The Cribs interview: Wakefield brothers talk depression, rebirth and America

'I’ve often thought that if you can make a living out of something you love, that’s a Utopia - but that experience can still be more negative than positive'

The Cribs circa 2015 (Sony handout)

“I found a guy who was a fan of the band who ran a hotel in Ipswich,” The Cribs’ Ryan Jarman remembers of his living arrangements three years ago, “and he gave me the key to one of the rooms, so I’d just go back there sometimes. That was a low point. But I had nowhere else to go.”

The band he formed with twin brother Gary and younger brother Ross in Wakefield in 2002 had been central to all their lives. Their fervent grassroots fanbase had just made In the Belly of the Brazen Bull their second Top 10 album. But The Cribs was now consuming Ryan.

“Gary had moved to Portland, Oregon, Ross had had a baby, everybody had found some degree of stability,” he explains. “But I still didn’t live anywhere. I’m not trying to sound moany or pathetic, but I always found myself in situations where everything would fall apart. I felt that was the way it was supposed to be. Because I was so dedicated to the band, everything else dissolving was just a symptom of my commitment. But my views on that have changed in the last couple of years.”

Wakefield brothers The Cribs: Ross, Ryan and Gary Jarman (sony handout)

The Cribs are sitting in a hotel bar in west London, considering the factors that make their sixth album, For All My Sisters, feel like a rebirth. Thirteen years into their career, they have a fresh major-label deal, with Sony. The new, exultant LP was produced in New York by The Cars’ Ric Ocasek (chosen, Gary explains, because “he can make hits, but doesn’t approach them like a [regular] person would”). Most importantly, New York has been Ryan’s home for the last two years, with his new girlfriend, Jen Turner, formerly of the band Here We Go Magic. After a period of depression, self-destruction and effectively homeless drift, this healing move may have saved his band, and him.

A line in one of Ryan’s songs, “Diamond Girl” – “you don’t have to hear the screams of those living out their dreams” – suggests what The Cribs’ success had come to feel like. “Everyone’s always working towards something you feel is going to be totally great,” he explains. “When you do finally get there, you don’t have anywhere else to go. So if you hit a low point, it’s worse. I’ve often thought that if you can make a living out of something you love, that’s a Utopia. But that experience can still be more negative than positive, through over-familiarity, and then you’ve lost everything. I was convinced after 10 years that that was it, I’d had my lot. I was so jaded and sceptical. But now I get taken back to that completely uncynical, starry-eyed kid I was, every now and again.”

Such idealism, along with a wild, unfinished energy both live and in the studio, always set The Cribs apart. They were special enough for Gary’s Portland neighbour, Johnny Marr, to join full-time from 2008 to 2011. “I see them as being part of a lineage that is very important to me,” Marr once told me, “that has the Buzzcocks in it, and The Smiths, and to some people the Arctic Monkeys, of street music – groups that can tell their story with great singles, built around guitars and interesting British lyrics.”

The Cribs while Johnny Marr was a fully fledged member

The Cribs, though, always looked to America. “We cut our teeth on grunge and Riot grrrl in our early teens,” Gary recalls. “Their sentiment and ideals totally spoke to us, as small-town-loser kids. They put down deep roots in us, and gave us our ethics, and liberal politics, and feminism. Portland [where he moved in 2006] blows my mind sometimes, because I’m with the people that were an inspiration to me.

“For instance, [ex-Pavement leader] Stephen Malkmus practises in my basement [Gary’s wife is Joanna Bolme, bassist in Malkmus’s current band, the Jicks]. Sleater-Kinney are friends. It’s nice to be considered a peer of those people. It ups your game, too. You don’t want to be the underachiever in your circle of friends.”

Drummer Ross Jarman is the only Crib left in a Wakefield whose cultural aspirations have been raised by the band. “We’ve got our own plaque,” he notes proudly. Their seemingly hopeless small-town isolation when they started, though, remains crucial to them.

Ryan Jarman of The Cribs performs onstage during day 3 of the 2015 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival (Getty)

“The satisfaction we’ve always had is in making something out of nothing,” Gary explains. “Adversity as motivation’s stuck with us. When we do pull it off, and get Top 10 records, it makes it that much more satisfying. That’s where we get our kicks. Perversity is what makes it all worthwhile sometimes.”

Gary also thought back to early days in Wakefield for his lyrics on For All My Sisters. “When I was younger I couldn’t articulate some feelings, so I’m going back and doing that now. A lot of the songs are about past situations that seemed really important then, and paying tribute to them. Some of them are love songs for crushes I had as a kid. My wife knows that I’m obsessive, and I live in the past, sometimes. I wrote the lyrics in a nostalgic reverie.”

The Cribs promoting their latest album For All my Sisters (Sony handout)

Ryan, by contrast, has been getting used to having a future as more than a Crib. His move to New York has also redeemed one of his life’s greatest regrets – a move to Chicago he cut short when the band began, a wrong turn he yearned to correct all through The Cribs’ early years.

“It’s far too late to ever recapture that,” he says. “But this move did feel similar. Chicago and New York are the two most significant things that ever happened in my life. I’m not deviating from following my heart this time.” Does he feel almost resurrected by the change?

“Yeah, a bit. In New York, I’m surrounded by people who are doing creative things, so it’s good for my state of mind. They don’t care that I’m just daydreaming all the time. I feel a lot less highly-strung, and at peace. I’m enjoying things again, rather than just getting through them.”

For All My Sisters is out now on Sonic Blew/Sony Red, while new single "Different Angle" is out on 1 June