Whether it's dressing up or stuffing your face with sweets, Halloween is a fun time of year.  Today's 'We're Only Here For The Banter' guests certainly agree, having released a brand new acoustic EP Ghosts  on Halloween to celebrate.  I caught up with Callum from East Kilbride five piece Poor Frisco to delve deeper.

Hello! How the devil are you?

Hi Neil, I’m great, thanks!  And cheers for playing us on the radio!

It's the question everyone hates, but could illuminate our readers with a little bit about your music and your influences?

We usually describe ourselves somewhat vaguely as either alt-rock or indie, depending on the amount of plaid being worn at the time.  A few influences are Pixies, Modest Mouse, The Shins, and being from East Kilbride it would be remiss to not add The Jesus and Mary Chain.

What's your song-writing / creative process like?

Usually I’ll write a song - lyrics and at least one guitar part - and bring it to rehearsal where Scott (guitar), Fleck (bass) and David (drums) jam along to it until they come up with something they’re happy with.  David acts as editor, he likes the tracks to be as lean as possible.  He’s cut many a bridge, pre-chorus and noodly intro/outro.  I like to be quite spare with the lyrics too, which is either minimalism or laziness depending on your sympathies.  David also writes himself occasionally, you can hear one of his excellent songs, Brothers Grimm,  on the new EP for the first time.

What could we expect to see from a live show?

Bang for your buck!  A song over three minutes is an epic for us, and we’re strangely proud of being able to rattle through twice as many songs in a half hour set than most other bands.  We like to think we put on an energetic show although we seem to be a bit disaster prone with a history of opening track string breakages, amps falling off stands and, most recently, a rogue smoke machine that gassed us offstage at the end of a set at Sleazy’s.

Tell us about your new EP Ghosts.

Ghosts  is a five-track acoustic EP which we recorded ourselves one afternoon at Scott’s.  We’re releasing it especially as a Halloween treat so it will be free to download from the 31st October.  All the tracks are stripped back versions of songs we play live regularly.

What else have you got planned for the rest of 2014?

We're releasing a new single towards the end of the year (going up against X Factor for the Christmas number one), getting loud again, and will hopefully be doing some more gigs.

What are you listening to at the moment?

I recently arrived at The Eels pretty late in the game and have been working my way through their back catalogue, and Honeyblood’s album has been on a lot too.  Fleck has been bingeing on Villagers and Beulah.

Thanks for speaking with us, would you care to share a joke with us?

You can’t tell jokes to kleptomaniacs – they take everything literally.


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