Credits Roll in: Reinvention, Resilience and the Sound of Something Real…
You might already have heard whispers about one of the most exciting new names on the local music scene – and if not, it won’t be long. Credits are a five-piece with serious pedigree: sharp musicianship, genuine authenticity, and a set of influences that run deep. In their first ever interview under their new moniker, the band sat down with Liverpool Noise’s Steve Kinrade to talk musical roots, creative rebirth, and what lies ahead for this ambitious collective…
Let’s begin with the intoductions… Whose who in Credits?
Tom: We are – Matt on Drums, Duffy on Bass, and Tom, Jay and Liam on Guitars. If you want to know which guitarist is which – Jay’s the one that looks like Doyle from The Professionals, Liam looks kind of like the lovechild between Ryan Gosling and a really handsome eagle, and I always look knackered. We all split vocal duties up between us, aside from Duffy. He only uses his mic stand to hold a vape for hands-free niccy hits while we’re practicing!
Was there a specific event, discussion, or creative shift that led to the decision to rebrand as Credits from BrightTown?
Tom: All three, to be honest. Without going into too much boring detail, we’d been through the ringer a little bit with personnel changes and lots of unnecessary grief from some of the team we had around us at the time who were meant to have our back. It had got to a point where I think a few of us were on the edge of jacking it in completely and moving on, but one day a couple of years ago we got offered to play a festival in Norway called Blåfrost almost completely out the blue.
We didn’t even have a bass player at the time, so we asked our mate Duffy to step in for us by dangling the offer of a free holiday to Norway infront of him. We also managed to untangle ourselves from a lot of that behind the scenes drama that was dragging us down, and for the first time in a long time we had the breathing space to rediscover what had made us fall in love with playing together in the first place – namely, making boss music and going on mad adventures with your best mates.
This also meant there was a shift in how we wrote songs, and I think the lack of pressure encouraged everyone to get more stuck into putting ideas forward and developing them collectively. We used to write songs completely separately and then dictate parts to each other, but now it’s much more collaborative, kind like a mixture of The Wrecking Crew and The Power Rangers.
And then finally, we gradually started working with Joe Campbell from Culture City. As I mentioned before, we’ve had run ins with our fair share of shysters, so it took us a bit of time to get comfortable with the idea that someone could be interested in helping us out purely because they saw something of artistic merit in us. He’s been an absolute Godsend though, and he was definitely fighting our corner in the early days when maybe we ourselves had lost a lot of our self esteem, so we owe him a lot for his part in us getting our mojo back. We spend most days now just firing mad ideas back and forth about how we’re going to go about taking on the impossible task of being in a band in 2025 – it’s boss.
Who are your main musical influences?
Liam: I always find this question a bit tricky to answer because I’m constantly exploring new music and pulling inspiration from different places. In recent years, some of the artists who’ve influenced me the most are David Rawlings, Buck Meek, and Blake Mills. I’ve heard that our music tastes are pretty much set in stone by the time we’re twelve, and if that’s true, then my earliest influences came from my dad’s record collection! He had a big stack of records next to the couch, a stereo and a pair of shitty walkman headphones. I spent hours listening to Joni Mitchell, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, Cocteau Twins, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Oh, and the Guitar Hero III soundtrack was heavily on my rotationk.
Tom: Loads. Hearing Simon and Garfunkle sing Scarborough Fair as a kid was the first time I realised music could do make me feel that way. Joni Mitchell was the first person to make me cry with her music. My Dad was the person to make me want to pick up a guitar. Wilco,The La’s, Ben Folds, Big Thief, Sufjan, all of the Heads (Mick and John, Talking, Radio), Kendrick, Elliott Smith have all been pretty key in my understanding what songs can be and do. According to Spotify, the last album I listened to was Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress by Gulch. That should say it all really!
