"So much goes unspoken": An interview with 2:54

First published in Loud And Quiet

There's a moment in the Melvins track 'A History of Bad Men' when the white-hot riff-crunching collapses in a smoky haze of churning doom rock, like stones turning to molten lava. It's at two minutes and 54 seconds, to be precise, and it's a fitting moment of conception for the elegant but ferocious music of sisters Colette and Hannah Thurlow. Though that origins story has been repeated many times since the day in 2010 when 'Creeping' popped up online and became an instant blog hit, it remains an auspicious genesis for the duo who call themselves 2:54. Finding themselves with a whole lot of hype to capitalise on, they've spent every day since then honing their songs and shows, and on 28th May their self-titled debut will be finally be delivered to the world through Fiction.

Younger sister Hannah is the quieter half of the duo, with hair like a gothic Elvis and usually found moulded over her guitar, wringing out plaintive melodies shimmering with reverb. Colette, older by two years and the more dominant conversationalist, is the de facto band leader given to scarlet lipstick. Their synergy isn't obvious as first – they don't look especially similar, even up close, and they don't trade private jokes or bicker as siblings are wont to do. Instead, there seems to be a certain silent bond between the two – not that they have nothing to say to each other, but there is simply no need to say it. This quiet assurance is the core of every 2:54 song, where poise and balance underpin the windswept emotional turbulence and lovelorn drama of tracks like 'You're Early' and 'Scarlet'. No surprise that they often draw comparisons with the brooding darkness of The xx and Warpaint.

But in contrast to the music, in person the girls are nothing but polite and warm, drifting into each other's sentences and nervously tapping lighters and fidgeting in their seats. We meet in a flat on one of East London's more salubrious streets, in which the dark furnishings and black piano provide a suitably moody backdrop for the photo shoot. They make for quiet sitters, amenable to the photographer's directions but bristling at the possibility of a vintage stove creeping into the frame, keen to avoid situating themselves in a typically feminine domestic milieu.

With their monochrome grungy clothes and spooky videos to match their atmosphere of the music, it might seem they control their image pretty carefully. “Not at all!” they counter, speaking together. “My main thing is, it’s the last thing I want to think about, ever, but particularly with performing I just want to be able to move with my guitar – that’s my only thought after sitting in a van all day,” says Colette. But you know, two sisters, two leather jackets, people are going to describe them as moody gothic types whether they like it or not – yet nothing could be further from the truth, surely? They both laugh. Maybe the music is a conduit for a darker side of their personalities? “I think it's totally part of us.” “It's completely us.”

Third one's a charm: An interview with The Maccabees

A few weeks ago I met The Maccabees before their headline show at Brixton just as their third record, the expectedly epic-sounding Given To The Wild, was coming out. It's an alright record! And they were lovely! And mega fit obvs lol!!1! The whole thing was a pleasant surprise! Owen Richards took some neat photos of the band too, including the one below, which was taken to the side of the stage. They set up a ping pong table on stage during soundcheck, which can only be a good thing. I miss ping pong.

Some slight changes were made in the printed version which I can't really be bothered to add in here. Suffice to say I prefer my own concluding paragraph to the subbed one (as all writers do, the egotistic idiots).

First published in Loud And Quiet

Photo by Owen Richards

Raking through the slush pile of mid-Noughties indie rock, who would you have predicted to be filling arenas half a decade later? The Kooks? Good Shoes? The Pigeon Detectives? As we know, the landslide of leather jackets and Telecasters soon became landfill, consigned to changing rooms, mobile phone ads and Hollyoaks montages, and surely destined to be a mere footnote to 21st century pop music.

But a strange thing happened in 2011. Three of the year’s most feted albums – The Horrors’ Skying, Metronomy’s The English Riviera and Wild Beasts’ Smother – were delivered by bands of the 2006 vintage. While none of those bands could have been mistaken for landfill indie even in their embryonic form (being obviously in possession of some discerning taste and eccentricity of vision), they hardly seemed likely back then to blossom into the critically acclaimed list-botherers you now see before you.

Even less likely to make the leap from upstarts to heavyweights, then, were The Maccabees. While the Brighton-based band may not quite have a Mercury nomination on their hands with their third album, the restrained and ruminative Given To The Wild, they are nonetheless on a weirdly similar trajectory to their Class of ’06 peers, surprising probably even themselves as they gear up to play Brixton Academy for the third time.