The Hoosiers frontman Irwin Sparkles already has an idea in mind for the band’s follow-up to their latest album, Compassion.
Speaking exclusively to Cult Following, the Goodbye Mr. A and Choices hitmaker explained how the band had adapted to post-debut album life and the importance of performing to crowds across the country. Compassion, The Hoosiers‘ sixth studio album, will be released on May 15. While the band are looking ahead to touring their latest album, Sparkles confirmed there is an early idea in mind for a follow-up that would complete what he called the “triumvirate of C’s”.
The band released Confidence in 2022 and followed it up with Compassion four years later. When the third C album is released, and if it does, is yet to be seen.
Sparkles said: “It was a sense of we have to say something, we have to have it mean something. So we came up with a triumvirate of C’s, confidence, we’re on compassion, I think we’ve got the third one, but I don’t know yet. Alan and I had it last week, so we’re just letting it settle. It would be too soon. It might change, but it’s Curiosity.”
Compassion marks a change in direction for The Hoosiers, with the long-serving frontman saying this is where he and drummer Alphonso Sharland are finally writing songs that feel inherently personal.
Sparkles broke down the band’s trajectory, starting with their chart-topping album, The Trick to Life, and working his way through to Compassion.
“I think at the beginning we were loving Doves, The Last Broadcast, albums that had just come out that had this sense of melancholy,” he said. “Elliott Smith, Sufjan Stevens, and bands like that. We sound absolutely nothing like it, but it was hard to break away and find our identity.
“I might love listening to their music, but they might hate mine. It’s quite a bit thing to get your head around and get a genuine sense of who we are, and to choose positivity. It requires a lot of force behind it.
“I would employ the term, and it’s true etymologically in a Titanic way. As Titans, we struggled against the synonyms of poppy, peppy, upbeat, positive, puppyshit, all the P’s. I think it really took us time to actually be okay with that because we didn’t sound like these other artists that we admired, that we were listening to at the time.
“Something that did chime with us was the positivity of The Flaming Lips and seeing them live, seeing the way they threw both arms around life and gave it a hell of a hug. We strained against that during the second, third, and fourth albums, trying to be playful, even in terms of groove to lyrical construction. After this seven, eight year break between the fourth and fifth record, I think we were of an age where we could really embrace who we are.”
Compassion marks a new start of sorts for the band, with Sparkles saying that The Hoosiers are having the time of their lives on stage, and seeing their audience enjoy the show is all part of that.
He said: “With Compassion, we just thought, ‘How can we be even more.’ We’re the benefactors of having an hour of everyone’s time, maybe more if we’re on a roll. The audience fills our cup just by being there, singing songs that we wrote. It just blows our minds. That is still the highlight.
“Then we get to hopefully fill their cups and then people goout into the world and, I don’t know how long it lasts, but it might be on fire, and you might’ve just thrown a thimble of water at it, but whatever it is, it’s a positive force for change and we are fortunate enough in some tiny, little way, to be a part of, hopefully, one of the best things that happens to someone’s day.”
The Hoosiers, who released hit songs Goodbye Mr. A, Worried About Ray, and The Trick to Life as part of their early years material, have written off trying to appeal to social media and viral moments.
Sparkles explained that this was an active choice by the band, who are fully engrossed in enjoying the feeling of being back on stage. He said: “It’s realising the ephemeral nature of music now, how it’s consumed, how we’ve never listened to more music more of the time. It’s all passive.
“I didn’t want it [the tour] to just be, ‘We’ve got some songs, here are the songs.’ You’re just regurgitating. Then we go off and talk, then we come back and then we do it again, you hope you go viral, is that it? It costs us a lot of money to make a record.
“I mean, it was costing us a lot of money back in the day, but that was shielded from you by some very clever accounting at major labels. The virality thing is as out of your hands as when the label used to ask, ‘It’s good, but is it a hit?'”
Though The Hoosiers had a near eight-year break between The Secret Service and comeback album Confidence, Sparkles says the pandemic and lockdown sparked a desire to keep the band going.
“I always felt very lucky, and Alan would always say, you know, how much luck plays a part, and we felt that,” he said. “We were never under any illusions because we saw better bands than us get dropped, not make it, whatever. But it was a sense in the immediate aftermath where you’d be playing to a level – it’s funny how accustomed you get to it, to playing in front of thousands and then you’re like, ‘Oh, this room is half full.’
“And then it becomes hundreds or whatever. I remember it affecting me about the people who weren’t there, and it was short-lived because you can’t have an interaction with the people who aren’t there. It allowed us to say, post-lockdown, ‘We’re nearly losing this. We can’t lose this.’
“And then when gigs came back, we had this new sense of vigour for us, we had a spring in our step to go, ‘We nearly lost this. This is incredible. How can we make it better?’ And for the first time in our twenty years, we come off stage, and all four of us, including Leighton and Paul, we go through the gig because we love it. What went wrong? What can we work on and what can we improve? It comes from a really healthy place, because all four of us are so invested. We want it to be the best show.”
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