FFO: The Strands – Ed Sullivan

North-East rockers The Strands return with a new line up and brand new track, ED SULLIVAN. The track is a gritty, driving two-minute-long indie offering with elements of current postpunk revivalists such as Yard Act. This relentless assault of sonic energy, complete with moreish guitar riffs, sharp vocal delivery and a rather danceable change – that mixes things up halfway through the track, demonstrates a band who go in satisfyingly hard but keep things pleasantly simple… And interesting. 

Here the band give us some insight behind the track’s inspirations in an FFO…

IDLES – Never Fight A Man With A Perm

This song delivers raw and aggressive vocals with a punk attitude, accompanied by frenzied drums, keeping a suspenseful, heartbeat-like tempo throughout. Songs like this inspired us to incorporate more of our alternative/punk influences into our sound when writing ED SULLIVAN. Non-conventional vocalists, like the one of this band, allowed us to find our inspiration to be more open vocally and lyrically when writing ourselves and to be more sporadic/non-perfectionist in our process.

The White Stripes – Fell In Love With A Girl

I couldn’t get this band out of my head when hearing the drums for ED SULLIVAN. When Tom goes on the crash the song just comes alive and to me, is reminiscent of a hard-hitting White Stripes hook. I think during the recording process when finding our guitar tones, we additionally drew inspiration from this band and others from the post-punk revival era and wanted to embellish that into our music. I think you can really hear the grit of the guitars throughout the track.

The Stooges – No Fun

Vocally, Iggy Pop is a huge inspiration for me. His raw, unorthodox vocals brimming with eccentricity just stood out to me as something I wanted to embody in my songs. So much so that I took direct lyrical inspiration from a section of this song where Iggy screams out “Well come on! Well come on!” He is the godfather of punk after all. The simplicity of The Stooges was something I also loved. If you can make something simple sound good, you’ve accomplished what you need to in my eyes as a songwriter. If a song just feels good and right, then let it be. ED SULLIVAN is an example of that. It’s basically like two notes and two chords and it sounds huge!