Our Girl’s maypole attempts hadn’t gone so well.
STRANGER THINGS Words: Rachel Finn. Photos: Emma Swann.
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ince forming in Brighton four years ago, Our Girl have been whizzing their way through all the usual experiences for a band on the rise. This year so far alone, the trio - made up of singer and guitarist Soph Nathan, drummer Lauren Wilson and bassist Josh Tyler - have headed out to Texas for a busy week of shows at SXSW, played a fifteen-date run on the DIY Class of 2018 tour alongside Pale Waves and Bloxx, bagged a supporting slot on tour with The Magic Gang and started making their way around the international festival circuit. But for a band that had, as Soph explains, “only ever imagined playing live when writing,” getting together to tick that all-important debut album off their list proved a little trickier at first than they might have hoped.
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“When we first started talking about it, I was so not ready,” Soph says, thinking back to the beginning of the process. “At the time I was like ‘but we can’t do a record! What are we gonna do with it!’” Getting some time in their busy schedules to head to the residential Eve Studios in Stockport alongside producer Bill Ryder-Jones for a week late last year proved the key to getting the record done. “Sometimes you can get caught up in your own head and your own thoughts and worrying about little details, like ‘Oh I don’t know, is this right?!’” Lauren explains on working with Bill who, as well as being a successful solo artist and former member of The Coral, has also produced records for the likes of Hooton Tennis Club and The Wytches. “...and then he would just crack a joke or say something really lovely and then we’d just be like ‘OK!’”
