Gemma Cockrell
In the midst of their tour with Wet Leg, Gemma Cockrell caught up with Honeyglaze to find out more about their self-titled debut album and their own upcoming headline tour.
How do you feel about the release of your debut album, Honeyglaze, this Friday? Do you have a personal favourite song from it, or one that you are particularly excited for fans to hear?
Yuri: We’re so excited. A surreal moment in our lives. Burglar and Half Past are probably our favourites both on record and live – super excited for fans to hear Half Past, and all the singles in context to the album too.
I just wanted to write something quite mindless and silly
I was really impressed by the singles from the album, especially Female Lead. I love the story that it tells, and how it doesn’t take itself too seriously, so I was wondering if you could tell me a little more about that one?
Anouska: I wrote it during lockdown when the world felt in complete disarray and I just wanted to write something quite mindless and silly. I also just think it’s one of those situations everyone seems to have been in, thinking a change of appearance is going to fix everything.
I saw you describe the album as the “opposite to a concept album”, and having heard it myself, I feel like it perfectly summarises everything about the band without overcomplicating things, which I think is perfect for not only a debut album, but also a self-titled album. How did you go about writing and recording an album like this?
Tim: Maybe that’s a misnomer – the album is no more a concept album than it is the opposite of one. It’s just all the songs we had at the time, in an order we liked. Anouska came to Yuri and I with her parts, and we wrote ours around them in jam sessions, and then we just rehearsed for a couple months to refine the details so we could play it live in the studio with Dan Carey and Alexis Smith. Simple as that, really.
You’re signed to Speedy Wunderground, a label that is best known for post-punk bands like Squid and Black Country New Road, but I feel like your sound is quite different to those artists that I mentioned. I was wondering how it feels to be signed to such a special label, as well as which bands or artists have influenced your own sound?
Yuri: It’s a huge honour to be able to part of the loving family Speedy Wunderground and their legacy. Artists like Cate Le Bon, Weyes Blood, Caroline, and Big Thief are influences sonically to name a few. We definitely take influence from those bands you mentioned too, but in a subtle way.
It’s important to have a team around you
You’ve currently been touring with Wet Leg, and it is safe to say that they have a lot of buzz around them right now. What has the experience of touring with them been like and what lessons would you say you’ve learnt from them that you’ll take forward with you when embarking on your own tour dates in May?
Tim: It’s been a mad experience playing much bigger shows than we’re used to, but in every other way it’s gone really smoothly. Wet Leg are a really sweet, humble group of people and they’re just as confused by the whole thing as anyone else, so in many ways the tour has just been a strange way of hanging out with friends.
What we’ve learned is that it’s important to have a team around you – driver, sound tech, tour manager, promoter rep – that you trust and can be friends with. Their team has been great.
I see you’re coming to Nottingham not only for a stripped-back show and signing at Rough Trade on 2nd May but also that you’ll be back at the end of the month for Dot To Dot on 29th May. As a Nottingham-based magazine, I wanted to focus on these shows, and ask whether you ever been to Nottingham before, as well as your expectations of the city?
Yuri: Yeah we went to Nottingham to play a support show for The Lounge Society at the Chameleon Arts Café last year which was a blast. We’re very much looking forward to the in-store and Dot To Dot!
You’ve also recently announced a headline show at Jazz Café for October, a venue that I feel like bands are always very excited to play, since it has a lot of impressive history. How does it feel to be selling out headline shows and expanding to bigger venues so rapidly?
Tim: It definitely feels a bit strange, but it’s easy to dissociate from it and just accept it as the new standard. It’s good to take a step back sometimes and think “wow, this actually isn’t what I was expecting to happen at all” and be humbled.
It will probably never fully click that people are coming just to see us, people who we aren’t even friends with. Jazz Café is definitely a cool one for us because most of our peers in the indie rock scene never play there, but we have some background in jazz and that whole scene in London as well.
Gemma Cockrell
Featured image courtesy of Holly Whitaker. Permission to use granted to Impact. No changes were made to this image.
In-article images courtesy of @honeyglaze_ via @instagram.com. No changes were made to these images.
In-article video courtesy of Honeyglaze via @youtube.com. No changes were made to this video.
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