Athlete

Deptford to number one

Athlete formed in Deptford in south-east London from friends since age fourteen, rehearsing from 1999 in the basement of The Bear, a pub on Deptford High Street. The line-up never changed: Joel Pott on lead vocals and guitar, Carey Willetts on bass, Steve Roberts on drums and Tim Wanstall on keyboards. Their first release was the self-titled EP on March 4, 2002 (UK 85), "You Got the Style" reached 37 in 2002, and the debut album Vehicles & Animals (April 7, 2003, UK 19) was nominated for the 2003 Mercury Music Prize, going from silver to gold within two weeks. Roberts said there is an underdog waiting to be discovered by the Mercury every year.

Tourist (January 31, 2005) reached number 1 in the UK with 83,370 copies in its first week and went platinum a month later. "Wires" was released on January 17, 2005 and reached 4; it won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song in 2006. Beyond the Neighbourhood (September 3, 2007, self-produced, UK 5) and Black Swan (August 24, 2009, on Fiction, UK 18) followed, then the compilation Singles 01-10 (September 27, 2010) and a Live at Union Chapel album (February 27, 2012). Willetts recorded as Boxes. Setlist.fm counts 323 setlists from 2002 to 2014, and the latest is OnBlackheath on September 14, 2014. Pott has said the band ended, though his Wikipedia page says they still play occasional dates and have not ruled out another album.

Pott has since written and produced for George Ezra ("Budapest", "Shotgun"), Shura, London Grammar and James Bay; Willetts has written for Dermot Kennedy and Freya Ridings, and Roberts and Wanstall have done production work. Critics often made the Coldplay comparison, and Tourist drew mixed reviews, with a Metacritic score of 46.