Girl In The Year Above Cause Chaos at Truck Festival
We catch up with Girl In The Year Above at Truck Festival to talk touring with The Kooks, Massive Attack, their next chapter and a £400 Elvis Presley bowling ball.
Over the weekend, a couple of us from Still Listening Magazine’s own investigative reporting team had the pleasure to be invited to Truck Festival, Oxfordshire, with the intent of listening to some music, enjoying the beautiful summer sun, and if there was absolutely nothing else to, interview an artist. Well, despite an unending set list of up-and-comers and industry giants, like the Libertines and the Kaiser Chiefs, we thought that (in a display of unimaginable charity to PR) we would sit down with a band that is fast turning into this year’s movers & shakers.
If looks could kill, Girl In The Year Above are fatal. Utterly smooth style and all of them devilishly handsome, they bring a sound that blends siren-song vocals and epic instrumentals not quite seen since Florence + The Machine brought us Lungs. Much has been said about their pre-career move of releasing a gorgeous cover of Massive Attack’s Teardrop before their first single, and rightfully so. It was a masterstroke that garnered them critical acclaim and two thumbs up from celebrity stardom and us mere mortals alike. Their sound is evident, and like any artist worth their salt, is best seen live. Although I had met the band on a previous occasion and even had the pleasure of working with one of their members at a ghastly place in East London that has often alleged to be a pub: to my joy, this was my first time hearing the band play - and what a time to hear them!
Finding the main stage abandoned of audience as they set up, it took only one note to see to my amazement the huddled masses, yearning for good music in that blistering sun, gather and swarm to the point of engulfing us. It was a crowd befitting a headliner and rest assured, Girl In The Year Above confirmed that crowd. All I can truly say without you having been in attendance is that I cannot overstate how powerful their singer, Jennifer Ball’s voice is, and I hope that it's reflected in our dialogue below. That, and they had a bowling ball superimposed with the face of Elvis Presley placed front and centre, which will be mentioned later. After the show, and having been nursed back to health by the placement of an ice cold beer on my sunburn by the band’s own guitarist, David Kennedy, we (myself, my co-interviewer Sam, the band) set up shop. What was said between us lot can be found below:
'And we’re live with Girl In The Year Above! SO… first of all, everyone else in the band is well practiced, having played in session or with other bands. Jenny, when on Earth did you learn you could sing like that?’
Jenny - ‘Honestly, a year ago. I’d sung before, of course, don’t get me wrong, but like this? About a year ago… These guys have been in music their whole life, and I mean, I did it in school & college, but I’ve never played in front of people like this.’
Nathan - ‘Let’s be fucking real. The first time you came in and sung into the mic, I was trying my best to be coy, but internally I was thinking to myself: “what the fuck”. It was crazy!’
David - ‘So I met Jenny in a bar, and the first time we met she told me she was a singer! Anyway we went back to her house and she started showing me some of her stuff. I was living with Nathan at the time. I came straight home and told him “I met this girl and she’s fucking amazing”, and he said “yeah yeah yeah, you WOULD say that, YOU’RE just smitten!”. Jen came back one night, and at around 5am she sung for us. Half way through, he shot me a look that said, “I’m in”.’
‘Right on!’
At this point, Dork Magazine’s commander and chief / Truck Festival’s own PR and Press whip cracker, Jamie Muir, kindly asks us to move as, unbeknownst to myself, I had set up in the middle of somebody else’s interview. I swiftly moved us to a nearby dirt patch.
‘So you went on a tour with The Kooks, some of you have familial connections or you’ve been friends since childhood, and you’re going to be together for a long-long time. Have you discovered anything on tour about each other that’s become a peev?’
Jenny - ‘HA, you mean like Nathan stealing everyone’s pint?’
Nathan - ‘Mate… I’ve gotten WAY better…’
At the time, Nathan did in fact have a can of lager in his hand. It’s origins: unknown.
