Whilst tides of recent tracks filled with reverb reservoirs, hidden vocals, buried guitars and ambient, DIY, bedroom ambience seem to dominate the blogosphere, a guy can celebrate when he hears some good ole, guitar-driven, cocksure Rock. And while many-a-critic (note: if I ever refer to myself as that, shut this shit down asap) may say the Strokes, White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the like already gave us enough bluesy, garage rock revival for the decade, I’ll take riffs and licks 4 days. Thus, England’s Band of Skulls was just what the doctor ordered. I stumbled upon the power trio via their gusty “I Am What I Am” video; a catchy mix of bold riffage, male-female harmonies and well-honed songwriting. Just before playing a few London shows with the Black Keys, bassist/vocalist Emma Richardson spoke to me about their new record, Jack White, and SXSW beer.

Apes on Tape: So you’re in the middle of a few London dates right now, correct?

Emma Richardson: Yeah, we’ve got three at Alexandra, the Palace, in the next coming weekend.

Nice. And how’s reception at home right now? I know sometimes there are different simultaneous receptions across the Pond. Is it as strong over there?

Yeah, it’s really cool actually! These shows, the tour is with the Black Keys. It’s been going really well.

Oh, no way?

Yeah it’s a lot of people.

I bet, I bet. Are you guys big fans of the Black Keys?

Yeah, they’re a great band. They’ve released a lot of records and I own a lot of them. So yeah, I’m a big fan. It’s great to be able to watch them every night as well.

Well, I’m curious about your songwriting process. You’ll have a song like “Devil Takes Care of His Own” or “Sweet Sour” and then swing the other way with something like “Lay My Head Down”. I’m wondering how that pans out. Are you sharing duties on every song, splitting them out? How do you guys go about that?

It’s different with every song, but a lot of the tracks are a combination of the three of us writing. Someone will come up with a melody or a verse or a chorus, show that to somebody else, then we add parts to it or take parts away. But literally, it’s a big collaboration. With some songs, someone may have the full lyrics or both a strong verse and chorus. But it is very much a three-way combination of us all contributing to it.

Very cool. Speaking of dynamics, I read Russell said you wrote this new album with “beefier songs for beefier stages”. We’re you writing this album with the live element in mind?

More or less. We stopped touring for about a year or so. With the first album, we had an idea in mind of how we wanted it then worked that. It’s exciting to be playing those live for audiences now.

As someone who’s played in a power trio, I’m very impressed at how big of a sound the three of you have created. Did you sit down then and discuss, you know, how to individually contribute to create as large as presence as possible? Did you have that conversation or did it just happen?

We just, well, we generally don’t talk much. We just play (laughs). Then if something happens that we like it, we record it. Then we might individually work on it and come back with the best ideas.

Less talk. More play.

Yeah. Pretty much (laughs).

So I was first introduced to you via the video for “I Know What I Am”. I felt a White Stripes aesthetic going on. Maybe it was just the minimal, black-red-white color scheme and some similar sounds. But are they a big influence? Any validity to my theory?

Yeah. Obviously, we’re big fans of Jack White and what he’s done. I’d say we might have similar record collections. You know, that kind of sound that he’s inspired by, the early blues thing, is a popular style of music.

Yeah, absolutely.

But aesthetic wise, that video was shot just off in a black room and we wanted to add something different to it. So we used some of our paintings for that specific video and just kept the artwork in-house and used that style.

I definitely dug the video, by the way. So I was actually just at Jack White’s Third Man Records in Nashville, and they were excited about him performing at Sasquatch. You guys aren’t headed there, but do play Coachella festival. Any thoughts on that?

Coachella, yeah, really excited. And the fact that it’s two weekend’s running. There’s a lot of bands that we really want to check out. Hopefully we’ll get the chance to get to see some people play. But yeah, really excited about playing there.

I haven’t actually talked to any artists yet about the double structure set-up they’ve moved to. What’s your opinion of doing the same performance, same place, same environment, but just different weekends?

Oh yeah, definitely! I think it changes each night. Like with these three shows with the Black Keys, it’s going to be a different crowd and a different atmosphere. So I’m just looking forward to it, pretty much. We’ll change the set up a little bit maybe and change the songs around. But just planning to enjoy it, as much as we can.

Yeah, it’s tough not to have a good time there. And you have some West Coast dates after that. You’re definitely playing some of the better venues out there (Seattle’s Neptune, Vancouver’s Commodore). Have you played the West Coast often before? Have you toured those venues before.

Yeah, yeah. We’ve played up in Portland and down in California, done a couple of tours there. So it will be nice to go back there, especially because it’s freezing in England at the moment. Looking forward to the summer.

(Laughs) Feel you on that one. Speaking of coming back, I know you’re going to SXSW and have been there before. But you’ve kind of blown up this past fall, in America at least, so are you guys excited to see how this year’s reception compares to years past?

Um, well our album’s just come out yesterday in the U.S. So it will be interesting to see the reaction we get when we play it live for the first time there. You know, see what people think of the record and actually get to play the new songs. That’s going to be exciting.

And are you excited for the BBQ here in Austin? Did you try some last time you were here?

Yeah, we had a great time. Though it’s really hectic. There are SO many bands in the same place, I don’t think I’ve ever had that before. Just thousands of people playing… But looking forward to the shows and the BBQ. And the beer.