“If you really want it you won’t need persuading,” sing The Jacques on ‘Nothing Amazing’, the laissez-
faire but euphoric closer to the London via Bristol trio’s second album ‘Make Repetition’ – a fitting
ode to “coming back stronger now, carrying on”.

It’s a mantra they know all too well. For a band so young in their years, The Jacques have been
through more than most: meeting their heroes, the death of a band mate and best friend, recovery
from crippling addiction, a dream tour torpedoed, then returning with their strongest work to date.
The story of The Jacques is one of resilience and togetherness.

Frontman Finn O'Brien and his brother drummer Elliot have been playing together for as long as they
can remember, first picking up instruments at the age of five and jamming The White Stripes before
they started writing their own songs. They formed The Jacques with another set of brothers at
school at the age of 15, and two years later they were already playing showcase festival Dot To Dot
and supporting The Libertines at Hyde Park – even being briefly signed to Libs drummer Gary
Powell’s label.

Early releases garnered indie radio attention, they found themselves at Glastonbury and Reading &
Leeds. “Then it all combusted,” Finn recalls, looking back over numerous line-up changes before
meeting bassist Will Hicks and multi-instrumentalist Harry Thomas while studying at Goldsmiths
University. They pulled it together, toured Europe and started to gain some momentum. “We were
so young and just didn’t register things properly,” Finn admits. “Looking back, we had a lot of
experiences that young bands don’t usually get. I was just a bit oblivious. I was just really young and
didn’t understand much.”

For Harry, it was a dream enough to be touring and recording a debut album on the side of “working
multiple minimum wage jobs to make ends meet”. They rode out a “turbulent time” to make their
first record ‘The Four Five Three’. “I’d just had some bad news about a good friend of mine Billy from
my childhood who unfortunately just passed away,” recalls Elliot. “We went into the studio and that
was on my mind. There was a lot of emotion and feeling. I wasn’t in the best place.”

Then further tragedy struck when bassist Will died before the record could be released. “It’s still
quite magical to me,” says Finn of the album itself. “It was one of the last things our best friend ever
did, so there’s always that.”

The remaining trio owed it to their friend and themselves to continue, but it wasn’t easy. “I think we
maybe jumped the gun a bit,” admits Finn. “I didn’t know that it was going to take f**king ages for it
to start to feel like a band again”. Hailing Will as “an irreplaceable influence as a friend and writing

partner”, Harry agrees: “We had to find ourselves again and find our voice. Even outside of the band,
it took a long time for us and our friendship group to get back. We didn’t want all of that work we’d
done together to fall on deaf ears. We wanted it to be heard so we just chose to plough through it.”

Without a guidebook on how to navigate such a headf**k, they marched on – but the world had
other plans. ‘The Four Five Three’ came out in 2020, with its dreamy mix of grunge and indie
soundscapes earning them comparisons to Pixies, Arctic Monkeys and The Kinks, but failing to take-
off as they’d hoped with COVID and the lockdown grounding everything and everyone. The brakes
were forced on, all while Finn was facing other demons with addiction.

“The journey is never really over,” he admits of where he’s at now. “It's not something you solve, or
cure, or beat”. Still, for the wizened young artist “music is the only thing that makes me feel like I
know what I'm doing”. “When I'm playing or making music, I feel like I deserve to be there doing it,
like I have some sort of license,” he continues. “It feels like something I've earned by learning how to
do it well. Nothing else makes me feel like that. Music instills me with a sense of belonging that in
my case is crucial to any kind of recovery.”

You can hear all that compulsion throughout the core of ‘Make Repetition’ – with songs of loss,
survival, self-destruction, self-improvement, catharsis and sticking together. Produced by Dan Swift
(Snow Patrol, Biffy Clyro), Jules Apollinaire (Suki Waterhouse, Declan McKenna) and Gordon Raphael
(The Strokes, Hinds), the band’s’ sophomore effort travels the spectrum of scorched but sky-
reaching indie between Blur, Modern Lovers, Parquet Courts and Velvet Underground, all with that
infectious and bittersweet Jacques flavour. “It’s not purposefully obnoxious, but by this one we
knew more about who we were,” says Harry. “We weren’t pandering to anyone, and it sounds how
it sounds.”

From the psychedelic grunge of ‘All The Sinners’ to the Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Humbug’ meets spaghetti
western sludge of ‘Dead Man’s Garden’, the 21st Century Britpop jam of ‘Via Dolorosa’ and the
teenage abandon of sweet pop gem ‘Ramona’, ‘Make Repetition’ is made up of 12 confident and
sentimental earworms.

They’ve already got the best part of their next album written – a ‘concept record’, watch this space –
and maybe this time the odds are stacked in their favour. One person who thinks so is Sex Pistols
icon John Lydon, who took a shine to The Jacques after inviting them to support Public Image Ltd on
a recent European tour…only for the band to find themselves with their van and equipment stolen.

“John found that completely hilarious,” recalls Finn. “He really took me under his wing. I actually
brought a tear to his eye at one point during one conversation. It was quite a beautiful moment. He's
a very caring person. I do remember thinking afterwards though; did I just make the original face of
punk cry?”

Do you ever get the feeling that this time, you won’t get cheated? Keep everything crossed for The
Jacques. “I want to catch everyone’s attention,” ends Harry. “Due to the timing and circumstances of
the first album, we’ll never know how it would have fared. We were just knocking on the door.
Hopefully the knock is a lot louder now.”