This year saw Fender resurrect the Marquee Club for one night only in London’s Soho, hosting an electrifying evening of live punk music from Lambrini Girls, Soft Play, Nova Twins and more, to honour the launch of its all-new vintage style line of electric guitars and basses: the Vintera II series. On the night Lambrini Girls’ raucous set had the crowd bashing their heads along to ‘Mr Lovebomb’ and ‘Lads Lads Lads’ while Pheobe climbed on the shoulders of fans. Bassist Lilly Macieira and vocals/guitar Phoebe Lunny discusses the release of the series.
Photos: Mike Palmer
Last time we spoke was just before the pandemic - and you’ve absolutely exploded since then. Tell me a bit about the journey the band has undertaken.
It's been a bit of a mental time to be honest, it all started when we jumped on a slot at The Great Escape in 2022 at the very last minute, a few days before the festival. That's the first time anyone had ever really turned their heads at what we were doing and from there it started to pick up steam.
You were recently asked to play at Fender’s celebration of the Fender’s Vintera II Series, which looked incredible. You’re both playing Fender Mustangs in your White Van video – what’s your experience been playing with Fenders in general? What do you enjoy the most about them?
We love Mustangs! They’re durable enough to take a beating and not break in the pit. We also have a Vintera Jazzmaster and a Vintera Tele Bass. Jazzmaster has a really trashy abrasive sound to it, which works perfectly, The Tele Bass is just a league of its own really. Sounds massive.
What were your first ever instruments?
Our first instruments were both Piano!
Fender has recently re-released a series of guitars aiming to capture the nostalgic style and sound of the “golden age” of Fender. What are some old-school artists and sounds you take inspiration from for your own music?
From the ‘Golden Age’ the obvious choices would be Hendrix or Dick Dale. Depends what you classify as an old school artist- J Mascis has got to have one of the sickest guitar tones of all time.
This is possibly quite a mean question, but has there been a particular city (or country)that really blew you away while touring?
There's been a few. The Faroe Islands was probably the most unique experience of them all. Its in the Arctic Circle, we played at 1am on a stage, in a playground. It was in the middle of the summer- so it didn’t get dark. So we played in the midnight sun.
Speaking of, your on-stage personas are infamous; you love interacting with the audience in true punk-rock style. Does this influence the way you create your music – do you picture yourself performing live while recording? Do you have a set routine, or do you play off the crowd?
It’s a mixture of the two. There are things we usually will do with the audience because we know they’re crowd pleasers, a lot of the time we will play off the crowd too. Never really picture ourselves playing it live whilst recording, it usually needs to be played out a few times before we know what we’re doing live with it.
What’s your general song-writing process?
It changes from song to song. Either we write a tune and put lyrics over it. Or we’ll fit the two together at once.
There’s been some recent conversation going around about how a lot of artists don’t enjoy the idea that their work is purely auto-biographical. Do you feel your work is purely a reflection of your own experiences that just happens to resonate, or do you purposely write in order for people to see themselves in your work? Or is it a bit of both?
That's a really good question. The songs are ultimately about issues that make us pissed off. The reason it resonates with people is because a lot of other are pissed off/have been affected by them too. But everything we have sung about so far, has come from personal experience or something that we are really angry about.
What are some artists that you’re loving right now?
Enola Gay, CLT DRP, Loose Articles, DITZ, TOKKY HORROR.
I’ve found, and you can absolutely correct me if I’m wrong, that a lot of post-punk musichas become incredibly performative – you’ve noted in interviews before that much of the scene has been overtaken by rich men that are essentially cosplaying as punks. Haveyou found that’s changed in the last few years, or is there still work to be done in these spaces?
There's still work to be done in those spaces. Punk is definitely for everyone and if we can work towards a common goal then there's no issue with whoever, from whatever background you are from partaking. The more voices highlighting the same issues the better! Just for the love of god- please don’t pretend to come from a background where you struggled- if you didn’t, and then leverage that for the sake of your bands success. That is how the working class gets fetishised. It's gross.
Do you have any upcoming projects or new releases that you'd like to share?
MAYBE WE DO MAYBE WE DON’T YOU WILL JUST HAVE TO WAIT AND SEE xxxxx
Victoria Comstock-Kershaw is an arts writer and editor for Fetch London.