One of BYT’s favorites (we know, we know, there ARE many, but not many THIS adorable) Boy Least Likely To has FINALLY announced that they are returning (its been since 2006 since we heard anything new from them) with a new album “The Law of the Playground” in March.

March is so far away though. To carry you over are also contributing to the holiday season with a single called ‘The First Snowflake’, a little pop song about feeling lost and alone at christmas, that makes you happy in the way that all the best sad songs should. it will be officially released on December 15th but has the internet all a twitter already with the video rolling around pitchfork for a few hours already

To contribute, we are rerunning this classic interview Cale did with them back when which by last count probably 10 people total read. It is really good, complete with a Hui song review and talk of this upcoming album. You should read it now.

Wait, you’re not a The Boy Least Likely To fan? Here, listen to this:

Ok, now that you love them, a quick bio - two English chaps, lyricist/singer Jof Owen and composer/multi-instrumentalist Pete Hobbs, start their own record label Too Young to Die and put out ‘The Best Party Ever’ in early 2005. Everyone digs it. The End.

We wanted to see what they were up to now, here goes:

Brightest Young Things: First things first, what’s your most regretted impulse purchase?

Jof Owen: I’m never really that impulsive when I shop. I suffer from a kind of shopping bulimia. Where I pick up loads and loads of things and put them in my basket and then before I get to the checkout I go back round the shop and put most of them back. So I don’t usually make any impulse buys. I did buy some cheese last week because it was on offer and it was really rubbery and tasteless so I regretted that.

BYT: Tragic. So I wanted to go see you guys at the 9:30 Club in DC a while back and then all of a sudden it was sold out. Apparently the person who you opened for was some huge pop star? And I’m not even trying to prove my indie cred here; I really have no idea who he is. What gives?

JO: I guess that must have been James Blunt. He’s quite popular all over the world it seems. At that time I think he was number one in America. We had had our own short tour of the states booked already but then James asked us if we wanted to support him on his much more extensive tour and we thought it would be fun. And if not fun then certainly funny. We’re not really that similar musically, but that was kind of what appealed to us. And it was nice to play to audiences who would probably never have heard of us otherwise. It’s always more fun playing those shows than it is playing with bands that are similar to us. I don’t know why, it just always seems to be the way.

BYT: So basically you totally sold out. I kid. Seriously though, when are you coming back to the states? We need you.

JO: We’ll be back over there once we’ve finished recording this album. We didn’t want to come over there and play lots of songs that people didn’t know. So we’ll wait until it’s released and then hopefully a month or so later we’ll come out there. I’m looking forward to playing in the states again. I’ve always enjoyed our shows over there. America always seems to understand us.

BYT: So there is a new record in the works?

JO: Yes. Very much so. We’ve been recording it for a few months now. It seems to be taking a lot longer than the first one, but actually the first one took us a couple of years to make so it’s actually been a lot quicker this time. We’re recording it in the same sort of way that we recorded the first album, except this time we’ve got an engineer to help us work the equipment. But other than that it’s just us making it. We haven’t got a producer or anything. We’ve recorded about ten songs already and we hope to have the whole thing finished by august if we can.

BYT: How does it compare to the first one?

JO: I guess it still sounds like us, like the last record did. I’m not sure what the themes are yet. I usually wait until it gets released and then see what the people who review it think it is about. We’ve already started playing a couple of them live. One of them is called ‘I Box Up All the Butterflies’ and the other one is called ‘A Balloon on a Broken String’. We’ll probably start adding other songs into the set over the next eight months or so, but I don’t think we’ll be playing that much live anyway until it comes out.

BYT: Since there are only two of you, what is the live setup like?

JO: There are six or seven of us when we play live. We have to have extra musicians because Pete plays all the instruments on the records and obviously he wouldn’t be able to play all of them live. So we have a drummer, a bassist, a glockenspiel and keyboard player, a banjo player, and another keyboardist sometimes. They’re just our friends. We’ve known them all for years, so it’s always quite nice touring. Although we haven’t known the glockenspiel player that long. His name is Rob and he’s only been playing with us for about a six months. He seems very nice though. I like having him in the band, because he still gets excited about things that everyone else in the band takes for granted now. It’s like having a little puppy in the band again, and I think that rubs off on everyone else. I never want us to stop being excited about what we do and I never want to forget how lucky I am to be able to do what I always dreamed of.

BYT: Jof, stop being so god damn cute, I can’t stand it.

JO: Sorry…

BYT: Whatever, let’s go with it, which picture is the cutest:

a)

b)

c)

JO: I think the kitten one is probably the cutest. It reminds me of all the Misty Dixon covers. I used to have those record sleeves framed on my wall. I’m not usually a cat person. I’ve always had dogs, but in this instance I think the kitten wins. My favorite animal is a tortoise, but I’ve never had one as a pet. They sell them in a garden center near where I live though, so maybe if we ever make it as big as James Blunt I’ll buy a tortoise for myself. I’m not really into fast cars or anything like that so I’d need some sort of status symbol.

BYT: Last night I had a dream about a tortoise that humped lawn ornaments, no joke.

awkward silence

BYT: Who are the monsters exactly?

