by anna jane begley
I’m waiting for indie rock band The Eeps outside Finsbury Park station when I spot a young, moustached man wearing flared black jeans, boots and a beany hat. “I think I just saw a hipster,” I tell Ash, our photographer. “He could be one of the band.”
“I don’t think so, no one has messaged that they’re here,” Ash replies. I should have perhaps added that the man had a pair of drumsticks sticking out of his rucksack. Then we wouldn’t have waited for another quarter of an hour unknowingly standing next to Jay, evidently the band’s drummer, all of us awkwardly trying to spot interviewee and interviewer.
Eventually – like a blind date scene in a rom-com – eye contact is made, and laughter and greetings ensue. Despite the grunge get-up, Jay is smiley, affable, and apologetic for his bandmate’s lateness (in fairness, 45 minutes is tame in the world of rock n’ roll).
Blanche (bass) and Dani (singer and guitarist) later appear, guitar cases in hand and out of breath from rushing from their flat to the station. I get the impression this is a glimpse into their daily lives; rushing from one gig to another, instruments on their backs… Jay being the organised one who shows up early.
We head to the skate park, where they sit and do each other’s make-up – it’s an oddly intimate moment, and you can tell the three friends have a familiarity and ease with one another that comes from having to spend almost all their time together. They recently spent a few weeks touring around England and Scotland, including cities like London, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow and Edinburgh. “I’m happy to go on the record and say my least favourite city was Leeds,” declares Dani. However their favourite city, they tell me, was Glasgow. “From what we know, we won over Scotland a little bit,” Dani says. “It was great. It was so much fun. And obviously I can’t really say much because I’m Scottish myself, but I loved it.”
Any blazing arguments during the tour? “I was so surprised because in all honesty, we were having a bit of a rough patch before we went on tour, mostly because of this guy over here,” Dani tells me, pointing to Jay. (“Because these people don’t know how to treat a human being,” Jay interjects. I reckon there’s more to this story but I let Dani continue.) “I really thought that the plan was that we’ll do this tour and then we’ll decide whether Jay stays in the band, but also he was deciding whether he wanted to stay.”
Was it just artistic differences, or personal stresses? “We’re very similar and we’re very different,” Dani continues. “We butt heads a lot, but over stupid things, right? You know, it could genuinely just be a tone of how I’ve said something, or vice versa. And he likes to annoy me on purpose. And we’ve had screaming matches where after two seconds of silence and a deep breath, we go, I’m sorry. He goes, I’m sorry too.”
“He’s screaming at me,” Jay says, “and I signal like, I’m not gonna scream at you.”
“The last big run-in was because we were late to leave a rehearsal room,” Blanche adds. “[Dani] wanted to do one more round of a song, but because the room was written in my name, I was like, no, we’re gonna get shit for it.”
“Oh, my solo,” Dani recalls. “You make me sound like…to be fair, we had about 10 minutes leeway, and she is such a big stressor when it comes to time. It would take 30 seconds for me just to do it one more time, and we would still have about five to six minutes of clean up time. But she was like, no, we need to stop now. No ifs, buts or maybes now, now, now. And we got packed up within the next two or three minutes, and we had about five minutes left. And then she apologised.”
You can feel that Dani, in true lead singer fashion, is the big personality in the group, yet Blanche and Jay aren’t easily downtrodden. Their side-eyes and discreet facial expressions speak a thousand words, and deep down, you can feel that the trio’s distinct personalities balance each other out and that there is a unique connection there.
Dani and Blanche met in 2023 when Dani moved from Scotland to London, and they were both completing their A-levels. “I joined as a guitarist,” says Blanche, “then [I left for a bit] and came back as a bassist.” Jay joined later, having been scouted by Dani and Blanche while in rehearsals for another band in Angel, London. “I was coming back from rehearsal with my other band that I’m in,” Jay says, “and Dani, this little Scottish dude, comes up to me, and he’s like, ‘Oh, you’re a drummer.’ And I was holding all my drums [sticks up] and he’s asking my band mates if that was all right to steal me. And I was like, ‘Yeah, sure. That’s fine. What sort of music is it?’ He’s like, ‘Oh yeah. It’s like, Beatles, David Bowie, stuff like that.’ And of course, I don’t really listen to that. So I’m like ‘okay, that’s fine, I guess.’”
I bring up the awkward question of the “missing band members” – go to The Eeps’ Instagram page and five members pop up, as opposed to the three sitting opposite me today.
“So the lead guitarist left to do his own musical project,” Dani begins. “And…”
“He also didn’t like Dani,” Jay mumbles – I decide I quite like Jay.
“He didn’t like me,” Dani admits gamely. “And we didn’t know that until he left us on the day of a gig. It was three hours before, and he said he was leaving, good luck.” How did they manage to play the gig? “It wasn’t that bad,” says Jay. “We had to just cut the set a bunch.”
“As for our keyboardist, she’s an amazing pianist,” says Dani. “She’s an amazing musician all round. So she went off to do more blues and jazz stuff. We did have fluctuating lead guitarists for a bit. [We] really don’t have a good reputation for lead guitarists!”
In the two and a bit years since the band formed, there seems to be a sense of traction. As well as their UK tour, they’ve released a couple of songs, namely Mondays Bloom and Heavy, and a live album – the mention of which touches a nerve.
“We want to not credit that live album, that thing to us doesn’t exist, right?” says Dani. “The thinking behind it was we released Heavy, and then we released our second single, Mondays Bloom. So we thought we’ve got this kind of crappy live album thingy that’s been recorded and horribly mixed, and we perform terribly on it, but if we release that, and people listen to that, then there’s a good chance that they might listen to a couple of songs. And then they’ll be suggested our proper studio releases, and then they’ll listen to that.”
Any chance of an album on the way? “The truth is, we’re not big enough to release two singles and then release a full album,” Dani explains. “We’d spend so much time on it. We’d spend so much money on it. And people would be interested in it for maybe, maximum, a week, and then it’s gone. But single per single, there’ll be engagement, you can create buzz, and you can keep creating some sort of addiction.”
The Eeps are very passionate about their music and you can hear a real mix of influences: you can hear early Green Day and Nirvana in Mondays Bloom; the Beatles in Heavy. As alt rock lovers, I dare to ask if they have any pop singers they admire.
“Sabrina Carpenter,” Jay remarks, almost a bit too quickly. Blanche nods in agreement.
I like Chappell Roan, Dani says. “A lot of people were comparing her to David Bowie, and I saw that. And Sabrina Carpenter reminds me of an early Michael Jackson.”
“We were on the train,” recalls Blanche, “and I see Jay listening to her album [Short n’ Sweet] and I was like ‘that’s funny because I was listening to that this morning’. And then I look at Dani and Dani’s [also] listening to Sabrina Carpenter.”
So Sabrina’s music is the one thing they can all agree on? The trio nod in agreement. And with that, they discuss her new singles being released in August. Maybe the secret to keeping a successful band – especially one with such distinct personalities – is indeed Sabrina Carpenter. Oasis, take note.
pictures by /ash