The sky is notepaper-white and the pavements have been cleaned. Outside the bars of Thomas Street people sit alone at tables, hunched inwards over cigarettes and phones. I’m walking to meet Hurts. They’re working underground near here; writing songs in a basement beneath Manchester’s centre.
On my way down into the building, I meet another local band. They seem flustered and nervous. They tell me that they’re off on tour. When they discover that I’m going to see Hurts the lead singer sets down the amp he’s carrying and seems on the verge of tears. ‘What do those two do in there?’ he asks.

Adam Anderson and Theo Hutchcraft sit side-by-side in chairs. The room is sparse and has a dusty wooden floor. There’s some recording equipment against one wall and a microphone in the opposite corner. Occasionally, Anderson pulls a guitar across his lap and inspects the frets for a moment. Hutchcraft takes a comb from his pocket, manoeuvres it between his fingers, then replaces it. They both seem different, at first. Anderson, the calculating visionary. Hutchcraft, the born pop-star. And yet there is a strong sense of loyalty between the two men. Above all, they both seem impossibly calm.

It’s a few months since they signed to an imprint of Sony. It was a decision they made in Berlin, having escaped there to get some perspective on their situation. It was a chaotic period. Even in Berlin, they say, they were tracked down by the MD of a German record label. ‘He told us that people aren’t happy,’ says Hutchcraft, smiling. ‘And that they needed our music.’
Silence surrounded Hurts at the start. There was no screaming house-party shows, no twittering, no posturing or hyperbole. They’ve spent the last year moving regularly from suburb to suburb, spending time in Broughton, Rusholme and Bellevue, as well as Berlin. A mystery surrounds them both. Though today, they seem relaxed and happy to discuss their pasts.
‘My dad was a milkman in Hazel Grove for thirty years,’ says Anderson, monotone but cheerful. ‘I’ve not really been anywhere,’ he adds. ‘My granddad was a wartime entertainer. He played banjo for the Queen.’
Hutchcraft says he was ‘born in North Yorkshire. I came to Manchester after I left home. As a kid, I travelled. We owned a caravan. We spent some time in Australia, some time in the middle-east.’
Both have spent the majority of the past four years on the dole. ‘I told the government I wanted to be a talk-show host and they gave me forty-four pounds a week,’ says Anderson. ‘It was ok.’
‘It was fine,’ says Hutchcraft. ‘We had nothing.’
Both worked, too. During the first Hurts sessions Hutchcraft was touring with British Super-bikes, working backstage. Anderson filmed the greyhound races at Bellevue dog track. He was still filming dogs when Hurts began to gather momentum. ‘It was odd,’ he says. ‘One minute you’re watching a man inject steroids into the hind leg of a dog, the next you’re on the phone to Rick Rubin and he’s saying how much he loves your video.’

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