‘IT doesn’t get more common than five high school kids forming a band and doing it right,” says The Orwells singer Mario Cuomo. To a certain degree, he has a point. Many of music’s best bands have emerged from childhood friendships, spurred on by a desire to escape their surroundings.

What he’s perhaps underestimating is just how many bands like that there are – and how few actually succeed.

The Orwells have known each other for a relatively long time. All aged between 18 and 20, there are twin brothers Grant and Henry Brinner, while Cuomo and Dominic Corso are cousins. The line-up’s completed by Matt O’Keefe, the most affable of the group and the member who does almost all of the talking in interviews.

The familial nature of the band calls to mind a young Kings Of Leon. They hail from the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst, a place Grant Brinner derides for being “too nice and not cool”, and started playing music together around 2009. In 2012, while still in high school, they released their debut Remember When on the small indie label run by the blogger who discovered them.

Since then they’ve graduated from high school, toured all over the world and found time to write and record Disgraceland.

“It was recorded in four cities: London, Chicago, LA and New York,” says O’Keefe. “We were so busy travelling and we’d have studio time between tours, so we just did bits where we could.

“We had a list of producers we wanted to work with too, Chris Cody (Grizzly Bear, Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Jim Abbiss (Arctic Monkeys, Adele) and Dave Sitek (TV On The Radio, Foals, Beady Eye). Instead of picking one we thought we’d have all three if we could, and they all agreed.”

Off-stage, Cuomo’s manner is directly opposed to how he appears while performing – during shows he’s a mass of bendy-limbed energy, diving around, dragging people out of the crowd to dance with him. At one recent gig, he even passionately kissed one audience member in the front row.

It’s hard to believe that person, and the almost monosyllabic character speaking to me today, are the same. He barely makes eye contact and drifts in and out of the conversation. This isn’t to say he’s unpleasant, just very quiet.

One subject that does light him up is high school. “It’s weird, all the way through school we had teachers telling us we had to go to college,” he begins. “Whenever I said I was going to be in a band, they’d tell me I was dumb. Now, the same teachers that are telling us we’re the best thing to come out of the town ever, are the same ones that were chasing me out of the music room and telling me I was never going to amount to anything.

It’s the same with the girls that wouldn’t give me the time of day in school,” he adds. “Now I’m in a band they want to talk to me, but they didn’t care when I wanted to talk to them.”

Cuomo does get animated about the Arctic Monkeys, whom The Orwells recently toured with in the US.

The Orwells were impressed by the Sheffield band’s efficient stage show but noticed Arctic Monkeys’ frontman Alex Turner making the same ad-lib jokes at each show.

“We’ve come to realise that musicians have to be really good actors. Every night it’s like, ‘Dance monkey, dance’, and some nights you just don’t want to do it, but everyone expects Alex Turner to give the best show of his life. If you can do that, and fake it, more power to you, but it might mess you up on the inside. Can I act like that?”

Cuomo asks. “I can, I’m learning.”

  • TOUR DATE: August 22 – Leeds Festival