When we sit down with The K’s Jamie Boyle and Ryan Breslin, their energy is infectious.
They’re eager to chat, and is it any wonder? After a successful tour, an album launch that more than exceeded their expectations, and keeping the Queen B (Beyonce for the uninitiated) from the top spot on the UK album charts for 6 days, there’s a lot to celebrate. It’s a testament to the band’s hard work and their love of making music.
But there were moments of doubt, of times when the grind became almost too much. Especially during the dark days of COVID. Seeing fellow indie bands close up shop and throw in the towel made The K’s realize they’d have to work twice as a hard to be seen and heard. It was never about playing to sold-out crowds, it was always about making music that makes a difference. And, to their pleasant surprise, it did. Helping some of their fans through their darkest moments.
The sold-out crowds just happen to be a bonus.
And as the band continues to see success after success, it revitalizes them. It makes them raise the bar for their artistry. Their latest album, Pretty on the Internet, is proof of that. Pushing them to their artistic limits, and beyond. Who knows where their drive will take them next?
In conversation with 1883 Magazine’s Dana Reboe, Jamie and Ryan of The K’s discuss the brand’s commitment to the craft, playing Glastonbury, their musical impact, and so much more.
Hey gents, thank you so much for talking with 1883 Magazine today, to dive in, can you talk about the formation of the band, how and when you all met, and when you decided you wanted to form the band? And what the process of putting your first album together looked like versus the second?
Jamie: So, the band, me Dexter and, the bass player, have been friends since we were really little, since we were like three. We met in nursery, so we’ve been friends since then. We went to primary school together, high school together, and when we were in high school, we joined a band with two other lads and just started messing around, playing covers and things like that. But we never did anything serious. And then Ryan was in another band that was doing a similar sort of thing when we were at school. And then everybody went off to college and uni and different things. Then, nobody did anything until probably about 2017. We just had a drunken conversation of like, “Why don’t we start a band?” And literally like the next week, we were in the rehearsal room.
So, it was a drunken promise that we stuck to for once [laughter]. We released a single, and it just started picking up, like snowballing and we’re like, “What is going on? What just happened? People are liking this, so we may as well carry on doing it.” We were playing and going from strength to strength, basically selling out every show we played, I think for the first two, three years, every show we put on sale, sold out, until lockdown.
Lockdown knocked us back a few steps. In 2022, we started getting back into it, and we started having proper conversations about maybe doing a body of work because we’d been playing about with the idea with different labels before lockdown, but then we properly wanted to sort of get our teeth into it. We got touring out of the way after lockdown, and then in 2023, we thought, “Yeah, let’s start seeing what’s out there.”
We signed to LAB, who’ve been amazing. And album one was sort of a different process because the songs had been written over such a long time. It was probably like a good five years, the songs had been written over. So, it was all already there. There was the actual process of album one. Maybe it’s just development as a band as well, but it seemed a lot quicker to make it.
Ryan: We already had a lot of the stuff, didn’t we? It was more just a case of tracking the other songs to the same standard as the ones we’d already put out there. We released album one, and that got to number three in the charts. We had a tough week as well. We did brilliantly to get to number three. I think that was in April.
Jamie: And then by September, I think I went down to Jim Lowe’s house. I had a load of songs written for album two. And Jim Lowe, who produced us, he does like Stereophonics, and he’s done Beyonce, he’s done Taylor Swift. He’s a great producer. I went down to his house with the acoustic versions of the songs on album two in August. It’s crazy. The end of August, and I took a full album down to him, which now just seems absolutely mental. We sort of picked what we thought was going to make it onto the album.
There are probably 15 songs, and 12 made it. And then when was it, Ryan?
Ryan: I bet by October, we were pre-prodding, ready to record it. So, it wasn’t even six months after album one, we got into album two.
Jamie: We started at the end of the year, didn’t we? But we were still heavily touring. And I think the last date of the 2024 tour was the day before Christmas Eve. We got back on the 23rd. We had one day off on Christmas Day, and then we got told that the deadline had moved. We had to meet a deadline by February or something like that. We had to get in the studio, didn’t we? In January and February.
Ryan: We had to finish it. It was so mad, wasn’t it? It was like, right, get up in the morning. Whoever was driving, pick everybody up, and get to the studio for nine o’clock. And then we would be leaving at like 10, 11 p.m. But for weeks on end, that was just our lives, just the inside of those studio walls for so long.
Jamie: But it’s one of them, isn’t it? You get out what you put in. There’s every possibility, Ryan, that we made this up in our heads, but we thought it was the end of March, didn’t we?
Ryan: Yeah, I think we just got it wrong.
Jamie: Time is an illusion when you’re in the studio.
Take me back to when ‘I Wonder If the World Knows’ cracked the top three of the UK official Album Chart? What was going through your heads as a band? Not to mention the 2 million streams, too.
