CLOCKS - Old Valve Radio OUT NOW!

Clocks are a band who specialise in short and bittersweet, powerful and punchy pop-rock nuggets concerning new love and old valve radios, delivered using the tried and tested guitar, bass and drums method but rendered with sufficient vigour to make it all sound fresh, original, brand new.
Straight out of Epsom & Ewell come the four Clocks boys – and they are boys, aged 20-22 at the time of writing, making them a sort of hard-edged boy band, only a boy band who can play their instruments, write their own songs and have a hand in the production and presentation of their material. Nothing like a boy band at all, then.
Some of the things that have made Clocks what they are and sound the way they sound include the music of Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, The Hollies, Buddy Holly and The Beach Boys. And a bunch called The Beatles. “My writing influences were basically Lennon & McCartney because those songs got me into music,” says Tom Hewitt, Clocks’ singer and main songwriter, who points out that he’s more of a Lennon fan than he is a McCartney man. “That’s what I’m looking back to and aspiring to. I don’t have too many modern influences.”
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The members of Clocks first met on the cusp of teenage, when Tom and guitarist Ed Hilliam, bassist John Ricketts and drummer Rich Farris all attended Scouts. Ed, John and Rich went on to Epsom & Ewell High School, while Tom attended Sutton Grammar School, a veritable hothouse of future celebrities whose famous alumni include gay police commissioner and aspirant London mayor Brian Paddick, one of the co-founders of Mensa, David Bellamy, Dane Bowers and several Wimbledon football stars of the ’90s. We trust you’re getting this down.
It was when they were 11-12 that the four Clocks really gelled as a unit. Ed and John were both into rollerblading and tried to get Tom to join in – “but he shunned us,” says Ed. “Because I thought you were weird,” replies Tom. Touche. It was during a Scouts summer camp that the band took shape. John’s dad had a varispeed tape recorder that they soon put to inventive use. “We thought it was hilarious,” recalls Tom. “We’d write stories and make up odd things and have great fun recording them too fast or too slow. During that summer camp we progressed to making up songs. At first we were going to do a cookery show, even a sketch show at one point because we liked Harry Enfield. But we decided to write songs instead.”
Now all they had to do was learn to play them. After dabbling with the flute, Ed decided to be a guitarist. Rich’s future as a sticksman was assured ever since he visited his mum’s friend’s percussion group as a two year old, where kids could bash tambourines and cymbals till their hands dropped off. After taking Grade 1 percussion aged 10, he was given a drum kit for his birthday. Tom started out playing keyboards. “I taught myself from buying reams and reams of sheet music of songs I was into,” he says. “I never bought CDs – I always bought the manuscripts. This developed an unusual writing style whereby I’d write songs as scores rather than on a guitar or piano. One example of this approach was That Much Better. I gave up on guitar the first time I tried it as it seemed very unnatural to me. It was only after I bought my own one after my GCSEs that I started to pick it up properly. Then I bought a guitar book from a second-hand music shop in London.” As for John, after stints on the recorder and ocarina, he played a bit of classical guitar before picking the four-stringed variety, whereupon his dad drove him to Kingston to buy his first bass.
But first there was the little matter of further education to negotiate. John is the only member of Clocks to actually graduate, earning a 2:1 in Biology – he left Sheffield University in 2006 before he could start his Masters in Biology so he could concentrate on the band. The others deferred their places - Ed was reading German and Spanish at Nottingham Uni, Rich did a computer animation course at Portsmouth and Tom studied engineering at Cambridge. “We could technically go back this autumn, but this is my last chance to be in a band,” says Tom, "so I don’t think I will." Tom is unique in being given a two-year deferral. "There is only one other non-medical ‘degradation’ - as it’s known in Cambridge - that I’m aware of in recent years," he explains, "where somebody got a year off to train for the Commonwealth Games. I’m very grateful to my tutor for her help!” Tom’s career path thus far bears an uncanny similarity to Nick Drake’s - left Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam College after two years, signed to Island Records aged 20. People even comment on how much Tom physically resembles the legendarily tormented singer-songwriter. “He haunted me at Uni. Am I as haunted as him? I’m disturbed,” he jokes, adding: “We’ve got everything in common so far, spookily so…” “Just don’t let him near drugs,” warns Ed.
It was during Uni holidays that they played their first gigs. Their very first one was at Christmas, which they dubbed The Xmas Bash, in their dilapidated scout hut with its weedy PA, playing cover versions of Christmas tunes: Stop The Cavalry, Lonely This Christmas, Step Into Christmas, Merry Xmas Everybody, Last Christmas, Fairytale Of New York, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday featuring guest vocals from a bloke called Robin Willes who in 1957 played in a skiffle group with one Jimmy Page. Using the money raised from these local shows, the four decided to splash out on a demo. So they headed to Kent, to a ramshackle converted outbuilding owned by someone they found online. Over two days, and at a cost of £500, they recorded three tracks with Paul Midcalf, two of which, All I Can and Call On Me, were so strong they will be on Clocks’ forthcoming debut album, albeit in rewritten form.
With a new manager, Clocks couldn’t fail. In 2006 came their first exuberant burst of power pop rock on indie imprint Hungry Kid called That Much Better before Island Records made an offer. They produced some demos with Liam Watson, who formed Toe Rag Studios in the early ‘90s and has since used his collection of vintage musical instruments and recording equipment to create “retro edge” rock for The White Stripes, The Kills and The Zutons. In January 2008 they released their released first major label single, All I Can, a paean to a wannabe princess, with a poignant yet rousing verse of, “dazzlingly pretty, sparkle in the city, I'm doing all I can.”
Meanwhile, the band have been doing what young bands have – and fortunately love – to do: tour. They’ve done four UK tours in the last 18 months, either alone or as support to the likes of The Departure, The Fray and The Feeling. A gig with the latter in front of 1700 people at Loughborough University proved a turning point. “It was amazing,” enthuses Tom. “A hundred people cheered when I asked, ‘Who’s come to see us?’ It made me want to play that kind of venue.”
Next on the agenda for this potential-packed four-piece is the single Old Valve Radio, a stompalong, fist-waving, airwave-friendly anthem so upbeat and infectious it makes Oasis sound like Radiohead, a further single in early summer, and then the album. As yet untitled, Clocks’ debut LP, produced by Eliot (Bloc Party) James in Eastcote Studios in Ladbroke Grove where Arctic Monkeys recorded their last LP, will be a tune-stuffed, melody rich affair, full of three-minute pop marvels bursting at the seams with hooks, nagging guitar lines and boyishly pretty harmonies. “A lot of them are boy/girl songs with bittersweet lyrics,” explains Tom. “We’ve all had relationships that have gone horribly wrong and a lot of the songs deal with that. But then there’s a song like That Much Better [which, incidentally, Orange recently picked up on and made a video for to aid their online campaign], about night culture, which is quite poetic. “Not all my lyrics are based on my own personal experiences,” he adds, “but I do like to put myself in other people’s shoes or imagine myself in different situations. Some of them are collections of images – I suppose I just think a lot.”
Clocks are touring throughout 2008.

Their debut album is released on Island Records in September.