Naming themselves after Bauhaus’ goth-rock-slash-post-punk anthem, She’s In Parties were never going to be anything other than a bit off-kilter. Weaving honest social commentary through wonderfully wonky sonic filters, they’re never too shy to play at the fringes of the alt-pop world, expanding their already impressive world-building abilities into yet another sparkling EP, ‘Are You Dreaming?’.
Their theatricality, imagination, and talent shine through even more strongly on their third EP in as many years, an exploration of the intensity of modern life and its all-encompassing torment that it causes on your mind.
Unfurling the worst of 21st-century madness through a synth-laden dreamscape, they reinforce themselves as one of the most exciting prospects within the indie art-pop scene.
“It’s very exciting because it’s quite different to what we’ve made in the past,” frontwoman Katie Dillon says. “It’s a bit nerve-wracking to see how people will receive it because it is a bit of a step away from our previous EPs, but we’re really happy with the sound of it: raw and fresh.”
Since their last EP, the malevolently marvellous exposé on digital danger, ‘Puppet Show’, it’s been all change for She’s In Parties. The Essex (via Ireland, in Katie’s case) quartet are now split across county lines, with their frontwoman fleeing the comforting embrace of the band’s native Colchester to the sometimes cold and always confusing Big Smoke.
This move to a new world, a new phase for both her and the band to contemplate, helped to create the swirling yet sharp spiral that so heavily inspired this new concept.
“It’s such a change of pace,” Katie explains. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh my god, everyone is so mean’, because they’re just in their own bubble. They don’t talk to you or move out of your way, and I work on Old Street with all the men in suits, so everyone’s just not paying attention to anyone else at all.
“Moving from the countryside to the city, not being able to walk in fields all the time and not having the boys around, was such an intense time”, she continues. “And when I go through really hectic periods in my life, my dreams get really intense, too, so it’s like I just can’t escape the madness; that’s where the concept for the whole project really came from.”
“Not being able to walk in fields all the time was intense”
The new phase of the band fed into a new way of writing, both administratively and sonically, with bassist and synth-player Charlie Johnson diverting the previously guitar-led She’s In Parties sound into a lighter, more playful realm.
“In the past, Katie and I would play with sounds on demos and then bring the other boys in when we were recording in the studio, but this time it was just a lot of sending stuff back and forth and seeing what happened. We left it really late with lyrics for ‘Runaway’ and ‘Are You Dreaming?’, but to be honest, we tend to leave things to the last minute, so that wasn’t an issue!”
“Yeah,” Katie adds, “I think it worked because it came together more organically in the studio. We had so much fun, but it also plays back into that theme of intensity and being overwhelmed with everything; every aspect of this album tells you that story.”
Really, it’s a story that has been building from the band’s first EP, ‘End Scene’, and was dialled up even further on ‘Puppet Show’. As much as the driving force of this EP might have swerved away from the grungy, guitar rock world that they so suit, this is not a complete refusal to acknowledge their past; instead, it grows with their catalogue, rather than despite it.
“Although ‘Same Old Story’ sticks out a bit because it’s quite fuzzy and is a bit of an anomaly for the rest, I’m super happy with how everything else fits together,” guitarist Herbie Wiseman considers, “I’m really proud of the theme and what the EP’s about, all the artwork; the whole dreaming idea is one we’ve always tried to put across in our music but it’s exciting being so forward about it. It feels good to have a story to tell and an image to put in people’s heads.”
Katie nods: “I love that there are little hints to our previous work and things that tie everything together. ‘The Times’ and ‘The Man’ really explored the sense of overconsumption and information overload, which plays into that sense that life is just spiralling out of control. Then the video for ‘Same Old Story’ brings in that idea that you’re on your own and everyone’s ignoring you.”