Jamie: It was hard to keep up with it. The week of release. We were trying to hold Beyonce off for as long as we could [laughs]. We got to day six, didn’t we? And we’re still in front of Beyonce. It was like, “Oh my God, we’re going to finish number two. But then even number three is like no mean feat.” And it’s also worth mentioning that we only found out about this two weeks ago. We had the best-selling indie album of last year and the second-best-selling debut out of everybody last year. And we only got beaten by Last Dinner Party, which is nothing to be sniffed at because they’re amazing and they’re smashing it. So, we had the biggest-selling indie album of last year with our debut record and the second biggest-selling. It was just a great release.
Ryan: I think I don’t know if I’ll ever grow out of it. No matter how long I’m in the band, you have that thing of like, “What if nobody turns up or what if nobody buys the music?” It’s just that thing.
Jamie: We actually had a pop-up shop in a town local to us. We were there every day in between playing in stores, record shops and all this stuff. And the way that people showed up there was unreal. We genuinely couldn’t have asked for anymore. There was no time when there was nobody in the shop. A week straight, it was the busiest shop St. Helens has seen in a hundred years or something.
That’s incredible! In addition to making the top three, another achievement from last year is playing Glastonbury. Can you touch on the experience as individuals and as a band?
Jamie: That was my favorite gig from last year, because I don’t know, there’s something about walking out and going, “Hello Glastonbury!” And it’s a pipeline dream that every single year to go and play Glastonbury and to do the stage that we did, the Woodsies stage and the crowd that came in, they physically couldn’t get in the tent. I think for a first time at Glastonbury, that was just like, hands down my favorite.
You guys are racking up the festivals, the accolades, the recognition. What has it been like for you to see the crowds steadily get larger and larger, and see the fan response to your music?
Ryan: I can speak for myself, I’m not sure about the rest of the lads. It’s taken us by surprise, the quickness of the growth in the last couple of months since we started releasing singles off album two. Because we did well with album one, but now it’s snowballing. Maybe the insecurity will go soon, right? [laughs] But I think with this album particularly, and the recent singles, we’re selling some of these venues out. It’s at the stage now, this might be a bit premature to speak publicly about, but I’m not bothered, that we’re talking about the next tour may be arena level in some cities, because the number of tickets we’re selling, the only option is for us to play some arenas.
What’s the dream arena?
Ryan: There’s a new one in Manchester, and there’s a new one that we’ve not been to yet called Co-op Live. So, I can’t wait to play that one.
Jamie: The O2 in London as well. Madison Square Garden, if we’re being real, if we’re not trying to play it cool, it’s got to be that, hasn’t it?
You know, at this point, it might happen sooner rather than later.
Jamie: Let’s hope so.
So, speaking of crowds and fans, do you have any interactions you’d like to share that are particularly memorable across the tour, or even before the tour that stick out in your memory?
Jamie: Without going into too much personal detail about them, when we finished filming a music video, there was somebody there with four bunches of flowers and a card. And we were like, “Okay, thank you,” not really sure what’s going on. And then we opened this letter. And it said, “Two years ago, I was really struggling with drug and alcohol problems, all this sort of stuff. And I was genuinely going to kill myself. And I just want you to know that the main thing that got me through was your music, that debut album. I genuinely feel like it was a turning point for me. And your music has just helped me get through that.” And so, it was just completely out of the blue, filming a music video.
It wasn’t even a show. To get little reminders of how much impact you have, when you take away all the lights and take away all the big shows and all that sort of stuff. And you strip it back, you see how much of a positive impact you can have on one person’s life.
Ryan: That is really what it’s all about. There’s a similar story in Liverpool; there was a young lad with his parents there. And, when we played Liverpool, he would only come out to see gigs and to watch us, it changed his perception of going out to crowds and things like that. So, I think, like Jamie just said, it makes it all worthwhile. We all went up and had a photo, and hearing his mom saying, “He’s never been out to a gig or anything. You’re his first band, and it’s helped him with his anxiety.”
That leads me to my next question: Can you talk about what making Pretty on the Internet has meant to you on a personal level and what you hope audiences take away from the album itself?
Jamie: I like the fact that we’ve kept all the energy of album one, and we’ve kept that raw emotion that we put into our music, and the energy that it sort of emits. But I feel like musically, whether that’s the parts we’re playing, whether that’s the instruments we’re using, whether that’s the vocal parts, whatever it is, we’ve really developed, and it shows a maturity since the album one that I hope keeps happening.
Ryan: I think the main thing is how proud of it we are and how happy we are with the way it’s come out. We genuinely couldn’t be happier with it. I think the big thing for me, as well, like Jamie said, is the development that we’ve shown. In any walk of life, if you’re doing something, you just naturally get better at it. And I think this album shows musically and vocally how we’ve matured and developed in each aspect of the song.
I think every aspect of it has come together and just made this developed sound that just catapulted us a little bit. And I think the exciting bit is that onto like album three and album four and not knowing where we’re going yet but knowing that it’s going to be a step up. I love album one, I wouldn’t change it for the world, but we sort of honed our craft playing live and that was our first time doing an album, we just hit everything as hard as we can. I love it, I love it for that reason.
Ryan: It kind of gets boring for everyone if we’re just doing the same stuff. So, I think this album shows that we can do that as well as keep the rawness.
Are there songs from album two that didn’t make the cut and that’ll probably, maybe in different iterations, show up on albums three, four, five, and beyond?
