New Music: Honeyblood - The Third Degree

OK, first of all can we all just take a moment to appreciate the lizard like way Stina from Honeyblood has camouflaged herself for this promo pic? If this is the effort she’s prepared to go to for this I imagine she’d be an absolute champion at games of hide and seek. 

Now, onto the music… after the first two Honeyblood albums the question I’ve been asking myself is ‘what next?’

More of the same? A radical change in direction which finds Stina embracing electronics and taking her sound to the disco? Fleshing out into a bigger band and maybe throwing in some strings and horns? Stripping it all back to a more rootsy or acoustic project? Going full on floor to the floor heavy metal? All of these things were and are still are possible. But yesterday with the release of some new material there was some sort of answer at least. That answer was classic 60’s ‘girl group’ pop and Motown influences – although to be fair those influences have always been there a bit, take a listen to the ‘Oo-oo-oo’ hooks on Killer Bangs and you can hear it.

With a new album In Plain Sight due later this year and a big UK Spring tour announced (dates can be found by clicking here) The Third Degree is Stina’s sneering 'could’t give a sh*t about you' indie rock take on the likes of The Ronettes, The Crystals and The Chiffons. 

“No no drama drama baby,” Stina sings as she sees an ex out with a new admirer and then makes sure she ignores them. “All the best to the one who comes next, she’s a braver girl than I,” she confirms. And with that, Stina moves on. 

6 years ago Honeyblood first appeared on Breaking More Waves. 6 years! And this new one's a blast. 

Honeyblood - The Third Degree (Video)

New Music: Honeyblood - Walking At Midnight (Video)

There’s a couple of indie rock / pop guitar bands I’ve been to see live recently who seem to have really upped their game in terms of crowd excitement levels and size  compared to when I’ve seen them before. One is The Big Moon (who this year released a highly-recommended song fuelled debut album – do check out Love in The Fourth Dimension if you haven’t done so already) and the other is Honeyblood who now have two solid records under their belt, both of which featured on my respective end of year lists.

From Honeyblood’s second Babes Never Die comes a new video for Walking At Midnight, which features a performance by drag-artist Virgin Xtravaganzah, some scary looking audience members and some nods to old school horror films, particularly Carrie and Suspiria. Prepare to get a little creeped out.

Honeyblood - Walking At Midnight (Video)

My Favourite Albums of 2016: #16 Honeyblood - Babes Never Die

Second album in and Honeyblood once again find themselves on the list of my end of year favourites just as they did in 2014. Despite a line-up change (Cat Myers replacing Shona McVicar on drums) Babes Never Die doesn’t go on any radical shift in sound from the self-titled debut, but does manage to be more confident, more empowered and possesses a greater clarity. Of course, it also features some great songs, particularly on the venomous and rallying title track and the hard riffing Ready For The Magic. If anyone thinks that indie rock is dead, this is a forceful and potent argument against that.

Honeyblood - Sea Hearts

New Music: Honeyblood - Babes Never Die

As you grow older death is something that slowly creeps into your mindset as a growing inevitability, as does, for a lot of people, indifference and the idea that sometimes it’s better just to accept things, even if they’re wrong, because you can’t fight everything forever – life is too short to be angry all the time.

Thankfully Honeyblood are still full of youthful venom with the rallying-cry of Babes Never Die, the title track from their second album due out 4th November via Fat Cat. The first time I experienced this song was just over a year ago at Somersault Festival in Devon and even at that point it lodged so firmly in the head that by the time I heard it a second time, at Guildford’s Boileroom last week, it felt like a riled up old friend. Both times it sounded like a single, and now here it is; a punchy kick-ass anthem and then some. Warning: this one’s an earworm.

Honeyblood - Babes Never Die

New Music: Honeyblood - Ready For The Magic (Video)

“Mother mother brought us here, she said the world we should fear, it is coming to its end, for ourselves we should fend, mother mother didn’t stay, she says no more, so do what may.” And so with these words, the video for Ready For The Magic, the new tune from Honeyblood, begins. A word of warning; neither song or film are for the faint hearted. The music, a mix of aggressive riffs and come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough vocals sound ripe for blowing the roof of a sweaty club near you and then some, the video on the other hand will probably leave you feeling a bit creeped out. Certainly towards the end you’ll see the girls in the film enjoying a bit of Honeyblood - but not in the way you might expect. Tasty stuff.

