‘THE DEEP BLUE’ DISH ON THEIR LATEST EP, GLASTONBURY AND IMPROV CARPOOL MUSICALS AHEAD OF THEIR TOUR FINALE MANCHESTER SHOW

Meet Katie, Sophie, Niamh and Georgia: Manchester’s honey-sweet, earworm-assured, indie girl band The Deep Blue. We got the chance to chat with them ahead of their home show at Manchester’s Gorilla, which marked the end of their UK tour which spreaded their Honeylove EP to new corners of the music world. Read on to get to know them, their music, and their dream dinner party guests!

Introduce yourselves! Who are you and what do you do in the band?

Katie: I’m Katie, I play keys and I sing.

Sophie: I’m Sophie and I drum.

Niamh: I’m Niamh, I play bass and sing.

Georgia: I’m Georgia, I play guitar and sing

So, this is your last show of your UK tour. Talk to me about how the tour’s been!

Katie: It’s been really chill, I’ve found. A lot of fun, so much fun, but I’ve felt really relaxed as well which has been quite nice. There’s been a definite change of pace.

Georgia: Lovely crowds! Really nice gigs. We’ve really enjoyed every show.

I know you’re a Manchester-based band. Do you notice a difference at these home shows?

Niamh: Yeah, it’s really lovely. We’re from all over the shop but we live here and the people that we love are here and they come to see us, and we have all our tales from the rest of the tour, so it’s really nice to have so many friendly faces that we know in the crowd. Our partners and families get to see us doing our thing! Also, we’re quite well-oiled by this point so the jitters are gone.

Sophie: And then it’s only ten minutes home, isn’t it?

Niamh: Yeah, we can actually stay for a drink!

Who were your top artists on Spotify wrapped?

Katie: I think my top artist was Fleetwood Mac, and it was the same last year!

Niamh: Mine was Morgan Harper-Jones, and her Journal Versions EP was the top of my listening this year.

Sophie: I haven’t looked at mine, but if I had to guess I would say that Sarah Klang was probably my top artist.

Georgia: I think I had a brief look and it said my top song was A Fond Kiss which is a traditional Scottish song that I was listening to a lot because I was singing it at a wedding!

Who do you find yourself listening to the most when you’re making music? Who have been your biggest musical inspirations?

Georgia: We listened to a lot of Flight for this EP.

Niamh: A lot of Phoebe Bridgers. And Beatenberg too.

Georgia: Oh yeah, a lot of Beatenberg, that was cool. We’ve got playlists for all of our projects, for inspiration.

What were the big concepts and aims behind the Honeylove EP? How was it different from what you’ve done before?

Georgia: We’ve done quite a lot of boppy tunes before now, so we wanted to give some space to our folkier side. At our shows, we’ll do half and half – lots of bops, but then also some chill, harmony-heavy, folky ones, but we didn’t feel like we’d really released that kind of music. We took some of our more chill tunes, just ones that we thought would be really nice together and that we felt ready to release, and then once we had them all assembled we retrospectively came up with the concept of Honeylove, which is all about love in different forms: sometimes nice, sometimes not, sometimes so sticky and sweet that it can rot your teeth or keep you from leaving. So yeah, just the way that love can manifest itself in so many different forms. What do you guys think?

Niamh: Yeah, I think the honey connection was really strong on this EP with us being a Manchester band and having the Manchester bee, and I think it’s about the different forms of love but also the different types of attachments – to our world, to people that are no longer with us – and how those feelings kind of seep into the songs in different ways. Like in Cynical, a love that’s gone a bit wrong, and the worst part of your mind kind of comes alive. It was really fun to do in the studio and make it stripped back, lean into the vocals a lot more. First time we’ve fully done it at the same time, which was fun.

Katie: The production was quite different as well, on this EP, wasn’t it? That more folky style.

Niamh: On this tour, we’ve also been trying to figure out which band member’s which animal, and Georgia, in an effort to say ‘gazelle,’ was named ‘Giselle.’

I was actually going to ask (and I can’t take credit for this question as our photographer, Abi, came up with it), if you could be an animal from the actual deep blue, what would you be?

Niamh: Oh, Katie was a seal!

Katie: Oh yeah! I’m a seal.

Niamh: Can I be a polar bear? We originally decided I was a black bear. So yeah, polar bear.

Katie: What about Sophie? I’m thinking jellyfish, because when you’re drumming your hair does sort of go like a jellyfish.

Sophie: Yeah, alright, I’ll accept jellyfish.

And going back to the themes that you touch on in this EP’s lyrics – how do you come to those poetic images? For example, Water Water really sets a scene. How do you get there creatively?

Niamh: (to Georgia) I think in Water Water, there was a very direct image you were going for, wasn’t there?

Georgia: Yeah, I find it much easier to write about something I can see, and to really go into the details. I think I’d watched Dune recently, and in that it’s all deserts and sand dunes, and I was trying to really picture the desperation of not having enough water and what that would feel like – in your mouth and in your skin, and how it would affect how you think and feel. Thankfully not something I’ve ever had to go through, but I was trying to picture what that would be like and capture it in a song in an effort to make people connect with that idea and feel the real threat of it.

The stand-out feature of a lot of your music is the three-part harmony you achieve between you. How did you realise that you had that cohesion and start making music together?

Katie: All of us vocalists have grown up with kind of choral backgrounds and with sisters who sang a lot around the house, so I think that to start singing together was quite natural because we are used to singing in harmony. It’s something that’s only grown and we all know each other’s voices so well now, and know where each voice sits best. I’ll often go to the higher harmony, Georgia’s in the middle, Niamh’s at the bottom.

