Preen

Words and Photographs by Willow Shields

I found myself standing in the middle of one of the busiest junctions in central London, just outside Tottenham Court Road tube station awaiting a band I’d fallen head over heels in love with just a few weeks prior. I’d totally by accident encountered said band, Preen, in Camden playing on a lineup with lots of less-enthralling bands in comparison. Their wit, charm and effortless ability to enchant a room filled to the brim with otherwise not-too-bothered faces left me totally captivated and I thought to myself, this is it! So, I’m outside the Dominion theatre on the meeting point of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, slightly weeing myself that I am soon to be face to face with these musical geniuses. After sucking the last smoke out of my nervous cigarette, I peer over to one of the many crossings and low-and-behold two of the three original Preens are strutting towards me with purpose. Evie, a smiley, blonde-ish, beautiful woman clad in an obviously vintage brown suit who has at least a foot on me, (and that's me in platforms!) To her right and at a similar height, is Robin, with auburn-y hair poking out of a baseball cap and an epic moustache. 

After flirting with the idea of finding a pub in which to wait for the third Preen, Dave, to arrive we decide to make the most of the dying light and set our sights on Soho Square to take some photos. Remembering trying to keep up with these two long-legged music gods is pure hilarity, hopping, skipping and jumping through the quieter streets behind the two, away from the busy streets of super central London. We meet Dave on the corner of Denmark Street, wearing what was later revealed to be a new jumper from gumtree, which Dave got for 9 Great British pounds and that he was very excited about. We trot off towards Soho Square, and coming up to the minitare patch of green in the ‘big city’ I remark on how busy it is for how dark it's about to be. After finding some furry palm trees that Evie says she is instantly drawn to due to their recent trip to Marrakesh and missing it dearly already, the band strike various poses, prancing around Soho Square and making the best of the new 6pm dusk. After the chill starts to set in, we make our way to a very hip bar-slash-cafe just off the square, we sit, drink and laugh.

HOW DID PREEN COME TOGETHER?

Dave: I knew both of these two already. Robin and I had jammed together a few times, we’d written one song and I met Evie and we ended up doing a duet together and I thought let's introduce the three.

Evie: I also heavily harassed Dave's dad at his EP launch, I said ‘you must make your son be in a band with me’ and I also commented on a facebook post Dave made saying ‘does anyone want to be in a band?’. I was digging away in the background.

Robin: We formed in London, we were all solo singer songwriters. But then we started jamming together one by one, I was jamming with Dave and Dave was jamming with Evie and then it all just came together, and it clicked right away.

Dave: We played as a three for quite a while but then we wanted to expand it for the sound. So we got Harley, our bassist, who I've known for years. He's in loads of bands, and a really really good bassist. And then George, an amazing drummer, who Evie knows from a band she was in, in Oxford.

HOW WERE THOSE FIRST GIGS, WITH JUST THE THREE OF YOU? 

Robin: It was quite intimate, it was quite fun.

Evie: It was funny because we didn't get together that long before the pandemic hit, so we had a handful of gigs as a three and I liked it…

Dave: I think we didn't have that many songs before lockdown,we’d do the gig with about 3 or 4 were our own songs and then a cover. And then lockdown happened and we wrote loads and loads of songs and finished loads of songs and came out of it like ‘wow we have a full set now’. I don't know if that would have happened as quick without lockdown 

Robin: I think we were working on a lot of that stuff at the time because there was that excitement of getting a band together. The first gig we ever did came about 2 months after we formed and I think we had about 2 songs we’d written together and then stand alone songs. We did covers of each other's songs, it was great.

WHAT INSPIRES YOU TO WRITE MUSIC?

Evie: We were all solo singer songwriters before we became Preen and I think that's really helped shape how we write songs together in that we all have really different styles and we all focus on different elements of songwriting and I think that's actually switched over time. We all brought a different puzzle piece to the puzzle 

Robin: I think there's a lot less pressure that way as well, writing on your own can be really hard and you're just trying to craft this perfect thing right away, I think it's very personal. I think it still can be personal but in a different way with other people, you bring an idea, you bring a riff and that can be the start of a song and there's less pressure on that, you each bring something.

Evie: It’s like planting a seed and you don't know what's going to grow.

Dave: None of us have ownership of the songs solely, we all own it all. Because with singer songwriting there's an expectation that songs in someway are you revealing your soul, whereas when you're writing collaboratively it's this patchwork of ideas that come together that end up becoming coherent. 

Evie: It's like a soup. Because everything really is kind of a soup of influences, but then everything's derivative but then when you're solo, you're paranoid about it. But when you're in a band, you've all brought very different very different influences together.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT PLAYING LIVE?

Evie: I like the energy that you feel in the room and the task of if you've got a very buzzing room that doesn't really want to listen, or like people who don't really know who you are and don't really care. I like feeling the energy shift, it’s nice to capture attention.