A mighty and powerful return from the band who have recently announced a series of small club dates and 1 UK festival - my home cities' Southsea Fest. All dates are on their Facebook page.

Honeyblood - Ready For The Magic 

Honeyblood - The Black Cloud

This isn’t really a post about Honeyblood, it’s a post about preconceived ideas and judgements and how we think the internet has made us all a little too quick to make them, plus some stuff on image and sexuality in pop music. If you don’t like these random waffling unedited  stream of consciousness posts we occasionally write, just skip to the bottom paragraph and read that and press play. OK?

“Normally I’d say @yumhoneyblood are a cool band. Tonight they (and the venue) was hot.” That was something that we tweeted following a Honeyblood gig last year. The resultant tweet was met with a response of “gross” from one person that read the tweet. When we asked why we were told: “Seems a bit creepy and pervy to me,” and “Male bloggers shouldn’t be focussing on female artists’ sexiness of appearance over their music.”

Here lies 1 of the problems with Twitter and the internet generally. There are too many people making judgements about people’s thoughts based on a few words, without trying to have a conversation to establish and clarify if their assumptions about the words are correct. 

Admittedly in hindsight our words were poorly chosen  – but the word ‘hot’ is one that is used in an abstract as well as concrete sense and can mean very different things. In this case it was related to the heat of the venue and the sh*t hot performance of the band. Unfortunately the aggrieved person on Twitter didn’t agree, suggesting that we wouldn’t have eluded to the band being ‘hot’ if we were talking about Royal Blood (he was right, but only because we don’t like Royal Blood – but he was wrong about other male acts we do like the music of). 

So, because we felt we were being judged incorrectly, we asked why he thought this. He clarified that his judgement was based on our Twitter feed which in his words “consistently seems to leer on and make weird comments about female artists”. There’s no doubt that here at Breaking More Waves we do write about ‘sexy pop’ and make comments on artists appearance – but always with a context (and also importantly we write about men as well as women when talking about such things). This is because pop music is a visual medium as much as it is a musical one. It’s why Lady Gaga, David Bowie, FKA Twigs and Mumford & Sons appear the way they do. They’re giving definition of themselves and the artistic space they occupy by their visual image as much as their musical one. Otherwise why have promo pictures? Why have videos? If music as an art form was just about sound these things wouldn’t be required. 

We believe that sometimes it’s right to talk about that image and appearance – but we try to keep a context. For example we once wrote about George Ezra’s lips because we were making a point that no music writers mentioned his large lips as they did when Lana Del Rey first appeared. Why was that? We’ll leave that for you to ponder over.

There’s also a lot of pop music that deals with sex. Many many pop songs are about sex or allude to sex in the lyrics.  Therefore once again we think that this is perfectly acceptable to write about these things, with that important word again – context. So for example when you see us tweet “Liking freckled musicians, cooking bolognaise by accident + pop stars butt cheeks,” and linking to this article here, please don’t make judgements just on the tweet, but read the article and see why we tweeted that. (It was actually an article about a theory that all sorts of other factors influence decisions on if we as human beings press play on a piece of music or not – and to exaggerate the point we used the most ridiculous factors such as the initial of the artists name, her freckles, pretentious PR statements to make that point – the article was an attempt to build some humour into a relatively serious piece – maybe it didn’t quite work, but hey, at least we had a go at trying to tackle the subject and make people giggle at the same time.)

So here’s the bottom line. We live in a world where not everything is always black and white. There’s a lot of grey. It’s why sometimes we think it’s OK to write about pop music, image, appearance and sex and sometimes it’s not. Context is everything. Interpretation is complex.

So here’s the new Honeyblood song. It's called The Black Cloud. It’s pretty hot good. And here’s the bit where this time we do mention the bands' physical appearance rather than the music or temperature. In the picture above drummer Cat Myers is wearing a Pie & Vinyl vest. This is important and relevant – it’s our local record store. It’s also Record Store Day this Saturday and this song is out then on a 7” vinyl backed by another Honeyblood song No Big Deal, limited to just 750 copies.

