INTERVIEW: Marketplace

Image by Megan Sidney

Winter’s coming…but thanks to Hartlepool’s indie pop outfit Marketplace the transition to the cold and darker months will be easier as they release their warm, summery debut EP, MARKETPLACE HAVE MADE AN EP! The name, which might seem to lack imagination, comes from the frustrations of people waiting a long time for its release. “We’ve been a band now for nearly seven years and this is the first body of music that we’re releasing. We just thought it was a fun little jab at ourselves.”

Despite the lack of releases in their time together, the quintet of Evie Rhodes, Joel O’Beirne, Jack Purcell, Matthew Short and Ross Dixon have been lighting up stages (and hearts) with their fun-filled, energy-packed stage presence and catchy, upbeat and melodic indie pop songs. According to the band, their songs take different form depending on who came up with the idea. “If it’s a song Evie’s brought to the table, she’ll usually come to us with the whole song and vibe already, then we’ll all jam it and write our individual parts before putting it together in the rehearsal room/Jack’s garage… Other songs are written completely from scratch with us all together in a rehearsal room. Fruit, for example, came from a riff Jack was playing, and was completely written in an afternoon. Edroom was somewhere in between. Jack had a full instrumental demo pretty fleshed out but we didn’t really know where it would go when we came to working on it together.”

There’ll be loads of little mistakes all over the EP, but I think that just adds to the humanness of it

Written when the band were leaving uni, the songs capture the feeling of being in your early 20s but without taking themselves too seriously. “Edroom was inspired by watching the 2022 season of Love Island. Specifically, the whole Casa Amor saga between Andrew and Tasha…I thought it was absolutely hilarious and such a good microcosm of how stupid and confusing modern relationships can be.”

The EP is crafted with foot-tapping tempos, gorgeous hooks and anthemic choruses, which burst from the speaker with youthful enthusiasm and infectious joy. Sonically, there are notes of eighties new wave akin to Flock Of Seagulls and The Cure, nineties indie acts such as Republica and Pulp, and contemporary bands Alvvays and Pale Waves. These influences are beautifully blended together with a spacious and vibrant mix from producer Chad Rodgers (Cape Cub). “We clicked really well with him from the start. He just immediately got the sound and vibe we were going for, but still managed to bring things to the production that surprised us. There are so many cool little sounds all over the EP that were all Chad, he just knew exactly what the songs needed. Still somehow haven’t met him in person though, for all we know he could just be AI.”

Plenty of bands have tried in vain to capture the essence of their live performance, but Marketplace seem to have nailed it with the fizzing presence of this release. “All the EP tracks are ones we’d been playing live a lot before recording them, so they kind of formed and evolved with live performances in mind. When it came to recording, we tried to recapture this energy by playing our parts in as few takes as possible… There’ll be loads of little mistakes all over the EP, but I think that just adds to the humanness of it, which is something we find cool in the music we like.”

Marketplace release MARKETPLACE HAVE MADE AN EP! on 4^th October. They play Twisterella on Saturday 10^th October.