“My pet rat used to crawl on my bed and eat my Bran Flakes”: NOAHFINNCE’s five favourite things

Your favourite bands all have favourite things, so we got nosey and demanded to know what they are. In the midst of preparing to bring his fizzy, energised pop-punk noise to Slam Dunk next month, we got NOAHFINNCE to tell us what makes his world go round. Starting with an almost Alan Partridge-ish indulgence…

“I’ve been obsessed with baklava recently. To get to the studio I go through Waterloo, and they have this massive stall of baklava there. It’s so fucking good. I’ve missed a train once just to get it. That’s my shit right now. It’s dangerous! It’s not really shit food, I suppose, but it’s still pretty indulgent. I've weaned myself off chicken nuggets because it was all that I ate until I was 19, but I won’t just eat one baklava, I’ll eat the whole box. I’ll get two boxes – one for the studio, and one that I take home and eat in the privacy of my home, so nobody has to see me get all syrupy. In the studio I look a lot more refined eating it…”

“That’s Microwave: the band, not just a microwave in the kitchen. They’re an alternative rock band from Georgia, and Nathan [Hardy], the singer, is an ex-Mormon, so there’s a lot of interesting religious stuff in there.

“They didn’t make much impact over here, really, but their vinyls made it over here. For Christmas, my boyfriend managed to find one that was years old, secondhand for, like, 80 pounds. I hold that very dear. I love how they write songs, and I went to go see them. I’ve seen them three times, but the second time I saw them, Nathan came out and he was like, ‘Oh, Noah, right?’ That was cool. People should check them out because they’re awesome.”

“I’m five-foot-five, and I’ve found a single pair of trousers that I actually enjoy wearing. I’ve probably got about 20 sets of jeans in my drawers that I can’t wear because they’re too long for me. So, when I do find a pair that fits well, I feel at home. I grew up wearing the big, baggy blue jeans where you’d walk to your friend’s house, and by the time you got there they’d have mud all over the bottoms and get all decayed. Which looks cool, but it doesn’t feel cool.

“When I say ‘fit right’, I mean trousers that don’t go past the bottom of my legs. My family have big butts, so if I buy jeans that are the right length, they’re too tight because they’re designed for really skinny people. But the big-butt ones trail behind me. But I found one pair that I like, that fit properly, that I got as a birthday present to myself. People say, ‘You’re like a cartoon character – you only wear the same outfit.’ Yeah, because it’s the only one that I like that fits. I have copies of all my favourite outfits, apart from those fucking trousers – I only have one pair of those because the shop closed down!”

“I’ve always been obsessed with rats and rodents. I remember we used to go to the pet shop near my house every week after Judo class on Fridays and I would always look at the rats. I was 10 when I got my first couple of pet rats. You can’t have just one because they’re social and they’ll get really lonely. They get depressed if they’re on their own, and some of them actually develop schizophrenia.

“They’re the cleanest rodents. Nobody believes that, but it’s a fact. They have specific places where they shit and piss and they never eat by it. You can train them as well, and they can be quite affectionate. We had one left after his friends died and we didn’t want to buy any more at that point, and we treated it like a dog. I’d keep the cage door open, and every morning when I’d eat my Bran Flakes in bed, he’d crawl up onto my duvet, sit by my pillow, and I’d feed him.

“I could talk to you about rats for hours. Rats became part of my branding, to the point where the first tour that we did was called The Anatomy Of A Rat Tour, and everybody on tour got a rat tattoo. It was that ingrained into it!”

“I love cancelled plans. No matter what the plan is, even if it’s something I’ve been looking forward to, even if I’m really excited to do it, if it gets cancelled I’m not gonna be mad. I love being at home alone, doing the same shit every single day. If somebody cancels a plan, I’ll just have a two-hour bath and scroll on my phone, and I’ll feel refreshed.

“I don’t know if it’s an ADHD or autism thing, but if I think the day is going to go one way, and it changes, I get freaked out. But the only thing I don’t get freaked out by is cancelled plans, because it means I have so much more time to procrastinate. I love having no responsibilities, no stress, not having to leave the house. So, for me, cancelled plans are definitely a favourite thing.”

NOAHFINNCE plays Slam Dunk Festival in May – get your tickets now.

Read this next:

• Listen to NOAHFINNCE on the Kerrang! In Conversation podcast
• Meet NOAHFINNCE: The YouTuber bringing joyful chaos to pop-punk’s new wave
  
• NOAHFINNCE: “There’s always going to be people that can’t see me as anything more than an influencer, but they’re not worth worrying about”