Slung, the Brighton based four piece are one of the hottest new bands in the UK right now. They have just released their stunning debut album In Ways and are not on the road taking it to crowds up and down the UK. I was lucky enough to sit down with the band to discuss a wide range of topics, including the band’s inception and the album, the Brighton music scene, social media and working with panto dames…yes, you read that right.
The album In Ways has been out for a couple of weeks now, first off I want to say congratulations, it’s an absolute banger. You have also been on the road now for a couple of weeks, so what have the live reactions been like to the songs on the album?
Katie (Vocals) I think we’ve been so lucky really. This is our first headline tour, with a debut album and we’re quite unknown coming straight out the gate, and it’s been a massive surprise to have people be so up for it. Even our hometown show, even though it was all of our mates that was unreal. We sold out the venue and we didn’t expect it, everywhere else we’ve been, everyone has been amazing, even all the other bands we have played with, it’s been really good, I feel very blessed.
Ravi (Drums) The hometown show was a bit of a funny one as well, like you say when you play a hometown show you look up and expect to see all your mates, and at that show we looked up and sort of didn’t. People were coming up after, buying merch, buying the record and singing our praises, we have no idea who you people are, you have no reason to like us but you do and that’s nice.
Katie: It’s humbling in a very beautiful way and I feel very grateful. It’s nice to have the record finally out, we did it about a year and a half ago before we ever even played a single gig. We started by writing and album then we had to learn how to play these songs, and then learn how to perform them live, so it’s a real 360 closing cycle
Now that the album is out and people are starting to hear it and discover it, what is the most interesting reaction you have found to the songs on the album. For you guys having lived with these songs for so long, in some cases some of you more than others, which songs have surprised you the most in terms of people gravitating towards them.
Ali (Guitar) I think universally there’s been a nice reaction to Class A Cherry
Katie: Yeah, I’ve seen that as well actually
Ali: It doesn’t seem to be one flavour of person, everyone seems to really like that one tune. Along those lines though I think Come Apart and Heavy Duty are very accessible.
Katie: The ballads are going better than we thought. I was up for maybe not doing them because it is a vibe change for a live show, but they have been going really well.
Ravi: I think when we started playing and no one really knew us, we never included the slower songs in the set, we chickened out because they were really exposing and stripped back, it feels really different playing them now that some people actually know them.
Ali: On the other side of that, I have all my heavy metal long haired friends coming up and saying Matador is awesome, Laughter is great, and you said some of us having been sitting on this music for some time, I think I wrote that riff over 10 years ago, and to now have people saying “Yo, cool riff” well that paid off.
The album itself is a journey and you talk about putting those slower songs into the set and it changing the vibe. I remember the first time I heard the album was on a lunch break at work and the first half of the record is very big FUCK YES, then I got to the lyric on Nothing Left that is “You put the gun to my chest, now I’m bleeding out” and I’m not ashamed to say this, but I cried. There is something about that lyric that we can all relate to, I think we have all had someone in our lives at some point who has made us feel like that, so going back to the idea of the live show how do you guys structure the live show to keep that emotional wave going up and down without causing the audience too much whiplash.
Katie: Thank you for saying that by the way, because that is a song that was the first one I wrote for this band with the lyrics and the melodies and I was really embarrassed about it for a while because I thought those lyrics were so dramatic, so thank you. I think when it comes to the live set, we pepper them in every couple of songs…
Vlad (Bass) Sorry, can I just jump in here, because I think it’s really nice that you noticed that lyric because I think there’s a universality to being wounded and feeling like that, and when you are hurt that phrase really resonates. It’s capturing all the cliches that aren’t cliches in lyrics yet that resonate with people but aren’t too on the nose and I think you have really served that balance really well in that tune, I just wanted to jump in with that.
Katie: I’m a wallower, when you feel sad, for me I want to feel as sad as I possibly can, you know when you want to listen to sad music and bawl and just exorcise those demons, to me it doesn’t matter if it sounds dramatic, but it helps.
Vlad: It’s an emotional inhibitor, like alcohol is socially when you have a couple of pints, listening to certain music you have an ability to connect with emotions easier because they transport you there.Katie: In the live set I still get a little bit nervous that people are going to get bored, but we kind of just space them out, but yeah we do the 3 ballads.
