“Perhaps the best thing Our Girl have put out, we’re totally addicted.” – Clash (on ‘Our Girl’)
“…one of the most exciting new bands around.” – The Line of Best Fit
“The fuzzy-pop, borderline-shoegaze track features chaotic, noisy indie-rock guitars that are perfectly offset by Nathan’s soothing, reassuring pop vocals. The result is a blissful, dreamy haze that you’ll want to relive again and again.” – Paste Magazine (on ‘Our Girl’)
“…the trio make overcast, shoegaze-indebted indie that whips and swirls with uncompromising force.” – NME.com
Following the release of their acclaimed debut album Stranger Today, OUR GIRL now embark on a tour of the UK through the Autumn. Full dates below.
To celebrate the release of the album and the upcoming shows, Our Girl are also pleased to share the music video to their single “I Really Like It”. The band shot the video in their living room, they go on to explain, “given how close to home the lyrics are, we wanted the sentiment of the song to speak for itself, so we shot somewhere personal and familiar – it would seem strange to have it set anywhere else than in our home.”
At first, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what makes Our Girl so special, or why the Brighton-formed, London-based trio’s music stands out within a busy crowd of fellow guitar-wielding-types. But if an explanation didn’t jump out when they first emerged with a debut EP of mighty fuzz-soaked songs in November 2016, it surfaces with ‘Stranger Today’, a debut album of personal, emotional juggernauts that could have only been made by these three people: Guitarist / vocalist Soph Nathan, bassist Josh Tyler and drummer Lauren Wilson.
Since forming in Nathan and Tyler’s Brighton home four years ago – Wilson joining as a late recruit when she was wowed by a demo of their self-titled debut track, and ‘Stranger Today’’s opener – Our Girl’s members have only had pockets of time to work together. A day booked in a local studio here, a soundcheck there, full-time jobs and other projects meant the three rarely had a concentrated, collective patch. This changed in September 2017, when they stayed in Eve Studios in Stockport for a week, recording with Bill Ryder-Jones. Their week in Stockport became a crucial catalyst for what would follow. Ryder-Jones is a guitar virtuoso himself (“He did stuff neither me or Soph had ever seen anyone do before,” Tyler remarks), and he became an unofficial fourth member of the group.
‘Stranger Today’ is a special debut for several reasons: First, because it’s the sound of a band beginning to grasp their own value and place in the world. Secondly, because you can hear the trio’s hunger to finally get in the same room and put to tape years’ worth of scrapbooks, half-finished ideas, and a slowly-forming feel for how their first album would actually sound. “What band isn’t itching to make their debut? But it’s quite frightening, knowing you’re about to do it,” Wilson remembers.
The real clincher, however, is Our Girl’s dynamic, and how it plays out across ‘Stranger Today’. Best friends in person, the trio share the same close kinship and chemistry on record. On one side is Nathan’s visceral lyricism, which has a habit of detailing and chipping away at precise moments; the first heart-flutter of a new crush; the moment a long-term friendship begins to ebb away. Around her, Tyler and Wilson’s rhythm section carefully mirrors each feeling Nathan conveys. When she sings pointedly about love (‘I Really Like It’), she’s backed by a major-key afterglow. When the subject turns on its head (‘Josephine’), out steps a wall of taut, earth-shaking noise. They each “serve the song,” in Wilson’s words, moving in sync but with their own personal slant. Not least on the closer ‘Boring’, where all restraint is thrown aside and the trio let out one final, violent thrash. They inhabit a space bigger than the first loves, sleepless nights and growing pains that define this
record.
Nathan remembers being in Brighton four years ago, shortly after Our Girl formed, and realising, “I was finally in the band I wanted to be in.” Almost half a decade later, and this eureka moment is sewn up on ‘Stranger Today’. It’s the sound of three friends totally at ease in their own space, discontent with being anywhere else; a vibrant document of what it’s like to be young, invigorated and amongst people who feel the same.
Pre-order ‘Stranger Today’ here.
Tour dates:
September –
19th – Bath – Chapel Arts w/Bill Ryder Jones
20th – London – Queen Elizabeth Hall w/Bill Ryder Jones
21st – Leeds – Howard Assembly Hall w/Bill Ryder Jones
22nd – Glasgow – School Of Art w/Bill Ryder Jones
23rd – Manchester – Dancehouse Theatre w/Bill Ryder Jones
29th – Gloucester – Guildford W/Bill Ryder Jones
October –
12th – Birmingham – The Sunflower Lounge
14th – Bristol – The Louisiana
15th – Leicester – The Cookie
16th – Leeds – Oporto
18th – Sheffield – Picture House Social
19th – Newcastle – Think Tank?
20th – Glasgow – The Attic
21st – Liverpool – Buyers Club
23rd – Cardiff – Clwb Ifor Bach
24th – Southampton – Heartbreakers
25th – London – The Garage
26th – Brighton – The Haunt
Artwork:
Tracklisting:
1. Our Girl
2. Being Around
3. In My Head
4. I Really Like It
5. Josephine
6. Two Life
7. Level
8. Sub Rosa
9. I Wish It Was Sunday
10. Heat
11. Boring
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For more information please contact rob@sonicpr.co.uk (mailto:rob@sonicpr.co.uk)
