Floris van Luijtelaar, lead vocalist of Dutch band The Vices, hopped on the phone to discuss the deluxe version of their album “Before It Might Be Gone,” the music scene in Groningen, and how the band came to be.

Where you grew up in the Netherlands, Groningen has a rich music history. Did that embolden you to follow your own dreams and make being a musician seem more tangible?

I always wanted to do this. It’s hard to say, but I don’t think it would’ve mattered where I was born. The fact that we have places here like Vera and Euro Sonic, which is the South by Southwest of Europe means there’s a lot of opportunities to see a lot of great musicians and that helps, that inspires, that teaches you things. Also, there was a place where, as an artist starting out, it was always full and everyone could get 15 minutes of fame. A lot of great jazz musicians came and it was a very good place to get some more experience. I think the first time I performed there, I was 14 or 15. So, those things really helped but I would’ve always done this.

Forming a band is quite sacred. How do each member of The Vices complement each other?

I think that we’re four quite different people, so everyone has a very different upbringing and different things that they like and get inspired by. So, we give each other space for all of that, and that helps. For example, Simon, our Bass player, loves everything from Woodstock. I like that too, but then you have Matthew, our drummer who likes Toto and we all really, really, really dislike Toto. Our other guitar player, Jonathan, I think the first years of his life he played piano and produced techno. So, we all like things that are on a whole other spectrum and we leave space for all of them. And that’s why it becomes what it becomes, under Deluxe, for example, when we did the alternate versions. I was in a studio with Jonathan and Simon and Simon was like, ‘Let’s try these scenarios, Ali Farka type of influences. And I was like, ‘How the fuck do you want to do that in “Gold?”’ But it works very well. And then someone else brings ideas that are somehow referencing Beach House. There’s a lot of different worlds and if you fuck around with them, and, do it in your own way, they can come together, and that’s I think what we do.

Your songs are very diaristic (as if you’re pulling lyrics from personal journal entries). Is it therapeutic to be able to work through what you’re going through in your own life via song?
We once said that music saved us all in very different ways. In high school it helped me to calm down and focus. Often when I write, I’m not trying to write a song about this or that and then after a month you read back what you wrote in a certain period and there are often similarities and it helps you understand yourself better. I know for Simon, for example, he once described it as being on the fringes of society when he was in high school and if he didn’t have the band, he would’ve probably gone a very different way. So, it helped us all very much in a different way.

On Before It Might Be Gone, you can tell you’ve all found the sound that truly suits you as a band. Did you go through an experimentation phase when working on this album to see how you wanted it to come together sonically?

I think it all started with the song “Before It Might Be Gone,” and I remember that I was very much influenced by the atmosphere of Michael Kiwanuka, and Turn Blue, that record by the Black Keys. They both have the same feel to it. There’s rock, but there is also a lot of soul in there, and the way it sounds, it’s like Danger Mouse, it has a very specific sound, lots of lows, lots of highs. It touches you in a certain way, that was inspiring me and I first brought that chorus or that verse and we started from there. We tried to find a theme and Jonathan said ‘I got this, almost desert surf thing,’ which he was getting a lot of influences from at that time and that became the [starts to hum] the theme of the song. Sparklehorse was a big inspiration for the record too. So, it’s a lot of different things together. In “Gold” there is some techno even, so it worked like that too. 

You have a slew of tour dates from now until December. Are there particular songs you’re most excited to perform live, and how are you changing things up to give the live version of these songs a little something special?

“Still They Might Not Like It” because we don’t do it too much during festivals, but with club shows I really like playing that one and a song like “Hope” offers a lot of space for improvisation. Playing live is a very important part of what we do. There’s the energy that comes from playing live and improvising together feels magical. Simon on the bass will play something and I need to listen, so I can react and together you explore where it’s going to go.

You find interesting ways to connect with fans and bring even more eyes to the Groningen music scene. Could you tell us a bit about ViceFest and how it came to life?

ViceFest started because we wanted to have a place where we could do whatever the fuck we wanted. It started during COVID and I called up a place big enough to host people who would be seated with distance. The idea was for it to be this place where there should be a lot of freedom, a lot of dream worlds and a lot of music. We have a team who helps us with it and the result is 11 artists performing during ViceFest across genres. Everything that we like, we try to get it there. It goes from hip-hop to singer-songwriter to rock, to soul, we had House DJs this year too. Besides that, there is also a market and a skate ramp. We had a cinema one year, we had a circus one year, and the whole thing is that there obviously is going to be something that you like, but there are going to be things that you don’t like or that you don’t know also, but being in the freedom and the chaos makes you open to encounter things you didn’t know or thought you didn’t like.

What advice do you have for aspiring musicians?

This is probably a very cliché one, but the most important thing is that you make the shit that you make for you and then the rest will come. That’s it. Don’t have the audience in mind at all sounds bad but I really do think that’s a good way to do it. Music is not about what an audience wants, music is not about how things sound or how things are, it’s about conveying something. The person listening to it doesn’t even have to receive the same thing as it was intended, but that will only happen if you really make it for yourself.