Join us as we sit down with Ex-Giant to explore the stories, challenges, and inspirations that fuel their captivating music.

Emerging from the depths of lockdowns and London basements, this band fuses the intimate with the epic, delivering a sound that’s as much a Frankenstein’s monster as it is a finely crafted work of art. Their music, a swirling mix of lush vocal harmonies, angular guitars, and literary influences, stands at the crossroads of pop and something altogether more complex. Today, we're diving into the minds behind the music—unpacking the band’s origins, creative process, and what makes Ex-Giant a truly unique voice.

For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

(Iain) Ex-Giant are from all over, but spiritually we’re from Essex, where Joel, George and I played in school bands together. After spending a few years apart, we all ended up in London, where Joel rallied us to start Ex-Giant. 

I’d say we make lumbering, proggy pop music. I think we write pop songs, but the arrangements obscure that, adding all sorts of weird bits in the process. It’s like Frankenstein: he tries to make a beautiful creature but ends up with a shambling monster, because fundamentally he’s stitched a load of bits of dead person together. Our songs are like that. Lately there’s a lot of country in there, a lot of Kate Bush, some heavier stuff.

Ex-Giant was formed during the lockdown period. How did the unique challenges of that time influence your creative process and the direction of your debut EP, Sprocketland?

(Iain) To be honest we formed just before. Our first ever gig was booked for March 2020. We were gutted! I think being pals made us keep going even though we couldn’t meet up regularly to practise. It made it fun when we did!

The lockdown period was quite fruitful, though; we were writing a lot. I think Sprocketland comes across as really angry, full of dissonance and jarring rhythms. For us it was more about confusion, about the disaffection we were all feeling. That’s reflected in Joel’s lyrics on that EP, which would veer into nonsense poetry. 

As a husband-and-wife duo at the core of the band, how do you balance your personal relationship with your creative partnership? Does it ever influence the music you create?

(Joel) In many ways the fact that we are married makes it easier to be creative together. A successful creative partnership is built on trust: you need to be comfortable allowing someone else to criticise work which you feel is an expression of your experiences, values, tastes etc.. We’re already used to having these conversations because we’re married. If I’m comfortable with having full and frank discussions about how to raise our son, it’s a lot easier to hear Tats telling me that a lyric or melody is a bit rubbish. The creative partnership just folds nicely into our broader collaboration.

Tats certainly brings a lot more of the relationship to the table lyrically and thematically. If you listen to our last single (Dry Mouth) there’s a lot in there about the frustrations and enjoyment of long-term relationships and that bubbles up throughout the rest of the stuff she writes. I write in a less direct manner and so my feelings about our marriage or our family tends form part of the broader emotional background I’m trying to express rather than being directly addressed. 

With the addition of Tati Gutteridge and Suzie Creevey, Ex-Giant’s sound has evolved. What inspired this shift towards more lush vocal harmonies, and how has the band’s dynamic changed with the new lineup?

(Joel) Originally we were doing a sort of Birthday Party/Tom Waits thing, which was a lot heavier than what we’re doing now. After we did our first EP one of our guitarists and drummer both had to leave the band due to work and, after Tats and I got married, I invited her to join. Tats had a back catalogue of material she had written for her solo work which she wanted to bring to the group and it included lots of layered harmonies inspired by choral music. At the time, I was listening to plenty of the Beach Boys and Beatles and wanted to see whether I could write a decent pop song, rather than focussing on being abrasive or challenging. The result was that we fused this new material with Tats’ harmony-forward sensibilities, which led to quite an abrupt change of sound.

When Tats went on maternity leave Suzie joined on a temporary basis to take on her vocal parts and to play keys. However, she’s got such a fantastic voice and gelled so well with the band that we asked her to stay on (in fact, she’s doing a lot of the singing on Feed Me). This gave us another voice to really lean into the vocal arrangements. Ed (our drummer) joining also shaped the music a great deal, because he plays in such an idiosyncratic and expressive way.

Your music has been described as a fusion of rich vocal arrangements, angular guitars, and literary influences. Can you share some of the literary works or authors that have inspired your songwriting?

(Joel) For some of the earlier material, I was really inspired by this E.E. Cummings poem next to of course god america i and Lewis Caroll poetry. In different ways, they manage to build up a mood or thematic resonance without any single sentence making sense, either because they’re making up words or ramming language together ungrammatically. I used this technique a lot in Sprocketland and more sparingly in recent songs, largely where I don’t want the specific meaning of what I’m saying to undermine the general mood I’m trying to create. 

