Ain't No Fun

Photo by Toby Price

What happened? Last summer it felt like we were on the verge of something great. Bands were being exciting and original and kids were putting on parties in squats. Every weekend was like a holiday you wanted to go on forever. A whole year later and we’re stuck with a big fat nothing. Dubstep has become the new breaks for public school boys, the clubs are empty, the line-ups all look the same and bands have gone the lazy route so you end with unspeakable derivative shit like Trash Fashion that makes you want to eat your hands off. Fortunately, if you look hard enough, you can usually find hope somewhere and as ever it usually comes from a bunch of punks who weren’t really paying attention anyway. As Mika Miko and No Age gave LA a kick up the arse with their riotous sets at The Smell, bands like Lovvers are finally making going to shows in the UK fun again. Four kids from shitty towns across the UK who met in Nottingham, they have managed to force a bunch of influences that should never work together into a scarily good live show. Watching Lovvers is like you’re witnessing Drive Like Jehu play Pavement songs with Darby Crash up front. As unlikely as it sounds, that works out so well that their debut seven-inch was the first thing to sell out on Jonson Family in living memory and the blogger geeks are hailing them as the second coming of Christ appearing nightly on a stage near you. Vice: Wakefield, Coventry, Skelmersdale and Worcester. Jesus. Who has the worst hometown? Steve Rose (drums): Worcester and Wakey are awful and even the people that live in Skelmersdale call it Scummersdale. I’d say hands down that I have the best hometown. Coventry is okay. Shaun Hencher (vocals): No way, the only good thing about Coventry is his dog. It has a medical problem with its ass. It keeps popping out. They have had to sew its ass in. I’m not sure where the poo comes out. I heard you had a pretty rough first week together as a band? Michael Drake (bass): After our first gig in Spalding we were driving back to Nottingham and Henry fell asleep at the wheel. We went into a dual carriageway lamppost at 70 miles an hour in a tiny Corsa with all of our gear in the back. We all ended up in hospital with concussion and cuts and bruises and shit apart from Henry who was totally fine. Then a couple of days later Steve got a bit billied and decided to jump off the river Trent bridge because he thought the water looked nice. He hit the bank and shattered both his ankles instead. He couldn’t walk for weeks. Did you not take these to be pretty bad omens? Like some celestial power was telling you that this band was never going to work out? Henry Withers (guitar): I could never believe that a celestial influence was cursing our career, as I have a Grade One knowledge of Jyotish, which is a brand of Vedic astrology. This tends to keep me content at all times. My father designed a computer programme that takes your birth time and latitude and converts that data into your Jyotish chart. My chart has Jupiter in the main house, which means that I am “fun loving”, “gregarious”, and generally seeking enjoyment over most other things so despite an alteration in the house of health these events did not affect me. JAM ROLY POLY
Lovvers’ second seven-inch “Near Enough For Jazz” / “Special Needs” is out now on Jonson Family Records.
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