Box of Trash humbly command attention with new EP
Written by: Brooke Eboule
“There’s a famous story with Lyle [Kennedy, vocalist], the first day we got into Chicago,” says Jordan McKee, drummer for Scottish four-piece Box of Trash, with a laugh when I ask if the guys have any memorable moments from writing or recording. “Joan [Velez], the guy that runs our label picked us up and we went into an IHOP for breakfast. He’d met us for maybe 2-3 hours the previous night. Lyle here thought the butter was a dollop of ice cream and ate a spoonful in front of Joan and then proceeded to try and swallow it, probably spit half of it out. Joan probably looked at us at that point and thought ‘why the fuck have I brought these guys over here on a plane?’.”
“I’ll never forget that moment literally for the rest of my life,” Jordan says, still chuckling. “I thought the album was done at that point.” He’d just wanted to knock it back quick-like to get it out of the way, Lyle explains. He doesn’t even like ice cream.
It’s such a charming, innocuous, immediately endearing story, particularly from a rock band. But it’s quickly clear that this is what one can expect with Box of Trash. No pretension. No big egos. Big sound, though, yes! “We’re just real people doing what we like,” Lyle later says. “We’re not trying to be people that we’re not. We’ve never tried to fit into something to be popular. We just make music, doing what we like.” Even with a label, like the majority of indie bands, the members all have day jobs – Jordan works in sales and Lyle works in a parts department for an agricultural business. “I’m kind of a striving musician with a job,” says Jordan. “You’ve got to pay the bills.”
Initially started as a side project by Lyle and lead guitarist Barry Fisher, Box of Trash took its full form with the addition of Jordan and bassist Aiden Davidson. The guys decided to really go for it in 2021 when the band was offered a recording contract with independent Chicago-based Thirdfire Records. In September 2022 they went stateside to record their fabulous first album, Candlewood 230, released this past March.
Most recently, the band dropped some more new music in the form of a fantastic EP showcasing what Lyle says are “the different dynamics of song writing we can bring as a band; we have the hard-hitting rock n roll side and the slower softer ballad side and everything in-between”. I had a chance to chat with Lyle and Jordan just before Look At Me was released.
NW: Your debut album is quite eclectic with a range of sounds and influences. Would you consider that an exploration of identity, or do you foresee yourselves continuing to operate outside a sort of defined box (no pun intended)?
Jordan: I don’t think we’ve got a definitive label or genre of music. That album is going to have some sort of experimentation angle to it because we were new to it all, but I don’t think we’ll ever stop changing. I think we’ll keep growing. You need to evolve constantly. Bands don’t stay around these days putting out five albums in the same genre. You have to keep going. It’s just about growth on all fronts, really.
Lyle: Aye, reinventing… When we’re creating a song, we just go with it, the kind of flow of things. If it works, it works. I think the second record, what we think it’s going to be just now is going to be totally different when we’re actually in the studio. We’re writing new songs all the time.
NW: The flip side of that is sometimes there’s criticism when bands switch things up too much. Arctic Monkeys come to mind. Is that something you think you’ll ever have to worry about?
Jordan: It’s so subjective. Arctic Monkeys are a great example of that. Love them. They’ve changed so much over the last 15 years but ultimately they’re still the Arctic Monkeys to me. They’re still a great band. The way I think about it is, the music that we’re putting out there, I strongly believe that there are enough people in this world to enjoy that music, that we can continue to do it as a livelihood.
NW: As you’ve been preparing to launch the new EP, you’ve been on a quest for pre-saves. Do you have any thoughts on what playing that algorithmic game is like as an indie band?
Lyle: I think it’s just a big popularity game, [seeking] more interaction on socials. If you look back at the 90’s and stuff like that, bands didn’t have social media, whereas now, you wouldn’t survive without it. Nobody would really know who you are. So it’s a big popularity game. You’re on every social media platform trying to get people’s attention.
Jordan: When I first started in a band, playing music or even thinking about being in a band, the last thing I ever thought about was having to promote myself on some sort of social media platform and having to push to make algorithms work. It’s a complete other side. The amount we’ve learned in the last 12-18 months is just crazy. It’s a whole other job, I’d say.
NW: There’s so much noise on social media that it can be hard to break through and find your people even though, as you say, you know they’re out there. Do you ever get discouraged by that effort?
Jordan: Every second, every hour of the day. At our level it’s hard to monitor and measure success. It’s hard to monitor what’s good, what went down well. Numbers at this level mean absolutely nothing because they’re so miniscule compared to the big dogs so it’s hard to keep your head straight and yeah we’re doing the right thing, and I think coming up on three years, we’re still all pretty headstrong in that sense. We just need to keep going. It’s just about being ruthless with it.
NW: Who do you surround yourself with to strategize and make important judgment calls?
Lyle: We’ve got Thirdfire Records behind us. Joan [Velez] has been instrumental for giving us advice, guidance. We spent 10 days with him over in Chicago recording the debut album, so even just spending time with him in the studio he’s taught us quite a lot and given us advice on social media, how to use it as a proper tool to get your music out there.
Jordan: Yeah, the guys from the label, the peers that we’ve got around us and [our manager] Colin. If there’s anything big that we’re doing we tend to kind of feel it out with them first and listen to what they’re saying. Then we just have a discussion as a band. But we’re so young as a band, in terms of how long we’ve been in it that it comes down to trial and error. A lot of it is trial and error.
NW: What did you learn from writing, recording, and releasing the debut album that you have taken into this new EP?
Lyle: Patience.
