Sheepish

Out today (13th March), London newcomers Sheepish share the lo-fi jangle-pop brace of ‘Loving You’ / ‘Smell of the Walls’.

Starting as the solo electronic project of songwriter Charlie Bowles, before morphing into a fully fledged 5-piece outfit in 2023, Sheepish set their stall on spinning out fluffy, hook-laden jangle-pop tinged with the pangs of esoteric weirdness. Mingling the familiarities of bedroom textures and candied melodies with weird experiments of violin stabs or uncanny synthesisers, each Sheepish track offers its own wondrous pocket-sized adventure.

Their first major release since emerging as a quintet, leading track ‘Loving You’ fires out a bustling, restless yet oddly comforting lo-fi bop. Mingling high-tempo dead-pan post-punk with dewy-eyed indie-pop optimism - like Folly Group or Beige Banquet but quilted in down blankets - ‘Loving You’ is an intricate and gently absorbing offering, with plenty of emotional complexities lurking underneath, as songwriter Bowles himself explains:

“Originally written on solo guitar, I took the song to Oli who used a sampler to add layers of electronic drums and synths. Slowly the track became more experimental as we lengthened the structure and added more instruments such as violins and live drums. It was challenging to find the right pitch for the vocal performance but I was keen for the deadpan vocals to be an eerie contrast to the song’s subject matter. The repetitive nature of the song and the way the instrumentation becomes more abrasive and uncomfortable questions the lyric’s sincerity.”

Backing up the release comes ‘Smell of All the Walls’. With the rockier influence of the Dunedin sound pulsing through, the track wanders off into unlikely crystalline synth-pop soundscapes, as Bowles again explains:

“The guitar part and vocal line for Smell of the Walls came together very organically. It was only after writing it that the noughties rock influence became so clear. I took the track to oli fairly soon after writing it and we pulled the recording together very quickly - I think in just one afternoon which helped keep its organic feel. The only part we worked on a lot were the vocals. I performed them in many different ways and then we meshed them together adding more intense performances towards the end. The song is our attempt at writing a teenage anthem."