Eyre Llew
“If you look at what prog means, that's what we are. We play with organs and keyboards, we play with sonic layering and messed-up guitars, and have vocals over the top.”
Road stories? Eyre Llew have got 'em.
Over 12 years the Nottingham ambient rockers have played to 3000 shoppers in a sweltering Singapore mall. In Gdańsk, Poland they performed their emotional, reverb-drenched anthems at a Soviet submarine hangar converted into an arts centre. In South Korea they secured their place in the audience’s heart by singing their towering anthem 'Silo' in the native language.
Then there are numerous tours of the Baltic states – notably Latvia – where the band are now huge. Vocalist and co-guitarist Sam Heaton thinks he knows why: “When you start going to the areas that don't see a lot of exported music, people just welcome you with open arms and promoters are excited to book you. It's a very different climate from a live performance aspect than the UK.”
‘Eyre’ comes from a term for a wandering medieval judge, and ‘llew’ is Welsh for lion. It’s a fitting moniker for these peripatetic, courageous self-starters. Along with the keen touring, acclaimed 2017 debut 'Atelo' earned them the helpful, if rather facile comparison to Iceland’s Sigur Rós. True, Heaton’s beautiful falsetto is a trademark. Guitarist Jack Bennett sometimes brandishes a violin bow. It’s also hard to avoid terms like ‘tsunami-like washes’ and ‘towering cathedrals of sound’ when conveying their emotional, dynamic music. But let’s try.
“I really like some of the reviews we've had that describe how people felt more than describing the music,” says Heaton, who cites Hammock, The National and US ambient duo A Winged Victory For The Sullen as personal touchstones. “We’ve not really fit into a perfect genre or scene. That's been tough to orientate around, but it's also meant we’ve been called a palate cleanser on a line-up, so we’ve been placed on indie rock, arts and prog festivals.
“If you look at what prog means, that's what we are. We play with organs and keyboards, we play with sonic layering and messed-up guitars, and have vocals over the top.”
While working at Nottingham venue The Rescue Rooms, Heaton watched impressed as Thijs van Leer’s quarter-ton Hammond organ was loaded in for a Focus show. At a recent car boot sale he picked up his very own, solid-state (so much lighter) 1973 Hammond for the princely sum of three quid. “And 'Bloom', the title track of the new album, was recorded on that. We put it through a plate reverb pedal into a small amp and it sounds fucking massive!”
The huge atmospheres are here in 'Bloom', as is Eyre Llew’s magpie-like lyrical aesthetic. 'Atelo' was peppered with song titles in Welsh ('Glas', 'Hwyl Fawr'), and German ('Vorfreude'). 'Bloom' has 'Oban' – referring to the picturesque Scottish coastal town – love song 'Semper Fi', and 'Aetos' (Greek for eagle).
Amid the loops and layers are happy, folky gang-chants ('Everywhere'), spine-tingling love songs ('Ebanon') and the truly proggy 'Fireworks', an instrumental that proves that – when done right – simplicity and repetition can fuse into the sublime.
New recruits, bassist/producer Russ Clark and keyboardist Laurie Illingworth, have opened new creative vistas for this multi-faceted band doing it old-school – racking up the air miles and reaping the rewards.
- Grant Moon
PROG FILE:
Line-up: Sam Heaton (vocals, guitar); Jack Clark (drums); Jack Bennett (guitars); Russ Clark (bass); Laurie Illingworth (piano/percussion).
Sounds like: they’ve got a reverb unit and they’re gonna use it (Hammock, Sigur Rós).
Album: Bloom (out on September 18), self release
More info: Eyre Llew