Interview by John Wisniewski
England’s Agency-V recently released “Never Meant To Be,” the trio’s debut album for the Pittsburgh-based Distortion Productions label. A unique merger of synthrock with dark overtones, the band consists of vocalist Marie Williamson, keyboardist Lloyd Price and guitarist Peter Steer. Agency-V was indirectly forged during the Covid lockdown where the trio explored dark and introspective themes on their debut 2020 EP, “No Divide.” Over the next few years, Agency-V would release a number of strong singles and EPs that ultimately both led and fed into their new album, “Never Meant To Be.” We caught up with the band soon after they completed a series of shows supporting the legendary Gary Numan in the UK.
John Wisniewski: How did Agency-V get together? Tell us your story.
Pete Steer: We first started working together during the early part of COVID in March 2020. Lloyd and Marie had been chatting online and decided they’d like to do a track together and at the same time Lloyd and myself had struck up a conversation about doing the same thing to alleviate the boredom we were experiencing at the time. Instead of two separate projects we decided to all pitch in on the same demos that Lloyd had created to see what alchemy might occur. Our two first tracks came together very quickly and were completed within a week so we decided to complete a 4 track EP which we released only 6 weeks after the initial spark between us. I think the name came from Marie, I know I definitely didn’t come up with it.. It’s pronounced Agency Vee not Agency Five which happened a lot in the first year!
Marie Williamson: Pete has done a great job of outlining how we got started as a project but I will add that for me, at the time of forming Agency-V I’d become dormant with music and had little inspiration so making that connection with Lloyd and Peter couldn’t have come at a better time. As Pete mentions I did come up with the band name after going round in circles for days – I wanted something snappy with 3 syllables followed by one syllable that people would remember and it had to fit with us and our personalities. When I fell on this Lloyd & Pete both agreed that Agency-V was the name for us.
JW: Who are some notable music artists who have influenced you?
Pete Steer: My initial influence was Gary Numan & Tubeway Army closely followed by artists like Ultravox, John Foxx, OMD, A Flock of Seagulls, Depeche Mode, OMD, Japan, Heaven 17, The Human League, Kraftwerk, Japan, Blancmange, New Order, Sparks etc.. Later on I got into more industrial stuff like Nine Inch Nails, Nitzer Ebb, Cubanate, Garbage, Curve, Linkin Park plus my favourite rock band Queens Of The Stone Age. I also love a lot of early ‘Post-Punk’ like The Skids, Magazine, XTC, Psychedelic Furs, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Joy Division & The Cure. My favourite guitarists are Josh Homme, John Mcgeoch, Bill Nelson & Steve Harris to name but four!
Marie Williamson: I have such varied music tastes and will listen to everything! I grew up in a house that regularly played Elvis, Buddy Holly, The Beach Boys and such bands and loved music from a young age. The real head turners for me though were many of the 80’s electronic, new romantic and rock bands, Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Dead or Alive, Pet Shop Boys, New Order, Spandau, Duran Duran, The Cure, Heart, Pat Benetar the list just goes on. I kind of missed the Kraftwerk and earlier Gary Numan eras but these fell into my listening repertoire much later. I also got into club music in a big way in the 90s and have often pulled on these influences when writing. I also like classical music, anything that is relaxing with strings is usually a winner for me. I was delighted when, unknown to us, Tim Dorney (who mixes and masters all of our tracks and gives endless help and advice) in addition to all else he does decided to create an ‘Overture’ version of our track Pray For The Sun. No vocals, just a shortened classical sounding mix, Loved it from the minute I heard it, an amazing addition to our repertoire.
JW: Tell us about recording Garbage’s “Stupid Girl”. Any chance you’ve heard from Garbage about their thoughts of the cover version?
Pete Steer: We’d been trying for a long time to choose a cover for the live show that we all liked and could stamp our musical identity onto. We went through a load of tracks before we decided on ‘Stupid Girl’ and once we started recording it we knew instantly that it would work. We haven’t heard from Garbage as yet as to whether they’ve heard it but we’d hope they’d approve as we’ve retained the feel of the original but given it a boost in the tempo department and it’s definitely been going down a storm at our recent live shows.
Marie Williamson: Yes – Stupid Girl! – it was a relief when LLoyd sent the basic demo over to me! I can’t tell you home many circles we’d been round. We’d come up with some great cover track ideas prior to this but none of them worked vocally.
I knew when recording the very first lines of vocals that this was the one and it came together brilliantly with LLoyd and Pete both adding their magic to the mix. It’s great to sing this track live and many people know this song very well. Who knows Garbage may get to hear one day!
JW: What was it like supporting Gary Numan on his tour? I take it the band members of Agency-V are also Gary Numan fans?
