Why Imperial Leisure only wrote ‘Through the Mountain’ during a full moon

Known for providing their fun time ska and rock around festivals like Glastonbury and Boomtown since 2008, Imperial Leisure make their much-anticipated comeback, but this time with an important single about men’s mental health and male suicide. Denis Smith, Imperial Leisure frontman, chats to Headliner about creating Can You Real as the lead single for their new album, Through The Mountain. Also why he and bandmate Scott would only get together to write and record around the time of the full moon each month, and more about their return in 2023.

Currently based out west in Bristol, Imperial Leisure was originally born out of the school friendship of Denis Smith and Scott Vining while growing up in London in the early 2000s.

The band were signed fairly swiftly after its formation, with lots of touring until their 2008 breakthrough with the single In A Letter, supported by Radio One, XFM and Kerrang! Among others. It also saw them become mainstays of the UK festival circuit, with appearances at Glastonbury, Bestival, Reading and Boomtown.

Frontman Denis Smith speaks from home in Bristol, having his morning coffee and recovering from a recent tour. “I’ve got a cold but it’s completely self-inflicted, the guilt and burden lie squarely on my shoulders,” he says. Smith’s younger days saw him living between Reading and Nigeria, before settling in London until band life brought him to Bristol.

As the fight goes on to save grassroots music venues, Smith adds weight to this saying, “You don’t have Imperial Leisure without those small venues. I remember playing at The Hope and Anchor in Islington, and you’d play in the basement there which is the size of a bedroom. It was quite a feat, getting a 10-piece ska band in there, and you’d feel the breath of someone in the audience on your face.”

The events of 2020 sadly not only saw many small and local businesses packing up, but many musicians also went on extended hiatus or even changed careers completely. For Imperial Leisure, however, the reverse was the case.

“I’d packed up the band about a year earlier to pursue other things,” Smith says. “But that time on pause really made me think about things. It was an awful time for me financially, like with most people! But it made me really think about what I wanted and didn’t want in life. And when the option of touring was completely taken away like that, it was a case of ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’.”

Imperial Leisure recorded their latest album Through the Mountain in Cornwall, with the very particular quirk that they would only get together to write and record during the week of a full moon each month.

“Once you lock into that energy, it becomes so natural doing it that way,” Smith says. “It would just cause this tidal wave to rise up and down within us — I’d recommend anyone try making music this way. So much emotion was just flowing out of me. Scott and I were coming up with all these ideas so quickly. But then afterwards I was just utterly broken. On one of the days driving back from the studio to Bristol, I was just pitifully crying for nearly half an hour!”

This fascinating experiment has yielded fascinating results. Because, when it comes to the ska bands of the turn of the century (say, Reel Big Fish or Less Than Jake), it’s pretty fair to say you know what you’re getting when you hit play. This is not something you can levy at Through the Mountain, where synths, a huge range of vocal styles from Smith and brass parts which feel like part of the music rather than its defining feature, mean it’s a wonderfully varied record.

The same can be said of album opener and lead single Can You Real, a potent and excellent track that opens with bass synths and piano, somehow leading to huge brass parts and a Justin Timberlake Señorita call and response style ending. And yet, it’s a song about male suicide (suicide is one of the leading killers of men in the UK, and men are four times more likely to commit it than women) that tackles the issue without moroseness or self-importance.

“All our other albums have been about being happy and being in a happy place,” Smith says. “This was our first album coming out of a dark energy. The name of this track is about trying to get people to be more honest with themselves. Because male instability is so often manifesting as suicide at the moment. 

"Men can be so damaging to themselves and the people around them. The song asks if we can stop brushing over this and pretending there isn’t a massive problem. Because the most important thing for me was actually realising I was in trouble. I’d left myself vulnerable by building this fake world up around myself.”

Regarding the call-and-response ending, he says, “I was nervous about having that in there, as it does feel a bit pop. But it came about when I was imagining being in this Alexandra Palace or Madison Square Garden-sized venue, and attempting to transport this feeling across the auditorium to all these people and trying to get people to believe in themselves. Like a call to the soul. Going high and low in the music is like going through the highs and lows in life, that’s what helps to bring out those feelings stuck inside.”

Imperial Leisure are in full festival season right now, and while they do explore some darker material on their excellent new album, it’s still the perfect soundtrack for summer, upcoming full moons, and everything in between. Go and luxuriate in it.