Violent and young

On arriving in Iglu & Hartly’s dressing room, several very good-looking young men jump up from their seats to shake my hand and offer me a beer, throwing an interview by two boys from Birmingham Uni into complete disarray. Jarvis, Iglu and Hartly’s singer and producer, hands me a beer which he has just opened with a massive kitchen knife (the same one with which drummer, Luis, later saws off the cable on his headphones, because it was getting on his nerves) and asks if I’ll brush his shoulder-length hair. Being the obliging young lady that I am, I, of course, agree. It soon becomes evident that his hair hasn’t met with a brush in a long time, so the first question of the interview turns out to be: when was the last time you brushed this? “Uh…since we’ve been on tour” And how long have you been on tour? “About four months”. Jarvis also informed me that he’d been wearing the same clothes for four days, and he had an enormous rip in his boxers so that his trademark low-slung white jeans revealed all of one butt cheek. Incredibly, I still fancied him.

Although the band often tell people that ‘Iglu & Hartly’ were the names of two ships that went looking for pineapples and came back with cinnamon (a metaphor for something or other), Jarvis tells me that it actually comes from the merging of the names he and rapper Sam were working under separately when they met. At the time he was calling himself ‘DJ Iglu’ and Sam was ‘Hartly Dark’, which had to be changed Jarvis explains ‘because it meant that he wasn’t black’. Yup. And this story is confirmed by the record sleeve on which Jarvis thanks ‘Dj Iglu and Hartly Dark’. I’d say the fact that he remembered to thank himself is a pretty good indication of his character. (Incidentally, he also mentions ‘The Person who wrote star wars theme song’, ‘Michaelangelo from Ninja Turtles’ and Tina Turner.)

The band members all came together at different times but this process could have been set in motion a lot earlier if it weren’t for the fact that Jarvis lived on the other side of town from Sam – ‘People kept telling me I should meet him, but 45 minutes is really far when you don’t have a car or anything’. Although they met at separate times, drummer Luis tells me the band all feel like they have been ‘heading towards this since birth’, and they don’t see any reason why they won’t be doing the same thing in 5 or 10 years time. ‘These guys are really great and we get along really well, we don’t have hardly any fights’ adds Jarvis.

The interview disintegrates pretty early on; Luis had drunk 3 cans of Redbull in about half an hour and kept demanding to know what my number one favourite thing in life is. And then my second favourite thing. And then my favourite song in the whole world ever. And then my favourite movie ever. By the time he had found a new occupation (making me a bracelet out of The Carling Academy’s Christmas decorations), Jarvis was skateboarding up and down the corridor, just popping back in every few minutes to put on soul music or new remixes of their songs.

The conversation turns to journalism and in an effort to keep it focused on the band I ask whether they enjoy doing interviews. ‘We like doing interviews for student papers and things. Real journalists are always trying to get you to say certain things, y’know?’ Luis then goes on to tell me about one of the worst interviews he’s ever done. ‘One time, this guy asked me what the foxes on the front of the album cover were about’ he says and pulls a face. I smile in agreement at the ridiculousness of this line of questioning, whilst secretly thinking that I’d quite like to know the answer myself. I still haven’t quite worked out the symbolism of the foxes which are pursuing the band as they jump, naked, off a cliff into the sea on the cover of their debut album & Then Boom.

After a few crazy-tour-antics stories (bassist Bucher hoovering naked, having to smuggle people who had forgotten their passports into the country illegally on their tour-bus etc.), it was time for the band to go onstage. The boys from Birmingham Uni didn’t look too happy when Luis got me an Access All Areas pass so I could go backstage whenever I wanted but conveniently forgot about them. Being female seems to be rather useful with this lot, and as could have been predicted by pretty much anyone, the audience was largely made up of screaming fifteen-year-old girls.

Iglu & Hartly’s set lasted around 50 minutes. They played almost every track from the album, including singles ‘In this City’ and ‘Violent and Young’. For some unknown reason the male members of the crowd felt the need to keep punching each other and several were thrown out by the bouncers. The band stopped mid way through their set to thank these guys for doing such a good job with all the crowd surfers, but then went on to increase their workload by seeming to encourage the fights breaking out amongst audience members. They closed with ‘The PJ Song’, which doesn’t appear on the album but is a firm fan favourite, during which a bunch of the aforementioned screaming fifteen-year-old girls were pulled up onstage to dance. All in all ‘Violent and young’ seemed to sum up the night rather neatly, with the majority of the crowd falling under at least one of these categories.

Despite the bizarre displays of aggression, both the band and the audience appeared to be having the time of their lives. However, although I really enjoyed the show and their light-hearted music, I think that the only chance Iglu & Hartly have of still being around in 5 or 10 years is if their looks don’t fade (I have my fingers crossed, along with most of the fifteen-year-old girls in the U.K).