In Conversation With #098 - Sea Girls
Sea Girls’ Oli on new hotly awaited album Open Up Your Head.
The long-awaited explosion of joyous indie rock we’ve all been waiting for is finally here. The band’s drummer, Oli Khan, muses upon outselling Brixton Academy, his lockdown soundtrack, and what excites him the most now that the Open Up Your Head is finally out there.
As a band, you’ve grown exponentially in the last couple of years; do you feel like it’s been a really intense build-up to releasing the debut album?
It definitely feels like this big moment! We knew we wanted to do an album at some point, and we could have done one at any point - but we just felt like you only get one chance, so we really wanted to get it right.
We also just released a cassette of all of the other songs, as a sort of “fake first album” in the build-up to this; but it’s always been in our minds that we want to do this big album and make it the best thing we can do. It has all of our songs on it; it has “Call Me Out” which was the first song we wrote, and “All I Want To Hear You Say” and “Damage Done”. It’s got little threads to all the songs we’ve been releasing.
I bet you can’t wait! How have you been finding lockdown? How have you managed to stay connected with not only each other as a band, but also to your fans?
Well, at the start, because we’d been playing all of these live shows, we were initially like ‘it’s kind of nice to have a break!’. Then I think, after about two weeks, I just wanted to go and play some more shows. That said, it has definitely been an amazing chance to connect with our fans in different ways to what we’d normally be doing. We’ve been doing some home performances for our April shows that we had to reschedule; we’ve done Netflix parties with our fans, and recently we’ve made a few WhatsApp groups with them too. We’ve had to look at different ways to connect rather than live, so it’s definitely been a fun challenge.
You’ve definitely managed to keep that hype going, and it’s been really great to see you guys stay on top of everything despite all that’s been going on. Also, congratulations on selling out Brixton! Do you think it will be strange to get back into the live element?
Thank you! Yeah - as soon as we found out we had to move the tour, we’ve been itching to go. When we’re going to release a single, we usually start performing it a month or so before, and actually, we still haven’t played “Do You Really Wanna Know” live yet. To not have been able to see everyone’s reaction to it by playing it live, we’ve been robbed of that bit - so, by the time all of these live shows roll around, we’re going to have so many new songs and it’s going to be really exciting to be able to see our fans’ reactions to them.
In terms of how this album came together, it would be good to grasp more of an idea of how you piece together a song - whether it starts with a lyric, or a riff, or a drum-beat; what does that process look like for you?
Throughout all of our songs, we’ve definitely tried loads of different approaches. Most of the tracks on the album came from Rory or Henry as completed into the studio. Normally, we’ll have the songs ready in the practice room, then we’ll have around a day to record it, so there’s not really much room for messing around. But with Open Up Your Head, the first thing we did was book out six weeks in the studio, so having that space was really cool.
Song songs - like with “Forever” - it was very clear what it was going to be. But then, with something like “Lie To Me”, all we really had was Henry and his guitar-part. We spent maybe five days on that song, just trying so many different versions.
Do you find that there’s a sort of separation between when you’re crafting a song, compared to when it’s released? For example, “All I Want To Hear You Say” is a really popular song - do you find that there’s an element of surprise when you release a song and it almost becomes almost this separate entity?
Yeah! Like you say, that’s the exact feeling we had with [“All I Want To Hear You Say”]. Obviously, we liked it, and we knew it was a cool song, but I don’t think we expected this one to be the runaway song. But I guess there’s something really relatable in those lyrics, and obviously people in Manchester really love it - when we’re doing it live, you can’t hear us because they scream that line! The first time we did it we were really not expecting that.
But with all of the songs, there’s this moment where you hold your breath and let it go, and see what happens. It’s exciting, and hopefully people are going to find new favourites with the new songs on the album.
Totally. One of the main appeals with Sea Girls is that there’s a brutal honesty in the lyrics. You guys do a great job of bringing out the realness and the grittiness in real-life situations. Is that something that you would say is your main appeal?
I guess it’s the not wanting to shy away from every aspect of relationships and human emotion. “Violet” is a scream-from-the-rooftops love song, and then you have a song like “Transplant” which is the end of a relationship, and a sort of coming-to-terms with that and accepting it, and I think in terms of the music, it’s all about telling that story. “Transplant” is a cool example of that - it starts kind of chilled, and then once you realise what’s going on, it’s like a real open-the-floodgates thing. You can have cool guitars, but ultimately we’re trying to convey a feeling in this song.
With these songs, it’ll be about something really specific, but ultimately they’re all feelings that people have felt.
The latest videos you’ve released are aesthetically really creative, are you able to talk through the process a little more with the animated videos?
I think the plan was to do a proper music video, but because we couldn’t go to a shoot we decided to do this because Andrew and I are big fans of an animated video. In terms of the process, the idea was pitched to us and we just loved the idea. The “All I Want To Hear You Say” video was a bit more involved than “Do You Really Wanna Know”, because we got the storyboard and we got to pour all of our input into that.
We also know that we’re not amazing video commissioners or anything, so whilst we knew what we liked and wanted, we put most of our trust into the creators.
For those who might not be familiar with your music, which song would you point them to as a “this is who we are”?
“Transplant” is the most Sea Girls song on the album; it’s got all of the elements on it that make us who we are. It’s got a story, but it’s more relatable in a broader sense, and it’s got all of these big riffs, alongside these moments of quiet contemplation, then a bit of kick-ass rock ‘n’ roll bit by the end.
I definitely see that. Would you say that’s the song that you’re the most proud of too?
I think so - we came up with all of these parts that made it flow really nicely and I’m really happy with that song. We all particularly love that song and are happy for that to be finally out there.
Aside from “Transplant”, which other songs are you really excited to get out there?
“Forever” is a song that we’ve had...forever! I think we first wrote it around two and a half years ago, and we first played it two years ago - it went terribly - but it’s been on our setlist since then and for a lot of our fans it’s been a bit of a long wait [for the recorded version] and so hopefully we’ve done it justice.
I think we did three versions; we first recorded it around the same time as “All I Want To Hear You Say” and we knew it was going to be on the album, and we spent two years trying to get it right.
What are you listening to at the moment?
At the moment, it’s Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers, and HAIM. I guess those artists have been soundtracking my lockdown!
What are you the most excited about with the next chapter, when you look to the coming months?
Playing Brixton is going to be this crazy moment. Playing Scala, at the time, sounded crazy, and when we did that it was awesome, so it never crossed my mind that we’d be playing somewhere like Brixton Academy. It’s going to feel like this amazing moment - I can’t wait to play the album live and see our fans again.
Feature by Kelly Scanlon