We’ve featured The House Flies a few times over the years (including a review of their fantastic EP Glimmer), but we’ve never actually had the chance to sit down and talk to the band about their music. Thankfully, the time for an interview has finally come around with the release of their banging new single Derelict Crawl – if you’ve not checked the song out yet, you can find a stream at the bottom of our interview below…

By Jane Howkins

How has your year been so far? Has anything particularly special happened for you as a band?

It’s been a productive year. Most of our attention has gone into finishing Lions and Ore, and we’ve spent a lot of time rehearsing, recording, making the video for Derelict Crawl and getting everything around the release into place.

We’ve also started playing and booking more shows outside the Quad Cities, which is something we want to keep building on. Having the album completely finished and finally being able to hear it as a whole has probably been the biggest thing for us.

You have a new single out soon titled Derelict Crawl. What can you tell us about the song and what can existing fans expect from it? What does the title refer to?

Derelict Crawl is one of the more direct songs on the record, so it seemed like the right first song to put out. There’s a lot of repetition in it, and it keeps circling back on itself while the guitars and dynamics gradually get heavier. Lyrically, it works more through images and repeated phrases than a clear story. “We don’t belong” is probably as close as we want to get to explaining the center of it.

The title just seemed to fit the song. We’ve never really tried to pin down exactly what it means, and we’d rather leave some room for people to make their own connections. For people who know our earlier music, it should still sound recognisably like us, but I think there’s more patience and space in it.

This is your first single release of the year so far. Do you have any more due for release soon?

Yes. Derelict Crawl came out on September 4th and then we’re releasing Lost Literature on October 2nd. The full album, Lions and Ore, follows on November 6th.

We deliberately didn’t want to release half of the record as singles beforehand. It’s only seven songs and we think it works best as a complete album, so two songs felt like enough to give people an idea of where it’s going without giving away too much.

Your next album release, Lions and Ore, will be released in November. What can you tell us about the record? Are you excited for the release?

It’s our second full-length, and probably the biggest change from the previous record is that we became more patient. We were more comfortable letting parts repeat, allowing quieter sections to stay quiet and letting songs take longer to arrive somewhere.

There are quieter songs, heavier parts, longer sections and probably more space than we’ve left ourselves before. There are still post-punk and goth elements in what we do, but there are other things mixed in there too. It also feels less like seven individual songs to us and more like an album with two sides.

We’re definitely looking forward to having it out. At this point it’s been finished long enough that we’re mostly just ready for people to hear the whole thing, instead of the small pieces we’ve been showing.

It’s your first full-length release to feature your current iteration as a band. How does that feel? I assume everything’s flowing well together?

It does. Songs usually change quite a bit once all four of us are playing them together.

Ozzie and Nick can completely change the feel of something through the rhythm section, and Burnie brings another guitar voice without simply doubling what I’m doing. Having two guitars also means neither one has to be doing something all the time, which gives us a lot more options when we’re arranging things.

The current lineup feels very natural at this point. We’re not really thinking about it as adding another guitar anymore. It’s just what The House Flies sounds like now.

You’re from Moline in Illinois. What is the local scene like now and are there any local acts you can recommend we check out?

The Quad Cities scene is pretty mixed, which I think is one of the better things about it. There isn’t necessarily one dominant sound. You can have punk, metal, indie, experimental music and quieter stuff happening around the same group of venues, and there tends to be a lot of crossover between the different parts of the scene.

King of the Weirdos, Company Dimes and Half Loves are all playing our album release show with us in November and are worth checking out. There are plenty of other good bands around here too.

Who are your main musical influences and what have you been listening to recently?

That’s always difficult for us because the four of us listen to a lot of different things, and it changes constantly. Post-punk, goth, shoegaze and heavier guitar music are obviously somewhere in what we do, and bands like The Cure, Joy Division, Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, Interpol and Wovenhand can sometimes be useful reference points.

But none of us only listens to that kind of music. Between the four of us, there’s metal, punk, folk, older rock, experimental music and plenty of things that probably don’t have an obvious connection to The House Flies at all. I’m sure some of it ends up in our music whether we notice it or not.

Do you have anything else exciting coming up this year?

Quite a bit over the next few months. Derelict Crawl is out September 4th and we played Reggies in Chicago on September 6th with October Noir. Lost Literature follows October 2nd.

Then Lions and Ore comes out November 6th, and we’re playing an album release show that night at Raccoon Motel in Davenport with King of the Weirdos, Company Dimes and Half Loves.

We’ll also have the record on vinyl, which is something we were particularly interested in doing for this album.

Do you perform live? If so, are there any plans to tour in the UK anytime soon?

Yes, playing live is an important part of the band. We’ve been gradually expanding outside the Quad Cities and have shows coming up in Chicago, Milwaukee and Indianapolis, along with the album release show here.

We’d love to play in the UK at some point, but there’s nothing planned right now. If the right opportunity came up, we’d definitely be interested.

Any last words for the fans?

Mostly just thank you for listening and for continuing to follow what we’re doing. We put a lot of time into this record, and we’re looking forward to finally letting people hear it as a complete album.

Hopefully people like Derelict Crawl. It gives you part of the record, but not all of it.

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