[Friday Feature] No Romance: New EP ‘Unfold’ + Interview, Playlist

20 Aug

KATIE BROWN - 20 AUG 2021

One for you 80s post-punk fiends, Berlin-based Aotearoa/UK act No Romance’s brand new debut EP Unfold is a deliciously melodramatic take on the pains of falling out of love that will have you twirling around your lockdown living room in an agony of bliss. Think Siouxsie and the Banshees x Depeche Mode x the Cocteau Twins, and you’ll be well on the way to capturing the essence of No Romance’s sound (and probably pretty amped about it too - let’s be honest).

Produced by Nick Roughan (The Skeptics) and mastered by Amelia Berry, Unfold is a stunning debut offering from No Romance’s Lucy Holliday (vocals, synths), Joel Ivan Thomas (guitar, bass) and Isaac Hickey (drums). Drawing their influences from both the electronic scene in Berlin and their own Aotearoa and UK heritage of shoegaze and post-punk, the trio have a democratic writing approach that sees each of them step up and offer their own ideas and takes. In Unfold, the resulting collision of the crystalline clarity and purity of Lucy’s vocals with a dark sonic grittiness achieved through the layered stacks of massive synths, guitars and drums makes for a sound that is hypnotically catchy and immersive, perfectly tempering a tantalising darkness that nips at your heels but never drags you under. Unfold is the ethereal beauty of delicate flowers sprouting from the somber and earthly grave of an ended romance, and it’s refreshingly icy, hypnotically danceable and vivaciously gloomy.

We caught up with No Romance for a quick chat, and you can find the interview below, along with a killer playlist they’ve curated for your listening pleasure.

Find No Romance on Instagram | Facebook | Spotify | Bandcamp

KATIE: SO, TELL US: WHAT SPARKED YOUR BAND NAME ‘NO ROMANCE’ (GOT TO BE A BACKSTORY HERE!)?

Lucy: I actually found the text conversation where it was born the other day! We were throwing a few ideas names around for a while, and landed on ‘romance’ initially. It wasn’t quite right so we were playing around with words preceding it, I suggested no romance (also after the great song by Tirzah), and it stuck.

Isaac: We were actually considering calling ourselves Blusher for a while (Lucy’s idea), which I thought would have suited us perfectly but we looked it up and there turned out to already be a few artists using that name, and not only that but one of them turned out to be a friend of a friend, so definitely too closely related to rip it off.

DO YOU ALL COME FROM MUSICAL BACKGROUNDS? HOW DID YOU GET INTO MAKING MUSIC, AND WHAT’S A STANDOUT MUSICAL MEMORY FROM YOUR YOUNGER YEARS?

Lucy: I’ve been writing songs since I was a child, really. I’d make up songs to perform in the playground, it’s always been a part of my life! I started learning piano at 5, guitar at 13, and eventually studied pop music at Goldsmiths Uni, which was fun. My family aren’t particularly musical, but I grew up around a lot of music. I have wonderful memories of long car journeys listening to Crosby Stills and Nash, Carol King, Bowie, James Taylor, Cat Stevens- I think listening to these artists at a young age really laid the foundation for my love of songwriting and music in general.

Joel: Omg Lucy so cute! I was into musical theater and singing in school but I didn’t start playing guitar until I was 18 or 19. Like many people, music really meant a lot to me as a teenager and played a big role in shaping my view of the world, so I decided to teach myself guitar on youtube - mostly twinkly emo songs. I started gigging at 20 - probably earlier than I should have considering how new it was to me, but I was so excited by the scene in Auckland and how encouraging everyone was.

Isaac: Growing up I was always a bit obsessed with music, I was constantly listening to music and singing and dancing in my room, and from a really young age the only thing I really wanted to do was be a musician. I started trying to learn guitar when I was about 8 years old, but no matter how hard I try I’ve never been able to do it. I thought this meant I could never be a musician but at age 12 I started learning the drums and picked it up really quickly. I started a punk band a couple of years later and the day after we formed we played in front of the school assembly, and were so bad that the jocks threw grapes at us (which hurt more than you would think). After that I was always starting new bands, and throughout my time at uni I would often be playing 3-4 gigs a week in 2 or 3 different bands (sometimes on the same night). My band Astro Children, which started in high school, did a lot of touring around NZ and eventually Europe.

HOW DID THE THREE OF YOU MEET AND END UP MAKING MUSIC TOGETHER?

Lucy: Through mutual friends; we met up just to play around for fun, but jams turned into songs and then it just kind of evolved organically.

