Get to know Get to know… Roxy Girls

Hello and welcome to DIY’s introducing feature, Get To Know… getting you a little bit closer to the buzziest new acts that have been catching our eye as of late, and working out what makes them tick.

We admit we may have been slacking over the last month, mostly due to Team DIY flying out to festivals every weekend and subsequently needing a bit (read: a lot) of R&R time, but we’re back with a band that’s deffo been worth the wait.

Introducing Roxy Girls, the Sunderland post-punk quartet who’ve been building up tonnes of buzz this year touring with loads of our faves (The Murder Capital, Drahla, Mush, to name a few).

Dropping their newest track ‘Spanners For Hands’ today and with their debut mini-album ‘A Poverty Of Attention’ due out 6th September, they’ve been hailed for their live shows and refreshingly unique sound, so we sent them over our quick fire quiz to find out a lil bit more.

Describe your music to us in the form of a Tinder bio.

Top grafter, honest lad, does the job, doesn’t last very long.

What’s your earliest musical memory?

My dad had The Beatles 1 compilation in his car when I was about five or six, that’s until I stood on it and smashed it to pieces. I also seem to remember him playing ‘Clear White Light’ by Lindisfarne on the drive to Primary School. That was probably the first time I heard something that really caught my attention. Those Geordie harmonies sent/continue to send/will forever send shivers down my spine.

Who were some artists that inspired you when you were just starting out (and why)?

Pre-Roxy Girls, the band we were doing tried to be The Velvet Underground. It was our first band, I was 16 and as you’d imagine, it was shite. Our songs weren’t good but they were always slightly out of tune, so technically we were half way there. I accidentally wrote ‘Two Dead Nuns’ around the time I’d been introduced to Glaswegian art punx The Yummy Fur. Months later we were stuck for a name upon realising that our old one wasn’t very good and track 13 of their first record gave us the one we use today. I’d also just heard Parquet Courts’ ‘Light Up Gold’ and really started getting into the first Futureheads album at the same time. They’re probably the biggest and most obvious of our influences para mi, well at least for the first EP and this one.

You’re based in Sunderland - what’s the music scene like there at the moment? Are there other artists breaking through at the same time that you take inspiration from?

Honestly, it’s pretty non-existent. Well that’s in terms of bands our age doing stuff in a similar vein. The people you’d immediately associate with music in Sunderland (Futureheads, Frankie and The Heartstrings, Field Music etc) are still about but have all progressed to proper adulthood with children and mortgages and things that school didn’t prepare me for. Despite the age difference, those bands have been instrumental in our coming to be. We were formed in the basement of Pop Recs Ltd (The Heartstrings’ Cafe and Venue), Dave Brewis of Field Music recorded our upcoming EP and Barry Hyde of The Futureheads used to teach Aidan the guitar (He plays the drums now though). It’s a small, albeit tightly knit scene. Canny craic.

Who would be your dream collaborator?

Probably Man to Man meets Man Parish… Nah in all seriousness, I like the sound of Roxy Girls ft. John Cale on viola, King Tubby on the dub machine and Limp Bizkit on backing vocals.

Musically, or otherwise, what are you most looking forward to in 2019?

We can’t wait to put this EP out, work on the next one and then start writing a full length. All of which should hopefully be before sweet 2019 is out. We’re probably gonna do our first tour this year too, that should be class, though getting to Europe would be the swan on top of the £3 latte.

If people could take away one thing from your music, what would it be?

Daft Mackem accents, schizophrenic drum beats, speed addled guitar riffs and stories of Sunderland life.