More recently, I’ve been trying to write songs from the perspective of different characters, which helps me get pen to paper when I feel I have nothing interesting to say. A common theme is someone trying to justify some flaw or fear through comically grandiose language or references, basically hiding behind pretension. I have cribbed this almost exclusively from the T. S. Eliot poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, although I should also credit the satirical novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg and the TV show Frasier.

The track "Feed Me" is described as an ode to excess. What personal or societal observations led to the creation of this song, and how did you approach its complex musical structure?

(Joel) This song was much more of a personal indictment, rather than a societal one. There’s nothing like getting married and starting a family to make you realise how much you’ve gotten used to doing things your own way, because suddenly you’re in a position where you can’t (or shouldn’t) put yourself first as much. Feed Me came from this feeling that I had a little guy in my head that was constantly demanding immediate satisfaction, even if it was over something silly like skipping cleaning the kitchen to get to the pub sooner, or moping in bed. The song is largely written from the perspective of that little guy.

However, I do think that it reflects a broader impulse that we all have, which is to crave treats to get us through the demands of everyday life. I could say something massively pretentious about post-industrial angst or whatever, but I think it’s probably just some kind of lizard-brain evolutionary hangover. 

The new single "Feed Me" features a dramatic shift in intensity and a disco-funk ending. How did you decide to incorporate such diverse elements, and what was the creative process like in bringing this song to life?

(Joel) I was a latecomer to the Beatles but when I listened to Abbey Road the second half of that album completely changed the way I wrote music. The way it moves through disparate snippets of songs is formally interesting, but also each of those sections are like the greatest tune you’ve ever heard in your life so it never feels like hard work. That’s something I also really love about Cardiacs, who I also slept on until recently. 

For Feed Me, and all of our recent music, I’ve tried to use the same approach. Basically, I’ll write a load of sections of songs which I think sound good and then I’ll try different combinations to find what works together. If I get something song-length, I’ll try to tie them up using a central lyrical idea. Then the rest of the band add their own contributions and suggest edits and we play it live a bunch to help us refine it. That’s basically the process for how we wrote Feed Me.

With your upcoming EP in the works, can you give us a glimpse into what themes or sounds fans can expect? How does this new material build on or differ from your previous releases?

(Joel) The next EP will build upon the style we’ve been working on with Dry Mouth and Feed Me. Even though I would describe it as largely pop-oriented, we’re using a lot of unusual structural choices and intra-song genre shifts to keep things interesting. I can guarantee at least one Ennio Morricone-style section, and hopefully only one blatant Pixies rip-off. 

You can expect to hear a lot of songs about characters Tats and I hate but worry that we’re like. It’s quite wide-ranging thematically, but the unifying theme is the excuses which we tell ourselves to excuse our bad behaviour, either individually or as a group.

The name Ex-Giant is intriguing. What’s the story behind the band name, and how does it reflect your music or philosophy as a band?

(Iain) Lol. ‘Ex-giant’ was an in-joke about an illness I have. I’d had surgery the previous year for gigantism, which is where a tumour on your pituitary gland makes you grow too much. It’s the same thing that Andre the Giant had! I was a giant. They drilled into my head to remove the tumour, so I became an ex-giant. 

(George) The idea for the name actually came from my older brother, Greg, who used to be in the band when we started up. I think there was a feeling that Iain might actually shrink and get shorter post-surgery but I guess that’s not really how the body works. 

What do you love right now?

(Iain) Pregoblin, Hermann Hesse, Klein.

(Joel) I Saw the TV Glow, Oliver’s Jazz Bar, the theme song to Fireman Sam (the original, the new version sucks).

(George) Baking, sunshine, Babybels.

What do you hate right now?

(Iain) Chatgpt, being sleepy.

(Joel) Reading the news, being unable to stop obsessively reading the news.

(George) Elon Musk, although not just right now. 

Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s still important to you?

(Iain) There are so many, I should have grown up more lol. Joel and I were obsessed with the Smiths when we were in school. They’re probably the band I go back to most. The self-titled one is my favourite. It’s so sad and disturbing and funny. 

(George) Substance by New Order. I realise it's a compilation but I was listening to it loads when I met Joel and Iain in school. It just reminds me of heady days driving over to Joel’s house in the summer to do band practice. 

As you prepare to record your new EP this winter, what excites you most about this next chapter for Ex-Giant? Are there any particular challenges or goals you’re focused on?

(Iain) We’re having lots of fun at the moment. We’re playing lots of shows and I can’t wait to get back into the studio. Over the next year I want us to play more outside of London, go round the country a bit. The main challenge is logistical - having a baby in the mix makes that difficult! He’s got little ear defenders now so maybe he’s ready for a tour.