Shine A Light Sunday is all about bringing you artists who may, but also may not be on your radar. One thing that is consistent with this series is that each and every one of them smash it out of the park. I first saw them performing when they supported Hatchie at Yes Basement in June last year and have been a fan ever since.
Lyrically sardonic, musically gifted punks with a passion for live playing is exactly what you get with Loose Articles. If you want to hear one of their best songs go and listen to 'Lethal Weapon' - live it takes on an energy that literally fizzes in the room. It's incredible to behold!
I had the chance to catch up with Natalie from the band just before they play a live set for We Are Manchester today at 5.40pm today.
Dreaminsifree: How would you describe your sound to someone who hadn’t heard your music before? Loose Articles: We Specialise in discord, repetition and radical politics and if you had to pigeon hole us to a genre i guess we would say we’re are a melodic punk quartet. We’re feminine & threatening, working & class. From our live show expect sweaty, adrenalized carnage, surrealist street poetry and cheap hedonism. Our music speaks to all those determined to get through the age of austerity with tongue in cheek, pint in hand and two feet firmly on the dancefloor. Some people have been using lockdown to get creative, some to just chill. How have you found it? Lockdown to us has been pretty creative actually. We’ve just taken a shit situation and turned it in to a productive, positive one. We’ve been writing a lot and also revising old songs looking at ways to improve them just as we only all properly got together for a first full band practice in February 2019 then in May that year we started gigging and was gigging a lot so its been nice to take a step back from our live shows to concentrate on revisiting songs as we very much was thrown in to the live scene as soon as we got together. From your socials it looks like you’ve been in the studio recording – How did it feel to be back playing after lockdown again and how long do we have to wait to hear it? It felt amazing to be back in the studio! We travelled down to Brighton Electric to record with the amazing Theo Verney and we couldn’t have been happier with how the tunes have turned out. Theo just got it and got us! He’s just a top Producer and really wanted to capture our raw energy in the tunes which fingers crossed will come across when we do release them. As for releasing it will be hopefully coming out this year very soon! Just watch this space! Not going to lie I can't wait to wear my LAFC footie top. Which footie teams do you all support and is there any United/City rivalry/banter in the group?` Buzzing you’ve got your order in for the footie tops! So we have Louise who’s a massive Everton fan, Erin is a FC United supporter and I (Natalie) was a big united supporter but have been swayed to FC United now by Erin's influence and how amazing the club is! I often go to West Didsbury/Chorlton matches too which is a top day out for anyone who loves a bit of low league footy! So we don’t actually have much rivalry in the group but I do deffo wind up Louise with a cheeky text if Everton are playing badly. It has to be done! What’s the best thing about being in Loose Articles? Well we’re all just really good mates and was for years before Loose Articles so one of the best things is that we’re just having a laugh making music with some of ya best pals! We’re serious when we want to be and serious about our music but we’re having a right laugh with it as well. Loose Articles is a good little excuse for a night out/piss up! haha Other than Stella what’s your favourite tipple? And if a rival larger or beer offered a sponsorship would you take it? So we have a confession…. only three of us LOVE Stella. Our gal Tree HATES lager and fizzy alcoholic drinks! She’s a flat cider connoisseur and if she gets a fizzy cider she’s equipt with a spoon she takes out with her to stir the drink until it's flat….no joke you can find her at your local pub doing this! So if Old Rosie offered us a sponsorship she would take that in a heartbeat! Other favourite drinks include Buckfast, Hooch and any Tequila so if they were to step up to the challenge of sponsoring us we’d take that as well. Seeing the success of bands like Dream Nails it feels like there a resurgence of feminist punk – Does this motivate you or do you do your own thing and not pay much attention to what’s going on in the wider industry? We do our own thing really just as we don’t like to compare ourselves to other bands. Each band is different and their journey is also different so it's good not to compare yourself too much to other bands and their successes. Always support other bands and follow their success as a fan just stick on your own path and do things the way which suits our members. What motivates us to be a successful band isn’t seeing other bands successes but the uproar in how little representation there is for people who identify as women in the music industry. We do want to be at the front with that with the rest of amazing female identifying musicians having a voice and challenging the fact female identifying artists don’t get booked as much as male ones as well as the lack of radio play they get in comparison to the male bands. It's shocking how we live in 2020 and we’re still talking about this and trying to use our voices as a band, for example in our tune lethal weapon, to make the industry listen and reconsider who they are booking/playing to offer more diversity within what gets platformed in the industry.
We know you’ve got the gig at Yes on December 19th (fingers crossed). In 2021 if we all got back to live music again where would you like to play most? We would obviously love to play Glastonbury because...who wouldn’t! In fact we’d love to play lots of festivals just as festivals are the best places on earth! We’re also all massive fans of The Beat-Herder & District Workingmen's Social Club stage and it would be amazing if we could play that.
Loose Articles are scheduled to play Yes 19 December you can buy 4 tickets for a fiver - yes a fiver via this link. See you down the front!
Loose Articles
Dreaminisfree always has and always will be free. Any artists looking to collaborate with Dreaminisfree please email debbie@dreaminisfree.co.uk