Ali: We toured the album last year, before it was out, so nobody knew the songs, so we got the chance to practice and see what the response would be, and coming to actually perform them for the album it was a case of what order should these songs sit in, as you said you don’t want it to lull too much, but you don’t want it to be whiplash halfway through the set either, so it’s trying to pepper in those songs tastefully so they blend into each other.
Katie: Also, we could play them in the order they are on the album, we did think about that a lot as well, and a lot of the feedback we were hearing was the first half of the album songs like one thing and the other half sounds like another, so we did wonder if we blended it enough, but like you say it’s supposed to be a journey.
Ali: We think we’ve said it wouldn’t be Slung if we didn’t have all of the extremes. If it was all heavy metal it wouldn’t be Slung, if it was all ballads, it wouldn’t be Slung, it’s the ride, the highs & the lows and that dynamic juxtaposition that is important to all of us.
Katie: It’s where that phrase on the bio we’re using comes in ‘Somewhere between Mastodon & Mazzy Starr’ because it is the two real extremes and everything blends in somewhere on that spectrum.
I think the way I described it was Tori Amos fronting Veruca Salt, because that was all the stuff I got from the album, was the last 90s Alt Rock, especially the first couple of songs, they really took me back to all the stuff I grew up loving as a kid. Talking about the songs, one of the things I find most fascinating about you guys as a band is that when the songs were written they weren’t originally written with Katie in mind, so I wanted to ask you collectively about that. Starting Katie, with yourself, when you first heard those songs on those demos, what was your first response to them, was there a sense that you could do something with them or was there a sense of intimidation?
Katie: I was really really intimidated. I’ve never been the most confident front person or vocalist and I’d come from a previous band where I played drums and was fronting at the same time, so I could get away with not being great at either, but I was free from criticism, so I could be a mid drummer and a mid vocalist and get away with it (laughs) so when it came to just fronting I was really insecure actually and I found it really difficult, so up against these vocalists, some of the best in Brighton, some of the best in then Country some of them, these real powerhouse vocalists, there was no way I thought I could do them as good as, let alone anything different or better, I didn’t know how, but Vlad and the guys were very encouraging, but I booked in with a vocal coach a guy called Will who is the former vocalist of band called Black Peaks, who is local and is a good friend of ours who has really helped me overcome a lot of my insecurities. Limassol is a perfect example, when I first heard that I thought it was a perfect song and i thought that I would be doing a bastardization or a karaoke version of that song, and I still now have those moments where I think “Is it as good as it was before?” and that is what’s so funny about listening to the album now after recording it two years ago, is that it sounds so polite versus what i do now vocally. I’m much more able to belt and perform now, whereas then I was much more shy and timid.
Vlad: I wanted to go back to something you before when you compared it to different 90s bands than other people have, and you know with a lot of the music we make I don’t think we are reinventing the wheel by any means, but I think we are trying to connect the dots of childhood nostalgia and the satisfaction of a good riff, and the pleasure of a good song is that it doesn’t have to be heavy, you don’t have to hide behind a heavy song all the time. It’s cool the description you gave it and how you heard it. It’s cool with the album being out, and having people connect with it for lack of a better word in their own way, and seeing how they draw their own connections from it with elements of the past, because we’re not a modern sounding band I don’t think, but it’s interesting to be riding on wave of nostalgia in a way.
For you guys as a band when you heard Katie’s vocals and some of her lyrics on those songs after those initial demos, what was the moment where you knew that Katie was the right fit and you had your vocalist?
Vlad: Our first song that she did, straight in.
Ali: He’s right, he’s got it.
Vlad: It took a lot to get her in the room, but once she was in the room the band was done.
Katie: The first lyrics of Nothing Left “I don’t like this, it makes me nervous” were the first lyrics I wrote because I didn’t know what else to say because I felt so on edge like I couldn’t it, so that song is like half testament to being come apart from a friendship and a really important person in your life and feeling pathetic, but also feeling insecure and like you have a lot to live up to because of the pressure, but feeling like you want to do it right so well, but having this big voice of doubt saying “I don’t know if you can buddy” it wasn’t really so much about learning to sing, but it was about learning to let go of the barriers, so a lot of that song is just super direct and honest about being scared and being wounded.
