It’s been 11 years since Joe Newman, Thom Sonny Green, and Gus Unger-Hamilton formed alt-J in the halls of the University of Leeds in West Yorkshire, England, and six since the trio released its debut, An Awesome Wave. Since then the band — known for creating a unique, earworm-y collage of sounds that include enchanting keyboard-driven melodies, dynamic tempo shifts, rock sensibilities, and often-indecipherable lyrics — has garnered a large, devoted following and played to audiences worldwide. Its sophomore record, This Is All Yours, went straight to number one in the U.K. following its fall 2014 release. In 2017, the band released its third studio album, Relaxer, which was shortlisted for that year’s Mercury Prize, an award given to the best record from the United Kingdom and Ireland.
I recently spoke by phone with Unger-Hamilton, who was walking the streets of London before heading to the U.S. leg of alt-J’s tour, which includes a stop at the Santa Barbara Bowl on Monday, April 16. “We’re going to be touring until like October,” he said of their relentless schedule. “So yeah, the rest of this year mostly. But that’s all right. We enjoy it. Getting to travel around with your mates around the world playing gigs — it’s a great journey we’re on. We’re loving every minute.” The following is an edited version of our conversation, which focused mainly on the making of Relaxer.
I read that several songs on Relaxer were composed in the studio on the fly. How did that process work? In the case of “Hit Me Like That Snare,” we had all of our gear all set up, which isn’t something we often do in the studio, actually. Usually we’re very track by track, layer by layer, but in this case we … were going to try and do something else, then while we were standing around, Joe started playing this guitar riff. I think it’s something he’s had for a while, but I think he kind of played it faster than he played it before, like double the speed. It completely changed the character of it. And Thom and I immediately locked into it. And Charlie [Andrew], our producer, luckily just pretty much hit record straight away …. We’re all really feeling it. And then Joe went home and very quickly wrote the lyrics for it. And rather than record it again from scratch, we managed to use that original jam … [which] is the basis for the final track …. That was quite an exhilarating way to write a song.