Honeyblood - The Black Cloud

Albums of the Year 2014 #3 Honeyblood - Honeyblood

“I will hate you forever, scumbag sleaze, slimeball grease. You really do disgust me!” sings Stina Tweedale on Super Rat, a hate fuelled anthem and in a nutshell we have what this album is all about; plenty of bitterness and garage guitars that make a good old fashioned scuzz-pop sound. 

There’s quite a few obvious comparisons that get drawn out of the bag when talking about Honeyblood, plenty of them American, even though the band are from Scotland; Throwing Muses, Best Coast, Juliana Hatfield and The Breeders and we wouldn’t disagree with any of those. But what makes Honeyblood such a success is the songs. There’s hooks, melodies, harmonies and something quite euphoric about many of the vitriolic tunes contained on this record. It’s a record to throw (and flop) yourself violently around to on the indie disco (or bedroom) floor, particularly on the energetic and fiery Killer Bangs or opening mosher Fall Forever. Yet whilst Honeyblood is an angry sounding record it never becomes either overbearing or too inward looking; it gets the balance right, the songs are kept short, sharp and exciting, the guttural guitars simple. 

Honeyblood takes third place on our Albums of the Year 2014 list. Not only is this a thrilling indie rock record but it suggests that Honeyblood could be a name for a future as well.

Honeyblood - Super Rat

Honeyblood - Choker (Video)

Whilst Royal Blood are taking all the accolades for ‘Best UK Guitar Band of 2014’ it’s worth remembering that they are not single flag bearers. In fact we’d rather the flag was ditched completely and we just talked about good music. Another 'blood' named two piece  -Honeyblood - make exactly that. 

Having been named on the UK Blog Sound of 2014 long list the group has certainly justified that tip, releasing an excellent debut album (we’re hoping it might sneak in on a few end of year lists) and played many well received shows. With original drummer Shona McVicar now departed and replaced by Car Myers, next up for the Scottish band is a co-headline slot on the NME endorsed New Breed Tour 2014 alongside Superfood.

As part of the build up to this tour Honeyblood has released a new Hitchcock styled video for the song Choker which is based on Angela Carter’s short story The Bloody Chamber. The Choker is a wedding gift given to the main character by her husband. In the book she discovers that he enjoys sadistic pornography and has killed his previous wives, keeping them in a secret room. It’s fair to say that he isn’t a particularly nice chap, but he gets his comeuppance eventually. The story was in turn based on the fairytale Bluebeard. 

The director of the video Julian Tardo says of the piece “I wanted to house Stina's reinterpretation of Bluebeard within yet another layer of context - so I suppose it's Bluebeard through the Bloody Chamber through film noir. I like layering these ideas over and over - I think the essence of human reaction becomes ever starker as you bury it in these layers.”

The video is also the second that we’ve featured in 24 hours that uses the colour red to highlight key visual images in a largely black and white environment after Seinabo Sey's effort yesterday.

Honeyblood - Choker (Video)

Bushstock 2014 - Review

Not all festivals are created equal and Bushstock stands out because of its convenience and well -mannered audience. If you want dangerous, dirty and full-on moshpits then Bushstock is probably best avoided, but for the rest of you, it is if nothing else, a very painless festival and an event that oozes quality.

Based in Shepherd’s Bush, West London, this now annual one dayer took place in four venues all within easy walking distance of each other. It’s centre piece was (as in past years) St Stephen’s Church (pictured above) which hosted mostly, but not exclusively, acoustic based artists and remained busy all day. There were also three other venues; the elegant Bush Hall, complete with chandeliers, disco ball and grand ornate mirrors on the wall, plus two pubs, The Sindercombe Social (which replaced last year’s sweatbox underground bunker Ginglik) and the smaller Defector's Weld. Due to the close proximity of the venues it was possible to catch a large number of full sets with very little effort and venue hopping was straightforward - we experienced none of the ‘at capacity’ problems that many multi-venue festivals face.

Here are 10 things that we learnt at Bushstock 2014:

1. The early bird really does get value for money.

An early bird ticket for Bushstock 2014 set you back just £15. For that we saw 10 bands – just over 5 hours of live music.

