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SEA GIRLS turn the intensity up on ‘Midnight Butterflies’ – a swaggering ode to the freedom of youth and living unrestrained. Find out more with our latest Dork Mixtape cover feature.
Words: Steven Loftin.
Photos: Blacksocks.
Ready to embrace life with the explosive certainty of a cheeky late-night firework, Sea Girls are soaring higher than ever before. “With this album, we want to be seen – I want to be seen,” vocalist and guitarist Henry Camamile enthuses. “That’s why I’m in a band. That’s why I’m the frontman.” This swaggering acknowledgement comes hot on the announcement of their third outing, ‘Midnight Butterflies’, and a belting 2022 set at London’s Alexandra Palace. It’s safe to say Sea Girls aren’t doing things by halves. “I’ve always felt like I’ve got something to prove, which is why I make music. I want to get out of feeling normal,” he continues. “I want to write about escaping every day and worrying about the future.”
The London quartet have, since their debut 2017 single ‘Call Me Out’, written the kind of songs that swoop you up into an embrace that dares you to live: “I think that’s why fans connect to us, they’re not special stories. They’re typical stories that everyone experiences, the highs and the lows,” Henry says.
Suitably, this third chapter of Sea Girls is them fully leaning into being Sea Girls. Confessing that, “This is the most I’ve ever embraced the feeling of being in a band,” Henry, alongside his bandmates Rory Young (guitar), Andrew Dawson (bass), and Oli Khan (drums), is roaring ready to get this new chapter underway. “I’m enjoying life more than I ever have, and I feel like we’re enjoying being in a band,” Henry beams. “We’ve never not really enjoyed it, but it just feels great. We’ve got fans, we’ve built this up, we’ve got this confidence that we can just fucking lean into – the energy, that buzz inside us and push it.”
Doubling down, ‘Midnight Butterflies’ is unabashedly Sea Girls. The hooks are hookier, the energy more frenetic, and the sentiments as euphorically youthful – for better or worse – as ever. Theirs is a space to be revelled in and escaped to, not to feed answers but to propel and assist. While Henry acknowledges, “We’re not reinventing the wheel; we’ve pushed out.” For this time around, they’ve worked with a few different names to give new flavours to the Sea Girls formula. With co-writes from Harry Styles’ producer Kid Harpoon to YUNGBLUD collaborator Matt Schwartz, it’s all in the name of “embracing the culture and people to work with,” reckons Henry. “Instead of being insular in our own little team.”
‘Midnight Butterflies’ is, in their eyes, Sea Girls’ rejuvenation. Digging deeper into their arsenal of nights-lived and life-loved, they’re turning the crank up higher on what it is they do best. It also marks their first release as an independent band on their own Alt. Records, after parting with Polydor post-’Homesick’. It’s a culmination of the band getting to grips with enjoying everything they do. After all, life’s a bit too short. “This one was just about, I’m gonna have a fucking good time being in a band, we’re gonna have a fucking good time,” says Henry. “I’m super proud of all the other albums, [but] the debut feels different. This one is all about living in the moment, going no consequences.”
“We want to be seen. I want to be seen”
Henry Camamile
Their latest offering, ‘Polly’ – named after the Nirvana track – is a prime example of their reignited devotion to their craft. “I had characters in my head that I’ve met throughout the years,” Henry explains of its composite. “We definitely wanted it to feel different to anything we’d ever done. It’s a cool feeling that I was trying to portray. It sounds fucking cool. When someone listens to this, I think they’re going to connect to that feeling when you’re exactly where you want to be in life. You’re in this moment, hanging with this person in this kitchen, wherever you are outside of a party, just like feeling like I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
That place for Henry, at this moment, is with his band. After a tumultuous time, with a long-term head injury steering him down the path of excess – but ultimately to writing their debut album, Open Up Your Head – he acknowledges: “The first album I was consumed in my post-concussion syndrome, which just basically gave me depression and then my only escape was fucking getting off my mind, and that was shit.” ‘Homesick’ was the sober follow-up, though the sounds would suggest otherwise, having never waned in their bolstering indie-pop. Reflecting on it now, Henry mentions, “[‘Midnight Butterflies’] felt like I’d written a debut because there’s so much stuff that went on over those two years,” he says. “Making the first two albums, there were difficulties, but this one, I felt like I could enjoy being in the band and just writing about fucking having a good time. I just feel there’s just more joy that sits in this album compared to that first album, lyrically.” While it fizzes to life with the triple-hit of its titular track, and recent singles ‘I Want You To Know Me’ and ‘Come Back To Me’, before long, the edges blur and the humanity seeps back in with pensive closer ‘After Hours’.