Isaac: To be honest I wasn’t even sure if I still wanted to make music in any serious capacity anymore, but I needed an opportunity to play drums as an outlet, so I asked Joel to jam just because he seemed like a sweetheart and I knew he played guitar (I hadn’t even heard him play). After a while Lucy started coming along and before we knew it, we were a band. I recently asked my friend Hannah Gonzalez, who I met through another band we briefly played in together, to join too, and she said yes so I’m really excited to see what direction she helps guide us in.

HOW IS THE FUSION OF UK AND NZ BAND MEMBERS WORKING OUT?

Joel: We all have a lot of common ground musically, and a lot of differences in taste as well. Sometimes me and Isaac pull inspiration and references from New Zealand artists who maybe Lucy doesn’t know off the bat, but our different nationalities doesn’t affect our ability to connect musically at all - I think it gives us a deeper well of inspiration to share and pull from.

Isaac: I realised after moving away from my hometown of Dunedin in 2017 that I’d been living in a bit of a bubble musically, and people in other places had all sorts of different ideas and attitudes towards music. This is true not only internationally but also within New Zealand, so it’s been interesting breaking out of this bubble and trying new things.

Lucy: I’m not sure whether it’s the geographical element that affects this, but I think our differences in taste really benefits our writing. We collectively touch on so many reference points, which hopefully then comes across cohesively as its own thing in the music!

WHAT’S THE BERLIN SCENE LIKE TO MAKE AND RELEASE MUSIC IN?

Joel: From our experience, it’s much harder for new bands to get gigs in Berlin than it is in New Zealand, even before the pandemic. There’s no place like Wine Cellar giving smaller musicians a chance - you really have to prove yourself. So we’re trying. I also personally don’t think there’s not a huge demand for guitar music - techno dominates here, which is fine. We all love to dance and definitely wouldn’t make the music we make without it.

Isaac: I think the scene is more saturated than it is in New Zealand, which is probably a large part of the reason it’s harder to get gigs. If venues are getting hundreds of emails from bands they’ve never heard of, it’s pretty hard to convince them to read your one. There’s also a lot more noise restrictions compared to NZ, because most of the venues are bars with apartments above them. I don’t think we’ve played a single gig in this city where someone hasn’t told me to play the drums quieter. Why somebody who wants peace and quiet would move in above a music venue is beyond me, but unfortunately these people often have the upper hand, legally speaking.

Lucy: Before the pandemic I guess we were just starting out, and didn’t get the chance to really get going. Getting shows certainly felt like an uphill battle. It also felt frustrating to turn up to venues, even ones that were pretty well known in the scene, and have no backline, or just a shitty set up; I don’t think I ever played a gig where I could actually hear what I was singing. I think the scene here heavily relies on artists to be already established, and fronting a lot of costs themselves, which makes it difficult when just starting out. But we’ll get there! I’m sure it’s partly also just a learning process- we had really just started. I’m so excited to play again when we get the chance.

HOW DO YOU SHARE SONGWRITING DUTIES? WHO’S RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT?

Lucy: It varies. Sometimes I will bring a ‘finished’ song, where I can hear what I’d like the other parts to be doing, but the process is always very collaborative; we all have an input on where the song should go, and Joel and Isaac always add their take on the ideas, which I love. Other times songs are born out of jams; sometimes they just magically fall out as pretty much fully formed things, and that always feels really special.

Joel: Yeah, we have different approaches to songwriting. Me and Isaac bring ideas in sometimes, or Lucy will bring a more structured song idea (she’s great with chord progressions and melody), or we jam and develop from there. I think some of our best songs were written very quickly, with us getting excited by a few ideas in a jam and just working them out. We’ve got so much new material waiting!

Isaac: It’s very democratic, which is a good thing but it means that things sometimes take ages to finish because we obsess about ironing out the creases and making sure everyone is happy with it. It’s an approach I like a lot though, because I feel like everybody’s different tastes and ideas are represented in the music.

YOUR PARTICULAR BRAND OF POST-PUNK/SHOEGAZE IN UNFOLD IS VERY IMMERSIVE. IS THERE A VISUAL ELEMENT TO WHAT YOU WRITE WHEN YOU WRITE IT? DO YOU SET OUT INTENDING TO CREATE PARTICULAR WORLDS?

Joel: This is a super interesting question - it’s so abstract how people think about music, and of course we all think of it differently. We never start with a visual idea, but we often refer to our songs in colours or in feelings. As we’ve played together for longer, we’ve just gotten better at adapting our own individual worlds to fit a shared little solar system.

Lucy: I think it depends on how the song comes about; I think when jamming where the music comes first and lyrics generally after, the musical world demands certain themes or emotions. When the bones are written and the narrative of the song is already set, we attempt to represent that musically. Not usually as a visual world, but certainly with feeling or mood. Although, I found the process for writing grasslands very visual. I pictured the beginning as being in a pit, a kind of misty, dark, dead land, that half way through the song lifts and clears and brightens.

