Furrowed Brow - ‘It can be chaotic.’
It was a hungover Monday morning at the typewriter when I heard a smash, a laugh, then a car speeding away. I exited my writing cupboard, kicking empty beer cans away when I found a gaping hole in my front window. In amongst the debris on the living room carpet was half a house brick. Tied to it was a cassette tape with no case, bearing the words ‘furrowed brow / punctual punk’.
Furrowed Brow. From left to right - Alex, Richey, Meg, Criostoir and Evie. Image Credit: Jimi McDonald.
Furrowed Brow are a five-piece band from Manchester consisting of vocalist and bandleader Richey, keyboardist and backing vocalist Alex, Evie on bass and backing vocals, guitarist Meg and Criostoir on drums. In June 2020 they released their debut EP (with original bassist Ryan) entitled ‘Dead Dead Dead Still Digging’ with a follow-up single by the same line-up in September called ‘Pissing Superfluous’.
To tie in with the release of the latter, the band put together their own merchandise line. Teaming up with their favourite brand of toilet paper, Furrowed Brow have created two individually hand-written sheets of double ply with the words ‘Pissing Superfluous’ and ‘Shitting Superfluous’ upon them. These are available to order now, but be warned, stock is very limited.
The band, featuring newcomer Evie, hit the studio again for a weekend in December with Sam Hunter at Birch Grove. The result of these sessions produced their latest single ‘Punctual Punk’, with the B-side ‘The Narrative Of Hugh Gordon Pym’.
Chaotic thudding and whirling keyboards signal the start of Punctual Punk. Criostoir holds down the beat while Meg’s guitar tone can be described as dirty-clean, which is locked in with Evie’s bass playing. In addition to bass, Evie also created the artwork for Punctual Punk as seen below. Surfing over the solid rhythm of Furrowed Brow is Alex’s spacey keyboard sounds, with the occasional organ part thrown in.
Spoken word is interspersed with bursts of ‘Punctual Punk’ from the band, a phrase inspired by Richey’s meeting of a friend who is unexpectantly on time. I would assume the mixing of this track serves to muddle the vocal elements intentionally, though I love hearing Richey climbing into falsetto on ‘you weren’t supposed to be on time.’ Punctual Punk throws back to an era when songs could be written about anything and still be great.
Whilst you might think the video for Punctual Punk was conceived with the idea of lockdown restrictions in mind, I fully believe this is the kind of video Furrowed Brow would’ve made for this song regardless. It basically features the band getting dressed and getting ready to leave their respective houses. If I could get ready in under two minutes, I’d make a music video about it too.
The Narrative Of Hugh Gordon Pym is inspired by the early days of the pandemic, and honestly I wish I could include the entire lyric here. Remember The Great Toilet Roll Crisis? That’s covered. As is the optician expedition of Dominic Cummings. It’s actually some of the final words of Richey’s that I’d like to include: ‘End the privatisation of health and social care, we can't live in these choked towns, we can only be buried here, in this foul year of Our Lord 2020.’ It’s honest and critical music like this that we don’t see enough of anymore.
The band soundtracks Richey’s observations well from the start, with Meg mirroring Richey’s vocal melody along with the backing vocalists. The mix puts guitar and keyboard opposite each other - Alex’s organ sound is heavily distorted, while Meg’s guitar riff reminds me of Blur’s ‘Parklife’. Criostoir’s drumming totally serves the song, rolling along with the verses but stepping back to hear the whole band shouting a chorus of ‘Hey!’ underneath Richey’s lyrics. The backing vocalists in particular feature heavily in this track if you listen closely, I’d love to hear that in isolation. It’s the section following where you notice Evie’s bass playing the most as they beef up the thumping sound of Criostoir’s drums. Not only is The Narrative Of Hugh Gordon Pym damning, it’s also catchy, and you can actually hear a stripped down version featuring just Alex and Richey on the band’s YouTube channel.
Read on for a full Q&A with all of Furrowed Brow as they discuss the making of their latest single and the recording sessions that helped to birth it. I ask them their opinions on current festival line-ups and the way the U.K. has handled the pandemic, and the band talks gigging and their current listening habits. All this and more below.
Furrowed Brow. From left to right - Evie, Meg, Richey, Alex and Criostoir. Image Credit: Jimi McDonald.
