Yak

Frontman Oliver Burslem begins our interview by repeatedly telling us how moist he is, having just gone for a dip to escape the heat. The tongue-in-cheek declaration sets a jovial tone for the conversation.

“I’m all nice and lubricated at the moment. I just went for a dip, so I’m all moisturised and wet. I’m in Melbourne,” he says. “I just came here randomly before we go on tour in the States. I just thought I’d check it out. I mean, it’s not really on the way, but we were out travelling anyway.”

Despite the success of their recordings, Yak are most definitely a live band. Their cacophonous guitars, drawling vocals and a relentless rhythm section lend themselves well to your archetypal, scummy British punk club. Looking forward to the American spate of shows, Burslem waxes about the romance of the road.

“I actually love touring,” he says. “I love the gypsy lifestyle. We’ve got a van that we all run around in, doing our shows. We’ve had so many problems with it. It’s got holes in the ceiling and it’s just rubbish, but we’re all hands-on and it keeps running, so it’s great.”

With Yak’s relatively limited studio experience ahead of their full-length debut, they found themselves working closely with producer and Pulp bassist Steve Mackey. Burslem is quick to crack jokes about Mackey, before explaining how the band met up with him before deciding to record.

“He did touch me inappropriately. No, Steve’s good. He’s a true northerner. We’d just played a gig in Liverpool, so we were knackered, and he invites us over to check out his garage where he’s playing music. So we get there and he puts all these cameras up in trees, filming us, then we played our arses off for two hours and went home.

“We’d never really thought about our music, we always just played it,” says Burslem. “Steve helped us a lot with recording the songs. He brought in some great ideas with the sound and sorted it all out for us. I’m really happy with how the album turned out. It’s a proper rock album.”

Fashion fans might have recently recognised Burslem’s rocker mug gracing ads for Burberry alongside a score of other London creatives. However, when asked about the experience, Burslem remembers the whole thing with cynicism.

“What is Burberry anyway? I don’t know. It’s kind of an idea of what London was. They get all these people who look like aging rock stars from the ’60s and ’70s – that’s where I come in – then they put them in coats that have been made a million times before, made in China. Then they put us all in a posh car in Mayfair, because that’s apparently what London looks like.”

Considering his misgivings, it might seem odd that Burslem chose to be part of the campaign. In truth, the members of Yak were all working odd jobs to save money when the gig landed in his lap.

“I was driving fashion people around,” he explains. “One day I was bringing them tea and biscuits and they asked me if I wanted to be in this thing and I said, ‘No, I’m in a band.’ Then they told me how much money I was going to get – and it was a lot – and I still said [no]. They kept asking me and I said I’d have to ask my manager, so they all started laughing at me like, ‘Who’s this loser, saying he has to talk to his manager to be in a Burberry campaign?’ Then they gave me more money and I was like, ‘With this I could record an album.’ So I did it, sold my soul. It’s not bad though – I’ve sucked dicks for less.”

Moving the conversation on to music, Burslem has a wide range of tunes he draws from when he’s writing. He cites Turkish psychedelia and gospel music as personal favourites at the moment, but baulks when it comes to thinking of them as influences.

“Some days I want to be Al Green, but that just isn’t me. Even if I could sing like that, and I can’t, I’m a white boy from London and an atheist. If I tried to make music like Al Green, people would just be like, ‘That’s fake, what’s he doing?’ I’ve played in enough bad bands to know fusion styles or whatever, it doesn’t work. It’s taken me a long time to come to this point. I feel like what we’re doing is honest and that’s why people like us.”

At least for the foreseeable future, Yak will be busy on the road, but after that the band’s course is yet to be decided. Burslem says he’s careful never to take the whole thing too seriously, which isn’t hard considering the lack of money being a musician brings in.

“We don’t make a living from it; there’s not enough money in it for that. So I’ve never approached it as a career or anything. We just do what we do in the moment because that’s what we like. We try to make honest music and have a good time when we’re playing. We don’t think about it too much.”