An example. One night, Josh couldn’t sleep, so he got out of bed, sat at his computer, and just began to write. On the way to the gym with drummer Dan Flint a few hours later, Josh asked if he could read him what he’d written. Dan asked what it was about, to which Josh replied that he’d read it first, and then the drummer had to tell him what he reckoned it was.
“I think I got about five or six lines in, and he pulled the car over as we were driving and went, ‘I want you to finish it. And I want you to read it to me all over again,’” recalls Josh. “I did and he went, ‘Alright, this is about us. It's about us five. This is about young men, just not being able to communicate, not being able to say what they mean, finding it difficult to receive information about others that they love and care about.’
“I'm not talking about them four vs. me, I'm talking about us five, I'm talking about, ‘Fuck, isn't it amazing that we went through all these life-changing moments together; good, bad and ugly?’ And we're learning how to be a man, how to project our happiness, or our anger, or our disdain or confusion. Ultimately, the biggest victory for this band has been our longevity with its original line-up, that’s worth looking at.”
Elsewhere, he touches on themes of closed-up masculinity, about people he knows starting new relationships while others are ending, friends not looking after themselves, looking at life as lived in very real terms. Do you worry what people are going to think if they clock a song’s about them?
“I don't care,” he says. “Because I know, on this record, it's not laced in anger or sass like it sometimes has been in the past. It's just real. I'm not being cruel. I can be mean about myself, but I'm not being mean about others. In the past, I've definitely been guilty of that. When we’ve done anniversary shows, like doing Take Off Your Colours, or the Sinners… shows last summer, I’ve been singing and going, ‘Fuck, you were so angry. What happened?’”