Mark Morriss of The Bluetones: ‘The four of us are very much best friends’

With the recent Oasis reunion – and the ‘dynamic’ ticket prices for their comeback gigs next year – dominating the headlines, might we see a resurgence in popularity for British guitar-based music of the mid-to-late 90s, or has it never really gone away?

One man well-positioned to answer this is Bluetones frontman Mark Morriss, who will soon be coming to Cambridge with the hitmaking indie rockers to perform at the Junction.

Formed in Hounslow, Greater London, in 1993, the popular quartet have scored 13 top 40 singles and three top 10 albums in the UK charts.

Their debut album, 1996’s Expecting to Fly, even knocked Oasis’ second long-playing effort (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? off the top spot, if only for a week.

“I guess not,” says Mark, speaking from his home in Tunbridge Wells, at my suggestion that ‘Britpop’, as it was popularly known, has never really gone away, “and I certainly hope it doesn’t.

“I’m sick and tired of being associated with Oasis… Their music’s never done anything for me, I’ve never been a fan, and it leads to inevitable, frustrating comparisons.”

The Bluetones – whose line-up also includes Mark’s brother Scott on bass, guitarist Adam Devlin and drummer Eds Chesters – have put out six studio albums to date, the most recent of which was A New Athens in 2010.

Fans of the group will be pleased to learn that the boys have been working on new music.

“Since the beginning of the year, the band and I have been writing and recording our first new material since 2010,” explains Mark, 52.

“I mean we kept touring in the interim, every year or so we do a little jaunt round the country, but I don’t know, something stirred in our collective waters and we just felt this urge to see if there was anything left in the tank, creatively, and it’s turned out to be a very fruitful year.

“Everyone’s really energised and invigorated and we’re wondering why we didn’t do this sooner!”

Why didn’t they?

“I think there are one or two factors,” replies Mark, who has also made a few solo albums, “the largest one being that we all live all over the place.

“Scott, my brother, the bass player, lives in Tokyo, which kind of makes spontaneity a bit tricky…

“It’s taken us a while but we’ve worked around it and we’ve worked out a new method of working, because it’s impossible for us to do an album because Scott can’t really be away from his family for two or three months at a time – it’s not going to happen, it’s not fair.

“And then the penny dropped and we thought ‘We don’t have to work that way, we don’t have to work towards an album each time – we can just do songs in batches of three, batches of four, and then see where we are after a year or so’.

“And that’s proved to be a way that’s kept everyone very engaged and very focused.”

Mark reveals that the band don’t record remotely – no tracks are sent to Scott in Tokyo for him to add his part in over there, for example.

“We just send each other ideas so that we know where we are,” he explains, “so when we come back and we’re in the room together, we’re all on the same page.

“But everything happens organically still, and in a room. It’s not a case of ‘just add your bit to this’ because that wouldn’t feel like a collaboration.”

The Bluetones are to release a new EP, Drive Thru, on 4 October, ahead of their Cambridge gig, which is on 25 October.

“I think we’ll play two or three new songs, we’re not going to be playing a huge swathe of the set where it’s new material that people don’t know,” says Mark, who reveals that the band have never been to New Zealand or Portugal (“Can you believe that?!”) and that he hopes to go to both to play a show at some point.

“I think doing it this way, in the EP form, gives people a chance to live with the songs for a little while, and I think it’s more enjoyable to hear familiar stuff in that setting.”

On the heartwarming fact that the band still features all of its original members, Mark says: “The four of us are still very much best friends – and that’s a fact.

“We love being together, we love just hanging out together, which is what it feels like when we are rehearsing and writing – it’s just hanging out again.

“We’re lucky that we’ve got understanding partners, and we’ve got so many shared experiences… It’s difficult to explain, it is like a family, we just support each other.

“It sounds kind of corny when you say it out loud, but we do love each other!”

Earlier this year, Mat Osman of Suede told the Cambridge Independent that Suede had previously been mistaken for 70s rockers Slade.

Have The Bluetones ever been confused with a similar-sounding band – The Bluebells, of Young at Heart fame, for instance?

“People have mistaken us for The Blue Notes, an old soul band,” observes Mark, “that’s a common one – they go ‘Ah, we thought you were the soul crooners’ and we get ushered away.

“The Undertones has happened in the past. They were expecting The Undertones and we arrived…”

Looking ahead, Mark concludes: “The band are very excited about sharing these new songs with the fans, and so for that reason this is a tour that we’ve been looking forward to with a greater sense of excitement than perhaps in previous years.

“So I can’t wait to get out there and let people know that we might not quite have lost our mojo just yet.”

Catch The Bluetones at the Cambridge Junction (J1), with support from The Loose Cut, on Friday, 25 October. Tickets, priced £29, are available from junction.co.uk. For more on the band, go to bluetones.band.