“Throughout all the anguish and uncertainty, we were certain about our bond and the songs”: How The XCERTS found a new way to overcome the odds

A new XCERTS record is always cause for celebration, so three years on from the release of Learning How To Live And Let Go, it’s exciting to be able to announce that there’s a new one on the way. Titled – in all lower case – i think i want to go home now, it will be released on July 10, and documents a particularly turbulent two years in the lives of the Scottish trio. That, of course, is nothing new. The band – vocalist/guitarist Murray Macleod, bassist Jordan Smith and drummer Tom Heron – have been behind some of the most emotionally raw, moving songs in British alternative music since releasing debut album In The Cold Wind We Smile in 2009.

For this new one, which was produced by Larry Hibbett, the trauma came crashing down on Murray and Jordan. Murray’s dad was diagnosed with cancer, and his partner left the town they were living in. They later broke up. Jordan lost his mum Lynne, and her absence is a huge presence on 10 songs. Weirdly, those things almost mirror what happened to the band before they made that debut, when Jordan lost his father, and Murray was going through a terrible break-up (“I’m the problem,” he chuckles. “I think I’m the problem…”). The end result, as Murray explains, is a record that looks back as it forges forward, that demonstrates the power of The XCERTS’ friendship in the face of adversity, and which reasserts them as one of the best British bands on the planet right now.

One of the central themes of i think i want to go home now – both the title and the album as a whole – is the idea of reverting to a childhood sense of safety. How and why did that become the focus of the record?
“I guess it’s as simple as what the lyrical content is about, because I was writing so much about people in Aberdeen. That’s not to say the title is specifically about a place, and I hope it’s interpreted however which way somebody wants to interpret it, whether that be a city, a person, a pet, an apartment, a house, whatever. But I was quite literally thinking about Aberdeen for two years of writing and recording. Aberdeen and the family that occupy that city were just on my mind every day 24/7, and i think i want to go home now captures that childlike vulnerability of desperately wanting to be home when, at times, I couldn’t, or Jordan couldn’t go home.
“But it’s also important to note the use of the word ‘think’ in the title. It represents the uncertainty of that entire time. Without it, the album title is a statement, but we wanted to convey the insecurities and internal conflict that we faced nearly every day for two years, which again relates back to the childlike vulnerability. At the same time, we wanted to create a feeling of warmth, and I think everybody can experience that – where they reach breaking point and they know where they need to be, or where they should go to find respite, whether that’s a peaceful state of mind, or just an embrace. Home can also be somebody’s arms, and I’ve thought a lot about that as well – of this idea of home being somebody else’s arms.”

Even when the arms that were holding you are no longer holding you.
“Yes, exactly (laughs). I was miles away from home and was unable to have physical contact with my mum and dad who bring me so much comfort, and also my partner, who had left our home in the city we were living in. It was all crumbling and I couldn’t physically embrace her because she wasn’t in the city. And then we broke up. When you feel stranded like that, it does feed back into that childlike vulnerability and fear, and that’s how I felt for the majority of two years – like a child left in the house alone, not knowing when a parent was coming back.”

It wouldn’t be an XCERTS record without that heartbreak, trauma and pain…
“Exactly. It certainly fuelled the songwriting, that’s for sure. We’ve had this conversation many times about being a tortured artist and whether you need the hurt to make the song. I don’t quite believe in all that, but by our blueprint, it’s definitely served us well, musically speaking.”

You don’t have to be tortured at the moment, but it does help to have been tortured at some point or points in the past, so you can call on memories of those feelings to write something new about it, or about something else.
“Absolutely. Especially given the current climate in the modern world. I don’t know anybody who’s not living in complete fear or who’s hurting in some way. The world is an incredibly heavy place at the moment. We write very personally, but we’re world-weary and what’s going on did feed in to things.”

