Y Not Festival Interviews – The Twang, The Subways, ALRIGHT – 31/07/2025 – 03/08/2025

The Twang

In 2009, a Guardian review of The Twang’s second album posited that ‘it will be a miracle they make it to album number three.’ Now, they’re five albums in, with a greatest hits and B-side compilation under their belt – an apparent glut of miracles. I caught up with lead singer Phil Etheridge at Y Not Festival, just before their well-received set of indie sing-along staples.

‘Hearing that Guardian piece back, I just remember how much they switched everything. I think someone asked me like, you know, why do you keep going? And I think because the gigs are such fun and so great and we’re still selling big enough rooms. I’ve always said, as well, if I start walking on stage and feel fake and like a d*ckhead, I’m definitely going to knock it on the head, but it still feels good and my head reactions are good.’

It’s impressive to see how headstrong Etheridge has been considering how ruthless the media were with The Twang. He credits this, in part, to his fans, whose reaction to their second album’s rerelease last year ‘was beautiful’. 

‘We re-released it last year and toured it and every show sold out, the vinyl sold out. I think what happened with us in the early days was, when a magazine is telling you that this is the best new band, no one wants to be told this. I think they wanted to p*ss on our chips a little bit, do you know what I mean? 

‘I remember that time. The Jewellery Quarter went in at number 20, and we were dropped the next week. But if you’d have told me as a kid, “you’re going to get a number 20 record,” my mind would have been blown. It’s not your given right to be abandoned or to be selling – you’ve just got to be good.

One of the biggest changes since those early days of Love It When I Feel Like This is social media, at whose mention Etheridge is inconsolable.

‘I just find it f*cking bizarre. I don’t even like f*cking writing a post. No, no. It’s horrible. I can’t do it myself either. You just, it’s f*cking horrible. It’s as bad as it gets. You know, my sister-in-law is younger than us and she’s like, “what are you doing?” She talks about f*cking algorithms and all that sh*t. I’m just like, shut the f*ck up.

‘The braggy side of it, it’s so mad. I don’t know how people can do it and not feel like a tw*t. I know it’s only a little simple thing and I shouldn’t care but I’m like, my mates would think I’m a tw*t, do you know what I mean? I find it so interesting that people I used to think were cool, because of their Instagram I now think, “oh my god, I didn’t know you were a d*ckhead.”

He said all this with a wise self-awareness, adding that he’d ‘moaned too much about technology and you’ve got to move with the time’, although he still gets frustrated with his children’s phones:

‘I feel like the only arguments are about their phone. These guys have their phone. Speak to your gran. Do you know what I mean? Speak to your gran. She’s f*cking old and she loves you. She just wants to spend time with you, and you’re sat there watching some tw*t with f*cking injected lips telling you about your business. Do you know what I mean? What the f*ck are you doing? It’s insane.’

Clearly, Etheridge prefers the side of the music industry away from cyberspace. His love for touring came up when I mentioned my birthplace, Barrow-In-Furness, which he politely described as an ‘interesting place’.

‘I like playing those places. They were really happy to have us there, you know, and I think it’s really important that you go to those towns, so they’re not forgotten about you. I think one of the beautiful things about the band is it took us to all these little towns I’d never have gone in my life. 

‘We played so many little places like Hebden Bridge, which I thought was super cool. And I came out of the venue, and I saw Gordon Raphael, you know, who produced the first Strokes album. I saw him just walking down the road with his tiny little bag. I love it.’

You could see that joy on Y Not’s Big Gin stage, where Etheridge and bandmates gave an impassioned performance to a crowd of fans. A group of young teenagers were stood by me, eyes closed, faces red, shouting back every word. A little miracle, one which the Guardian article hadn’t anticipated.

The Subways

When I first saw The Subways on Y Not Festival’s Giant Squid stage, with bassist Charlotte Cooper galloping past the drumkit with guitar in hand, headbanging as she went, it almost didn’t compute that it was the same person I had spoken to, articulate and considered, perched on a sofa that was too close to the ground in the artist village.

We spoke about longevity in the music business, and Cooper extolled that the band still relishes their day job: ‘In many ways, it hasn’t changed, which I think is the best thing about it. We still absolutely love doing this, we love making music still, we really love being on stage, we really love being on stage. And I think that’s the core of what we’re all about, and I think that will never change.’

Rather, she admits, their lives around the band have changed. Way back when The Subways were recording their first demos, lead singer Billy Lunn used ‘this tiny little, I think it was a 4-track thing. And we used to record it in his parents’ council terrace house. Looking back, I feel for the neighbours. We were just kids, but actually it was probably really noisy.’

Nowadays, Lunn has his own studio space, producing for his own band and others. The bigger change, Cooper concedes, is that ‘20 years on now, people have got families, people have got lives outside of London. That’s the difficult thing to sometimes make light of – there’s a lot of logistics. Everybody does a lot of work at home, so when we come together, we can be very efficient. We don’t really live near each other.’

That’s not to say The Subways have slowed down at all. A career-spanning greatest hits compilation, When I’m With You, will be released on October 17^th, and the band has been touring festivals around Europe, with another UK/Europe tour coming at the end of the year.

