Phil Selway on Phantom 105.2

Philip Selway talks to the Irish station Phantom 105.2 at Electric Picnic on the day of his set there, the first he will play to an English-speaking audience. His band for Familial came out of Neil Finn's Seven Worlds Collide sessions in New Zealand, where he had gone as a drummer, found plenty of other drummers and slipped down the list, so he took to playing his own songs in quiet corners. People picked up on them, and “The Ties That Bind Us” was the first song they all played together. Most of the record was made with Lisa Germano, Sebastian Steinberg, and Glenn Kotche and Pat Sansone of Wilco.

He had not finished a lyric since he was a teenager, and had to find a singing voice as well. The songs had been gathering for about seven years, and only three years ago did he see that they made a collection. What pushed him on was time passing quickly, and the thought that “if I don't do it now I won't do it”. The title came last, after mastering, from the sleeve's family with woodland things sprouting from their faces, and he likes that “it's a tricky word for people to say so it'll stick in your mind”.