Scottish duo Honeyblood’s second LP brings the noise
On its second album, Babes Never Die, Scotland’s Honeyblood covers a lot of ground. There’s the punk-meets-girl-group clatter of “Ready For The Magic,” the funky, hedonistic rave up of “Sea Hearts” and the dreamy, cynical chanting of “Love Is A Disease.” The women in the band—guitarist/singer Stina Tweeddale and drummer Cat Myers—make a mighty noise, marked by anthemic choruses, Tweeddale’s skilled use of power chords and distortion, and Myers’ blockbuster drumming.
“We encourage each other to make as much noise as possible for two people,” says Tweeddale. “With this record, we demoed vigorously to nail down the sound we wanted to achieve before we went into the studio. We made the album in 13 days, racing against the clock at all times. I would love to have the luxury to spend months making a record, but it’s something we can’t do at this stage.”
Live, Tweeddale and Myers rule the crowd with the force of their playing, but in the studio, producer James Dring (Blur, Lana Del Rey) and their friend Matt Jones added synthesizer tones to fill out the sound. Would they consider adding another musician to their lineup?
“We recently acquired a new member called Sebastian,” says Tweeddale. “He’s a collection of sounds, triggered by Cat through a sample pad. We’re loving his work at the moment. Will we ever get more humans in the band? Maybe, but not right now.”
The album closes with a brief, easy-listening Latin outro, featuring drum loops, dreamy harmonies and Irish penny whistle. After 10 tracks of rowdy, energetic garage punk, it’s quite a shock.
“Cat loves Latin music,” says Tweeddale. “That inspired us to play the tin whistle and write that little outro. We’re planning to write a whole EP of Latin tracks after this album comes out.”
—j. poet
