Receiving acclaim across BBC 6 Music and the indie press for their ‘car boot sale’ pop music, SUEP rummage through the jumble bin of music history, selecting and reassembling its best parts into something playful, strange and deeply artful. The band are affiliates of the Gob Nation collective - including The Tubs, Sniffany & The Nits, Ex-Void, and others., described by the Guardian as uniting around “a leftfield sensibility, lacerating wit and snotty attitude.”

With a slightly darker edge than their delightful EP 'Shop' or last year’s groovy 'The Rain', 'Highway II' tells the story of hope slamming into disappointment - a Valentine’s date gone wrong. Tears, cigarette breaks, running makeup and snotty sleeves paint a picture of painful emotional dislocation. It comes with an incredible, multilayered dance-routine music video from frequent collaborator, artist Jess Power.

Singer Georgie Stott says: “The lyrics for this poured out of me on Valentine’s Day when me and my partner went out on a date in the Limehouse area, over the river from where we lived in Rotherhithe. I got drunk too quickly, he got grumpy, and tears started streaming down my face because I just wanted to have a nice romantic time. We made up in the Canary Wharf Wetherspoons at the end of the night, but I went to have a cigarette before, to get out all my sobs and wrote all the lyrics on my phone in one go. Then at a practice studio we quickly wrote it around some chords I made up in the room.”

'Forever' is a confident debut, a masterpiece of modern indie songcraft. Across the album SUEP dip into country, synthpop, garage rock, post punk, and pub rock, but always retain their signature penchant for melodic hooks, snappy structures and straight-to-the-heart lyrics. Artfully unpretentious, the album was recorded by friend Matt Green, best known for his work with The Tubs, and mixed by Mike O’Malley of the band caroline.

Led by Georgie Stott and Joshua Harvey, SUEP have become fixtures of south-east London’s underground through a series of shared living spaces, improvised studios and DIY venues. Now with George Nicholls (The Tubs, Joanna Gruesome, GN Band), William Deacon (PC World), and Louis Forster (The Goon Sax, Expiry) completing the line up, their debut is finally on its way.

Georgie met car-boot-camera-salesman Joshua aged 18 in Winchester. Forming an instant bond, they proceeded to spend 72 hours together chatting and laughing, before forming a punk band with 2 friends. When Georgie went to university in Brighton, Joshua ended up living rent free on the floor of her squalid, now demolished, East Slope dorm-room for the entire year. They spent their time driving around the hills of Sussex, going to boot sales and listening to music very loudly on the speaker he’d hooked up to his creaking Morris Minor. The duo started experimenting with playing each other’s songs under the name ‘SUEP’ after moving into the Pupil Referral Unit - a property guardianship that once housed wayward adolescents.

An early formulation of the band fell apart after various breakups led to a member escaping to Australia, but after moving to London they soon locked in with Nicholls, Deacon and now-departed original bassist Oliver Chapman. During this era, Georgie and Josh lived in the Red Lion Boys Club - an ex-youth centre that hosted art exhibitions, raves and their weekly practices. Georgie lived illegally in a cupboard, just large enough for a double bed, and working as an early morning bakery delivery girl, while Joshua lived on a mezzanine platform he built out of scaffolding - the floor beneath full of obscure electronics and musical detritus.

It’s in the echoey expanse of the Boys Club sports hall that the 2022 EP 'Shop' was recorded, and in which the songs of Forever were first honed. Lead vocals on the album are shared between Georgie (7 tracks), Joshua (2 tracks) and Oliver (1), and a spirit of easygoing collaboration exudes through every track - no member overplaying, everyone slotting in for the greater whole.

'Forever' is a glimpse into one of the best bands on the scene, not fitting into any trend, but also never fading into obscurantism - SUEP are a band that wear a joie de vivre loosely but fashionably. Now is their time to shine.

TRACK LISTING

1. Purgatory
2. In The Morning
3. Highway II
4. Hollywood
5. Country SUEP
6. Patronised
7. The Rain
8. Big Jump
9. 10 Days
10. Fornever

London-based ‘indie-supergroup’ SUEP announce their long-awaited debut mini-album Shop, a collection of six oddball, car-boot-sale pop songs with a sprinkling of theatrical storytelling. Led by Georgie Stott (of Porridge Radio, Garden Centre) and Josh Harvey, SUEP was born out of a near-decade of playing in sheds and barns with like minded personnel, holding a mutual love for Paul McCartney, Jona Lewie, the B-52s, Devo and other performative freaks enjoying themselves.

