Since forming near the end of 2018, London’s Lyena have proved themselves to be one of the most exciting new acts emerging from the capital right now. With their acclaimed debut single, ‘Once A Queen’, still doing the rounds online, the band recently returned to deliver their latest offering, ‘Headlines’.
With notable comparisons to acts such as Fontaines DC and The Snuts, the post-punk trio smash out a cacophony of soaring guitars and thunderous drums on their return, delivering a bold and engaging new offering that looks to get you pumped up at every turn.
With the group back on everyone’s radar, Chris Bound caught up with them to find out more about their influences and the meaning behind their latest release.
Words by Chris Bound
Discovered via http://musosoup.com
Chris) Hi guys, how are you doing today?
Lyena) We’re all good. We’ve been stuck at home for a while and just cleaned every kitchen cupboard, hoovered every room in the house and stayed well away from any other humans. Living the dream.
How would you best describe the music you make?
We’ve been compared to the bastard child of Bloc Party and QOTSA once before, which was pretty accurate. We’re really focused on groove and melody and we try to make our live shows as energetic as possible. We want people to move and dance around. We all have different points of view and are inspired by a lot of genres. As a rule we always aim to make music we’d want to listen to.
Can you tell us how your sophomore single ‘Headlines’ came about and what inspired it?
The way we write our songs is very dynamic. We usually piss around with ideas in rehearsal and create these huge 15-minute-long recordings, then we take our turn developing specific parts. The lyrics usually come later. We don’t ever think, “Right, let’s write a track about the government”, it’s more about how we connect with the music and how the track makes us feel emotionally.
A year ago when this song was first written, Love Island was everywhere, Boris Johnson was kicking up a fuss, the royal baby was all over the headlines and we were sick and tired of seeing the same vein of headlines overpowering the real stories – which is funny because it seems more relevant now than ever. The narrative [of the song] follows characters in a wider world who are drawn a bit from ourselves, our friends and people who we meet in our day-to-day lives. The protagonist in this song actually pops up in a couple of our songs; we kind of follow his journey.
Do you feel that having a message in your music is important today?
Absolutely. With Brexit, the Tories and all of the other shit you see on the news, people our age are just frustrated with having a voice that’s not being heard. Music for us is that platform where we can just scream “What the fuck is going on?!” and people will listen. Writing songs about what you know just gives you a more genuine voice.
At the moment times are pretty bleak, so a lot of our themes reflect that, as we write about what affects us. Hopefully that won’t always be the case but right now we want our music and shows to be a space where people can feel connected, come together and dance around.
Can we expect an EP or album from Lyena anytime soon?
We have another single that we recorded at the same time as ‘Headlines’, which is ready to go. It was a toss-up between the two of them to be the next release but ‘Headlines’ felt more relevant right now. We hope to drop another single in a month or so depending on how things go. After that we’ll most probably head into the studio, once we can leave our houses, to record an EP.
What about your plans for the rest of the year? Are you hoping to get out on the road again soon?
We were supposed to have the busiest few months of our career. A single-launch party, a couple of shows outside of London, a UK tour support slot and a couple of shows around Europe that were all booked and ready to go – but naturally they’ve all been cancelled because of the pandemic. The only gig we have still in the pipeline is at Paper Dress Vintage in Hackney on 12 June. We’re waiting to see if that can still go ahead but it’s one of our favourite venues so we really hope everything will be better by then. In the meantime we are working on some quarantine sessions: acoustic covers etc over on our Instagram.
Finally, what’s on the band’s bucket list?
Glasto is obviously the dream for us. We managed to get tickets for this year but were secretly hoping to get booked and not have to go as punters. We’d love to be able to travel around the world and play shows every night. Other than that, make the next FIFA soundtrack? Appear on Soccer AM? Or maybe even write a new Match of the Day theme tune.
Lyena’s latest single, ‘Headlines’, is available to stream and download now. Have a listen to it below.