Matt: Influences for me I can split into two categories: music that Ilove and have internalised, and stuff that I’m currently listening to. I imagine the bit of me that does the creative stuff as a big machine that needs constant feeding and will use what it gets whether I feed it high quality art or doom scrolling binges, so I’m trying to be a bit more conscious of that lately. In general I’ve always been drawn to lyrics and great melodies more than any other feature of music. Neil Peart, Feist, Beach Boys, Common, Doves, Paul Simon, Divine Comedy, Midlake all come to mind.
Duffy: Pretty hard to say with me being relatively new into music I didn’t really grow up idolising anybody in particular. If I was to pick a bass player I would definitely say Nick Campbell who I got into after buying my first bass. After searching up the bass I bought I stumbled onto him and went down a rabbit hole of watching him perform. More generally I’d say bands such as Wilco, The War on Drugs and Chris Staples have been a big part of my life for the past 5 years. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but they all just make songs that I can connect with and escape into for hours at a time.
Jay: My earliest memories of music growing up are of Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Neil Young, and of course the Beatles. They were all a huge part of my early exposure to music. I listened to my dad’s copy of Harvest by Neil Young constantly when I got a record player, and it’s still one of my favourites to this day. I go through phases where I’ll become obsessed with a band or an artist for months at a time, probably much to the lads’annoyance when we’re driving to gigs. I started the first few months of the year going through anything written by Tom Petty, I couldn’t get enough of it. Now I’m constantly listening to Crowded House. I’ve also been doing a deep dive into Cass McCombs recently, so who knows what will be next on the heavy rotation!
Communicaton of a name change is key to ongoing development, and from my perspective this has been handled absolutely brillantly across all the social media platforms. I presume this was a long time in the planning? What was the strategy?
Tom: The idea to restart under a new name got floated a while ago, but at the same time so did the fact that changing the name won’t solve anything unless there’s something new for it to represent. We used to be a glorified bedroom band, so Joe encourages us to think bigger than that. He also tells us when we’re thinking too big – one time I wanted to shoot a music video from miles away through a lens that could zoom halfway across the city, until he told me that they only make lenses like that in military research labs in the future. Take that first video we put out of Bright Town being “murdered” by Credits. There was a time where that would have just stayed a funny little daydream I’d have while doing the dishes or something, but Joe Campbell has given us the means to bring stuff like that to life.
I also think that internally we knew we were onto something good with this band, so we’re more up for getting our hands dirty with the fine details of planning releases and engaging more with different ways of using avenues like social media to get information across. I think deep down we’d all rather still sit around and write tunes all day, but we’re definitely more willing to put the work in to make sure that what we do write has a shot at reaching and growing an audience.
How do you feel the new name Credits reflects your current sound and artistic direction compared to what Bright Town represented?
Tom: Liam was the one who suggested Credits. It was one of those moments where it just seemed to sum up what we were going for, the same way that Bright Town did when it got floated way back. Bright Town always felt kind of pastoral to me – like a place that might be inhabited by talking mice and voles like Redwall or something. But I think subconsciously that always steered me towards writing about the countryside like I was some kind of folkster of yore.
Credits makes me think of the end credits of a film and, as a 27 year old who lives alone with his dog in the year 2025. I watch loads of films. I think this encourages me to be more authentic and contemporary with how I write, especially lyrics. I’m not as afraid to write as myself anymore and make reference to low culture, negative/embarrassing emotions, 21st Century life, etc. and artistically it’s really nice to not have to hide behind a fake persona made out of corduroy and kindling.
Liam: For me, it captured the cinematic tone of the music we were writing during that transitional period, such as The California Myth – a song rooted in Silver Screen iconography. It aligned perfectly with our vision of creating more multi-format content going forward – like the rebrand video Tom was developing at the time, and the podcast we were beginning to plan. Retrospectively, I like to think of Credits as a nod to who we are: a collective of musicians supported by an incredible multidisciplinary team, coming together to create something greater than the sum of its parts, much like the credits at the end of a film.
Are there any thematic or lyrical changes in your recent music that align with the new name Credits?
