Vistas talks to Moosik about their debut album, COVID-19, life on the road, and even album no. 2

Despite the World being under lockdown, it seems Vistas' debut album 'Everything Changes in the End' has brought the sun out. With upbeat, singalong tracks and nostalgic lyrics, this record has the summery vibe, to keep your spirits up, in a time where many need a pick up.

How does it feel to finally have the debut album ‘Everything Changes In The End’ out?

It feels mental to be honest, it feels crazy because We’ve been going for this for just over four years, and even back then, our friends would always say “when’s the album coming out?” and we’d always have to reply with “We don’t know” until we announced the album in January. We really didn’t expect it to do so well, as soon as we knew the tour had been postponed and that we couldn’t do instore gigs and promote the album the way we wanted to, we’d already released three singles, so there was no chance we were going to push it back, and we decided to stick to what we’d agreed with, and it was a no brainer. The fact that we’ve put it out now is amazing. We never expected it to do so well.

So you’ve found the support for the record really strong, despite Covid-19?

Even more so to be honest, we’re really lucky to have really supportive fans, but it seems now more than ever that people are getting behind us, tweeting us, or commenting on posts. We’ve found this to be the perfect time to release the album, because in Scotland, the day we released it, (29th May) was the hottest day of the year so far, and lockdown had just been eased as well, so we could go visit another household and stuff, so it was luckily a good time to release it.

It could be the soundtrack to this year’s summer!

We’ll take that, definitely!

With older songs on the album like ‘Tigerblood’ and new singles like ‘Sucker’ talk me through the writing process and how you brought all the songs together.

Prentice (vocals and guitar) writes the songs, and sometimes has co-writers, but with the older songs, we felt it was only right to include ‘Tigerblood’, being the song that kicked us off, and with ‘Sucker’ I remember Prentice showed me a demo that he’d written with Rich Turvey, who produces all the blossoms stuff, and ‘Teenage Blues’, Prentice wrote that with Kieran from Circa Waves, he’d written that in about 3 hours. We don’t live with each other, so it’s always Prentice sending us demos, and nothings changed in lockdown, he’s still sending us demos. We had like 25 demos of songs we had to whittle down, and there were a few we knew were going on, but I’m so happy that we went with the track list we did.

You could say there’s enough songs for album two?

Yeah, the second records pretty much written and to be honest, it’s insane, because by the time we actually record the second album, we probably won’t have even toured this album yet. It will be so exciting to be able to play these songs eventually, and hear the words being sung back to you.

Personally, We’re big fans of ‘Sucker’ and ‘November’ especially, I enjoyed that new sound on a more slower track, what are your favourite songs from the record?

One of my favourite songs is ‘Summer’ because Prentice wrote that when we were in a different band, back in 2015 and he showed me the demo after we finished high school, last time we played it was TRNSMT 2016, and our producer Rich dug it out of our demos and liked it. Other favourites include ‘November’ because the demo for that was just Prentice and a keyboard, so different to what it is now, its something we’ve never done before, so it’s nice to have that. My favourite is probably ’15 Years’ because in the studio down in England, at the later stages, Prentice started doubting if any of the songs were good enough, which is normal, and I remember one night, he was just playing the chords to ’15 years’ on his acoustic, and we’d never heard it, and I realised straight away it was a good song, and it couldn’t have gone better in the studio.

With the genre filled with so much good talent, how do you manage to keep Visas in the foreground?

It’s hard because those that have been around for a long time, like Circa Waves, Two Door Cinema Club or even the Kooks, Sea girls, Marsicans, we’ve just stuck to what we know and we think we’ve developed a sound, in that if you take away Prentice’s voice, you can still tell it’s a Vistas track, so we just stick to what we know, and luckily for us, people seem to buzz of that.

If it’s not broke, don’t fix it!

That’s what our music teacher in high school used to tell us!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RElvnl6Yk40

You’ve toured relentlessly over the last few years, what’s your favourite venue, and do you have a favourite show?

We’ve been lucky to play a lot of cool places, and the cliché one for a Scottish band is the Barrowlands, that is probably our favourite one, We’ve played there with Circa Waves and with amazing Scottish Band, The View. Besides that, we played Victoria Warehouse in Manchester, which was like 4,000 capacity and it was sold out, and we were first on, and it was still packed and about half full which was brilliant. Manchester was special, Roundhouse in London was really cool, and for a Scottish band, it has to be the Barrowlands.

What is your favourite part of being on the road, be it on your headline tour, or supporting other bands?