It’s this flip-side Henry is all too aware of as he readily admits, “I’m not this guy that fucking lives this kind of rock’n’roll life, but I can really enjoy leaning into it.” However, embracing this in totality nowadays is the same reason Sea Girls have always been able to lift even the grumpiest of moods with their synth-soaked rock. “The reason why there’s always been that part of it, that euphoric side of it, is because I’ve needed an escape – I needed it back then.”
“It feels great. We’ve got fans, we’ve built this up, we’ve got this confidence that we can just fucking lean into”
Henry Camamile
Knowingly, his retrospection comes from a battle-worn place. “If you try and escape all the time… I’ve done too much of it,” he shrugs. “It gets destructive, and it’s dark, you know? So there is a dark side to the mission statement of the album, but ‘Midnight Butterflies’, to fucking live for 24 hours; give a shit, fucking do what you gotta do. I hate reducing it down to ‘it’s a party’ or whatever, but let’s be honest: that’s mostly what we do when we try to escape.”
While he was sober for a couple of years throughout ‘Homesick’, these days Henry is all about seizing the day. “I’ve just started enjoying life a bit more,” he shrugs. “I’m not a perfect person. I haven’t found the fucking answers or whatever. I’m just finding my way through and making the most of it – making the anthems bigger, the bright points brighter.”
The kind of joy Henry and co are going for this time is the same as that rush you feel when everything is right, when an unstoppable feeling washes over you, and the threat of the other shoe dropping is a distant memory: “I just wanted to burn out in every song,” Henry smiles. It’s a feeling bottled in part by the album being recorded in a lightning strike over the last year. “I wanted this album to be like, listen to it, and it’s done. I just wanted this core feeling and this urgency.” Even in their more sombre moments, they’ve held their heads above the water. “This rush has always been in us, despite everything else that goes around [we] let our identity flow out of us.”
This is what ‘Midnight Butterflies’ seems to truly be for Sea Girls – a way for them to redefine themselves in the warmth of recognising a bright future. On what it is, for Henry, that’s made this new embrace possible, he firstly nods his proper calling. “Music is my favourite thing, and it’s such a big part of my identity,” he says. “But on a personal level, I’ve started partying more. I’m sort of searching through my own little journey of fucking living,” he smirks.
This is the most important part for Henry. The distinctly human feel of this revelling return is, in its very nature, just Sea Girls on their mission to serve their fans a reason to get outside and live life. “It’s partly our duty to try and make great art and live it,” Henry explains. “Nothing fucking crazy, but I should really enjoy the fact I’m in a band, and acknowledge in myself that that’s what’s going on?” While their perspective is decidedly focused upon ever-growing stages and songs-to-be-written, Henry acknowledges that original opening point again and the key part of why Sea Girls continue to be a resounding draw: “These are stories that are just so common to everyone my age, younger and older,” he says. “We’re all humans, and the same as the next person, everyone’s muddling their way through and having a good time when they can and feeling shit when they can’t help it. That’s what we’re doing.”
Seemingly in a place of increased wisdom, without the boring maturity, he opines: “You don’t have to be in a band for this to make sense. These songs aren’t about being in a band; this album is not about being in a band. We just happen to be in a band. It’s the human condition.” ■
Sea Girls’s new track ‘Polly’ is out now. Their new album ‘Midnight Butterflies’ is out 14th June. Follow Dork Mixtape on Spotify here.
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