We speak to the band at The Great Escape to talk live shows, silverback gorillas and new EP ‘Forbidden Fruit’.

In their jolting, shapeshifting mania, Alien Chicks are crafting their own take on what punk music could be today. At gigs, lyrics are screamed, drum kits are smashed and moshes explode faithfully, but with this long-established musical formula, the band take the liberty to warp it with ridiculous ambition. ‘Say Fish’ closes their new EP ‘Forbidden Fruit’ and is one of the band’s collective favourites to play live, doubtless for its overstimulating barrage of musical (and amusical) sections that range from an exposed vocal-and-guitar intro to a breakdown of whirling emergency siren-style noise, with catchy hooks fleetingly taking shape in between. ‘5/4’ is another favourite to perform, “because it’s hard, I like the challenge”, singer and guitarist Josef Lindsay explains.  In the wake of black midi’s ascendancy, there has been a growing vogue for London bands to challenge their moshing adherents with continuous shifts in pace and time signature and having similarly grown from doing hard yards at the Windmill, Alien Chicks have plenty of experience figuring out just how to do that. Indeed, the accelerating whirlwind single ‘Steve Buscemi’, an early fan favourite, grew out of a jam section added to an early show to fill out the set.

Now a good few years down the line from those early Windmill shows, we spoke to Joe and drummer Martha Daniels on Brighton Pier ahead of the band headlining our stage at The Great Escape. “Stef” (bassist Stefan Parker-Steele) “has lost his wristband so he’s running late”, Martha explained as the interview kicked off. With a busy touring schedule combined with full time day jobs – Stef and Joe are both schoolteachers, while Martha works at Camden council – it is pretty understandable that collective herding among the band can be a challenge. This GCSE season clashes with the release of ‘Forbidden Fruit’ as well as two Glastonbury dates, and the band have recently been spending their evenings racing to catch the train to tour dates with Lambrini Girls up and down the country (the boys got sick of driving and Martha hasn’t passed her test yet).  Joe and Stef’s respective schools are at least encouraging, we are told, allowing them the occasional day off when they can. And next year Joe and Stef both go down to four days a week, so watch out, LNER!

At our Great Escape show at Revenge, the band incited a frantic mosh pit. It almost always happens at Alien Chicks shows, but at a gig attended largely by music industry professionals, this level of looseness was pretty impressive. “We have a hardcore of fans who get the mosh going at every gig”, Martha told us after the show, glad to have that starting group to draw others in. Crowd surfing too, it is clear, is a favourite part of gigging for the band, with all members getting a go at the Great Escape show, even Martha, who abandoned her drums to dive in as the last song descended into noise.

Discussing embarrassing stage moments earlier that day, Joe had mentioned a failed stage dive that could have been embarrassing, though he insists that he was undeterred and simply “got back up [on stage] and told them to try it again… I felt like I needed a Jack Black moment, you know?” Digging a little deeper, Joe went on to reluctantly reveal a live moment that’s been a little harder to come to live with, which happened pre-Alien Chicks. “When I was 14 I played in, like, a pop-punk band. [We had] a song about my girlfriend at the time, and I went and kissed her during the song… it was so cringe. My brother brings it up all the time like ‘that was the worst thing that you’ve ever done in your entire life.’ Even though he was 12 when he was watching it and he was still like ‘that is so fuckin’ cringe it’s unreal’.”

Older now and slightly wiser, the band still don’t take themselves too seriously, and their music speaks of the playfulness and variety that makes their live shows so infectious. The rapid verses of ‘Mr. Muscle’ take an associative freefall through the signs of the capitalistic oppression that weigh on the mundane details of life, before a chorus they have described as “slapstick” rattles through the names of “our favourite cleaning products, which we would use if we ever cleaned”. An ability to navigate serious themes without taking yourself too seriously has always been at the core of punk, and the band evolve this philosophy for the modern day with shapeshifting songs and blitzes of referential lyrics that altogether reflect our increasingly constricted attention spans. The band appropriately emit a mixture of stage-diving bravado and down-to-earth humility. Back on the pier, we asked what animal each could beat in a fight. Tongue in cheek, Joe backed himself against a silverback gorilla, while Martha reckoned she could take “a small fish”. How about if they joined forces? “A silverbacked gorilla and a small fish”.