Victory Lap
Victory Lap are one of Nottingham’s fastest rising and most beloved new bands to have formed in the last few years. Their 50’s noir inspired sound sets them apart in the local scene and beyond, gaining traction as they continue to release consistently impressive songs and play shows that feel like a real spectacle, drawing the listener in with a passionate and mysterious sound. On Saturday they play their biggest show to date, headlining local landmark The Bodega after tour dates in Brighton, Hull, Leeds and London. I phoned their frontman Tomas as they began their drive to the first show of the tour in Brighton for a chat about all things Victory Lap
How did Victory Lap begin?
Tomas:
So me and James were writing songs back and forth, we’ve been friends for absolutely ages so we’ve always been writing songs here and there. Around the time of lockdown we had a few songs. James was writing love ballad-y songs and I was getting into doo-wap, I was heavily into that at the time. We took some of James’s songs and some of mine and put his love ballads through the guise of these doo-wap romantic era styles. That’s what formulated one of our first songs, we thought that we had something there so we decided to progress down that route.
What was that first track that you mentioned writing?
Tomas:
It was called Jealousy, that’s one of our oldest songs and it set the standard of what would write going forwards, which is ironic cus it’s the first single we released but also the first song we wrote.
Yeah I really love that song. I was just listening to it now and saw that it was chosen by Rough Trade as part of it’s “Nottingham in 20 songs” list for it’s 10th birthday celebrations, that’s really cool!
Yeah it’s a massive honour, especially like some of the people they put us amongst, I feel like our imposter syndrome only grows larger with this accolade they’ve given us but yeah it’s a massive honour.
Tell me more about the creation of that song.
It didn’t take long to write at all actually. I was in a relationship, and I writing this song during that time. I was trying to formulate the way I could contextualise the relationship that I was in. I just remember feeling that I was exceptionally jealous, and at that time I thought that I could see my love through jealousy. And so I had this lyric “Love to me is jealousy”. I just had that one lyric, and then I was listening to a lot of doo-wap stuff, so you know a lot of ¾’y style. I just completely ripped off parts of “Don’t Cry, Put Your Head On My Shoulder” from Pet Sounds too, put a chorus to it and a put a C-section to it. Me and James just sort of crafted the instrumentation around it for a while and then it was finished. We recorded it at 1 Thoresby Street, it’s an old art studio that was behind Sneinton Market. It’s an old factory building, it was a cheap space and I built a recording studio in there. A couple of the tracks we recorded when we first got together and recorded as a band were done there. We got some string players in to lay strings down for it. Then after that, we took all the tracks to Elliot Mc Coid, who was the producer at Rainy Daze Studios in Netherfield. We got him at a sweet spot where he had some time off, he was working with other bands as well so he was keen to work. He cut us an absolute deal and we spent hours and hours, days and days tucked away in that Rainy Daze Netherfield studio finishing the track. I can imagine Elliot got frustrated with us as we kept changing our minds and it took a few months to complete, but I think especially as it was the first song we had and we knew exactly what the sonic palette for it needed to be, it needed to be a hallmark for how we wanted the rest of the sound to be. It was really important to me and James to get the decision right, and you know when you can just see in someone’s eyes, “Come on guys, make a decision now”. I think that was the case with Elliot but we got there eventually.
Who would you say are the main influences on your sound?
The doo-wap thing was just a tangent from what contemporary bands had been referring back to that sound. We always cite them but timber timbre have been a massive influence because they had recontexualised what doo-wap is and was, and put it into a more contemporary sound. That’s something that we definitely set out to do. I remember watching an interview actually with yourself, the one you did with J-Maes! You were talking about recontextualising things. In fewer words, it feels that everythings been done to an extent. You can find everything now so you know that everything’s been done. Because you’re so aware that everything’s been done, it’s about rehashing and recontextualising and finding a fresher way to do it. That’s effectively what we’re trying to do. When I say about the doo-wap thing, I had been listening to a lot of that music but I was more influenced by modern bands that had done it, such as dirty beaches, a lot of bands that we really enjoy nowadays. I watched an interview with the Fontaines DC frontman about their new album, and he was saying how everythings been done already so how do we redo it. You can see that in their earlier music but with this new record, I think he sat down the rest of the band and said to them, “What does the future sound like?”. I think that’s a cool idea and something we’re trying to do with our newer stuff. We’ll still have our old methods but we want to carve a new path forwards too.
So is this your first tour as a band?
Yeah it’s our first tour! We’ve been playing quite a few shows across the country, we’ve been trying to cultivate some sort of momentum. But I think for publication and music PR, press in general, when you do your first headline tour it’s a milestone definitely. Then people are like “Oh ok cool, they’ve made it out of that bracket they were in” but I think for us it’s about trying to push the bracket every time. We really enjoy it, we’re 5 friends primarily. We play music together but we do enjoy hanging out in pubs together or pool halls.
I’m really excited for your Bodega headline, tell me about your connection to the venue.
We played our first ever show there supporting Sancho Panza. It has that full circle moment feeling when we play there. It’s a clear marker of the bracket we’ve moved, so we’re very happy to be back there, and we always love playing Bodega because it’s Nottingham, you know. We’ve got Grain Mother and Prima Star Power on support who we’re massive fans of. We have some friends joining us onstage, Alice Weatherall is a local jazzy singer songwriter who’ll be playing strings during the set. Then we also have Alice Robbins from Grain Mother who’s also going to be playing strings with us. We wanted to do something that was a bit more “big band show” I guess for our Bodega show, so yeah it should be good. Our goal has always been to try and get some strings or other performers alongside us to occasionally join us to make it more of a spectacle. We’re super chuffed we’ve managed to get these guys down, they’re really nice guys and also really good! So win win.
Tell us about any standout shows so far
For me personally, the last couple of months of shows have been really quite memorable and special. I feel like we’re getting to the point where it’s not that panic and despair before the show, it’s quite nice cus we know what we’re doing now, we know how to put the show on that we want to put on. We just played a show in Manchester supporting Youth Sector, it was one of the most rewarding shows we’ve done. We even tried new songs out there, I don’t feel scared to go onstage anymore. It’s a good feeling when you get to that point.
Are there any other Nottingham bands that you want to highlight
I always like Wizards Can’t Be Lawyers, I think they’re the funnest band around. I saw them play at Poison and it was just absolute chaos but orchestrated chaos, it was so fun to watch. We love Davoli, Bloodworm as well. Prima Star Power are actually from Nottingham but they live in Leeds, they’re fantastic and everyone should check them out. They’ve got a track called Mr Flight and it’s very good. They’ve got some brilliant string players and they’re fantastic.
Yeah I’ll make sure to watch them at Bodega before your set, cheers guys have a great tour!
Cheers Sam, see you there!
Victory Lap headline The Bodega Nottingham on Saturday the 7th December, with support from Prima Star Power and Grain Mother.