Louis Adams and Johnny Bond take refuge in The Safest Place

FEBRUARY 20TH 2024 | by EMMA SCHOORS

Louis “Lou” Adams (Them Things, Chintzy Stetson) and Johnny Bond (Catfish and the Bottlemen, Symphonic Pictures) have led adjacent professional lives for over a decade. Now, they've teamed up to create The Safest Place – an auditory hideaway for rumination, examination, and utter ecstasy. 

Formed in 2023, the duo have steadily fallen into their groove as a creative unit with singles like “Asleep At The Feels” and “Candle For Ira,” earning them airplay on BBC Music Introducing and an uptick in worldwide notoriety. In their first ever joint interview, the band tells us this “isn’t [their] first furore” into performing together. “We once cleared the room at a buskers night under the name Party Bag,” Lou says. “Conceptualized that morning, we played our first and last show that night. Probably for the best.”

While not named after the Sade song, (“I do like Sade, though,” Bondy assures) the band was constructed around its songs, not the other way around. “This meant the themes of the music helped guide us to something that felt befitting,” Bondy says. Lou adds that “everybody has their own version of what they'd consider to be the safest place. It's not always the place you're in, either.”

Their first release, “Knife-Edge,” vacillates between the natural and material world, finding additional cohesivity in its accompanying visuals. “We just wanted to shoot a performance video in any indoor space we could get our hands on, but also it was important to have a naturalistic counterpart to anything that was going on in the video,” Bondy says. “We built a tiny replica woodland to shoot inside a terrarium, then featured the scarce Peruvian stick insects that live in my hallway.” The video opens on this terrarium, then glitches to reveal the band in a performance space lit by cerulean hues. 

“These various shades of blue just seemed to be a constant thread,” Bondy says. “As each track came there was always imagery in mind, so when it came to single and album artwork it was just a case of matching it all up.”

This focus on color wasn’t intentional, deriving instead from the emotional landscape of the material. “[Lou and I] are both lovers of cinematic sounds and find constantly listening to music throughout the day enhances whatever it is you’re doing, so whatever we put out, I love the idea of it soundtracking someone's day in some way.”

From there, the band unveiled “Asleep At The Feels,” a track penned for the passivity on which modern life is axised. It’s about “knowing you're being lied to, but making the decision to ignore the lie,” Lou says. “It puts you in a state of hypernormalisation, which isn't necessarily a modern idea but has become a more regular way of coping in today's world. Songs about fucking and sucking are nice, but nothing’s more fun than machiavellian fear tactics. These are the themes I fell into at the time of writing.”

Ordinary,” Lou says, is the “black sheep” of their discography, released last December as their fourth single. “I’d written the song prior to recording it with [Bondy]. It's also different to most other tracks on the album because it's a waltz, which was quite fun to record.” The track’s drums were recorded by Jack (Jango Flash) in a work-in-progress hotel owned by Kristian (Dr Krippa). Now, it’s a live venue: “We highly recommend if you’re ever in the area.”

“At the time of recording, the building was being used as a shooting gallery. You pay to take drugs for an hour in a room,” Lou says. “It was serendipitous that the lyrics worked in that they were mostly written about the destruction caused by something like drug use. It is a bit like firing a big gun in a small dark room full of people you love,” the lead singer continues. “Just because you're the one firing the gun doesn’t give you any advantage, either.” 

While recording tracks for this project, Bondy frequently found himself behind an instrument far different from his typical six-string. “More often than not I’d sit with the electric piano to my left in front of the recording set up, writing predominantly on keys. This meant the guitar might take a back seat or not be heard for most of a track until it's supposed to jump out. That said, as we’ve put the live show together I think the end product has ended up a lot guitar heavier, and heavier in general, than we might have initially thought.”

As for his evolution as a guitarist: “The approach to these tracks was a little different than anything I'd been doing in more recent years,” he says. “The Safest Place is a far more fluid process with regards to instrumentation. Anything could be the right sound for a certain part and anything will be exactly what it needs to be, this means a guitar won't just feature for necessity or so there's a part to play live.” 

“Equipment wise,” he continues, “I’ve been playing my 1976 Ibanez Rocket Roller a lot recently. It has a nice divebombable tremolo system on it that I’ve been enjoying trying to get some interesting sounds out of. My Audio Kitchen Big Trees still continues to be a huge part of my recording set up, and is very useful for dialing in nice characterful guitar tones.”

Newcastle witnessed the inaugural The Safest Place gig last year. Liv Bolton, who attended the show and met the band, had most recently seen Bondy headline Reading and Leeds festival in 2021. “Initially, I wasn’t sure how to simply say, ‘Look, I admire you and your work ample amounts, thank you for everything you’ve done,’ as simple as that sounds. He’s as humble as they come,” she says. “To see ‘black beauty’ on stage again, the guitar that had traveled the world, Glastonbury to New York, London to Brazil, it felt like we were so well and truly back in business.”

Bolton emphasizes the “heart-pounding thrill” of watching the band come alive in such an intimate venue, and calls the night an “unforgettable memory.” Needless to say, the crowd response has been positive – “hot as a bath, and we need another scrub,” Bondy says. Lou adds that getting up on stage was a spontaneous, almost shocking feat: “We didn't know what the live show even looked like until the first song that night. I think we were as surprised as the crowd.” 

The Safest Place has arrived as emotional transportation for listeners all around the world — a chance for each to find their own fortress within. “There’s a train depot I used to go past on the way home from work nearly every day. During the day it looked like a piece of shit. Nothingland. By night it was lit up by security lights and made me feel so warm and safe,” Lou concludes. “I write from there a lot. No matter where I am.” 

The pair will continue on with performances at Cullercoats Crescent Club in North Shields and The Water Rats in London in mid-April.

Find tickets, merch, and ways to listen to The Safest Place here.