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When The Futureheads released their self-titled debut in 2004, the result was a shock of kinetic post-punk energy-we're talking double-shot of espresso on an empty stomach-centered around fierce instrumental prowess. But it was the uplifting vocal arrangements that set this quartet from Sunderland, England apart from peers like the Kaiser Chiefs and Bloc Party. Barry Hyde, Dave Hyde, Ross Millard, and Jaff all handle singing duties, creating four-part harmonies that could just as easily be at home in a choral group. The world immediately took notice and The Futureheads found themselves touring the states as the supporting act for darlings-of-the-moment Franz Ferdinand and playing the main stage at Coachella.

Their new album News & Tributes (Vagrant Records) finds them cutting back on the caffeine and savoring each moment. The band explores a more spacious, atmospheric feel that lingers long after the songs have ended. We spoke with guitarist/singer Millard while he the fellas were on a bus en route to London to promote the goods.

VM   So the new album is called News & Tributes. What's the best news you've heard all day?

RM   The best news I heard all day was that our bus driver the other night had his trainers [sneakers] and his jacket stolen by some ruffians who crept on the bus while he was sleeping. And he just bumped into one of them on the street and managed to get his coat back. So we're all very pleased for him. (laughs)

VM   Looking back on your quick rise to the top, how do you see yourselves?

RM   I think we've all be pretty sort of surprised by the way it's all panned out, to be honest because for a long time, when we put the band together I think we did very much considered it to be something... not on the periphery of other things that we were doing but it was going to be very much a part-time thing, you know? We came out of a music scene that was very much self-contained, very much d.i.y. orientated. For a long time we always thought we'd be one of those bands that saves up their money from their day jobs and records themselves and releases their own records and stuff like that simply because, like, five years ago when we put the band together, the sort of music we were making was so far out of the mainstream that we never entertained the idea of being one of those bands that the N.M.E. seems to like. It just so happens that within that period of time, left-field music has become a little more palatable for the general public it would seem and so here we find ourselves with a record deal by Warner Brothers (laughs). Crazy times.

VM   This album is much less hectic than your first. The melodies are stronger and it's just much prettier. Have you settled your nerves a bit?

RM   Yeah, I think we just wanted to come out with a record that was a little bit stronger in terms of things like melodies and even things like tempo and the pace of the record is a lot kind of stronger in a sense that the first album's very much one-speed and it relies very heavily on the energy and the idea that everything-but-the-kitchen-sink thrown into every song. We still stand by our first record and we're proud of it because it was very much a document of what we did in the early days of the band. The first three or four years of the band was all spent toward writing those songs but now we're in this position where we're suddenly playing these venues that are two-thousand, three-thousand capacity, we feel like we can deliver more of a show and there's all sorts of focus on making records these days because we wrote some of those songs not in mind to ever record, and we ended up making an album anyway so I think a lot of those songs were just written for the live show rather than to be recorded, whereas on the second record we spent a lot more time thinking about things with regard to the studio and how things might sound on record rather than just live, and I think that's the results on the second album are we realized we can't just have everything happening all the time.

VM   The first single, "Skip to the End" relays something I think a lot of us wish we could do-fast forward life to see what's worth it and what isn't. But you guys don't seem like the kind of band to take shortcuts. You seem to ride everything out.

RM   I don't know, we spend a long time on the road and that kind of thing you know; we've never been one of those bands that are massively prolific, like those songwriters that have 150 songs on a 4-track somewhere or a massive backlog of work. We've learned to take things as they come because, not that we're constantly being surprised, but because you kind of know that your time isn't really your own in a sense you've got a diary with a lot of dates and there's a six-week window where you got to do some recording and that's the kind of opportunity that you're meant to seize in terms of putting the record together type of thing.

VM   And the title track about the Manchester United football team that died in a plane crash-that event happened a while before you were born, so did you grow up with some sort of lore about that event?

RM   Basically it happened a long time before we were born. I think that it's an interesting thing to write about because it's an enormous tragedy. I think there's something quite poignant and whimsical in that that's worth putting down on record. It's kind of a tribute to the people that lost their lives in the same way it's mainly getting at the fact that it was a lot of young people that showed a lot of signs of promise that could never deliver because they died too young kind of thing, you know? I think that sort of story works on various levels and appeals to people who aren't even interested in the team.

VM   Speaking of, this album feels like a soundtrack for lost souls or confused souls. What drew you to the darker themes this time around?

RM   I definitely think you're right in terms of it being a darker record, more whimsical. I think it's a very sort of autumnal record. It has a lot to do with where we were recording the album. A lot of the songs were written up to a year in advance of us recording but we went to record the album on a farm in a place called Scarborough in England. It's kind of in the middle of the Yorkshire hills which is sort of a massive, well it's just a huge empty space of enormous fields and not very many signs of life and we ended up making our album on a farm in the middle of nowhere and that kind of sort of isolation did creep into the way that the record sounds in a way. It's far less of a city record for sure.

VM   The Futureheads are known to take their musicianship very seriously. Are you bringing anything to the live show this time around or are you still going for the straight-ahead performance?

RM   I think that it is very important that, I mean, you know, we're all massively into punk rock and the whole idea of anyone being able to strap on an instrument and go out there and do something is very very important to music, but at the same time while that music has a place, the music that we are making, that we intent to make is kind of underpinned by the need to play the instrument at a reasonably adequate level because I think there needs to be a message in the music as well in the lyrics. A lot of sort of punk rock bands who don't care too much for musicianship they choose to use their lyrics and their delivery as a way of spitting out whatever message they want. I think that what we've always tried to do is arrange the instrumental points as much as we would the vocal part because that kind of sets the scene as much as anything does, you know? We've always been massive fans of songwriters who, in the space of eight or 16 bars, can send you into an entirely other world, kind of be able to create these images out of nothing other than music is a really strong card to be in possession of. In the live show this time, it think we'll be very much coming from the same ballpark, but we've learned to sit on the tempo a little bit more, slow things down and play to the strengths of the song rather than the songs play us.

VM   But you'll still sweat a lot.

RM   Oh, I'm sure we will, yeah. I think the dynamic of the live show will be a lot stronger now that we've got two albums worth of material to pull from because you can still pull out all the sort of raucous ones from the first record and some from the second album as well but it's gonna be nice to have those moments like "Thursday" and "Burnt" and "News and Tributes" to have in the set as well.

-Jeanne Fury