Ali: Yeah as soon as you came in and wrote that one it was like “Oh cool” for me.
Vlad: It’s the same with Ravi though, the first jam with him, I think the moment you came in and learned those demos, and the first time we played we knew this could work, it was crazy and such a lucky strike to have the first jam with a first drummer, playing songs that other drummers have played so well and it just worked.
Katie: We didn’t even know each other at all, and now we live together (laughs) We didn’t know each other and when we went to Shaken Oak to record the record, we were acquaintances which is so funny, because the drums are the first thing to record and the vocals are the last, we had 10 days to just hang out, drink wine and do jigsaw puzzles.
I do think though with music, and I say this as someone that isn’t a musician myself, but when it comes to a creative space I think the vibe you get from people and the space you are in with them is a large part of the creative process. I think the fact you had that immediate collection is very clear on the album. The songs on the album sound tight, but it also sounds loose. I think everything you do from the music, to your videos and even your social media, which is some of the funniest stuff out there for bands promoting their stuff, that cannot be manufactured, it has to come from a real place and I think that is what is so great about your music and you as band is that not only does it sound authentic when you listen it but you can tell it’s made by people that genuinely care about each other and being in a band with each other.
Ravi: I think that’s maybe sort of a function of how it all came together, initially it was a means to give life to some older demos, then we set this target to make an album. We didn’t set out to say let’s sound like this… or let’s go down this particular avenue or try and do this particular thing that we think is really great, it was just that we had these demos that we have turned into really great songs, so let’s write 5 more and see if there are any good, and that sort of mentality has been applied across everything we have done. If that’s the music video, then what are we trying to do here? I don’t know what feels fun.
Katie: What is the most fun thing we could do under these circumstances
Ali: Let’s hire the Dame from the local panto (laughs)
Katie: Yes, that’s my favourite story. So we played a gig in London at Portals Festival last year, had a great time, a really fun time, all our friends were there and we got a bit drunk, and it was just before Christmas, and my sister had texted me to say there was a local panto, so I was like “Guys, shall we go to the pantomime?” and everyone was like “Whatever” so I just dropped hundreds of pounds for us to go to the Christmas Panto,then woke up the next day thinking why did I do that, then we went to the pantomime and it was hilarious…it was Jack and the Beanstalk and the Panto Dame was amazing…such an icon.
Ravi: I would like to clarify, it was Jack and the Beanstalk, but in the second half just out of nowhere zombies appeared. Phil Mitchell from Eastenders was in it as the villain, he was trying to accelerate climate change…
Katie: He was, he was trying to cause climate change to make giant beanstalks for profit, it was bonkers and so fun. Months later, we were thinking about doing the Thinking About It video, and I was thinking it would be so good to get someone like the Dame we saw in the Panto, and we managed to book the Panto Dame from Jack and the Beanstalk with Phil Mitchell, and it was this guy called Michael J Batchelor, an amazing person, amazing performer and what a goofy turn of events it turned out to be.
Ali: I was laughing all day, from start to finish. I got there at 8 O’clock in the morning and he just had us in tears laughing.
Katie: It worked out so perfectly, he had one day of availability which just so happened to be the one day we were booked in with the crew and it was Valentine’s Day and it was a dating show theme, it was one of those really serendipitous turns of events. To bring it back to what you were saying, the way we approach it is, what is the best we can do with whatever the restraints we have, if we have to deliver something, what is the best,funniest, most joyous version of that thing we can deliver.
Ravi: I don’t think there is any contrivance in what we do, whether that is making social media content, making a music video or writing a song, there is no “Shouldn’t we have a really big poppy chorus to turn people’s heads” there’s no artifice, it all kind of is what it was originally trying to be refined down into it’s best thing that we hope other people enjoy.
With the videos and the social media stuff being so funny, you look at the two videos for Laughter and Thinking About It, and the lyrics to the songs and the videos don’t match. Was it your purpose to make them so absurd and as far removed as possible?
