Sorry, but I'm very, very, very poor at interviews,' Daniel Blumberg, the lead singer of Yuck, says at the start of our interview, the uncertainty in his voice and the use of the word 'very' three times betraying both his nerves and also that British propensity for constant apology and self-deprecation.
All talk about Yuck, their critically acclaimed eponymous debut, and the tour they are about to embark on proves tough going, at least initially, with Blumberg much happier to discuss other bands and the Mike Leigh box set he's just finished watching.
Lars Von Trier's seminal TV show The Kingdom stirs some passion, which comes very much to the fore when talk turns to The Wire, with the animated Blumberg engaging in a 20-minute conversation about the show's authenticity and how the character Bubbles is able to so convincingly play a crack addict.
But with Yuck due to play in Hong Kong on January 26, the conversation has to move back to music and Blumberg's initial reticence begins to fade. Formed in 2009, Yuck are an international lot featuring Londoners Blumberg and guitarist Max Bloom along with Japanese bassist Mariko Doi and American drummer Jonny Rogoff. Blumberg and childhood friend Bloom are former members of mid-noughties MySpace sensations Cajun Dance Party, which means they have seen the best and worst of the music industry before they have even left their teens.
'In retrospect Cajun Dance Party ended quite soon after it started. We got signed when we were 15 - it was essentially a school band to win a battle of the bands competition,' Blumberg says almost wistfully. In a blizzard of hype, this high school band went on to record one well-received album produced by former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler. 'When Cajun Dance Party got picked up we didn't really tour or do press, we started the band without any intention for it to grow or develop the way it did. When we finished school that was when we sort of said to each other 'Let's not do this anymore'.'
The whirlwind that was Cajun Dance Party was an experience Blumberg and Bloom didn't want to repeat, but it also didn't put them off forming Yuck while their former bandmates went off to university. Last year was Yuck's breakout year with the self-titled debut album (featuring cover art by Blumberg himself) making many critics' end-of-year lists and the band scoring sell-out headline gigs in London and New York plus prominent slots on the European festival circuit.
Blumberg is ambivalent about the praise, particularly from NME and the British mainstream music press who he feels don't really 'get' what Yuck are about. 'I think the mainstream press were only too happy to call our music just 'guitar music', and I think that is a particularly British attitude, an attitude of people who listen to Radio 1 playlists. The UK music scene is not something I am striving to be a part of.'
