Since the release of their debut single on Speedy Wunderground back in 2020 the buzz around the Lounge Society has continued to flourish. Back in the autumn of last year I saw the first show of their first tour and witnessed an event that felt like my very own Lesser Free Trade Hall. The stripped back energy and outward giddy joy that each member threw into their performance was something that could’ve only come from tour debutants and left everyone walking away knowing they had just witnessed SOMETHING. A couple of weeks after that gig I caught up with them as they were half way through their tour in Manchester and I was met with a band that matched up with the live event I had witnessed a few weeks before. It was refreshing to see a band that were so open and energetic, completely unspoiled by the industry they had just began to dive into. They were so wet behind the ears they could have all been about to drown, but fuck me they were gonna sound good while they were doing it.
Now, six months later, I found myself catching up with them again. Though no new music had been released in the time that had passed between our last meeting I was clearly met by different people than the teens I had met upstairs at the Castle Hotel oh so many months ago. Six months had matured the band from your average weed smoking mates’ band to a genuine, wired post-punk outfit. I went out to the smoking shelter with them and sat down, still intrigued as to how they were finding their new lives and what they thought of their first tour looking back at it: “It was difficult towards the end. We played basically every day in October and we had never done anything close to that but it was a transformative experience. I think we’ve all come out of it seasoned touring musicians.” The emphasis of seasoned can mean whatever the reader wants it to but from being around them for two minutes it was clear that they had. I wondered how their second tour, of which I was about to witness the ending of that night, had compared: “It’s been good, we know what we’re doing. We know what we need to do to keep ourselves in a good mood. A lot of it is learning how to look after ourselves on tour. 90% of the time we’re not doing anything.”
This experience on the road will come in useful for the band in the coming months as their growth has shown no signs of stopping, having recently announced a huge tour compared to anything they have ever done in the past I wanted to find out how it felt to be booked in at iconic venues such as Gorilla and Patterns: “We love those intimate shows but it’s been amazing to book those.” Archie (drums) then addressed then band; “It’s got our hunger back a bit, hasn’t it? Cos, we started to lose our nerves a bit before gigs and it’s just, yknow. Obviously, every gig is great but sometimes it gets a bit tiring whereas now we’ve got those nerves back and every gig now makes you feel tense.” Herbie (Guitar) then rounded things off; “It just makes you a bit sharper round the edges, you know?”
After rounding off two tours and seeing how much they had clearly matured over the past half a year I looked to see if they had picked up any Do’s and Don’ts of on the road life, Archie chipped in first joking; “I think I’m still learning the Do’s and Don’ts, I’m learning them the hard way.” Herbie then chipped in “Well yeah, Balancing energy levels and… artificial energy levels. Just making sure your well up for it by the time you go on stage, because if you’re up for it two hours before then you won’t be.” Cameron (frontman) then interjected “It’s also making sure you know where you are and where you need to be the next day. How long you’re gonna be sat in the van is important.”
Last time I had spoken with the band I had also been surprised by their plans to jump straight into an album as their next project. I wanted to know if this was still the way things seemed to be going: “Yeah it’s been recorded, we’re very happy with it. We did it with Dan (Carey) down at Speedy. We can’t wait to get it out there, it’s not gonna be for a while but we’ve got a single coming out on May 9th. We’re excited to trickle out some of the singles from it and see people’s reactions to it. It’s so much better than anything we’ve done before. Its gonna blow your head off!” Though drench in a slight sarcasm there was a seriousness that I didn’t doubt. “It was recorded just after the first tour over two weeks. First week was just was a really nice Air BnB and wine, second week was just horrible, just Lidl food and drugs. Those two elements are kind of what make the album, they’re the albums sound. We were trying to do an album in an old school way, like the Velvet Underground, just not very singles orientated. I think we’re quite an old school band, not in our sound but in the way we operate.”
So that’s it, with an album on the horizon and new singles closer to home all someone has to do is look at their previous work, and the team arou- actually fuck that. All someone needs to do is go to one of their live shows to know that something electric is coming out of Hebden Bridge (via Dan Careys Brixton studio).
