Interview Honeyglaze: “In the current music climate, it’s easy to disappear into the void of the internet if you don’t kick up a fuss”

Your self-titled debut had a real sense of being grounded in the South London / Speedy Wunderground scene (despite the fact that, sonically, there wasn’t always huge amounts of common ground…) Have you found that, with this record, there’s been a greater sense of expressing who Honeyglaze are in your own terms?

Yuri Shibuichi (drums): Definitely. We set out our ideals, which were having a longer time to record, and to record somewhere outside London. I think that alone allowed us to breathe in a creative sense, and lean into the sonic nuances of the songs more. We had more time for experimentation and realisation for each song, which naturally allowed more of our voice to be expressed in a confident tone.

Musically, how do you feel that you’ve changed or developed since that first album? One of the things that’s most striking about ‘Real Deal’ is its unpredictability and dynamism.

Yuri: I’d say our collective sensitivity to the guitar-vocal demo Anouska brings to the table [has developed]. I see the first album arrangements as being pretty straight up, and what you might expect if you jammed a song a couple of times as a band (which is what most of them were), but for the tracks on ‘Real Deal’, I think me and Tim approached the arrangements with a lot more care. [We learned] to be cautious of unnecessary parts, and to keep it to the essence of the song.

While the lyrical content of ‘Honeyglaze’ is fairly autobiographical in its detailing of coming-of-age anxieties, here you use character work to consider emotions or experiences through a slightly different lens. Was this a purposeful shift in perspective? If so, why?

Anouska Sokolow (vocals, guitar): There’s something nice about separating yourself from the song sometimes; it can be quite emotionally exhausting being completely open about yourself, especially playing live nights on end, being reminded of something that would rather be forgotten. 

Tim Curtis (bass): Sometimes making up an absurd story is somehow truer than just describing your feelings outright. Plus, it’s easier to see someone else from the outside.

You recorded in a residential countryside studio with producer Claudius Mittendorfer. What was this experience like? Did you learn anything new about each other - as people, or as bandmates - while you were there?

Yuri: The experience was a dream; it’s every musician’s bucket list item. Waking up knowing the sole goal of the day for two weeks - and knowing that we were giving [the recording process] the focus and passion it deserved - was relieving in a lot of ways, especially as they were the two weeks we’d been working towards for almost two years.

Even visually, it’s apparent there’s been a bit of a shift; where the album cover of ‘Honeyglaze’ is moody and relatively abstract, the artwork for ‘Real Deal’ is (no pun intended) punchy and arresting. Can you tell us a bit more about the reasoning behind these creative decisions?

Anouska: ‘Real Deal’ was a written very soon after the first album came out, and was named after a boxing poster I found of Evander ‘Real Deal’ Holyfield. At art school I was obsessed with the vintage boxing aesthetic and was very inspired by boxing as a subject matter. When we finished recording and settled on the name of the album, I think it started to become obvious that we needed to really lean into it. It’s such a strong name, and such a strong album, it felt only fitting to treat the artwork with the same forcefulness and commitment.

Very much echoing the album’s visual language, ‘Real Deal’’s lead single, ‘Don’t’, is perhaps the most visceral and biting the band have been to date. Can you expand on the experiences that inspired it? Why did this track feel like the right opening statement for the record as a whole?

Anouska: ‘Don’t’ was inspired by a break-up. I had never been that angry before and didn’t really know what to do with that feeling. Previously, I would poke fun at myself and make sarcastic comments - which you can hear a lot in the first album - but for ‘Don’t’, I didn’t want to minimize my experience. We’d also taken a long break from music and in the current music climate, it’s easy to disappear into the void of the internet if you don’t kick up a fuss, so ‘Don’t’ felt like a really strong way to remind people we were still here and wanted to be heard.

Last time DIY caught up with you, you reflected that the songs on your debut album are “a moment in time of how [you] felt a couple of years ago”, and commented that, in retrospect, you find them “quite silly”. How have your relationships with ‘Real Deal’’s tracks changed since writing them? How do you think you’ll look back on them in the future?

Tim: The first album has a little more pure silliness mixed in than this one, I think. Maybe that was partly because we didn’t have many songs to pick from in the first place, but the really sincere ones aren’t any sillier than they were. There isn’t a world of difference between ‘Pretty Girls’ and ‘Young Looking’ in terms of humour, so we still look back fondly on songs like that and ‘Female Lead’. Part of this album is about recognising that you’re a little ridiculous sometimes and being okay with that, so hopefully we’ll never be too “cool” to smile at those songs :)

‘Real Deal’ is out now via Fat Possum. 

Tags: Features, Interviews, Honeyglaze