Currently hammering through their UK headline tour and with a debut album supposedly mere months away, the buzz (if you’d forgive the pun) about Brighton indie rockers Black Honey has been ramped up a notch recently. They’ll be spending a fair bit of time in the Steel City this summer too, with a sold-out Leadmill show and a Tramlines appearance fast approaching. With this in mind, we asked Rachel Havard to get on the blower with Izzy Baxter for a chat about their big year.
Props on selling out your Leadmill show. Will this one be a biggie for you?
Oh yeah, definitely. Especially because Sheffield as a city is really good anyway, and then having sold it out – well, it’s a really fucking exciting moment when you sell out a venue in advance. People in Sheffield are really cool as well, plus everyone has more fun north of London. Tramlines is fun too; we’ve played there like three times. We’ve normally played the alternative stages before so not like the main ones.
You’re no strangers to the city, having played a number of gigs up here and Tramlines Festival a few times before.
Yeah, we’ve played Sheffield before at the Rocking Chair and I think we might have done another gig on the Ash tour, but I can’t remember. We do a lot of touring and I’ve got a really bad memory.
Understandable because you’ve pretty much been constantly gigging for the last year or so, jetting out across Europe and Asia in the process. Got any good tour stories to share with us?
I would have to say that our favourite place was probably Tokyo. We stayed in the centre of town, had a club show and played a festival in the centre of Harajuku and there was this crazy storm while we were there which was incredibly cinematic. The rain was falling, there were puddles reflecting all the sparkling lights and it was just an awesome place to perform.
Your gigs are known to be particularly raucous affairs. I imagine we should be expecting more of the same?
Yeah, it’s gonna be quite schizophrenic; we’ll be doing the whole jumping around on stage and crowd surfing thing as per usual. However, as a little teaser, people can expect a bit more dancing and we’ll be throwing a few routines in there.
Nice. The whole Lana Del Rey comparison has been something that has followed you around for a while now. What’s your take on it?
I think that the Lana Del Rey thing comes from because we both have said we like Nancy Sinatra and Hope Sandoval. Some say it’s a vocal thing, others mean it in a more artistic sense. There’s that sort of retro thing going on.
Yeah, there’s definitely a cinematic 50s/60s feel to you guys.
Yeah, I think so. From an artistic sense, I take a lot from my love of cult movies: I literally wanna be a Tarantino villain or something.
Surely now the debut album can’t be far away! Can you give us any sneaky details?
It’s still a bit under wraps, sorry, but I can say that we’ll be providing a few sneak-peeks that will be exclusive to these upcoming shows, so it’s going to be really exciting seeing how that goes down. We’re also going to come out after the Sheffield shows so we can have a drink and a catch up with everyone – it’s been so long!
Black Honey play Leadmill on May 11th and the Library Stage at Tramlines Festival on Sunday July 22nd.
