Someone I Can Love With Sleeping Together

Interview By Lindsey V. Britt

From FaceTime to the stage, Sleeping Together is a Liverpool-based band led by lead singer Alexander Lloyd-Jones, who’s just released their new song “Someone I Can Love” ahead of their headline show on July 27th at the Kazimier Stockroom.

Okay, I have to ask, how did you get the name Sleeping Together?

It was an old lyric. When we were in the studio we sent a message to BBC Radio X producer called John Kennedy, and we asked John if he could play our new song from the band Whatever The Weather, which is what we used to be called. And he said I have not spoken to you guys for ages, which was new, cause we never spoken to John ever, so we realized it was a name clash. So I think the hint was you should probably change your name because it might be easier for ya. We debated rather we would try to reach out to the artist and see if we could use their name because they had two accounts, or if we change the name. Anyways, we changed our name in the most stressful 30 minutes of our lives, it was intense. So, Sleeping Together is a lyric after about a hundred suggestions and we changed the name.

Your new song “Someone I Can Love” just came out, how excited are you for fans to finally hear it?

We’ve teased it for ages, and we changed the name of it. It seems to be quite well received. “Daisy” was kind of our biggest hitting one. I think it’s quite hard to not measure up your success from the previous ones. Our fans, they are quite dedicated. We’ve not gotten any negativity back which they seem to quite like it, and a lot of shares. XS radio Manchester Jim Salveson put it as his record of the week, which we were really pleased with. There was some really big bands on his playlist that week, Liverpool band STONE they’re really good, kind of looked up to STONE as we would write, still do as we’re growing.

I noticed that you write your own music, what is that process like?

It’s different for each song. “Someone I Can Love,” I had the lyrics and I brought the idea of just the progression. But I only had the guitar for the chorus, so I was like I’ve got this and sung it to them and played it in the rehearsal space. And then I said what I think we can try and take like an approach that’s used by the Arctic Monkeys to make your choruses, big in your verses to your dynamics jump quite a lot. So basically in the verses you kind of take some instruments out so the verse is just bass and drums. So I said to the lads please write me a drum and bass verse, which is what they did. Then Michael who plays lead guitar brought in a part on the verse B section, and everybody came together, it was good. Other songs people had written completely, so like a song called “Stockholm” which is an unreleased acoustic song, I had that complete basically as it was. We changed the chorus in the studio. “The Essentials” was largely based around Jason our drummer, he wrote that, and “Always In My Head.” I would say we just wrote as a unit in the room, just different parts thrown together, I think I had the chorus chords, we just built from there.

I read you recorded music at Narcisus Studios, what was it like recording there?

Stunning, it was good. It basically bankrupt us, haha. I think when I hit 50 or 60 if I’ve managed to make an impact in the music industry it would be nice to look back on the time you spent in a top studio in the UK with your close friends and you just did it. We spent about six weeks there with a producer that was just brilliant and guided us the whole time. We stayed with a partner of one of the bands, it was just good fun all of the time. It was tiring and quite stressful but good.

You’re playing Liverpool on July 27th, how excited are you for the show?

Very, I think we just pushed over the 50% mark of the tickets. It’ll be good, Liverpool, although we’re a lot northwest of the UK spread, that’s our home in regards to the where the band is based. It’s where our rehearsal space is. I had a band reach out from Belfast called DISORDER they’re quite good. I’ve followed them for a little bit, they supported Corella, it’ll be nice to have them over and maybe in the future to go over to Belfast, do a gig swap. We’re still on the hunt for the support for Liverpool. We’ve offered it to a few people but I think a lot of people are booked up, so we’re going to keep trying to push.

You’ve played a load of gigs, what’s been the memorable one so far?

That’s a good question, how much time do you have, haha. Some highlights, we played with The Lottery Winners at The Rockin’ Chair in Wrexham. I think it was one of their first shows after they got their UK. No.1 album, a very receptive crowd, it was just nice, home environment, a few of our loves are from Wales originally. We know the staff there really well, it was an invite so it was a good show. And The Lottery Winners were brilliant as well, I hadn’t seen them before. We played at FOCUS Wales which was recently, we opened up the same night as The Royston Club.