JO: The monsters are the things that everyone can turn into when they get older if they’re not careful. Monsters are usually born as human beings but just turn into monsters once they stop being a child. Although increasingly human beings seem to be turning into monsters at a much younger age. Most people know someone who has turned into a monster. They can often be found in shopping malls, licking their lips in front of window displays and muttering to themselves.

BYT: If you guys had an indie DJ dance night, what would it be called?

JO: It’s a bit of a boring answer but we’d probably call it ‘Too Young To Die’ after our record label. I think that would be quite a nice name for a club night. I think I’d like to be a DJ at my own club night. I always enjoy making the compilation CDs to be played before we go on stage. It takes me a couple of months to make them, but I think of it as a really important part of our shows.

BYT: No, it’s totally a great name, what about drink specials?

JO: I think we’d have cocktails as the specials. My favorite cocktail is a strawberry daiquiri. And I think we might have a shots menu as well. I recommend the Cocksucker Cowboy, a mixture of Baileys Irish cream and butterscotch schnapps. Delicious. I wish it was called something else though.

BYT: No, it’s totally a great name, what kind of stuff would we hear?

JO: I guess we’d play different things each week; otherwise our club nights would be a bit predictable. But there are some classic records that we would be almost guaranteed to play at some point in the night: ‘Her Jazz’ by Huggy Bear, ‘Young at Heart’ by Bananarama, ‘Since Yesterday’ by Strawberry Switchblade, ‘I’m Sticking With You’ by the Velvet Underground, ‘Don’t Talk to Me About Love’ by Altered Images, ‘Gifted’ by Katrina and V Twin, ‘Middle of the Road’ by Denim, and some Kenickie and some Dexys Midnight Runners, and definitely something by Nancy and Lee. And if I could I’d like to throw a bit of Daniel Johnston in there every now and then. And I’d like to play ‘Beautiful Cosmos’ by Ivor Cutler, but I’m not sure how easy that would be to dance to. And I’d always like to end the night with ‘Past, Present and Future’ by the Shangri Las. It’s a nice song to go out on…

BYT: You have this pretty well thought out…

JO: I did actually do some DJing the other week at a club in London. It wasn’t a very long set, only about an hour, but it was quite fun. I had a few regrets afterwards. I think maybe sometimes I tried to second guess what the people in the club wanted to hear and so I changed my mind at the last minute on some songs and then wished I’d played some songs that I didn’t get a chance to. I finished the set by playing ‘Police Officer’ by Smiley Culture. I have no idea why I even thought that would be a good song to play and I hadn’t played anything similar to it before then so it didn’t really work. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for ages afterwards. I think maybe the trick with DJing is not to put too much thought into it and to stick to a game plan.

BYT: Don’t be so hard on yourself. Can you tell us a little bit about the art concept for the band, who does your album covers/web site/etc.?

JO: My brother does all the artwork for our record sleeves. It’s not his job or anything, but I’ve always liked the way he draws and I always knew I wanted him to do the artwork for us. He often spends more time thinking about what he wants to draw than he actually does drawing it. But I like the scrappy nature of the drawings. It seems to suit the music we make. Our music is a bit of a mess sometimes so the artwork should be too.

BYT: Are you gonna keep going with this theme for the next album?

JO: We’ve just started working on the artwork for the next album. It’s nowhere near finished yet but I know there will be worms and butterflies and caterpillars and a donkey and a maypole somewhere on it. I think we’re going to have backgrounds on this next album too, whereas on the last one we just had the characters on plain backgrounds. So that’s the biggest development.

BYT: You should put a baby panda on it. If you had a baby panda what would you name it?

JO: Sadness.

BYT: Nice. Finally, we do one last thing where we get my day job co-worker Hui-Qing (a married-with-kids non-scenester 34-yr-old Chinese lady engineer) to review one song from the band we’re interviewing. She’ll give it a rating of 1-5 dumplings. You have to pick out the song for her to review though, so choose carefully, she’s hard to please.

JO: Hmmm, that’s a difficult one… but i think i’ll go for “My Tiger, My Heart” just cuz it hasn’t been a single so it doesn’t get reviewed that much, but it’s one of my favorites. I’m nervous now… I don’t want just one dumpling.

BYT: Excellent, thanx Jof, it’s been a pleasure!

JO: Lots of love

Ok Hui, take it away:

What a sad, sweet song! It is a little heart breaking to listen to the young artist softly and slowly singing out “We don’t want to grow up, but we have to grow up” Through out the whole song, you can hear little kids’ talking, playing, and laughing voice in the background. No one can ever stop growing up, but at least we would want to keep all those beautiful natures of childhood stay with us as longer as possible; so we can always talk and laugh innocently no matter how old we turn to; no pressures, no responsibilities, no obligations, and even a small candy bar can make us feel like the happiest person in the whole world for a loooong while. But is that possible?

Interesting enough, this song make me think about how I felt when I was in that certain age period. I can’t remember I ever had fear about growing up. As a matter of fact, I thinking I always wanted to be a grownup, and finally when I actually became a grownup, I was/am very happy to be one. Maybe someday, many many years later, I will have fear about growing old. :-)

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The Boy Least Likely To Official Site: http://www.theboyleastlikelyto.co.uk/
And Myspace Page: http://www.myspace.com/theboyleastlikelytouk
Fan Site: http://www.thegirlleastlikelyto.com/

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