HOTLY TIPPED NEWCOMERS FRONTEERS WILL RELEASE ‘IT’S UP TO ME NOW’ ON DRAWING BOARD RECORDINGS VIA CAROLINE INTERNATIONAL ON 13TH NOVEMBER
THEY WILL JOIN PRETTY VICIOUS ON THEIR UK TOUR IN NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER
‘It’s Up To Me Now’ is the second release from Hull’s hottest new export; FRONTEERS. Released on 13th November via boutique singles label Drawing Board Recordings via Caroline International, it has already received acclaim from 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq, Radio X’s John Kennedy and Radio One’s Huw Stephens.
The song is an ultra-catchy, upbeat take on struggling through darker days: “At the time I was writing it I’d just lost a decent job, so I had problems with money and I had people telling me that I didn’t have my head on straight and that being in a band doesn’t pay,” explains vocalist Andy Towse, continuing defiantly, “so this song’s just about doing it anyway because you want to.” Listen on Soundcloud now; https://soundcloud.com/
“We don’t try to fit in,” says FRONTEERS bassist Ellis Keogh, “we just make the music we make without worrying what anyone else is going to think about it.” That’s the key to FRONTEERS’ inevitable success; they’re not chasing any bandwagons or moulding themselves to the most saleable style, they’re making the music they love as naturally and honestly as they can. These are four nineteen-year-olds brought up on modern alternative rock, but sensing within those sounds a rich seam of classic pop that they’re only just beginning to explore for themselves.
Case in point. Andy is from a brood of eight, born to musical parents – his self-taught father gave him the basics of guitar at the age of eight and he “found a love for it”. By the age of sixteen, after three years of fledgling projects that never got out of the bedroom, Andy and best friend James Taylor discovered The Last Shadow Puppets and, early in 2014, decided to start an acoustic duo in their harmonic image. “The way they sang together made me and James wanna do that,” Andy says, “And we found we could harmonise naturally too, the songwriting just seemed to flow from there.”
Andy and James weren’t even aware of other legends they were accidentally emulating, “People would say to us ‘you sound like The La’s or the Everly Brothers’ or whatever. We hadn’t even heard those bands before we started, obviously then we went back to listen and yeah, it’s cool, people are always going to make comparisons whatever you do.”
Their rich unconscious heritage was most apparent in the first song they wrote as a duo – ‘Youth’, and, after a handful of open mic nights as a two-piece – one of which turned into a full on bar brawl – it was the tune that made them realise they needed a full band behind them. Enter bassist Ellis Keogh and drummer Lloyd Tuton.
Over the first three months of 2015 they did nothing but write new songs. Then they began to concentrate on gigging in the North of England, building a strong fan-base in places like Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle and Sunderland. And in the process attracting the attention of the major label A&R pack, not that the industry attention is something that’s playing on the band’s mind, “It’s not something that we’re particularly interested in to be honest,” says Andy, “Playing gigs and winning over new fans wherever we go, writing great songs, that’s all that really matters.”
Debut single ‘Youth’ was released in July on producer Cam Blackwood’s label Human Music, prompting support tours with rising stars such as Blossoms and Pretty Vicious on which their growing batch of dazzling tunes blew away unsuspecting crowds.
As labels line up to court them, they are excited to announce a UK tour with Pretty Vicious this November and December. As the band heads off to play their next string of fan-base building shows, it’s rewarding to see such a young band happy carving their own unwavering path to new Fronteers. Boldly, go.
FRONTEERS are Andy Towse (Vocals / Guitar), James Taylor (Vocals / Guitar), Ellis Keogh (Bass), Lloyd Tuton (Drums).
LIVE DATES WITH PRETTY VICIOUS
25th Nov Joiners Southampton
28th No Welly
30th Nov Sugarmill
1st Dec Cluny
3rd Dec Riverside Room Newport