From Nothing to a Little Bit More

For The Lathums, making their second album was all about capturing humanity. “The humanity of us and the humanity of music, just figuring all this crazy stuff out as human beings,” frontman Alex Moore tells Apple Music. Picking up the thread that was woven through their 2021 debut *How Beautiful Life Can Be*, this follow-up melds the mundane and the magical, the gently euphoric indie-rock sing-alongs wrought from everyday struggles, and the quiet defiance of getting through troubling times. Emboldened by the success of their first record, the Wigan quartet wanted to push the boundaries. “We wanted to show that we’re progressing and trying new things and that we won’t ever get comfortable in a certain place,” says Moore. You can hear it in how these songs dynamically shift from panoramic ’80s rock to epic ballads, from storming indie anthems to sweetly melodic skiffle-pop. “We feel like this is a step up,” says Moore. “We’re very proud of it.” Moore and guitarist Scott Concepcion talk us through the album, track by track. **“Struggle”** Alex Moore: “I felt that this was a powerful song to start with—it sets off the narrative for the rest of the album. It felt right to be the spearhead. I started writing it when I was a lot younger, and I couldn’t finish it because I wasn’t old enough to understand it at that point—but the end of it came out of me later down the line.” **“Say My Name”** AM: “We wanted something with a lot of energy that people can get behind, like when you’re in a crowd and there’s a certain kind of noise going on. Being on stage you can see it, everybody naturally either jumps at the same time or sings along at the same time. We wanted to capture that in a song. We played it live before we recorded it and it became a bit of a fan favorite. It went up on YouTube and then, at the next couple of gigs, there were people singing the words back to us. It became its own entity.” **“I Know Pt 1”** AM: “There’s a bit of love in this one. There’s a lot of love, really. I wanted to take myself out of my own shoes and see things from somebody else’s perspective. In this scenario, it’s the perspective of a woman, which is hard for a man to do. I’m not saying I’ve learned how to do that but I wanted to give it a go and not think just about me. I think I learned more about myself—ways that I’m selfish but hadn’t really realized, and certain things like that. I think it was owning up to things, things that you could change to better yourself.” **“Lucky Bean”** AM: “I wanted to have a song that brings an old, nostalgic feel but in a modern way. We always want to keep it fresh, we used to talk about that when we were playing in pubs as young lads. We wanted to have a song for everybody, it doesn’t matter who’s listening—there can be a song for everybody.” **“Facets”** AM: “This was a very fun song to record. There’s a lot of melodies, and I know Scott had a whale of a time on it.” Scott Concepcion: “I did. There’s plenty of little guitar parts and overlapping intricacies that form melodies when listened to together. Jim Abbiss \[producer\] brought out his Höfner electric thumb piano too, it was incredible.” AM: “The end is like a climax of music. It’s amazing.” **“Rise and Fall”** AM: “This was a sweet little number me and Scott started when we were whippersnappers. We neglected it for a while, and it got pushed to the side. Then it presented itself again. There was a lot going on at the time that fitted a lot of the words—and the idea of being in a headspace all the way at the top and then all the way at the bottom and the different parts of a journey. It felt right, and obviously we were older and a bit more experienced, so it was easier to revisit the song and let it be itself.” **“Sad Face Baby”** AM: “A lot of the album is music for an individual—personal music—and we wanted something for everybody in the crowd to get behind, where everybody takes the song for themselves and the energy from everybody is just so good. We’re conscious about stuff like that now. We’re never selfish with it, we never wanted to keep it to ourselves. We always wanted to express it to people but now we understand that, at a show, it’s their time to have a laugh and have a jump around. You have to write a song that’s sat in that category.” **“Turmoil”** AM: “This is a gorgeous piece of music, especially if you take the vocals away! It was fun recording this because it was out of our comfort zone. I was very proud of us after we’d finished it because we’d never done a song like this before. We didn’t really know what we were doing with it at the beginning, but we kept at it and it’s become quite special. It’s of its own kin, there’s not many songs like it about at the moment. It gives us more confidence to express things in different ways.” **“Land and Sky”** AM: “In the beginning, this was more of a dark, complex, fingerpicking kind of tune. But we got in the studio with John Kettle \[producer\], and the arrangement we created transcended what I envisioned in my head when I first wrote it.” SC: “We all felt we were channeling Dr. Dre.” AM: “It’s like Lathums but in a ’90s hip-hop way. It was fun crafting it in the studio. It excited us, like, ‘What can we do now to make it better or make something strange? Where can we push these songs to?’” **“Crying Out”** AM: “This was another oldie and goldie, but it never really got its chance to breathe. A lot of fans mentioned it being special to them, but it was forgotten about. It felt good to give people that and let the song have its time to breathe and just be. We loved the song, and we’d already lived with it for years, so it was nice to revisit it.” **“Undeserving”** AM: “It’s a journey, this one. It’s one of those songs where you have to be in bed on your own, just in your own world, trying to figure things out with your headphones on. Let the words just take you on a journey. It sums up a lot of our journey, personally and musically. I think it rounds off the album in a really nice way. It’s almost like I’m trying to explain to you that we’ve not got this figured out yet, this life, but we’re giving it a go and we’re very happy and grateful for the position that we’re in and the opportunity people have given us—because without everybody else, music doesn’t have any connection.”

Writing this from my shared office in Peckham, I can confirm that that didn’t happen, but it did for The Lathums, who’s debut album shot to number one and saw them playing festivals, supporting The Killers and selling out venues all over the country.

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