Niamh: Georgia and I sang previously in a folk project together, and we were looking for another singer to start The Deep Blue as it is now. Then we had our first kind of audition in Georgia’s garden, and Katie arrived and when we sang together it was so lovely and our voices sounded so nice together. It was the worst audition ever actually because when Katie started singing we were immediately like, ‘Oh, she’s amazing!’ and the other people just didn’t have a chance!

Katie: It was very cute. I remember that, and the bike ride there.

Georgia: Yeah, I came up behind you on my bicycle.

Niamh: That’s nice. Threatening.

Georgia: Yeah, just this gal with a ukulele in her rucksack.

What are your favourite things to do outside of music?

Georgia: It feels like I don’t really have any hobbies outside of music.

Niamh: Excuse me, our whittling queen over here!

Georgia: Oh yeah! We went to a festival this summer and I learnt to whittle. I made a spatula which I actually regularly use. You should try it, it’s so fun!

Niamh: Became your personality for a while, didn’t it?

Georgia: Yeah. I should also give a shoutout to cycling because I love cycling. Love getting out on my bike.

Niamh: This sounds absolutely ridiculous, but I have an obsession with stationery. I love books and notebooks, going book shopping. Also travelling, going to galleries. That kind of thing.

Katie: I like travelling too and exploring different parts of Europe and the cityscapes. This is reminding me that I need to get a hobby aside from music!

Niamh: You like country dancing.

Katie: Yeah, I love country dancing!

Sophie: Like Georgia, I feel like I have barely any time to do anything apart from music. My whole job is music as well – I’m a teacher – but when I do have time I love perusing charity shops for vinyl. I love reading, cooking, baking, writing. Wholesome, artsy things.

Now I’ve got to ask, Sophie – what’s been your favourite read this year?

Sophie: I think the most interesting book I’ve read that’s just popped into my mind is called The 100 Years War on Palestine (Rashid Khalidi) and it’s just the history of the conflict. It’s heavy and quite dense, but it’s really, really interesting and obviously incredibly pertinent at this time as well. I just wanted to be educated on it and it’s a really good book.

And what was playing Glastonbury like?

Sophie: Yeah, it was alright, I guess… Amazing, absolutely amazing! It was huge! There’s no other experience like it.

Niamh: It was truly exhausting in every way, but it was very interesting to wander round. We’ve done a lot of festivals now – I think we’ve done 30, which is a lot – and everyone says that Glasto’s not like a festival in the normal sense. We went from the Wednesday to the Sunday and had a really nice time getting ready together in the tent. And I was in a shower queue with Gok Wan! He was lovely. My girlfriend and I were in matching towel robes when we met him which was quite upsetting because he’s a style icon. He was very nice about it. He said it was giving comfort and comfort is key! In general, the whole thing was amazing. We saw Janelle Monet who was incredible.

Sophie: And Shania Twain!

Niamh: Yes, who did loads of screaming, which I’m still not over.

What’s the best and worst thing about festivals?

Niamh: Worst is the toilets, hands down. I really do struggle with that.

Georgia: For the best thing though, the nature of some festivals are so lovely. You have an excuse to camp somewhere nice and sit around a log fire, learn to whittle.

Sophie: I just love that it feels like protected time with each other. Most of the time you don’t have phone signal, so you’re not distracted by the outside world and just get to spend loads of gorgeous time together at quite a slow pace, making tea in the kettle over the campfire.

Niamh. Yeah, you can slow down a bit.

Katie: We’ve got a good set-up because Sophie’s tent is massive.

Niamh: We’ve got a compound, don’t we?

Sophie: Yeah, it’s a camping cult.

It’s been a busy year for you. Are you working on anything at the moment?

Niamh: We’re working on getting our next round of songs together, and we also have some really exciting shows that we’re going to be announcing in January. We’re going on tour with somebody really awesome! So yeah, just figuring that out at the moment, but also trying to figure out what’s next for us and what kind of music is coming next. We’ve really loved playing some new songs on tour and have had some calls for them to be released.

You’re hosting a dinner party and can each invite one person, alive or dead. Who are you inviting?

Niamh: Ruth Jones, but as Nessa from Gavin and Stacey. I saw her recently in Sister Act in London and she was amazing. Very excited for the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special.

Katie: I was thinking Liza Minnelli. She’d be a hoot, I think.

Sophie: Dolly would be a good one. But I think I would have to invite my hero, Amy Winehouse. She’d be a great crack at a dinner party, wouldn’t she?

Georgia: My first thought was Kate Bush.

Katie: We have too many characters at this dinner party!

Sophie: I reckon Liza and Amy would have a fight.

What’s a question you really want to be asked?

Niamh: Can I actually ask a question of you? What do you think our fans should be called? Right now we’ve got the ‘blue-mers’ which is quite odd, and the ‘blue bees’ which I don’t love.

Katie: The ‘blueberries!’ That’s it!

Niamh: I’m quite into that. I’m gonna rename the WhatsApp group!

Georgia: But when it comes to what question we’d like to be asked… What do we get up to in the car?

Okay, a random question just popped into my head. What do you get up to in the car?

Georgia: So much stuff. We spend a lot of time in the car together. One of our favourite games at the moment is doing improvised musicals. We’ll start out with something completely random.

Niamh: Sophie really hates it with every fibre of her being but I feel like someday she’ll be listening with glee.

Georgia: She pretends to be asleep.

Sophie: I had my headphones in the first time. How long did I last?

Niamh: About a minute and a half.

Sophie: To be fair, I did listen to the last one and it was good. I did enjoy it. Maybe I just need to be in the right frame of mind.

The Deep Blue’s latest EP Honeylove is out now and you can catch them back in Manchester on 29th December supporting Lottery Winners alongside The Clause and Jamie Wooding at Manchester Academy. Remaining tickets can be found HERE.

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