There has been a rise in the number of duos making their mark recently. They seem to go extra hard to make up for the apparent lack of personnel and The Meffs go harder than most. They prick social consciences while simultaneously bringing the party. Gary Trueman chatted to Lily and Lewis about their musical balance and playing at festivals that are changing at a rapid rate of knots.
Your lyrics focus very much on as you put it ‘Broken Britain’. Is that from direct personal experience?
“Definitely, at the minute we’re living in a broken world. In terms of Britain we focussed two EPs on that. Lily is from Clacton on Sea and Nigel Farage is our MP. Thankfully we don’t live there now we live in Colchester. We think it’s important to speak out about these things, especially when you’re directly impacted by them. Someone came up to us today and said it’s so refreshing to hear a band on stage actually call things out. It’s not always easy to do but we always try to find a space to do it.”
The thing is when artists do call stuff out some people try to shut it down don’t they? We saw that happen with Bambi Thug at Eurovision.
“It’s about balance. We have people say to us keep politics out of punk which is absolute nonsense. Punk is politics. Music is politics. Writing music with no politics in it isn’t the sort of music for us. The bands we listen to and what they stand for, that’s super important. Why is it right for world leaders to stop protecting their people and be the ones to create terror? That’s not OK, so if we go on stage and sing pop songs and don’t even mention it then we’re mugs!”
Your music is sharp, snappy punk but there’s loads of other influences in there too. You’ve even got a little bit of Bob Vylan in there. So what are your personal influences?
“We love all the old school and new stuff too, Motorhead, other bands like X-Ray Spex and The Clash. Then modern bands like Amyl And The Sniffers. I mean we walk on to a Prodigy song. We love them not just because of where they’re from, we love them as a band too.”
They were punk in a way too
“They were a crossover band. And that’s what we’re trying to do as well, not just appeal to one section of people.”
Who writes what in the band? Does Lily write all the lyrics?
“Lily is writing lyrics all the time so we put music to them. Lily’s phone is full of lyrics, like her head is full of them too. We practice in a studio every week when we’re not out on the road. So we’ll write and then build around that. We try not to listen to new music (by other bands) when we’re consciously writing because it impacts it.”
You’re playing Download this weekend and have Rebellion coming up in August. Both completely different from one another but both are changing their booking becoming even more diverse and looking at least a little bit to move away from the older heritage acts. That’s something they are having to do to survive isn’t it? So you’re at Download which might not have taken you a few years ago and Rebellion had, for instance Tokky Horror recently.
“Ah, Tokky Horror, they’ve split now – gutted! Things are changing. We don’t think it’s necessarily that bands are dying out, but there’s a recognition that if you’re a newer band and you haven’t been going for 40 years, it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a place on a main stage. Festivals like Rebellion do that well, they do give opportunities. And Download is the same. It’s nice to see festivals opening the doors to newer bands.”
‘What A Life’, what an album. What’s the reaction been like to it now it’s been out for a while?
“Well we’ve sold a lot of copies haha! It’s done very well. The vinyl sold like hot cakes. It’s a bit different in that we changed the tempo nearly every song. We were experimenting a bit on it with different things, different pedals and stuff. It’s helped us mould where we go from there really.”
The thing is even though the lyrics are serious the music bounces along too.
“Well we like to get angry on stage but we like to be chirpy at the same time. It goes back to that balance thing.”
So while you’re here who are you going to go and check out?
“We need to see Spiritbox and Jinjer. And we want to see Korn headline this festival.”
What’s your top tip to survive a festival?
“Get a hotel. Don’t camp! Seriously though, lots of water, keep hydrated.”
Interview and photo by Gary Trueman