#tdcc interview

Back in 2016, Two Door Cinema Club came blazing back into view after three years of silence with ‘Gameshow’. Now they’re at work on the follow-up, Alex Trimble tells us.

It’s been 18 months since Two Door Cinema Club returned with third album ‘Gameshow’, a record borne of depression, alcoholism, near implosion and hospitalisation, but one that saw them come out fighting.

“You’re telling yourself - ‘We’ll put the work in now, at the start. And that means in five years time, we’ll be this really big band and we’ll get to do the things we want,’” the band’s Kevin Baird told us of the new record in our cover feature around the release of ‘Gameshow’. “You imagine playing fewer shows, having more time at home. There’s this mystery point where everything’s fine and you can say yes or no, on a whim, to what you’d like to do. Life on the road, you’re not enjoying the things around you, thinking each show is a step on the ladder to somewhere else. It becomes less meaningful. Life at home is this little gap in time that’s prolonging the work you’re gonna have to do to get to that point. The more time we spend at home, the less time we’re away slogging it to reach that festival headline slot.”

Since then, the trio have well and truly reasserted themselves as one of the county’s biggest bands. They returned to Latitude - a festival they had to cancel a headline slot at years before - and triumphant laid waste to London’s huge Alexandra Palace.

This summer, they take on their biggest show yet, headlining London’s Community Festival in the cavernous Finsbury Park, and as Alex Trimble tells us ahead of the show - one of a summer packed full of huge festival slots - there may just be a few surprises and glimpses of new material.

Photo: Katy Cummings

It has been a while now since you put out your last record ‘Gameshow’. Are you beginning to think about your next album yet?

Yeah, absolutely. After taking the break and getting back into the studio, we all realised how much we missed it, and so right from that moment we knew we wouldn’t be taking that kind of break again; at least not for some time. As soon as touring finished on this record [‘Gameshow’] in early October last year, it was straight onto thinking about what we were going to do next. We were writing on the road, and getting bits and pieces, but work has really begun now. We’re in and out of the studio playing around with ideas, putting songs together. It’s starting to form into something. Whatever it is, I don’t know yet, but we’re getting ready. That’s for sure.

Do you find that you’re never really sure what you’re creating until it’s finished?

It never becomes clear until it’s done, and sitting in front of you, yeah. We put our records together in the studio, because with being on the road for such long periods, we don’t really get that chance to road-test new music. With the schedule, it’s hard to rehearse and bring out. In the studio everything’s very open, and we can kind of do what we want, and go anywhere. It does remain an unknown until it’s down there on tape. Then we’ll bring it onto the stage.

Is that far off, now? Do you reckon you’ll play a few newbies at festivals this summer?

I would really like to hope so. If we don’t get stuff ready by then, then something’s going wrong. I’m very excited about what’s already being recorded and written, so we’re just developing it right now. We’re thinking about how to finish them! .

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