April Tapes Interview – Y Not Festival – 02/08/2025

How do you get new fans in the modern music landscape? Some bands tour endlessly, others spend hours dancing on TikTok or thousands on Facebook adverts, and the most desperate use up wads of printer paper just to add to the collage of hopefuls on record store notice boards. I imagine that April Tapes are relieved to avoid at least some of this futility, having won Y Not Festival’s ‘Apply to Play’ competition.

‘We’ve just played Truck and Tramlines festivals too,’ explained bassist and vocalist Bethan Evans. Those slots were also awarded to the band as winners of the competition, alongside professional photoshoots, vinyl pressings and studio time. You can see why they won, though. Their performances are tight showcases of what might be generalised as ‘indie rock’, although their influences run far and wide. Their track ‘Grunge’ is a clear homage to Nirvana, while there are hints of Geese and Kings of Leon on their most-streamed tracks, ‘Reyt Fast’ and ‘Those Days’.

From the way in which singer and guitarist Max Stokes talked about his influences, a fervent passion for good music seems to inform the band’s songwriting:

‘We’re not indie in the typical sense, you know, we’re not trying to like sing about sticky dance floors and all that b*llocks. For me personally, guitar music is a big influence on us, kind of country folk too, but we’re big on melody. I know there’s a big post-punk scene going on at the minute, but like I’ve not really got much time for it.’ Evans and drummer Angus Marnoch laughed nervously at this point, jokingly anxious that Stokes might be a bit too heavy on his criticisms. I was enraptured by his spirited opinions.

‘I’m not sh*tting on the other scenes! I love Fontaine’s DC, I genuinely do as well – I’m just on about our sound. I think there’s a big part of melody in it and catchiness to it, and that’s what we want. I want people to be able to sing along to this music, and I want to have a catchy hook in there. Good vocals and good melody, rather than, kind of, people just talking.’ Other influences were thrown into the mix, including Big Thief, Divorce, Do Nothing, and anything with dual vocals.

All this talk of competition winning is not to say that the band hasn’t been working hard. In fact, they have probably been working more than most. Parallel to being in the band, Evans works in an NHS lab, Marnoch works ‘in the rain as a roofer’, and Stokes is a landscaper and part-time graphic designer. Lead guitarist Henry Wright, whom the band had lost sight of just before the interview (‘too busy being a rockstar’, they surmised), is a chef.

‘Whenever we’re recording, we’ll just be off on the beers and he’ll be slaving away over the hob,’ confessed Stokes, with Evans adding, ‘the only way we all get together is when Henry says he’s cooking and we’re like, yeah, go on, and then we get trapped in the studio.’

In some departments, however, the band is more than happy to offload some work. I asked the band whether they’d want to stay in charge of the administrative side of the band’s job – emails, DMs, whatnot – to which Stokes made his position blatant:

‘No, I want someone to f*cking help me out. It would be nice if someone would answer the emails. Secretary at best. Half my life spent doing admin work for this band. Everything we do is DIY. We don’t have any like crew, we don’t have any label we don’t have any management.’

This is a band that just won’t stop. They’ve got another three singles ready to go, self-producing their music in their house.

‘Well, whether they’re singles or part of an album – we don’t know what we’re going to do. I think we’re pretty set on having a double-sided single track, like two singles coming out. More dual vocals, a bit more of the sound than we want to be. I’d say the new stuff probably sounds truer to us. If you watch our live set, it’s more what our live set is – our Spotify it doesn’t necessarily reflect what we want to do, but it will soon.’

With the band looking to the future, it was nice to ground them with a full-circle moment. They mentioned on stage that Y Not was the first festival that some members had been to, and this was brought up at the end of the interview.

Stokes began, ‘It’s f*cking crazy. I can remember being here watching. I came when I was 15. I can remember watching a set like with one of my mates at the time and saying like, “Oh, we’ll be on that stage in a few years.” I had a different band, but we’d never made it. I remember some girl turning around and just looking at me and laughing. So, if you’re listening to this, f*ck you! I made it!’ 

Evans added, ‘I came when I was 16. If you’d have mentioned to me that I was playing that stage, I would have just laughed. I wasn’t part of any musical projects at that point. For me, it’s more like I didn’t have… I love music but I wasn’t confident enough in myself to actually play with it. And now it’s like, I sing in front of people now.’

The last memory was one about Marnoch: ‘I can remember seeing Angus one year p*ssed at 12 o’clock with a pink dressing gown on.’ If this isn’t a band destined for the rock-and-roll lifestyle, I’m not sure who is.