Music

MARVIN x Wunderhorse: Jacob Slater isn’t Jockeying for Attention

It’s no wonder that Jacob Slater is sounding a wee bit hoarse; his band Wunderhorse have just roared across the USA for their first stateside headline tour. “I got a bit sick in the middle, which was a bit shit. I didn’t want to cancel shows but I got laryngitis and I couldn’t fucking sing a note anyway,” he says, with a slight rasp, over Zoom. The doctor that Slater saw advised him not to perform. “He didn’t give me anything. But they have this thing in America called Throat Coat tea, so he said just drink loads of Throat Coat.”
Is it a little like Lemsip, the UK’s premier lemon-flavoured cold-and-flu panacea? “It’s like Lemsip on steroids,” he says, sacrificing his strung-out vocal cords to imitate an American accent. “Bigger and bettttter!”

Just like Wunderhorse, then. In under three years, Slater’s band have gone from Shetland pony to Shire stallion, if you will. After releasing their debut album Cub in 2022, the London band rapidly notched up supporting slots for the likes of Fontaines D.C., Pixies and – it writes itself, doesn’t it – Foals. 

Then, came Midas, released last summer; a Bildungsroman of teenage romance told through grungy hooks, loud-quiet song structures, and belt-it-out choruses. And the latest US tour, swollen voice box aside, was a knockout; it saw the group travel coast to coast, headlining legendary venues including NYC’s Bowery Ballroom and LA’s Troubadour.

Before Wunderhorse, Slater was the frontman of the Dead Pretties, a snarling indie outfit that would have been the kings of Camden had they come around a decade prior to their 2016 inception. “There was a youthful naivety that’s necessary to undertake something as silly as starting a band,” he says. They built up a cult following in the UK capital — and Wunderhorse’s latest stuff undoubtedly riffs off the gnarly guitars — but the group disbanded within a year, leaving behind a prophetic note on their Instagram: “You will undoubtedly see us playing in new bands and under new names in the near future,” it read. I remind Slater. “It’s what I love to do and what I do best,” Slater says. “Why the hell would I do anything else?”

Slater took a time out and went back home to Newquay, a coastal town in Cornwall, to teach surfing. He also landed an acting role in Pistol — Danny Boyle’s 2022 TV drama about The Sex Pistols — as drummer Paul Cook. He played a solid sticksman, but he didn’t enjoy the glitz and glamour that came with appearing in a major series. “The whole red carpet celebrity thing…it’s total horseshit,” he says.

Slater began work on Wunderhorse as a solo project, named after Champion the Wonder Horse, a rooting-tooting, kids’ Western series from the ‘50s (regrettably, Slater didn’t get a chance to visit the statue of the stallion, in LA’s Museum of the American West, while stateside). He quickly got interest from labels; but he wanted a full herd to flesh out the songs. Joining forces with Oscar Browne (guitar, now left); Harry Tristan Fowler (guitar); Peter Woodin (bass); and Jamie Staples (drums), the newly-formed band released debut album Cub in October 2022.

The record is achingly vital, a vial of youth seen through sex and drugs and, obviously, fucking good rock and roll. And those gritty, raspy, growling vocals; Slater uses his voice percussively, wringing the meaning out of every single word, hitting your eardrums until it reverberates in your brain. The album’s lead single “Teal” captures the hazy wanderlust of being a teenager, when “nothing was real man, you know what I mean.” It’s a hazy, filmic snapshot of a pulsating summer which took them on the road alongside the likes of Sam Fender and Fontaines. 

In 2023, Wunderhorse recorded their second album at the legendary Pachyderm Studio in Minnesota (where Nirvana’s In Utero was birthed) in just three weeks. “I’m not into that hippy-dippy kind of thing but some places seem to welcome in the muse or whatever you call it and Pachyderm is really like that. You enter a different state of mind,” he says. Boldly, the band pretty much wrote the entire LP while there. “We didn’t tell anyone we were doing that until afterwards,” he laughs. “Sometimes you’ve gotta roll the dice.”

On the matter of tumbling dice, it was Rolling Stones producer Craig Silvey who steered the band towards a sense of organised chaos, resulting in a neat, undiluted, heady spirit that runs throughout every track. The key was creating genuine imperfection; like wearing-in a pair of jeans properly rather than emptying your pockets for some “distressed” raw denim bullshit. “You can’t think about it too much. [Otherwise] you have a meltdown and move to a trailer park and fucking start working at Aqua Splash to try to refocus. I’ve thought about it.”

Waterpark existential crises aside, the band is gearing up to headline  legendary London venue Alexandra Palace for their biggest headline show to date this May 29. “We’re all stoked,” he says. Will they use the Champion the Wonder Horse theme tune for their walk-on song? “It’s a contender,” Slater says. Either way, the gig is set to bring together 10,000 Wunderhorse fans, all under one roof rocking.

For Slater, this is still what it’s all about. “That’s the whole point. The fans who skip school or get the train to the gig and are young and their eyes are lit up, it gives you hope,” he says. “Maybe that element of the human spirit isn’t dead yet. And it really matters to me. It’s one of the most important things in the world,” he says. It beats feeding the content machine any day. “I try to stay as true to myself as possible. I don’t make them but you know there are TikTok videos of you out there. I’m becoming a bit of an old man. But it is odd,” he says.

I tell Slater that one fan on Wunderhorse’s Subreddit (I have to explain what this is) is obsessed with trying to find out the exact model of sneakers he wears. He laughs; it turns out Slater’s tour Vans aren’t as coveted as they might seem. “I don’t know. They’re just black. They were the cheapest ones. They finally died a death in Liverpool, so I think they’re in a bin there if he wants to go and find them.” Cue a Merseyside rummage for one zealous fan.

Could there be a commercial partnership with Vans down the line? “Who knows! You hear a lot about sponsorships and they kind of rarely happen.” Fair play. But based on Wunderhorse inevitably getting even bigger and better, maybe, just maybe, I’m speaking to the future voice of Throat Coat.