If you were to hazard a guess at what 50 per cent of an acclaimed soul-funk-electronic-dance crossover collective does on a day off from touring, playing golf would probably not be the most obvious answer. But Tom McFarland of Jungle is an avid devotee of the sport. The day after we talk, the band that he fronts with Josh Lloyd-Watson will play the iconic Red Rocks venue, in Colorado. The next weekend there’s their second Coachella date to negotiate. Today, however, he is preparing to head out to play 18 holes.
“I actually played in Howth a couple of weekends ago – I was DJing in Dublin on Easter weekend, and I took my golf clubs,” he says. “So I’m looking forward to playing Beyond the Pale; apparently the golf in Wicklow is good as well. My handicap?” He grimaces. “It’s 14.9 at the moment. Extremely average – but on the better side of average, I would say.”
For that Beyond the Pale appearance this month Jungle will be headlining the music festival at the Glendalough Estate, joined on stage by the vocalist Lydia Kitto and a host of musicians and dancers. The band are riding high: as well as their success in the US, where their second album, Loving in Stereo, brought them to new audiences, they recently beat Blur and Young Fathers to be named best British group at the Brits.
“Did I fancy our chances?” McFarland says, chuckling. “We’re always the sort of people who never expect that kind of thing to happen to us. Being nominated and being asked to perform at the ceremony was enough for us, really, so actually winning it was just the icing on the cake. It was a really fun night, and it was great to be able to share it with all the dancers, all of our crew, all of our band ... and my wife was there, which was amazing. For us, the accolades aren’t the most important thing – but it’s nice to be recognised by the industry.”
Jungle’s Brits performance of their song Back on 74 was one of the impeccably choreographed and stylish productions that have become synonymous with the band, who broke through with Busy Earnin’ in 2014. Their visuals and music videos are intrinsic to their music, which is something of a rarity.
“Yeah, let’s be honest, it’s a massive waste of money,” McFarland admits, laughing. “But we love making videos, and working with choreographers and dancers. You could argue that Back on 74 might not be the song that it is without that music video, and without all those people on TikTok trying to replicate it. So, to play devil’s advocate, if we hadn’t made that music video, we might not be playing the shows that we’re playing at the moment, and the show at Coachella might have been smaller, and we might not be playing the O2 in London in September. We’re fully aware that people seem to be dismissive of music videos as an art form these days, but ... f**k ’em, really.”
The TikTok dance challenge inspired by the video saw the track spread like wildfire across the social media platform. Going viral on TikTok, says McFarland, has its positives and negatives.
“It’s such a double-edged sword, isn’t it?” he says. “All this stuff. Spotify’s amazing, but they’re also f**king ripping us off – same with Apple Music, same with Amazon, whatever, these big corporations trying to stick their nose into people’s creativity, and claiming that they have some sort of ownership over it because they are ‘helping artists’ and ‘being the good guys’.” He sighs. “But, at the end of the day, they help our music reach millions more people than we’d be able to reach if we were just trying to get stocked in tiny record shops across the world. So you can’t sit there and beat up on it too much, but I do wish the model was a little more sympathetic, financially, towards artists.”
Jungle have flown under the radar for many people over the years, an indie band capable of headlining festivals and scoring high-charting albums but far from a household name. They have quietly conquered both the online and live realms. “But I like not having the spotlight on us the whole time,” McFarland says, smiling. “We’ve just quietly gone about our business and worked really hard over the last 10 years. It’s self-satisfaction, really, that we’ve stuck with our ethos over the years. People make concept albums, but we’ve sort of made a concept band. And that’s kind of quite funny, that we’ve managed to do that and keep it going. Jungle has always been a place where we can escape real life and escape the nonsense of awards, and people, and ... life, essentially.”
To outsiders, the band’s profile boost after Loving in Stereo might have felt jarring; suddenly, this indie-minded soul collective were on tour supporting Billie Eilish and playing arenas.
People make concept albums, but we’ve sort of made a concept band
— Tom McFarland of Jungle
“When you’re a kid you dream of it,” he says of those big gigs. “When you see your idols as a teenager doing amazing things growing up, you obviously want to follow suit. I don’t think we ever expected success to happen, [but] playing arenas is actually really great, because it’s easy to tour: our buses have enough space and your crew aren’t really stressed trying to cram a massive amount of production into a tiny venue.
“We’ve always been over-ambitious in terms of what we bring to a venue or a festival, and sometimes when you turn up to a 1,000-capacity venue in America you’re, like, ‘Oh, f**k. We really f**ked ourselves here.’ So, actually, the bigger venues that you play, it actually becomes easier.”
It’s a decade since Busy Earnin’ put Jungle on the map, and the song remains their best-known, largely thanks to its ubiquitousness in various TV shows, ads and sports montages. McFarland has not grown tired of the track that has become their signature song.
“When we were making the second album there was a slight sense of, ‘Oh, f**k. What are we gonna do next?’ But I think we quite quickly got over that,” he says. “We’ve never not played that song in a live set; it’d be like going to see The Strokes and them not playing Last Nite. It’d be a bit of a f**k-you to your fans. But it’s never felt like a chore. We’ve actually started playing it at the beginning of our sets, which is interesting: ‘Here you go, here’s what you all came for – now we’re going to explore the rest of the catalogue.’”
Four albums in – their most recent was last year’s Volcano – and Jungle are determined to keep innovating. The success of Loving in Stereo galvanised them to approach the recording of Volcano from a different perspective, where the live process was at the forefront of their minds.
“We always want to make sure we’re challenging ourselves to do new things and collaborate with new people,” he says. “On Volcano it was saying, ‘Actually, we don’t want to sing on this album – let’s get Lydia [Kitto] involved,’ and she’s now become the de facto third member of Jungle. So there have been these little evolutionary steps that make it feel fresh to us, and keep the creative process interesting and different. I think if we didn’t have that, it’d probably start to feel quite stagnant quite quickly.”
They are always thinking about new music, McFarland says, but their busy year of touring means it will probably be late 2024 or early 2025 before they have the time and space to do something about it. Whenever album number five materialises, though, it’s safe to say that it won’t be laden with ballads; McFarland said last year that “people come to see us because they want to have fun”. Is that the remit, going forward?
“I think so, but we can never tell – we might sit down at the end of next year and realise that we’ve got an absolutely world-class jazz record sitting on the desk in front of us,” he says, grinning, as he grabs his clubs and prepares to head out on the golf course. “It’s not incredibly likely, but who knows? We’re always just looking to make music that we love and that we can dance to. And if that translates to our audience, then that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Jungle headline Beyond the Pale, at the Glendalough Estate, Co Wicklow, on Friday June 21st; the festival runs until Sunday June 23rd