Robin: I feel like there's always a moment. I mean, with most bands, but especially because obviously it's quite personal to us, like where the audience wakes up to that, ‘Oh sick yeah, that's who they are’.

Dave: I think because it's like the opposite of recording and that in recording everything you put down is permanent and so you can be neurotic about it. Whereas when it's live, it happens. And then it's gone, forever. That version of the song. You will never play it that particular way again, it's so exciting when you do feel this, that synergy in the set, you're just like, wow, this is happening, it might not happen again.

Evie: I feel like we all slightly play for each other as well when we're playing. You know what I mean? We're kind of like listening to what the other one's doing and enjoying it. It's nice. I was going to say about harmonies because, the endorphins or instant serotonin or whatever. So like, it feels good to sing it. And then you can tell people are feeling good hearing it. It's that buzz buzz thing that happens when voices come together.

WHAT ABOUT YOUR FASHION CHOICES WHILE PLAYING LIVE?

Dave: At the camden assembly gig one of us was wearing a white flared 70’s suit, it was me, with three inch cuban heels. 

Evie: I was wearing an 80s dress I got from eBay.

Robin: Obviously we're into fashion and stuff, but it's a performance as well. Like you want, you want to come across a certain way.

Evie: A lot of like music that's being released at the minute, and also like people's social media presence and stuff. It feels like you need to be the personality that you're portraying or like, you need to be so candid about everything, but it's quite nice to put on a show. Aldous Harding said this thing, when she was like, look, if anyone thinks that I'm not planning out every crazy thing that I do on stage or like these weird silences and these weird, like uncomfortable eye contact. I think it's important to put on a show. Definitely.

Dave: I don't like the sort of casual, like I'm going to go in my. Hoodie and, but that's, that's fine. Cause I'm such an ordinary bloke, like that's, you know, does anyone want to see that you're paying to see something? You know what I mean?  Anyway, that's fine. I don't mind people going out in hoodies, but yeah, fuck hoodies. 

Evie: Before we started dressing up for our gigs or like deciding what we would wear. We did this gig. It was just the gig while we didn't dress up. We just wore our bog standard clothes and the gig went so badly. But then this one was memorable because someone afterwards came up to us and was like ‘really great set, I really liked your costumes.’ And we were just dressed in our normal clothes. 

Robin: You were just in your trailers..

Evie:  We're all kind of obsessed with charity shops and Dave's like a depop fiend. And like we went to the market the other day. It was really fun. Robin like sent a picture of a blazer, at this market that he just sent to the group chat and I realized that I was in the same area. So I swooped down upon the markets. I was in a charity shop the other day on Holloway Road and Dave just walks in…

Dave: I walked in because I saw a blazer in the window and then I was like, ah Evie!

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE SUPERMARKET?

Robin: I grew up in Italy and after school, very close to school there was this fancy supermarket, called Esselunga. For special occasions, I don't suppose you'd go for a big shop, you have for special occasions. I just would go on the way home from school, sometimes with my mum in the car, get some focaccia and some pear juice. 

Evie: I grew up in a village, and I had like a sort of post office in the village, I lived in a quiet, small remote village and that was the only shop and they did penny sweets. And on the way back from school, I used to get a big bag of penny sweets, eat them all on the walk home, and they gave it to us and paper bags and there was like a goat on the way home, and I'd feed the paper bag to the goat so that my mum wouldn't find out that eaten all of the sweets.

Dave: I don't know. I don't really have a favorite to market, but the one I used to go in a lot was Asda in Newton Abbot because they had a cheap sweet selection and I've got a very sweet tooth. It wasn't even a pick and mix. It was like there's packets where it's like three for a quid, unbranded, fizzy laces. You know what I mean? Probably power washed on an abattoir floor. And then the gelatin compresses it into some sort of sweet and flog it to children. That was my shit.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR MUSICAL GENRE?

Evie: We’re a vintage flavour, west coast America, sixties seventies theme band with a modern twist. Big song lines, big narratives, a cherry on top, and a banana split. 

Robin: We’re inspired by a lot of sixties and seventies stuff. And also take some inspiration from sick modern stuff. Big thief, Aldest Harding, that sort of in between thing. It's a bit of old and new combined. We want to, I suppose, be telling stories like older music does, you're creating a story and characters, but with the newer tendencies of what newer music does.  It's got this very distinct melody and it's very distinct structure. Although sometimes we'll throw in some surprising chords and that kind of thing, but you're telling a story, someone can engage with that and think, oh yeah, the one about that thing. Like with older songs you think of like, yeah, Beatles songs and you know it's the Beatles, but if you compare songs, they sound completely different sometimes. I think with older bands, it's kind of like that. Maybe we're trying to do a similar thing.

Dave: The style of writing that dominates a lot of guitar music is this verse at one level and then this thumping anthemic chorus but our songs weave you to where they're going they don't thrust it in your face. 

Evie: We like a build. We like a climax.