Honeyglaze: “Writing the album, I was just an unemployed person who was in a band”

Its foundations laid in emotional introspection, post-tour hangovers, and the harsh realities of surviving in the real world as musicians, HONEYGLAZE find grace in falling through the cracks in their new album ‘Real Deal’.

Words: Rebecca Kestevan.
Photos: Kalpesh Lathigra.

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“It’s funny, that feeling of excitement – everything happens over such a long period of time you lose a bit of it, then it randomly comes back,” ponders Anouska Sokolow, singer of London-based trio Honeyglaze. Along with bass player Tim Curtis and drummer Yuri Shibuichi, the band are just a couple of weeks away from the release of their sophomore album ‘Real Deal’ – and are taking a moment to reflect on it all. 

As its cover art might suggest, ‘Real Deal’ feels like one big confrontation. It’s gritty, unapologetic, yet also nestled within it are moments of real tenderness. There’s an urgent sense of push and pull, of a fight between inner turbulence and calm exteriors – the calm versus the storm. 

Honeyglaze describe the album as reactionary, in some ways, to their 2022 self-titled debut. “There were very specific rules and limitations,” Sokolow explains about the record, produced by Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey. “We wanted to have a bit more creative freedom. We had a lot more time to pick and choose and be a lot more creatively fussy.”

From abstract musical references, dynamics, structures, and Shibuichi’s ever-changing drumming styles, the band had a real opportunity to explore their sound and what they wanted to create with ‘Real Deal’. “We’re all quite driven by novelty, and I think that’s important,” says Curtis. “We’d all have these epiphanies and be like, ‘Oh shit, maybe I didn’t need to be doing all that!” he laughs. 

Driven by this novelty of trying different things and taking different musical routes, what Honeyglaze have created is an album rife with sonic diversity, niche and subtle musical references, crazy middle sections, and instrumental layers, and it’s the band’s proudest work to date. 

“We actually had a very clear idea of how it was going to sound,” explains Curtis. “It was a bit of a Michelangelo process; like carving a statue, the statue’s already in the stone. We already knew what we wanted, so it was a matter of shaping it. It was a lot easier than if we’d gone into the studio and then tried to come up with how it was all gonna sound. Because we had so much time, we could shape it.”

“It was a bit of a Michelangelo process; like carving a statue, the statue’s already in the stone”

Tim Curtis

Some songs, however, took longer than others to polish off. “‘Don’t’ had a really long process,” Curtis admits. “We weren’t sure we were gonna release it. It just didn’t seem like a full song. It was cool, but it was very different – it was just verses, and then we were like, ‘Now what? We’ve got to make a big vibe shift and make it really moody or experimental’, and just none of them worked.” 

‘Don’t’ was the single that marked the band’s return back in May. The melody is, funnily enough, drawn from ‘Bills’ by Destiny’s Child – but it’s been so impressively recontextualised that it’s difficult to recognise for even the most tuned-in ear. It’s an intense, loud, raging masterwork that ebbs and flows between being full of tension and chaotic instrumental release – arguably setting the perfect tone for the rest of the record. Sokolow’s spoken-word lyricisms get increasingly more aggressive before boiling over, shouting ‘Don’t raise your voice and interrupt me when I’m speaking / I’m a person too you know I’ve got things to say I’ve got fucking feelings.’ 

“‘Don’t’ is definitely very cathartic,” Sokolow explains. “When we were recording the album, there were definitely some days where I was like, ‘I’m not ready to do this song yet’. It was one of the last vocal takes, and I just had to think, ‘Okay, I’m just gonna do it. I’m gonna drop all this hesitation I have towards it and just do it’. It’s the same as going on stage; we just have to do it.” 

Arrangements, structures and textures throughout ‘Real Deal’ were a collaborative effort. But lyrics have always come from Sokolow, who, in contrast to the self-consciousness of their debut, writes with a sense of powerful vindication this time around – storytelling through different character lenses, her lyrics cleverly weave different narratives and vignettes to bring a mirror to her own experiences. “I think everything is me. Whether it comes out as me or some other romanticised version of myself, it always comes back to how I’m feeling.”

