Introducing #158 - The Lounge Society
Let us introduce you to West Yorkshire based - The Lounge Society - who later his month release their debut EP ‘Silk For The Starving’ via Speedy Wunderground. Having released three singles so far, the band have gained praise from the likes of BBC 6 Music, and their debut track being the fastest-selling 7” vinyl their label has ever had. They took a moment to talk to us about their music.
Hey there The Lounge Society - how are you?
Not too bad! feels as though certain parts of life are slowly coming back which is nice, seeing live music and being aloud in pubs is refreshing. Even if it is socially distanced...
Where are you from? Where do you go for adventures?
We are all from around Hebden Bridge/Todmorden which is in the north west.
We tend to spend most of our time together, either rehearsing/writing/recording or out at the golden lion in Todmorden. It’s weird because the band and our social lives very much coincide and are somewhat the same but that’s partially what makes us work. You know, when we’re at a rehearsal working on a track and it’s maybe a bit difficult you’re doing it with your closest mates which is really nice and makes it feel easier. It also means we can go straight from our rehearsal space to the pub.
How did the band start?
We became really good friends in high school through the mutual obsession with music, we initially bonded over bands like the smiths and then started listening to different new music together. The majority of our school felt like it was hooked on Drake and nothing else so to meet people who were listening to guitar music felt like a bit of a breath of fresh air, at the time. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with Drake, Passionfruit is a tune!
You have released a few singles now that have hit the BBC 6 Music playlist, including your debut ‘Generation Game’ - what is that track about?
Generation Game was written about the concentration camps or ‘training camps’ ... in Xinjiang and everything that was and is going on there. We read about what was happening and couldn’t comprehend the fact that none of the media was talking about it, it’s fucked but typical of our corrupt medias.
I think some people thought that it was partially about Brexit or different politics which it wasn’t but the various politics around the world definitely feed into all of our writing. It feels almost impossible to not let all the fuckary in the world impact what we’re writing about. The easy option is to ignore it and choose not to write about it but really it’s our duty as a band with a voice, regardless of how loud that voice is, to shine light on the topics which are avoided by others. It’s lazy to just write about the weather or some boring shit like that, which too many bands are doing at the moment.
You recently signed to Speedy Wunderground, with our tracks being produced by Dan Carey - how did that partnership come about?
We met Dan for the first time when we recorded Generation Game. We’d sent a demo of the track to Speedy a few weeks earlier and Dan said he wanted to record it as a speedy single.
Once that had been released we then all decided that we wanted to get back into the studio with him as soon as possible so we we recorded our EP a few months later. It’s been a bizarre way of working because of lockdown and stuff, we feel like we have such a great relationship with Dan and everyone at Speedy but we haven’t really been able to see them much apart from when we’ve recorded.
The label will be releasing your debut EP later this year. How is that coming along and when can we get to listen to it?
The EP will be out on the 18th June, and we can’t wait for it to finally be out there. To be honest, it feels like quite an old selection of tracks, but these four songs are incredibly important to us and have shaped our album. But this EP isn’t just a taster of what’s to come like some people seem to be do, it’s it’s own piece of work and we are really proud of it. The two tracks which haven’t been released as singles could’ve been singles in our eyes, they’re not filler tracks or anything like that, the EP is basically 4 singles esque tracks which are all equally important to us and hopefully will be for anybody who listens to the record.
What are your key themes and influences when it comes to your music?
I think both our music and words are influenced by what is going on around us. I guess the lyrics are easier to interpret but usually the feel of the music says a lot as well. When we recorded this EP we were in a strange space because we felt really hopeful and excited about the band but there was a bit of a dark shadow or whatever because of all of the lockdown but also the state of England as well as the rest of the world. It’s a dark place at the moment, the fact that the various fascists running the world are still doing what they always have is difficult to ignore. There’s a sense of anger in our record but not in a shouty way, in more of a hopeful way, it’s like this band is everything for us and in such a dark world the positivity that keeps arising from it seems to keep driving us.
The list of our musical influences keeps growing and growing so to pin down any particular artist would be difficult but I think we have been trying to fuse as many genres as possible into our music. By the end of a track being written it’s the lounge society and all tracks have that link which can only be the fact that it’s us four in a room writing a track. There have been occasions where we’ve been writing a few tracks at the same time, one really up beat funky fun track and one driving almost joy divisiony style tracks and by the end of it they sound like they are connected. There’s links between al of our tracks but sometimes we can’t work out what the links are because the tracks are so musically different.
How would you describe your sound to someone who has never listened to your music before?
We get asked this question a lot and we’re yet to come up with a good answer but I’ll give it a go.
Like I said there are a lot of musical influences for us so our sound is a bit of a mash up of various styles. There’s often a funky or ‘dancy’ element to our music. Archie, our drummer, plays a lot of really interesting beats, often almost Afro-beat style stuff, so the combination of a guitar or bass melody and a slightly weird drum beat can shape a quite interesting style of music.