The Great Internet Sharing Conundrum with Crouton Cannon

I love a bit of social commentary - but wait! Before you click away I promise this isn't about life-changing elections or global pandemics of any kind. London band Crouton Cannon (aka one of the best band names I've ever heard) have released their latest single 'Share', based on the idea of what can be found out about a person if you simply googled their name. A topic we should all be paying attention to.

But first you have to understand the kind of band Crouton Cannon is. If you didn't already guess from their band name, taken from an experience of a crouton being fired at band leader Alex Marshall at a gig, they aren't a band with the most serious edge. Their youtube channel itself has a multitude of videos introducing you to the players in a unique way.

As well as Alex Marshall on guitar and backing vocals, you'll find Louise O'Connor on lead vocals, Daniel Marks on keyboards, Jonny Cheung on bass guitar and Ben Swan on drums and backing vocals. Most of whom answer thought-provoking questions like 'what is your favourite kind of soup?' and 'what is your favourite thing to clean?' I won't spoil their answers but for me my favourite soup has got to be this three bean thing we have at home with tomato and chilli. Phwoah.

The first music video you'll find on Crouton Cannon's youtube channel is this one for 'Credit'. Shot on the floating Soup Studios moored in East London, the band all play together and it's easy to see how much fun they'd be as a live band. The grainy studio shots are interspersed with additional backing vocal parts in front of a green screen. The music is inspired, with much of the melody strung together with Alex's guitar playing and Daniel's electric piano lines, at times sounding like 1970's jazz-influenced progressive rock, but this is far too upbeat and funky to slot into that generalisation. Jonny goes between holding down the rhythm with Ben and assisting in the melodic highlights with the lead instruments. The backing vocal blend the band has with Louise is a great mix, whose delivery is confident without venturing into a state of 'Lead singer with backing band' kind of role. Nobody overshadows anyone else, and that's a refreshing status quo to maintain in a band like this. Crouton Cannon would later adapt Credit for Vulfpeck's Front The Flyers challenge, giving the piece a wildly different sound, but with equally enough spirit.

As well as releasing singles 'Expressing' and 'Find The One', Crouton Cannon found themselves in a similar position to everyone else over the summer with little to do but a lot of time to do it in. In a socially distanced recording, they covered Lake Street Dive's 'How Good It Feels', showing that even apart, the band can still perform together tightly. In contrast to their performance of Credit, this one is a slower affair, showing the band has diversity in their playing. Best enjoyed with a glass of wine and an open fire.

'Boogie Blight' released a month later, features a return to an upbeat Crouton Cannon. Ben Swan's drums open the piece and keep the beat driving forward with some percussion sprinkled in. Daniel Marks' keyboard serves just as much as a beat with Jonny Cheung dancing around the fretboard. At times Alex Marshall's guitar has a Nile Rodger's flavour. Louise O'Connor delivers some interesting lyrics (written by Alex) that I feel get a little lost with the instrumentation. It would be overindulgent to post the entire lyric here though I certainly recommend reading the whole thing, check out this first verse; 'In her mind, she hears this music - that’s hallucination, if she can’t stop the shakes she’ll make us get out the restraints. George made a mistake when he tried to quit cold turkey, and the Jacksons knew just exactly where to place the blame.' What really enhances the feeling in this track is the video by Katy Annand featuring Joseph Junkere infectiously dancing his heart out in a suit.

And that brings us to Crouton Cannon's latest single 'Share', which has been given the band's most interesting music video so far. This features each band member's point of view in the familiar setting of Soup Studios, that and creative overlays showing more information about each member that you can find on Google. In terms of the music, Share begins softly, with a light touch at the electric piano from Marks and percussion from Swan. Backing vocals are smooth, and as you are lulled into a false sense of security, Swan strikes hard at the snare and Share quickly evolves into the heaviest song featured here. The lyrics are amongst the best of the Cannon's canon so far;

'House special chow mein and chicken satay, after you’d only done fifty steps that day. With all of this access, we can reduce your excess. We are here for you when you want to share, when you think no one could possibly care, all we want from you: please don’t spare no detail, your inside voice is now up for sale.'