I keep hearing that 2024 is going to be your breakout year and so far that’s the case, what else is left in the works for 2024?

I hope so. Being in a band is really quiet like being a footballer, you’re either a footballer or you’re not. You either make it as a full time footballer or you play in a weekend league. At the minute we’re still in the weekend league, I’m hoping that we can break out. We have our first EP due to be released and you will be able to purchase it at the July 27th gig. We’re only doing physicals ahead of the release, which will be coming out in August. That is the first I’ve ever mentioned that to anybody, that’ll be EP 1 and then we are hoping by the end of the year a handful more of tracks are in EP 2. We’ve brought some merchandise, got some new T-Shirts. And we found our new drummer, so we’re introducing our new drummer at the 27th gig. It’ll be a changing of the guard if you would, I’m looking forward to it.

Do you have a dream collaboration?

I’ve never really thought about collaborating. I like Oli Sykes from Bring Me The Horizon. He was one of the first people who got me into lyric writing, I always liked a lot of his lyrics. And then obviously Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys. So I would say my dream collaboration would be maybe Albert Hammond Jr. from The Strokes, he’s the guitarist. His kind of rhythm style, a lot of his riffs are brilliant I think. If I could whip up something like “Reptilia” or “You Only Live Once” that would be nice to be featured on a track. Maybe Johnny Marr, he’s done some interesting songs. I read his book Set The Boy Free it was really, really good, very insightful.

I’ve seen you mention Arctic Monkeys a lot online, I’m guessing they’re one of your favorite bands?

Definitely, when I was about 11 I was in the final year of primary school, I went to my friends house and we were playing Legos and we got into some sort of debate. Long story short, he locked me outside of his room and his older sister who I used to think was stunning, I kept asking her what she was listening to and she wasn’t interested. Anyway she eventually said that she would write me down some songs that I‘d like, so she wrote me down Green Day, and My Chemical Romance, Pierce The Veil, Bring Me The Horizon. That was kind of my first eye-opener of something that I thought was cool and the music I like and “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor” was on the list. I remember being 14 and I was listening to “ I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor.” This was early Spotify and you could see what other stuff they had released. And I thought this band is alright I’ll have a see if they’ve got anything else, maybe they were on album two by then Favourite Worst Nightmare and it was just like “oh my god this is what music is.” I remember listening to “A Certain Romance” about three times on repeat. And it was just like the feeling of euphoria, the sensation you get on your neck when your hairs stand up. I just became obsessed in a sense. Then I got obsessed with Ben Howard, then Bring Me The Horizon, Linkin Park, and smaller bands after that, but it was always Arctic Monkeys.

Normally I ask people their favorite concerts, but I’m curious which artist you have at the top of your concert wishlist?

I’ve seen a lot of people I wanted to see. I’d like to see Kings of Leon, I think they do a brilliant live show. Obviously, I would love to see Oasis reunite, me and everybody else. Nile Rodgers from Chic, and then went on to write loads of hits. I had tickets during the pandemic then it got postponed for a year then it just got canceled, so I felt like I missed out on that, I’ve been waiting a long time so Nile Rodgers is on my bucket list.

Finally, do you have a recommendation? It can be anything, book, song, restaurant, absolutely anything.

The best advice that ever helped me was for a while I had gotten obsessed with Ben Howard and I liked a lot of his acoustic playing. And I watched loads of interviews and YouTube videos of him, which I never did with Alex Turner. And in one of the videos Ben basically said that he was really boring himself and just writes music. And his advice to raising musicians who idolize somebody is never look into your heroes too much. People think these people are so untouchable but like, read books about people in their private life and kind of everybody that faults. And I think it can ruin the magic a little bit. I think the same with learning a song sometimes, if you learn how to play your favorite song it’s like oh it’s there and it’ll always be there, it’s a strange thing. So I think never look too much into your heroes. I’ve probably watched one interview of Alex Turner and then turned it off because I just wanted to keep him on his pedestal and he’ll probably stay there until he releases a book, I’ll probably give it a read.

You can stream “Someone I Can Love” now along with the rest of their discography, and you can pre-save their upcoming song “I Won’t Tell If You Don’t” here.

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