Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
"Time to dance your ass off. Bristol’s Playwrights are one of this country’s finest ensembles; stunning stuff -the real new order of cerebral rock begins here, the rest are only pretending. Don’t come crying when they are massive. " - Losing Today
"Time to dance your ass off. Bristol’s Playwrights are one of this country’s finest ensembles; stunning stuff -the real new order of cerebral rock begins here, the rest are only pretending. Don’t come crying when they are massive. " - Losing Today
“Brilliant again, simply brilliant; we’ve told you before about the brave hard boiled English beauty of Bristol’s very left field pop makers called The Playwrights, and we’re going to tell you all again - one of the very best bands out there. The Playwrights are mostly about songs, pop songs - cleverly constructed rule breaking pop songs that leave you so much to hang on to every time you come back to explore. Fine art-pop; earnest, sometimes uptight, always warm and rewarding... they really do push all the buttons. Single of the week.” - Organ Magazine
“Brilliant again, simply brilliant; we’ve told you before about the brave hard boiled English beauty of Bristol’s very left field pop makers called The Playwrights, and we’re going to tell you all again - one of the very best bands out there. The Playwrights are mostly about songs, pop songs - cleverly constructed rule breaking pop songs that leave you so much to hang on to every time you come back to explore. Fine art-pop; earnest, sometimes uptight, always warm and rewarding... they really do push all the buttons. Single of the week.” - Organ Magazine
"The Playwrights are literate, anti-establishment and have a penchant for skinny-jerk melodies that will have you dancing like a spider with half its legs torn off. Step aside Hot Hot Heat, Interpol and Franz Ferdinand, we love you all but we love The Playwrights more!" - Logo Magazine
"The Playwrights are literate, anti-establishment and have a penchant for skinny-jerk melodies that will have you dancing like a spider with half its legs torn off. Step aside Hot Hot Heat, Interpol and Franz Ferdinand, we love you all but we love The Playwrights more!" - Logo Magazine
"One of the greatest joys in life is hearing a new band that you know could really become something special. For me this has been the case with Clinic, Franz Ferdinand and The Beta Band. Right now I feel that Bloc Party, The Duke Spirit and The Futureheads are going in the same direction. Oh and this band I’m reviewing now - The Playwrights.
This band has been around for two years, and I’m sure that with this single they should get critical acclaim. ‘Guy Debord is Really Dead’ is a fantastic example of the new breed of rock that is slowly forming: post-punky with a modern edge to it. Although I can hear shades of XTC and Wire in this single, really and truly the Playwrights have their own original sound which grows on you and obsesses you further with each listening. It will literally be criminal if this band doesn’t go places in the near future." - Alternative Malta
"One of the greatest joys in life is hearing a new band that you know could really become something special. For me this has been the case with Clinic, Franz Ferdinand and The Beta Band. Right now I feel that Bloc Party, The Duke Spirit and The Futureheads are going in the same direction. Oh and this band I’m reviewing now - The Playwrights.
This band has been around for two years, and I’m sure that with this single they should get critical acclaim. ‘Guy Debord is Really Dead’ is a fantastic example of the new breed of rock that is slowly forming: post-punky with a modern edge to it. Although I can hear shades of XTC and Wire in this single, really and truly the Playwrights have their own original sound which grows on you and obsesses you further with each listening. It will literally be criminal if this band doesn’t go places in the near future." - Alternative Malta
“The Playwrights are stunning, very young and ultra dynamic; oscillating around the stage like spinning tops. Earnest and uptight, they whirlpool out their songs of 2lst century suburban relapse with an urgency that is full of all the different kinds of tension that makes great Pop great: art, politics, social inequalities and sex.”
- Careless Talk Costs Lives
“The Playwrights are stunning, very young and ultra dynamic; oscillating around the stage like spinning tops. Earnest and uptight, they whirlpool out their songs of 2lst century suburban relapse with an urgency that is full of all the different kinds of tension that makes great Pop great: art, politics, social inequalities and sex.”