Following a move to London from Brighton, the pair added George Nicholls (The GN Band, Joanna Gruesome, The Tubs), Will William Deacon (PC World, Garden Centre), and Ollie Chapman (Boil King) to the line-up. The five-piece take turns writing songs and taking the lead vocal duties in a wonderfully playful but coherent collaboration, with their debut mini-album Shop being a kaleidoscopic off kilter pop ride, taking the listener through haunted castles, deprived encounters, days lost to the imagination in bed, and through the integral friendships that give SUEP the energy to keep dancing to their own beat.

The album was arranged and recorded in the Red Lion Boys Club, an ex-youth centre in which Georgie and Josh both lived. Using equipment collected by Josh in his travels as a bootsale and market trader, the sports hall was transformed into a makeshift studio for a few days, with sessions conducted by producer Matthew Green (Sniffany & The Nits, The Tubs, etc.)

Mark Riley (BBC 6 Music) described SUEP’s debut single and album opener, ‘Domesticated Dream’ (2021) as “perfect pop music.” The joyfully kitsch track brims with a 70s Yamaha disco beat, deep bass, nostalgic drum machines, and hooky melodies. Possibly the most psychedelic and infectious track born out of lockdown, it tackles homelife, drinking too much, and making big plans that never come to fruition, but with a big technicoloured positivity for the future of the human-race, with the chorus’ refrain, “the psychedelic 4000s,” predicting the return of the psychedelic Age of Aquarius in a couple of millennia time.

The following single ‘Misery’ (2021) is pure cosmic swing-pop wizardry in part inspired by spy music and The Supremes. Ollie, The track’s baritone vocalist, describes it as “A love song disguised as a song about loss. It's about cherishing the things that matter but it’s also about having the courage to say goodbye,” with each line of the song a small story about a different character.

Whilst latest Shop taster ‘In Good Health’ is darkly euphoric like a pleasantly strange meeting of Siouxsie Sioux and Jona Lewie. It’s a playfully discombobulating mix of 80s jangly guitar, chirpy keyboard and moody post-punk tackling mental health, drug addiction, and the power of friendship, written after the song’s vocalist Georgie came out of hospital following a mental health crisis. “I wanted to write a song that encapsulated how important my relationships with my friends and boyfriend were at that time” she explains “…and one that also felt dark like I did at the time. I couldn’t go outside due to anxiety surrounding my health so I stayed inside for weeks. People would visit and watch films with me or let me tattoo them or make music with me. My community helped me recover.”

Elsewhere on Shop is ‘Just The Job’ fronted by Harvey and described by him as “About the relief of accepting a menial existence, and allowing life to be boring - but (within that) how the small things are the important ones, how pulling a sicky or extra long lunch break are important things to do for yourself, and how easy it is to miss the joy of every day once you get comfortable in a routine.” It’s an anthem for working people who’ve had enough - and a crowd favourite at SUEP gigs.

The darker undertones and post-punk angles of the Georgie-fronted ‘Onions’ is inspired by the crapness of cliques, with the band calling the song “A cry of welcome to all;” and finally the hooky ‘Friend of Mine,’ described as “A love letter to all the people that come and go throughout your life no matter how long you know them” - another number recalling Jona Lewie, mixed with a little sprinkling of Jonathan Richman in Harvey’s vocal delivery.

SUEP have received coverage in Independent & Clash, (among many others), with big support from Mark Riley and Steve Lamacq (BBC 6 Music) for early singles. They have played countless gigs over the last couple of years, with their first ever headline show at London’s Stag Head selling out immediately, toured with contemporaries such as Garden Centre and Ex-Void, and performed at 2022’s The Great Escape.

SUEP’s mini-album Shop was recorded in February 2020 within two days with producer Matthew Green (Sniffany & The Nits, The Tubs, etc.) at Georgie and Josh’s old home, the Red Lion Boys Club youth centre in Surrey Quays, with the old sports hall being made into a makeshift studio. It was later mixed by Mike O’Malley (caroline, Girl Ray).

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: 'Shop' is an endlessly joyous and fiendishly hummable selection of upbeat pop anthems skilfully spanning disco, lounge jazz and art rock and pulling them all together into a surprisingly cohesive whole. At points quaint and minimalistic, while wonderfully widescreen in others. It's a perfect example of a fun release, without ever being too twee to enjoy.

TRACK LISTING

A
1) Domesticated Dream
2) Friend Of Mine
3) Onions
B
4) Misery
5) In Good Health
6) Just A Job