We are delighted to welcome Will Pearce, the creative force behind the musical project Norm Archer. Will has just released his latest album, a compelling record titled verb, and it offers a fantastic window into his unique blend of indie rock and home recording artistry.
Today, we’re diving deep into the album’s creation: exploring his distinctive songwriting and composing process, digging into what inspired some of the album’s particular tracks, and discussing the overall journey that brought verb to life. Of course, we’ll also be looking ahead to hear about Norm Archer’s plans for the future in music.
Hello, thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. How have you been?
Will: Hello to you too! Quite well. It’s a pleasant autumn evening in Portsmouth and I’m answering these questions next to my sister’s cat Vincent who we’ve been looking after this year and he’s thinking his bowl looks pretty empty.
“Verb” is your new, third album. Can you tell us a bit about the title and why you felt it was the right name for this collection of songs?
Will: Good question. I like the brevity of the title and the way it looks on the artwork. In terms of its origin, I think I was inspired to call it ‘Verb’ as I went through a phase of reading a lot of books about songwriting that read like English lessons, which I found very prescriptive, literal but someone said you need to ‘electrify your verbs’ and I found that amusing, and as I tend to use ‘reverb’ a lot – one of my guitar amps is a Deluxe Reverb.
There is a title track, but it originally had a different title and lyrics and I retrofitted it from there to fit with the title and the intent of the other songs.
At roughly an hour long, this is a substantial record. When you began recording, did you set out to create a larger work, or did the music naturally dictate the album’s length?
Will: I tend to record very intermittently and I work from the same Logic project, and my usual strategy is to write 30 songs and then filter down from there. My first album ‘Flying Cloud Terrace’ was pulled from two separate projects totalling 60 songs.
The final two tracks on ‘Verb’, ‘Roaming’ and ‘Wicked Ray’ are ten minutes long and I was inspired by how Husker Du ended their album ‘Flip Your Wig’ (which is otherwise a great pop record) with two surreal instrumentals and wanted to lean in to the more progressive and psychedelic influences.
Are there particular tracks on “Verb” that you feel are essential listening to understand the core of the album? Which ones, and why?
Will: ‘The Hell of Neighbours’ and ‘Sea Still There’ are a contrasting one-two punch setting the scene which I love. The final two songs ‘Roaming’ and ‘Wicked Ray’ are the most ambitious, one being a collage style work influenced by the Who and the other a slow jam with some field recordings & noise rock worked in, and ‘The Weaver’ as a pop centrepiece.
What was the general inspiration or feeling you were trying to capture when writing this material?
Will: I have a few different ways I write songs, and in some cases I take ‘intent’ out of it and write with free association methods but overall, I really wanted to write more about Portsmouth as a city, and examine the density and crowdedness of the area but also the open spaces which inspired the contrast between the opening songs.
There’s also some songs about chemical dependency, religion, compassion and there’s a few characters involved, and/or unreliable, drunk narrators.
What was the feeling like when you finally finished mixing and mastering the last song and realized the album was complete?
Will: This was genuinely a stressful record to mix – I decided to have some of the drums recorded by my friend Ben Whyntie at Little Piggy Studios, I played live drums on one of them ‘Wicked Ray’ and electric drums on the rest, which meant there was a mix of different sounds which was overwhelming.I initially released it last year but found that there was an issue with the stereo image in the master and so I enlisted Todd Tobias to re-master it and at that point I was happy to release the project.
I learn a lot from every release and can’t wait to put the lessons into practice on the next one.
You’ve been involved in multiple bands, such as Young Pretorians, Misgivings, and Sombulance. Do you approach the act of writing a song for your solo work differently than you would for one of those other projects?
Will: Misgivings were together from 2013 until 2022 and I used to write those songs pretty much in the exact way as these, but not as many! I’m not a songwriter in Young Pretorians but I greatly enjoy playing bass in that band and approach writing the bass lines in a similar way to Norm, trying to be somewhere between John Entwistle and Mike Mills. Sombulance isn’t together any more, and I tended to write a slightly more ‘rock and roll’ version of what the other guitar player did, and I like that contrast.
