Brighton’s alt-pop trio Suzi Island are steadily building their reputation on the back of early singles ‘Show Me The Way’, ‘Actor’ and ‘Halo’. Now they drop their most accomplished moment to date with the new single ‘The Real Life’
Unheard Gems: Welcome to Unheard Gems! We are so happy to get to hear from you guys! How are you today?
Suzi Island: Thanks so much for chatting to us!! We’re great. How are you?
Unheard Gems: Just for our readers to get to know you a little better, can you tell us a bit about how you got started in music?
Suzi Island: I think probably I kind of wanted everybody to like me a bit more. And obviously that didn’t work, so music and songwriting has just kind of stuck ever since!
Unheard Gems: I always love to know the band origin story, how did you all meet and start out?
Suzi Island: Matthew and I met waaaaay back at the end of school, I needed a bassist in my band at the time as the old one punched me in the eye. It sounds very rock and roll, but we were just kind of two awkward kids that got on really well. After moving to Brighton we met Carlie, and then it just all clicked!
Unheard Gems: Following up, how did Suzi Island become the name? Any duds before that?
Suzi Island: I think Matthew heard it whilst ironing once. The ‘Suzi Isles’ were being chatted about on the tv, and we really needed a name for our first gig. We tried out ‘HUMA’ (a combination of Hugh and Matt) but that really wasn’t very fair on Carlie...
Unheard Gems: You guys recently released a song called ‘The Real Life' and I honestly think it is one of the best of the new spring-y/summer-y sounding anthems I’ve heard this year. What can you tell us about this song and the process of writing it?
Suzi Island: Ah you’re way too kind! We just try our best. For me with that one I was just spending days trying to write something that I really connected with. I was coming up to the end of uni, and all this anxiety and doubt kept on popping into my head all the time. I think it kind of sums that up nicely.
Unheard Gems: You also just dropped a music video to the song. What was it like creating the visual and what had you guys learned from your previous music videos?
Suzi Island: We’ve had such a pleasure of working with Brighton Film School on some of our previous videos. This time we were working with Jackie Du Bled, who studied there and worked on Show Me The Way. We just wanted to create something that felt like it got us across, as well as feeling like a live performance. It was a really fun day of recording. Although we all felt a bit iffy afterwards ‘cos of the smoke. Don’t try that at home kids.
Unheard Gems: What about looking ahead, anything we should look forward to from you guys in the rest of 2019?
Suzi Island: We’ve got a whole EP’s worth of songs coming up so soon, ‘The Real Life’ is really just the beginning. I can’t wait to show you what we’ve got planned!
Unheard Gems: I love hearing what the artists we talk to are listening to. Who are some artists you think deserve more attention in the music industry and why?
Suzi Island: Definitely Youth Sector, Stranger Girl, and Jumanji.
Unheard Gems: Lastly, for all of our readers, where can they find you and your music, and is there anything else you want to leave us with that we didn’t talk about in our questions?
Suzi Island: You can check us out on Facebook facebook.com/Suziisland
Twitter: twitter.com/suzi_island
Instagram: instagram.com/suzi_island
And most importantly Spotify!
All questions answered by Hugh Reilly-Smith. Hugh - lead vocals, Matt Carter - bassist, Carlie Randall . - keys.
Interview by Hannah Schneider