India Thomas had a chat to Sam Macintyre and Jack Bottomley from Marmozets ahead of the Cardiff date of their co-headline tour with Lonely The Brave.

Quench Music (QM): Debut album ‘The Weird And Wonderful Marmozets’ is finally out, are you guys glad for it to be here at last?

Jack (J): Very hyped and relieved that it’s finally out. It’s been a long winding road. But it’s there, it’s out, it’s ready for people to get their hands on, which we’re very happy about.

QM: You’ve spent a long time working on the album. What’s your favourite track off of the record?

Sam (S): Hit The Wave. I like ÔÇÿIs It Horrible?’ And ParticleÔǪ

J: It depends on your mood, I’m always like that with music in general anyway. I’ll love one song one day and won’t like it as much the next day. I have days where I think ÔÇÿthis is cool’ about every song of ours, I’m sort of at that point now.

QM: Which is probably good for tour…How is the tour going?┬á

J: It’s been nice to see such a great reaction to the material. We’ve done shows with these songs for the last year really, so it’s been nice for people to actually know the songs. When we’ve played live before we’d have the songs that were out as singles, such as ÔÇÿWhy Do You Hate Me?’ and ÔÇÿMove, Shake, Hide’ or something and people would go mental and sing along to them but wouldn’t really know anything else. You get the ÔÇÿRa Ra’s’ as we call them, [mouthing along]ÔǪ So it’s nice to not have them as much, it’s great having a big group of people there to see us and sort of enjoy the music and actually know the songs.

QM: I guess it’s the difference between playing the NME stage and The Pit at Reading, did you find a difference between the two of them orÔǪ

S: NME at Reading was so much bigger so you couldn’t really see as much going on. I could tell there was a lot of people having a good time, though. But when you’re in a tent like (The Pit) you’re closer so you can see it more, you feel a bit more part of it and stuff. Both were very interestingÔǪ

J: We’d just come back off a run of festivals in mainland Europe and were playing stages sort of similar to the NME in front of thousands of people so by the time we got to the NME thing, we’d already done loads of those.

S: We had really good preparation for it, ÔÇÿcause again they were completely new crowds (in Europe). Playing The Pit was weird cos it felt like doing a gig but it was cool as hell as we’d sort of missed it. As much as we love playing big rooms and in front of as many people as you possibly can, the small rooms are the ones with the vibe.

QM: We saw you play Hobos in Brigend, and to go from that small venue to The Pit tent at Reading was dramatically different. Do you think the atmosphere of that Reading set is where your live shows are headed?

J: It’s one of those things where it’s down to your fan base and down to the crowd. The crowds have been really cool on this tour, yet they’ve been really mixed ages, which it has sort of always been but there’s been a lot of people all sort of similar to our age which is nice. It’s down to the crowd, like the gig that you mentioned in Brigend ÔǪ

S: The smaller shows do get quite violent, but when we do the bigger shows it’s a lot slicker because you’d don’t really have a choiceÔǪ

J: You need to live up to it and you’ve got a lot more room onstage and can actually focus on stuff that you can’t actually focus on in a small venue without a dressing room or whatever. But we’re sort of lucky in a way that we can do both things. If it is a sweaty, dingy venue we can do that and enjoy it as much as if it was in a big room.

QM: You guys are quite lucky I think, with the kind of music you make in that you can easily appeal to both kinds of shows. You’ve got ‘Captivate You’ which is kind of perfect for bigger stages and stuff but you don’t sound like you’re ‘selling out’ in the way that a lot of bands planning to play really big festival stages alter their sound accordingly…

J: Thanks. With each song we don’t really think about what our other stuff sounds like. We treat every song as its own little animal and wherever we feel like it needs to go, it’ll go there. In that respect as well, with having Becca’s voice on it, adding her character and everything it sort of makes it sound like us anyway no matter what we put underneath it. It is why the album sort of works.

QM: She definitely ties it all in. You did the Radio 1 Live Lounge session and covered Bruno Mars’ Locked Out Of Heaven. I thought it was a really good and refreshing take on it. Do you think that it is important to challenge people’s perceptions?

S: The thing is if you get on daytime radio, it gets out there.

J: It’s an opportunity you can’t really say no to.

S: If you want your music to be heard, they have millions of listeners.

J: So if you get the opportunity, jump on it straight away. A lot of their audience will be solid pop listeners so when it came down to it, did we want to do a straight cover or did we want to do our own thing? And there’s people (online) on the comments saying ÔÇÿI don’t like it because it’s not like the original’…

S: Some of them are funny: ÔÇÿI don’t like this it doesn’t sound anything like the original’ and then the top comment was basically this guy that posted something really cool actually. He was sticking up for us like ÔÇÿY’know what, if you want to listen to the original, go listen to the f***ing original’. It’s like the whole point of this is trying to make it your own. I thought it sounded alright to be fair..fuck ÔÇÿem.

QM: Do you prefer the writing process or live shows?

S: Both, they have different vibes.

J: When we’re in that moment we think we prefer it and then we go back to doing live shows and think ÔÇÿthis is the best thing in the world’ and then we finish and go back to writing and think ÔÇÿthis is the best bit’. We love every aspect of it equally, really.

S: It’s like asking do you like a cheeseburger or do you like a cheeseburger. I like ÔÇÿthe cheeseburger’. Once you get off the tour and start doing the writing you get really excited, like ÔÇÿyes’ we get to create and then you’ve done the creating thing for a while and you’re like ‘ugh great’. And then you finish that and it’s like ÔÇÿnow I get to play’. It’s like a never ending cycle.

QM: It’s good if you like it though.

S: It’s alright..

J: Nah it’s great.