Basement, Disconnect
The singer relocated to the States a couple of years ago to be closer to his girlfriend, but is clearly fond of his hometown. He grew up in a small village outside of Ipswich, but it was the bigger town that he and his brother James, Basement’s drummer, would make a pilgrimage to every weekend, drawn in by the punk and (much to Andrew’s embarrassment) ska bands that frequented its creaking pubs. It was at these shows that the pair would meet the rest of their future bandmates – guitarists Alex Henery and Ronan Crix, and bassist Duncan Stewart. A natural bond was amplified as the group began playing in different bands and setting up their own shows.
Still, it wasn’t until they reached university age, with Andrew going off to study at Kent, that Basement took shape, initially as an anchor point to home as their lives headed off in different directions. “I felt a little bit separate from everyone and I missed my brother,” explains Andrew. “And I thought a really cool way for us to keep in touch would be to start a band. It kept us all together and it kept this focus on home, because we were all very homesick all of the time. It was almost like a coping mechanism.”
What started out as a way to stay in touch between friends grew substantially over the years, and by the release of their first full-length record, 2011’s I Wish I Could Stay Here, the band had enough attention to warrant packing themselves into vans heading across the U.S. and Australia. Things seemed good, but it was just a year later when the band would grind to a shuddering halt, as they announced a surprise hiatus. Second album Colourmeinkindness was offered as a parting swansong, and then they were gone.
“It got to a point where there was too much band stuff happening and not enough real-life stuff happening, and I didn’t know which one I wanted,” offers Andrew by way of explanation. The singer admits to being the driving force behind the decision, which came with the realisation that his band wasn’t paying the bills. “I knew that I didn’t want to move out of my house and live with my parents, and that seemed to be the only thing that made financial sense if we wanted to do more band stuff. At the time, in my early to mid-twenties, it felt like a back-step. So I said, ‘Maybe now is the time to take a break.’”
The hiatus is clearly something of a sore point for Andrew, but he stands by the fact that the group’s time away from the band gave them valuable real-world skills; things they can keep in their back pocket, should they need them. For him, that meant becoming a religious studies teacher at a school in East London (he’s an atheist, he adds), while the other members made moves into illustration, coffee buying, tree surgery and videography. But the time away from band life ultimately left the group realising that they’d made an error.