BILK FRONT MAN ON ‘ESSEX, DRUGS AND HOW THE BUS DRIVER MIGHT BE MORE ROCK N ROLL’

INTERVIEW | SOL ABRAHAMS (BILK) by Gracie Erskine

With the music scene crying out for sincerity, Gracie Erskine spoke to Sol Abrahams, front man of self-confirmed ‘only rock n roll band left’ Bilk. Conversation flying from authenticity and angst, creativity and crying, and of course ‘Essex, Drugs and Rock and Roll’ to be released January 24^th, 2025. 

Sol: Hello, hello, hello. Hello, hello.

Gracie: How are you feeling about Friday? 

Sol: I am fucking fantastic, banging on the top of the world. I’m up for it, man, yeah. ‘Essex, Drugs and Rock and Roll’, our second album. Come on!

Gracie: If you were going to describe the album in three words that weren’t Essex, Drugs and Rock and Roll, what would they be? 

Sol: Erm, 13 banging songs, that’s what I’d say. People ask me about the album, and that’s sort of how I’d sum it up, do you know what I mean? It’s just 13 good tunes, you know what I mean? I can get deeper on it, but that’s the core of it man, it’s just 13 good tunes. 

Gracie: It’s a bit of an emotional rollercoaster as an album, of acoustic breathers that I really enjoyed that we’re not used to seeing. Personally, Skidmark, for its fast wit. And I think if you’re going to end a song by saying, ‘You’re a cunt, suck your mum’, there’s no-one else going to do that. But I would like to know who it’s aimed at. 

Sol: I couldn’t possibly say. 

Gracie: I thought it might be about these music fakers and TikTok entertainers, to be honest. (a line mentioned in the single ‘RNR’)

Sol: No, no, no. Actually, I can tell you it’s not about them, but I can’t tell you who it is. At some point, you might find out, but I can’t tell you who it’s about. It’s non-disclosed. Because if I give it away, then the mystery’s up, and I feel like it’s something I should keep people guessing at.

Gracie: There are a few acoustic tracks on there, ‘Turning Pages’ stands out for being refreshingly introspective.

Sol: I reflect my life and my experiences and myself in my music. So obviously that’s what you’re getting. Turning Pages is a special one, not only to me, but also to Harry, the drummer in the band.

This was one of the last days in the studio, And I’m doing the vocal takes of it, and Harry’s a bit quiet, and he’s not normally quiet, so he’s normally quite jolly. And then he goes, ‘I’m going to go for a walk’. And then it was only a couple of weeks later, and we were at a festival, and Harry was a bit drunk, and he goes, ‘to tell you the truth, man, when I walked out, I cried. The song got to me so much, I felt like it was written for me. I related to it so much, and it just got overwhelming, and I got really emotional’.

I kind of feel a bit evil when I hear that. I don’t just sort of rub my hands together in like a Dr. Evil type way, and go, yeah, I’ve written a song and now I’m in the money, pound signs in my eyes.  It’s going to get people to cry. That means it’s a fucking banger. If it gets a reaction, it means it’s a good song.

Gracie: How do you think the fans will feel about this new turn?

Sol: I don’t know. Whatever people make of it, they make of it. Obviously, I love the tune, and it means something to me, and I wrote it because it’s personal to me. I write about my life. There’s no bullshit in my music. I don’t sit there and go, let me write an introspective, reflective song that’s going to make people sit down and rub their chins. I just write whatever flows out of me flows out of me. Whatever happens, happens. I put myself into my art, do you know what I’m saying? My music and myself ain’t separate. It’s all one.

Gracie: If your writing must come from within, did you face writers block trying to overcome the sophomore album stigma?

Sol: I think I’m the sort of songwriter, where I get stuck in the album. Each album is like putting a new suit on. When I wrote the first album, that was like a mixture of old tunes that I had already written, and then maybe five or six new ones, and I put that together into 11 songs for the first debut Bilk album. I wasn’t really thinking about writing too much, until we got around to the start of 2024, and we were kind of like, we need a second album now. Then we booked some in the studio time, and had written one song or something like that, and everyone was fucking stressing out. And I’m going, chill, chill everyone, I’m gonna fucking deliver the goods, and then I did, I sat down every day for two months, and got in my zone with it, and the creative flow just all flowed out of me.

