Party: Saint Raymond // Louis Berry // Shannon Saunders // Plug Sheffield // Fri 27th Nov

Party: Saint Raymond // Louis Berry // Shannon Saunders // Plug Sheffield // Fri 27th Nov

It’s not just about the game, says Saint Raymond. As anyone who goes to football regularly knows it’s also about meeting up with your mates to discuss it all beforehand, and that celebratory (or consoling) drink afterwards. It’s about walking to the ground together then chanting, singing, cheering and even sometimes weeping with a crowd of people all feeling the same way.

A life-long Notts County fan, he smiles ruefully as he admits that the football can sometimes be the worst part of the day. ‘It’s that whole thing surrounding it that I love. I went to my first game when I was a toddler, and I’ve been going ever since. I think that’s why I have a lots of “woahs” and “ooohs” in my songs, from chanting at football grounds.’

When he was seven, he discovered that there were other ways of getting that sense of being carried along by the crowd, of feeling part of something bigger than himself, when his older brothers took him to see Oasis play at Nottingham Arena. He knew then what he wanted to do, picking up the guitar pretty much as soon as he got home. ‘I just fell in love with music,’ he says.
With a three siblings who were much older, he grew up surrounded by a wide range of music from dance to indie, and loved hearing about their exploits in Ibiza, or at festivals. But as his guitar playing improved, Callum also started to discover music of his own: The Kooks, The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Bombay Bicycle Club. Then later everything from Kanye West and Jay-Z to Bon Iver. ‘For me what’s important is the song, not the genre. I just started listening to everything, and taking it all in.’

By the age of 14, he was playing open mic nights around Nottingham, learning his craft the hard way. ‘I just gigged anywhere. Sometimes my mates would trek up to watch, but a lot of the time there wouldn’t be many people there.’

Honed through constant live performance, the songs on Saint Raymond’s debut album Young Blood offer an intoxicating mix of euphoric, feel-good choruses and teenage angst. It’s the sound of summer festivals and a crowd singing its team to victory, with songs about falling in and out of love, taking chances and just having fun. But Saint Raymond also has a tender, contemplative side. Witness As We Are now, written as his friends were all leaving for uni, looking back with nostalgia at the good times they’d had, but also celebrating change; or the gentle Carry Her Home, written alone in a room not long after the death of his grandmother, and sung with just a piano and subtle strings.

It’s taken a while to fully capture the energy of his live shows in the studio, to do his infectious songs full justice. In London, he worked with Richard Wilkinson (Amy Winehouse, Hot Chip, Adele), and Hastings production duo Artery Music. In the US, he recorded with Jacknife Lee (whose many credits include REM, Snow Patrol and Kasabian) at his home in Topanga Canyon, a wild, bohemian and often eccentric enclave just outside Los Angeles where wild coyotes still howl at night. One morning, on the drive up the mountain, Callum saw a man killing a rattlesnake with a spade, and he realised he’d come a long way from home.

With such tales to tell, it’s easy to forget that Saint Raymond is only just 20-years-old. Young Blood is a fitting title for an album that shows the real story is just beginning.