There must be some­thing in the water, or the ale, in West York­shire’s Calder Val­ley these days, judg­ing by the sur­feit of young musi­cal tal­ent ema­nat­ing from the crag­gy moors and val­leys around Heb­den Bridge. Oth­er fac­tors that play a part are a clued up, sup­port­ive net­work and a hand­ful of local venues will­ing to take a chance on their local talent. 

The Lounge Soci­ety are one such band, con­sist­ing of Cameron Dav­ey (vocals, bass), Her­bie May (gui­tar), Hani Paskin-Hus­sain (gui­tar) and Archie Dewis (drums). They met at school and the hard­work­ing out­fit have already plunged them­selves into play­ing live, real­is­ing this is the per­fect way to hone their skills. They’ve also been broad­cast across the Radio 6 Music air­waves, most recent­ly on Lau­ren Lav­erne’s increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar day­time show plus there’s a Lon­don gig lined up. 

I man­aged to get an inter­view in with all four of the band, while they’ve still got some spare time on lockdown.

How did you all meet each oth­er?
We all met at high school and formed the band there. We all did Music GCSE and now are doing Music Tech­nol­o­gy at A lev­el. I’m not sure any of us know what’s going on in regards to exams. It’s all very up in the air, like every­thing else in the world!

Who is the song­writer and who writes the lyrics?
It’s a real­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive process. Usu­al­ly one of us will play a gui­tar riff at rehearsal and we just jam it until some­thing comes of it and then over time we’ll change bits to get it per­fect. The lyrics usu­al­ly come last but we often spend months work­ing on them. A lot of the lyrics to our songs that we’ve played live for ages have changed three or four times. 

And where do you go to rehearse?
We rehearse up in Archie’s attic. We owe Archie’s par­ents (and neigh­bours) a hell of a lot for let­ting us make a racket. 

Heb­den Bridge and in gen­er­al the Calder Val­ley has build up quite a rep for music. Do you feel this has had an influ­ence on you? Do you feel like you are part of a music com­mu­ni­ty? Why do you think that there is so much tal­ent around where you live?
Local bands have def­i­nite­ly influ­enced us. Going to the ear­ly Orielles’ gigs at our local venue in Heb­den Bridge, The Trades, inspired us all mas­sive­ly – that’s what made us want to be in a band real­ly. The idea of get­ting out of the val­ley and into the cities like Man­ches­ter has def­i­nite­ly been a cause of young peo­ple to form bands to play at venues in Manchester. 

Who are the peo­ple who have most helped you along the way – who has giv­en you sup­port and guid­ance?
We owe a ton of peo­ple a lot, too many peo­ple to list here but we’d def­i­nite­ly say Mal Camp­bell and Sarah Ross at The Trades Club in our home town of Heb­den Bridge. And Gig and Waka at the Gold­en Lion [Tod­mor­den] for let­ting us play our ear­ly gigs at their pub. 

I know you’ve been play­ing live as much as you can and you once were sup­port for War­m­dusch­er. Are you enjoy­ing play­ing live? What’s been your best gig so far? And what do you feel you need to work on?
We write music to play live, we love record­ing as well but for us it’s all about play­ing the songs live. The most spe­cial gigs we’ve played are prob­a­bly those we’ve done at The Trades with all of our local mates in the crowd. But we’d also have to say that play­ing in Man­ches­ter is always good fun. 

Tell me more about the Man­ches­ter gigs, where do The Lounge Soci­ety play?
Our favourite venue in Man­ches­ter is YES. It’s a great place with loads of amaz­ing bands play­ing. Get­ting out to venues out of the Calder Val­ley has been real­ly good for us – it’s nice to have peo­ple com­ing to see you who don’t know you per­son­al­ly! But we will always love play­ing local­ly, there’s noth­ing bet­ter than see­ing all your mates in the audience. 

Any fun­ny or cringe­wor­thy sto­ries about play­ing live?
We always joke about Cam (lead singer) kick­ing the mic stand over at the end of the set. He does­n’t do it on pur­pose but he seems to always end up kick­ing it over. I think it’s fair to say we’ve pissed off a few sound engineers.

Gen­er­a­tion Game is a real­ly strong track. Is this the direc­tion for the band – a post punk vibe?
We pur­pose­ly chose Gen­er­a­tion Game as our first sin­gle because we want­ed to put a strong mes­sage across both with the music and the lyrics. I think it’s fair to say our sound varies a lot – we’re influ­enced by a lot of dis­co and funk so that def­i­nite­ly has a bear­ing on our sound. There’s a good chance our sec­ond sin­gle is going to be a lot more dan­cy or discoe‑y. You’ll just have to watch this space…

Who – or what – have been your major influ­ences?
Musi­cal­ly we’re influ­enced by a lot of old­er post-punk which you can hear in Gen­er­a­tion Game. But we’re also inspired by new­er bands like Fat White Fam­i­ly, Fontaines DC… Lazarus Kane we love. We’re into a lot of dis­co and elec­tron­ic music, like we men­tioned. There are some new­er bands we’re into who we rec­om­mend you keep an eye on. Those who we love are Blan­ket­man, Three Day Week and The Short Cause­way. 

Right now is it dif­fi­cult while every­one is iso­lat­ing… but how are you cop­ing? Are you writ­ing, or rehears­ing via Zoom or whatever?

We’re all doing alright, we’ve been hav­ing spo­radic video chats to dis­cuss ideas and plans for the future. All of us have all been get­ting ideas togeth­er so that when we can get back to rehears­ing again we can hope­ful­ly get some new stuff writ­ten quite quickly. 

When lock­down is over, what’s The Lounge Soci­ety’s next step? 
Get­ting back to gig­ging, writ­ing and rehears­ing is def­i­nite­ly our pri­or­i­ty but also record­ing sin­gle two and hope­ful­ly get­ting that out as soon as possible.

If you could choose, which fes­ti­vals would you like to per­form at?
We’re all huge fans of Green Man Fes­ti­val which has sad­ly just been can­celled but we’re hop­ing to play there, along with oth­er fes­ti­vals, next year.