Interview
Interview
Stage times: Boston Manor
Mike Cunniff of Boston Manor walks us through his gig history – from Preston pubs to the biggest stages in Europe
Four-and-a-half years ago, Mike Cunniff figured that if he was going to be shut inside indefinitely, he might as well have fun where he could. ‘What can I do that I never usually get a chance to?’ The answer involved watching films, seeing people when the ever-changing restrictions permitted it, making playlists of the music he was raised on. One of his major pandemic rituals involved cosying up in bed with his headphones in and combing through those playlists, while also watching live videos of some of the artists he’d constantly come back to throughout his life. “It felt like a really nice way to escape,” he considers. “Then I thought, ‘Man, music really is such a powerful tool for mental wellbeing, and I felt like I’d not used music like that in a while.”
This might have simply been a way of passing the days in that sluggish, hopeless period of time but, eventually, it enabled the cogs in the Boston Manor guitarist’s brain to start spinning again. He started writing, laying the groundwork for what would become the Blackpool rockers’ fifth album, Sundiver, an overflowing cauldron of his influences – 90s alt rock like Deftones and Smashing Pumpkins, black metal, shoegaze, even pop and R&B from the turn of the millennium.
“We said, ‘Why can’t we just be our favourite band of all time?’” Cunniff says. “That just involved us grabbing all of our favourite music from [the time] when you felt like music impressed you the most, which is when you’re younger. I feel like the albums you listen to now never quite sound like they do the first time you heard them, especially at as a young age, when you’re so impressionable. I kind of wanted to bring that feeling back again.”
Sundiver is the second part of an album duology that began with 2022’s Datura. The former was an album made for the night, a spacey, atmospheric body of work capturing scenes of excess, angst and hedonism. Its follow-up, however, still carries fingerprints of darkness, but nonetheless sees the light flood in.
“Sundiver kind of serves as more of a sobering dawn, like a point in your life where you think ‘I need to change, or something needs to change, or people need to change’,” Cunniff explains. “In the world that we live in at the moment, the change and the positivity needs to be almost aggressive. You need to aggressively love people. There is a lot of aggression behind the instrumentation and I guess the message is plain and simple: no matter who you are, let’s try and get together and try and do something positive.”
Ahead of the band’s UK tour with Trophy Eyes and Split Chain in support, Cunniff looks back on the Boston Manor gigs that were memorable for both the right and wrong reasons…
The first
“It was a gig at The Ferret in Preston, which is a staple music venue there. We literally played our first EP, which was five songs in order, front to back, and it was just an opening slot for a touring party passing through. I have no idea who was on it, to be honest with you. We were just really excited to play and it was great. I’m sure it sounded really, really f*cking bad! It feels like another lifetime ago.”
The best
“There’ve been a few notable ones where I’ve walked off stage and gone ‘That was one of my favourite [shows] we’ve played.’ One of those was fairly recently, and it was playing at 2000trees [in July], in the forest. There was something magical about that show – the vibe was just completely right and it was packed out all the way to the back. I looked up at the sky and it still hadn’t gone completely dark – it was a really moody indigo sky and it was just such a vibe. I was like, ‘Man, I want to play all my gigs in the forest’. I walked off and I was just kind of blown away by it. It was just amazing to actually be so present and in the moment during that show and really just take it all in.”
The smallest
“We’ve played so many house shows and stuff like that in people’s living rooms, where you literally can’t move, because the drum kit’s [in the way], there are people right in your face screaming the words back at you and spitting in your face. That kind of world’s where we came from. The smallest was probably at the Rat House in Southampton on our first… I want to say, tour, but it was like four days… lt was a weekender thing, and it was famous for its house shows. They had all kinds of bands in our scene play there.”
The worst
“It was like a routing show that helped us pay for petrol to get back when we were super DIY. We had to do this horrible pop punk versus hardcore and metal all-dayer that they used to do a lot back in the day. All the pop punk bands pulled out, and we were the only one left. We got paid for it, which was kind of all we were really hoping for at that point, because we were just wanting to play in front of people. It didn’t really matter at that point. We played and nobody cheered or applauded after any of the songs, it was just greeted by people with folded arms, just staring at us. I think one person actually started clapping – and one person clapping in a room sounds so f*cking awkward!”
The biggest
“We’ve played on one of the biggest stages in Europe. It’s in Germany and it’s nicknamed ‘The Big Lady’, or something like that – that’s what it translates to in English, something like that. I’ve never been so far away from the other band members before on stage – our cables didn’t reach the amps, so we had to stand a little closer. The stage was absolutely humongous. I’ve never seen anything like it. That was really cool as well.”
Boston Manor start their UK tour on 18 September. Find tickets here
