Great news: young West York­shire three-piece The Orielles have just signed to Heav­en­ly record­ings. The band – Esme Hand Hal­ford on bass, sis­ter Sidonie on drums and Hen­ry Wade on gui­tar, are known for their lush garagey sun-drenched sound  – a Cal­i­forn­ian vibe by way of Hal­i­fax (the Cal­i­fax sound, per­haps). Since the band got togeth­er they’ve been gig­ging up and down the coun­try at a host of venues and fes­ti­vals, so they’ve already got plen­ty of expe­ri­ence under their belts. 

Num­bers such as Jobin reflect the band’s sun­ny vibe, com­plete with dense, rip­ply gui­tars, with a lay­er of rich har­monies com­ing through. The bass-heavy Twin Freaks is per­haps my favourite Orielles track, a gor­geous­ly sul­try, laid back num­ber with Esme’s vocals, seduc­tive­ly sweet but there’s a hint of a dark­er edge. In fact it’s that post-punk raw­ness that creeps into their com­po­si­tions which makes this band so com­pelling. It will be inter­est­ing to see what they do next.

So here’s a few ques­tions I asked the band: 

What’s in store for The Orielles in 2017? By all accounts it’s going to be a mix of plen­ty of live appear­ances and we’ll have plen­ty of stu­dio time. There’s going to be a new sin­gle to release with Heavenly.

Any fes­ti­vals? Yes it seems so but we’ll have to wait a bit for that announcement!

What music are you lis­ten­ing to at the moment? We lis­ten to a real­ly wide range of music; any­thing from punk to dis­co to rap to psych. A few bands we have been lis­ten­ing to late­ly include Hap­py Mon­days, ESG, Teenage Fan­club, Joni Mitchell & Hush Moss. We have always con­sid­ered our­selves pro-Bea­t­les in the Beatles/Stones debate but we lis­tened to the Rolling Stones the oth­er week and…woah, I dun­no dude!!

I’ll leave the Bealtes/Stones debate right there as who knows how long that could go on for. Go check out The Orielles at one of the gigs (below) or at the afore­men­tioned Heave­ly Week­ender (at Gourmet Gigs’ favourite venue) The Trades Club, Heb­den Bridge.