An interview with White Lies

Avery Durnan / Staff Writer / The USD Vista

“Everything has got to be love or death” the White Lies dramatically sing. The British trio formed the band about a year ago and since then have accrued quite the following. Riding the recent British invasion musical phenomenon, the band recently toured major U.S. clubs, including Los Angeles’ The Roxy last Thursday, even though they are under the American drinking age.

Heralded as close to a cultish musical phenomenon, fans have been driven to tears at White Lies shows where the three British gentlemen address the world’s major issues through their music. From romance to the morals of electric shock therapy, the band fearlessly pursues the darker questions in life, as evidenced by their newly released EP entitled “Death.”

Harry McVeigh, lead singer and guitar player for The White Lies, took a few minutes to chat with The Vista before their show at The Roxy

Vista: How did the band get started?
Harry: We all met a long, long, long time ago, we’re old friends from school. Charles and Jack actually met each other in primary school. But we just started White Lies a year ago.

V: Only a year ago? How has the past year been?
H: Well, it’s been crazy. It has been a big compliment to us that people like our music and that they like it enough to support us as much as they have. It means a lot and it has been an amazing year in so many ways. We’re all only twenty, so it’s sort of a great coincidence. Things just took off for us and now we’re doing loads of shows.

V: How do you like playing the States?
H: We were in America this summer and we’re back again now so I guess you can say we like it pretty well! We played Lollapalooza in Chicago, which was a lot of fun, and we’ve also played San Francisco, L.A. and New York. L.A. is beautiful, we’re really excited to play tonight at the Roxy. It’s great over here, and we love it. People are a lot less cynical and appreciate music more than people at home. We love the enthusiasm.

V: Where is your favorite place to perform?
H: I would have to say three places in particular. London is special because that’s sort of where we’re from so our friends and family come down whenever we play there and there’s a little party after the show, which is fun. The other two would be New York because I love the city and it’s an amazing place and Tokyo because it’s insane. All the stories you’ve heard are true about Japan and it is wild! The fans are great there but a little out of control. We played the Fiji Raw festival a while back and people were waiting outside our hotel when we got there. We had really just released one tiny little single, but they were all there, screaming and so on. It was quite strange, come to think of it.

V: If you had to pick a White Lies track for a random listener, what would it be?
H: “Fifty on our Foreheads.” I love playing it live and I feel like it’s a good taster for someone who hasn’t heard of us before.

While The White Lies have not yet played San Diego, they hope to very soon. Until then, go listen to myspace.com/whitelies.