by B. Snapp (@snappstare.bsky.social)
Brighton quartet The New Eves released their full-length debut, which weaves mystic folk and avant-garde art rock. Known for theatrically disrupting the post-punk scene with their live shows, their origin tales are woven with details that include pouring fake blood over an all-white-clad troupe while reciting poetry. But most directly, they disrupt playlists of today by incanting, incessantly strumming and plucking, tapping until the shape of a song emerges, waving a flag for feminist anarchic folk-punk built around strings and tribal-style drumming.
The album cover, bearing the banner The New Eve Is Rising, depicts The New Eves in a medieval setting, suggesting a trad elegy for a fallen patriarchy or the rejoiceful parade that might commence thereafter. The group's history in performance art not only helped develop their grassroots sound but also propelled their songwriting style, recalling a group of Patti Smith disciples fronting The Velvet Underground, distilled into a tribal folk sensibility. The instrumental core is built around bowed strings and Violet Farrer (violin) and Nina Winder-Lind (cello) also take turns on guitars, backed by the rhythm section duo of Kate Mager on bass and Ella Oona Russell on drums (and occasional flute).
The New Eves define their style as “Big Hag Energy.” Songs are singularly born of ritualistic improv and poem chanting, summoning lyrical and sonic imagery that spans the ages. Their mythological references span biblical archetypes — from Genesis to the New Testament — and theatrical works like Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Caryl Churchill’s Vinegar Tom. (While not on the album, their cover of the Lord of the Rings soundtrack provides another apt mythological layer.) The resulting soundscape is an alchemic eruption that dances through hagstone, sci-fi fantasy, and fiery ritual.
There’s a sense of pagan pageantry set up by the first near-title track, “The New Eve,” which serves as a bold mission statement for the band. Throughout the album, they explore catharsis, upheaval, rejoice, and resilience. “Highway Man” and “Cow Song” establish expectations of throbbing post-punk, which are defied by “Mid Air Glass” and “Circles,” tracks that resist prototypical genre categorization. “Mary” cites biblical themes while “Volcano” gets primeval. Such are the worlds The New Eves explore, and they commit to each world from the first drone to the final soundwave.
In the music video for their first single and the album’s penultimate song, “River Runs Red,” a red apple is replaced with an off-white egg dropped into a black-leather-gloved hand. Archetypes and symbols run deep, but they are constantly effaced with anachronistic playfulness. The dichotomy is ever-present: the play and the players, the costumes and the street clothes, the acoustic and the electric, the wooden sword and the silver tray of wild strawberries. These concoctions are accompanied from the guttural to the melodic and from charms to hexes, spinning into the magic spell the music evokes on its own.
There is definitely a wink in all of this. There’s a layer of it being a put-on, and that theatricality makes it easy to be entertained. Embrace the double toil and trouble, and let it bubble, or bounce and laugh along with them at it, and let it play.
The album culminates with the eight-and-a-half-minute “Volcano,” which bubbles and erupts with the ferocious feminine power of fire and wind goddesses. It is a final, definitive declaration of their presence on the scene. Repeated listens reveal how organic and conducive to day-dreaming the music is, seeking translucency as it transpires and tempting the listener to throw up their arms and shake along with the record and its creators.