Most of the songs on your new album, Love Is Dead, could be about both a relationship and the state of the world. Would you agree?

LAUREN MAYBERRY: I could go down the list and say which ones are about personal stuff, and which are just waking up in the world we live in right now and feeling the heaviness of that. But I really like the fact that people can read them in whatever way they want. That just says that pop music doesn't have to be meaningless. To me, it's about the death of empathy I suppose. Some days you get up and 100% agree with this album title, and then other days we emphatically don't agree. I guess that's what it's about, questioning and trying to figure it out.

In what way do you think empathy has died, and what do you think has caused it?

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LAUREN: The best thing about where we are right now is people being conscious and caring about each other and doing things with a purpose, and the worst things are the apathy and lack of ability to engage and empathize with each other. All of that ultimately probably comes from a place of hurt. If people are really hateful and disgusting in the way they treat other people, that probably came from a hurt place — but then, when does it stop? When does this spiral end? Sometimes you can get pretty melancholic about that.

IAIN COOK: I think it comes from a place of fear as well. The idea of building walls and isolating and alienating ourselves from, for example, the rest of Europe. "I don't trust this person because I don't know them, or know what they want from me." I think that contributes as well to wanting to withdraw.

MARTIN DOHERTY: People are inherently selfish, that is just the way it is. And when those people become politically disenfranchised, that starts to breed hatred, and then when you get someone saying all the right things, that they identify with, like the people in power in Britain and in America right now, that spreads and increases the level and intensity of that feeling, until we get to the position that we're in right now.

LAUREN: It's like an onion, there's layers of fucking sadness to that. Because the people who are generally coming from a place of privilege, the politicians who are saying they're gonna help these people, aren't gonna help them. They're helping people that are like them, they're helping people who are in a high tax bracket, they're helping businesses, they're helping corporations, [not] the people that were fearful and confused. If your life sucks and someone tells you it's because of somebody else, that's where these things flourish and fester because everyone's sad and afraid. And then you say you're gonna help them, and you didn't even do it. You dragged us out of Europe because people were afraid and you preyed on their fear, and you're not even gonna help them anyway. What a horrible state of affairs!

MARTIN: The anti-Scottish independence campaign in the UK preyed on people's fear about what would happen if Scotland was not in the European Union. But then a month later they were like, "Oh, by the way, see that whole campaign… we're gonna leave the EU anyway."

LAUREN: People say it's too soon to have another Scottish independence referendum, but Theresa May will have another general election! Somebody said to me the other day, "You should be pleased there's a female Prime Minister because that's feminism at work." Just because somebody walked into Downing Street and had a vagina, doesn't mean they're making decisions that benefit women in any way. Margaret Thatcher was a lady. I suppose she was a woman in a man's world, but that's about the only nice thing I have to say.

