More about: Lip Filler

With a week to bed in, we can confidently say we're obsessed with Lip Filler's debut self-titled EP. Delivering on good old-fashioned indie, the 5-piece are quickly becoming Gigwise HQ favourites thanks to this 4-track run of crowd pleasers. 

Letting us in and taking us deeper into the release, the band took us through the EP; track by track...

'Cool'

'Cool' is basically about being in that weird transitional stage of young adulthood where you’re not secure enough in your identity. It leads you to project your insecurities onto other people you believe aren’t experiencing the same struggles.

'Haircut'

'Haircut' is about adapting to a metropolitan lifestyle and constantly being over-stimulated and confronted by technology. We all moved to London at a weird and unwelcoming time, so these lyrics resemble our headspace after moving to the city. This was one of the first songs we wrote after our first single ‘Cool’. At first, we were a bit standoffish about the overtly indie hook in the chorus - it was a bit of a guilty pleasure. But after recording it with St Francis Hotel, it was given a new life and a modern edge. He helped us filter our frantic ideas, which brought some cool outcomes, like replacing sections with sample loops. We had a lot of fun on this track, and it definitely comes out in the energy of it.

'Susie'

‘Susie’ is a song about feelings in a post-Brexit Britain. It’s about older generations and the lack of attention they can give to issues of the younger generations. The bar “Your breath smells like Persil” is a nod to an old-school method of punishment where you would get your mouth washed out with soap. It signifies conservative patterns of thinking that still linger in our current generation through hypocritical politicians and lawmakers, impacting society for the worst. The lyrics came before most of the instrumental content, which was a new way of songwriting for us, and the vocals were definitely what drove the energy behind the track. Susie always had a raw live energy, but what was important to us was that it maintained this energy in the studio. Alongside producer St Francis Hotel, we managed to capture this energy bang-on.

'Monster Truck'

Monster Truck is the first song we wrote that tells a story from the perspective of a character. It’s a take on American high school culture, derived from films like Napoleon Dynamite. The writing process came pretty naturally, and we managed to finish the track over two days, straight away getting excited about how this song sounded different from the previous stuff we’d written. We refined the track, taking inspiration from the grungy aesthetic of American bands like Pixies and Pavement. There was a strong American influence in this song. It probably came after naming the track after a sport that involves giant automobiles crashing into one another. We reckon this is unanimously our favourite track off the EP (shh).

On A Whole...

Lip Filler is a project we’ve become so involved in that it’s basically completely taken over our lives. It’s a projection of our living situation and how we’ve all changed as people over the past few years. All of us have many individual influences and we’ve learnt so much through each other whilst writing these songs. We’ve hit the ground running and put our personalities and lives into the music. That’s why our music sounds so reminiscent of frantic noughties indie rock, it reflects the human aspect of us growing into adulthood within a manic living situation together.

What started out as a bunch of housemates pissing about in the living room, getting constant noise complaints has become something we are all so invested in and excited for. The fact that other people are excited about it too is great but terrifying. The EP is something that none of us could have done individually and something we could have only done through working together. We’re each other’s therapists and worst enemies simultaneously - like a dysfunctional family. Too often, we find ourselves thinking about what’s cool, too pretentious, or what sounds like stuff other current bands are doing. But that’s essentially just the struggle of growing up, and we’ve all been doing it together through the format of this band. The countless hours of deliberation over all the details of our music have accumulated into this mad thing, and it feels real.

Grab your copy of the Gigwise print magazine here.

More about: Lip Filler