Throwing Up are Sick

Throwing Up are Sick

23 August, 2011
by: Domzig

Say hello to Dalston's answer to Bikini Kill

After kicking nu rave into touch, powering through the garage revival and briefly toying with the idea of rekindling Britpop, the latest craze to sweep through Dalston’s pubs and clubs has been a grunge/mall punk revival. Take yourself down to Alibi on a Thursday and you’ll be confronted by kids going nuts to the Offspring and New Found Glory, and if you manage to stagger over the road to Barden’s, you can get a pretty mean game of spot the Nirvana t-shirt going on. It sounds a bit leftfield, but even the Guardian has been caught up with the bug, in its usual ‘oh-you-crazy-kids’ way.

Right in the eye of this particular storm is a band called Throwing Up. Built around ex-Headless members Camille and Claire, this three piece sound like every band you’ve ever read about in Kerrang! condensed into one neat little pop punk package, with just enough lo-fi influences piled on top so that they don’t just sound like that band you were in back in high school. Add in one of the brattier attitudes the music scene has seen since the Beastie Boys were dangerous and you have something that sounds like Reagan Youth if they were sixteen year-old suburbanites rather than New York crack heads.

In the tried and tested East End fashion, they’ve only been together a few months, but have already managed to play every big show going. They’ve played SXSW and Primavera and the main stage of this year’s 1-2-3-4 Festival in between supporting the likes of Cerebral Ballzy and Let’s Wrestle, and it’s not even autumn yet. More unbelievably, somewhere in the middle of all that, they’ve also found the time to release quite a few records and have even in legendary punk rock fanzine Maximum Rocknroll. I mean, when do these people sleep?



Why did you decide to name your band Throwing Up?

I don’t know. It just sounded cool. It’s not like we’re all bulimic or anything like that.

You guys haven't been round that long right? What have been the coolest bits so far?

We are seven months old. Playing Texas has been the highlight so far. We played a series of random house shows in the middle of nowhere.

Can you describe your sound for us? Are people allowed to call you grunge?

John Prescott after three curries. Sometimes it’s like lalallalalderdumderdum then other times it's like wahhhwahhhahararlarrargh.

I was way too drunk to remember your set at Primavera this year. How did it go?

We don't remember it either. Felt good at the time. Felt bad when we woke up. Now they won't return our calls...

Finally, can you solve this burning issue for us. Who's cooler, Dexter Holland or Billy Joe Armstrong?

This is quite hard actually. We’ve been playing some Offspring covers recently, but, basically Dexter is too much of a bro and Billy’s much more punk. So yeah, Billy. 100% Billy. Unanimous.

Throwing Up are supporting Cerebral Ballzy at the Garage tonight and are playing OFF!'s show at the Old Blue Last on Saturday.

Click here for more live music in London.

Domzig