Words: Estelle Coulter
Photo: Lindsay Melbourne
Catchy indie-disco rhythms and vintage synth sounds are what you can expect from Sheffield sextet Work In TV. Before they hit the road this month on their second UK tour, Exposed’s Estelle Coulter rounded up three of the six members – Jack Hardwick, Will McMahon and Luke Lincoln – to find out a bit more about the band and their newest single, ‘The Good Life’.
How did it all begin?
WM: Drinking, of course! And hanging out in pubs together. We all knew each other from the Sheffield music scene. We were all in bands before and a few of our projects ended naturally around Covid so we came together through a few rehearsals and really liked the sound we created.
JH: It felt quite natural coming together after working on other projects. We all had different skillsets to offer to Work In TV, so it made sense that these people were involved.
LL: We saw each other around, we watched each other’s gigs and watched other people’s gigs together. There was already good chemistry there, and we worked well from the start.
What is your dynamic as a six-piece band?
JH: We can do a lot more musically than we might’ve been able to do in smaller
set-ups. We all know what a Work In TV song is; there’s a clear direction that has been stronger than in my previous projects.
LL: We’ve learnt a lot from being a six-piece and having that to play around with. I came from a two-piece, which I still have going on, but there’s a lot less room for manoeuvre there. With six of us, there’s so much to explore – that’s been a big learning curve.
Your music was described by BBC Introducing as ‘lyrics on a bleak subject matter to an exuberantly upbeat sound’. Is this what you’re going for?
JH: Yeah, definitely. A couple of months ago we had the idea of the phrase ‘dance in dejection’. I think there’s a lot of good that can come from presenting things in this way – a juxtaposition, I suppose. It’s an important part of our music to me, that people are dancing but are singing about struggles and challenges like they are celebrating being able to talk about these things.
WM: That’s always how I felt about it: we can revel together in a captured moment
at a gig or listening with your friends, appreciating you both may feel this way and it may not be the nicest feeling but you can share that together.
LL: I’ve never thought that deeply about it… but I like that our songs can be
multifaceted. It doesn’t have to be, ‘Oh, this song is about mental health or depression, and it’s supposed to be sad and make you feel a certain way’. The lyrics can be speaking about something but with a really cool, upbeat tune you can dance along to. The song can do different things; you can either not worry about the lyrics or you can get into them.
Where are you getting your inspiration?
JH: New wave musicians like LCD Soundsystem and Talking Heads are a big one for us. There are plenty of bands that use an Afro-groove-like sound as a way to approach rhythm, as well as heavy uses of syncopation that Work In TV plays around with. There is definitely inspiration there – not just in sound but in the philosophy of the way we do things.
Tell me about the new single ‘The Good Life’, which came out on 8 November.
WM: It’s kind of a culmination of everything that we’ve been working on recently. The idea behind it is that life can be kind of shit, but it’s a good life if you want it to be, if you’re willing to try and enjoy yourself despite the things life might throw at you. It’s simultaneously a positive and negative reflection on life. I’m dead proud of it; it’s my favourite tune we’ve released so far. It feels like we are honing in on the sound we want to create with Work In TV. There are names in the song, whether real or not, that are all people in our lives and we’ve tried to tell a story.
LL: We’ve got the layering; we made sure each sound and what each person is doing is deliberate and contributing. I think the sound is great but also the idea behind it is strong and we are super excited to get it out there.
JH: ‘The Good Life’ for me is about acting the opposite. Say you wake up in the morning and you feel terrible, getting up is the absolute last thing that you want to do – but you get on as if you were happy. You can look at yourself in the mirror and smile. This tune is a bit like that, for me – a reflection of people that I’ve met at different places and jobs and they’re often not having a great time at. They might be sat in a call centre for 40 hours of your week or trapped in a tin can of a kitchen, churning out pies for hours and hours. But there’s something about all those people who have such a positive outlook. You can acknowledge something for being bad and then get on with it anyway.
What can people who haven’t seen you live before expect from your shows?
WM: I think we are quite an intense live band, not as in that we’re too loud but that
we’re energetic on stage. We’re having fun on stage but also we’re conveying a couple
of messages that we hope will reach out and make someone feel heard. Jack likes to get involved in the crowd and gee them up a little bit. I think we’re good fun to watch.
JH: The thing about a Work In TV show is that we always leave the stage exhausted, having left everything on there. We played shows to four people in a room before and the philosophies have always been like, well, let’s just make sure that those four people go away and tell their mates that they were clowns for not being there. I like to try and make eye contact with as many people as I can; I want them to know I mean what I’m saying. We always pepper in covers and put our slant on them, which is a fun element.
What’s next from you lot?
JH: ‘The Good Life’ will not be part of an EP but there will definitely be a second EP next year. I’m starting to write some songs and maybe they will form a collective, but at the moment I’m enjoying being back to exploring the ‘single’ as a format as putting out a song that is complete in itself. Writing an EP can be more exhausting because it’s a labour of love and has to be cohesive to justify being an EP. Where I’m at creatively, I want to dip my fingers into a few different pies.
LL: With an EP, you can’t give as much love to each song as you might want to. If those songs had been singles they would’ve got the attention that we felt they deserved, but as they were part of an EP we may have been rushing or had gigs to play so didn’t have as much time or energy. We want to wait until we are fully ready to release an EP and until then singles are a better way of giving out music the love and attention we want to give them.
‘The Good Life’ will be released on 8 Nov and you can catch Work in TV at Yellow Arch Studios Sheffield on 22 Nov. Tickets here. @workintvband
