Rising from the ashes of BIG DEAL, Medium Love soar on their sun-kissed debut EP.
FEATURE | MEDIUM | WORDS BY DAN MARKSMAN
Formed from the ashes of his previous band, London outfit BIG DEAL, Kacey Underwood’s new demos needed to be filed under a new name, that name became Medium Love. Having toured with Depeche Mode and released three albums with BIG DEAL, Kacey was keen to hit the ground running with his new tracks, recruiting Heather and Sam to form a three-piece live unit. They released two singles in 2019 and today unveil their debut EP ‘Overcoming Shyness’ which features brand new single ‘Little Love’. We caught up with Kacey for a quick Q&A ahead of the release to dig deeper into Medium Love.
Hard Of Hearing: Talk to us about how Medium Love came together and formed?
Kacey: “I met Heather a while after my last band Big Deal split. I’d asked a bunch of friends if they knew anyone looking to play who’d be a good fit, and the only suggestion that came back was Heather! So no options really. We went to a gig together and talked about music and wanted the same things from a band, and she liked the demos I’d been working on. She knew Sam from living in Harlow, they had played together in cover bands, something like that.”
Hard Of Hearing: What music do you share a love of that informs Medium Love?
Kacey: “If I say in rehearsal, nah it needs to be more broken social scene or this bit is Fleetwood Mac, or, hey less Weezer more Prince, they know what I’m trying to say, and that I’m probably wrong.”
Hard Of Hearing: You used to play in BIG DEAL, how has your experience in that band informed what you do now? Any highlights you’d like to mention?
Kacey: “I try to be nicer now, and I know nothings going to turn out the way you plan, so enjoy it while it lasts. I loved touring and look forward to seeing the inside of vans and smelly venues again.”
Hard Of Hearing: What were you up to as a band before lockdown happened?
Kacey: “We were making an album, bit by bit piece by piece, and rehearsing a lot, still finding ourselves. Lockdown has been hard. None of us are exactly social, but we weren’t built for isolation either. We try to stay in touch, but getting in a room together was the key and we’ve lost that for now.”
Hard Of Hearing: Your lead single ‘Can’t Go Back’ is out, it sounds reflective yet instrumentally it has bags of momentum and energy, tell us more about how the single came about.
Kacey: “Reflective is a nice way to put it! I was thinking about the adage, ‘Time heals all things’ and how its more like, it just turns things to jerky. Like, its all still there, just in a weirder, dryer, saltier way. I went through a phase where every time I picked up the guitar I played the riff, and it just felt really satisfying even though its really simple , and that it should be balanced by what I was actually feeling at the time, which was not satisfied with simple things.”
Hard Of Hearing: Your debut EP is out August 7th, was it hard choosing the tracks for it? Talk us through the thread of choices behind the EP and it’s song’s.
Kacey: “It was really, really hard to pick the tracks. We’ve got a lot of recordings in the works, and a lot of them we’ve struggled to get right on a tiny budget. These were the ones that sounded right together.”
Hard Of Hearing: Any plans to hit the ground running live when it’s possible again?
Kacey: “Yea, we’ve got things booked for October. Just hoping the virus fucks off, or things don’t get weirder like aliens landing or finding out we’re in a simulation, you know 2020 stock footage.”
Hard Of Hearing: If you could say one word to your teenage self what would it be?
Kacey: “Cool.”
Medium Love release their debut EP today, August 7th, alongside their new single ‘Little Love’.
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