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| Credit: Andrew Cooper |
There is music journalism, vintage fashion and music, and it all melds with Brighton’s Hourglvss on the scene. With drive, passion and infectious energy in abundance, the unique outfit's love of style, drama and theatrical effects has started to cast a magic spell on their crowds.
They are currently part of This Feeling’s Alive
tour in association with Red Stripe and
Scott’s. Full of anticipation and
excitement, It’s All Indie caught Sophie-May Williams and Katherine Benbow just
before the big tour kicked off to hear about the ambition, adventures
at this year’s Isle of Wight Festival and their plans for the future.
How does it feel to be part of the Alive tour?
Katherine:
I was sat on the beach when George of This Feeling rang me, he was like ‘do you
want do the Alive tour?’ ‘Yes definitely!’, I replied. He had been texting me
saying ‘I’ve got some exciting news’, and then he rang. I wasn’t going to say
no!
How much
did you know about This Feeling?
Sophie: I
have known Mikey for a couple of years because I did journalism at Isle of Wight
in 2018. My friend and I interviewed all of This Feeling’s bands. I literally
messaged him and I was like ‘Mikey, I wanna come and be part of it all now”.
Tell me
about the gigs have you played this year. What shows did you enjoy most?
Sophie: we
loved Isle of Wight Festival. It was my favourite, we played another festival a
couple of years before and there was loads of technical issues, the PA was in
mono etc. It was no one’s fault but I think from that festival we became determined
to get things right in the practice space. It led to hours and hours and hours
of rehearsing.
Then at
Isle of Wight Festival we smashed it! It was just so good as well as being able
to meet all the other bands backstage, watch them and it just felt like a
really good time. There is a strong sense of community, and I felt a lot of love
from the other bands.
Do you
tend to find that you feed off the crowd as well?
Katherine:
completely. At Isle of Wight we played on the Thursday, and the main stage didn’t
open until Friday, so we had everybody in our tent. We had a massive crowd and
everybody was like dancing and loving it. Mikey was there, and he was filming
us in the crowd (with his hat on).
.
Did you
get a chance to see other bands play?
Katherine:
we saw DMA’s, and Ninth Wave for the first time. They have played with This Feeling
as well. Sophie and I were there together.
Sophie: after
watching them, we looked at each other, and we were like ‘this is how good we
need to be’ and from watching that band it’s really become clear what an
inspiration they have been, it has lit a fire in us big time.
How do
you approach songwriting?
Katherine:
we write them together. We used to write separately, but we don’t anymore because
we’ve realised that we write so much better together. The process of me and
Sophie writing a song is probably my favourite thing that I ever do because it’s
like we are so in tune with each other.
There has
been so many times, especially when it comes to lyrics, where we are sat down
writing and the room goes silent for a minute. It happens so many times that we
have both gone and said [Katherine + Sophie speak at the same time] the exact
same lyric.
You clearly have a lot in common. How did the two of you meet?
Katherine:
we were at a Fat White Family gig, and we got speaking. Then Sophie bought some
stuff from my vintage shop, we got speaking and we just connected on another
level. We decided to do music, we were like ‘sh*t this is really cool! We just
started jamming together and decided we should write songs together because we
have the same ideals, the same brain and everything.
Are you
planning to release new music soon?
Sophie:
yes our second single is coinciding with this tour, so we are releasing a
single called ‘Death Man’s Hand’. When we write we both have our moments, we sing
separately, but our concept behind Hourglvss is that we want to sound like one
voice, so this is actually the only song we wrote where it sounds more like a duet,
which is quite interesting. We love it because it’s full of drama, it’s a very
visual song with some strong lyrics.
We are
going to film the music video after the Alive tour because we just didn’t have
the time. But at the end of the video we are going to do our own version of ‘Thriller’
but with a western line dance, it’s going to be like a little short film. We
are doing everything ourselves, we are making all the props and a lot of costumes
for it. We are going to document it all!
What’s
next? What do you want to achieve?
Katherine:
I think because this is our first tour we really want to focus on that, but
then it will be gigging and enjoy being an active live band, and then we want
to do some writing. Next year we want to get on as many festivals bills as we possibly
can.
Sophie: I
feel where we are at now is a really good place. We started gigging in April,
we are with This Feeling, and god love them – I don’t believe in god - but they have given us such good opportunities.
Then next
year we want to aim as high as we can. I want our shows to be not musical theatre
necessarily but a real spectacle and theatrical. I want to create an experience
at our shows.
Katherine:
we are ambitious. We tend to get to where we want to be at a certain point, we
are very dedicated to this band and that’s what you have to be. We work hard, and
my boyfriend said to me the other day ‘do you and Katie ring each other every
day?’ I was like ‘yeah, of course’. I don’t even think of it as an important
thing. Who else am I gonna tell stuff? Who else is going to care about these
shoes?!’ [laughs].
Alive
will visit the following venues:
October 2019
Wed 2 Oct - Record Junkee, Sheffield
Thu 3 Oct - Broadcast, Glasgow
Fri 4 Oct - Night People, Manchester
Sat 5 Oct - Hope & Ruin, Brighton
Wed 9 Oct - Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff
Thu 10 Oct - Thousand Island, London
Fri 11 Oct - Boileroom Guildford
Sat 12 Oct - The Sunflower Lounge, Birmingham
Advance tickets will be £8 for London’s Thousand Island venue,
and £6 elsewhere on the tour, available from thisfeeling.co.uk and metropolismusic.com