Interview – Grapefruit – Breaking Glass Magazine

Hailing from Kent and bringing atmospheric indie tunes to the table, five piece Grapefruit release their enchanting new single into the world today. Get to know the band and take a listen to Soak below…

Give us a quick introduction to Grapefruit…

Grapefruit are a five piece band from all over Kent – we’re a bit of a clumsy mish-mash of old friends and strangers meeting online. Grace (guitar) and Angela (vocals) started Grapefruit a little while after finishing school and then met James (drums) through a desperate online search. Ollie (bass) was James’ best mate who came along to our first ever gig and joined us straight after that. We played like that for a year or so before Lew (guitar), a childhood friend of Ollie’s, came to see us audition for Pride in a drag bar and he’s been with us ever since.

It’s hard to describe what we aim for except to see what happens when we all come together with our vastly different music tastes to create music that isn’t what we are all used to hearing. Debating the value of country music can be helpful for creative flow it turns out.

Tell us about your new single Soak…

Soak is the perfecting of the very first thing we started playing when Lew came along to his first practice with us. He instantly clicked with us and we love the music we are making with him now.

The song is about the feeling of dissociating, we live in a world that is so overwhelmingly chaotic and cluttered that you can lose yourself as life rushes past. The song is loud, intense and relentless, which is like the experiencing of dissociating sometimes.

There’s a fair amount of festival activity around Kent (By the Sea and Folkestone Psych Fest spring to mind), has it been a supportive environment for you growing as a band?

Maidstone’s been a bit of a hub for us; it’s Ange and Grace’s hometown and we’ve played Maidstone Fringe Fest a couple of times. Just this year we’ve been picking up a bit locally; we played the Fringe Festival and Hope Festival this year and we’ll also be playing the Faversham Beer and Music Festival in July. It’s exciting to get this support.

What’s been your favourite live show or venue that you’ve played to date?

Get in Her Ears are an incredible collective who promote women and femme people in music; we played for them at Notting Hill Arts Club and really enjoyed it. It was already a nostalgic place for us because it was one of our first ever gig venues back when the band had just started with three members, so it was really cool to come back with more members and more music and more experience, plus to play alongside other really talented female fronted bands. We also found out that night that our new single (Black and Blue) had gotten played by BBC Introducing!! We spent a lot of the night enjoying the really good vibes and dancing.

There seems to be a flurry of articles questioning whether streaming is killing or saving the music industry – what’s been your experience?

It’s a hard question. On the one hand, you could say streaming is killing the industry – 1,000 plays equates to no money for the artist whereas 1,000 single sales would’ve been £990 before. It’s somewhat harder to get somewhere and make a living making music. On the other hand, it is allowing small bands/artists to take control of their own music. Maybe it’s changed the music industry as opposed to killed it and it’s all about adapting to the times.

And what are you planning and hoping for during the rest of 2019?

We are writing and recording and releasing all year. It’s been really good to focus on new music and we’re trying to pick up the pace and spread the Grapefruit vibe.