Matt: The California Myth is a bit symbolic of a mentality change for me – it was written around the time we were having discussionsabout working more collectively and sharing writing and singing duties out to diverge from the traditional ‘frontman+band’ dynamic. It’s got a four part harmony throughout most of the song where one line isn’t really more important than the other but it needs all the parts to sound right. Cloying, I know, but all but one of the Bright Town set had Tom singing lead, now it’s almost 50/50 with Tom and the rest of us and it’s only getting more diverse as we go on. That’s where being called Credits makes sense for me, we’re five equally sized slices of a really sick pie.
Tom: Aside from being more rooted in reality, I’m on a bit of a kick where the more uncomfortable something is to write about – the more I get out of trying to write about it anyway. A lot of the new songs are about how I’ve let people down, or pushed people away that I shouldn’t have, or how I’ve focused on trivial things over what’s really important. But then I think the fun challenge is trying to address things like that in a way that’s actually relateable for a listener, and give it some kind of resolution or upswing so that we can all get some kind of kick out of it. Otherwise I’ll just sound like I’m a self-pitying moaning-arse, which I most definitely am not.
The California Myth is a song that encapsulates for me the best elements of some of my favourite artistes – Eagles, Doobie Brothers and Crosby Stills and Nash. I just love it! Your live rendition from Buffalo Studios highlights the true musicianship of the band. How did this session come about?
Matt: Thanks! I’m glad it’s clear where my allegiances lie. One of the first things we did with Joe was that session at Buffalo, which is a studio ran by JB Pilon.
There are many things we could say about JB, but Duffy said it best: “Superman wears JB pyjamas.” Last year JB got in touchwith Joe to say there was some unbooked time coming up at Buffalo if he knew of any bands that would take advantage of that. Stars aligned on that one really and in a few days we managed to finish off a big batch of tunes that were all in various states of completion, and some new ones that I now couldn’t have imagined recording anywhere else.
The vibes were immaculate and just pushing the faders upon the raw tracks says everything about JB’s talent for crafting sounds. So later in discussions about recording some live sessions, there wasn’t really any other option in our eyes. It sounds boss thanks to JB, and looks boss courtesy of Culture City who produced the video. Being in a space surrounded by that level of talent and passion for making great art pushes you to perform better and the proof is that session.
So, you have already played a couple of low key gigs, but the two big one’s coming up is your support to those Liverpool legends Shack at Liverpool Olympia on 25th April and your headline gig at Liverpool ARC on the 17th May. How are you feeling about this?
Duffy: Overall, its just nice to be gigging again. After taking the time away to work on the relaunch, I think I speak for us all when I say there’s a hunger to get out there and start performing as much as we can. To be asked to support Shack is just massive. Their influence not just on us but on the Liverpool music scene in general is everywhere and to be playing at the Olympia is just the cherry on top. The Arc headline gig I think will be a special night full of people who have supported us for a couple years and hopefully a lot of new faces who are looking forward to hearing the new songs live for the first time. It will be our first time gigging with BITE and Euan as well who we are massive fans off so I’m really looking forward to seeing them perform.
You drop the track Your Favourite Song on May 2nd. When was this written, and where did you record it?
Tom: Considering it’s the first single to come out, it was actually written a bit more recently than some of the singles we have lined up to follow it. I wrote the main idea in the run up to some time we had booked in with JB in Buffalo Studios, and once we’d played it in the room and made the demo we were that excited by it that we juggled around the studio schedule a little bit so we’d have time to record it. As much as we’re doing things in a more structured way lately, we’re also trying to keep chasing things that get us buzzing, so it felt right to do record and release it first.
Moving forward, what are the plans for the rest of 2025? Hopefully an album?
Jay: We’re in a really fortunate position at the minute as the new tunes are flowing and we’resat on a load of new material which we can’t wait to get in the studio and record. Everyone is chipping in with the writing and we’re all feeling really creative. We’re loving playing these new songs live too, so hopefully we get some more great support slots in Liverpool and further afield. We’ve also got a few more singles that will be released over summer and into autumn!
Credits support Shack at The Olympia, Liverpool, Friday 25 April 2025. Credits headline The Arc, Saturday 17 May 2025.
Follow @creditsband on Instagram for updates.
