an interview with… Vincent’s Last Summer
- katiehillier
- 16 hours ago
- 6 min read
@ Truck Festival 2025
A band quite literally stuck in the moment… Manchester duo, Vincent’s Last Summer excuse their post-punk, indie-sleaze sonics as the result of being stuck in 2008 - their only communication with those in the present day being through their music. Within their high-energy, theatrical live shows, they take their audiences on a trip back to when Alexandra Burke won X Factor, Manchester United had just won the league and Pete Doherty had been released from prison, and pair it with 90s teenage post-punk sonics full of playful swagger. After making their Truck Festival debut, opening up the Market Stage, we caught up with James to chat all things indie sleaze, 2008, and Jarvis Cocker…
Hi James, thanks for joining me for a chat! How are you?
I’m very very well, thank you!
So I’m at Truck Festival 2025, but you’re at Truck 2008. How’s it treating you?
Very very well so far. Yeah, we’ve caught some of the major acts - we’ve caught Scouting For Girls, they’ve been alright. I think LCD Soundsystem might be on the way, but I’m not too sure if they’re even playing. So yeah, the time machine has been a bit of a weird one, you know, our heads are still quite dizzy, we’re still trying to get our bearings. We hit our heads in 2008 and we’ve been stuck here since - I’m not too sure what all the riff raff is about with all these other years, but we’re quite happy where we are.
I’m intrigued - do you have any concept of time or is it just that you’re stuck in a never ending loop of 2008?
It’s a little bit Groundhog Day. We’ve been very bored and thus have cobbled together some music, and every so often, the news will chime in as well, so we’re quite informed. United have won the league, apparently, that’s like the ninth time they’ve done that now, so we’re very happy for them. Pete Doherty has been in prison as well, I’m not entirely sure what for though. I hope he’s alright. You know, looking forward to the new Babyshambles of course as well. That will be good.
If you could take one thing that exists in 2025 and take it back to 2008 with you, what would you choose?
5G. Especially now.
So where did the obsession with 2008 specifically come from?
The obsession has become a little thing for us, trying to pinpoint a time for us where indie sleaze was at its biggest. I feel like in 2008 you’ve got like MGMT popping around, LCD had just dropped Sound Of Silver the year before, and it’s a very influential period for us. We kept looking for a source of inspiration for ourselves, and found that 2008 was the thing in common. We’re clearly stuck there, so we may as well live there for a little bit. I’m not sure how long we’ll live there for - eventually we’ll get out. But we’re just not quite sure about that yet.
Do you think you’re going to have eras where soon you’ll be stuck in 2009, then 2010…
It was on the cards yeah. We’ll just have to see how it comes along I suppose. We’re making it up as we go along.
Who or what is the biggest influence behind your music? I guess aside from 2008.
Club culture and things being quite sexy, and people letting go of themselves, forgetting about real life and enjoying themselves at a party or at a club. Being with your friends, having people that matter to you and seeing them have a good time. The whole party atmosphere that we try to create is kind of out of being in those situations where you’ve got a good group of people around you and you’re just having fun. I feel like that’s very relatable to everyone, hopefully, and also great electronic music helps.
So where did the inspiration for the band name come from?
There’s a few stories here and there. I like to think that it’s a play on vodka lime soda, but you know, not everyone can partake in a vodka lime soda. But it is actually a couple of song titles that I quite like that I’ve cobbled together from a few years ago and stitched them together. I’ll leave the audience to figure out what songs they are and if we get any right answers then there’ll be something.
Is one of them David’s Last Summer by Pulp?
One of them is definitely David’s Last Summer. We were going for that. His n Hers is my favourite Pulp album!
I said to my friend when we watched your set earlier that your stage presence is definitely someone that has studied Jarvis Cocker.
Oh relentlessly. I’ve got them all on download - all the DVDs.
How did that set go? Did you have any prior expectations?
We thought everyone was going to be hungover, so we’re quite glad that people weren’t… Well, not too much to not come and see us. The crowd was immense, absolutely loved it! I fell over at one point during a song, but I quite happily played it off, so we’ll just pretend that I didn’t. I don’t think anyone saw it anyway.
See, you shouldn’t have said that because I thought it was just part of your Jarvis Cocker-esque stage presence…
Ummm… it was! Yeah! It’s all on record now, nevermind [laughs]
You were shortlisted by Dork Magazine to open the Market Stage. How has the support from the magazine been for you?
They’ve been absolutely wonderful for us. We joined them on the Dork Hype List tour in February with Welly and Polly Money, and it was a great experience with those people. It was such a great team. Jamie Muir was brilliant, Jamie MacMillan, lovely, lovely people. Got a lot of time for them.
Do you think music journalism is still important for artist development, especially in an era of social media?
Absolutely. It gives you the voice. And you meet some fantastic people who do work really hard, at what they do, and you all come together and make this brilliant thing. Everyone will play their part and it’s nice to see that.
You spoke a little bit about your live performance and how there’s almost a theatrical layer to them. What made you want to add a whole concept around your music and have segments of almost acting?
We just quite liked spicing it up a bit and being a bit eccentric, you know, from our indie sleaze and punk forefathers who didn’t really care about how they presented themselves, just so long as they got their message across. We quite like to get it across in a bit more of a fleshed out and weird way, and we kind of locked ourselves into this lovely little script that we can now recite blindfolded and upside down. But it just stems from us wanting to do more and use our space, use our voice as much as we can. The music is a big part of it, but we also just like expressing ourselves and creating a world.
You supported Chloe Slater, who is playing here tomorrow, at the start of the year. What did you learn from that tour and how has that impacted how you approach gigs?
Campervans are a great way to tour. They are unbelievable. We did a little vlog of it in Bristol. The Chloe tour taught us how much of an angel Chloe and her whole team is. It was an absolutely outstanding experience, and it taught us a lot about Bristol as well! We had a little night out - we didn’t find the karaoke bar but we found somewhere with a big pinball table and spent a lot of time there which was good.
Who else do we need to be checking out at Truck this weekend?
Courting, Chloe Slater, Scouting For Girls. TTSSFU and Westside Cowboy have also just been on and they’re absolutely unbelievable.
Finally, what’s next for Vincent’s Last Summer?
An awful lot!
Vincent’s Last Summer is back on tour this autumn supporting Welly, and headlining Manchester Deaf Institute on 6th February 2026. They’ll also be supporting Slumber at The Lexington, London on 29th August.
Find Vincent’s Last Summer at:
Instagram: @vincentslastsummer
TikTok: @vincentslastsummer
X: @vincentslast
YouTube: @vincentslastsummer
KATIE HILLIER
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