- Careless Talk Costs Lives
“The Playwrights cannily use keyboards, strings, brass and weird contraptions to create fine art-pop. They offer an angular, accessible, essentially English sound well worth investigating." - The Independent
“The Playwrights cannily use keyboards, strings, brass and weird contraptions to create fine art-pop. They offer an angular, accessible, essentially English sound well worth investigating." - The Independent
"This is most impressive, warm, rewarding and clever pop music - gloriously challenging, rather beautiful, slightly psychedelic, intelligent and dynamic. The Playwrights are brave enough to give us so much more, they positively glow, they're like that bit between the rain and the sun where everything is extra radiant." - Organ Magazine
"This is most impressive, warm, rewarding and clever pop music - gloriously challenging, rather beautiful, slightly psychedelic, intelligent and dynamic. The Playwrights are brave enough to give us so much more, they positively glow, they're like that bit between the rain and the sun where everything is extra radiant." - Organ Magazine
“Gushing. That’s what I miss these days. Gushing. The ability, the passion to gush. The Playwrights then, and ‘Good Beneath the Radar’. Gushworthy? Crushworthy, even? Well goddammit, yes. And yes. And yes a third time just for the hell of it. Actually, thinking about it, of course that ought to be “an enormous Yes!” The Playwrights are instinctive, intelligent and incendiary, are smart, serious and scathing. What more do you want fer chrissakes? The Playwrights understand the value of adding razor wire edges to pop. With fabulously oscillating guitars meshing in dynamic directions (all of them strangely headed straight for the stars), their sweet reflections of pasts they don't even know exist head strongly into futures they trust will be okay mark them out as marvellous post-modern purveyors of pop that prickles.” - Tangents
“Gushing. That’s what I miss these days. Gushing. The ability, the passion to gush. The Playwrights then, and ‘Good Beneath the Radar’. Gushworthy? Crushworthy, even? Well goddammit, yes. And yes. And yes a third time just for the hell of it. Actually, thinking about it, of course that ought to be “an enormous Yes!” The Playwrights are instinctive, intelligent and incendiary, are smart, serious and scathing. What more do you want fer chrissakes? The Playwrights understand the value of adding razor wire edges to pop. With fabulously oscillating guitars meshing in dynamic directions (all of them strangely headed straight for the stars), their sweet reflections of pasts they don't even know exist head strongly into futures they trust will be okay mark them out as marvellous post-modern purveyors of pop that prickles.” - Tangents
“You need this band in your life now.” - Losing Today
“You need this band in your life now.” - Losing Today
"Have we mentioned that we fucking LOVE The Playwrights? Those of you who like your post-punk all arty and angular and intellectual and intense ought to visit the Bristol-based brainiacs at theplaywrights.co.uk and download some tunage. We recommend the very ace ‘Dislocated’ and the swinging Situationist single ‘Guy Debord Is Really Dead’. " - Rolling Stone
"Have we mentioned that we fucking LOVE The Playwrights? Those of you who like your post-punk all arty and angular and intellectual and intense ought to visit the Bristol-based brainiacs at theplaywrights.co.uk and download some tunage. We recommend the very ace ‘Dislocated’ and the swinging Situationist single ‘Guy Debord Is Really Dead’. " - Rolling Stone
Discography
'Dislocated' / 'Welcome To The Middle Ages' 7" single (Unpopular Records)
'Guy Debord Is Really Dead' CD single
(Sink and Stove Records)
'English Self Storage' CD mini-album
(Sink and Stove Records)
The band are demoing new material and re-working existing tracks for their debut album as a complete band 'When I Lived In The Modern World'.
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
It’s all about timing. The Playwrights are a majestic and angular indie-rock band from Bristol, England, with a strong pop edge. Formed in 2001 by friends and long-time collaborators Aaron Dewey (vocals) and Benjamin Shillabeer (guitar) the duo initially demoed, over the course of a year, a collection of homespun experimental indie-pop songs in bedrooms and office blocks in Bristol and beyond. Not wishing to re-record the songs or to lose momentum, the pair set about getting a band together and subsequently released the ‘finished’ recordings as a clutch of singles and an album on Benjamin’s acclaimed label Sink and Stove in 2003.
