Describe your music in 3 words 

Heavy blues, yeah?

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How did you pick your band name?

We started off with the idea of sticking to the blues, to give us focus. A Barrelhouse is a prohibition-era drinking den, as well as a kind of honky-tonk style of piano music you'd find there. We thought it all fit together pretty well. Things have evolved since then but we like the name. The 'haus' part is a nod to krautrock and to give it a twist.

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Who are your musical influences?
It's all blues-based, essentially, with Sabbath, desert rock, alt-rock chucked in there too.  Anything that's really fun to play.

 

Fresh On The Net BBC radio 6 has given you high praise for your first single, how does that feel?!

Great, of course. It's nice for your music to be appreciated, the way we appreciate others. It's also nice if it results in more people at the shows. Ultimately though, we're just out to have fun with it and please ourselves. Hopefully others join in.

I’ve had a sneaky early listen to the new album 'Dirty Hymns & Antonyms' (out 5.5.23) & it sounds amazing! You both share the songwriting and vocals, tell us about how that dynamic works for you so well.

We complete each other! We both occupy very different spaces, from the themes of the songs, to the sounds we use and the way we play. Put it together and there's no overlap so it works really well, resulting in something quite rich & varied.

What would be your fantasy gig line up to play?

70s Sabbath, Shellac, Kyuss, Soundgarden, Fantomas, Deerhoof, Tool, White Stripes. Nothing very left field!

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You’ve both been part of previous musical projects, lastly Master Of None, how does this project feel compared to the previous?

MON was great fun, perhaps just not built to last. What we're doing now is very easy, logistically, as it's just the two of us. Things happen very quickly and it's really relaxed and positive. We're loving it.

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The recording of the album sounds wonderful, especially the drums having a live sound like Steve Albini craved, tell us about your process.

Steve Albini would be disgusted with the way the album was done, as it's recorded digitally and the drums have samples under them. Out of necessity really! When I recorded them I hadn't played drums in 2 years and got a couple of practice sessions in before recording 11 tracks in about 6 hours, with no experimenting with sounds.  Apart from that, it's just a process of tweaking over time, listening again, tweaking again. Extremely labour-intensive but it sounds really full. We're really proud of it.

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Where can we catch you live in the next few months?!

We are playing at The Port Mahon (Oxford) on the 29th of April with Gappy Tooth Industries - they are great promoters who put on well-crafted nights, so we are looking forward to airing the album that night before it comes out on the 5th of May. We are also playing The Library Pub (Oxford) on the 15th of June, The Rising Sun Arts Centre (Reading) on the 30th of June and Readipop and Riverside festivals in July. We are looking at booking more shows in the Autumn, too... The set is really heavy, loud, and upbeat, so we are really excited to get these songs out there and hopefully get people moving!

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The album 'Dirty Hymns & Antonyms' is out 5.5.23 and the singles 'Mud Pie', 'Just Get On With It' & 'Self Help For The Helpless' are out now!​

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April 2023

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