Denzel stepped into the kitchen with Matt and James from the Leers and learned how much the guys just love jamming together

We here at Inside//Out love taking your classic interview and putting a spin on it, we’ve done facetimes and zooms, we’ve shared beers at a cool location, hell we’ve even sat in silence in the corner of a room and watched a band do its thing. This time, Denzel is taking it another step further as he jumps into the kitchen with two awesome humans from an even more awesome band, The Leers’ Matt and James invited Denzel for a night of cooking, eating, beer drinking and question answering(when we say cooking it’s basically Matt doing his thing in the kitchen while Denzel and James drink a few brews and talk some nonsense). If you don’t know who The Leers are, I would say you’ve probably been living under a rock or might be a little out of tune with the local music scene.

The Leers have been around for the last 10 years. I first heard of the boys when I was in high school (YUP THAT LONG AGO FUCK I’M OLD). Fast forward far too many years later and they are still killing it, which is a big testament to their talent and passion for music. So, after a full belly and a few beers deep, Denzel queried Matt and James about the whole journey.

Alright Matt and James for the people that still don’t know who The Leers are, give us a brief intro?

Matt: We are four best mates from the Mount making tunes, drinking beers….

James: Strike that (laughter erupts out in the room) that’s all I’m gonna say in this whole interview.

M: James is actually my PR agent.

J: Yeah legal implications.

And you guys have been jamming for 10 years or so ? Or longer?

J: Ooohh I think it’s longer to be honest.

M: Yeah, I think we worked out that it was 12 years last year, so technically 13 years, actually hold on no we started in like 2005 so 15 years. But for like the first 5 years we were just kids playing in a basement. When you say we’ve been a band for 15 years it sounds like we’ve been doing shit for 15 years which isn’t true, those first 5 years we were just fucking around to be honest. We are closer to 10 years old if we’re counting on when we decide to pursue a career in music.

How did The Leers form?

M: Me, Jack, James and Jacob were keen to make a band. We were all mates as we all went to the same school. There were a couple of other kids forming bands to play in Rock quest and we were like ‘Fuck that looks like so much fun we wanna do that’. Found out that Jacob played a bit of bass in his spare time, James played the guitar and then Jack came along a bit later and he played drums, so we used that as an excuse to hang out together and play music.

J: We ended up playing that talent quest and I mean we killed it, we didn’t win but we still killed it.

M: Fun fact, we lost to this band called Jocks trap and we loved them and one of the guys, who played for them, ended up being one of the members of Leisure.

Did you guys know back then that you’d be here, still making music together, after all these years?

M: Hmmm nah not really, like sometimes I do have those moments where I’m thinking, ‘are we wasting our time?’ but the main reason we're still together is just cause it’s so easy being together. We’re all addicted to playing music and the love that we get from it.

J: That’s exactly it, we already have a bond with each other without playing music, but that bond is just so much stronger because we love playing music together.

M: I keep having flashbacks of all these other bands we used to hang out with or play with and they’ve all gone their separate ways now and yet we are still here jamming and still doing it. The main reason they ended up breaking up was because of personality clashes or they set out to be successful in music and it didn’t work out the way they thought, or it was too hard. Whereas with us, it’s always been about staying together as a group and using that same excuse of ‘oh let’s hang out’ by playing music together.

J: It’s such a buzz, if you’re at home by yourself on your laptop making beats and you get a little excited about it so you ride that energy and be ecstatic about it for an hour, but when you’re with three other dudes and something just clicks, it sounds mean and suddenly everyone is just buzzed and it’s such a powerful energy.

With an EP and an album under your belt, what was the process working on both of those?

M: It’s long. It’s fun but long. Probably the most fun one is actually the songs we will be releasing in the coming months as we went to LA to record those.

J: It’s always a crazy buzz when we get into a real professional environment, as we are so used to using low tech equipment, in LA we were buzzing for 3 weeks as everything just sounded better.

Despite the world going a bit to shits, 2020 seems like your guys’ year. You were supposed to play at the WSL, which sadly got canned, but then ended up playing at a sold-out Spark and Claudesland Arena. How did that feel, playing at these big venues?

M: It was pretty weird to think that we were playing at one of the only arena shows in the world at the time. Thinking that ‘man nowhere else in the world is allowing this many people to be in one place and we are playing for them’ felt pretty surreal.

J: You even threw in a ‘Vote yes in the cannabis referendum’. Matty’s never political when we play live shows, so when I heard him say that I was thinking ‘oooohh ok, here we go, I like this.’

M: I usually try and steer away from that shit. I’m not one to push any agendas, I don’t personally like using the stage to push a political topic, even though I understand why people do it, it’s just not me. The only reason I said it was because the next song was about being too stoned to cook but wanted to show that I’m still pro making it legal but also writing a song about the downside of being stoned, it was a very ironic situation why I said it hahaha but hey spur of the moment shit, I don’t think anyone really got it either.

The Leers have been described as alternative pop, alt rock, indie rock (what are genres anyway these days) but what I want to know is who is The Leers biggest inspiration?

M: Ah fuck man, it’s too hard to say we have inspirations anymore. When we were younger, we used to listen to a lot of Tame Impala and the Arctic Monkeys, but there isn’t a band that we really identify with now.

J: Matt’s completely right - when we started these guys were our heroes but now, we kind of just vibe off our own sound.

What about personally? Who you guys vibing with right now or who is your fav?

M: There are three bands that I’ve been really vibing off since lockdown and those are Skinshape, Palace and Chicano Batman. They have all produced great albums that I can just put on and listen to the whole way through and enjoy. Those are my three plugs.

J: I haven’t really found any new bands that I enjoy, I get stuck in that trap of finding one or two songs I like from a band but not the rest. I’ve been listening to a fuck load of Mars Volta lately though.

What’s next on the cards for The Leers? Is there another project in the works?

M: We want to release a few songs that we’ve been sitting on for a while. And I want to put the upcoming singles (that we’re releasing in the next couple months) on a 7 inch. I've been thinking of hitting up Holiday Records and getting it pressed.