Ravi: I think we right royally pranked ourselves really early on in the days of this band. Katie had a slightly questionable haircut… It;s the contrast of slightly goofy persona with ostensibly quite serious songs, so our kind of first exposure to a larger audience came from a TikTok filmed outside the Hope & Ruin in Brighton where I walked up to Katie and said she looked like Rod Stewart and that got 15 million views across all these platforms.
Katie: That was the first video we ever made on our TikTok account, and it just blew up and blew up, and it blew up on instagram and we all got all these followers and we were like “Well, we’ve fucked it now” (laughs)
Ravi: We’re a meme page now…Let’s release the song Neurotic which is about dealing with some challenging shit, oh no people are disappointed and they have unfollowed us, as it’s not another meme. Sick.
Katie: You kind of dream of doing something important enough that you tip the algorithm in that right way, which I swear to god, we never ever expected, we just thought it might be nice that if someone came across our profile they would see how lighthearted we are, that we are goofy people and we do have fun, but no it was a blessing and a cure, it was funny and a good joke for a bit and then we got thousands of followers who gave you Ravi a knighthood for his services to comedy (laughs) then we got all these incel people who were talking about shaming women in the street and it all went horribly wrong.
Vlad: You were wearing a Sunn o))) hoodie in the video and people were asking you to name 3 songs, which you couldn’t.
Katie: Of course I couldn’t. It was your hoodie (all laugh) So yeah it was just us trying to do things we hope are fun and not attract the wrong audience again.
As a Brighton based band, but with none of you being from Brighton, how much does that play into the identity of the band? Not in the sense that you make it your whole personality, but in terms of as a sort of creativity and inspiration. As someone who lived here and has taken that long walk down The Marina at 2am, there are definitely moments on this album I can visualise myself listening to in many of the locations there.
Vlad: Just a quick diversion, as you mentioned locations. When Limassol was written, the vocals were originally written with Michael from a band called Sick Joy, and he came in and he’d listened to the instrumental demo and I asked if he had any ideas, and he said “I’ve got this word, it sounds like a cleaning product. Limassol” and I googled it and was like “Dude, it’s a city in Cyprus” (Laughs) so location wise, we have a song about the City in Cyprus, and I’ve asked Sarah, our Press Officer to email their tourism board to see if they would use it in their trailers. Never got a reply (laughs)
Katie: It’s funny, we’ve had a few reviews that say our sound is kind of American sounding, because of the slide guitar and songs like Come Apart sounding very Desert highway coded. So maybe not as sonically pick uppable in our music, but I think we would all agree that Brighton and the community of musicians in Brighton is everything and it’s why we’re all there.We’re all super connected to amazing musicians all the time, Vlad runs Small Pond which is a rehearsal rooms and recording studio in the centre of Brighton and it’s got a massive community of amazing musicians of all ages, all genres and backgrounds, Vlad works there, I’ve worked there before, and our recording engineer Sam Allen works there.
Vlad: We are plugged into the scene, but we don’t sound like any other band from Brighton, it all sounds different, there is a big hardcore scene at the moment, there was a big punk and post punk scene, but I guess post Lambrini Girls, the appetite for acts of that sort of thing has gone down, people are looking for a newer sound, we don’t sound like a Brighton band, but we are very embedded into the Brighton scene.
Katie: I think we’re embedded individually as people less so than our band name. I don’t think our band name is mentioned in the conversations with acts coming out of Brighton and that’s cool, I don’t think that’s what we wanna be or are trying to be. I think as individuals we are so plugged into friends and the community and all of that.
Vlad: Our first gig was not in our home town. Last year we played 28 gigs, out of which most of them were not in our hometown. Like Katie said about making the album before we ever played a gig, we did everything almost backwards, we didn’t foster in a scene then try to go out, we started trying to build an audience early to return to, then start putting out music and going on a headline tour to see if that music we put out actually reached anybody and if people were at the shows, we kind of did it backwards from the Brighton scene I think.
