The Lovely Eggs: 'We want other people to be able to live like us'

For singer and guitarist Ross, this record, like its six predecessors, represents “a snapshot in time of where we were at a certain moment”. Its more overtly psychedelic sound is also, she says, a reflection of the fact that “we never like to repeat ourselves”.

Ultimately, though, the biggest influence on the album was the all-consuming campaign to safeguard Lancaster Music Co-op. The fight centred on a pledge by city councillors five years ago to repair the building and give the Music Co-op a new lease. “Five years later it still hadn’t happened,” Ross explains.

“The reason why we’re in a band today, and the reason why our band pays the bills and we don’t have other jobs, we’ve got all the free booze and the amazing crowds that we get to play for, we’ve got to thank Lancaster Music Co-op for that,” she says.

“When me and David were both growing up, that place was invaluable, and basically for the last year we’ve been fighting Lancaster City Council to try to get them to agree to support us after they evicted us five years ago.”

It came down to defending a lifestyle, Ross says. “We want other people to be able to live like us, and if you want that then you need to have that at a very early age and the opportunities open to everyone. If the Music Co-op isn’t there the kids don’t get that opportunity. Youth and rock ’n’ roll go hand in hand, it’s about exploring art and music and making friends and all of that stuff and if there’s no space for that any more in society that’s shocking.

“We can’t really talk about whether these places exist on a global or a national scale, we can only talk about it in our world and the one that we had – Lancaster Music Co-op – was under massive threat and so we felt like we had to fight to defend that place because that’s where it all begins and ends for us. So that’s where we’re coming from in terms of defining a lifestyle, and then it’s up to them. If you’re in a punk rock band at 15 it’s up to you whether you decide to be an accountant at 25.”

Ross says the record attempts to convey how daunting it felt trying to juggle their own band while constantly firing off emails and having meetings with the city council then finding themselves “put in charge of a £1m building project”. “It was a feeling of being overwhelmed by life,” she says, However, she sees a universality in their situation. “Although the songs can be perceived as specific to our situation, I don’t think they really are because that’s something that people feel a lot nowadays, overwhelmed by stuff. People have got more work and there’s only 24 hours in the day, everyone feels overwhelmed and struggling with the amount of stuff that we’re expected to do. I think there’s a universal appeal in that way.”

The chinks of light in the record represent the band’s glass-half full outlook. “We live for the good times,” says Ross. “We didn’t want any of it to be (the way it was). Five years ago when the council said they would repair the building we expected them to do it...and it just wasn’t, they tried to sweep it under the carpet.

“But we feel like we’re out of the other side of it now. We’ve got a 99-year lease signed on the building, it’s meant that we can go back to doing what we do best, which is making records and being in a band and having fun. (So the album) is hopeful but it’s still documenting the bad times – it’s like that old adage, you can’t have the good times without the band times because the bad times put the good times into context. Yeah, we have been through an incredible amount of s*** in the last 18 months, and this record is a kind of diary of that, but we’re getting out of it and it’s going to come good.”

The Music Co-op was where Ross and Blackwell first met when Ross’s then-band Angelica started rehearsing there. “David recorded our first demos because he worked as a sound engineer in the studio at the Music Co-op,” Ross recalls. “So thta’s why we record all our stuff ourselves now because he knows how to do it all.”

Eggsistentialism is their third album in a row to be produced by Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips/Mercury Rev/Sparklehorse). Although Fridmann is based in upstate New York, Ross says that they have developed a good working relationship. “I’d like to say that he has become a friend now,” she says. “We’ve got a way of working with him where we say we think we might be ready to record an album now and he’s like, ‘OK, send me some ideas over’. We don’t really do demos, we think it’s a bit of a waste of time to work on a song and then go that’s great, let’s do it again. So we will send him some rough ideas of a song and then he’ll make some suggestions remotely and then we’ll keep that conversation going. Then there will be a point we we both think these are in good shape for a mix and we go over and mix there record with him, which is great because then we get to hang out and work on the record together.”

As far as their inspirations go, Ross says: “I’m inspired by an author like Richard Brautigan as I am by an artist like David Shrigley. I’m more inspired by art and literature than I am by other music. I try not to be (inspired by other music) because how can you create original work if listening to other people’s work that’s in the same area you’re working in, so I try and take my inspiration from elsewhere.”

Ross appreciates the consistent support that they’ve had over the years from BBC 6 Music DJs such as Marc Riley and Huw Stephens. In 2021 it also led them to a collaboration with Iggy Pop, who has a show on the station. “With him DJ-ing on 6 Music he became aare of our music and became a fan of our band. Then when we were doing the single I, Moron we knew that something was missing and David said, it would just sound great with Iggy Pop’s voice on there, why don’t we ask him? So we did. We already had that link with him playing our tunes, so it was good.”

On their tour later this month they will once again be joined by their son, Arlo. “He’s 11 now and he’s been on every single tour we’ve done in the last 10 years,” Ross says with pride. “It’s pretty amazing. He loves it, though. He loves the hotels and he loves eating pizza almost every night of the week.”

The couple arrange their touring around school holidays. “That’s part of it,” says Ross. “It’s not moaning about what’s not available, it’s about looking at what is available. We can’t tour all year round because we’ve got a kid and he’s got to go to school and that’s important and we’re not a massive rock star band that can afford a tutor to take round on the bus, but we do what we can – and we can tour in the holidays. I think it’s important to have that mentality of not always wanting the ideal situations because life isn’t really ideal, you just have to work around it.”

Eggsistentialism is out on Friday May 17. The Lovely Eggs play at Brudenell Social Club, Leeds on Sunday May 26.