Review Fix chats with Safeguard’s Declan Gough who discusses the band’s new album, I’m A Stranger To Myself, the follow up to their self-released EP When Did You Stop Caring.
Review Fix: How did the band get together?
Declan Gough: I put up an advert online around mid 2016 looking to start a pop punk band, as that’s always been my main genre of interest. I found Zak and Martyn through that, we met up, had a couple jam sessions, and we clicked. Then I got Connor from my previous band to fill in for us one show when our previous drummer left, but immediately he fitted right in so he became a permanent member, and then finally we added Denholm on guitar after another early member departure. It’s fair to say we didn’t have the smoothest of starts, but since then we’ve been a solid unit!
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Gough: Every so often, we’ll all get together at Martyn’s place and just sit in a room and write. Usually, someone will bring an idea in and we’ll work on it and see if we can make anything from it. We used to all just write separately and only work on ideas when we got together to practice, but since work began on this new record, we made more of an effort to get together and it definitely paid off.
Review Fix: What’s your standout song on the current EP? How was it written?
Gough: For me personally, my favourite track on the EP is ‘November’. It’s arguably has the most intricate instrumentation of all the songs, and I think some of the best lyrics we’ve ever done. It was actually the last song we finished before we went to the studio, it literally went right down to the wire because we were working relentlessly trying to get it right but i think it came out brilliantly and one of my favourite songs we’ve done to date.
Review Fix: What did you learn from the last EP?
Gough: As much as I still love our first EP, we pretty much went in all guns blazing, and almost every song was kinda just 100mph right in your face. With this one, we learnt how to strip certain parts back to bring other parts more to the forefront and bring the whole song more to life.
Review Fix: What are your remaining goals for 2017?
Gough: There’s not very long left of the year, but for goals I’d love for Harbour to hit 50k streams before the year is up which we’re very close to doing, and then following the release of this EP – to reach more people and gain new fans of our band to take into the new year.
Review Fix: How do you want your music to affect people?
Gough: The songs on this EP mainly deal with depression, anxiety, and being socially awkward. Overall, the message we kind of want to get across to the people who deal with those issues is you’re not alone in feeling the way you feel, that it’s okay not to be okay, and we hope that people can take the positives from it and be some form of therapy for them.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Gough: We’ve got a few cool things in the pipeline for 2018 which we’re keeping firmly under our hats for the time being, but you can keep all up to date over on all of our social medias!
Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?
Gough: If you’ve ever shown an interest in our band, thank you so much, it really does mean the world to us all. Thank you to anyone who’s pre-ordered the EP, and to anyone who hasn’t yet and wants to pick it up, you can find it over on our Victory merch page, and all your usual music outlets: iTunes/Spotify/Google Play, the lot. Once again, thanks for checking us out!
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