Three BFFs Making Doof You Can Cry To: Introducing Huntly

The clichés of love and its discontents have been sprawled across popular music for decades. It's become shorthand for the bone-crushing experiences that usually define a love's end. That's why we're familiar with lyrics like "baby please don't go", or "baby I just don't get it / do you enjoy being hurt?". But therein lies the trouble with writing about love: it's all been done before. So spare a thought for the musicians who'd rather not be writing about breakups.But of course, rarely does life give you a choice. And it's this that brings us Feel Better or Stop Trying, the debut EP from Melbourne three-piece, Huntly.

"I remember a drive home after seeing an ex and Kid A was playing. I pulled something over my head, trying to hold things together, and as soon as I got home I wrote one of the EP's tracks," said vocalist Elspeth Scrine—Elly to her bandmates. Charlie Teitelbaum—vocals and keys—and Andrew McEwan—percussion—fill out the trio, which was initially Scrine's solo project while living in Brisbane. Sonically, the band are all falsetto and spoken word vocals, played out with calls and responses, filtered through methodical electronic effects.

Though you probably wouldn't get that from from how they describe their music : "3 bffs making doof you can cry to." There is a certain truth to the description, though. The journey the EP takes mirrors the complexities and vulnerabilities of twenty-somethings making their mark on the world—and sometimes getting bruised in the process.

And it's no surprise that this appears on the EP. In times of high trauma, we all—to varying degrees—try to negotiate the emotional pressure cooker that usually accompanies a breakup. To some, it means hitting the disco bikkies and losing a weekend, while for others it's spent at home writing music (or listening to sad goth party jams alone). In Huntly's case, here comes an EP timestamped with a breakup's residue.

Take the following lines from 'Lusty':

"I disconnect / Remember you're not fighting for me but yourself / And I gotta shut down to preserve my own health."

"I used to live in share house in North Melbourne, and that's where the majority of the really fucking sad songs stem from… it was a really dark time," Scrine told THUMP. "A lot of these are references the feelings after a connection's been lost." Scrine makes up the bulk of Huntly's songwriting, having penned five out of six tracks for the debut. 'Singing Surts' belongs to Teitelbaum, a six-minute electronic ballad that feels as though it goes for much less.

In most cases, music that revolves around vulnerability is often referred to in the feminine. Here, to be vulnerable is to be "tender" or "delicate". But that's not always so, because we can also see in vulnerability, too. As this EP swings between both pendulums, it's just as much a sombre listen as it is stamping new lessons for the trio, like on 'Sunday Sheets': "Place me up, so god damn high / that I cannot be yearned for."

Essentially, the three aren't putting up with any shit.

"We've tried to stay away from the predictability of all-male contexts around live music," said Andrew. "I've been with Elly where sound techs completely talk down to her, and I'm treated as though I know everything." Scrine is no stranger to these constructs, thanks to prevailing assumptions about the (often diminutive) roles women have to play in live music.

"I trained in jazz and I repeatedly was being put in spaces with all-male instrumentalists where I was simply the decoration as the singer—I don't want to play that game anymore," she said. Direct experience aside, she's probably better placed than most to unpick music's expectations over gender and sexuality, seeing as she'll be commencing a PHD on these things very soon.

"Talking about gender and feminism guides me through the world. So I'm interested in how pop culture feeds unhealthy and dangerous models of hegemonic gender constructions, but also how music can be used in a positive conversations around this," she said. Scrine certainly isn't decorative, nor is she the sole nexus of Huntly's stage presence. Put simply, Huntly are three friends, conscious of creating safer music spaces for everyone.

"I feel as though this EP is what's been happening in my heart: it's recorded what all three of us have gone through, and it's this precise moment in our lives which is quite a significant thing."

Listen to the exclusive stream of Huntly's Feel Better or Stop Trying below.

Follow Alan on Instagram.