The Freaks: A Testament to Youth

By Caleb Peck

Youth is a supreme force. It envelops us completely, often so much so that it feels like it becomes our enemy. It’s quite rare that we embrace our youth when we’re in the midst of it, so by the time our mind becomes aware of the ridiculously dumb beauty of being 16 years old smoking shitty weed in your friends basement, we’re left crate-digging for scraps of nostalgia. It’s impossible to crawl back in time, but if you feel the need to fill a void of youth in your soul, The Freaks are here to help.

Jude Atkins (Vocals, Guitar), Matt Brown (Drums), Laurence Shipway (Bass) and Jacob Blazdell (Lead Guitar), are artfully punkish teens from Britain. A friend-group-turned-band with favorite bands like Slaves, Modern Baseball, and Blur, a strong cast of influences that have guided their sound, one that embodies what it means to be young and feel like an outsider. 

The foursome’s new EP, “The Freaks vs. The World” draws from punk, emo, and alternative, delivering a varied listening experience that strays away from the tweeish-bedroom-indie music flooding today’s musical youth. “The Song You Asked If I Wrote About You, Pt. 1”, and its kin, “The Song You Asked If I Wrote About You, Pt. 2” are standout tracks. Part one features Atkins rousingly playing their guitar while singing, reflective of their emo influences. The timbre of their raw vocals coincides superbly with the sonics of their warm guitar; sweetly slipping into part two — a short, but raucous track — with energizing guitars and metronomic drums. The two-parter showcases the span of what The Freaks have to offer.

All four members were kind enough to talk with me for an hour or two earlier this winter to discuss their friendship, getting booed for playing Nirvana at their school assembly, and becoming Tik Tok sensations overnight. 

Are you guys all in high school? Or I guess 'College' over there. 

JB: I'm in college.

JA: Yeah, Jacob's in college, and we're all in high school. He's the year above us. I'm 16, which is the first year of college, but I'm old for our year. Matt and Lawrence are 15.

So how long have you been playing music? 

JA: So the three of us without Jacob have been playing together for about four years, whereas Jacob just joined a month ago? Two months ago?

JB: About that, yeah. Your birthday pretty much.

Wow, what was the genesis for adding Jacob to the group? Was he just a chill guy that you wanted play music, or were you missing an element.

JA: I've always wanted to be able to sing and not play guitar, and also Jacob just is a 'chill guy we wanted to play music with', like he was already the homie.

When did you guys start playing as a band?

JA: Um... probably 2017, yeah. We learned Knew Somebody by Kings of Leon all together.

MB: Oh yeah we thought we were the shit, we thought we were amazing (laughs).

JA: Yeah, and then we wrote a song together and it was terrible.

MB: It was like three notes, I hit like one cymbal. 

JA: After that we just kept going, we were practicing like every day.

So you've been around for 3 years, is whats out right now your first proper releases? Or have you put out other stuff?

MB: I'd say yeah... cause you wouldn't want to hear the stuff we used to make.

JB: (laughs) You actually have to show me that.

MB: Jacob you don't want to see that.

JB: I do, I really do. 

LS: It was mainly covers.

Who'd you guys cover?

JA: A lot of Nirvana. 

JB: I definitely want to do a cover of Sex-bob-omb in the future. Cause in some of our intros we say "We are The Freaks" and that's just totally taken from we are Sex-bob-bomb. Scott Pilgrims definitely influenced all of us in our lives.

At least from Jude's perspective, I've seen a lot of American music be noted as influences, particular like Nirvana or Modern Baseball, do you guys look towards the UK's scene for influence as much as you do America's?

JB: Oh definitely.

JA: Yeah I mean Slaves, the UK punk band Slaves are a massive influence.

MB: They're amazing.

JA: Blur as well I guess.

MB: Are IDLES English, or are they American?

JA: IDLES are English, yeah they're a big influence.

JB: Blur for me, especially. 

All: Definitely Blur.

JB: Just britpop in the 90's as a whole.

MB: Slaves is probably the biggest though.

JB: It's just because they're like with it right now, they're just making really good shit all the time.

JA: It's the same with IDLES. 

LS: What about this (Holds up a Neck Deep album)

JA: Oh yes, and Neck Deep as well, they're from the UK.

LS: I completely tore apart my drawer to try and find that (laughs).

JB: Bloody legend.

So you guys just listed a bunch of bands you like, when you listen to certain bands or songs, what is it that really hooks you into the music?

JA: Guitar.

MB: Yeah good drums definitely (laughs).

JA: I think just the energy in general, like if it's not high energy or if it doesn't make me feel emotion then I won't listen.

How do you try to bring that high energy and emotion into your own music?

JA: So I record all the instrumentals myself and I think the way I try to bring that in, especially with the vocals, is not standing still.

JB: Yeah he does NOT stay still.

