The New Eves: “If people still think we’re whimsical, they won’t after this”

The Brighton band on their debut album, The New Eve Is Rising, being real, and being ready to get called weird.

Four women in white dresses stand on the cliffs near Brighton on a cold, grey December day. They brandish a homemade, Suffragette-inspired banner with red words emblazoned across it: ‘The New Eve Is Rising.’ It reads like a proclamation – or a threat. To passersby, The New Eves’ album cover shoot might resemble a period costume drama, or some strange, cultish ritual. The Brighton quartet’s songs – embellishing archetypal stories with ritualistic chants, incessant drumbeats and ominous strings – seem to immerse us in an ancient, elemental world. But while their delivery taps into something primal, they are far from ushering in an era of Neo-Luddism. Instead, they embrace technology, drawing on Donna Haraway’s cyborg feminism theory, which rejects the boundaries between human and animal, and human and machine. “We’re modern women,” quips vocalist and bassist Kate Mager. “We’re cyborgs.”

“They think we’re whimsical cottagecore princesses,” continues vocalist, guitarist and violinist Violet Farrer. “It’s because we’re women. It’s because we wear white dresses.” Rather than whimsy, The New Eves’ music is driven by an unruly intensity, their songs urgent, galvanising calls for unfiltered self-expression. They defy easy categorisation, fusing elements of freak folk and 60s garage rock with the screeching, discordant strings of The Velvet Underground and the pummelling basslines and brash, post-punk sprechgesang vocals of The Raincoats. 

Since forming in 2021, The New Eves have built a reputation through transcendent live shows that are part concert, part ceremony, and include avant-garde dance. Exploring themes of nature, myth and religion, The New Eves draw from a well of literary romanticism. Farrer and Mager became friends while studying English Literature at the University of Brighton in 2016; they met Nina Winder-Lind (cello, vocals) and Ella Oona Russell (drums, flute, vocals) a few years later through the city’s tight-knit art and music scene. 

The songs on their debut album, The New Eve Is Rising, released in August, were born from loose jam sessions and unfiltered teenage poetry that journeys through caves, marshes and meadows. On Cow Song, they long to “feel the mountains under my feet” and “breathe the alpine air”. In short, it’s a call to ‘touch grass’. That chronically online buzzphrase reflects a fantasy to return to the elemental, communal and human, reflecting a growing social trend that has manifested in the IRL communities around Weird Walk and Stone Club – proponents of reconnecting with ancient landscapes and seasonal rituals. 

Rather than rejecting modernity, The New Eves see nature and tech coexisting in harmony. “You can be talking about the mountains and how ancient the rocks are and still welcome technology,” Mager says. “It doesn’t have to be two forces against each other. We’re going to take our Nintendos up a mountain and play Zelda while dangling our feet in a stream.”

This push and pull between past and present, sacred and profane, arises throughout their debut. Opener The New Eve serves as the group’s fearless manifesto. Amid references to Eve eating the apple in Eden, contemporary touchpoints surface. Their New Eve “runs across fields at the dawn of humanity”, but also “eats baked beans, cries into her pillow, watches TV”. Farrer and Mager appreciate the sublime beauty of nature, but they want the modern convenience of the city: “We’re just being real,” Mager says. “I will eat baked beans and then think about the beginning of the universe.”

Their latest ferocious single, Red Brick, sees them put to the sword any assumption that their sound is whimsical, while its B-side, Whale Station, is an expansive sonic swell, diving deep into their obsession with marine biology. Deliberate piano and foreboding bass underpin surreal, visceral lyrics about flying horses, whales’ heartbeats and salmon worn like hats. “If people still think we’re whimsical,” Farrer says, “they won’t after this.”

“No,” Mager adds. “They’ll just think we’re weird.”

Sounds like: The Velvet Underground at a Kibbo Kift convention
Soundtrack for: Casting Etsy witch spells
File next to: The Velvet Underground, The Raincoats, Joanna Newsom
Our favourite song: Mary
Where to find them: @the_new_eves