Loose Articles Nat & Erin Interview Feb 2025

Photo Credit Lakes Studio

I’ve been wanting to this interview with Loose Articles since hearing their debut album Scream If You Want To Go Faster via hearing the single Thought He Was A Welder on Radio 6 and straight away fell in love with it. So much so that it’s played at least once a week.

Why do I like them? Somehow in their natural progression over the last 6 years they’ve ended up with hints of other bands – Stranglers, Slits, B52’s Fall to name a few – but with a sound and approach that’s very much their own and in certain songs a real punk bite. Tie that to their beliefs and approach to gigs, and they are genuinely refreshing, quirky and imaginative and great role models.

They’re now at the stage with an acclaimed first album, great airplay and publicity, more gigs but balancing being semi-professional and making the leap. So exciting times for them!

So there was no better way to start than the embarrassment of getting Natalie and Erin mixed up! Once that was got out of the way we kicked off!

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Becoming more popular and having more exposure means more gigs, and it’s a challenge for any band when they have to start thinking about moving to semi-professional and then the big leap to professional.

Erin: Gigs have to be in the Northwest if it’s in the week on a school night so we can get there after work in a mad dash.

Nat: I’ve moved from a salaried job to be hourly, so I can take unpaid leave quite a lot. So I can do band stuff, but I don’t get paid holidays for it so. Sacrifices.

Erin: I work agency so I can take Mondays and Fridays off for the band unpaid as well. So that’s how we work round it.

Nat We love it so much and we’re looking to the future to make the band be our full-time jobs. To be an overnight success, it takes 10 years and we’re in year 6 at the moment. So yeah.

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Stepping onto the industry treadmill

Nat: It seems like now that major labels don’t take risks on bands for the music; they want to go with bands who have got a really big social media platform to begin with anyway. So it can be kind of difficult in that way that everyone’s very much looking on social media and if there’s a big following rather than take a risk on smaller bands.

Erin: I think we’re quite lucky though, because between us we all kind of have quite a lot of artistic skills. So we can make our own music videos, do our own artwork and a lot of things ourselves like that. We don’t rely on other people to help us out with that.

Let’s not forget Abbi Phillips on Drums and Louise Rivett on keyboards.

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Is the aim to sign to a bigger label or just stay on an independent and have that independence to try and do whatever you wanted to do?

Nat: I mean with us at the moment, it’s just who believes in us.  We’re with Alcopop, who are amazing. So supportive of us and really believe in everything we do. If it was later down the line, say a major, wanted to sign us, they’d have to get who we are and what we’re about to even consider it.

Erin: But we don’t want to be told, what to do and things like that too much.  We can take constructive criticism but we want our own creative freedom to be able to express ourselves how we want.

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You mentioned that collaboration with the Arts Council is trying to get people involved and interested from your experiences. You also do your gigs and engage with the audience in an unusual style. Gigs tend to be a combination of band separated from audience and gladiatorial combat closer to the front based on brute strength and male bonding rituals. Loose Articles’ gigs from the YouTube videos are a lot more relaxed and a lot more fun. There’s less division between the audience and band, which is very refreshing, to be honest with you. Is that the aim?

Nat: I guess it’s one of those things where the main thing about going to a Loose Articles gig is for everyone into in the room to be having fun. So that’s what we try to encourage and also the gig isn’t just about us playing. It’s about everyone else having a good time and getting everyone involved and that’s what we’re trying to do at the moment.

Erin: We want our gigs to be a safe space for everyone to enjoy it and have a good time. If they want to get involved in a bit of limbo, they’re more than welcome to! Laughs

How did that come about and in what song?

Erin: The limbo appears in the song Unpaid intern. The idea for the limbo just came when we’ve been on nights out and stuff and it’s just a way to break the ice on the dance floor and meet other people who are also in there. Just makes it a bit more fun, doesn’t it?

Nat: We’ve definitely noticed at the gigs that as soon as the limbo happens, everyone feels a bit more up for doing stuff and more all together a bit. Like they’re all looking each other like, oh, yeah, we can all dance together now. It’s nice because it’s bringing people together and having a laugh.

It’s like the limbo is a very silly game to do. You don’t have to do it properly as well. You can just roll under.

We’ve seen some really fun people trying to limbo and half fall over but still have the pint fully in the air and not drop any of it, so that’s great to see.

So what’s the reaction been then on the on the that the Arts Council tour bit, you know, in terms of, you know, other other people picking you up on the the offer to attend the pre gig stuff, the Q&A what you’ve learnt. How’s? How’s that gone in terms of, you know, people?

Nat: It’s gone really well, like, especially these past few weeks. We had a full class of a school come down. Luckily we’ve been in contact with other organisations who already run workshops like this who have been able to collaborate with us. Like we’ve got More Music in Morecambe happening soon and they always have a good crowd; around 30 kids there, some older sort of women & non binary people who are attending. It’s all been received so well; each one’s been completely different and it’s just really nice to chat to people who are really wanting to get into the industry.

