New Music: Introducing - Lady Bird

Meet the band who have been signed to Slaves own record label, was one of the highlights of my Great Escape Festival in Brighton this May and despite their riotous indie punk sound, tell stories with a sensitive and heartfelt base to them. 

This is Lady Bird. They consist of Don Rennols on vocals, guitar and occasionally keyboard, Alex Deadman on guitar and Joe Walker on drums. They hail from the same Kent music scene as Slaves and Don has been friends with the Slaves guys before Slaves even became Slaves. They released their debut EP Social Potions through Girl Fight records (the aforementioned Slaves label) earlier this year and it was Spoons from that EP that grabbed my ears. A lurching, strutting punk rock number that sounds half like Parklife era Blur and half like The Streets, Spoons tells the tale of a young man exploring life (eg: going on a bit of a bender) in the cheap pints and cocktail pitchers world of pub chain Wetherspoons.

At Great Escape I watched two of their shows, the second of those at The Walrus, a dark basement pub. They played with an intense spiralling energy that found them collapsing exhausted on the floor stage side afterwards, whilst the audience danced on smashed pint glasses. Not plastic ones – but real glass. Thankfully health and safety weren’t around to shut the whole thing down.

Now with Reading and Leeds festivals under their belts this weekend on the BBC Introducing Stage, Lady Bird release their first new material since the debut EP. 

Boot Fillers might initially sound like a more lo-fi take on songs like The Fratellis Chelsea Dagger with its ‘da da da’ hook designed to get the drunken football lads singing along, but there’s a fully endearing vulnerability to the lyrics that tell the tale of someone dealing with a number of step-fathers through his life: “The first one ran away with another man’s wife, the second he wasn’t afraid to fight, I had my differences with the third, but they turned out all right.” It’s this reality that gives Lady Bird that extra appeal as much as the handful of visceral but catchy songs they’ve released thus far. 

Catch Lady Bird out on the road this November with Slaves.

Lady Bird - Boot Fillers