get. I don’t know if it is good, someone else will have to tell us if it’s any good, but we felt really free making it and we felt like we were in control. I co-produced it with a friend of mine I’ve been working with for years in a studio, so it’s just been our normal family setup. We think it’s really good, but only time will tell.
Speaking about the album, where are you in that process?
JS: In terms of making some songs, we’re nearly done. We’ve got about 14, is that right?
ON: Yeah, I think about 14 recorded.
JS: Yeah, so we’ve got about 14 songs, and then “Teriyaki” is the first single. So it’s starting to come out, but we’re in this thing where we don’t know who is going to put it out. We’re talking to a lot of people, but we don’t know who or when or how we’re going to put it out, so we don’t want to tell everyone we’ve got a debut album coming out because they’ll just say we lied to them.
ON: In the same aspect, we could finally get someone who wants to put out this album and then they’ll tell us to change something
JS: Yeah, that’s the other thing. We want to give them the freedom to have some say in it…
ON: But at the same time we want to take people on board who like it and want to release it as it is. It’s about finding that balance, so hopefully we’ll strike that balance soon.
What is something about your band that nobody knows yet?
ON: I’m just trying to think of something involved with Jamie.
JS: Nobody knows that he used to pack fruit in a warehouse. You can’t really tell by looking at him, but his most recent job after that was being a school teacher, whereas I feel like you can tell that.
ON: Yeah, although I wouldn’t want him teaching my children.
JS: No, I wouldn’t want him teaching mine either. Every time I do an interview without him I talk about him, and I make sure I look at him while I’m talking about him and he gets a bit nervous.
interview by: Courtney Farrell