Erin: It’s a good opportunity for us to share our story with people who are looking to get into the music industry. They can ask us anything and we can just be open and honest about how it is, how it is for us and they can shadow us during the sound check and stand on stage and see how things work. Because we all feel like if we had something like this when we was younger, we probably would have got into music a bit faster and the confidence to do it a bit more.

Then the next time we went over again, they had three songs and there were like now 3 or 4 bands with three original songs each. This time, they’ve got a full set of all original music and it’s great and it’s amazing and it’s going to put us to shame because they’re just so good already. They’ve just been booked for Rebellion festival in Blackpool, which they’re so excited about.

We’re so excited for them because it’s if it wasn’t for these workshops and doing this, it just shows like how much of a difference it actually makes. So yeah, it’s nice. It’s very, very nice and heart warming.

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When you’ve gone around these venues have you seen any change in the gender of people that do the sound or the lights or anything because it historically has been all male.

Nat: On this tour we have a fully female crew and we have our own sound technician, Liz, who’s coming along with us. It’s just about being visible, isn’t it, and showing people who come to the gigs that women can do these jobs as well.

There’s been a few who want to actually get into the tech side of it as well. So I’m sure there is going to be a shift in who’s going for these jobs. I have seen it myself like there are starting to be more female non binary crew members in venues so yeah. It’s a slow change.

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You present scenarios very humorously and deadpan while making very serious points. I have to say that as someone who saw the rise of punk and post-punk and more women into music (often enduring some horrific sexism and sometimes violence) to be able to express themselves, I’m shocked and saddened that 50 years later there are still prehistoric attitudes out there. Especially as the stuff I’m liking the most at the mo is stuff like The Meffs, Lambrini Girls and yourselves which is pushing boundaries and innovative musically and lyrically. In short, it’s not coming from men.

Nat: Well, Guitars, Cars you wrote the main lyrics for that one anyway.

Erin: I got the idea from a conversation I had in the workplace with a colleague who believed only men could play guitar. Like genuinely, if a woman was ever to play guitar, they’d be in their knickers and bras and it’d just be like for show, and they wouldn’t really be playing; there’d be a guy playing in the background. But I mean some people think that and it’s one of them in the song. It gives you a bit of material to write about. So it does seem mad to us. But yeah, it’s also quite funny.

Are a lot of your songs autobiographical because I love the lyrics to Sinead Loves Bitcoin?

Nat: She’s a very well-known Manchester photographer in the music scene. We just found it absolutely hilarious that she got hacked by Bitcoin hackers because her Instagram account is very focused on band photography. So she’s messaging loads of bands, but it wasn’t her, asking they  wanted to buy her Bitcoin.  If you meet Sinead as a person, she’s a character as it is and she should have her own TV show. We just found it really funny that she was trying sell Bitcoin.

Erin: Everyone we knew had a message off her asking do you want to buy £10,000 worth of Bitcoin? We were like, is it actually Sinead? Or what’s going on?

Listening to your earlier stuff prior to that and then listening from Sinead loves Bitcoin onwards. You seem to get a bit more of a groove. Had something changed around that at that time at all?

Erin: I remember when we wrote Sinead Loves Bitcoin because we wrote it together, didn’t we on garage band? I think that was probably a shift in writing style maybe.

Nat: 100%. Me and Erin started more collaboratively writing in a room the lyrics, guitar and bass. I think before, when we was writing all our other stuff, we didn’t really know what sound we were. We were just doing things because we were like, oh, this sounds all right. I think we just started to then realise oh this is what what’s happening. We were just starting to get, I guess, good at it and starting to get a bit groovy. Groovy chicks (laughs).

Erin right and Nat left (got that Paul? :))

I happened to come across you when I was picking the kids up and had Radio 6. Then I played your stuff on Spotify and then I went and bought your album which I think is absolutely fantastic. The songs are just so well put together. Really good bass and a really good groove,  really good guitar that’s not your standard barre chords but quirky, leftfield and imaginative, synthesiser and then really good vocal delivery on top with some great lyrics and themes. I thought it’s just such a rich rewarding album that I can play over and over again. The whole sound and production of it pretty much come together on that.

The album playing at 45RPM?

Nat: We were chatting to the label about it and they said because the album is quite short at around 30 minutes it would sound better at 45 than at 33 and I was like just go for it. I record collect and DJ a lot. Anyway, I’ve got albums that are like that and I forget they’re 45 and I like that. It kinda makes you think a bit.

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I mean, what do you think of the album? You must have been well, proud. Proud of it because it’s got absolutely fantastic songs.

Erin: Yeah, very, very proud. It’s is an achievement, isn’t it? To have a full body of work that you’ve worked so hard on. It’s like a child!

Nat: It’s mad because we’ve had these songs out there for so long that it was really nice to actually get them physically out there for everyone to hear. But as soon as we’ve got it out there, we’ve just started writing the second one. We don’t want to stop with it, and also it’s all a learning process as well. We like the production on the first but how can we make the second even better.