David - ‘Well yes, in fairness, he’s my best mate, and in the band is my fiancé and my little brother, so of course there’s going to be a few things, but we love each other!’
Jenny - ‘I’ve got another one: Shane being asleep all the time, or the way Jeanie will so confidently misname things! Today for example, she said with no hesitation: “Truck festival, nice, Leeds.”.’
David - ‘For 5 weeks we were with The Kooks and for 5 weeks she kept calling someone Ralph until he had to take her aside and say “…I’m not Ralph man…”.’
Jenny - ‘But it’s a Jeanie special, we love it.’
David - ‘She’s just so overflowing with enthusiasm that that’s the worst we can think of.’
Jenny - ‘Oh boo hoo we love our mates and they’re really enthusiastic.’
David - ‘I mean, Shane’s my little brother, so there have been times when we’ll be screaming at each other on stage. Half way through the song we’ll quietly come over to each other and be like “Hey man… I’m really sorry”. Any argument is over within minutes.’
Nathan - ‘6-months time and we’ll have fists on stage like Brian Jonestown.’
David - ‘More like The Police, we’re not going to break-up because we don’t all hate each other…’
‘Tell me about the bowling ball with Elvis’ face on it.’
Jenny - ‘Obviously it’s Elvis Presley…’
David - ‘Uh he’s actually quite a big artist?’
Jenny - ’…from the meme, and if you don’t know then it’s the one with Elvis in a ball, saying “Help mama, I’m trapped in an orb.”. One day, Shane came up to us and said “Guys, I found it. Online. On-sale. On eBay. The orb.”. It was like £400. When we win the lottery or get a record deal, we won’t tell anyone… but there’ll be signs…’
‘So everyone always gets asked ‘what’s your dream collab’. I want to know what your nightmare collab would be; someone you would never ever dream of working with. Someone who would ask you and you’d plainly tell them to fuck off.’
Jenny - ‘Oh! Who’s the guy that Shaggy did a song with…?’
Everyone - ‘…’
Jenny - ‘Ummm… the paedophile?’
David - ‘That could literally be almost any artist.’
Jenny - ‘Fuck it, Donald Trump.
‘That would be a nightmare support to be fair.’
David - ‘Jesus the nightmare would be him ever using our music.’
Jenny - ‘Seriously though, our dream collab would be Magnus Paulin Ferrell, Will Ferrel’s son?’
David - ‘We listen to him in the car, he’s got the voice of a fucking angel that guy…’
Jenny - ‘It’s like SILK!’
Nathan - ‘Well the DREAM dream collab would be Massive Attack.’
‘Ah yes, when are you lot joining Massive Attack again?’
David - ‘I mean it’s amazing that they were a massive fan of the uh…’
Nathan - ‘Attack?’
David - ‘Yes, a massive fan of attack but also of the cover. They gave us a shout out which was pretty fucking incredible.’
‘This one was meant for Shane, but I’ll ask you all: in reference to his signature on my record, when is he going to learn to write his name?’ (Evidence of his signature can be found here)
David - ‘OH!’
Jenny - ‘Well he actually DOES write songs…’
David - ‘He’s got some corkers! I mean he’s got a heavy right hand and he plays like a busker, he broke a string today, but he really knows how to write. The thing about this band is that everyone individually can write, which I think is quite rare.’
‘It is rare, I mean even the Beatles had Ringo singing about a fucking Octopus.’ (This is my favourite Beatles song for reference)
Jenny - ‘Yes! This does make us better than the Beatles!
‘And therefore Jesus!’
Jenny - ‘WAIT! Don’t put that on the record. Remember that time that Simon Cowell made that group out of 10 musicians and one of them made a comment about BTS and they all got cancelled? Millions of pounds down the drain…’
David - ‘Okay that’s fair, write this down, bigger than Jesus, not BTS.’
‘Next question Jenny, do you cut everyone in the band’s hair?’
Jenny - ‘Yes!’
‘And when will it be Shane’s turn?’
Jenny - ‘He’s growing it out!’
