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Pep-Rock: Hi there, what’s your name and what do you do in the band?
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| Brandon: My name’s Brandon and I sing and play guitar for The Movielife. I mean Nightmare Of You! Oh man… I’ve been talking about The Movielife too much today. |
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| Pep-Rock: How would you personally describe Nightmare Of You’s sound to someone who’d never heard of you before? |
| Brandon: Oh no! Why did you ask that?! |
| Pep-Rock: Because I find it impossible to describe your sound… |
| Brandon: I was having a conversation today about how I hate talking about what we sound like. Every person has a different opinion of what we sound like but I can tell you who the biggest influences are on me as a person… The thing is that I think that English music, from The Beatles up until a band like The Stone Roses – I’ve always loved it. I loved the ‘80s, earlier stuff like Bob Dylan, Squeeze and then stuff like Pulp, we’ve been told a lot there’s an element of Pulp in our sound. English music says a lot more to me that American music…with the exception of Bob Dylan. Also, all that underground revolution stuff that happened in the ‘70s – Velvet Underground, Blondie, I love Nico and all that – so influential. I read a lot, lyrically I tend to be influenced by books than music so to speak. Tim O’Brien, Tom Robbin, Thomas Hardy, Sylvia Plath…man, I love to read books. That’s where most of my lyrical influences come from. Have you read a book called ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’? It’s fucking amazing – it’s one of the most moving books I’ve ever read. If you’re trying to understand love, read it. I read it and now, well, I still don’t understand love (laughs) but I kinda have a good perspective on the whole idea of love. Get it, it helped me see things from the outside. People say I rip off Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker and no matter what I say, I can’t express enough that, lyrically, books are my inspiration. |
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| Pep-Rock: Your songs seem to have been influenced by a lot of eras, would you describe yourselves as being influenced by one era in particular? |
| Brandon: No, absolutely not, I’m just into the art of classic, good, pop songs. |
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| Pep-Rock: When I first heard of you, I heard that you were made up of yourself, ex-Movielife guitarist, a drummer for Glassjaw and Rival Schools so I expected a raw, heavy sound to your band…then I heard you were called ‘Nightmare Of You’ I thought you may be a hardcore band. Did you intentionally make the decision to disguise yourselves as hardcore in order to surprise first time listeners? |
| Brandon: No it’s absolutely not a conscious effort, I wasn’t the songwriter in The Movielife so I’ve been trying to do this for a long time. I’ve always loved British music and just wanted to write good, catchy pop songs. This feels more natural to me more than anything else I’ve ever done. It’s hard for a person on the outside to understand. |
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| Pep-Rock: Why did you decide to call yourselves Nightmare Of You? |
| Brandon: It’s a line a song by The Cure, there’s a Cure song called ‘Kyoto You’ and the opening line is ‘a nightmare of you of death in a pool’. Aesthetically ‘Nightmare Of You’ just sounds nice, it rolls nicely off the tongue. I don’t think it’s a terribly good name but coming up with a band name is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, writing the songs was easy. Coming up with a band name… it’s not for me. People I know just have the knack to come up with a good name, I don’t know how to. I don’t think ‘Nightmare Of You’ is terribly good but it serves it’s purpose. The songs are meaningful, the name of the band to me is not meaningful at all. |
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| Pep-Rock: Because you were in The Movielife and Sammy has been in other bands too, have you found that it has been difficult to agree on sounds when writing songs or has it been the complete opposite and you’ve found that you’ve gelled together? |
| Brandon: Our system is amazing. The Nightmare Of You system is solely ideal because what I do is, I will write a full song on acoustic guitar, like chord progressions, things like that, I’ll take it to a practice and say “hey this is my song”, and me and the guys have a lot of the same influences but we also have some totally different ones, like Joe likes bands like Grateful Dead and then I go to the practice and he puts things to the songs that I would never have even thought of putting to them. I’m glad that I can rely on him and that I don’t need to do everything, I know that whatever he does will be great, and the same thing with Sammy on drums. I write the song, then we come together and make it a real big song and I know that I’m going to love every single thing that every person is doing. |
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| Pep-Rock: What’s been the response to the band so far – have you had much criticism? |
| Brandon: It’s all been positive, I haven’t had any negative criticism at all. Nothing negative has been said to my face about this band. We’re a great band and I’m not afraid to say that, what’s the point of being in a band if you don’t think your band is great? There’s bands who are like “we’re just a shitty band” and I’m like “so why are you doing this then? You’re wasting my time and you’re wasting everyone else’s time”. You have to be passionate about whatever you do. |
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| Pep-Rock: Which band around at the moment do you think should be a big influence, not necessarily on your band but future bands? |
| Brandon: I think The Decemberists should be used as every band’s example. They make well-crafted pop music with subject matters that aren’t typical, the songs are written beautifully. I think that band are flawless. They’re on a band that isn’t very big and yet they’re selling out so many shows and I think they’re the example of how to do a band. They’re never gonna have a ‘hit’ but they’re always gonna have thousands upon thousands of fans and sell out shows. That band are as genuine as it gets. |
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| Pep-Rock: Are there any up and coming bands you’re currently listening to? |
| Brandon: I just heard this band called Keith, we played with them in Stoke, no one’s heard of them and they’re so good, check them out. |
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| Pep-Rock: How are you feeling about tonight, your first London show as Nightmare Of You? |
Brandon: Flustered but so excited. The sound check went pretty well – there’s gonna be a lot of management, labels and friends so it’s going to be a little overwhelming. |
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| Pep-Rock: Any final thoughts? |
| Brandon: No no that’s all. |
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| To find out more about Nightmare Of You - Click Here |
