A Band that’s Big in the Suburbs: Interview with art-pop band Welly
Image Credit: Ian Cheek Press
Do you remember your Year 6 school disco? It’s too early to leave, so stay with me, dear Reader. The dance floor rammed with your classmates, the memories of your hometown looking too much like a world out of a Where’s Wally puzzle, the endless queue of kids outside the corner shop fiending for Lucozade and that one unbranded 50p chocolate bar 10 minutes before the school bell goes. All of these small life dramas are taken for granted when bands consider writing music about where they are from and what life experience they have to bring forth in whatever repackaged version of grungy post-punk they have bleed their fingers over. What even is the term ‘gentrified pop’? Pop surely can’t be gentrified anymore than it already is, you may say to yourself, draped in an Idles or Black Country New Road tee (ironic), IPA in hand and permanently frowning over your lack of Hinge matches. I get it; a subculture of Leeds students may not at all be phased with joy as a primary emotion in music about the world outside, without feeling guilty.
Allow me to introduce you to Welly, pop’s answer to social commentary about the latest drama in your local village Facebook group. If you were getting bored of listening to whiny love songs and wished that somebody would just write a song about the bins not being collected, this band from the suburbs might just be the answer to your boredom. With their debut album Big in the Suburbs dropping on March 21st, this band has come in hot with live sets incorporating magic shows, shoe stealing and cowbells? But on a wildly windy Friday afternoon, I dodge the comically scary obstacle course that temporarily erupted in Woodhouse Moor to hunch over my laptop and chat on Zoom with frontman Elliot.
On the surface, there’s so much of British culture oozing out of their music that it’s quite easy to compare Welly to Britpop pioneers Pulp or even Blur. “I was hearing people singing about the supermarket and common people. It’s not so much that I am inspired by Britpop, it’s that I am inspired by the sort of ‘cottage industry’, the sort of hobbyist element of British life. I can speak quite candidly about school discos, playing knock n’ run – that’s where it comes from.” Inspiration for building the world of Welly is very visual and all in his surroundings. “The suburbs to me are as much of a muse to me, as a lover would be a painter or daffodils were to Wordsworth. I find a dead end street with pretty little gardens and really nosy neighbours.”
Take their music video for album opener ‘Big in the Suburbs’ as an example for how CBBC unknowingly defined a generation, idolising the Dick and Dom’s and Horrid Henry brats in the room. “I always liked how Madness do their music videos. In ‘House of Fun’, one of them is a clown, one of them is a jester, and a barber. Whatever the song is, they always play the roles of the characters in the song.”
Self-produced by the band, the perfectionism of releasing a debut album is one that most bands have to succumb to. “The album is really homemade. We made it a year ago now, all by ourselves at my dad’s house. Now that’s finished and I keep thinking of what I could have done differently, I compensate with the visuals. The day we were mixing the album, we were saying ‘we could have done this, we could have done this’. I’d rather just get stuff out or else it would never go anywhere.” But a debut project is meant to be raw. It’s a band at their most authentic. “We’re very proud of it, and it’s what a debut album should sound like.”
There’s an ever evolving image of what a debut album is supposed to be and whether it aligns with a band’s message. Narratively, this debut album is very centered on a caricature Southern suburb, zooming in on all the gossip and happenings of everyday people. I ask if there is already a sequel written for the saga. “Album 2 was written before we even signed the record deal, we’re just not sure on what it will sound like yet. I want to focus more on fast food, junk food and instant gratification culture. The 3rd album will be the prog rock Genesis project that no one really wants to listen to.” Soon, there’ll be a cosmopolitan city of sound made up of the band’s sound, whether that’s them hoping to pursue hyperpop or even a baroque project. “It’s about throwing stuff at the wall and I was lucky that the first thing I threw at the wall stuck, which is what Welly is.”
For now, the album opens with its titular track ‘Big in the Suburbs’, opening up the world of Welly with a formal introduction of ‘Welcome to the brand new great British zoo’. I got some further insight on the rest of the tracks. “‘Home for the Weekend’ was the first song that started the project. I never really felt homesick but I was always really gagging to leave home, which for me is a suburbia outside of Southampton. When I moved to Brighton for university, I suddenly went ‘oh I quite miss it’. Bizarrely, I had a seizure and spent hours in Brighton A&E and that’s when I came up with ‘Big in the Suburbs.’ ‘Knock and Run’ is a rip off of the macarena if you listen close enough. There’s also sadder slower songs and it isn’t just all a big joke. Hopefully, if you have already written Welly off, there might be something there to surprise you.”
Hopefully, none of you have yet. You could argue there’s a strong self-awareness to the music, and most of today’s guitar music expresses a deep need for social commentary on the state of the world, but in a more pessimistic and often overdone way. The difference with Welly is the amount of fun and comedy they exude on stage, and they succeed in striking a balance between wit and sincerity when making music sound really British. “It’s far more pessimistic and less arty than it used to be in the 80s. It feels like the music now is shouting at me. Yeah, but could you embellish it?”
Formed in Brighton, there were many grassroots venues that they owe their start to and continue to praise. “Places like The Green Door Store, The Prince Albert and Hope and Ruin, all that lot. Heartbreakers and The Joiners (Southampton) too.” The scene seems to have become a tight-knit community where their DIY project flourished way more than it could in a glorified London. “I don’t think Welly would have got off the ground in London, but in Brighton, it’s not like we could bring our friends to shows because we didn’t know anybody when we moved here. We sort of had to put on our shows and play gobby to get people’s attention, which is how we made those friends through gigs. It’s a very accommodating place and I think they’re up for something kind of odd.”
There’s so much about not being a London centric band anymore. Playing in London is impossible. Welly’s recently announced seaside tour or previous North/South tours showcase their passion to play in small, dingy venues that reach the smaller, more neglected pockets of the music industry around the country.
“You’re way better off trying to be the biggest band in Leeds than be bottom of the bill in London. We are playing to all of our friends, we played in Nottingham with 5 other bands and they were all having so much more fun than any prick in Hoxton. If you go to Falmouth, they have such a great scene there and what’s great for a touring band like ours is that their biggest band will support. Same thing in Huddersfield, Shrewsbury, Swansea. We get to meet their community. There’s 5 bands, they’ve all got the same drummer, they’re all having so much more fun than working in a coffee shop 9-5 just to play once a year at The George Tavern. Move out, have fun somewhere else. Brighton, if anything, is one of the bigger and harder ones.”
And with that, a toast to our beloved local music scenes. It’s Welly’s reimagined world of what would happen if Horrid Henry grew up with his band, and we’re all living in it.
Written by Eszter Vida
