鈥淒IY [do it yourself] is a very useful method within activism, art and music because it is totally pure,鈥 explains Holly Ross, one half of Lancaster鈥檚 brilliantly lo-fi punk husband/wife duo, The Lovely Eggs. 鈥淚t allows you complete freedom to express what you want to in exactly the way you want to. No funding hoops to jump through. No boxes to tick. It鈥檚 about getting off your arse and doing stuff now, with what you鈥檝e got. So yeah, that approach is pretty essential these days.鈥 It鈥檚 an attitude that has seen The Eggs go far, fast.
The Eggs are currently on tour with their new album, This Is Our Nowhere 鈥 a self-released statement of intent recorded at Lancaster Music Co-op. Baby Arlo, the couple鈥檚 two-year-old son, is now on the road with them. What鈥檚 gigging life like, post-baby? 鈥淥h, it鈥檚 pretty good. No mammoth hangovers. No being sick into carrier bags in the front of the van anymore, mostly. We鈥檝e taken Arlo on tour with us since he was four months old. He鈥檚 road-hardened. Not that much has changed, apart from the fact our rider now includes milk.鈥
This Is Our Nowhere is a nod to isolation both geographical and creative, says Blackwell. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a big British underground scene that gets ignored by the mainstream music press and we鈥檙e proud to be a part of it. It includes our fans too. We鈥檙e in oblivion and it feels great!鈥 鈥淎t first the album was going to be about our hometown, Lancaster. There have been a lot of changes here recently. Several shops are closing, many old beautiful objects are being dumped in skips, and there are a lot of rich landlords taking over the city. So we were going do it all based on this theme. There are still some songs about that 鈥 Forest of Memories is about the city being wrecked by developers and Goofin鈥 Around (in Lancashire) is about the mid-1990s Lancashire house party scene. But there鈥檚 other general stuff on there too; some real life event lyrics and then more trippy/philosophical songs.鈥
The result is an album fizzing with noise, distortion and joyous riffing 鈥 a bedrock that slides kaleidoscope-like between nimble, grungy punk and psychedelic freak- outs. The duo鈥檚 love of DIY props (which they employ in videos and on stage) has peaked this year, as evidenced in the delightfully trippy Magic Onion video. 鈥淲ell we are in love with odd and bizarre things, and psychedelia kind of embraces all that. Plus we adore the music. When we first started The Lovely Eggs our sound didn鈥檛 really go in that direction, but that鈥檚 changing. We are really into a lot of 1960s and 1970s carboot monstrosities 鈥 you know things that end up in your front room and you just think 鈥榳hy?鈥
鈥淲e sourced a lot of the props for the Magic Onion video at Lancaster Music Co-op; we also spent a number of days making loads of psychedelic magic onions dripping with neon and glitter. The visuals are very important to us. Our thought is this 鈥 it has to look as obscene as it sounds.鈥
Charlotte Richardson Andrews
