Start Listening To: Humour

Striking a balance between horrible and pretty isn’t easy but if anyone’s going to do it’s Humour.

Can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make? 

We’re Humour from Glasgow. We’re very bad at describing our music but have heard it described as a cross between post-punk and post-hardcore, which we quite liked. There’s horrible parts and there’s pretty parts and we try to strike a balance.

What encouraged you to start Humour?

I think lockdown certainly kick-started things. We all live together, and all got furloughed so had a lot of time on our hands. In the lead up to the pandemic we’d been listening to a lot of the same music - American bands like Ought and Protomartyr and thought we might be able to make something like this. We were wrong – we were pretty bad at it.  But with so much free time we were able to make something that we’re really happy with.

What is the background story of your band name? 

There isn’t really much of a story there. I think we had been struggling to come up with a name that didn’t suck for a really long time. We had a list of acceptable ones, and a friend had the idea to look up synonyms for the various words. Humour was one of them, and we liked that it was ambiguous and had a few different definitions.

Can you tell us more about how you produce your music?

In terms of writing, instrumental ideas always start with a drum beat and few guitars on a laptop. From there I sort of have a go at shouting some things I’ve been thinking about over it. We keep what works and get rid of what doesn’t.  Once we feel we have a song we take it to the studio and develop it from there. For recording, as during much of lockdown you couldn’t actually get in to recording studios, we were forced to learn how to do it at home. We built a vocal booth in the flat and bought some mics and slowly got going with it. In the end we recorded all the vocals and guitars for the EP at home and doing it this way really suited us. In many ways it was in having this time and doing it this way that made us sound the way we do.

How has Glasgow influenced your music? 

I’m not sure it has in any direct way, really. Four of us grew up in Edinburgh and one in Perth, and we all moved to Glasgow for university. The fact that there has always been such a strong music scene in Glasgow definitely encouraged us to get involved in music, so in that sense living here did play a big part. In terms of the music itself, I don’t think we are particularly influenced by other Glasgow bands. We are big fans of other bands here and good friends with lots of them, but there isn’t much of a crossover musically.

How are you feeling about releasing your debut EP Pure Misery?

Very excited. We’ve sat on these songs for a while so it’ll be really nice to have them out in the world. We never liked the idea of just releasing singles with no plan ahead - we always wanted to release a larger body of music once we thought we had something worth sharing. The Pure Misery EP is a sort of introduction to the band that we’re all really proud of, it characterises what we’ve been up to for the last year or so, and has lots of little gestures toward a bunch of different influences.

We love the lyric video for your recent single ‘alive and well’. How involved in the concept were you? 

Thanks! We were quite involved throughout. The imagery in the video is all from drawings and prints that I made specifically for the EP, either as cover artwork or promotional artwork. These were brought to life by a friend of ours called Cameron Gleave, who also produced the video for our first single ‘Yeah, Mud!’ using other drawings I had made. We love them, he did an incredible job.

What’s it like working with So Young Records? 

It’s amazing. All the music So Young release is so good and it’s really nice to be a part of that.  Sam and Josh have really helped us push our ideas further and find ways to present Humour visually. 

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

I’ve been listening to ‘By The Way’ by the Red Hot Chili Peppers recently. It was one of the first albums I can remember buying. When I was 7 I made a mixtape for my Walkman which had the title track repeated 3 times, followed by ‘Somewhere I Belong’ by Linkin Park 3 times. I don’t know why 3 times was necessary. That Linkin Park album is also one I often return to. 

Is there any new music from 2022 you have been enjoying?

The new Black Midi album is incredible. Been listening to a lot of Yves Tumor too.

What advice would you give for anyone trying to achieve a similar sound to your music?

We got quite lucky having the lockdown period to focus on writing without any pressure to put a live set together. I think that time taught us not to be precious about songs, and to try to be experimental with them without the fear that they turn out terrible, which they often do. The benefit is that they can also turn out really interesting if you have pushed them beyond what you initially feel comfortable with. There’s often a period after writing a song where I cringe to listen to it, and two weeks later I love it.

What do you love right now? 

You can buy these little pickled chillis called Yarens from the Persian superstore in Dennistoun.

What do you hate right now? 

When they’re out of Yarens at the Persian superstore.

Is there a particular place in the world you would love to play a gig one day?

We’re getting a lot of offers to play in Europe which we’re really excited about. We’d love to play in America too. Most of us haven’t been, so it would be a nice reason to finally go. There’s also a lot of bands there that we’d love to tour with. 

Is there anything you would like to share with our readers?

We’ve got loads of live dates coming up across the UK and Europe in the lead up to the EP. It feels particularly special to be able to take this EP to all these places we’ve never been before given that we had it locked in our flat for the last year. We’ll also have a limited run of all the original artwork on sale at these shows so if you come and buy one now it’ll be cheap because no one knows us and if we get really famous you can sell it for easily three or four times the price.