Last night I went to see Reading new-comers Palm Honey at The Sunflower Lounge in Birmingham. I first heard of this band after coming across their extremely catchy track 'Bewitched' on Soundcloud and liking what I heard. The band themselves were really accommodating and just generally a nice group of guys. Their live performance was truly refreshing and I would recommend going to see these guys live if you get the chance with all aspects of their show pulling together feelings of euphoria and tranquility leaving you in a hallucinogenic state of dreariness yet still feeling as though you want to dance. I managed to sit down with the band about their show to talk all things music from Bowie, pushing boundaries, ambitions and a load more. Have a read below on what the band had to say.So, to introduce people to the band, how did you guys get together?
Joe: I knew Ayden from school and Seb and Harry knew each other from school too. We were all on the same music course at college and we all got on and so we just decided to jam and it came together. We've been together for almost two years now but have only taken it seriously for a year. For the first year we were finding our feet and rehearsing and writing a lot - just basically doing as many gigs as we could to get more practice and we definitely feel more comfortable now.
Obviously there's been the sad news about David Bowie, did that have any effect on the band at all?
Joe: I was pretty fucking upset, it's a real shame. We were listening to the album Heroes on the way here and it's just a fucking brilliant album. The most interesting thing is just the scope of the people that are mourning him; I mean you're getting everyone from working class men in their fifties to trans-women and just so many people. He had such a massive influence on most people, so of course to an extent it had a bit of an effect.
Seb: He was pretty quirky wasn't he? I think he made a lot of people more comfortable with themselves
Joe: I was reading an article with Bradford Cox, one of my musical heroes from a band called Deerhunters, that he wrote for Pitchfork and he has a physical syndrome that effects him quite a lot and he was saying that if it wasn't for David Bowie then he would have never started in music in the first place and that he would have never of felt comfortable enough, because of the way he was, to put his music out there if it wasn't for him. I was also listening to an interview that Bowie did for MTV at the times when racism was a big issue and asked why they weren't playing any black music and it really stumped the interviewer. I think overall it's a massive loss.
Would you say he had an influence on your music?
Seb: I think indirectly he did
Ayden: Artistically I think so. Not so much that you could listen to one of our songs and be like "Oh yeah I can definitely hear Bowie in this" but I think more so where we are as artists. Also, when you think about breaking boundaries and you think "I can't do that" or "I should't do that because it wont please people" with him it was just a case of him doing whatever the fuck he wanted.
Joe: And I'm sure he's influenced so many artists that we deem as more direct influences to us.
On the topic of musical influences, who would you say are your main ones?
Joe: Mutually, the more modern, psychedelia sort of artists like Tame Impala, Pond, MGMT. We all listen to different stuff along the alternative music spectrum. Seb's more into the whole 90's and shoegazing thing and Ayden likes 2Pac. But at the minute I've been listening to a lot of Brian Eno and Northern soul stuff that our manager brought to my attention that I'd never even thought of listening to before so they're constantly evolving really. All four of us just appreciate music as a whole and we're so interested in everything in every aspect.
Ayden: Joe you're like one of those people who you ask what they listen to and they say "everything" you know, like "yeah man I just love sound"
As you're from Reading, is there anything locally that's inspired you? such as Reading fest itself or even local bands that have come out of there.
Joe: There's a band called Tripwires and they're fucking sick. They were around when I was about 16 and they made me really want to be a band. They're how I started to get into different music like shoegazing as apposed to metal which is what I used to listen to. Also a band called Peers which are now named The Amazons they made me want to be in a band too.
Joe: All Reading bands are doing their own thing. In the press at the minute they've got the whole idea of a 'Reading Scene' but if you actually endevour to listen to the artist as an individual first, you'd see that everyone is different. I think it's important for people to not start defining you as one big scene because you don't want to be overshadowed by someone else as everyone has their own talented stuff.
Joe: Yeah, it's not really a tour cos that would imply that we're being all cool going all over the place in a tour bus with like PlayStations built into the back of the seats but it's been really cool as we love playing live and Southampton was sick. It's so cool that people are asking us to play in different places like I've never even been to Birmingham before. I'd like to go play Pitchfork Festival actually and just Paris in general and Japan. I wanna play everywhere actually and just get our music out to everyone.