1. Your new single and B-side were recorded with Sam Hunter at Birch Grove, what was that experience like?
Richey: In the past we’ve always recorded quickly and live but this was quite different as each track was done separately and it took two days to record two songs. Inevitably this meant long periods of boredom for the four of us whose turn it wasn’t but overall it was a very productive and low-pressure environment and the songs turned out really well. Sam knows his shit.
Meg: Spectacular! We took it in turns to record each of our instruments and had a mini band chess tournament going on in between. I think Sam had a great vision of how he wanted to capture our sound and he really pulled it off. It was overall a wholesome and fun-filled weekend.
Criostoir: It was pretty fun, Sam is nice a guy and helped me a lot with getting the timing on point for the drums, and even though my part in recording was over pretty quickly I still stayed and enjoyed definitely beating Alex Hamer at chess and not coming to a stalemate after a few hours.
Evie: It was my first ever experience of proper recording (i.e. not just alone with a usb mic) so I don’t really have much to compare it to! Overall it was fun, I’ll have the memory of us all stood in a circle in Sam’s front room shouting ‘hey’ in my mind for a long time.
Alex: I had the best time ever, it was so much fun and Sam was brilliant, I think he really got the best out of us. I loved seeing the recordings take shape too, where before the songs had only really existed in our heads, or in a transient few minutes as we played them.
2. The day I first heard 'Punctual Punk', I had talked about the state of festival line-ups in the U.K. What changes would you like to see in that corner of music?
Meg: Including Furrowed Brow on their line-ups would be my first suggestion! I think we are all avid festival enjoyers. Regarding line-ups in general though, less of the 'laddy' type bands would be nice and I would definitely like to see more female/non-binary artists on the posters (can apply that to the music business in general at the moment). Festivals need to be doing more to promote new, interesting bands rather than the same circle of regular bands with little variation each year.
Criostoir: I’m not really sure what the line ups are specifically but they always seem to be the same people for the past few years so I guess it would be nice if they tried giving some smaller bands a chance to be heard by a wider audience.
Evie: I mean, any beginnings of a deviation away from four white guys with guitars as the main headliner would be welcome, but the festivals I mostly go to are places like Boomtown. And when I go there, I go for the acting and the finding-bands-behind-a-random-door experience, rather than for the line-up.
Richey: I would like to see more bands on festival line-ups that aren’t a pile of shit – what are bands like Catfish and the Bottlemen or The Kooks doing still headlining festivals, who listens to that sort of indie shite anymore anyway? Maybe it’s not the line-ups that are the problem.
Alex: I don’t think I have much to contribute/complain about here – I mostly do scampering about in the sunshine at charming hippy festivals, and always find something intriguing to entertain me. I’d love to play some though, of course.
3. How does the band usually write a song? Does someone present the band with a track they've written or is it more collaborative?
Evie: The two songs of this single are the first I’ve seen through to completion, since I only joined as the (new) bassist last September. They were both mostly fleshed-out before I came to them too, so I’m excited to help develop new ones, and I’ve no idea how that will go!
Alex: My understanding is that Richey agonises for weeks on end, alone in his room until he has crafted the perfect specimen of songwriting genius, then gets us all together and shouts at us when we can’t learn it fast enough/didn’t practice/have forgotten everything we learned last time/think certain elements ought to be changed. This goes on for a few weeks to a few months depending on the song, and then one day as if by magic we’re all rocking out together playing the finest songs known to humanity and having a blast.
Criostoir: Richey comes up with the structure of pretty much all the songs and everyone adds their parts, we usually don’t have trouble agreeing on the how it should all sound, although it can be chaotic.
Meg: Richey is always writing new songs I think, and he makes demos of certain tracks for the rest of the band to listen to and contribute ideas. My Bone Idle Idol is our only song which was built from a jam I believe, but for all of the others, the foundation of the song is birthed by Richey's brain and then we each have our creative input and the song grows and moulds over time. I think songs should keep changing and growing as the band does over time.
Richey: It’s all me, me, me. Once I’ve written a song I usually make some kind of demo, send it to the others then we all have a go at it when we rehearse. More recently I’ve been trying to keep the demos simpler – just me and an acoustic guitar – to encourage everyone to come up with their own parts from scratch. My songs can be very diverse but once the band gets hold of them they all get their ‘Furrowed Brow thing’ and become a coherent body of work.