‘Hahaha we’re really short changing Shane out on this.’
David - ‘That should fucking learn him for going out the night before the show!’
Shane, for the record, was fast asleep on the floor in the dressing room.
Jenny - ‘He’ll always say “It wasn’t that late…” and then we’ll see a video of him doing shots at 3am.’
‘So what’s the news on the band-front for now?’
David - ‘Well we’ve only really been together for like 18 months, it’s all moved so quickly, and we’re signing with Transgressive next week…’
‘Are you?!’
David - ‘Well… yeah, you’ll be the first to hear that, but maybe wait until the news it out first, I don’t want to jinx it you know?’
‘We are the news!’
David - ‘Okay well, as soon as you see us sign online… We met so many industry types when we were flying all around Europe with The Kooks, which was great, and when we came back we had more meetings with those guys and they were grand, but Transgressive came to one show, then two shows, then three and we already knew that they were selective.’
‘So why did they feel like the one?’
David - ‘Well, with everyone else it felt as though they were all talk. That’s not to say that that’s all bad, because I’m sure that the competition could’ve given us some of what we needed, but they didn’t have a plan. The thing with Transgressive is… they’re a band’s label.’
‘Very true. So now that you’ve played smaller venues like your recent set at Mascara Bar and you’ve played huge stages, which do you prefer?’
David - ‘Oh we love both!’
Jenny - ‘Mascara Bar was SO fun!’
David - ‘The smaller ones can be scary but they’re cool, the bigger ones can be the best shows though! They both have their moments.’
Jenny - ‘Honestly, we’ve yet to perform on a big stage where they’re there just for us! That’s never been the case for us, and I imagine that when they’re there for us, it’ll be incredible because it’ll be the same energy as the smaller venue.’
David - ‘The crowd today was incredible, though. I didn’t see that coming.’
‘Truck yeah!’
Jenny - ‘TRUCK YEAH! I couldn’t stop saying that.’
David - ‘I was half way through tuning and I looked up, the crowd went from being a few people to being the whole festival.’
‘Build it and they will come!’
David - ‘It was nuts! But anyway, we did Mascara Bar because we did our first ever show there last year.’
Nathan - ‘Shout out to Maggie!’
Jenny - ‘SO on record, shout out to Maggie!!’
David - ‘Yeah, we sold out that first show and it was amazing, and Maggie asked us if we’d want to come back next year and do another show, show we said of course! We got there… it was fucking rammed. I mean, we’ll do it every year for free, if they’ll have us, but the bigger we get, the more secretive it’ll have to be; to the point where we wouldn’t even post it.’
Jenny - ‘But that’s a secret…’
Jamie Muir then approached to kindly let me know that Girl In The Year Above were needed for many more interviews, as well as a cocktail making competition.
Okay, Jamie says one more question but I’m doing two more, fuck him!’
Jamie, from afar - ‘I HEARD THAT.’
‘Sorry Jamie, I love you. Fine, lets wrap it up. Obviously you’ve been on tour for a while all around Europe, whatever, who cares. What are the places you’ve been missing around London?’
Jenny - ‘Well obviously Mascara Bar! The Plimsole, Army & Navy, The Auld Shillelagh, The WB Yeats. I really miss the Camel in Bethnal Green and the Palm Tree!’
‘Okay, now to actually wrap it up, what insights can you give us, what else is coming up?’
Jenny - ‘Our new song’s coming out on Transgressive!’
David - ‘As soon as possible, so you might have to wait for us to sign, but it’s coming!’
As they rushed off to perform as a panel of judges in a novelty cocktail making competition, the free-willed and liberated members of Girl In The Year Above couldn’t help but give off the feeling that they were going to go far, and be sharp and fast about it. Their energy was an infection and their talk was sweet but real, as if their stardom had come so quickly that they hadn’t time to let it go to their heads; there was too much work to be done. If you get the chance, see them play live, they’re on tour all over the country, and should not be missed.