Whether you serendipitously stumbled upon Temple Songs as a consequence of their prolific amount of past online releases, or, like many, you’ve recently become engrossed thanks to their trio of singles released on RIP Records over the past few months – then you will have probably discovered there’s something about this brainchild of frontman Jolan Lewis that illuminates the band, even against the backdrop of a particularly effervescent current underground music scene.

It could be something to do with the excessively casual, yet effortlessly captivating voice Lewis harbours, in which there’s just enough guttural presence to ensure a lasting impression above an already indefatigably driving Temple Songs rhythm. Or maybe the reason lies in the group’s essence; less-is-more, naturally lo-fidelity music in its purest form, something Lewis alludes to stripping songs of their inessential features and adulterating post-production techniques.

Where the latter distinguishing feature of Temples Songs could seem somewhat unmethodical, there’s undoubtedly a certain thought process and reasoning behind each Temple Songs release. Take latest offering, Point of Origin. In something of a self-processed sabotage of what was admittedly his ‘cleanest’ sounding track to date, Lewis dreamed up a Red Krayola-esque introduction to slot in front of what many would have deemed a finished product. The result splits the mood of the song in half, perhaps analogously dividing listeners the same way, but ensuring a thought provoking listening experience.

Devoid of motives other than writing and recording the music they want to; there are more directional changes, sound altering and sporadic releases lying in wait for fans to endure, given recent evidence. Although with Temple Songs yet to fall short with their already mountainous amount of material, endure is probably not the right way to put it.

Matthew Liam Fogg: You recorded your latest single, Point of Origin, in your own studio. What were the reasons for doing so?
Jolan Lewis: We did try a couple of different studios, kind of just out of intrigue. I like the room that we have, though. I feel comfortable in there, and there are absolutely no time constraints. I think that was the biggest problem with trying other places – we’d never really had to deal with the ‘that’ll have to do’ thing, that I guess a lot of bands have to put up with.

MLF: There’s a Red Krayola-esque intro on the uncut version of Point of Origin. What was the process behind its inclusion?
JL: I love Mayo Thompson as much as I love Paul McCartney and I think that on the simplest level, I’m always trying to find different ways of combining my interest in abstract music and that brill building sensibility of pure pop. To me, Point of Origin is one of the cleanest-sounding tracks I’ve produced, so I guess maybe I felt a little uncomfortable and wanted to do something to work against it. I don’t want to make it seem like I just threw something together to annoy people or something, which I suppose it may sound like to some people, but I probably spent longer thinking about the intro than I did thinking about the actual song. I’m really happy with how it turned out. It just felt like the thing that was supposed to happen.

MLF: Given Point of Origin’s lo-fi, grainy sound, do you work towards a specific sound when recording songs?
JL: I think that the only unifying theme in all of the music we produce is that each song is treated on its own merits. I’m not interested in trying to keep a common theme so as not to confuse people, I write whichever songs I happen to write and I try to record them how I hear them in my head. The recording process usually consists of Andy playing the drum parts and then me playing the rest. There’s no post-production. I record to a digital multi-track then mix it down to tape. I have absolutely no idea how to use computer programs to make music and I’d feel like I was cheating anyway.

MLF: You recently professed you were glad a label didn’t pick you up instantly. Why is it important to you not to rush into things as a band?
JL: I didn’t really say that, I think it was one of the other guys. Personally it doesn’t really matter to me how long it takes, because I can only work in one way so I don’t feel like anything would change for me. Having said that, I do think that it’s true that the vast majority of bands who get picked up quickly and thrust out into the world come out sounding and looking a little plastic-y. It feels a little like labels think, ‘ah, we need one of these bands now,’ finds one, dresses them up and puts out an album. So in that respect, I suppose I’m glad that we weren’t ever faced with that choice, because we’ve been allowed to carry on at our own pace. I think that honesty is a rare thing in pop music at the moment, either because a band decided they needed a gimmick to get noticed or because their ego has become swollen and purple. I like to feel like I can get to know someone when I listen to their music, so if there seems to be too much posturing then I tend to get turned off pretty quickly.

MLF: You’ve already, quite prolifically, previously released an uncountable amount of material online, most of which for free. Can we expect Temple Songs to be more ‘traditional’ in the sense of ‘proper releases’ as of late, or will we still see sporadic online releases like in the past?
JL: Yeah, it’s not ideal I guess, but I understand that physical releases cost money to make so you have to start asking people for money in return. I never charged people for downloads before because they didn’t cost me anything to record and they certainly didn’t cost me anything to write, so why should it cost anyone to listen to it? But we have started trying to do more of that kind of stuff. We’ve started a series of covers EPs which we give away for free. The first one is out and the second volume has just been recorded. I want to do eleven of them.