4. It looks like you had a good run of gigs up to the start of 2020, what's the best gig Furrowed Brow has played?
Criostoir: Hard to say, I don’t know if it’s that I can’t remember them or if we just sound good all the time. Probably not but I enjoyed all of them, bar one or two.
Alex: Our final gig before lockdown was pretty fun. I came home early straight from Bangface festival on the Sunday specially to play it, and the (now-seemingly-endless) UK lockdown saga kicked off just a few days later. As I remember it was totally empty, but we played splendidly.
Richey: Nothing stands out I think we’ve played about 20 gigs so far and they all kind of blend into one. There was one we did for Deco Records downstairs at Retro; I overheard someone say ‘That was so weird!’ when we came off stage so I felt my job had been done.
Evie: Again, having only joined in September I haven’t had the privilege of playing a gig with Furrowed Brow yet! I saw several of their gigs before joining though: a lot of my best late night memories of the Peer Hat are soundtracked by the songs that I’m now playing bass to.
Meg: The one that sticks out in my mind as one of my favourites was the gig at Fuel (a small cafe/music venue outside the city centre of Manchester) where Richey had covered his face in white paint and I painted a yellow crescent moon onto his forehead and Alex (in her true style) turned up at exactly the time our set was starting. It’s a bit blurry in retrospect, but it was definitely exciting and chaotic. We've not been able to play any gigs since Evie, our newest member, has joined so the best gig is surely yet to come!
5. What do you all miss about playing gigs?
Alex: Basically everything. I miss choosing the set list, choosing what to wear and getting dressed up together – seems like a long time since we’ve had a chance to do that! I miss the excited chaos of setting up; borrowing/lending/losing/finding equipment/band mates/drinks. I really miss the community of people at the Peer Hat.
Evie: Being on stage and being able to peacock around and show off the clothes I’ve made, and people *have* to pay attention to me (honestly I just really like attention).
Criostoir: Probably the feeling after you’ve played when it all goes well and you can enjoy the rest of your night, watch the other bands and get drunk!
Meg: The social side of it for sure. I'd made so many new friends from doing gigs but also normally the night would continue afterwards at someone's house or The Peer Hat and we'd all just have a great time til early the next morning. Another thing I miss is the full sound and volume of the band at a gig, something we've not quite replicated playing in Richey's cold, dingey basement!
Richey: Getting pissed and having a good time. Gigs are everything; that’s why we do what we do, the rest of it’s boring shit.
6. 'The Narrative of Hugh Gordon Pym' is somewhat pandemic based, what's been your biggest criticism of the way the U.K. has handled the pandemic?
Evie: My criticism is directed towards the government and the media, in particular the incompetence of those in Westminster and the way they have tried to stoke division in society as a means of distracting everyone from their own failings. I’m tired of being told that I should resent other generations/cities/EU member states because of something which the UK government has fucked up on.
Meg: The government has definitely let us down by not heeding the advice of actual scientific experts, making last minute decisions and false promises. They've basically had a blunder at every turn throughout the pandemic. Not properly funding the arts and hospitality sectors which have been out of action for months is something I take massive issue with. Also not providing NHS and frontline staff with enough PPE and then later denying that there was a shortage. Then failing to give them a well deserved pay rise which actually reflects the extra work they have had to put in during this pandemic. The list of despicable actions goes on and on!
Richey: The whole thing’s been a massive balls-up but what sticks in my mind is that we clearly didn’t lock down fast enough at the start of the pandemic.
Alex: For me it’s the massive, incredibly important government contracts being given, in secret, to incompetent and utterly unqualified mates of Tory ministers. It’s a disgusting use of public money, especially at a time when people’s lives across the country are being made miserable by under-funding things like councils, hospitals and schools. Not only that, but had contracts for things like test and trace or PPE been awarded properly, i.e. to experienced, qualified firms who knew what they were doing, untold numbers of lives and livelihoods would likely have been saved. It makes me sick with anger just thinking about it.
Criostoir: The government or the politicians are a small percentage of the population, I don’t think most people handled it all that well.
