Scottish pop punks WOES have been making a stir the past few months, touring with the likes of Neck Deep, Seaway and Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes. The band are now pleased to commence a new chapter, with the release of forthcoming EP Self Help on 4th May via UNFD.
As a taster of what to expect, the band have revealed new single “HLB2″ – a homage to to the Drake megahit “Hotline Bling” – which showcases a new dimension to the WOES sound.
“I remember when I first demoed HLB2 I was so excited about it! I knew it had something really special. When I first started working on it, it was a totally guitar based song that sounded like what you would expect from us. When we started working on it as a band, we couldn’t get it together so it went on the backburner for a while. Then after a month or two we looked at it with fresh eyes, we were like, ‘OK, holy shit, now we’re on to something.’ and the whole song was pretty much re-written from there, barring a couple bits from the original arrangement.
“Lyrically, the song is about trying to get it together with someone you have a casual thing with, and it not working out and the kind of self-reflections that come from that kind of experience. It’s something that has happened to me a few times I guess, and at the time I couldn’t really see why. Looking back now, I was just putting all my time and energy AND money into music, and not really leaving anything of myself for someone to want to be in a relationship with. So I tried to put myself in that headspace of, ‘what is this person’s problem’ and gradual realisation of your own flaws over time – that it was your fault all along that things couldn’t work out.” – DJ, vocals
“HLB2” follows previous singles Losing Time, Real World and High On You, which garnered support from the likes of BBC Radio 1 Rock Show, Rock Sound, Kerrang! Magazine and Radio, Alternative Press and Upset. All tracks feature on Self Help.
“Any song that you write is a cathartic human process of something that’s happened to you or an expression of hurt or an expression of love, and for me any song that I write is self help,” says DJ. With prolific producer Seb Barlow (Neck Deep, WSTR) at their disposal, they did what they do best: worked hard. “We wanted to write songs that sounded unique. We made a conscious decision to write distinctive sounding songs, we would only work on a piece of music if it made you feel something. And it’s our best work yet! As we were writing these songs our band was growing and growing, and we anticipated that we were writing songs that we were going to be playing in HUGE venues. We’ve never really had to write music with the expatiation of having to play it to thousands of people before. So that changed the dynamic of how we structured songs quite significantly.”