This early material started receiving excellent reviews - from the likes of the UK’s mainstream music press (The Independent, Rocksound and Losing Today amongst others) to more grassroots platforms; as word-of-mouth responses found the The Playwrights namechecked and playlisted on webzines, blogs and radio shows across Europe, Canada and the USA. The album ‘Good Beneath The Radar’ was included in the late John Peel’s lists that year and he played the band’s first single ‘Television In Other Cities’ back in April 2003. However the success of these recordings wasn’t matched by the progress of the new band, which saw a series of frustratingly shifting line-ups and personnel changes, as the right balance of personalities and instrumentation was sought. Despite this upheaval this fledgling band managed to tour on behalf of Careless Talk Costs Lives magazine in 2003 and then with Pretty Girls Make Graves in 2004; coinciding with the release of limited edition 7” ‘Dislocated’ for UK tastemaker Unpopular Records (The Pipettes, Smoosh) and a CD single ‘Guy Debord Is Really Dead’ for Sink and Stove (responsible for Chikinki, Gravenhurst, Controller.Controller and The Organ to name a few). Both these releases saw further acclaim - from Rolling Stone magazine in New York to filesharing sites and messageboards across their homeland and abroad.
Christmas 2004 saw the line-up finally settle with the addition of Hector Peebles on bass and, a few months later, Tom Mills on drums. Guitarist Nathan Edmunds has been a steadying hand in the band since 2002 and completes the line-up. Finally in a position to develop the mass of new material written, the long wait has done the band immeasurable good; having allowed them to develop their sound into something harder and more aggressive, as the recent relentless live shows attest.
Such is the renewed vigour and chemistry, the forthcoming mini-album 'English Self Storage' (due November 2005 on Sink and Stove and recorded in London by producer Brian O'Shaughnessy) feels like The Playwrights first proper release. Songs such as ‘Why We’ve Become Invisible’, ‘Fear Of Open Spaces’ and a new version of ‘Dislocated’ showcase the band’s classy combination of simpatico guitar interplay, busy but funky basslines and solid but expressive drumming; with the addition of Aaron’s refreshingly English vocals and The Playwrights now trademark splashes of cornet, glockenspiel and dubby melodica. The lyrics are arty but not inaccessible, being about common themes and often reflecting the band’s native Westcountry. Full of jilted passion stemming from the drudgery of day jobs, failed relationships, the inertia of small-city life, frustration over the lack of romance in modern existence - but filtered through an art-school lens, the songs turn absence into substance. A craft has been honed also - apparent in the more relaxed but powerful vocals, tightly focused songwriting and sophisticated arrangements for brass and strings - coupled with bursts of noise, slabs of guitar feedback, squeals of theremin or an arresting passage of spoken word lyrics.
This willingness to experiment is a key point. Unfairly lumped in with the current resurgence of new wave post-punk styled bands, The Playwrights palette is broader. Echoes of Burt Bacharach, Captain Beefheart, King Tubby and Michael Nyman are equally at home in The Playwrights music as those of Gang of Four, XTC, The Fall and Joy Division. Influences range far and wide; from English acts like Nick Drake, The Cure, The Smiths, The Auteurs, Blur and Hood to American bands such as Talking Heads, Fugazi, Pavement, The Sea and Cake, Tortoise and Les Savy Fav. The Playwrights have shared stages with Mission of Burma, 90 Day Men, Weird War, Herman Dune, Seachange, The National and James Yorkston as well as Sink and Stove labelmates past and present, including Leave Land For Water and You & The Atom Bomb.
The Playwrights are an urgently needed proposition for indie rock. They take their tales of everyday life and turn them into angry and arty but immediate and hope-filled anthems, bristling with intelligence, hooks and a conviction and independent spirit rarely seen these days. The Playwrights have booked their own shows, managed themselves, released their own records, maintained their own website (including the much admi
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