I genuinely enjoy playing music with other people and helping to make their ideas come to life, and it’s a very different thing to Norm Archer.
This is primarily your project. What is the most challenging part of taking on most of the composing and performing roles yourself?
Will: I guess there’s a feeling of inauthenticity about projecting the sonic image of a ‘band’ as a solo musician, but in reality I’ve been making demos by myself for most of my life, starting out on a 4-track when I was extremely young and just messing around. I think the crucial bit is imposing some form of limitation and making sure that the songs aren’t too excessively technical. With this album I wrote them predominantly on acoustic guitar and tried to make sure they all work in that context, but occasionally I break out of that mould. There’s really no rules and it’s important to do what you want but make sure what you want is really what you want.
Do you have a specific method for getting started with a new song? Does it usually begin with a lyric, a specific guitar riff, or something else entirely?
Will: I usually start with a title and then work on a lyric and then improvise guitar chords over the lyrics, occasionally I’ll come up with an undeniable guitar riff and I find it very challenging to write a lyric that matches the potential of the music. The ‘lyrics first’ method works for me as it allows me both to remove the filter and get the most challenging and crucial step out and from there it’s a breeze.
Every artist has their influences. Who is an artist or band that you were listening to a lot right around the time you were writing and recording “Verb”?
Will: If I had to pick one it was probably Sonic Youth, particularly the mid 80s period. ‘The Weaver’, ‘Verb’ and ‘Smells of the Lamp’ feature alternate tunings and the longer songs on their albums were inspiring. They’re probably an obvious influence for any indie rocker, but I think a lot of bands are influenced by their aesthetic and that’s not a major interest of mine.
Thinking back to the music you grew up on, what’s one long-standing influence that still informs the way you write music today?
Will: I’ve been a music fan since I was around six years old so it’s a bit difficult to pin one down. I discovered music through my parents’ collection of soul music, 60s and 70s rock, Britpop and a lot of folk and world music. My parents took me along when they went to see Martin Carthy (English folk singer) when I was super young, before I’d been to any other shows.
Of course I later got into punk and hardcore and became immersed in that scene, but I’m a music fan at heart and one of my top bands of all time is The Kinks. It feels almost insulting to insinuate that they’ve been an influence on me specifically, but I think their musical approach isn’t as talked about as the poetry of the lyrics.
If you were sitting down to create a playlist for your fans, who is one artist you’ve been into recently that you would absolutely put on that list?
Will: I really immersed myself in the Gob Nation collective over the last year, bands like The Tubs, Ex-Void & Suep etc. I’ve been really enjoying a record by a band called Buffet Lunch called ‘The Power of Rocks’, they released it in 2021 and I don’t know if they’ve done anything since, and I can’t actually remember how or where I bought the record.
Now that your third album is out, what do the immediate future plans look like for Norm Archer?
Will: For recordings, I’m currently working on a new album of course, and this time aiming to collaborate with some other musicians, namely a musical colleague called Jason who plays bass. We’re using BandLab to collaborate on material and try to elevate the project to a new level.
Do you have any plans to play these new “Verb” songs live, either solo or with other musicians?
Will: Yes – we played a gig recently for Neu Waves, a great local indie night in Portsmouth and we have another show booked in for January.
My good friends Pete, Mike & Jason have been learning a selection of tunes from the three albums studiously and the first show went down extremely well.
That’s it! Thank you so much for your time. Anything you would like to say to our readers at the end of this interview?
Will: Just wanted to say thanks for reading and to give a bit of a shout out to Portsmouth as a musical city. I mentioned Neu Waves, but there’s also Washed Out and ABH Promotions putting on great shows. There’s tons of interesting bands like Slow Century, Noise Factory United (I’m playing bass for them), Wooed, Jalou and many more I’ve missed.
One of my favourite things though is my small group of friends who live round the corner from me who mainly play in thrash/grindcore bands on the label Charlie’s Big Ray Gun Records – we sit around, drink cans and play The Jackbox Party Pack and openly mock our respective musical projects which is character building.
Thoughts Words Action 