There’s being out of step with current trends, and then there’s The New Eves, the Brighton four-piece who take marching to the beat of your own drum – or the toot of your own flute – to new levels. You won’t find a hint of jittery post-punk or cavernous stomp-clap pop on the band’s debut album, ‘The New Eve Is Rising’, a record that instead mines the unpredictable free-spiritedness of freak folk, the loose, louche nature of rock’n’roll and the no-rules attitude of punk.
The New Eves have slowly and steadily been building to this moment since 2021, gaining a reputation as an unmissable live band. On stage, they appear like something out of a pagan fairytale and perform – at least sound-wise – how you imagine seeing The Velvet Underground would have, thanks to Violet Farrer’s violin (they also deploy cello and flute in the layers of their songs, alongside the typical guitar, bass and drums).
But this group are more than just a modern throwback to Lou Reed’s punk experimenters. They’re a band with something to say and who completely trust in their own way of delivering that message. On the slow build of ‘The New Eve’, they set out their manifesto – a sermon-like track that portrays the titular character as “curious and free”, wholly embracing of herself and in complete control of her desires, agency and autonomy. “The New Eve fucks if she wants to,” they declare. “The New Eve says no if she doesn’t want to / And there is no god to save you / If you fail to listen.”
The New Eve’s thematic world, too, is far from rooted in the present. Throughout ‘The New Eve Is Rising’, they pull from old, sometimes ancient, ideas and traditions to share their views on the world and on humanity. The harmonica-led ‘Mary’ was inspired by Farrer attending Madrid’s Holy Week, a religious celebration that dates back over 500 years, where statues of the Virgin Mary are carried through street processions. In the band’s vision of the festivities, though, Mary is set free, “emancipated […] crying, laughing, kicking, gleaming / And dancing / On the edge of the world”.
‘Astrolabe’, which revolves around a repeated handful of notes, takes inspiration from romantic couples over time, including the medieval French lovers Heloise and Abelard. The harmony-laden ‘Cow Song’ uses the traditional Swedish vocal technique of kulning – usually used to communicate with animals – to make their voices bigger, louder, more impactful, while the jagged surf-noir of ‘Highway Man’ takes the classic story of a horse-riding robber and retells it from a woman’s perspective.
While The New Eves are respectful of tradition and the past, it’s their ability to recast both into something completely fresh that makes them so exciting. At times, they get a bit bogged down in their own experiments – the eight-minute-31-second ‘Volcano’ perhaps overstays its welcome – but, mostly, ‘The New Eve Is Rising’ presents a singular band doing things just right, and completely in their own world.