2. There still is very little bush at Bushstock.

We mentioned this in our review last year and it continues into 2014. Because Bushstock had a relatively high quota of acoustic and folk acts (amongst their number Hozier, Eaves, Luke Sital-Singh and Alex Vargas) if you believe folk music clichés you might have expected the number of beards in the audience to be high; however, almost exactly the opposite seemed to be the case. It seemed that in this corner of West London beards are out and clean shaven is in. Hats off to Jack Garrett though who delivered a fine beard, as well as a deeply impressive mid-afternoon set that marks his name down as the UK’s rising answer to Chet Faker. Clearly excited at playing to such a large crowd (his inappropriate exclamation of ‘Jesus Christ this is surreal’ in the church got a big laugh) his deftly executed mix of electronic soul and twisted guitars fully deserved the standing ovation he received at the end. Listen to him below.

3. A cushion is the new ‘must have’ at festivals.

Or at least at Bushstock, for sitting on a hard wooden pew in a church for a number of hours requires some extra padding in the backseat area.

4. Chlöe Howl might be making pop music, but there’s a rock star inside her wanting to jump out.

The evidence?

Her band. 

Put it this way, this man doesn’t look he would have been in Steps, Girls Aloud or One Direction does he? Yet he rocked out with Miss Howl.

Her footwear. 

Not just DMs straight out the box, but proper scuffed up and well worn. 

Her energy.

Temperatures in Bush Hall may have been bordering on sauna like but that didn’t stop Chlöe Howl giving it her all, striding the stage with a don’t mess with me stomp suggesting that if Paramore ever need a new singer she could do a pretty decent job.

5. Shepherd’s Bush loves chicken.

As we walked between the 4 venues of Bushstock 2014 we counted 11 different fast food chicken takeaways / restaurants and very little else. Yes, of course there was a Nandos.

It's a shame this website (click here) never got going. It could have just posted pictures from Shepherd's Bush.

6. It’s not always Christmas at Chicken Cottage.

Last year in our review of Bushstock, we suggested that at one of these fast food joints, Chicken Cottage, it’s always Christmas, as dusty and tired looking Christmas baubles hung from the ceiling, every day of the year. We were wrong. The decorations are no more. Christmas has cancelled this summer. But you can still get a burger (chicken obviously but veggie varieties are also available), chips and a soft drink there for £2.89 (a 4p increase from last year economics fact fans). Now that’s what we call cheap festival food.

7. Layla is another word for lovely.

Shoved into a small corner stage of The Sindercombe Social, Layla’s blend of girl next door piano based pop was utterly adorable, possessing an intimacy that had the ability to turn even the most rugged football hooligan into a fluttery mess of sweet affections. Songs like Yellow Circles, New Year and Black Mud were rolled out with an easy on the ear sensitivity that felt perfect for the later part of a Saturday afternoon – the musical equivalent of a great cup of steaming coffee, a good book and a hug from someone you love. 

8. If we were to define cool we would write it like this: Honeyblood.

Two girls. Guitar and drums. A ‘we’re just doing this because we like doing it and don’t give a sh*t if anyone else cares or not’ attitude in The Defector's Weld pub. Great clothes. Great hair. From Scotland. The sort of band that make you think ‘yeah I want to be in a rock n roll band.’ That is Honeyblood.

9. Even god cannot stop corporate sponsorship.

Posters for the beer company that was one of the sponsors this year’s Bushstock inside the church? Yes, the power of the sponsor is more powerful than the lord. Praise the lager.

10. Saint Raymond does what he does well.

His indie pop may not have smacked of originality but it was packed with hooks, riffs and summery jangles that were virtually impossible not to shake a leg at in the live environment. All this with a guitarist who looked like the rock version of Gary Barlow and some men dressed in banana costumes in the audience as well.

Bushstock 2014. For fans of great music and chicken; one of our favourite one day multi-venue festivals in the UK.

Jack Garrett - Worry

The Great Escape Festival 2014 - Review (Part 2)

The second day of the fun, frolics and musical mayhem by the sea that is known as Brighton's Great Escape continued in much the same way as the first, with Breaking More Waves joining the music hungry masses to see what tasty delights were available to feed the ears and how many bands it was possible for us to see in three days.

