Artist: New Starts
Title: Under The Striplights
Format: digital single
Cat#: Fika102SG1
Release date: 8th May 2024
Bandcamp | Spotify
Under The Striplights is the first track to be taken from the debut New Starts album [More Break-Up Songs].
It’s a love song or at least for a plea for a simpler more straightforward type of love. A couple on the edge of a break up can’t agree on anything or where to eat or where to drink.
Under the Striplights or Under the Moon, means they could be anywhere, the location isn’t the problem, the solution can be found anywhere.
New Starts are a spikey, fresh sounding band recalling the poppier ends of new wave and angular guitar rock. Their influences include The Cars, Breeders, Bay City Rollers, The Velvet Underground and ZZ Top.
Lead singer Darren Hayman has his own long career running from the late 90s with John Peel faves Hefner to his more recent thematic and historical albums dealing with the English Civil War, William Morris and forgotten rural idylls.
“I wanted a band again,” says Hayman, “and not a band that just backed me up and played my old songs. When we form our first bands in our teens we just find some friends and work through the musical differences. I usually look for players who play in a way I’m used to. This time I looked for variance and was led by people’s personality.”
Guitarist Joely Smith [of South London’s noise-pop adults and recently DIY-punks Fresh] was recommended by a mutual friend who said, ‘She makes everything better’. Hayman and Smith shared a coffee and agreed on the correct number of guitar pedals and decided to proceed without an audition.
“There is a tendency for me to make my chords too pretty. Joely cuts against that and plays in the opposite direction.” Hayman is a fan of rules and constraints and employed a new, oblique strategy on this record. “Even though I wrote all the songs, I wanted the songs to belong to everyone during arrangement. I decided that I would say ‘yes’ to every suggestion from the band, regardless of my instinct.”
This made the songs warp and bend into new shapes and ensured that the record was the product of four individuals. Bassist Giles Barrett and drummer Will Connor come from funky afro beat influenced band Tigercats. “Pretty much the only rhythm I use, left to my own devices, is the ‘road runner’ rhythm. Will takes to care to find where the drum beat can be and we always end up somewhere I didn’t expect.”
“there’s an undeniable freshness here, that slightly off-kilter collision of ideas that’s at the heart of all the best bands, the propulsive rhythm creating a base for the guitars to play off against one another, Darren’s driving melodies battling against Joely’s choppier, against the grain style, reminiscent of Graham Coxon’s playing on Blur’s spiky self-titled album. An intriguing introduction, New Starts feels more than just a name, by digging back into their earliest musical memories, they might just have created a blueprint for where these talented bunch of musicians are going next.” For The Rabbits
“it’s a supergroup of what’s cool in the UK underground scene. They hold the song in these jagged bouncing chords, while Hayman delivers his traditional idiosyncratic lyrics across the tune; this particular tune seems to be bleeding with notes of confessional, which makes sense as this is another album filled with break-up songs. Pop songs with great punch? I’m betting New Starts have it in loads” Austin Town Hall
“fuzzy as heck and wouldn't seem out of place dropping in the late-70s” Thats Good Enough For Me
“Fresh spiky pop that fuses with lonely guitar rock and a desire for simplistic love, but most of all they just want us to like them, and we do.” Freak Magnet