Long Read // “If a button is there, it’s there to be pushed” - Oral Habit on their new EP Garage Frock
“If a button is there, it’s there to be pushed” - Oral Habit on their new EP Garage Frock.
Hailing from Brighton, three-piece psych-garage savants Oral Habit have been a particularly dazzling group this year, having already released two turbulent singles “Sauerkraut” and “Garage Frock” before their impressive debut EP Garage Frock came out earlier in July.
Frontman Charlie Hales, who had played in a few different local bands, explains the origin of the project: “I think I was butthurt about getting kicked out of a band and was like ‘I want a new kind of thing’, changing up the style of music, changing a habit, and it was just like that”.
Founded in 2023, Oral Habit saw its inception in a rather unfamiliar fashion (or perhaps the contrary), as Hales approached his brother Felix about starting a band.
“I kind of made him join”, he laughs, “We started practicing and we spent that summer playing small venues and playing in our parents’ attic, just kind of creating what is now the backbone of Oral Habit”.
The raw, unrestrained sound they have developed is one that reflects from the minimalistic setup they resorted to in these early sessions: “I would in my late teens try to write stuff that was almost too thought out, so starting this project I just wanted a really simple setup without loads of pedals”.
“We would play really loud and use a lot of fuzz and wah, almost just using the pedals Jimi Hendrix used”, he explains, “I think just from being as basic and harsh as that the music lent into that”.
From playing smaller venues in their first year, the trio have gone on to play highly-acclaimed venues such as Shacklewell Arms in London and Big Hands in Manchester, having been described as an “unstoppable energy” with their “fuzzed-out, high-voltage sound”.
“We tend to play so many grimey shows that it now feels like we are stepping into nicer venues where we actually have proper soundchecks and not just a line check. It feels great and makes me feel really comfortable on stage”.
The warm reception they have found for their live performances is unsurprising considering their rigorous practice routine, the trio committing up to 12 hours a week in the runup to a gig.
Hales claims this approach does a lot to ease the nerves when on stage: “The main thing is to be able to play it on the night and kind of just let it happen, not having to think about it”.
Having just released their debut four-track EP, Hales goes into detail on the process of recording the songs for the project: “It was just primal, instinctive”.
“I feel like the idea was the same as the live shows. We really rehearsed it so that we’d know it inside out and when we get to the studio it’s all there first or second take and it’s just as natural and raw as it can be”.
The tracks were recorded in the space of three days with Rory Lethbridge, frontman from highly-acclaimed local band School Disco: “I was kind of like not knowing where I wanted to record this, would we need to do it ourselves, and then he kind of came to us and it just felt like a natural way to do it”.
“I think we had three days booked in. It’s also the space where we practice and we just went in and ended up smashing it out in two days. It was just me and Felix recording the parts and then we spent a day on vocals and overdubs and just got weird with it”.
Title track “Garage Frock” perfectly captures the essence of their sound. Packed with vibrant bursts of radiant garage spirit, the track was written only a week before the group had planned to go into the recording studio: “It just felt like it would round it off in the most blunt and stupid way".
The two latter tracks of the EP show a more composed and calculated side to the group, with the track “I’m Free” perfectly portraying the feeling of a warm summer’s day with a delightful, yet still raw and vivid sound.
Garage Frock is out now, also available via a limited-edition cassette release from Manchester tape label Sour Grapes. Oral Habit will also be doing in-store shows in London next month, along with a UK tour in September.
Words by Jay Cohen