Here are 10 more things we learnt at Great Escape 2014. (Yesterday’s list can be found here).

1. The spirit of rock ‘n’ roll isn’t dead (1)

Scottish two piece Honeyblood brought a glorious lo-fi ness to the Dome Studio. The concept is simple: two girls making a racket with Stina Tweedale’s vocal providing some neat pop melodies underneath her garage band guitars (that’s garage band in the old fashioned sense not the computer software), whilst Shona McVicar bashed away wholeheartedly at the drums. Their just get up there and do it d-i-y approach seemed to be providing dividends as well; this time last year we saw the band at the same venue and the 2014 audience was much fuller, so much so that it was a 1 in 1 out situation, impressive for a mid-afternoon gig.

2. The spirit of rock ‘n’ roll isn’t dead (2)

Even more rock ‘n’ roll than Honeyblood was Misty Miller. Last time we saw Misty live she was a dainty teenager with butter wouldn’t melt looks singing cute ditties about love with a ukulele. Now her image is more goth than sunshine princess and her music is 50’s and 60’s inspired grubbily raw rock ‘n’ roll. Managing to exceed the licenced permissible decibel levels in the outdoor Festival Hub stage Misty was told to stop playing after 15 minutes of her set. Cue a two-fingers to authority moment as Misty told her band to play on and amped up the volume whilst an official climbed on stage and tried to wrestle her microphone away to boos from the audience and yells of ‘fuck you,’ from Misty. 

3. Friday was busier than Thursday

Whereas Thursday got off to a relatively quiet start it appeared that by mid Friday afternoon the world and his wife was at Great Escape with the festival's text notification and twitter services already starting to report a number of venues being at capacity. However we found no problem getting into every venue we wanted to and at one stage despite receiving a notification that one venue was at capacity, arriving three quarters of an hour later in between acts there was plenty of space to get in, so as useful as the text service was it was very of the moment and during the day audience movements were fluid.

4. Breaking More Waves might not always be the first to post the latest buzz band, but we can be the first to post a review of yesterday’s proceedings.

We beat the professionals. Better reviews not bashed out in half an hour before breakfast after 5 hours sleep will surely follow from the pros but our first one was up at 8.30 yesterday morning. We impressed ourselves. Today we're a bit slower at 9.30, but hell we didn't go to bed till nearly 3am. 

5. The worst toilets at The Great Escape are in The Blind Tiger.

Like something out of that scene from Trainspotting.

6.The quiet ones are the ones to watch out for (1).

In the basement of 10 Below, the Lake District’s Tom Higham and Ben Fletcher better known as Aquilo provided one of the sublime moments of the day. Their soothing  tunes were stripped back for a live set that silenced a room that went from being virtually empty 10 minutes before they were due to play to chock-full with a noticeable amount of music industry delegate pass holders. It suggested that whilst Aquilo may not be known to the general public particularly yet, they’re doing all the right things to make that happen in the future. With both of the duo providing soulful choirboy vocals, lush keyboard based ambience and gentle touches of guitar they silenced the crowd with something perfectly crafted and a little bit special. Hear them below.

7. The quiet ones are the ones to watch out for (2).

The toilets might stink of piss but Sophie Jamieson’s songs in the Blind Tiger had a fragile robustness that was musically fragrant. Her shy I-shouldn’t-really-be-here stage presence was transformed the moment she starts playing her mix of Daughter like folk rock, her face full of expression and intensity. The languid atmospherics of her bands guitar work added layer upon layer of goosebumps. What other words are there to describe her music other than gorgeous? None.

8. The quiet ones are the ones to watch out for (3).

Thankfully the toilets in Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar didn’t smell as bad, but Wilsen come from the same school of musical melancholy as Sophie Jamieson. Their dream-folk music swelled with sleepy waves of emotion and beauty, with tunes that were not immediately obvious on first listen, but became an immersive experience as they continued. Once again, gorgeous.

9. If you’re a band and you want to get a big round of applause just tell everyone it’s your guitarist’s first gig.

Indie rockers Shy Nature did that. It wasn’t. But they got the applause.