Jamie: Yeah, I think so. I can think of a couple off my head. Shadow Puppet Show is the one that’s springing to mind. That’s a good tune still, isn’t it, Ryan? The perfect example is picking up a piece that didn’t end up on album one, and now it’s on album two.
Ryan: I know, yeah, and now it’s on number two. I’m sure there’s definitely some little bits that we’ll find on a demo or something like that and be like, “That needs to be out.”
The 22nd of May marked the end of your Pretty on the Internet headline tour. What are some of your standout moments from the tour?
Jamie: Newcastle City Hall because my family is from up there, my dad’s a Geordie. So that city, I’m a Newcastle fan. I’m up in that city once every two weeks, going to the football games and stuff. So, to play the most iconic venue in the city and to have it sold out and it to be the night that it was, was definitely my highlight of the tour, I’d say. It was amazing. I wish I could do it again. Even talking about it now, I really want to be back there.
Ryan: That was a big one for you, wasn’t it? Because your dad was there. He watched a lot of bands growing up there and stuff. I think probably the main one for me was Leeds. I’ve got two Leeds and Roundhouse. Leeds, my family flew over from Vancouver, and then the crowd. And that was just like one moment where I was sort of awe-struck. I think it was during Hoping Maybe, I stopped playing my guitar because the roar of the crowd was that loud. There’s nothing in the world that can compare to that feeling.
I bet it’ll be a high you’re chasing for a while. One of the standout hits on the album is The Bends.Can we just talk about the music video? Where did the idea for that come from? Who came up with that?
Jamie: When I was a teenager, in my sort of later teenage years, I spent a lot of time in the hospital because I got unwell. And they couldn’t find out what was wrong with me. For the best part of like two or three years, I was just in and out of the hospital on various treatments, having various surgeries, all this sort of stuff. And it got really sort of touch and go for some time. And The Bends just alludes to that feeling of being really high on painkillers and not knowing what’s going on, and the loss of control.
So, when we were speaking to Jeff again, who we spoke with at Glastonbury, it was actually his idea because he asked me what the song was about. I told him, and he came up with the whole concept of it. And Olivia, who plays the nurse in it, she was in one of the videos from album one and stuff. It’s just a really fun video. It just went a bit mad in the end.
Ryan: It was like he was giving instructions to Jamie on the bed, they’re whispering to me to jump on him at this moment in time or something. So, like, we’re all trying to jump on Jamie and restrain him. I don’t know where the astronaut suit came from. I’m trying to play guitar with an astronaut suit on. I looked at the back of the guitar and it’s like all scratched because there’s metalwork on the suit. It turned out great.
It did! So, the behind-the-scenes TikToks are everything. [Jamie and Ryan laugh] I spent last night just going through all of your TikToks. How much incriminating evidence didn’t make the cut?
Jamie: Freya has got so much on her. She’s probably waiting until we peak success, and then she’s going to want all the rights to our songs. It’s just always what you see on the videos. It’s just stupid stuff. It’s just people messing about all the time. Our touring party is way past the band. There are the four in the band that you see heavily on the videos, but there are about 20 of us who go on tour, maybe a couple more. And everybody’s just sort of the same vibe in terms of everyone likes having a laugh and a good time. I think it’s important when you’re touring and spending so much time around people.
It’s not an accident that it ended up like this. We’ve done it on purpose and built this team of people who all really get on with each other. We love being on tour. That’s why we say we get off for one day and want to go back out, because it’s just a laugh.
And lastly, when you look at how far you’ve come as musicians and as people, what is one thing you’ve learned about yourself and each other? And I’ll start with you, Ryan.
Ryan: I think having the resilience to carry on. And I know that sounds like the obvious answer, we had so many knockbacks from the start, from not having any songs out, not being able to sell tickets. We actually used to go with physical tickets to pubs and say, “Does anyone want to buy a ticket?” And I think having that resilience of carrying on through COVID and then a few other knockbacks. And a lot of bands in the Northwest were folding and stopped playing and gave up. But we tried to stay relevant. We released a couple of songs.
Coming out of COVID and sort of getting back on the horse and thinking, “Right, we can give this our best shot.” And we started selling tickets again, and we started building it just as before. I’m proud of doing it with these lads.
Jamie: It’s sort of two sides of the same coin, what Ryan’s saying. I’d say the confidence in myself and the other boys to be able to do what we do, but not only just play. We’re in this position now and we were an independent band for so long. We signed to an indie label for album one. We’ve done the same for album two. We got some management on board just before we signed that record deal, but for the vast majority of it, we’ve been running it ourselves and we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. We just all shared this idea that this is what we wanted to do. We weren’t going to let anything stop that.
We wanted to be full-time musicians. We wanted to be full-time musicians with each other in this band. So through a lot of trial and error, a lot of long way rounds, we’ve stuck at it and we’ve completely, even now, even if we stopped it right now, I still think we’ve done so much more than we could have ever dreamed of that first day in the practice room and no matter what happens, we’ve done that ourselves.
The K’s new album Pretty On The Internet is out now
