#paulvaughan

“Vegas bomb?” Jason ventures with glee. “Definitely,” Jordan affirms to his partner in crime, casting a glance of excitement at me from across the table.

This would be the final exchange of the interview with the musical duo Cherub of Nashville, Tennessee. Whilst the British pub would unfortunately be unequipped to concoct the kick to the system that the shot would provide, the falsetto funk-infused electronic harmonies of Cherub and the lively twosome behind it were a more than adequate consolation. Talking to Jordan Kelley and Jason Huber, we discuss the origins of Cherub, from their humble beginnings in freshman year to becoming a group whose newest release The Year of the Caprese could likely form the soundtrack to the next generation of underclassmen looking to leave their mark.

The conglomeration of Cherub began at Middle Tennessee State University where they lived up to Twain’s famous sentiment of not letting school get in the way of their education. As Jason explains, “We were each going to school for music production. Me, Jordan and Nick Curtis [The group’s producer and de-facto third member] met our freshman year because we were all in the same program but it was probably at least five years before all three of us did anything together musically. Jordan was producing for a bunch of MC’s and I was in a psychedelic folk rock band - so very different projects than what we’re doing now but at the same time our roles in the projects were very similar.” Delving further into his first year upon dropping out of school to take a hands-on approach to continuing his education, Jordan continues, “I rented out a house and I spent a whole year kind of trying to get my shit together. Me and Nick made the first record, I brought the stuff to him, he refined the sound and made it into something listenable, after that I sent the album to Jason and he liked it, and then we just started building on it.”

Consider Cherub’s musical landscape as you would consider the Freudian notion of the ‘id’: a permutation of urges, interests and instincts churned out through the sonic sensibilities of Jordan, Jason, and Nick. The foundation of the group’s sound has clearly been influenced by the hybridity of the modern musical landscape and its pluralistic status-quo, setting the stage for an assembly line of exuberant, rambunctious party tracks which in turn find surprising congruence with other songs that showcase wistful inquisitions of lust and love. Lyrics that shift between the ‘better off without you’  tone of XOXO (“I heard what you said / So yeah, yeah / fuck that bitch!”) and the melancholy introspection of Lyndennberries (“I love you the most / More than I love them / It’s important we stay close.”)

Elaborating on the process of Cherub’s construction, Jason recalls, “there was a pretty short conversation actually – whether it was going to be you know a live band or a DJ project and we decided to do somewhere in the middle.”  Jordan adds, “It’s a three piece dynamic - and live currently it’s just me and Jason, but Nick owns the studio where we’ve recorded all of our stuff and he mixes and masters everything. The dynamic is in the studio. Even with the new stuff it’s a little different but for the most part it’s me writing the music and then we lay down that foundation in the studio and from there Jason and Nick add and layer things and then it turns into a song.” Jason continues, “A lot of the underlying writing starts with Jordan and on this one started off with all of us sitting around the studio around keyboards and drum machines and stuff like that and then developing an idea and then Jordan taking that idea and crafting lyrics and a whole song around it and then we kind of put it back together and mix it out in the studio and that’s when we start to take it and break it back apart for the live show. We write in the studio first and foremost with no thought of the live show in mind really, it’s really just about the music. Because we write in the studio first there are no limitations, it’s all about the sounds and the ideas that are in our heads and just finding a way to get them across. And then it’s a really fun process taking that and finding a way that it can translate live.”

Cherub’s latest translations come about amidst promotion for the release of the aforementioned album The Year of the Caprese as well as the re-release of Doses and Mimosas, – rightfully reclaimed from relative obscurity to becoming a multi-million YouTube hit and likely your favorite summer song that you just haven’t heard yet – one which in-keeping with the rest of their catalogue goes down as easy and enjoyably as - well, doses and mimosas (if you’re into that sort of thing). Detailing the reticence and eventual rationale behind the re-release Jason explains, “I thought ‘Everybody has heard this song. Its old news - nobody wants to hear it again.’ Then one radio station in Las Vegas makes an edit of it and we start having people hit us up and we thought, ‘How are these people just hearing this now?’ And then it starts to hit other radio stations in the country, then we realize this is just the U.S - we haven’t even reached out to the rest of the world. It’s really cool for us – I mean its humbling and it’s awesome to realize our bubble is so small. All that we want is to be able to reach out to everybody, just to have a chance to make a connection.”

“Not to sound naïve but we want to touch everyone.” Jordan chimes in with jest, “Don’t misquote that. We want to touch all the little people out there.”

“In little places…[leaning into the recorder, pre-empting a burst of laughter]…this is Jason.”

The longer the interview lasts the more apparent it becomes that the jokes fly freely and often with Cherub because the creativity does as well. While the lively party anthems and the saucy tongue-in-cheek declarations of youthful desire are symptomatic of a joyride, the group’s formation is more than simply  a careening rollercoaster. It may be a wild ride – but its one where the tracks are as important as the velocity, where the chemistry between like-minds is as vital as their burgeoning success. That success looms ahead now with the imminent release of Year of Caprese the mention of which kicks off a final spree of self-deprecation and ball-breaking as Jason and Jordan reveal the significance (or lack thereof) of their album’s title, and more tellingly, the dynamic of the group which drives them forward.