10. Sometimes you need a sit down.

14 hours of music and nearly all of it in standing venues. We actually praised the lord when we entered the Unitarian Church to watch Lyla Foy and Sea Change and saw chairs. Sometimes a sit down is required. The legs aren’t what they used to be.

If our legs hold out we’ll be doing it all again for a third day and reporting back here soon.

Bands Seen On Friday: Secret Company, Wilsen, Ted Zed, Beautiful Boy, Honeyblood, Misty Miller, Secret Son, Aquilo, Sea Change, Lyla Foy, Sophie Jamieson, Y.O.U, Death At Sea, Shy Nature, Bat And Ball

Here are the important statistics

Number Of Artists Full Performances Seen In Total: 29

Number Of Hours Sleep : 10 ( 5 hours / day)

Fatigue Factor : Moderate to sleepy

Hugs From Artists : 3

Number Of Music Bloggers Randomly Bumped Into : 6

Aquilo - Part Of Your Life

Honeyblood - Killer Bangs (Video)

If we were female (we’re not) and a musician (we’re not), we would quite like to be in one of two groups. One would have been Girls Aloud (r.i.p) just so we could hang out with Nicola Roberts and do stupid dance routines. But if that couldn’t happen we quite fancy being in Honeyblood because they look cool (and we would like to be cool just to see how it felt), sound brash and noisy (and we quite like the idea of making a lot of noise) and underneath their guitar racket they actually produce some quite fiercely glorious pop melodies (which is pretty central to a lot of our music taste). 

We first saw Honeyblood last year at The Great Escape in Brighton, this weekend they’re back they're back for more and we will probably be joining them again, alas only in the audience, not as their special guest tambourine player – maybe that will happen in 2015? Honeyblood’s album is due for release on FatCat records on the 14th July in the UK (15th in the US). After their Great Escape shows they are out on tour with Courtney Barnett.

Here’s their new video for Killer Bangs which was uploaded recently. Oh and if any bands need a guest tambourine player at Great Escape, we're available right now. Our rates are quite reasonable - if we like you a lot we'll even offer our services for free.

Honeyblood - Killer Bangs (Video)

Honeyblood - Killer Bangs

Here’s Honeyblood’s best song to date. In blog terms we're very 'late' with this one. Full of thrashy punk-pop energy it reminds us of early Kenickie (always a good thing) and is best played extremely loud to annoy your neighbours and that includes if you live next door to us. We honestly don’t care if it pounds through our party wall. Why? Well besides the fact that it’s a good tune and we’d most certainly rather hear Killer Bangs blasting through than the likes of David Guetta for example, it’s mainly because we’re not there. We’re on holiday and have been so all week. We're still blogging though. If this was twitter we'd probably end this with #dedicationtoblogging.

Honeyblood - Killer Bangs

Honeyblood - Bud / Kissing On You

Glasgow-based two-piece Honeyblood impressed us at this year’s Great Escape in Brighton with their rough and tumble garage rock sound. Now Stina Marie Claire Tweeddale (vocals, guitar and greatest name ) plus Shona McVicar (drums) are releasing a single proper called Bud via Brighton’s FatCat Records on pink vinyl together with digital download. The track was produced by Rory Atwell who has worked with other notable indie guitar bands such as Palma Violets and Veronica Falls.

Despite hailing from Scotland, there’s a very American sound to Bud. We hear touches of The Breeders and Throwing Muses in their glorious shambles as well as the closer to home North-Eastern lipstick, glitter and leopard print rock of Kenickie (who featured all round media top person Lauren Laverne amongst their line up) on the good as the a-side b-side of Kissing On You.

We’re streaming both the video for Bud, which was filmed at Great Brampton House just outside Hereford as well the Soundcloud for Kissing On You.

Honeyblood play a number of UK shows this week. Dates are 24th Oct - Boiler Room, Guildford, 26th Oct - Sticky Mikes, Brighton, 27th Oct - Fallow, Manchester , 29th Oct – Glasgow Broadcast and 30th Oct – Edinburgh Electric Circus. If you're seeing them in Guildford tonight, we'll see you there.

Buy Bud here.

Honeyblood - Kissing On You

Honeyblood - Bud (Video)