‘We’ve been lucky that we’ve spent a lot of our career in Europe: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic and Belgium have been really good to us. We’ve really loved that and feel really grateful for that. I think that’s what’s allowed us to go on for so long. We’re able to play lots of places. Financially, the boring side of it, that’s what’s kept us going.’

Their wildly energetic performance on the Saturday would make you think that they’d had a spa day on Friday, not played a German festival: ‘Hanover was crazy. The rain was insane. We’ve all got really good pictures of all of us running from the rain. Billy dove in the mud and it was really cool. Sometimes the rain makes it.

On the other side of the hectic coin, more serious circumstances have ailed the band, with Cooper stating how ‘Billy has had quite a wild time over the past few years. He’s been through a heartbreak, and I know that is a big source of inspiration to him. There’s one song we’re playing tonight, and he tells a bit of a story about that.

‘But he always sees music as the thing that gets him out of the bad times. You kind of feel like you’re super wild, and kind of helpless. The music is the thing that always picks him up.’ Judging by the crowd’s reaction to their set, particularly the closing rendition of ‘Rock and Roll Queen’, Lunn isn’t the only one picked up by their music, and by what Cooper had been saying, it’ll continue for years to come.

ALRIGHT

Having an identity as a band is a difficult thing to manage. It can be more lowkey, like having a specific sound or guitar tone, perhaps a certain cheekiness in interviews. Some go full Gene Simmons and get the paint brush out, or don a parka and swagger about the stage, but that comes with a risk. The audience can sense inauthenticity, and without some serious craft or tunes behind it, it can put them right off. Sometimes, it’s best to stick to what you know.

ALRIGHT, a five-piece indie outfit from Blackpool, have centred themselves around their northern hometown with songs like ‘Homegrown’ and ‘Tangerine Dream’.

‘We’ve never had a conversation to say, let’s write about Blackpool, let’s make it our image. I think ‘Tangerine Dream’ we released quite early on, and the town really got on board with it.’ The boys reminiscences became fonder with each word. ‘And the football club. We love our own town, it’s rough, but it’s our place. When ‘Tangerine Dream’ came out, it was a bit like, that is who we are, we’re from Blackpool.’

Lead singer Joe Darnell had his own bone to pick with those less-than-honest artists. ‘A lot of bands that are from the surrounding areas of Manchester, but they’re not actually from Manchester, they’ll shoehorn themselves and class themselves as a Manchester band. That was one thing I said from very early on. We can’t forget where we’re from. We are from Blackpool and that’s who we are. 

‘Let’s make a scene there, that’s the idea. There is such a scene back home, so we want to champion Blackpool and the talent that is with them. There’s so much talent back home.’ Drummer Liam Smith chirped in with a clarification, ‘Forgotten seaside town, one of many.’ 

ALRIGHT’s reach stretches far beyond the North West, however. At festivals, they charm uncertain crowds with some off-the-cuff banter and giddy energy, and down in London, they do it with a Ting Ting’s cover.

‘What was the club we played in London in the centre last year? It was in Soho, wasn’t it? Dead low roof, it was almost like a comedy club. They were bouncing and we hit them with a little sly cover of the Ting Tings, ‘That’s Not My Name’,’ Smith explained, grin widening at the audacity. ‘We thought there would be a massive difference between the northern and southern crowds, but they surprised us.’

Whether the crowd are Ting Tings fans or a coachful from Barrow-In-Furness, ALRIGHT know that the music is most important. Speaking about their latest single, ‘Everlasting’, Darnell emphasised that the rawness of their songwriting is a band’s biggest pull:

‘I wrote it about my girlfriend about a year and a half ago, but then we didn’t really touch it. It was just sort of sat there. It was about February, March this year, we all got in a practice room. Very quickly, we thought that this sounds like a good one. You know when you’ve got a good feel for it. When there’s a million and one ideas, it’s like, we have to go all in.’

‘We’ve uploaded the process on our Instagram, how raw it was to start with. You know, having a laugh at practice, messing it up, talking a lot of rubbish, getting through it. That’s the first time we’ve done that really. People want to see that, I think.’

Smith, who also writes for the band, added, ‘Some of the songs that we’ve brought out were from when I was like 16, 17, in college. We brought that song, ‘Homegrown’, recently, and that was about our own lives. We were just in that mindset as young lads – we wanted to get out, we wanted to see the world. Not depressing, like – it’s more like prideful. Our town’s getting smaller and smaller, and there’s less going on.’

They are a band with ambition, but also a sensible gratitude to those who have supported them along the way. Or, if you’re the Pet Shop Boys, a less sensible gratitude.

‘Back in 2022, I think, they shouted us out on Instagram, and we got 30,000 streams like that. What it did for us was massive. But it’s just that surreal, isn’t it? Thank you to The Pet Shop Boys, by the way. If you want a pint, you’re more than welcome.’ I bet Neil and Chris would be thrilled to have a pint bought for them in The Velvet Coaster – who wouldn’t?