Phil Selway on AARUK

Philip Selway talks to AARUK at Liverpool Sound City 2011, his first show of the year, for an interviewer with an eye on Spanish and Latin American listeners. When he started thinking about Familial he was listening to Juana Molina and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, whose singing felt akin to what he was after, and since he had to learn to sing for the record, they were his guideposts. It began privately, playing with ideas, and took several steps of building faith in the songs before he had a record he would be happy to play to people. The title came last, out of the artwork, when he saw what the artists were answering in the music.

The players on the album came out of Neil Finn's Seven Worlds Collide, where he had gone purely as a drummer and played his songs in the downtime. For the road he wanted musicians nearer home, and a new angle on songs that on record are “almost kind of pillow talk”. The live band is Adem, who records for Domino, and three musicians he met when they were playing for Bat for Lashes on tour with Radiohead. His label, Bella Union, came through talks with Simon Raymonde, and he admires Raymonde's sense of how to get music out to people. He plays Truck Festival in July, close to his home in Oxfordshire.

The King of Limbs was made faster than anything before it, and its release, digital first and the special edition about three months later, follows In Rainbows, holding everything back so nothing leaks and sending it to the pressing plants on the day. Asked about Radiohead's standing, he says they are as “riddled with insecurities” as any band, with a lot of history between them. He would love to tour Latin America, but would have to save up first, touring being an expensive business.