The whole lifestyle, there’s nothing better to wake up in a hotel with your best mates, go to the venue, and everyone’s buzzing off your music, and getting to chat to fans after, and you get to meet people, who actually, if it wasn’t for them, you wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing. The worst part, is coming home, because it’s difficult to adapt to staying in the same place. We went on tour for about a month, and when we came home, it felt so weird to just be sat in one place, in the living room watching daytime TV! It was strange man.

You’ve supported Circa Waves, and you’ve opened for The Wombats and The Kooks, who would you most like to open for?

It would have to be The Strokes, their debut album is collectively our favourite, and that would be the dream, or someone like Two Door Cinema Club, we’ve been listening to them since high school. Even before, opening for the bands we have, would’ve been crazy because we’re massive fans of theirs, so the fact that we’ve been able to be on the same bill as those guys is so special, but I’d have to say The Strokes, because their debut album got me into this music, when we were about 15, Prentice introduced me to it and that’s when I knew I wanted to be a musician, I want to recreate what they did.

If you eventually were to headline Wembley, who would you have supporting you on the bill?

That’s a good question, that would be a crazy situation, so to make it even more crazy, We could get somebody like Harry Styles, I’d really like to hang out with him, or someone like Drake, somebody nobody would expect at an indie pop concert.

You mentioned that Prentice has written with Kieran from Circa Waves, and the record was produced by Blossoms producer Rich Turvey, is there any other artists or producers you’d like to work with on album 2?

We’re really comfortable working with Rich, he’s done some brilliant records, he’s done The Coral, all the Blossoms stuff, they have two number 1s so I want to keep working with him, as long as he keeps working with us. In terms of writing the record, I see artists like KSI, on his new record, he has so many features, I thought, you barely see indie bands do that, for example The View had Paulo Nutini on a song, about 15 years ago, and I thought that would be cool for an indie band to have a song, featuring another band or solo artist.

Describe your music in 3 words.

Nostalgic, upbeat indie. A lot of our tracks have that nostalgic feeling behind it. It’s not always happy, some songs are quite sad, but we always make sure that even in sad songs, the song is still upbeat.

If you could speak to Jamie before the release of your first single ‘Sign Language’ or any musician in that position, what advice would you give?

Just keep on believing in what you’re doing, I had a full time job at that point, the other two were studying, and we were offered by our booking agent to go on a two week tour, and I was working at the bank, so I spoke to my parents and they were really supportive and just told me to go for it and take the opportunity, you can do this job in 5 years time after you’ve hd a really good go at it, and that’s a great piece of advice, so believe in your music, keep working hard, enjoy yourself, and just be a nice guy. Don’t expect anything to be handed to you on a plate so keep working at it

What effect do you think COVID-19 will have on you as a band and the industry in general?

Really, really bad because nobody can see it coming, we had plans to go to America on tour, in LA, New York and SXSW in Texas, and luckily when it got cancelled, we got our money back but a lot of bands weren’t as lucky and a lot lost a lot of money. Lots of musicians make their money from live shows, if they may not stream or sell as well, but can sell out venues, so they will suffer, especially since music will probably be one of the last things to come back, because you cant have a live show behind closed doors. A lot of people have been financially hit by this, for example our sound guy and tour manager, who have no work at all, since they can’t go out on tour, and loads of our friends up in Scotland, guitar techs, sound guys, booking agents, and they’ve got no work at all, lots of people behind the scenes, not just musicians have been hit as well.

Where do you see Vistas in 5 years’ time?

Hopefully, we can have a couple of albums out! If you’d have asked me 5 years ago, I’d have said to have a debut album out, and to headline the Barrowlands, which we’re both doing, with the album out last Friday and Barrowlands scheduled for November. Hopefully, we can continue to make good music and people keep buzzing off it, who knows, hopefully we’d still be a band! As long as people stick by us, and keep showing the love and support they’ve been giving for so long, we can hopefully be in a bigger and better place.

What can we expect from future Vistas releases, more of the same or something a little different.

Probably a bit of both, mainly stuff people are used to. I’ve been looking at a lot of second records from bands, and sometimes I think, I don’t know why they strayed so far from what was so good about the first. The way I see it, if you want to be experimental, the best time to do that is the 3rd album. I’m not the best person in the industry to give that advice. I think we will mainly stick to what we’re used to for album 2, maybe add a slightly experimental tone to it. You won’t be hearing very low BPM songs, and we won’t start dressing really weird and all of that sort of stuff. We’re going to stick to what we know and hopefully produce another record that everyone seems to like.

Vistas released their debut album ‘Everything Changes in the End’ Friday 29th May 2020, and is available to be streamed across platforms.