The Lovely Eggs

Hitchin’ with Jad Fair, nudity, scrap-yards, OCD and working with a Super Furry Animal. An average day for The Lovely Eggs…

A few months ago, I brought you The Lovely Eggs with their bouncy, humorous, anarchic (do what the f*** we like) pop. They’re also the band that have produced my favourite single of the year (so far), Don’t Look At Me (I Don’t Like It). So when I was asked over for a chat, naturally I jumped at the chance!

Above: The Lovely Egg Plants

Originally the interview was supposed to take place at Abbey Road Studios were the band were putting the final mix to their new single, released on the 31st October on Cherryade Records. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make the scheduled time so we arranged to meet at a bar in Angel (London, Islington) in the evening. I walk through the doors to find husband and wife members Holly Ross and David Blackwell chilling over beers.

Not being sure what to make of some of their lyrics, I’m a little nervous the interview could go pear-shaped. But I soon discover that the band are… well, lovely! And the interview rapidly goes egg-shaped!

How does it feel right now to be The Lovely Eggs?
Holly: It feels good!
David: Yeah, amazin’, yeah!
H: We’ve been really busy – we’ve just come back from a month on tour in Europe which has been great! And at the weekend, we’ve been filming the video for our new single, Panic Plants. Today we’ve been over to the Too Pure office cos we’re doing another single on their label in December with them and we updated our back-catalogue. Then we went over to Abbey Road Studios, so it feels pretty good, we’ve got a big bag of records now and it feels …great!

You’re married, but how did you meet?
H: Just hangin’ around Lancaster really, just being in bands and David works at the Lancaster Music Co-op.
D: It’s like a little studio where we record all our stuff, we kinda met through that really!
H: Yeah, and just being in bands and going to gigs and discos!

That’s nice, so Lancaster music brought you together then?
H: Yeah, and just growing up. Lancaster’s a really small town with a tiny music scene, but there are a lot of people really into their tunes up there. We’ve got friends that are these big vinyl junkies, that are really into their ’60s stuff and into their bands, so just knocking around there and hangin’ around with them brought us together.

I recently described your music as psycho-pop, but how would you describe it?
H: I dunno, it’s hard to describe really, we just kinda leave that up to other people.
D: Yeah, when you’re in a band, labeling stuff is kinda hard cos we never formed to follow any particular genre or anything like that. It was like, lets get together, do this and see what comes out. We weren’t …particularly at that time, inspired by a certain thing. We had certain influences coming in, I guess.
H: We have this Punk-Rock ethos, we’re not necessarily Punk-Rock (although we love Punk), but we just love the idea of doing what the hell we want. We don’t have any rules in our band. Like, if we wanna write a song that’s ten seconds long and it’s just drums and my voice, we’ll do it or if we wanna write a song that’s three to four minutes long, that’s got more instruments in it (that sounds like a normal song), we won’t be afraid to do that either!
D: We have no boundaries with our song-writing!
H: We don’t have to be faithful or anything like that, we’ll just do what the hell we want!

So, you might go for the big production one day and throw in a brass band?
D: Well, one day if we wanted to, we would …cos, were not saying that’s ‘not us’ cos anything’s us really!
When I’m listening to your music, I’m getting a bit of Moldy Peaches and The Vaselines, but who would you say are your biggest influences?
H: Well, for me growing up, I was into Sonic Youth, Nirvana and a lot of Riot Grrrl bands such as Bikini Kill but also had a massive love for ’60s stuff!
D: Yeah, like “psychy” ’60s and garage stuff, obviously we have a lot of love for The Velvet Underground and that New York kinda scene.
H: The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and just simple stuff …the vibe of stuff like Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers (amazing!). We love the vibe he creates at his solo gigs, it’s not just the music, we’re inspired by people that create a feeling inside you. But also we’re influenced by authors and artists just as much as we are musicians. Richard Brautigan, if you read one of his books, they’re just full of joy and what’s possible in the world written into such small chapters. And David Shrigley, we’re massive fans of him. These people are pushing boundaries, people like that who are doing something that is so free, that inspires us!
D: But yeah, like you say, bands like The Moldy Peaches and The Vaselines, we love the simplicity of that, and we’ve got some of that in our songs as well!
H: You get the vibe from those two bands that they’re just doin’ what they want and they wouldn’t do it any other way.

What ya listening to right now, what’s on the tour bus?
H: Ha ha, we’ve just been on our tour in Europe and we had Electric Psychedelic Sitar Head Swirlers Vol 1 and 2. After Panic Plants, we did this other single with Gruff Rhys and it’s this psychedelic number. Gruff says, it’d be really nice if we had a sitar to go on this. Dave collects so much shit, and says “I’ve got a sitar!” and Gruff says “Ya joking, get it out, let’s put it on the track!” So yeah, after that we’ve been listening to loads of sitar stuff like Lord Sitar!
H: Also, some contemporary stuff like, Grandaddy – been listening to a lot of him recently.
D: When we were leaving to go on tour, we just grabbed (cos we were rushing) this huge case of CDs without knowing what was in there; and it was like, right, that’s our music for the tour. We’ve been dipping in and out of the past really with what we’ve been listening to.
H: Y Niwl (which translates to The Fog from Welsh to English), who are Gruff Rhys’ new backing band, we’ve been listening to them in the van!
D: They’re like a psychedelic surf band!