Courting and The Cribs on collaborating and today’s indie scene: “We’ve entered an era of bands not taking themselves so seriously”

nme.com:

Courting have spoken to NME about the making of second album ‘New Last Name’, which features The Cribs’ Ryan and Gary Jarman on co-production duties.

Check out our interview with the band and the Jarman brothers below, where they also open up about the current era of indie and comparisons with The 1975.The “raucously fun” Courting debut ‘Guitar Music’ was released in 2022 and saw the Liverpool four-piece push back against labels of ‘post-punk’ via auto-tuned vocals and rave-inspired breakdowns. “In the cockiest way possible, we’re a year or two ahead of the curve, Murphy-O’Neill told NME at the time.“It’s just important to keep people on their toes,” he explained earlier this week. “It would have been easy for us to go away and make another strange record, but on ‘New Last Name’ we wanted to do something really focused and direct.”Ryan Jarman agreed: “It’s always been a big statement if your second record is better than your first.

Not everyone can pull it off.“Brother and bandmate Gary continued: “It’s hard when there’s a general sound around at the time, like post-punk or our era of indie sleaze, because how do you deliver something that’s bigger than that.“Some bands will do more of the same, some will buckle under the pressure but a rare few will totally step it up.