Ravi: I think for me, while we don’t sound like a Brighton band, I think it’s such a luxury to be surrounded by musicians that you admire, I think all of us could say that having friends who are incredibly talented musicians has hugely contributed to the way we play and the way we write and even just some of the people on those demos originally, for me there was Liam Kearley from Vower, there was Dave Morgan from The Physics House Band, there was Blake from Delta Sleep, all bands that were born out of Brighton, you just kind of look up and these are all some of the best musicians in the country. I think we are all sort of musical magpies in a way, I think we all try and borrow something that someone else does and try to incorporate it into our own thing, and I think maybe that is our connection to the Brighton scene is being inspired by and taking things from the people around us that we think are immensely talented more so than necessarily fitting into that Brighton sound.
Katie: Yeah, definitely. People joke that you open a door and see four different bands, everyone is in a band it’s so not novel,if you meet someone and they don’t play music it’s like “Oh…”
That’s why I had to leave, they kicked me out (laughs)
Katie; But it’s really funny, because everyone is doing art or illustration, everyone is always doing something really cool and it does credit this kind of buzz, it might sound cliche, but if you have an idea there at least 3 people you can talk to about it, like Jordan who is the guy who has done most of our music videos with us, he’s a videographer and like you said our music videos are goofy as hell so we can always go to him with an idea and say “what if…” and he is like “oh my god…here we go…” there is this collaborative energy which is literally how Slung began.
Ali: We managed to get our friend Allesandro dressed up in a matador costume on top of a shire horse in Oxfordshire…
Katie: All because it was funny (laughs) all of our friends star in our music videos, any of the actors that aren’t us or the Panto Dame are our friends and who people are just up for it.
I’m not sure if you have been asked about this yet, but I wanted to ask you about the album artwork, because it makes visual references to songs & lyrics on the album. How important was that to you, was it something that was planned from the start or did it come about during the writing process. It brings you into the world of the album before you even hear it, but then also gives you something to look back on once you’ve heard it.
Katie: You are the first person. You are the first person who has noticed that. I’m so glad you noticed that, we had a review the other day that said you would never put the album art with the songs, but it’s not that crazy.
There is a song on the album called Matador… there is a Matador on the cover (laughs)
Katie: We knew that we wanted to do references for the lyrics and the songs, the burning house actually comes from an original idea for a music video that we didn’t make for Come Apart, the Maiden is for Heavy Duty, we couldn’t actually burn a house down (laughs) we tried, we were actually going to be in New York, we did get fire though… fire to burn (laughs) in the music video for Fire to Burn, that is an imagined version of us recording the album that is encapsulated on the album cover, so obviously we recorded at a place called Shaken Oak a couple of years ago, had an amazing time, no demons, no ghosts, no fires and then we had to come up with the album art and we had to put it all together and we come up with all the references, but what we made a music video based on the references that were a recreation of what could have happened if we recorded the album. It’s really meta with easter eggs and we’re just hoping one day someone will put 2 & 2 together, so there is a shot in the Fire to Burn video where I’m playing the Maiden in the water and Alessandro is playing the Matador where he reaches down into this lake I’m in and he lifts me out, which recreates the album cover. We were trying to explain it to this other artist, we got one back and it wasn’t what we wanted, so we had a few back & forths. How did we find Dommy?
Ravi:The tattoo shop Jolly Devil that Vlad frequents, she had some prints for sale,and so I guess you were reading a book at Shaken oaks…
Katie: Oh yeah, it was called The Giant Dark
Ravi: The cover art was by Sophy Hollington who is this amazing artist who does all these sort of medieval folklore prints who are all like wispy demons and fire, and they are an amalgam of really colourful bright heavy images in one place. So we were there, reading that book, and that books cover artwork seems like the experience we are going for, so we used that artwork almost like a jumping off point to craft a bit of a story out of the lyrics and song titles that would work really well in that style, the sort of images as you say when people listened to the album they could then revert back to, and then we spent ages trying to find the right artist and then there in the tattoo shop…
Katie: We all got these tattoos,which is our little logo and when we were there we were looking at the art on the walls of the artist on the wall thinking it would be amazing and then it was Vlad’s really good friend and the rest is history, she smashed it. I’m still so obsessed with it and proud that we have it as our album cover.It’s so cool though.
