Interview: The Faim on writing with Pete Wentz and hitting 1 million streams

This is your first time coming to Reading and Leeds Festival, what can we expect from your performance?

It will! It’ll be our first ever. It’ll be exciting, I mean, we’ve watched hours of YouTube videos – I’m sure it’s not going to do it justice.

The biggest thing you’re going to see is four guys who love playing music and playing songs that they’re really passionate about – I think that’s the biggest thing that we’ve always tried to put across, that we’re nothing but ourselves, we’re no different to anyone else.

Congrats on ‘Summer is a Curse’, it’s been streamed over 1 million times on Spotify which is amazing, how does that make you guys feel?

It’s actually insane! We’ve always imagined seeing that number at some point, but we hadn’t really thought about it too much like, “Oh, wouldn’t it be funny if we ended up hitting a million streams one day.” The fact we have is a real milestone for us, we’ve still got a long way to go and we’ve still got a lot of different bridges to cross, we’ve got a lot of time to grow and develop, but we’re really excited about the attention we’ve been getting. It’s been such a positive response and we couldn’t be happier with it, it’s a very personal song for us as well so we’re really glad it’s got that attention.

In the theme of ‘Summer is a Curse’ what would your perfect summer evening look like?

That’s a good question, hmm, my perfect summer evening would probably be a good day at the beach with really good weather, no wind, not too hot but hot enough to get into the water. There’s something really therapeutic about being in the water and close to the ocean – it’s really relaxing for me.

You worked with Pete Wentz on ‘Saints of the Sinners’ how did that come about?

We did! It pretty much all came about through John Feldmann our producer really, because he was just letting people that he knew know that he had an Australian band over writing with him and wanted to know if they wanted to listen to any songs or come and have a chat.

It was never really confirmed if Pete Wentz was going to come or not – he just kind of showed up, we had no idea if he was coming on the day! It was really cool, we really look up to Fall Out Boy and being able to connect with him on a personal level and get a little insight into his life and his journey as a musician – it makes you realise that these people are just guys who basically worked their asses off.

There’s just no wiggle room for people who aren’t going to give it everything in this industry, you have to love what you do and basically put every ounce of it into it – that’s how ‘Saints of the Sinners’ came about, talking about that passion for your vision.

You’ve said previously that Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco would be on your dream festival line up, what’s your favourite album from each band?

Ohhh, ahhh. I really like ‘From Under The Cork Tree’ by Fall Out Boy, I really really love that album. Panic! at the Disco I do love their old albums but I’m really feeling their new album, ‘Pray For The Wicked’ – actually no, I really like ‘Death of a Bachelor’ his voice is just incredible, he’s such a talented guy and seems so down to earth and passionate about music, I really respect him.

Which song are you most looking forward to performing at Reading and Leeds this year?

I’m very interested to see the type of response ‘Saint of the Sinners’ gets, it’s always a very energetic song for us and we’re very, very passionate about it. It’s just nice seeing the type of energy that a crowd can respond to and seeing how, especially because it’s the song that’s been out for the longest that people know the most words and know the vibe to. I really do love playing all our songs though, especially ‘Summer is a Curse’, there’s so much diversity on our setlist, so it’s really cool to see the responses we get.

You’ve been dodging the question recently about your album, what can you tell us about the upcoming release and how long do we have to wait for it?

There’s not that much I can tell you honestly, there’s so much in the works at the moment. I can tell you that it’s done, it’s all finished – we’ve recorded the songs and it’s just we wanna hold on and give it the best chance possible to reach as many people as possible, especially because we wanna release it at a time when we have time to talk about it. We’re touring so much so we want to find the right time to release it, we all want to do it now – in a perfect world we would. We want to do more music videos and really get the story out there as well.

What’s the weirdest thing anyone has ever thrown on stage at one of your performances?

Haha! There have been a few weird things thrown. Flowers aren’t weird, that’s actually really sweet. I’d say the weirdest thing was a bag of nuts – I really didn’t expect it, it wasn’t a big bag – it wasn’t even open. It was just a little bag of nuts.

How do you like to get pumped up before you take to the stage?

I have a lot of rituals and I’ve had a few of them for a long time. I do a lot of weird stuff; I pace around, I listen to music, I dance, I do my stretches. It’s kind of just like this natural routine that I do just to get myself psyched and pumped about the songs.

I like having my mind completely clear so I can just become the songs when I get on stage because they’re so personal and they mean so much to us, it’s easy when I’m completely relaxed and ready to go. I always have lemon and ginger tea, that’s one of my favourite things to have before a show.

If you had a food stall at Reading and Leeds what would you call it?

Hahah I don’t know, this is a really interesting question. I can make pretty good wraps – nah, actually that’s too hard. I’ll say burgers. A name… I’m thinking about trying to incorporate my last name somehow but it doesn’t work with burgers. Big Jimmy’s, just sounds like a burger stall but you can’t go wrong.

Who on the line up would you like to party with?

This is such a hard question. I think Post Malone would be pretty fun to party with, I’d love to know what he’s like behind closed doors.

The Faim bring some of the Australian heat with them on Friday at this year’s Reading Festival. You don’t want to disappoint them, do you?