In the couple days leading up to my conversation with Herbie May, Hebden Bridge was graced with the year’s first sun-soaked days. Very quickly everyone made their way out of hibernation and started walking the streets in shorts. It’s the sort of spring-time rarity that sends English people into delirium; day-drinking on a Tuesday and meandering around town ice-cream hopping.
On the contrary, the day I’m leaving to go meet Herbie is cut up with frequent downpours and hailstorms. We end up huddled in the corner of a cafe, both unsure of the logistics of the meeting. Weeks prior we had discussed an interview but, after time spent just messaging over Instagram, it felt less like any form of work. However, I did start recording and it very quickly spiralled into a non-stop conversation; by the end the recording was just shy of an hour and half.
Herbie May was signed to the Speedy Wunderground label at just 15, alongside his band The Lounge Society – a concept that frightens me senseless. Since the swift and overwhelming push into the public eye, and the subsequent downturn in Lounge Society’s activity, Herbie, still incredibly young, now performs as a solo act. It’s just him and a guitar, a strikingly different environment to being in a band with three others to fall back on. Herbie’s experience of starting this new chapter has certainly been transformative.
“Thinking about how to hold an audience with so few tools – just guitar and voice – and then you’ve got to fill half an hour. You have to find the motivation from nowhere. With a band you can’t let them down, there’s no element of choice involved. You do what you do out of duty to this institution, but when you are that institution, you could just go up and not bother. But I found myself digging deep and eventually you pull something out.”
Herbie’s first release was the AA side Bleeding / Shoelaces in January. He tells me about the next AA side Uphill / Apple, out in May, with Archie Dewis as the sole producer. Backing vocals are provided by Rebecca Spooner with Albie Shaw-White of Rose Villas on drums. The new work is on Red Licorice Records, Herbie’s own label. Vinyl pressings are available for Bleeding / Shoelaces and will be for Uphill / Apple. The best way to describe Herbie’s new direction is in his own words:
“We’ve been cool, now it’s time to be honest.”
Herbie shared the new tracks with me and there’s definitely a new depth of sound compared to Bleeding / Shoelaces. Both songs have a fragmented country-esque jangle, sewn together with a sort of lo-fi drone. It feels really fleshed out and layered. You can almost deconstruct each element and track the creative process.
Herbie has an indisputable charisma when it comes to songwriting. It throws me back to when songs were a form of storytelling and folklore. It may be taboo to compare someone to Bob Dylan but I really can’t help myself, especially in Uphill – it’s impossible not to hear the similarities. I almost feel a little guilty that I have the privilege of hearing it before the rest of you.
It’s a comment about Herbie having to announce the release on Instagram that veers us onto social media talk – something I’ve found happens often when interviewing musicians. They all share a similar perspective – social media and a phone-centric culture discourages creativity and freedom.
“Social media pitches everyone against one another. Like in the kingdom of the blind where the one-eyed man is king, in the screen world, the screenless person is going to fare better in the long term. In the short term though, you will miss so many opportunities. When people ask me how the label’s going, I’m like, the label is in my pocket.”
In a similar breath, there’s an air of importance around how Herbie talks about the opposite: physical media. Red Licorice places importance on getting music out into the real world and having people own the vinyl of their favourite bands. In a world that’s increasingly disinterested in the arts, there is nothing more powerful than owning and directly supporting an artist’s work. Everyone is conscious of the evils that are committed by big music streaming platforms but it often feels too difficult or complicated to take action. The easiest solution is to put money in the artist’s pocket. So, buy vinyl and look incredibly cool while doing it.
There’s undeniably a certain magic in having music in your hands and digging through boxes waiting to strike gold. So, I’m incredibly pleased when Herbie reaches into his bag and hands me a copy of his first vinyl release. It’s a real marvel. Other than himself, Lily Rae Grant’s debut 7” single Poison Ivy / Forget About is out via Red Licorice, as is Jessie, the debut 7” by the recently signed band Pareidolls.
“That’s the thing I want. If I can get a song of mine or of a good artist into someone’s hands who genuinely values it, I just think that’s great. Some cyberattack will wipe out the internet but they can’t wipe out all physical objects.”
Aside from the already impressive feat of having a solo career and running his own record label, Herbie is hosting and supporting Big Truck at The Trades Club on 23rd May. It’s his first serious endeavour into booking bands and it sounds like a whole new world. It really conveys that Herbie has spent time soul-searching, finding what he wants from music and is now taking the leap of faith. It’s what is desperately needed from the industry. Growth can only come from risk.
It feels impossible to ignore Herbie’s past with The Lounge Society. The pandemic hit just after their debut single Generation Game but they ran steady and released a 2021 EP Silk For The Starving, followed by the debut album Tired Of Liberty in 2022. For their age, the band were unusually exceptional but there’s something to say about the reality of being teenage rock stars.
“We played characters. I mean, Jesus Christ, I was comparing myself to Keith Richards at 17 years old.”
Herbie’s incredibly candid about his time with The Lounge Society. It’s hard to avoid the topic of addiction. No matter what sort of a person you are, or how strong-willed you believe yourself to be, it’s insidious in the industry. It’s hard to think of the man in front me as anything but personable and kind, but it clearly had a profound impact.
“I looked at myself one day and thought: I’m so boring to be around. I couldn’t have a normal relationship with it, so I quit everything.”
Despite the nuances, we can both agree that there needs to be a certain degree of delusion in performance. Herbie is exploring new methods in his own live performance now playing solo.
“It’s exciting at the moment. It’s a new chapter. I feel like I’ve learned a lot and I’m starting to craft a live performance. I’m thinking about showmanship in a new way.”
Many of the best gigs I’ve been to have had a level of separation between the crowd and the band. I have many memories of looking up at a live band and thinking that the sound being produced is utterly impossible and what I’m being presented with must be paranormal in some sense. I felt a sense of this when first seeing Herbie perform. Playing solo forces this intense attention onto you and often artists can’t quite translate when playing alone, but for Herbie, it almost feels like a rite of passage. It seems incredibly natural that Herbie’s new direction is as a soloist and it comes across in the live setting.
Most of our conversation ends up encapsulating the impact of live music on the soul. Both me and Herbie have equally impassioned and possibly pretentious ideas about it.
“I saw Aldous Harding at the Albert Hall. I’m a human – I know that – but when I saw her, I thought that’s not a human. And I mean, since the dawn of time, we need rhythm and pitch – it’s encoded into ourselves. I don’t know whether that comes from the divine or whether that comes from the necessity to survive and communicate.”
Me and Herbie spent the best part of our meeting talking about music. From his experiences seeing Nick Cave in Cannes, Aldous Harding at the Albert Hall and Kendrick Lamar in Japan, you can tell the intense emotional impact music has on him. This translates equally into the music he’s putting out. There’s a lot of care taken with each element and the sound is so delicately intimate and personal it strikes a unique chord upon listening. This does not differ with the new material.
There’s so much that could be written from our conversation. I could rattle on about how earnest and insightful his music is, but I won’t do it justice. All you have to do is listen, go see him or buy a vinyl and find out for yourself. It’s hard to ignore the importance of what Herbie May is doing.
Words by Poppy Cortese
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