I love when bands do stuff like that. It shows that extra bit of care about everything and tying it all together. It always bums me out when people don’t notice stuff like that, especially when bands work so hard on doing things like that , but then also we are in a digital age now where art is consumed differently, so if they are streaming the album perhaps they aren’t necessarily looking at the album artwork or thinking about it. I personally just find it a little bit disappointing when people don’t pick up on things bands put down.
Vlad: Not to me. I think if it’s picked up, it’s an extra bonus., but at the end of the day we are doing it for us, it’s the same as not second guessing the type of music you make, imagine if you wrote big pop choruses because you think people would want to hear it, but then it doesn’t go well, i think that is the worst kind of way to lose in a way. I think if you’re aiming for success, recognition or even people noticing stuff or just turning up to shows then that stuff can be so cruel. For me, it’s an added bonus when people do,hearing you talk about the album is so awesome to hear and it’s amazing that you’ve enjoyed it and the bits you’ve picked up but that’s the cherry on the top of the cake.
Katie: It’s not disappointing if people don’t get it, but it’s so juicy and satisfying when they do, like “oh my god, you got it” it’s putting down these little easter eggs that if not one finds them, c’est la vie, it’s fun joy for us, but to hear someone got it is so satisfying.
I might be jumping the gun with this one, but have you already started thinking about new music?
Katie: We’re all cooking up things. This album was formed in a bizarre back to front way, each of us coming in at different moments, so the next one will essentially be the debut of all us starting afresh, so i’m excited. I have some ideas, but I don’t know what the running theme will be yet.
Vlad: We write music all the time man, it’s one of the joys in life. There are a lot of hard drives with idea 421 on them (all laugh)
Ravi: I heard that idea 412 went really well with riff 16 (laughs)
It’s fascinating though, because some bands will put an album out and then just forget about it, or they are focused on promoting the thing they have out at the time whereas some bands are constantly writing or some need a designated time and space to just write. I’m curious especially with yourselves, having lived with these songs so long you are probably looking ahead to the next thing, but for the rest of us, we have only had these songs a short time, so we aren’t ready for that next thing just yet.
Vlad: You have to move quick as a new band with people’s attention spans, they aren’t going to wait around for 2 to 3 years for the next record, it’s going to be like starting again. Most people who write for music publications or work in radio will trade over in 3 years, most people going to gigs will start going to different things, so you need to quick to follow up things if you want to stay on that growing trajectory.
Katie: Within 2 years max I think we will have something new
Ali: The way we got Fire to Burn and Neurotic out, it showed all of us how we can get in a room and combine all of our ideas and come out with something we are all proud of because we recorded those after we recorded the album and they came out before, but I think that taught us we can combine our ideas and come out with something with can be proud of in the future.
Katie: This tour has been so invigorating for us.
Ali: We’re happy people want to hear more. Isn’t that cool?
Katie: We want to do more of this. It’s funny because we don’t have the traditional thing of where want to be as big and as successful as possible but we’re still so hungry for this joy, the joy of this feeling is like 100% although if you were to mark successes against other people…
Vlad: But that’s a good attitude to have because it’s about the journey, not the destination, because then you end up enjoying everything you do.
Katie: If you are always seeking to maximise joy then I think that is what life is about. Sometimes you have to get into bigger rooms to have more joy, this feels wicked.
Ali: Connecting with others. Hearing that you connected to the album in the way you described earlier is genuinely moving, we’ve all felt that and hearing other people saying they have connected with our music makes us feel so loved, it’s a really endearing feeling and we’re really lucky to have the audience.
Katie: On this tour each day we have been going around doing our highlights and lowlights and our highlights are so joyous like “Best gig so far” and our lowlights are just so often “tummy ache” (laughs)
In closing, what is the message you like to leave Slung fans with from this interview?
Katie: Vulnerability is power. You can be pathetic and not be a victim, you can engage that and use it to be strong and powerful. That’s how I feel, sorry I just spoke on behalf of everyone (laughs)
Ali: I can’t top that, that was awesome. We’re grateful to all the Slung fans, all the people coming out to the shows, buying the record, we’re genuinely really humbled and really thankful to have the audience, and thank you to these guys who come along for the journey and we all get to do it together, I’m extremely grateful to all of you.
For more information on Slung including remaining tour dates & ticket info head here
