Superglu: International Showcase Fund (SXSW)

“Bands don’t come more instantly infectious than SuperGlu” DIY

“Punk with a pop flourish. Matching askew melodies to some wry, acerbic lyrics, the whole package is shot-through with a punk energy” Clash

An abstract painter, a disco dancing sociologist, a bloke who lives on a houseboat and guitarist form a band. No, it’s not the start of a joke, although there are plenty of laughs and a fair bit of goofing
around involved. It’s the story of SuperGlu, the band from Manningtree in Essex who have been rapidly shaping up to be one of the most exciting forces in British guitar music of recent years. Since their formation at the end of 2014 the four piece have been praised for their laser-precise punk pop workouts by the likes of DiY magazine and Clash, been enthusiastically spun and bigged-up by radio tastemakers like Huw Stephens and John Kennedy and graced stages as illustrious as Latitude (twice) and the headline slot for BBC Introducing at Reading & Leeds Festival 2016.
The BBC subsequently broadcast the band’s slacker anthem ‘Weekend’ live from Reading Festival on Radio1 in the immediate afterglow of the festival and featured brand new single ‘Dreams’ live from Reading as BBC Introducing’s much lauded Thursday Tip just ahead of its commercial release.
The music, often fast and furious, is informed by the couldn’t-give-a-shit attitude of punk, but at the same time never shies away from seriously generous dollops of pop catchiness, although never with the interesting knots and gnarly bits smoothed down or ironed out. The spikiness of The Pixies combined with the ocean fresh four part harmonies of the Beach Boys is how one reviewer saw it,
and although that’s surely only part of the story, it’s a decent starting point.

Their songs are mysterious creatures with a succession of one note titles. Is ‘Oil’ about aggressive Western military interests in the Middle East, or an ode to a broken down motorbike? Is ‘Diving Bell’ about a piece of equipment for sub-aqua exploration or an expression of the dark recess of the human mind? Or both? You’ll have to find out for yourself. You might already have come across SuperGlu.’s frontman, singer/guitarist Ben Brown. As well as being an accomplished abstract painter, he’s already come to the attention of the national press on
several occasions. Once for staging concerts to audiences of 15 at a time in the toilet of an Ipswich pub and then again for scaling the drainpipe of his girlfriend (and SuperGlu. bassist) Krista Lynch’s Brighton flat to serenade her with an embryonic version of live favourite ‘Latvian’.
Conversely part of the SuperGlu’s appeal is witnessing the forces of four very different characters working in relative harmony. Drummer and houseboat inhabitant Ben Ward acts as a more serious
counter-weight to the manic energy and unruliness of Ben Brown – you can even hear him on the band’s ‘Horse’ EP admonishing him for some mid-recording messing about (possibly a sea lion
impression if his memory is correct). Alex Brown, Ben’s brother, is quieter but not short of a barbed comment when it’s required, or least expected. Krista, meanwhile, takes centre stage live, a mass of airborne hair, channeling her childhood disco dancing competition successes to help her with “letting go” on stage. “You can’t simply just play some songs you’ve made up,” she says, “You have
to give everything.”

Essex/Suffolk border town Manningtree is their base – “a community focused around pubs, the local market, a man-made beach, rival Indian restaurants, a barrier-less railway station and my secondary school” according to Alex Brown – and the smallest town in the UK. As well as a little of the town’s eccentricities seeping into their creativity – see their recent single ‘Weekend’ for further evidence of its double-sided qualities – living there has allowed them to develop their song writing free from the distractions of local rivalries and faddish influences. “Looking back I am so glad that the only influences on our music were the little flickers of pop culture that trickled into our lives,” Ben Ward reckons, ”if we were immersed in a larger community then things might sound a lot different.”

With the increased confidence that their tireless live schedule has, the band have developed their song writing from an initial modus operandi of Ben Bown’s ideas knocked into shape by him and
Ward, to a completely collective effort. “It’s four brains, eight hands – four completely different voices talking from different viewpoints,” explains Ben Brown, “If four people were sitting in four corners of a room looking at a white and blue vase full of tulips, each would see something different. A crack in the rim only visible from their side, the light passing through the stems casting a shadow unseen by the person opposite…”