Jordan: Patience and the expression I use is “being good in a room means nothing”. That’s all it is. You can play as much as you want in a room and play well, but until you implement that and put it out there in the right way, it means nothing.
NW: The new EP is titled ‘Look At Me’. Does that have any relevance to kind of what we were talking about before, or does it have any particular meaning to you?
Lyle: I don’t think there’s much meaning behind it. We played down in Sheffield in England a few months ago and there was artwork that we got a picture with and we thought it was pretty cool. We never said at the time that it was going to be the EP artwork, but I think there was a few indecisive moments where we would argue what the artwork would be and somebody just flung the Look at Me picture in, and we thought aye, stop arguing, we’ll just go with that.
Editor's note: Similarly, Barry has previously shared that there’s no great meaning behind the band’s name, either. He said it’s off a poster from a sixties garage rock compilation record.
NW: You’ve got a song on the EP called ‘What Do Your Dreams Say’, so I’m curious, what do your dreams say?
Lyle: Keep going. Just keep going. See where it ends up. Because if you don’t keep going, you’ll just be filled with regret and that’s my biggest fear.
Jordan: Follow your own desire – which is also another lyric from the song.
NW: The first single, ‘Minnie’s Habberdashery’, which you all described as “a cesspit of absolute rock n roll filth” has been out for a couple of weeks. What can you tell me about the other tracks from the EP?
Lyle: I think the other tracks are a bit more stripped back. Aiden, our bass player, sings and plays the acoustic guitar so he had songs he wrote and brought to the band. We thought it would be amazing to record ‘Maggie’ with just him and the guitar.
Jordan: ‘Fine Lines’ I think was going to be on the second record but we felt that it would be the right thing to put something like that out and then we decided to do a kind of stripped back version of it. Honestly, I think the result we’re all surprised with because it works well as a full electric and full band, but stripping it back and it just being bare bones, it’s still a really, really nice song. Which I think people will like, if you’ve got the one extent of Minnie’s being in your face, and then you have nice, somber music to chill out to.
NW: You’ve got a show coming up soon. A bit of a change, sadly, as Usual Affairs recently called it quits, but some other great Scottish bands on the lineup.
Lyle: Monza Express, I think I started speaking to them in my previous band through lockdown. About three years I’ve been talking to them online and whatever and we’re finally getting to basically have a big celebration because we’ve never met before. They’re big Aberdeen fans and I’m a Hibernean fan, and both teams are playing that day [head-to-head in the Scottish league semi-final], so I'm looking forward to that.
Jordan: And the Castros are brilliant as well!
NW: There’s been a lot of fire in the indie scene in Scotland lately. How do you feel about that?
Lyle: I’ve never seen the music scene as popular!
Jordan: I’ve been in it 15 years, I’ve never seen anything like this. Venues are struggling a wee bit but the Scottish scene right now is the strongest I’ve ever seen it, thriving with bands. There’s loads. For years in Scotland there’s been this standard way where if you’re in a band, you fill a bus full of your mates, you drive to the closest city and you all get drunk and have a really good night. And that’s nice for a few times. But in the last three or four years, there’s bands seriously putting themselves on the map. I mean, Apollo Junction, this week, that’s phenomenal what those boys have done. People are working hard. The results are starting to come through for everyone which is really nice to see.
NW: With that being said, is it important for you to stand out from the crowd? How do you separate yourselves from the pack?
Lyle: I don’t think we try.
Jordan: We don’t sit in a room and go “right, we need to be different from X, Y and Z” or we need to produce something that is going to turn heads. Ultimately, we work hard, we write stuff that we enjoy playing and writing and in turn that seems to be getting some sort of result just now. That method is working at the minute so why change it?
NW: Do you have any unexpected musical influences, individually or as a band?
Jordan: I’m a very big rap man. Hip hop. R&B. Bit of dance.
Lyle: Aiden would probably say Tom Petty.
Jordan: Aiden’s into pretty much everything.
Lyle: We played Bathgate a few weeks ago and I drove to the gig and Aiden was the DJ for the car and some of the songs he was playing, I did not expect him to.
Jordan: I think that’s probably where some of our influence and sound comes from. As much as we all like the same stuff, everyone has their own niche or genre of music that they like listening to and that probably bleeds into writing, recording, playing it.
NW: Speaking of song selections, let’s say you’re going round to the pub for a few pints, what are you wanting to hear for a guaranteed good time?
Lyle: The pina colada song. I’ve just recently listened to that and read the lyrics and I think it’s amazing.
Jordan: Oh god, that is so hard. If it was a Scottish night out, it would probably be something like Oasis. It just goes hand in hand with a night out in Scotland, a lot of the time. And then maybe some Proclaimers, just to keep it patriotic.
NW: What’s next for Box of Trash?
Lyle: We’d hope to do a second album at some point next year. We’ve got enough material there to gig with. We want as many gigs as possible next year. It would be good to play a festival as well. It’s just pushing, continually pushing and seeing where we end up.
Jordan: It sounds like we’re really lackadaisical but we’ve worked in a manner where we’ve put pressure on ourselves to do stuff and it just doesn’t work. You end up chasing your tail all day long. So, put some music out, gig a bit and then start thinking about putting another record out cause you need to keep putting music out.
NW: In terms of gigging next year, do you have any particular places or venues you’ve got your sights set on?
Jordan: King Tuts.
Lyle: The ultimate one for me would be the Barrowlands in Glasgow.
Box of Trash plays The Hive in Edinburgh on November 4. You can find them on X and Instagram @boxoftrashmusic