Gracie: The ‘goods’ seem to have a lot more varied influence. Summer Days, seems to have quite a strong The Cure vibe, and then Band Life Blues, has that kind of Johnny Cash storytelling, what were you listening to at the time of writing? 

Sol: Yeah, I rate that Johnny Cash. I rate Johnny Cash a lot, he’s fucking great man. 

(silence)

Sorry, what was the question? I just got distracted by you likening me to Johnny Cash, which is quite a compliment. 

Gracie: What were you listening to when you were making the album to get these different highs and lows of it? 

Sol: I think it’s all just been a combination of my influences, over the last couple of years.

I wasn’t really into band music until a couple of years ago when my girlfriend, Beatrice, who I wrote ‘Beatriz’ about, put me onto all the blues music. And I was like, this is fucking great, and I got my head in that. And because I liked that, I sort of started writing shit on my guitar that was kind of bluesy. I wrote the ‘Band Life Blues’ riff and had the riff for a while. And then when it came to recording, I just started writing the lyrics over it, telling the story of the band over the riff.  I wrote all the lyrics for it, and the song structure and everything, in about maybe 10 minutes or something, it’s not strict. 

Gracie: Going back to Band Life Blues, it tells the story of how Bilk came to be, but what do you think is the one song on the album that screams Bilk?

Sol: Apart from Band Life Blues, probably the first one that comes to mind is Go. It’s the last single off the album, and I think it’s a standout tune. It’s just got fucking shitloads of energy. It’s just about being yourself, not giving a fuck what people think, which I think is a strong message aligned with Bilk, and my own life ethos. The way that I choose to live my life, dress how I want, walk how I want, say what I mean, and mean what I say, and do my thing. And whether people like it or not, that’s their problem. 

Gracie: Is that the same vibe that we’re going to carry on into potential album number three? 

Sol: Fuck knows. I’ve written the second album, and I couldn’t be more happy with it, I wouldn’t change a fucking single note of the album, you know what I mean? Whether the third album will be similar, I don’t know. The first album is more sort of raw and punky and underground sounding. Essex, Drugs and and Rock and Roll is more accessible sounding and the production’s bigger and there’s piano and violins and it’s just a bit more sort of, it’s less underground sounding and more sort of like classic sounding. 

Gracie: It’s like the mature older brother to the first album?

Sol: Yeah, yeah, the first album is young and angsty. It’s like ‘fuck you, no one understands me’ whereas the second album has still got a lot of attitude obviously.

Gracie: Maybe because you do?

Sol: Well, that’s it, yeah, because I do. I’ve always had a certain spirit and attitude about myself, and obviously that comes out in the music. What the third album will do, I really don’t know until I sit down and fucking pen it together. It might be fucking psychedelic or something, I’ve written a lot of psychedelic sort of guitar riffs and shit like that, you know, like trippy shit. Maybe I’ll go to fucking Thailand or something and take, like, loads of magic mushrooms and sort of just write a new album out there, and then I’ll come back with some trippy album that everyone hates, you know what I mean? Everyone abandons me, and then I’m just like this, sort of this weird guy who lives in a cage, tripping on mushrooms for the rest of my life. Sort of got carried away there…

Gracie: I see the vision. It could be your Sergeant Peppers? 

Sol: Get Luke and Harry in those pink outfits or something. Might start making Edwardian little ditties, do you know what I mean? 

Gracie: In ‘RNR’ you talk about ‘the music fakers and the TikTok entertainers. How do you feel about the current music scene, and what do you think is limiting other bands? 

Sol: I feel like it’s fucked, and I feel like I’m often very disenfranchised with it, and I’m frustrated and annoyed about it a lot. It’s a weird place music nowadays. The music industry is a fucked industry. I think it always has been, it’s just fucked in different ways now.