Helpfully, these humorous (if slightly troubling) lyrics run along the bottom of the frame. Usually Crouton Cannon would release both a music video and lyric video, but this concept combines the two and uses the best of both worlds. The end of the video shows the power of tailored ads for each member of the band, highlighting just how different everyone's experience of the internet can be in the New Twenties. Read on to hear more about the wonderful world of Crouton Cannon from the band themselves! (Disclaimer: Q&A Answers not necessarily found on Google prior to publishing).

1. Crouton Cannon's latest single, 'Share', delves into the issues about being too open online - what was the breaking point where you guys felt a song was needed about that? 

Alex: It was insured by a story about a woman who was unaware she was expecting and kept getting marketing aimed at pregnant women. Her buying habits somehow revealed it before she even knew.

Ben: I think it’s terrifying, the way the social media algorithms build a profile of what they think you want to see based on your clicking history. We really need to be careful with what we are sharing on our personal pages - I think personalised ads will lead to the end of democracy.

2. The band began recording 'Share' back in January 2019, why the long wait?

Alex: We recorded an album’s worth of material in January 2019. New artists' releases can fall on deaf ears until you build up contacts and a following. The strategy so far has been all singles, gaining momentum with each one. The overdubs, mixing and mastering for Share itself took until the autumn, but we’ve been slowly releasing tracks from that recording session since November 2019.

3. You've recorded aboard Soup Studios! What's it like recording on the seven seas?

Alex: It’s a gorgeous and great sounding studio, so it’s a pleasure to record there. And totally normal until high tide! In one take of ‘Credit’, we’re pretty sure you can hear the moment a wave hits.

Ben: I love that place. When the boat rocks it can almost throw you off your playing - you have to keep focused.

4. Going further back, Alex, what inspired the lyrics on 'Credit’?

Alex: ‘Credit’ was the first of our songs I wrote. I had been demoing the tunes as instrumentals initially, unsure if there would be lyrics at all. I was sitting in a Bill’s Cafe in Salisbury and thought that writing a song about love and loss of a coffee loyalty card could be quirky and funny. That set a precedent for the rest of our songs, making mundane and silly things sound serious and heartfelt.

5. The band later adapted 'Credit' for Vulfpeck's Front The Flyers challenge, tell us more about that.

Alex: Vulfpeck is a huge influence on our writing and the musicianship of the whole band. We spent a good amount of our recording session jamming their tunes - we’re big fans! We saw Vulfpeck were inviting fans to write lyrics to the instrumental ’Speedwalker’ and greenscreen themselves over the video. We couldn’t miss the chance to reach their fans, a big proportion of whom would love our music, so we put together the recording and filming remotely quickly and edited over their video. It was ‘Vulfmom approved’, by Joe Dart’s mum.

Jonny: I enjoyed receiving my first ever public choreography ‘Credit’ here.

6. Jonny, when interpreting Alex's songwriting, do you have free reign to find a bassline that fits the music, or is it more rigid than that?

Jonny: Definitely! It’s interesting as Alex usually writes a guide bass track which I quite like to take ideas from due to the fact that they’re unconventional to play on bass (or not the first thing I’d naturally play if I was just given the chords). I can then mould and improvise from there, and got to do that in the bridge for ‘Share’ especially!

7. Louise, the cover of 'How Good It Feels' by Lake Street Dive is awesome, who came up with the idea of doing that cover in the lockdown video?

Louise: That would be me! Guilty! I am a huge fan of Lake Street Dive and Rachel Price’s voice and sassy performances in particular. I always think it’s interesting to see how lyrics can be interpreted differently depending on what’s going on in your life. During lockdown I definitely felt that ‘How Good It Feels’ really encapsulated my joy at slowing down and being less busy initially...until the novelty wore off haha it felt like a great fit for a lockdown cover and it was great to be able to work on a project with the band remotely.