Pete Steer: I’m definitely the biggest Gary Numan fan in the band, it was hearing ‘Cars’ in 1979 that changed everything for me and when my Dad took me to see him in 1980 on his ‘Teletour’ in London that was when I decided that being a musician was what I wanted to do. 12 years later I found myself on the very same stage supporting Gary with my band ‘BonBooshe’ on the ‘Isolate’ tour. So the recent dates we did weren’t actually my first gigs with Gary. But these were much more fun and intimate and I think Agency-V were far better suited to support him than any of my previous bands.
Marie Williamson: Supporting Gary Numan for three consecutive nights was just mind blowing on so many levels. We are definitely all huge Numan fans, although I got into his music much later than Pete & Lloyd and had never seen Gary live until these dates. We had no time to prepare as Gary asked Pete if we were free to play less than 2 weeks before. We were well rehearsed anyway so it was literally a case of sorting logistics and getting ourselves there. It was a small intimate venue holding about 650 people but the biggest audience Agency-V have played to so far. To be there on that stage for 3 nights will forever be another unforgettable milestone for us as a band.
Any concerns we may have had about how we’d go down with the Numan fans soon went out of the window – the crowd were amazing and totally embraced us every night. From the front to back of the venue we could see them totally getting into the music. Our merch stand sold out of our new album minutes into the second night so a pretty good indication that we had their support and we are of course beyond grateful to all those who were there. Gary is a total gent, very humble indeed and he made us so welcome it was good to spend time backstage with his crew, band and family. A totally great vibe once everyone was off stage.
JW: What is an Agency V live performance like?
Pete Steer: It’s always an absolute blast being onstage with Lloyd and Marie, we have great chemistry and once the lights go down we really go for it. The set is generally pretty up tempo and we really enjoy putting these songs across to the audience. We’re fairly new to the live scene as Agency-V but we are always working hard to improve performances, visuals and bringing new songs into the show to try them out and test audience response. We like to road test our new tracks!
Marie Williamson: We have a blast every time! We all know what we have to do up there and just get on with it and have the best time with it. We are always trying to improve the live performance and deliver the best we can but it really does help when you are fortunate enough to have a strong core of followers that turn up to support you, and of course with the Gary Numan dates we’ve just played we know this is going to grow. We are all pretty chilled before performances as well which probably comes down to the fact that we are a pretty organised band. We are also very supportive of each other and that unity I believe, comes through when we are on stage. The aim is always to pull off the best performance, make the audience happy and have fun with it.
JW: Tell us about your latest release? Are there extra tracks for just the fans of Agency-V?
Pete Steer: What has the reception been like for the new music? Our latest release ‘Never Meant To Be’ is a 17 track compilation album of pretty much everything we’ve released on singles and EPs over the last 5 years which we decided was the logical first step when we signed to Distortion Productions. Plus we’ve added a couple of brand new tracks including ‘Stupid Girl’ of course. This album draws a line in the sand under previous music we’ve released and sets things up nicely for the next album which we are currently in the middle of writing and is progressing really well. We’ve had a great reaction to ‘Never Meant To Be’ so far and ‘Stupid Girl’ is receiving extremely positive feedback too.
Marie Williamson: All 3 of us are really proud of our latest compilation album ‘Never Meant To Be’. It’s been a milestone to bring together all we’ve done so far. For us, listening to this, it’s good to reflect and hear all of these tracks back. It’s a definite reminder of what can be achieved when you work really hard at a project and we have done exactly thatwith all of these tracks. The album represents quite a journey of growth and even though the track listing isn’t in chronological order there’s definitely a developing Agency-V signature sound evident in there.
JW: What lies in the future for the band? Additionally, are there any side projects that Agency-V members are working on?
Pete Steer: We’ve signed to Distortion for 3 albums (not including compilations) so that’s going to keep us pretty busy over the next few years. Plus we’d like to play overseas, particularly Germany, Scandinavia and the USA. We plan to make more videos for future singles too as they are important to us in helping promote the band. I’m also in a 4 piece electro-rock band called ‘Tin Gun’ with Tim Dorney (ex Republica & Flowered Up) and Tim also mixes, masters and remixes the Agency-V tracks. He’s a very important part of the team and does a fantastic job for us. I’ve recently started working on a very interesting new project called ‘The Singularity’ with two established UK musicians which is based around an AI concept. Debut single ‘Not A Machine’ is imminent.
Marie Williamson: Agency-V seems to have taken on a life of it’s own and to date we have been incredibly fortunate with the amazing opportunities that have come our way so it’s hard to know where it will take us but I am a believer that if you label anything with a final destination you may only ever reach that destination and there may be so much more beyond that, I guess we will find out in time to come!
In addition to working with Agency-V I’ve been working for the last couple of years with Adam Collier & Brian Belknap of the incredible band Blaklight to complete an album under the project name SilverScene, We are pretty close to completion with this now and I’m looking forward to its release in the not too distant future.
Bandcamp: https://agency-v.bandcamp.com/album/never-meant-to-be