SHEAFS are back and raring to go
After spending a few months lying low, Sheffield indie five-piece SHEAFS are now back and raring to go. I caught up with Chris (guitarist) and Lawrence (vocals) to find out what they’ve been working on behind the scenes…
To the untrained eye, it may have looked like they were having a ‘break’ from the fast life. But the boys assure me that taking some time out from the public eye certainly doesn’t mean they’ve stopped moving forwards, and they have been grafting harder than ever to refine their sound, hone their songwriting skills and nail the core elements of their craft. They’ve got their heads together, shaken things up, rebranded, and now they’re back stronger than ever and with newfound zeal.
After their first couple of whirlwind years as a band, Chris explains that they needed to take a step back and put things into perspective. “It’s easy to get lost and run away with new ideas.” Lawrence stresses the need to get the basics right first before they can even consider pushing any experimental musical boundaries.
“At the moment we just wanna write songs that when we play live they’re gonna turn heads. Hopefully they’ll be songs that you can’t ignore.”
With indie guitar music on something of a decline, the duo admit that it’s quite a challenging time for bands like themselves, but they’re more than up for the challenge. Let’s be honest, everybody loves a bit of nostalgic indie rock to get rowdy to at a concert, but how often do you hear it on the radio these days? In fact, it could be argued that indie rock has become something of a tainted genre in the past few years. With an ambitious end-goal of bringing guitar music back to mainstream popularity, and competition coming from the ever-surging and shifting genres of EDM and grime, grassroots guitar bands such as SHEAFS have their work cut out for them.
Undeterred by the state of play, the band have been digging around trying to nail the winning formula, which Lawrence believes lies in communicating a clearer message and finding a balance between gritty attack and melodic hooks. Chris echoes this, hoping that their music can fill a gap in the market between the raw energy of the punk scene and the feel-good vibes of the commercial scene, stressing that they key to success is creating songs that people can have a good time to.
Their new single ‘Get Used To It’ is out on Friday 12 April and is the first of many powerful, anthemic singles that SHEAFS have ready to fire at us over the next few months. Both Chris and Lawrence believe that the back catalogue of material they’ve been working on is worlds apart from anything they’ve put out before, and with the launch party for their new single already sold out, it looks like they’re succeeding in generating a buzz around the local scene. Things are looking bright on the inside for SHEAFS, now it’s just a waiting game to see how things pans out…
