Artist: Finger Joust
New Single: This Ain’t a Scene (It’s Bull Semen)
New EP: Why Is It Red?
Release Date: 24th November 2017

 

According to Finger Joust’s facebook page, the band is a bunch of high energy, meme loving, pizza-eating, hometown hating idiots, who make trashy pop punk music. They met at university and have been sick of each other ever since ………. but hey, ho, there is nothing you can do about that when you make killer beats and PHAT tunes. Okay. This made me think that I should listen to their music and should interview them. As a result, I am happy here to share their music that you can check and read the interview below.

 

Hailing from Manchester, Finger Joust were formed just over 2 years ago. This fun loving pop punk band are ready to show what they are all about with their forthcoming EP ‘Why Is It Red?’ which is due to be released on 24th November. This is the band’s second EP with bouncy riffs, power chords, very likeable harmonies and lots of energies, and their fresh sound is full of everything you could want from a young pop band.

'Why Is It Red?'  Tracklisting:
We Are Finger Joust
Get Up, Grow Old 
Pushed Clean 
War of Attrition 
This Ain't a Scene (It's Bull Semen)
Abandoned
Why Is It Red?

At very short notice, the band took sometime out to be interviewed by us this week. You can find out a little more about the band and their music here:

Hello, Finger Joust! First of all, could you introduce yourselves? Your names and your roles in the band?

Hi there! We’ve got Jake Wilkinson on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Nathan Smith on drums, Jamie Dunstan on Bass and backing vocals and Rory Boyle on lead guitar.

Thank you. Could you tell us how you all met up and became a band?

Jamie and Jake had known each other from college where they studied music, and met Nathan and Rory when they moved to Manchester to continue their studies. If I remember correctly, Jake and Jamie were walking home drunk and agreed to start a band, and then the idea just kind of stuck. Jake met Rory on a library tour through university and then exchange digits and that was it.

At first, it was just Jake and Jamie in the band, where they posted online for a drummer and Nathan appeared from nowhere. We had one practice, where Jake and Jamie were extremely unorganised, hungover and out of tune, and Nath felt sorry for them, so he stuck around.

That’s nice, haha! Who are your influences? Does everyone listen to similar music and bands?

When FJ (Finger Joust) started, we played a lot of Blink and Green Day, but now we’re more leaning towards bands like Neck deep and State Champs. We still love the older guys of course. Jake, Nathan and Rory have always been into this style, but Jamie played acoustic music before starting the band, Ed Sheeran mostly! So he had a crash course in pop punk. We mostly listen to the same stuff now, lots of Neck deep, A Day To Remember, ROAM, the good stuff.

Rory is very into his metal, which explains his beefy guitar playing. Nath loves his old punk bands such as NOFX, and Jake wants to fuck Tom Delonge which explains his terrible playing, singing with an accent and octave writing skills.

I could have guessed it! I’ve listened to your early stuff which is full of Blink covers. I enjoyed it though. You are just about to release the EP “Why Is It Red?”. You must be excited!

Very! It’ll be nice to have a place to point people if they want to listen to us rather than just sending them MP3 files.

Not long now! Can you tell us how long you took to create this EP?

Longer than it should have, honestly. We’d had most of the songs for a quite a while, but we had a bit of trouble getting time in the studio. It took us about two weeks of tracking when we could find the time between classes, and we’ve been waiting on mixing and mastering for a couple of months now.

Okay. How would you describe this EP and the songs?

When it comes to songwriting, we try not to limit ourselves too much. We’re classed under pop-punk, but we really just write music we like. The EP has some fast paced, classic pop punk, and some slower ballad type songs too.

Do you have a favourite song? Mine is “War of Attrition”!

First of all, thank you. Jake spent a lot of time developing that song and held it back for a long time before putting it forward. For all of us it’s gotta be ‘This Ain’t a Scene’, there’s a bounce to that song that we all really like.

Great choice for the single from the EP. How do you normally go about writing your songs?

Luckily we all live together and our living room is filled with instruments, so songwriting is pretty spontaneous. We mostly write lyrics when we’re bored, or procrastinating from uni work, and match them with riff ideas that fit. Jake can only write lyrics because he’s a shit guitar player. So having us with him to finish of his songs has been quite handy.

How important are the lyrics to you? And what is your message through the EP?

Lyrics are important, but like it’s not that deep, we’ll hop on a vibe train and see where it takes us. Most of the time we come up with little stories to start with, like a guy who quits his job and buys a dog, and then we’ll write from there. We are already in the process of demoing songs for our next EP and the lyrics are little deeper and meaningful, but much more jokes to come as well, there’s only so many times you can write about a girl. The EP was named in honour of Jamie’s father, who unfortunately passed away in 2016, and “Why Is It Red?” were his last words to Jamie, so there’s some meaning to the name there.

Thank you for sharing the story. It is nice for you to tribute this EP to Jamie’s Father.

Do you have a special show for the EP release?

Unfortunately not, but we are hoping to be gigging these songs a lot! So we should have some opportunities to play them live!

I would love to hear these songs live! What should we expect from your live shows?

Lots of banter! We like to sprinkle stand up comedy into our sets, but it’s mostly just us berating each other and laughing. But yeah we play music too, well we try to, we haven’t exactly mastered that just yet, but we try that’s all that counts. Our sets are always full of energy, we try to put in 100% every time, even when nobody wants it.

Great to hear that. What has been the highlight so far?

The live shows. Writing, recording and releasing music are great, but the live shows are always the best part of being in a band. If I had to pick one moment, it would be the time we covered ‘The Middle’ by Jimmy Eat World and had the crowd singing along, that was great. We played a gig at the Three Minute Theatre where we were asked to sign a couple of EPs afterwards, that was a stand out!

That matters! And I think a lot more to come! Is there anything more you would like to say?

Thanks for reading, follow us on our social media and YouTube for updates, and check our EP on the 24th November! It’s on all the big music places, Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, Bandcamp, pretty much everywhere. Cheers!

Thank you! And good luck!

Thanks to you too!

(Teri Morris)

 

To find out more about Finger Joust, visit their sites using the links below;
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FingerJoust/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fingerjoust/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FingerJoust
BandCamp: https://fingerjoust.bandcamp.com/
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/finger-joust
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLMC6UcrlS3q_Q8hhHitfZw/videos