Henry Cox has spent a lot of time reflecting on his formative years in Blackpool lately. Although he was born some 112 miles away in Burton-upon-Trent, the sprightly lead singer of Boston Manor has proudly called the Lancashire resort home since he was four.
“It’s such an interesting place, and there isn’t really anywhere I’ve found that’s quite like it,” says Henry, now aged 25. “There’s this weird culture that hasn’t changed since the 80s – it’s not relevant to 2018, but it’s still there. It’s fascinating. The kind of people you meet here and the aesthetic are unique.”
Henry’s unwinding in his parents’ living room in Blackpool, the glass of Shiraz in his hand well earned after wrapping up three consecutive nights of filming the quintet’s latest music video. It was a “fun and a little bit stressful” milestone for Henry – having previously directed music videos for the likes of Jamie Lenman and Weatherstate, the promising young filmmaker took on the helm of a Boston Manor video for the first time.
“We’ve just been doing lots of weird shit in Blackpool at night and filming it!” Henry teases of the “film noir-y, trippy journey through the surreal” which he captured over shoots which started at 9 pm and ended at 5 am. “I went to film school, and I’ve been directing videos for a while, and I felt confident enough to the point where I was like, ‘I can do this for Boston Manor, I can direct a video for us’. For every video I can think of, we’ve come up with a treatment for it and worked with the directors quite intensively.
“I’m sure I’m a director’s worst nightmare because I’m always peering over their shoulder and asking, ‘have you thought about maybe doing ‘this’?” he laughs.