Isaac: For me it’s not necessarily visual, but often when we’re working on something I’ll feel inspired by a certain event or feeling. We usually practice on Sundays, so I often turn up after being at some sort of party and try to carry some of the energy from the night before into whatever we’re working on at the time. There have been a lot of times throughout the pandemic though where I’ve had to heavily restrict how many people I see, so over the gruelling 8 month winter lockdown I guess I was drawing more from feelings of isolation and fear than post-party euphoria. I’m not sure how much any of this comes through for the listener, I think drums are a hard instrument to express feelings with, but it’s how I think of it anyway.

UNFOLD IS ABOUT THE ENDING OF A RELATIONSHIP – OF ‘SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL DISINTEGRATING’. WAS IT CATHARTIC TO MAKE THE EP OFF THE BACK OF THIS?

Lucy: Absolutely. I generally use songs to process my experiences, and need to- without it I go a bit mad. Once it’s in a song I feel freer; lighter; it’s been documented; it’s over.

Joel: It was nice to be in Lucy’s musical therapy team.

I LOVE THE GOTHIC MELODRAMA UNFOLD IS LACED WITH: WHAT WERE YOUR INSPIRATIONS THAT FED INTO THIS – MUSICALLY AND OTHERWISE?

Lucy: I really wanted to write something that emitted lots of energy; I often veer towards writing more mellow songs, and I wanted to push myself to have songs people could theoretically dance to. At the time I think I was on a long hyperpop binge, which our music definitely isn’t, but perhaps some of that energy leaked through..? On a narrative front, the EP documents a breakup and the rediscovery of self which preceded that, so I'm sure those emotions are adding to some kind of melodrama.

Isaac: When we wrote the title track I’d just started listening to a lot of Happy Mondays. I’d been wanting to do more dancey drums for a while, but was struggling to figure out how to do it, and hearing them helped me understand how this could be done in a band context. I also started listening to the New Zealand band Shocking Pinks for inspiration, because I remembered seeing them live a bunch of times and dancing so much. As for the gothic melodrama, I feel like I didn’t play a huge part in that but I do come from a pretty gothic little town and somehow every band I’m in seems to be tinged with that. I also love melodrama, I think my hometown was always a little afraid of melodrama because it was seen as inauthentic or not down to earth or something, but I think it can actually be the most authentic thing.

Joel: We have a whole bunch of inspirations which we pull from. We wrote it during lockdown, so I think a longing to dance really played into the style of it. Some of our mutual ground for this EP stemmed from late 70’s and 80’s post-punk and goth bands — The Cure, Section 25, The Happy Mondays. When we were writing I was on a huge Factory Records and Flying Nun binge. Also working with Nick Roughan was super inspiring. He’s incredible at picking up our sound and adding to it and we can’t wait to work with him more. We’ve actually each put a playlist up on the band Spotify, outlining our influences.

DO YOU ENVISION BEING ABLE TO GET OUT AND TOUR THE EP? WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE REMAINDER OF 2021?

Joel: We really hope we can tour soon. It’s not entirely safe right now and venues are at a very limited capacity because of the pandemic, but we’re trying to book whatever we can. We’re also spending a lot of time writing and developing our sound right now. We start recording new stuff next month!

Lucy: I want to play these songs live so much! Also all the material we’ve written since, which are some of my favourite songs i’ve ever written. So, hopefully! I’m not sure if a tour is on the cards this year, but 2022 definitely. I just want to keep playing, writing, recording and releasing!

WHO ARE YOUR CURRENT FAVOURITE ACTS?

Isaac: I listen to so much music and I feel like what I’m listening to changes on a weekly basis. Lately I’ve been really into a lot of Hyperpop type stuff (I kinda hate that label though) and pretty much anything Shygirl puts out. I’ve also been listening to a lot of house, jungle and techno. Our practice space recently got a new P.A. and I think my music taste recently has been shaped by looking for things that will be satisfying to blast extremely loud through that after everyone else has left band practice.

Joel: Ohhh my taste is all over the place right now - but I’ve been loving lots of goth (Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Boy Harsher), Eastern European post-punk (Kino, Super Besse), and disco (Diana Ross, ABBA). I’m also following a lot of musicians on Tik Tok hahaha. It’s nice because they teach you heaps.

Lucy: I’ve been listening to more funk/ soul recently. Have the Inspiration Information album by Shuggie Otis on often. Listening to a lot of Eartheater, JPEGMAFIA, Sega Bodega- I love his production. I am often drawn to female artists/ vocalists that push the boundaries of voice- Caroline Polachek is such an inspiration! Also people might be really hating on Jack Antonoff, but I think the new Clairo album is so beautiful; those chord progressions!