There are so many parallels with the first record on this one. Were you aware of them at the time?
“We’d had a conversation about wanting to make a record in a room together again, and for us to really celebrate the three-piece energy and chemistry that we have. We definitely weren’t self-referencing when we started writing, but there was purposeful purity in regards to the three of us actively being in the room together and getting a real kick out of making a racket. We weren’t signed at the time, and it felt really exciting because it conjured up this feeling of, ‘Oh my god, we feel 17 again,’ because we were just writing to exorcise all the demons that were starting to appear in our lives.”

Being older now, did your approach to writing about those demons differ to In The Cold Wind We Smile?
“When we were 17, we just wrote what we wanted to write, and we did the exact same thing with this record. I knew I wanted to be as honest as possible about what was occurring, because we were writing these songs in real time with each piece of devastating news we got – my father being diagnosed with cancer, Lynne being diagnosed cancer, my partner leaving. It’s all happening as I’m writing, so it was apparent that it needed to be as honest and raw as possible. That was kind of the deal on the first one, because I didn’t know any better, but I tried to be a lot cuter and a lot slicker on that one, because I was desperate for people to know that I was a reader. The lyrics on this record aren’t cute.
“Once we got into the studio with Larry, it wasn’t mentioned, but I couldn’t help but notice that the songs were starting to tonally remind me of moments on the first record – the specific sound that we created on that one was starting to rear its head in the studio. I think a lot of that is because my mind on the first record was so focused on Aberdeen – we started writing those songs there and then we left the city and were longing for it. On this record, all the negative things that were happening were happening back home, so my headspace was just filled with the city. So I guess that Scottish rock sound – whatever that may be – seeped back in. We wanted to bring back the coldness of Aberdeen. I guess they call it world-building, but I really wanted the whole thing to have one tone and take the listener somewhere.”

Did you feel further removed from what was happening on the first record than you did this time around? Were you closer to the trauma, rather than looking back on it from a distance, and with the nostalgia thing that The XCERTS do so well?
“Yeah, that’s completely right. I couldn’t look back because there was nothing there to look back on really because of COVID. We’d had three years wiped out and we’d made a record and gone on tour and done all that, but nothing was overly inspiring during that time. But when the news that you’re receiving is so crushing, all you can do is live in the fear and hurt of the moment. I couldn’t look forward, couldn’t look back – I just had to focus on what was happening in front of me.”

Obviously, it would have been much better to not have to deal with any of that, but did it bring the purpose of the band into sharper focus, and serve as a reminder of why you started The XCERTS in the first place?
“It definitely reinstated that sense of pride that we have that we’ve been a band for as long as we have been, and that we’re still awarded the opportunity to be a band and to make music and release records. There was a mass amount of safety in being in a windowless room with one another, because we could, for like four hours, just shut out the outside world and be together and love one another and create music together, which is one of our favorite things to do. Throughout all the anguish and uncertainty, the two things we were certain about were our bond and the songs. We truly were hyper-focused writing and recording this album. Not only as a tool to focus on something other than the harsh realities we were facing, but because we wanted to honour the people and situations we were writing about by creating something truly great. Maybe in some subconscious way we wanted to face the ugliness of life and scream, ‘Fuck you, we did it. You didn’t want us to do it, but goddamnit here it is, our album, desperate, bruised, battered and beautiful.’ One of my personal hopes for the record is that the listener feels like this album has been with them their entire lives. Familiar yet foreign. That’s where I’m at with making music right now. I like having a sense of longing in song, but I don’t want it to feel nostalgic. I want it to glance back and move forward, and exist in this liminal space between past and future.”

i think i want to go home now is due out on July 10 via FLG Records. Catch The XCERTS live at 2000trees the following day.

Read this next:

• “Grief is such a weird thing… There’s no right way to do it”: As Everything Unfolds on loss, uncertainty and leaning into fictional worlds
• Biffy Clyro: “I’ve got this almost unhealthy relationship with music, because I can’t create something that isn’t absolutely everything I’ve got”
• Keo: “Some of my writing is becoming uncomfortable to listen to. But good art makes you feel something”