I’m not trying to follow the same path as anyone that’s trying to bang shit on TikTok and go viral with a tune that they think might. I wouldn’t be surprised if people actually write songs for TikTok- which, to me, is just completely ludicrous. I think it makes a whole mockery of music and what it’s about. I take music very seriously, I don’t take life seriously you know, but I take music seriously, and it means something to me, it’s important.

Everyone’s got everything all the time. And I think it’s just because we live in a world now where everyone’s got TikTok on their phone where they can infinitely scroll through it. You can get any food you want delivered to your door with Uber Eats, you can fucking get any film that you like on Netflix, you know?

I don’t think people should be able to get things that easy. I think it should be more of a thing like back when people used to just go to a gig round the corner because their local band are playing. It’s because they’ve got had to fuck all else to do, it’s because they were either going to a local gig round the corner with their mates or they were stuck in with their parents watching Jeremy Kyle, do you know what I mean? Whereas when you’re fucking looking at Peter Griffin memes on TikTok or whatever, you’re not going to see anything spiritually fulfilling, are you?

Gracie: With that in mind, would you still call yourself the last or only rock and roll band?

Sol: Yeah, I put a tweet up about that once and it annoyed a lot of people, which I thought was funny. We’ve got a lot of haters, so if I can egg them on a little bit, why not?  But I annoy people just by being myself anyway. To me, rock and roll is a spirit and it’s an attitude and it’s a lifestyle and it’s a feeling. There’s a certain freedom with it, and I feel like we have that sort of freedom.

Gracie: What is rock and roll to you then?

Sol: I think rock and roll is a spirit, man, it’s an attitude. I might meet a bus driver that’s more rock and roll than someone else I know in a band. Do you know what I mean? Because it’s about your attitude. It even goes past picking up a guitar. My girlfriend’s rock and roll. She’s rock and roll as fuck because she thinks with her own mind.

Gracie: Got some substance?

Sol: Yeah, man. My dad’s rock and roll as well. He manages the band. He’s got that rebellious attitude and he’s rock and roll in his own way, even though he’s not in a band. I think it’s about an attitude and a spirit.

Gracie: If you could say just one thing to the fans what would it be?

Sol: If it’s about whatever I want, then I’d be very sincere for a minute and just say I appreciate the fucking support. What I like about the fans is that they have their own minds. We’ve always come up organically and naturally. I’m very on it with the DMs and shit. I chat to all the fans all the time. It’s just the way that I am. I’m a chatty person and also, I don’t feel like I need to be some mysterious figure. I like to just be real and open with the fans because that’s just how I am. They’re cool as well.

We don’t have bullshit at our gigs like that. We don’t have toxic masculinity dickheads or sexism or racism or homophobia. It’s a good mix of people of all different colours, people of all different nationalities, ethnicities, people of all different genders, whatever.

Gracie: It’s refreshing to hear as well because on the surface when you see another male rock and roll band, it’s easy to think it’s made for people of the same look.

Sol: In my music if you listen to ‘Slag‘ as a song obviously that talks about inequality and sexism. If a guy sleeps around, then he’s a player and he’s a stud whereas if it’s a girl then she’s a fucking slag and she’s a whore or whatever. I’ve never fucking agreed with that.

Gracie: When I saw the title, I have to say I did wince at the expectation. But you reclaimed yourself in the chorus. I guess. 

Sol: It’s a purposeful title. I meant to do it like that on purpose because the record label actually wanted us to change the title of that song. They were like, maybe do it as ‘I’m a slag’, but it’s meant to raise eyebrows. It almost makes people in society question why they thought it was about a girl. If she’s a slag then I’m a slag.

Gracie: And maybe that’s the attitude that makes Bilk, Bilk?

Sol: Yeah, It’s not in one ear out the other music, its not elevator music. It’s confident, and people don’t always like confident.

Bilk are hitting the road on a UK tour at the start of February before heading overseas to charge through an EU tour. If you’ve got a taste for Essex, Drugs and Rock n Roll, tickets to their tour can be found HERE.

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