A Chat with The Hoosiers (25.06.26)
This interview was contributed by Jay Lowe (guest contributor)
The Hoosiers are a British indie-rock act who have just released their sixth album, Compassion. Their debut, The Trick To Life, reached No 1 in 2007. They’re made up of singer Irwin Sparkes and drummer Alan Sharland. I spoke to singer Irwin Sparkes about the band’s 20-year career.
Tell me about your beginnings with Alan. How do you think you both complement each other musically?
Sparkes: I was in a band with a couple of guys and we needed a drummer. A mate of mine was like, “I know a guy at school”, and that was Al. We’re all still in touch. Al was the last member of the band. We bonded over the fact that we wanted it more. We didn’t know what we were doing for literally a decade, but we knew we wanted to do it. We’d just push ourselves, and we were the two that would get shit done. That’s always been our special power, maybe. I’d just taken my second year out before going to university. I was working at a cinema in Winnersh Triangle. Then we did a little failed tour of America, which we didn’t even get to take the instruments out of the case. But we worked out that we both loved playing football, so we got this scholarship to Indiana. And Indiana is The Hoosier State.
We complement each other heightwise, tall people and short people! Musically, I would say we complement each other in how we play, and it’s something we’ve had to work at because we’re not natural players. Al has never played more in his life than he does now. In terms of writing, I would be writing more melancholy numbers like ‘Everything Goes Dark’ and ‘A Sadness Runs Through Him’. The other side to that coin would be Al having this ear for big pop melodies like ‘Goodbye Mr A’ and ‘Worried About Ray’.
Your debut album, The Trick To Life, reached #1 on the UK Charts. How do you feel about this nearly 20 years later? Did success come too soon?
Sparkes: Well, Al and I had been working together for 11 years, so it was almost too late if anything. That said, we’d built up an amount of resilience. Getting chewed up and spat out by the industry was a real lesson. I guess before the algorithm was the ‘trend’ for guitar music, and that passed sometime after the release of our first record. You can only affect the creation of the music; other people’s reactions that’s out of your hands.
Your first two singles, ‘Worried About Ray’ and ‘Goodbye Mr A’, I consider to be noughties classics. What are each of those about?
Sparkes: Over the last 20 years, I’ve found myself sort of explaining, which I could absolutely do. But if you think they’re about something else, that’s the joy about releasing music. What they meant to me and Al when we were writing that’s one thing, but when other people bring their own meaning to it, that’s the beauty of music, as they don’t belong to us anymore. Those two songs changed our lives. It was Birmingham Academy in front of a couple of hundred people, and ‘Worried About Ray’ had been out for a couple of weeks. They were all singing a song that we wrote in university back to us. And that special feeling hasn’t left. It’s waned maybe over a few albums and some leaner years, but now me and Al are so buoyed by it. When you’re singing a song back, it’s yours, and it means something to you.
The other answer is ‘Ray’ is a metaphor for anything you love, it’s an existential crisis, a Trojan horse of a pop song. It’s that idea of anything you love, in a long enough timeline, you’re going to lose it. And there’s a fear, but that’s life in itself. We’re a poppy, upbeat band, but there’s also meat on the bone if you want to go deeper. Me and Al spent 20 years in the back of a van having the deepest and most meaningful conversations with each other, sharing our lives. We love to bring that to our music. ‘Goodbye Mr A’ is about the death of magic, science removing all mystery from the world. We did float with the idea of calling it ‘Goodbye Mystery’, but we liked the idea of personifying it and having a character.
How do you find the music industry now compared to 2007? Back then, there was barely any social media, so not everyone had a platform as they do now.
Sparkes: We were armed with our Sony Flip Cams! If anything, I do feel we were early adopters of that, as we were filming ourselves a lot with that and having a lot of fun with it. So there are some videos we managed to work on and re-release from the making of the second album, where we are roughly editing, and it’s us like kicking a ball around in the recording studio and that sort of thing. Even the streaming thing now gets me, when we charted with Compassion, above us in the chart were Justin Bieber (about three albums ago), The Beatles and Elvis. Because now, when you release music, if it streams, then it’s in the charts. So you’re up against every song released in 180 years of recorded music. It’s a whole new world.
Who would you say your contemporaries have been over the years? It’s very hard to put you in a box!
Sparkes: There were bands that we would get grouped together with. We never thought that we were part of a scene as such. We liked 70’s yacht rock, things that were painfully uncool. We would get grouped with The Feeling and Scouting For Girls, who are both really good at what they do. Bands that we would try and replicate live were people like Flaming Lips, Ben Folds Five and Steely Dan.
Compassion has been in the world for over a month now, and you have said that it’s your best album. What in particular makes you think this?
Sparkes: I would say that it’s partially the surprise. I would say a band on their sixth album making music of this calibre. I don’t mean that to sound big-headed or arrogant, but I do think that you’ve got to back yourself. Myself and Al listened to this record a lot, and I think if you’re going to bring something into the world that you expect other people to listen to, you’ve got to listen to it yourself. You’ve got to think it’s good enough. I would say it’s our most homogeneous body of work since our first album. I don’t find myself skipping any of the tracks. I think the quality is really strong and the message as well, it’s got the most focus of our albums.
The new album is wonderful and full of those quintessential three-minute pop songs. What’s your own favourite song taken from it?
Sparkes: I’ll go for ‘Automatic Glow’ as I’ve just been trying to replicate the live sound, as we haven’t played it yet. Within the confines of a sub-four-minute song, there’s about three different movements and groove changes; it’s adventurous and I enjoy that. ‘Sleeping With The Light On’, which has been around since 2008, probably, and we’d never been able to make it work. Two years ago, we got the chorus and thought this is what it should be. It was a joy to finally get to finish that one. That’s another favourite of mine as it’s closer to the stuff that I listen to.
What were the bands that influenced you the most?
Sparkes: Ben Folds Five and Weezer. I was thinking about this recently, and I haven’t given them their dues. They’re something that me and Al really bonded over. Whatever And Ever Amen by Ben Folds Five, I think the writing is muscular, but it’s pop. And the same with Weezer (Blue Album), which was produced by Ric Ocasek from The Cars. That ear for melody, and I think it’s like it’s been taught, and it’s something over the next few records I’d love to experiment more with. The next records will sound a little more minimalist, whereas the last three albums we’ve thrown the kitchen sink at it. Brass, layered strings, it’s all in there.
The band are ambassadors for Prostate Cancer UK, Music For Youth and SANE charities. What makes you so passionate about these causes?
Sparkes: My Dad is recovering from prostate cancer, and we lost an uncle also. Woody and Kleiny are a couple of content creators who are currently touring America for Prostate Cancer UK. They’re following the England football team during the World Cup. The message is bigger than any record; it’s compassion. It’s made between myself, Alan and management to think about how we can walk the walk and not just honk at you about compassion. The UK music scene is one of our biggest exports as a nation, and we’ve always punched above our weight, yet it’s criminal how little support there is from the government for grassroots venues. Al and I have recognised that we were privileged enough to have access to musical instruments. What Music For Youth’s M.O. is to get every kid, regardless of background or social standing, access to a musical instrument and that opportunity.
What else would you like to achieve in your career? I know Alan has said an Ivor Novello award!
Sparkes: The best music I can possibly write. I love the idea that the best song or album is the next one. Next year we celebrate 20 years of our debut. If we’re still here for 30 years, to still be doing those things is a joy. We’ve got a full summer and playing festivals all over the shop.
Learn more about The Hoosiers on Instagram, Facebook, Spotify and TikTok.