And there’s one song in particular, ‘I Feel It All’, which is perhaps the most intense. The track is almost cinematic, haunting from the offset as it explores extreme pulls of emotion. “It’s about being a person that’s very hypersensitive and very emotional, and those moments where you have all these feelings, and you feel like you’re gonna explode,” Sokolow explains. Lyrics like ‘You watch the sky open, but I feel it fall’ seem to sum up that feeling. “It’s just like, seeing yourself from the outside, seeing the world – on a good day, you can see certain situations as fine, but when you’re in that mental state, everything feels so destructive and crazy. It’s like a push and pull – the comparison between those two headspaces.”

“When it’s raining, and you’re feeling open to it, it can feel like a nice thing. But if you’re feeling bad, it’s like the end of the world,” Curtis adds. “I feel like there’s a pretty clear distinction where there are people who don’t feel this way, and it’s hard for them to understand why the hell everything is such a big deal, or why everything is so interconnected in this really overwhelming way.”

“It’s always been a very important song to me,” Sokolow reflects. “I’m not someone who finds it easy to talk about how I feel if I’m feeling bad. That song has always been the closest expression of that feeling; it feels like that’s the best way to explain myself when I’m in that kind of headspace.”

“It’s like a movie, split into three parts of longing, then chaos, and then this yearning feeling of not knowing who you are”

Tim Curtis

Feelings such as this weren’t the only source of inspiration for the ‘Real Deal’. The foundations of the record were laid in the aftermath of touring and having to confront the harsh realities of surviving in the real world as artists. “I think that was probably the biggest influence,” Sokolow explains. “I was in uni when we started the band, and when I finished uni we immediately had the first record out, went on tour, had some cash. Life was amazing, but music is never that steady. It kind of dipped, and suddenly, I was an adult and was like, ‘Oh god, I need to get a job; I’m not going to be a musician full-time’. I came to realise adult life wasn’t as easy as I’d anticipated.” 

“You dream of being a musician as a kid,” reflects Curtis, “and then you get this moment where you’re introduced to the music industry, which turns out to be totally different to what you thought. It’s just people who actually do this for a living, they’re all just like you; you think everything’s perfect, and you drop your guard.” 

“And then suddenly, you’re unemployed,” laughs Sokolow. “Writing the album, I was just an unemployed person who was in a band. Half the time, I was in my bedroom thinking, ‘Oh god, what is this? This is so weird! I don’t know what my life is!’ It’s a bizarre way to live, and trying to figure out how to survive is really interesting.”

This considered, it could be said that the overarching theme of the album is a kind of acceptance, of surrendering to the idea that sometimes, things just aren’t that great – and all we can do is try our best to survive. The journey from side A  to B on the record encapsulates this, too. The pent-up rage and energy of tracks like opener ‘Hide’ simmer down to a sound more mellow and introspective, like a sense of calm after the storm. 

Curtis points to ‘TMJ’, a song he recalls the recording of with pride, as a sort of bridge between the two – “it’s got the sensitivity, and it’s also quite accepting.” Sokolow agrees, adding that “it was definitely a choice we made. I think we struggled – we had a lot of different tracklisting ideas, because the album is so split in mood. It’s like a movie, split into three parts of longing, then chaos, and then this kind of yearning feeling of not knowing who you are. But in the end, you’re just like, ‘Well, I guess that’s just how it is!’” Curtis laughs, adding, “It’s like the stages of grief.” 

Indeed, ‘Real Deal’ feels kind of like a shrug – a sort of ‘it’s fine, I guess’. It’s an acceptance of the heavy-hitting, emotional sucker punches that come with the highs and lows of being alive. It’s an album that doesn’t run away from the chaos of life; it embraces it. 

Taken from the October 2024 issue of Dork. Honeyglaze’s album ‘Real Life’ is out 20th September.