Brightonian four-piece Black Honey have released their third L.P. A Fistful Of Peaches today. Led by firebrand frontperson Izzy Bee Phillips, the group is rounded out with guitarist Chris Ostler, bassist Tommy Taylor and drummer Alex Woodward. The album arrives with new highlight single Cut The Cord. With an appearance at London’s Rough Trade East tonight, the band will support the new album with a run of further in-store shows across next week, followed immediately by a 15 date tour across the UK, closing with a show at London’s KOKO.
Rising from cult underground favourites on their self-titled 2018 debut through to a genuine breakthrough success story on previous album – 2021’s Top 10-charting Written & Directed – Black Honey have amassed a legion of fans to their constantly shifting canon of fizzing, visceral indie and nostalgia-soaked pop. The first track they shared from the album was almighty opener Charlie Bronson, possibly the weightiest, most gnarly track the quartet have penned to date. Then came the woozily anthemic Out of My Mind showcasing a different side to the band’s capabilities. This was followed by the grunge-laden Heavy, outsider’s anthem Up Against It and platonic love letter OK. They are still able to swing from poppier dynamics on new gems like Cut The Cord and into a full on mosh-inducing chorus as seen on Tombstone, but every track is united by an outlook that feels more solidified than ever.
Listen to Cut The Cord below:
A Fistful Of Peaches is the group’s most personal, revealing album yet and a record that embraces every side: the palatable and the monstrous, the hopeful and the pitch black. Where Written & Directed showcased a band able to dip into seemingly disparate genres and pull them together into their own, its follow-up feels more pointed and streamlined.
Their third album still rings with the same musical sass that’s seen them easily find a home on the Academy and Arena stages of the country, but it’s also found a new space that’s less indebted to outside influence – to a sort of cultural moodboard of their inspirations – and more just about their real, lived experience in the world. As a document of a person and a band in constant development, A Fistful Of Peaches is Black Honey’s most important one yet.
As Phillips summarises: “Most of this record is me trying to figure out where the line is between normal mental health and when you’re having breakdowns every day that then become part of normal. I thought everyone cried everyday, I thought everyone had traumatic flashbacks and nightmares. This album is like, what the fuck? I didn’t have to have that? It’s like opening a new door to a future that I didn’t think possible, but it’s also soured by the realisation that I had to suffer through so much that I shouldn’t have had to. I don’t know what I’ll make next but it won’t be where I was when I made this.”
In-store dates:
MARCH
17th – Rough Trade East, London
18th – HMV, Crawley
18th – Resident, Brighton
19th – HMV, Cardiff
19th – Rough Trade, Bristol
20th – Vinilo, Bournemouth
20th – Vinilo, Southampton
21st – Pie & Vinyl,
22nd – Truck, Oxford
23rd – Rough Trade, Nottingham
UK Headline Tour Dates:
MARCH
24th – Esquires, Bedford
25th – Arts Centre, Norwich
26th – Academy2, Birmingham
28th – Cavern, Exeter
29th – Thekla, Bristol
31st – CHALK, Brighton
APRIL
1st – Rescue Rooms, Nottingham
2nd – Foundry, Sheffield
4th – Gorilla, Manchester
5th – University, Newcastle
6th – Classic Grand, Glasgow
8th – District, Liverpool
9th – Sugarmill, Stoke
11th – Chinnerys, Southend
12th – KOKO, London
Photography of Black Honey by Kalpesh Patel at London’s Brixton Academy and Alexandra Palace venues
https://rockshotmagazine.com/black-honey-glimpse-a-fistful-of-peaches-heavy/
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