Did the songs change much from when you first played them  because during the life of playing them live and stuff they tend to evolve. Did these ones on your first album change a lot or did they pretty much come out fully formed?

Erin: Playing live definitely helps. Say, if we’ve done a done a couple of songs in the practise room, we want to get them out live straight away because it does change them and you make changes to make them sound better. You also see how the crowd reacts, so it definitely moulds it into something else, moving it forward.

Nat: I do remember when we was writing the album, we went on tour with a band called Thumpersaurus and we went out to Europe with them. That’s when we were testing out Unpaid Intern and I’ve Nearly Made It because we’d just written those songs for the album and we just threw them in the set.

I think that’s shaped both the songs quite nicely and they’ve developed. Now when we play Unpaid Intern it’s completely different to the album because we’ve extended it because we do the limbo to it and we have like a samba breakdown as well. It’s so much fun and it’s like loads of whistles involved and cowbells going off.

Erin: When we listen back to the album, because we play it different live so much it’s a bit like, oh, forgot what it sounds like on the record, dear. When you listen to it back, I’m always a bit of shocked like.

Nat: We only really play now a few old songs as well, and they’re completely different to how they were recorded like Snake. We recorded that in 2019 and it’s just a different song; even the feel. But it’s nice listening back to it on Spotify because it was the old us.

Erin: It’s of the time. Things move on and change don’t they?

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Influences?

Erin: We’re all into different stuff and have quite similar tastes including hip hop, post punk. Just like bits of everything, really. And you’re the same, aren’t you?

Nat: I like Bollywood tracks and stuff not like Loose Articles unless we decide to do a Bollywood album. Would be great though (laughs). I think when it comes to influences, the main thing that we are influenced by when it comes to our music is the everyday life and that inspires us more than us wanting to sound like this or that band. We do listen to a lot of like post punky, funky stuff, what we see as a common ground like Maximum Joy, Delta 5 and stuff like that.

Punk77: Above Delta 5 from Leeds. A late seventies feminist post-punk funk fiercely anti racist band that should have been bigger. Maximum Joy was an early-eighties Bristol post-punk band blending a whole host of genres and influences.

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We’ve never sat here and thought, oh, this is what we want to sound like. We’ve just accidentally ended up sounding like other bands  – There’s The Fall you [Erin] get compared to a lot with.

Erin: I think the way we write the songs it’s not really about the sound; it’s more about the idea and what it’s about. I think the sound comes after.

We don’t necessarily know what it’s going to sound like because we all kind of like do our own little bits of writing independently and then mash it together which makes it sound different.

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And different it certainly does sound. But the lyrical themes, whether about music misogyny, workplace woes or even pinball and Bitcoin, are articulated and delivered in a sarky humourous way but with an underlying clear message. Ony once in It’s Art does the obvious frustration spill over in a song about women playing instruments with some real angst in the chorus and playing.

Nat We’ve both never gone for lessons in music; We’ve just played and if it sounds right it sounds right. So don’t really stick to any sort of rules except for does it sound OK and is it in tune.

So what made you actually pick up your instrument in the start then?

Erin: Mine will be Kurt Cobain. I was obsessed with him. I went through my dad’s CD collection when I was a kid, got my little Walkman and just listened to Nirvana. I just loved it and I  wanted to be him.

Nat: Nicky Wire. Another man, but he wears more eyeliner and looks better in a dress than me, so I can get away with that (laughs). My parents took me to see Manic Street Preachers when I was 13 and I saw Nicky Wire on stage wearing the leopard print dress and full face of makeup. I just thought “That person’s so cool. I Just want to be like them and begged my dad to buy me a bass guitar and now I wear only leopard print, obviously and dyed my hair red like his.

I guess I think we’ve got like elements of Nirvana with little things grungier stuff sometimes.

The Manics lyrics are meaningful, very working class and with a purpose and I think I’ve taken that inspiration more than anything musically. We’re the same; we write with a purpose.

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Ah the sound. It’s agonising trying to explain. There’s bits of The Fall, B52’s, Slits and even The Stranglers circa Menineblack and La Folie with really heavy basslines and intricate angular guitar counterpoints. But you are yourself and that’s what’s really fantastic about it. So don’t, don’t take that as an insult.

Nat: That’s cool. We listen to those bands anywhere. So that’s really nice to know.

Erin: Yeah, that’s cool. We like that.

Let’s finish it musically though. So look, you’re starting to write some new songs. Are you gonna release anything this year or just tour the Scream album.

Nat: I think actual new Loose Article songs will more next year. However, there might be a collaborative Loose Article tune being released very soon with someone else.

Erin: And it’s funky.

Nat: It’s very funky and it’s nothing like what we’ve ever done before, so yeah.(Laughs)

What a fabulous band that deserves all the success they get. The future looks exciting for them and I can’t wait to hear new stuff and see them live.

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Note all images are taken from Loose Articles Facebook pages and where a credit is shown is credited here. If the photos are yours and not credited, please let me know if you want credit or them removed

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