Doris’ music is chaotic, collaborative, inspirational and occasionally contradictory. Just like life. The Newcastle-based five-piece capture vignettes with their sound, using genre as a medium to tell stories about the painful and the mundane.
Up For It!’s Lill Scott chatted to Ziek, Myles and Bronte about their upcoming EP Birthday Cakes, the pains of customer service and being vulnerable on stage.
Doris’ compositional approach is flexible, allowing each band member to draw from an eclectic range of sources. They cite everything from Sonic Youth and Black Country, New Road to Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath as influences.
“The EP has a couple different moments of a folk-acoustic approach, but a lot of it is based around electric guitar…and a lot of fuzz-petals are used.”
The slow, ambient intro to ‘Dirt Pool’ is a product of keyboard-player Myles, who collabed with frontman Ziek to craft the track’s undertones of experimental synth, inspired by Sonic Youth’s ‘I Love You Golden Blue’.
The emo-folk echoes in ‘Teeth’ present a departure from Doris’ usual stride, and for frontrunner Zieke, performing the song meant he was challenged to open up on-stage.
“At some point, I think the song almost became a moment of confidence, that I could say that and be vulnerable. I used the song in a way of teaching myself that it’s okay.”
What began as a frustrating moment with a customer became the platform for Zieke to explore the stalemate of a long-term relationship in ‘December’. The accompanying music vid gives us a glimpse into the DIY artistry of Doris, as we watch the band inhabit the garage, the bedroom, the local park through the familiar grain of a 90s camcorder.
Frogs are Robbies’ favourite animal, and the four long, green stretches of frog leg represent each individual band member in the music video for ‘December’.
That shoe-gaze punk-rock mash-up we love so much on the track is sure to be flowing through into Doris’ debut EP, coming out on June 15. In the mean time buy/stream their latest single below and, to further fuel your excitement, catch the band playing the Agincourt Hotel on May 27.
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