8. The video for 'Boogie Blight' is great fun! How did Joseph Junkere and Katy Annand become involved with the project?

Alex: We recorded video in the studio sessions for most of the songs, but needed something for Boogie Blight. I pictured someone being forced to dance by the ‘Boogie Blight’ and pulling crazier and crazier moves. Katy, the filmmaker is my sister-in-law and Joseph is her partner, so I kept it in the family!

9. 'Favourite Thing To Clean' is...an excellent question. Who came up with the questions for your youtube interviews?

Alex: Most of the questions were me - that’s my ridiculous sense of humour. They do cut to the root of someone’s personality though. Embarrassingly, I didn’t have an answer to a lot of them when the camera was turned around on me. There’s a lot more of those band interviews to come.

Ben: I was so thrown off by those questions that I actually answered some of them incorrectly. Turns out I barely know who I am.

10. Daniel, you're conspicuous by your absence in the interview videos, were you unable to make it?

Daniel: I was actually there but because I’m so short you couldn’t see me! In actual fact I was working abroad on a cruise ship at that time, so was unable to physically take part in the interviews but I do as much as I can with very limited WiFi!

11. I love the Crouton Cannon logo, who's responsible for that? 

Alex: My friend Lucy Davis designed the logo and album artwork. And there’s a font coming soon! The logo was initially going to be a crouton with ‘CC’ on it, but it’s hard to make a crouton come across convincingly in a drawing! I was initially resistant to a literal ‘crouton cannon’ but Lucy’s interpretation is great.

12. Aside from the obviously brilliant name you've chosen for your band, were there any others in the running that didn't make it?

Alex: Oh yes. We were informally called Funky Soup for a long time. The band shot my previous favourite, ’Stanky’, down early (thank goodness). There was also Anyan, Ooberjean and Shemo Mejamo. We couldn't decide together so I made the decision on Crouton Cannon. 

Ben: I was actually quite vocal about his disappointment at the final name choice - poor Alex. Fortunately it’s growing on me. Anything’s better than Funky Soup.

13. It's been a while since most people performed in front of an audience. Ben, since the band has only performed a couple of times live, what were those gigs like?

Ben: We've only done two gigs together as a band. The first gig was great. Any bands first gig is going to be in front of mostly their friends and that's what that gig was. It was all great until my friend got punched and ended up with a black eye. The second gig - I'll be honest, I didn't enjoy gigging in London with all the COVID restrictions. There were too many rules and it felt a bit stressful. I think everyone was feeling it. So roll on the next gig! Post-COVID ideally.

14. A question for everyone: if you could delete your personal online presence tomorrow, would you do it?

Alex: I wish I would - it’s so easy to waste hours on it and I often fall victim to ‘compare and despair’ looking at other people’s projected successes. But I still feel it's a necessity now to promote yourself as a musician and artist.

Jonny: I wouldn’t delete everything, but definitely would like to delete all the accounts I don’t remember creating…

Daniel: 100%! I think social media is a bad thing in today’s society, especially young teens and adults. I try to use it mainly for messaging people and to promote myself as a musician, but sometimes you can’t help but scroll a little. The only thing I would keep are all the photos of my family, friends and awesome travel adventures

Ben: Good question. I feel like the idea behind social media is actually great, it’s just unfortunately taken a sinister turn in the past few years...For that reason, I wouldn’t delete it, I’d just cut down on posting and clicking on stuff until it sorts its shit out. 

15. You've released a string of singles, but is there a more collective work coming like an EP in the future? 

Alex: The singles we’ve released are from a record we’ll put out on one package next year called ‘Primordial Soup’. The songs are already recorded. New tunes are in the pipeline!

Ben: We’re looking at ways to get together for rehearsals more often, pandemic allowing, so we can focus harder on writing more material. We’ve jammed a couple of Alex’s new tunes and they’re sounding top. It’s exciting to think about what else could come out…

16. Finally, what would Cher share if Cher shared 'Share'?

"My mom said to me, 'You know sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man,' and I said, 'Mom, I am a rich man.'"

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Follow Crouton Cannon across their social media pages @croutoncannon.