The lyrical vulnerability and reflections on her new life as a Londoner could easily drag ‘Are You Dreaming?’ under, lurking in the depths of the intense goth-rock influences that so inspired the band’s name and early work. Countering it with warmer synth tones, sprinkles of jangly guitar ad-libs, and somewhat bizarre percussive choices, they ensure that the EP soars rather than sinks.
“Something I’ve always done is distract myself when I’m sad,” Katie explains, “I escape however I can, and that’s what ended up happening in the EP – I used it as a way to ease myself into life without losing the person I was before and it represents that, although everyone has these dark, unsettling thoughts, we don’t always show it to the world.”
Charlie agrees: “I don’t know if [the new sound] was deliberate at first; I was just leaning into these sounds when I was making the demos. I wanted some songs like ‘Are You Dreaming?’ which really filled your ears, but then for ‘Runaway’ I just had one pad and created these tones that excited me. I wasn’t really writing for anything at that time, but eventually they crept into everything we made, which was nice to have.”
To bring these demos to life, they turned to producer Macks Faulkron, who brought his expertise and wide-ranging set of tools to add the final shine to proceedings.
“He’s hilarious and so fun to be around, but he also didn’t want to fuck about,” Katie recalls, “there were a lot of elements to each song, but he helped us to make it all work. It’s important to work with someone who wants the music to sound the best it can.”
Herbie continues: “He’s the kind of guy you want to go for a beer with. We did my guitar parts quite early in the record, so I was just keeping up with everything on our socials; I woke up one day to a video of him smashing the shit out of a cymbal with a wooden block and thought, ‘Fucking hell, what are we making here?!’”
“I also have such a vivid memory of him going in and smacking a mic stand about because we needed some more percussion doing,” Charlie remembers. “He brought so much energy to every session, he was so fun to be around.”
“We want to grow, but don’t want to abandon where we’ve come from”
As much as the band’s minds are firmly focused on this EP release, including their celebratory hometown shows, it’s an occupational hazard that, rightly or wrongly, someone’s always asking what’s coming next. In this case, it’s us asking, and we’re not sorry about it.
“I mean, an album’s next innit,” Herbie states. “I’m not saying that it’s definitely coming, but I think that’s the next step for us. It’s another level of our band, a level of expression nobody would have seen from us before.”
Katie uneasily agrees, albeit with slightly less vigour. “I mean, yeah, an album’s the dream, right? To say we’ve made an album would just be incredible. We’ve got so many songs dating back, like, five years, where people have said to us, ‘Save that for the album, that’s good for an album,’ that we do feel like we’re ready.”
“We’re writing now, and I would say that we are writing with an album in mind,” Charlie continues. “We want to grow, but don’t want to abandon where we’ve come from in the name of growth. We want to mature as writers but not move away too heavily from where we’ve been writing from.”
In many ways, that’s the story of the band so far summed up: feeling their way into whatever sound fits them best, but never being ashamed to ebb and flow within whatever space they find themselves in. They’ve come a long way since their first few songs, but they’ve never forgotten the foundations: connection, camaraderie, and simply cracking tunes.
We’re speaking to the band (well, three of them) on the same day as the Mercury Prize, which naturally raises the question of the band’s ultimate dreams. Katie and Charlie agree that the Mercury Prize would be on their list, alongside a tour with Hayley Williams and a chance to do NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert. Herbie lands on “an Oscar for being a legend”, but he’s also lying on the floor by this point, so his mind may be elsewhere.
The best answer, though, comes from Katie in a charmingly earnest moment. “I think English Teacher winning the Mercury Prize last year really gave small bands hope that that could be us in a few years – why not? Really, though, we just want to be able to say that music is our career, and we’re not going to stop until we get there, no matter how long that takes.”
For now, though, the band are content in just being happy. Happy with wherever life has taken them, happy with where they are musically, and happy to keep on keeping on until their much-deserved stardom finds them. Life might not always be a party, but it sure feels a lot better with She’s In Parties around.
She’s In Parties’ EP ‘Are You Dreaming?’ is out now.
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