Radio BurgerFuel Interview: No Cigar

‍A Triumphant Return

It's been a huge year for the NO CIGAR lads. After dropping their debut album 'Bienvenido' last year, 2023 has seen them tick off their first international shows. Now, they return to Aotearoa, triumphantly waving their second album for the world to hear! Josh Morrice (lead guitar) gives us the lowdown.

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RBF: Kia ora NO CIGAR, welcome back from Europe! What were you up to over there - how was the tour? 

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JM: Thank you! The tour was something else; it was only our second time playing outside of NZ, so it was pretty surreal to get such a good response from our shows. Aside from the shows we played there, we also parked at a house about an hour north of Paris in a picturesque town called Chantilly. We spent about 13 days there writing new music and rehearsing for the upcoming shows.

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RBF: Let's take it back a little. Give us a lowdown on NO CIGAR; where have you come from? 

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JM: We're all from Auckland (pretty much) and have been friends for quite a long time before starting a band. Arthur and Ned went to primary school together, and I used to live across the road from Sam when we were teenagers. There are many interlinking social connections, but that's just how NZ is, I suppose! 

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We started jamming around the end of 2018 - nothing too serious, mainly just something fun to do together in the evenings after work. Then we decided to put out our first song, 'Tickets To Space,' at the end of 2019 and had a really good response. We had a lot of fun, so we just kept going.

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RBF: I want to dig into The Great Escape now (congrats!). How did you find album number 2? 

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JM: Thanks! Stoked to be able to share it finally. The album was fun to make; we worked with our good friend CJ (producer/bassist of Mako Rd) to produce it. He also produced our first album, which was very easy to produce! The album was written at Willy's [lead singer] family bach in Mangawhai, where we wrote most of our music and spent much time.

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We spent about 3 weeks there in February just working on the songs and rehearsing them all to be able to record them live together in one go. Then we took the album into Roundhead Studios for 3 days and tracked almost everything we needed, so it came together quickly. It contrasted Bienvenido, which was in the works for quite a while. 

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RBF: Did you always plan to put it out so quickly [only 15 months ago] after Bienvenido?

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JM: I'd say so. We knew we didn't want to wait two years before releasing another project. Most of us were planning a lot of travel this year, so we knew we had to all get in a room for a good stint before then. We just committed to the 3-4 weeks in February to get as much done in that time, whether it was an EP or an album. It just so happened we ended up with an album!

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RBF: How did you go about writing and recording this one? Was the process any different to the first? 

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JM: Yeah, quite different. On the writing side of things, Bienvenido has songs written years before - shelved and re-worked and shelved - and songs that just fell out of us in pre-production. However, as a project, it spans a large amount of time; every song has a different moment or point in which it was created.

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With The Great Escape, the album, bar one or two songs, was created in those three weeks in February. There is so much more continuity between the writing and album craft because the songs are closely related in age. As far as recording, we also tried switching it up. The first album we recorded piece by piece, which is a great way to nail the take and perfect things, but for m,e it can suck a bit of magic out of my playing, and the cohesiveness of the energy in the songs can suffer.

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So, with The Great Escape, we tried rehearsing the songs repeatedly before going into the studio for a short time to record everything together. Replacing things if needed, but trying to use the live takes as much as possible. This also has its pros and cons, so it was fun to experiment with this new process. It made CJ's life a lot harder in post-production, though (haha), so it was far from the perfect way to do things.

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Next time, we will try a mix of both! It's a unique challenge recording our songs and protecting the live feel and realness that moves us. It feels like trying to capture lighting in a bottle one day, and sometimes, it feels like shooting fish in a barrel.

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RBF: This may be just my first few impressions of listening, but it seems more chill/laid back than some previous releases. Was this on purpose? 

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JM: Nah, that is accurate! We never discussed it out loud as a direction for the album, but more being in Mangawhai, writing most of the songs sitting down, and about the music we listened to while we were up there. Being album number 2, it had less pressure and less ego to perform for, and the sounds we were drawn to led us all down that path. It was as much a conscious decision as an unconscious one. Don't expect it to be the same for album 3, though!

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RBF: How many tracks did you get to road test in Europe? What was the reaction like? 

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JM: 5 overall. It's always interesting to play an unheard song to an audience; it can tell you a lot about a song, but it is even more about the audience. 'Great Escape' and 'Father Of Mine' had great responses across the board, which was cool.

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RBF: You have a HUGE summer of shows in NZ and AUS. You are mixing up some festivals with a headlining tour. What are you particularly looking forward to? 

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JM: No offence to NZ, but seriously looking forward to returning to Australia for that bunch of shows. It was only in February this year that we played our first tour there, and it was seriously special for us. It's more significant this time with more stops, so I'm very excited about that! 

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RBF: And after that...do you get a break? 

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JM: Kind of! We half-wrote and half-recorded another album in France, so we will finish that. I'm keen to spend more time on this one, so I have a break!

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You can now listen to 'The Great Escape' from NO CIGAR on Spotify and all good streaming platforms. Vinyl is on the way, too. Catch them live all over Downunder this summer with 10 shows across NZ and 6 in Australia.

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