Orchards are sat in the pub, two-thirds of them at least; Sam Rushton and Dan Fane, guitars and bass respectively. A pint of lager for one and a lime and soda for the other. They’re busy preparing birthday flyers for the third Orchard, vocalist Lucy Evers. “It was her birthday yesterday,” Sam tells me, four days before the band’s sophomore album 'Bicker' is set to release. It’s a reminder of the friendship Orchards share. “Me and Daniel, we’ve known each other since we were two, but we were always in different bands. We met Lucy her first day in Brighton – our first week in Brighton – so we’ve known her the entire time we’ve been here”.
“Lucy actually used to take photos of us,” says Rushton. “We started the band when we first moved down in 2012 but it was a very different project back then. More of a grunge rock kind of shoegazey band. We had an original singer who left in 2016, maybe 2017. Lucy was like, ‘I can fill in.’”
It’s been close to a year since Orchards released their first single in three years, ‘I Feel Terrible’. Opening on two playful synth lines snaking their way around each other, which float over the groovy guitars and bass of the chorus, then settling into a grinding verse led by Fane’s overdriven bass and Evers’ soft vocals – there’s a juxtaposition of light indie pop with something texturally and thematically darker throughout this debut single that signals a tonal evolution in ‘Bicker’. “I think it’s one of the best songs we’ve ever written,” Rushton exclaims. “That song was the first time recording with Jack [Wilson of Fickle Friends, who produced ‘Bicker’ at his home in Shoreham]. He and Natty, who’s the singer of his band, co-wrote that with us.”
“We wrote that song in an afternoon,” says Fane. “It was almost like a first date. I brought this very rough bass and drum idea and we just wrote the song, all five of us. That was first date vibes, and after that –“ “Let’s commit, let’s go steady,” cuts in Rushton. “‘I Feel Terrible’ is probably the reason ‘Bicker’ is happening.”
“I think it definitely breathed new life into us. We didn’t really know what we wanted to say, or what we wanted to do. It was very much just like, go in a room and see what happens,” Fane explains. “It was only up until we released ‘I Feel Terrible’ that we decided to just commit actually. Just do a record. I think the second song we did was ‘Groan’.”
‘Groan’ released in January this year, the last single to drop before the album’s announcement. Again, it’s texturally lovely – that same overdriven bass, which can be heard in Orchards’ earlier work but is a lot more prominent on the new album, as well as background synths, vocal harmonies that sound Vocodered, off-kilter guitars and a delicious energy. “We spoke about this recently actually,” Fane recalls, “On all of our previous records we wanted to have bass, guitar, drums, and vocals. That’s it. We always worked like that. This record, we were like, ‘Let’s just write music and do what we want to do and not think about any of that. Let’s just have fun’. Working with Jack, he’s so talented as a producer, he can make any sound that comes into our heads.” Rushton interjects, laughing “I can’t count how many times us three were like, ‘Let him cook!’”.
“I think a lot of that rhythmical stuff comes with now having two guitar parts in a song, having the bass doing that overdriven stuff, having a drum machine but also a live kit,” Fane continues. “We really wanted to add a lot more elements and not really withhold anything. Not have any barriers.”
“Everything was on the table,” Rushton says in agreement. “With the textures, I think we need to shout out Jack. Everything else has been me, Dan, or our old drummer would play the synths. It was very limited – we could do some lead stuff, I mean, we could play, but Jack really took those things to another level. We’ve been doing our backing tracks for the tour and we’re sat there and our drummer now is like, ‘What is this?’ In context, it fits like a glove but Jack’s doing all this stuff behind the scenes. He’s let us present the core of the song and adding these bells and whistles. He was the fourth Orchard on this record. I think he’s the best musician I’ve ever worked with.”
Turning to Fane, he continues, “You said the other week, every single song on this record was written for the album. We thought people might listen to this record who might never have the chance to see us live, so let’s make the sound and the songs on the record the best we can and not worry about playing them live. We’ll come to that because we know we’ll be able to do it. Every single song was its own album.” Fane adds “For [debut album] ‘Lovecore’, we were basically in a residential studio for two and a half weeks. This took a lot longer, two years of doing it. We lived in each song separately. I really enjoyed working that way.”
‘Lovecore’ came out in March 2020 – not the most auspicious release date for a debut in hindsight. “Ten days before they announced the lockdown!” bemoans Rushton “It proper sent me west. It felt like everything I’ve ever known – I’ve been playing music since I was thirteen and we’ve been gigging since we were fourteen in Liverpool. To just have this massive debut record with your best mates, our biggest ever shows – we were gonna headline Chalk, Omeara in London and it had this real momentum going. It just felt like the carpet had been whipped out”. Terrible timing indeed, it also cost them a European headline tour. “That first album is so imperative. We’d built all these plans, we’d put in so much work and the label had put so much behind it and we had this huge tour booked,” adds Fane.
“We’d also had this very romantic recording,” says Rushton. “We recorded the drums on Pete Townshend’s boat in London, and we went to the middle-of-fucking-nowhere, Essex, in a barn to do everything else. We had a production station set up, our producer was there, and we had our own stuff set up like keyboards that we would be adding too. It was just a beautiful time.”
“It was a really incredible summer,” Fane agrees. “Then we had that UK and EU tour, which we rearranged for the following year, then there was that second pandemic and the tour got cancelled again. I think it got cancelled and rearranged three times so we eventually did the ‘Lovecore’ tour even though by this time we’d released ‘Trust Issues’. It was a combined ‘Lovecore’ and ‘Trust Issues’ tour that we ended up doing in 2022.”
