Teenage Dirtbag hitmakers Wheatus play Portsmouth on first UK tour in four years | Interview

​The Teenage Dirtbag hitmakers are currently riding high on… well, even the band aren’t sure what, exactly.

“The tour's going very well, it's really good – the best it's been in many, many years,” frontman Brendan B Brown enthuses. “We're really stoked – it's like everything's started all over again in a way. I don't know how this has happened, maybe it's TikTok or some other thing...”

It’s the band’s first visit here since 2019, but it’s not just here – they’ve been seeing an uptick in their fortunes back home too.

"It's been on both sides of the pond that it's been happening and it's really wonderful, I don't have a good explanation for it – other than The Song has come around again or something. Maybe people are digging deeper into our catalogue and the way we do things is a little different, so maybe people are up for that?”

Their signature hit was released in 2000, but has appeared in numerous films and TV shows over the years, as well as receiving high profile covers from the likes of One Direction and Phoebe Bridgers.

"It's something of a renewable resource for us,” says Brendan, “but more importantly it lives in people's abilities to see themselves in the song.

“If you're familiar with the concept that the author is dead, it doesn't matter what the author's intent was or wanted, people are going to take what they want from it and go with it.

“The only chance that the work has is if they make it their own in some sense. We feel that it belongs to people who see themselves in it, and that's that.”

This December the band is releasing a somewhat delayed rerecorded and expanded 20-sing version of their self-titled debut.

"We were shooting for 2020, and of course, as we were about to head into the finish line with the recording process it just unravelled – we couldn't do it. And then coming out of the first series of lockdowns we were invited onto a bunch of tours that we really couldn't say ‘no’ to.

“The short story is that it's a 20-song version of the album – twice the size. We were recording the songs from scratch because the masters were lost, so it was quite an intense, forensic scientific process. It wasn't your typical creation and discovery, it was much more tedious! But we wanted to honour the original that people know and recreate it as best we could, so we approached it from that angle.

“We also added the 10 songs that through the years, seemed like they belonged on the first album and that's why we hadn't done anything with them.”

With their biggest hit, though, the band have never felt like it’s been an albatross.

"No, never,” says Brendan. “I think bands who do wind up with one song that does feel a bit of a burden, that might have to do with it not really representing them – it's a one-off, it's an oddity, it's a novelty for them.

“Teenage Dirtbag is very much one of our songs, it feels like us, it's the way the band sounds, it's the way we feel, and so we've never had to fake it. If you have success with a cover or with something the label thought was kitschy, or it's a ballad that isn't representative of the rest of your catalogue, that kind of thing, bands do fall into that. We're lucky not to have that problem.”

It’s been a decade since the band’s last album, The Valentine LP, but Brown assures us they are working on its follow-up.

“We have put out two songs from album seven – Tipsy and Lullaby, and those are sort of experiments in the intensity in what can you do with jazz chords that are heavily distorted. And when I say jazz, I'm referring to the way that jazz used to be popular music, like Somewhere Over The Rainbow-era, where songs are quite intricate and beautiful, and they're jazz disciplined but they're also these accessible singalongs that everybody knows. It's not John Coltrane!”

But before they can finish the album, the band have to complete this UK tour – and a few more commitments.

"A long time ago when we were first introduced to touring in this country we were asked whether or not we wanted to do nine shows in the big places or 30 shows in the smaller ones, and we went for the 30. We've always done that.

“I was talking to my friend James Bourne (from Busted) on the phone the other day and we were like: ‘We're both on tour at the same time, let's see if we can cross paths,’ so I sent him our schedule, and he goes: ‘Bloody hell mate, what have you done to yourself, this is a mess!’ But we love to play more shows, more shows, more shows.

“Then there's more touring in 2024, I don't know when we're going to get this album seven finished...”

Wheatus play Moonshine in Southsea on Thursday, October 5. Tickets £20. Go to wheatus.com/shows