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\n\tUp until the release of their new single \u201cMeasly Means\u201d today, VILLANELLE had just one song on Spotify. The rock trio have never played outside of their native England with the exception of quick one-offs in Malta and Germany. They have no official timeline for the first of their first EP, and their debut LP remains little more than a distant dream.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut they\u2019ve already opened up for Jet and Liam Gallagher at enormous venues across the United Kingdom, and their frantic club gigs are packed with young fans who scream along to songs that haven\u2019t even been recorded yet, and are available only via dodgy, fan-shot Youtube videos.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n\tOne reason they\u2019ve pulled this off is because VILLANELLE are proud Nirvana obsessives who essentially reverse engineered the sound of Nevermind<\/em> and sprinkled a bit of Arctic Monkeys on top of it, introducing a\u00a0new generation of fans to a style of music that largely vanished before they were born. \u201cI love that Nirvana sound so much,\u201d says VILLANELLE frontman Gene Gallagher. \u201cThere\u2019s so many bands out today that I find a bit scared to be anything that\u2019s happened before or use any sort of influence from anyone because they want to be brand new. But I like that sound and I like using it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAnother reason they\u2019ve pulled this off is that Gene Gallagher is the son of Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher. This has obviously opened up many doors for the band, like a support slot on the elder Gallagher\u2019s Definitely Maybe<\/em> 30th anniversary tour in 2024. But it also raises inevitable nepo baby accusations that are unlikely to ever vanish completely.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of pros [to being the son of a rock icon],\u201d says Gallagher. \u201cI mean, the pros definitely outshine the cons, 100%. But the cons \u2026 you can\u2019t let them get to you too much. You\u2019ve just got to keep looking forward and pushing on and take it all in. You can channel all that energy of everyone giving a fuck, and it puts you in a pretty good position.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\tAs a kid growing up in England around the turn of the millennium, Gallagher was obsessed with the Beatles. When he got a little older, his mother \u2014 All Saints singer Nicole Appleton \u2014 introduced him to Nineties grunge bands. The music opened up his mind, and showed him a path forward in life. \u201cBefore I even played any instruments, I knew I\u2019d be a musician,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd when I first played to an audience, I became addicted to it. I knew I\u2019d do it forever.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\tVILLANELLE was born just a couple of years ago, when Gallagher met bassist Jack Schiavo at a bar through mutual friends. After discovering a mutual love of the Beatles, Nirvana, and Alice In Chains, they started talking about forming a band. Guitarist Ben Taylor joined up with them shortly afterwards when they heard about him via friends and tracked him down on Instagram. (Drummer Andrew Richmond was initially part of the band, but they parted ways with him this year. They now play live with Louis Semlekan-Faith, but technically remain a trio.)<\/p>\n \n\tFrom the beginning, they knew they wanted to emulate the sound of their favorite Nineties bands. \u201cAny genre or style is new if you\u2019ve not heard it before,\u201d says Taylor. \u201cSo yes, to a degree we could say it\u2019s bringing something back, but I think for a lot of people it\u2019s something fresh and new and it\u2019s the next thing that\u2019s going to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAfter seven months of woodshedding and songwriting, they booked their first show at Troubadour in the Earl\u2019s Court neighborhood of London. \u201cI was nervous as anyone would be on their first gig,\u201d says Gallagher. \u201cI was shitting it, but I obviously had a couple beers for liquid courage. And then I enjoyed it after that.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\tThey played nothing but originals at that first show, and that\u2019s a rule the\u2019ve stuck with to this day. \u201cWe never wanted to be one of those sort of cover bands,\u201d says Gallagher. \u201cWe just felt if no one knew our songs, we\u2019d have to just take on the chin.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\tAfter a few months giggling at tiny clubs around London, they had a repertoire of songs. But they decided to hold back on releasing anything, waiting until September 25 to drop \u201cHinge.\u201d \u201cAll of our songs went through so many iterations,\u201d says Schiavo. \u201cOnce it\u2019s on record and on Spotify, that\u2019s the final product. Holding onto them for as long as we did meant we were really happy with the end product.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn June of 2024, the band found themselves playing to capacity crowds at 20,000-seat arenas in England on the Definitely Maybe<\/em> tour. \u201cIt was very much a baptism-by-fire kind of thing,\u201d says Schiavo. \u201cIt made us so much tighter as musicians. By the time we came off and we went back to doing clubs on our own, we were just so much more solid because we had to really grow in that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSeb Barros*<\/p>\n \n\tThey opened up the Definitely Mayb<\/em>e shows with \u201cMeasly Means,\u201d and it\u2019s been a key part of their live show ever since. Dropping it as the second single felt like an obvious move. \u201cIt has the essence of \u2018Hinge,\u2019 but also the essence of what\u2019s to come,\u201d says Gallagher. \u201cIt\u2019s a powerful, jumpy song. I want to pogo every time I hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAt the moment, VILLANELLE have nothing on the calendar besides a round of U.K. club gigs in December. But they have big plans for 2026, including the release of their first EP in the spring, and their inaugural U.S. tour. \u201cWe are quite well-booked for things in the United States next year, all over the country,\u201d says Schiavo. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a good opportunity to go out there, show our sound off, see what audience it really resonates with, and maybe which ones it doesn\u2019t, and go from there again.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n \n\tVILLANELLE\u2019s rise coincided with the Oasis reunion tour. They\u2019ve had a lot of fun attending shows together when their schedule gives them downtime, but they\u2019ve also dealt with endless requests for free tickets wherever they go. \u201cWe get asked all the time,\u201d says Gallagher. \u201cEven people that I don\u2019t know don\u2019t stop asking me.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tPeople also don\u2019t stop comparing VILLANELLE to Nirvana, but that doesn\u2019t annoy him quite as much. \u201cPeople don\u2019t seem to see the difference between ripping someone off just taking inspiration,\u201d says Gallagher. \u201cBut I\u2019d rather be compared to Nirvana than someone shit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Up until the release of their new single \u201cMeasly Means\u201d today, VILLANELLE had just one song on Spotify. The rock trio have never played outside of their native England with the exception of quick one-offs in Malta and Germany. They have no official timeline for the first of their first EP, and their debut LP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1558,7238,18971,8283,5332,18970],"class_list":{"0":"post-33043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bringing","9":"tag-classic","10":"tag-grunge","11":"tag-listen","12":"tag-single","13":"tag-villanelle"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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