MLF: Among your perhaps lesser-known material already released is a whole cover album of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Can you tell why you decided to record it?
JL: A friend of ours was doing a tape label and asked us if we’d like to put something out. I’d been listening to that Pussy Galore version of Exile on Main St. and had wanted to do something like that. My friend and me have been putting out cover records under the name September Boys for a few years and we always have fun with it, but I wanted to try to cover a whole album from start to finish. Sgt. Pepper just seemed like the most absurd choice. Like, there was no way we were going to do it any better than the original, which freed us up from trying to do it ‘well’. I made a rule that I wasn’t allowed to listen to the original while we were recording, I thought that doing it from memory might make me come up with some interesting mistakes, but it just meant that I forgot a few backing vocals and stuff, which still frustrates me.

MLF: Noticeably, there’s quite a leap in style from one Temple Songs release to the next. Has this been a case of you all finding your sound as a band, or do you plan on keeping things fresh and different?
JL: It just depends on what I’m listening to. If I had made a record a year before the first one, it would have been country music. There’s nothing sadder than seeing a band who’ve either painted themselves into a corner and have nothing left to say on their chosen subject, or have simply gotten bored of doing what people like them to do. I figured that if we put out an album of extremely lo-fi, vaguely electronic music followed by loud punk music, that it would go some way to make sure that people don’t come to expect us to remain true to one style of music. I think it’s pretty dumb the way that so many bands set themselves these kinds of limitations and allow themselves to be defined by genre when there is absolutely no reason for music to have any rules.

MLF: Has the Temple Songs aesthetic changed at all now you’re signed to RIP Records and you guys have become more of a ‘full time band?’
JL: Not in any conscious way. If anything ever changes with us, it’s only ever because short amounts of time pass and we might decide, ‘I’m really into Albert Ayler at the moment,’ or ‘I feel like cutting my hair short,’ or ‘I never liked macaroni and cheese and now I do,’ or something like that. We would never make any changes to try to fit in to a certain thing, or even to not fit in with a certain thing. If we’ve gotten louder on stage or our records have gotten cleaner or whatever, it’s always just the simplest explanation; usually it’s just that’s what we felt like doing on that particular day.

MLF: With talk of an album this year, is it a case of picking and re-working some of the many tracks heard on the aforementioned releases, or can we expect new material?
JL: Nope, I absolutely hate the idea of re-recording things. We re-did Can’t Look After You because I really rushed the first version and, although there’s nothing wrong with rushing things, that particular thing didn’t really come out that well. Even so, I really regret re-recording it and have every intention of never doing anything like that again. None of our previously released music will be on the album; it always feels a bit tacky doing that. I’ve chosen the songs and we’ve started tracking the drums. I don’t like the idea of releasing singles from albums, because then they’re taken out of their correct context and held up as a stand-alone advertisement for the album and then every time you listen to the record it’s like being interrupted by those adverts on Spotify. We will probably do a video for one of the tracks though, but only if we think of something that feels like it would be worth doing in its own right.

MLF: You’re unashamedly self-professing about the fact you are a pop band. Do you think pop is misunderstood by certain subcultures?
JL: When I say ‘pop,’ I mean it in the sense of a catchall term for popular music, which would be anything which uses traditional song structures, scales and melodies for example. So I think of blues, country and rock, etcetera, all as sub-genres of pop. I don’t think that this includes classical music and some of the more experimental music, though. I describe us as a pop group because it’s a large enough umbrella that it covers most bases. I’ve never had any interest in making classical music and, while there are experimental influences in our music, I don’t think that this group is the place to try anything so abstract that it gets in the way of making pop music, if you understand what I mean.

MLF: Given that you have another project in Pink Teens and have released under different guises in the past, how do you decide which song ideas to attribute to each project?
JL: Same as everything else, it just depends on what it feels like to me. When I wrote ZZZZZ, it didn’t feel like a Temple Songs track, so I put it out under the name Floats. I thought it was a dumb hipster kind of song and Floats seemed like a dumb hipster kind of name. I realise that I’m contradicting myself there, having said that I want to be free to change styles whenever I want, but I also like the idea of making up a different guise to release under because then I’m not tied to it and I can think of it as a separate thing. I’m recording a Pink Teens album at the moment, which bears absolutely no resemblance to any of the Pink Teens stuff I’ve put out so far. There are no rules for any of this and I don’t mean that in an anarchist-kind of way. I just mean that as long as you’re not stacking shelves, there’s no need to wear the name badge. I just went on the Wikipedia page for Music and the first line is: ‘Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence’. I guess that’s the only thing you have to adhere to and I’m pretty sure there’s even a way around that.

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