MB: Yeah I've been there, you do not stay still mate.

LA: He's always running around the room when he's recording it (laughs).

JA: It's a lot of like physical energy that I'm putting in to try and get the point across.

I get it, it's like when the tennis players yell when they hit the tennis balls, you have to channel the energy.

JB: For sure, that's literally how it is.

JA: Yeah that's a good analogy (laughs).

You just talked about recording, do you guys do that at your school?

MB: Do you mean the videos of me and Jude? 

Yeah.

JA: That's just us like messing around, when it's just me and Matt.

JB: For recording we're either in Jude's room, My room, Matt's house, or a school somewhere.

I was gonna ask about those videos of you and Matt playing in that room at school, it ended up getting like a million (1.3m to date), what was going through all of your heads collectively as that was going on?

JB: It was Judes birthday.

JA: Yeah so it blew up on my Birthday, it exploded like as I woke up. It started going mental. 

That's crazy!

JA: I just remember calling Matt because we were supposed to meet up for my birthday and just telling him-

MB: (funny imitation of Jude) "It's on two thousand views this is amazing"

JA: Yeah so it hit two thousand views and I was like, "this is amazing', and then it just kept going (laughs).

MB: Yeah it was like an hour later and it was already on 50k, and we were like "right then".

JA: And then on the night of my birthday and the day after it hit a couple hundred thousand. It just kept going until it hit a million and then it kind of capped off. But it was actually insane.

JB: It just kept climbing in like the 24 hours, and we just sat in a room and watched it go up (laughs).

JA: We were constantly refreshing it and reading all the comments. It was insane.

A lot of your song titles are somewhat ironic like the one in that video (Marching Band 32 in A Minor), do you guys come up with the titles together? What's the process behind it?

MB: Jude made that one up on the spot.

JA: Yeah that video was the first time I ever said it like, completely off the cuff as a joke. I'm pretty sure before Matt starts playing the drums he's laughing in that video.

MB: I was expecting something else and then you hit me with that and I wasn't ready for it (laughs).

JA: But with the stuff we've released like, with Midwest Emo the songs are always really serious but like the song names are always really silly, although we don't really play Midwest Emo we've kind of adopted that silliness of song names from them.

Where does the name "The Freaks" come from?

JA: So we're named after this film, it's this little UK indie film called "We Are The Freaks" 

MB: Oh it's so good, it's literally us, it's literally us.

JA: It's so similar to how we are that it was too funny to not name ourselves after that film. And also I'm pretty sure we've all been called a freak by someone at school at some point

Entire band: Yeah.

JA: So it kind of fits with that as in we're kind of owning the fact that we're different and that we're not really like everyone around us.

I love to hear that. That was one of the things I was gonna ask is like, do you guys consider yourselves to be freaks

JA: Yeah

JB: Yes

MB: Pretty Much

LS: Definitely

I'm looking at the movie right now, what's it about?

JA: It's about these three guys, I think set in the 90's. They're teenagers and they just get into a bunch of mischief, and they're all into punk like we are. We saw it before Jacob joined the band, but the three characters we're so oddly similar to me Matt and Lawrence.

JB: Yeah I watched it at Matt's once and I was like, ok I totally get it. Cause you guys quoted it like all day (laughs).

Do you guys have a favorite song that you've put out so far?

JB: Probably Gloomer, I think Gloomer is my favorite. 

MB: Smoking Kills is probably my favorite, I just love the intro, just so much.

LS: It's definitely one of the good ones.

JB: Cause Smoking Kills is probably like our most listened to song.

JA: It is.

JB: I've listened to a bit of the preview and I like Raws quite a lot.

JA: Yeah the new one Raws. With the vocals I got a lot more screaming on it and I really like that.

Are you guys excited to release that?

JA: So excited yeah.

JB: Oh for sure, cause that's gonna be the first thing we've properly released since we got "found".

JA: Yeah it's gonna be like the first proper single that we have like people waiting for. Before we were just kind of releasing it to nobody, but now we've got people out there waiting for it drop.

Yeah that's awesome.

LS: It's absolutely mental (laughs).

MB: It used to be like, two people listening, and now it's like 60,000 people like, "c'mon, whens it coming out?".

Do you feel pressure now? or are you just like "fuck it"?

JA: I mean, yeah it's kind of just a fuck-it thing. 

MB: (interjects) I'm nervous all the time.

JA: Yeah same (laughs). Because on Tiktok people are so intense, some of the people who follow me on Tiktok would probably just lie and say it's good anyway. Obviously there's a sense of like, I do want to write stuff with actual artistic integrity, but we're just making stuff that we like. Stuff that's fun to make.

LS: Yeah and if people say they're enjoying it, that's good too.

Listen to their EP here, check out their Bandcamp here, and follow them on Instagram here.