Indie/Jangle pop band LIPS are a four-piece from Falmouth, Cornwall consisting of Rachel Anstis on vocals and guitar, Theo Dorian on guitar, Christian Wright on drums and Alex Smith on bass. LIPS’ influences seem to be a type of lo-fi dreampop on the edge of twee with some dabs of classic shoegaze & britpop thrown in here and there. It’s nostalgic indiepop, harking back to the jangly bands from the late 80’s/early 90’s, like the Sarah & Creation rosters, but also Sunday Records (Chicago, founded in 1990) who coincidentally made a restart in 2018 and are releasing this, LIPS’ first EP.
Debut single “Apartment”, and the lovely accompanying video, got quite a lot of attention already: the single reached over 100k streams and airtime on BBC Radio 6 shortly after release, and has spread through blogs and groups, slowly but surely getting noticed by all and sundry in the scene. “Apartment” is a charming jangle-dreampop track with surf-beats, siren-like vocals, and a smashing britpop coda à la Echobelly, whose influence I hear once more in on the crescendo’s of their 2nd single “Walls” in which the verse reminds me strongly of Adorable’s “Still Life“: seems we are in the right era, yes? “Sunken” heads more in the direction of The Sundays (oh joy!) but this time with the added languid haziness of more contemporary acts like Hazel English and Japanese Breakfast, and a ghostly echo of Lush right at the end of the song. You get the picture. So… what’s not to love? Kiss those LIPS!
Really enjoying your site, sampled this ep and ordered the cd (I’m old school:)). Absolutely love it, so thank you, wouldn’t have heard this otherwise.
The irony is that I was in an obscure band that released two singles on Sunday Records before LIPS were even born!
BW
SimonH
Oh really!? which band was this!
Fruit!
It was a long time ago:)
Simon