7. How did everyone in the band meet and get involved in Furrowed Brow originally?
Richey: This question is starting to bore the living daylights out of me so I will leave it to everyone else to answer.
Meg: I found the band's advert on joinmyband.com. I came across their listed influences and thought 'wow, that's basically my music taste as well'. I think Richey and Criostoir met on a night out and Alex had met Richey a while ago on joinmyband.com also. Evie came along to replace our other bassist when he left, I think we all already knew Evie from nights out and mutual friends. We all fit together pretty well I think, each bringing something different and weird into the band.
Alex: Woke up one morning after a party and looked at my Facebook messages to find that I had drunkenly and enthusiastically recommended myself as a keyboard player. I didn’t own a keyboard and hadn’t been in a band before. I had met Richey before though, back in 2014, when I first tried to join his band (in a similar manner) as a fresh-faced and eager teenager – that pilot musical venture lasted maybe a fortnight. No regrets!
Evie: I initially met Richey through Tinder (lol) back in late 2019, then gradually met most of the band through bumping into them coming into the pub, drunk, after band practice. Then, in those few weird months last summer when we could go to the pub, Meg mentioned that they were looking for a new bassist and I, being drunk and not owning a bass, and never having played bass before, naturally volunteered to fill the spot. I borrowed a friend’s bass for an audition for which the other applicant never showed, so somehow the spot was mine! And then I spent several frantic weeks taking what I knew of guitar and applying it to bass – and I’m still learning.
Criostoir: If you’re reading this then you’ve probably already read how we met between potentially 1-4 times already so I won’t bore you.
8. What's everyone been listening to in 2021?
Criostoir: I’m not sure what everyone’s been listening to to be honest, hopefully good stuff, I have been listening to the beach boys and I hope everyone else has too.
Evie: Well, I had a weird few months where I got kind of obsessed with Steve Priest, the late bassist of The Sweet, so I was listening to a lot of mid-70s glam rock. Then when it got dark and wintery I turned to industrial metal, in particular stuff like KMFDM and Ministry, and now the spring has come it’s back to twee pop like Tullycraft! Oh, also the BBC had this amazing podcast based on the stories of HP Lovecraft which had the best sound design and storyline, it’s great.
Meg: New releases-wise, not a lot unfortunately - just been revisiting many old favourites in the endless loop of locked-down life where the days are blurring together at this stage. The last thing I listened to was Twin Fantasy by Car Seat Headrest, which to me, never gets old!
Richey: I’ve been going through early John Cale and Eno albums again. The Underground Youth. The Cleaners from Venus. The Incredible String Band. Also old favourites Julian Cope, Go-Kart Mozart and early Suede. There’s an album by The Wave Pictures called Instant Coffee Baby I can’t stop listening to as well.
Alex: Billy Nomates, Eartha Kitt, Hellfish and archive episodes of Desert Island Discs.
9. If you had to stand on a street corner holding a sign, what would the sign say?
Alex: JOIN A UNION
Meg: "Bring back trade unions!"
Richey: YOU MUST READ THIS SIGN
Evie: Hail Eris!
Criostoir: It would say I don’t want to be here, please don’t take pictures of me.
10. What's the Furrowed Brow plan for the rest of 2021?
Evie: Get some more songs down! There are so many demos which are incredibly catchy, but which haven’t been recorded yet. And personally, get better at bass! There’s still so many things to learn!
Criostoir: Hopefully play in other nearby cities, planning a tour would be nice, although it might not be possible. Apart from that I’m looking forward to playing gigs like everyone else and maybe even release some more music.
Richey: Practice, practice, practice. We’re in the process of booking gigs – some out of town ones too. Also get more songs recorded and released.
Meg: Play as many gigs as we can and have lots of fun because that's something everyone has been missing out on recently. Would be good to record more songs too.
Alex: Finally settle on a good choice of song to cover (we’ve been arguing about this every practice since day one). I want to remember this amazing keyboard intro which I played twice about a year ago and have never been able to replicate. And gigs. Please oh please, let there be gigs.
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Find the musical outpourings of Furrowed Brow, as well as their sustainable brand of merchandise at their Bandcamp here.
Follow Furrowed Brow on Facebook and Instagram @furrowedbrowband.
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