Herbie May: 'In a post-lockdown world I had a self-imposed lockdown of a kind'
Herbie May describes the last 18 months as a “total, radical deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction” of himself after flying a little too close to the sun during the flurry of attention accorded to his band The Lounge Society following the release of their album Tired of Liberty in 2022.
Having, by his own admission, “lived and indulged in quite a chaotic lifestyle” in his late teens when the post-punk band from Hebden Bridge took off, he found they “stylistically and artistically and then business-wise hit a brick wall”.
“Things started to slow down and you realise that’s sort of what happens, actually, because the game is rigged from the off, so you might as well go back to your roots and express what it was when you started. There is no formula for success, the chasing of it will only drive you crazy – it certainly happened to me as part of the band.”
Going sober, he started to withdraw from socialising. “I spent a lot of time on my own – quite an unhealthy amount, actually, I really overcompensated, to be totally honest, and that was worse,” he says. “It got to the point where I would only really see band members in rehearsals, even they’re my closest friends and I love them more than anyone. I struggled to find a balance and quite a lot of things came up for me that I maybe hadn’t realised I hadn’t dealt with.”
Nevertheless “little snippets of songs started to come through”. The issue was that they were “very much personal – they weren’t appropriate for the band”, so instead he has launched a solo project – the first fruit of which is a single called Bleeding/Shoelaces, which he’s releasing this week on 7in vinyl on his own label, Red Licorice Records.
“I think (the songs) spoke about a different experience, maybe an experience which is more universal than we think,” he says. “I don’t like the way everything comes back to this frame of reference but unfortunately in a post-lockdown world I had a self-imposed lockdown of a kind, and I think so many young people, for one reason and another, whether it’s the rise of digital technology or just the anti-social, bitter taste in the air that seems to be around at the moment, or whether it’s because of those experiences of the real lockdown, we’re all very isolated and many of us are struggling to find ways of reconnecting.”
Adopting a stripped-down, acoustic approach – “These songs were written with no career move in mind” – May hopes that “the ideas communicated” will resonate with “someone somewhere”. He cites the influence of Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile’s 2017 collaborative album Lotta Sea Lice as well as Matt Johnson of The The. “I have these beatiful memories of driving to festivals and listening to Uncertain Smile,” he says. “I’d stopped going to gigs as part of withdrawing into myself and my sort of re-entry into society was to go and see The The at Holmfirth.
“Some of the lyrics in there – that is a man who’s been through some things and has such an eye for the personal, the microcosm of detail, those aches and pains of a morning all the way up to the grand tectonic political landscape, that for me is really tuned in and that for me is where a great lyricist lives. It’s responding to the metaphysical with the mundane, and responding to the mundane with the metaphysical. It’s that zooming in and zooming out or finding the specific in the general and the general in the specific. The The do that incredibly.”
May’s new songs have been produced by Gordon Raphael, who has previously worked with The Strokes and now lives in Hebden Bridge. He recalls the American introducing himself after a Lounge Society show. “In subsequent years we’ve worked together a few times with the band and then more recently we’ve become very good friends. We keep bumping into each other in wholefood shops in town, there between the courgettes and cucumbers there we often find each other. Then one day I decided I was going to make this record with Archie (Dewis) from the band, who’s also a fantastic producer, I couldn’t have done it without him.
“But I said do Gordon, do you want to work together? and he said, ‘Yes’, so off the three of us went a few weeks later to Eiger Studios in Leeds with these songs in mind. Archie did a little bit of arrangement and he played the drums, Gordon has this fantastic ear for the intricate details of the song. Because I’m not naturally a singer I needed some coaching or at least some patting on the back so I could get the words out and he’s so fantastic at that. His role as a producer goes beyond dials and knobs and faders; it’s very much human production, I think, and that goes for Archie Dewers, too.”
Now “ready to live without the fear...and just go out and see what the world does”, May is venturing out for his first solo shows, promising a “live set’s worth” of his own material with a solo album “definitely” to follow. This month he supports XGenerationX, the band led by Generation X drummer Mark Laff, on a national tour.
He has high hopes that Red Licorice Records will also provide a stepping stone for other artists. “I want to be able to provide the platform where someone who wakes up of perhaps a gloomy morning, picks up their guitar and sits down at their little Casio keyboard and comes up with an idea, I want to be able to let them in any way they like turn it into a physical 7in object and get that to an audience – that’s the dream,” he says.
In the meantime, May is adamant that this is not the end of The Lounge Society. “We’re currently separate but it is a break to get the health back. But I would definitely urge people to keep an ear out for Lounge Society music in the near future – particularly people based in the Calder Valley.”
Herbie May supports XGenerationX at Hebden Bridge Trades Club on November 11 and Social, Hull on November 18. https://redlicoricerecords.com/