Two Door Cinema Club: 15 Years of ‘Tourist History’
Northern Irish indie rockers Two Door Cinema Club’s debut album Tourist History turns 15 this year. Taking the album on tour across Australia this November, bassist Kevin Baird spoke with The Note about the making of Tourist History, his relationship with the record today and touring with The Vaccines.
Words Tobias Handke // Image supplied
After missing our initial Zoom chat, Two Door Cinema Club’s Kevin Baird is profusely apologetic when we finally connect 24 hours later.
“This never happens to me,” Baird explains. “I don’t know what happened to me yesterday. I’m usually the reliable one, so it pains me not to be.”
After joking about his band mates hanging shit on him for missing the original interview, Baird is happy to change topics and delve into the band’s iconic debut album, Tourist History. Celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, the release is one of the great records to come out of the UK indie scene of the early noughties.
Capturing a moment in time when jangly guitars, tight jeans and hedonistic dance rock was all the rage, Tourist History took out the Choice Music Prize for the 2010 Irish Album of the Year (the equivalent of ARIA Album of the Year) and climbed to the top of the Irish Albums Chart, helping propel Two Door Cinema Club to global success.
Two Door Cinema Club’s debut paired post-punk rhythms with dance floor-inducing guitars on catchy songs like ‘Something Good Can Work’, ‘I Can Talk’, ‘What You Know’ and ‘Undercover Martyn’. It’s a fun, lively listen that acted as the soundtrack to a generation of young music lovers. But the album almost didn’t happen. Despite their self-recorded and produced debut EP Four Words to Stand On receiving positive feedback, Two Door Cinema Club struggled to find anyone willing to take a punt on three lads from Belfast.
“It took a lot of convincing other people that this was good,” Baird explains of the songs written for Tourist History. “A lot of people sat on the fence with the band and weren’t quite sure if it was going to go anywhere or not, whether that be record companies, radio stations, magazines or whatever. I think it would have been quite easy for us to have given up rather than continually finding a different route to get to where we needed to go.”
After exhausting their options in the UK, Two Door Cinema Club looked abroad and signed with what Baird called at that time a “very small independent” label in Paris called Kitsuné. Now established tastemakers, back then Kitsuné was still in its infancy, slowly gaining a reputation for its influential compilation series featuring the best indie electronic music of that era.
With a roster that came to include Phoenix, LA Roux and Cut Copy, the label was building momentum when they signed Two Door Cinema Club, who found themselves headed to London to record their debut at Eastcote Studio with producer Eliot James (Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, Does It Offend You, Yeah?) before making their way to Paris to mix the album with legendary musician, producer and engineer Phillipe Zdar (Phoenix, Cassius, Cut Copy).
“We were so poor at the time,” Baird says about the month the trio spent living in London while recording Tourist History. “We were living in East London and making the record in West London, taking the tube across every day. We might be there super late, and the producer (James), I remember, would be like, ‘All right guys, think it’s time to call it a day.’ It would be midnight or one in the morning, and he’d be watching us trying to work out how we’d get home, because this was before cell phones. We’d be like, ‘We’ll have to take that bus to there, that bus to there.’ He’s like, ‘I was just gonna taxi.’ That was mind-blowing to us. We were like, ‘Take a taxi? Who do you think we are, the Beatles?’ Then he’d be like, ‘You can get in my taxi half the way or whatever.’ We were just kids trying to pretend that we belonged in this really expensive studio, but it was fun, definitely.”
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Spending close to four weeks knuckled down in the studio with James, Baird admits, “there wasn’t much producing going on.”
“It was kind of just come in [and] record. We had everything written and ready to go. There was time for little embellishments, which [James] did a great job of bringing to the forefront. I do remember it was pretty full on trying to get it recorded.”
Then it was off to France to mix the album with Zdar. “We went to Paris to quite a famous studio, now [known as] Motorbass, and it was kind of in construction at the time,” Baird recalls. “I remember there was nowhere to sit down. We had to sit on this Amazon air bed. We sat on an air bed for three days while we did the mixing. Phillipe, rest in peace, was a genius and just amazing to work with.”
Talking about the album, it’s clear Baird has fond memories of that period in his life. Then in his early twenties, he was discovering who he was and forging a path as a musician, and that naive exuberance shines through on Tourist History. Asked what his relationship is like with the album today, Baird takes a ten-second pause before answering.
“It’s odd. I feel like, at first, that album is your baby and [you’re] so protective and so involved with it, but then so quickly it’s not ours anymore. It just exists out there, and it’s other people’s, and that’s really nice. It’s great because our relationship has evolved with it. I think if it hadn’t, it would just become a bit boring to play all the time.”
It’s good news that Baird has no problems playing the same songs every night, as Two Door Cinema Club are embarking on a tour to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Tourist History, performing the album in its entirety. Bringing the album tour to Australian shores in November, Two Door Cinema Club have enlisted their good mates The Vaccines as support. The West London outfit are also celebrating their own milestone – 15 years since the release of their critically acclaimed debut album What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?.
“We’ve done a lot of shows together over the years. You know, we’ve even done a tour of Australia together many years ago, around the second record, I think it was,” says Baird as he highlights why The Vaccines are the ideal support.
“Anytime we ever bump into them at festivals or whatever, we always have a good laugh. They’re really nice guys, and I think from a musical perspective, it makes sense. It’s just nice to [tour with] nice people and exciting that they’re doing a celebration of their debut record.”
Although he’s not a fan of the amount of travel needed to visit Australia, Baird is looking forward to the warm weather and playing to local crowds, who he compares to the Irish.
“I think Australians are a great laugh. They want to have a good time. They like good food, good music and having a good time. I think they just approach going to a gig and watching it in a way that really works for our band, which is go and have a good time, enjoy yourself and not take yourself too seriously.”
And what about new music?
“We’re definitely working on things. We have some things that are finished [and] some other things that are kind of in progress. We’re having to pull back a little bit while we focus on this anniversary thing. But yeah, we’ve got lots of exciting things.
Catch Two Door Cinema Club with The Vaccines performing at AEC Theatre on Wedneday 11 November. Tickets on sale now via ticketek.com.au.