Ayden: My mum even upped my rent 'cos she saw all this cool stuff that we had on tour and it's like we're not playing Wembley or anything we're still just a bunch of normal guys trying to fit all our stuff into the back of a van. I love playing live but it's the bit after as well when you get to meet really cool people. But it would be sick to be able to play in Amsterdam.
Harry: I wanna go back to Festival Number 6 in Wales; the place in Wales where it is doesn't look real, it looks a bit like a fairy-tale - it's a really cool place.
I think that it's good that you guys seem like a band that aren't afraid to say they wanna play everywhere and be as big as they can be.
Joe: Yeah, I think it's so important for bands these days to not play happy families with the media. That's not what art is about. If you think of some of the biggest bands, they didn't give a shit and non of them kept quiet about being ambitious. It's important to care about where you're going and just use the platforms that are available to you.
Exactly! just like Bowie pushing boundaries.
So, what was the process behind your seven minute song Bewitched?
Harry: It was a bit of a project I started when I was bored in rehearsals messing with the keyboard and then everyone else just stood up and started trying to make the other instruments fit into it.
Joe: Harry came up with the main riff and then Seb just came up with this really fucking good bass riff. It was the first song we made with synths in it. I really love the fact that that was the song we put out cos for someone to take an interest in us after listening to the entire 7 minutes of that song just goes to show the type of people that really wanna get involved with your music and support you. It's nice to see that people were interested enough to listen to the whole thing and be into it. We added the long instrumental bit at the end a while after and we're always adding new bits into the songs we have on our set in our live shows and learning from it.
Harry: That end part where it goes slow, I listen to it now and think "Oh man, I've got ideas that would work so well in there" but I think the best songs do keep developing like that.
Where would you say your sound is going in terms of your album? I know how broadly the term 'psychedelic' is used these days but would you say it's similar to the stuff you've given out so far?
Joe: It's important not to be defined by one specific thing. I don't think that it's a conscious thought when we start a song for us to sound psychedelic. We all put our own individual take on the music we make and it just ends up that way. We want to broaden out a bit more musically but I think that just seems to be our natural sound so far when we all play together. but the term Psychedelic to me is something that describes really strong emotions and it's a lot bigger than how it's sometimes spoken about and used.
Ayden: I don't think we'll be sounding this way forever. It's never permanent and we want our sound to grow as we grow as artists. Fuck knows where we're going but I don't think we'll just be tied down to one sound.
Is there a message that you try to put across within your music?
Joe: I think everything we put out comes from a period of transitioning and going from like childhood to adulthood and dealing with the sorts of things that are thrown at you along the way. It's always going to be very reflective of where we are as people at the time. I think it's never one thing.
Ayden: I see that with a lot of bands they think it just has to be one thing about what everything is about but fuck that I want to be about everything.
Joe: I'd love to have someone grow up with our stuff. Going back to Bowie, I read an article where they said that there was a different Bowie album for every stage he went through and I'd love that.
How would you define 'making it as a band?'
Ayden: I think as I said, being a part of someones life and growing up with them through your music and just having an impact on someone. I would love for someone to look back at a period in their life and immediately think back to our music because I do that with times that I've been through with certain artists music. When you live in a world with people around you constantly building relationships it's so fucking easy to feel lonely and isolated but the thing with fanbases is that you're never really alone with music and that's how I want people to feel about us.
Seb: I feel like for me as well it's being happy with what we put out and we can listen to it is also why I like making music
Joe: It goes much bigger than just playing big shows.
Last question, what is the one song you wish you would've written?
Joe: All Day And All Of The Night by The Kinks. I would have fucking loved to have written that. That was an absolute game changer. Can you imagine writing that riff? I think there's just too many though. Whenever I listen to music I always just imagine myself playing it.
Ayden: If I really enjoy a song and it finishes I'll be like ah, I'm actually really upset now cos I didn't do that.
Harry: The Sound Of Someone You Love Who's Going Away And It Doesn't Matter - Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Air - La Femme D'argent.
Written by Rosie Mulhern
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