It's strange to hear Jacob Slater talk so tentatively about the “quiet life” when he's famous for one of the most intense, rock-hard live sets on the indie circuit. He's the kind of artist, it seems, who tries to find meaning in life's simplest moments.
“I haven't had a break in a long time,” he says, eyes narrowing as he lights a cigarette. Clouds of smoke drift towards a large poster of Bob Dylan stretched across the ceiling. “The sea has been cold and rough here for the last few days so it was good to get back out there. I'm a little rusty, though, spending so much time out of the water now.”
The Wunderhorse frontman is re-adjusting to the natural rhythms of life in his adopted home of Newquay, Cornwall. It's here where the 27-year-old trained as a surf instructor a few years ago, a solo venture that helped reignite his creative fire after he burned out and crashed in the much-hyped but short-lived London punk band Dead Pretties. Recently, he spent his time sleeping, listening to records and meeting friends for coffee. Best of all, says Slater cheerfully, there's little or no cell phone signal. The temptation to go off the grid clearly seems great.
Returning to the coast has become an outlet for Slater's newfound sense of lightness. Rarely at home, he spent much of 2024 sequestered in a touring bubble, playing across Europe with Fontaines DC and racking up massive UK shows at festivals such as Reading & Leeds and TRNSMT. In August, Wunderhorse's second LP, Midas (Communion Records), hit No. 6 in the UK Official Charts upon release. a significant achievement given the 2022 debut Cub failed to crack the Top 75.
On his birthday, Slater received a call from his manager saying they had booked a gig at London's 10,000-capacity Alexandra Palace for the following spring. In November, the group supported Fontaines DC across Europe and now, through December, the band are opening for Sam Fender in arenas across the UK and Ireland, capping off a great year.
Although often steeped in themes of self-destruction and instability, Wunderhorse's music is uplifting, cathartic and compassionate. The four-piece are cult stars on the cusp of mainstream crossover, a reality they now encounter on the road. Every night, they come up against a predominantly young fan base that has recently grown in size as a result of TikTok's “unexpected” popularity. “Not to sound like an old man, but I really don't know how this whole 'internet thing' works. But it seems to be a real beast,” says Slater, speaking via video call.
It was after a headline show at Glasgow's Barrowlands last month that Slater realized the band's profile was changing. Facing a disrupted sleep schedule that had left him feeling like a “nocturnal creature,” he ventured, alone, to expel all the adrenaline he'd pumped up on stage. What he found was a city that gradually revealed itself through characters of people, foggy images of bars closed for the night and the distant stretch of the M8 motorway.
Just an hour earlier, beads of sweat covering his forehead, he was growling into the microphone, stomping his feet as each song reached its climax. Video of the performance circulated on social media the next day, with clips of attendees crying and barking doing the rounds. The Wunderhorse may have already inspired fan tattoos and custom trainers, but this felt like a new level of visibility.
“Recently, the audience has become a little more fixed in their demographics,” explains Slater. “At first, I didn't know how to take it when people told us we had young fans. But I remember when I was younger, music meant so much to me. It still does, of course, but music has a special power when you're a teenager. If people connect with us at that age, then that's amazing.”
Originally a one-man effort, the first seismic shift in Wunderhorse's trajectory occurred when Slater decided to expand the project to a full band in its early days of creation. Midas. He brought Harry Tristan Fowler (guitar), Peter Woodin (bass) and Jamie Staples (drums), having met each of them at gigs in London and Hertfordshire. Slater understood early on that the best way to approach music was to build his own world and invite people. He and his bandmates soon honed their bluesy, expansive, emotionally troubled sound after bonding over the great records of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
His release CubMeanwhile, it had left Slater feeling like he was treading water as a lyricist. Much of the album's writing resonated because of its raw honesty about a dark personal history, selfishness (“Purple”), nihilism and traumatic teenage experiences (“Butterflies”, “Teal”). For its author, however – who was in recovery from addiction problems at the time – accepting the circumstances of his past life for what they were became too much of a mental burden to bear.
“This is probably not what you're going to say in interviews, but I think every artist has songs they wrote when they were younger and now they're struggling,” Slater says, smiling from under a large, rugged scarf. “You start to realize that whatever you write, you're going to have to live with it for a long time. If people are singing your songs and you don't like the words you've written, then you end up standing on stage feeling like you've cheated yourself.”
Wunderhorse
Polocho
Slater notes how his record deal said so Cub was intended to see him “deliver at least 18 songs”. Only 11 tracks made the final cut and he put “any leftovers that didn't fit into the world of Wunderhorse” on his 2023 solo LP Pinky, I Love You. Curiously, eagle-eyed fans noticed that, a few weeks ago, Wunderhorse's older music videos were pulled from YouTube. they responded by creating a Google Drive folder with all the recently missing clips. Today, Slater admits he did: “If I had it my way, there would be no promotion, no videos. I find everything very difficult because that's not how my brain works.”
Liberation Midas it didn't completely erase Slater's feelings of alienation towards the music industry, but explored a more peaceful coexistence within it. It looks like the quest for salvation he sings about on “Silver” is starting to pay off. Still, Slater believes some aspects of his life today would surprise his younger self: he's thoughtful but firm in describing how publications describing Wunderhorse as “generous”, just two albums in, can be disorienting for a musician still coming to terms with his changing stature.
“Worrying about becoming that 'big thing' that people say you are will only set you back. Nobody even knows what such titles mean,” he says. “Every songwriter who has stood the test of time has managed to stay true to who they are. Like, did Bob Dylan wake up one day and say “I'm going to be a generation?” No.”
It's clear that Slater sees a gap between his intentions and the audience's reaction to his musical output. Later he will mention how Midas“Superman” has been “completely misunderstood” by audiences, but he also tries to let go of those things that are out of his control. “No one is ever going to feel what you felt when you wrote the song, because everyone is at the center of their own universe,” he says. “And that's part of the magic.” True Self-Acceptance: Slater is steadily getting there, inch by inch, wave by wave, song by song.