 “Not to bust out a secret – but it really has nothing to do with the inspiration behind any of the songs or the content involved in the album – its super random inside jokes, and Year of the Caprese is the same thing. I had a really good seasonal tomato with ricotta cheese thing in Paris with our manager and it was the best dish I’d ever had, and from there I just ordered them everywhere I went-”

“You ordered like eight of them in Amsterdam,” Jason interrupts.

“Because they were good,” Jordan rationalizes, “If I find a good caprese I’m gonna eat as many as I can.”

“We’re special boys,” Jason laughs, “When people ask us, ‘Did you guys ever think you’d be where you are right now?’ I mean we’ll both say yes just because we both knew that we weren’t ever going to stop until we were somewhere. We both kind of feel like this is what were made for, what were good at.”

“Use do not abuse, for neither excess nor abstinence ever renders man happy.”

-Voltaire

Considering the quote above and trying to bridge its cautionary meaning to the precocious young face of Josh O’Connor proves challenging - despite being a bit of a self-proclaimed rascal in his adolescence, a rambunctiousness inspired as much by an incongruence with school as an innate mischievousness. That restlessness did however lead to drama and by extension a way of life, “School didn’t really work for me. I was a little mischievous, a little naughty. But drama was kind of a play around subject. To be encouraged to go in and play around and then turn that into a career was just great. My mom’s whole side of the family was quite artistic, so I always pictured doing something artistic, then I got into drama school and that was it.”

Josh looks to be, and by all indications – is, someone who couldn’t be mistaken for living a life or starting a career that would require Voltaire’s caveat of overindulgence. The bridge however is Josh’s role in Posh. Focusing on the debauched exploits of a fictional – but based upon reality - college-association aptly named ‘The Riot Club,’ Posh depicts a group of privileged young male students as they challenge Voltaire’s aforementioned quote. Posh, originally a hit play in Britain, depicted the ‘Riot Club’s’ latest festivities in a dining hall as cruel intentions take hold and the evening descends into chaos. The real-life club in question looming over the one presented in both the play and the film is of course Oxford’s ‘Bullingdon Club.’ The Bullingdon’s notoriety lay in the blatant contradiction presented in public and private record:  infamously unruly club-parties raising hell - by some accounts all the way back to the early part of the 20th century - which are in turn perpetually downplayed by the polished, successful politicians and businessmen who count themselves among their esteemed alumnus.

While the film is by-and-large informed by the foundations established by the play, Josh explains how it was necessary to take creative license tailoring the story’s structure to a different medium. Helming the adaptation and overseeing said changes is none other than Lone Scherfig, whose last film, An Education, many a cineaste will recall also considered the corruptive power of wealth and status over virtue and morality in high society. That kind of dichotomous vision for this world Josh explains, was exactly what the story called for. The divergence of public behavior and private conduct, the exhibition of cultivated behavior capsized by the revelation of inner nature: “I think it’s important that the audience genuinely like these characters at least for a significant part of the film – and that’s why we still focus largely on the dining hall scene, but introduce it with the characters in their natural environment… In the first part at Oxford you see how they socialize while introducing each character and then they go to the dining room and you see the downfall of each character. The politicians and former members who appear to be so lovely - we wanted to depict that public dynamic of the characters. They can be really charming, but as the film progresses its stripped away.”

             Conventional wisdom goes that the acting bug catches early, actors in-waiting find themselves on a stage and from then on are forever rooted by the spotlights and the eager eyes watching from the darkness. Like any performer with parents plying their trade as professional actors it was almost an inevitability that Tom Burke would one day have his moment, “I remember walking out on a stage without really knowing what a stage was- and I couldn’t naturally see the audience and there was an area of sort of abstract weird set, and then total darkness and that was sort of just a weird place to be in, and I remember feeling very intrigued at that moment. I sort of grew up in that world spent a lot of time with other actors. I just always felt I was one of them really.”

            Early adulthood was defined by varying acronyms that spell out the stepping stones to a life oscillating between theatre and the screen. After a brief stay at the National Youth Theatre at 17, Tom enrolled at RADA the following year. “For the National Youth Theatre I did the course and had some of the best times of my life really. I got into RADA when I was 18, and it was a very young time to go, they kind of seem to go really young now, but from my experience it was incredibly hard to get my head around it at that age. I think people who are older pick up a lot more, absorb a lot more, because when you’re 17-18 there’s so much going on, and you know people at drama school are trying to do all sorts of stuff like trying to throw you off your centre,  and I didn’t have a centre when I was 17 (laughs).”

            Upon finishing with the RADA and NYT , Tom took the leap from student to practitioner, where he would consistently find work across the mediums of television, film, and the stage. Despite the bevvy of both first and second-hand experience preparing for the transition proved to be as much an exploration of his own options so much as his own sensibilities. “I did sort of have a plan at one point -  I mean you are cherry picking as an actor and things come along when they come along and I found myself more challenged and more stretched and got more out of it maybe than I expected, so I stopped outlining my career and my life far less than I used to, a few years ago I was trying to do a play a year because it just felt like a very grounding thing to do. I’m not quite sure why but it just made me feel quite grounded but films and T.V. they happen when they happen and you just never know.”