Meet Only The Poets, the Reading band charging a quid for their biggest show ever
With a sound that flecks between RnB and 80s' pop, Only The Poets are carving their own unique place in music.
By Nick Reilly
It’s all well and good claiming to be a band that cares about your fans, but there’s many artists who leave something to be desired when it comes to actually putting their money where their mouth is. Step forward then Only The Poets, who have sold out their biggest ever show at Brixton Academy next February after selling tickets for the princely sum of £1.
The band says that the very affordable fee is partly fuelled by a desire to offer up an almighty celebration of their debut album And I’d Do It Again which lands just days before that Brixton show and offers a perfect reflection of what this band are all about. Songs like ‘I Keep On Messing It Up’ are an ode to self-sabotage, but the 80s sounds hark back to The Police – a firm favourite of the group. Elsewhere, there’s smooth moments of R&B and een funk on ‘Hate That I’m In Love’. One thing’s for sure – that Brixton gig will be as celebratory as it is eclectic.
Read our interview with Only The Poets frontman Tommy Longhurst and listen to their music via our Play Next playlist on Spotify below.
For the uninitiated, who are Only The Poets? How did you form?
We’re a band from Reading, Reading Festival was on our doorstep and incredibly inspiring for us as teens, watching bands like the Arctic Monkeys play so close to home made the impossible feel achievable. Andy and I started jamming together early on and began writing music before meeting Clem and Marcus through the local gig scene. They’d been in bands together for years, so when the four of us came together it just felt right, completely natural, and everything just clicked
Describe your band in three words.
Lads from Reading
Tell us about the debut album. It’s a big-sounding record with flavours of the 80s. How did you settle on that sound?
Vibes and sounds from the 80s like The Police and Prince are in there, and then there’s a mix of artists like Dijon and Mkgee who were definitely a big inspiration on the production side. We experimented a lot with DanDlion who we co-produced the record with at Premises Studios in Hackney. Being in one space allowed us to build the world that the album lives in, and we used real life sounds as part of the process – samples from the street outside in east London, us in the van on tour, and from the early days in our hometowns.
Any messages or constant through-lines that take a prominent place on the record?
We’ve always been really honest in our music, I’ve only ever written autobiographically, these songs feel like our most personal songs so far – heartbreak, loss, self-sabotage, it’s all in there.
The title is And I’d Do It Again. Tell us one unusual thing you’d happily do on loop for the rest of your life.
Tour and play live… it’s been a rollercoster, we’ve played hundreds of shows and been lucky enough to support some incredible artists. Yungblud told us to live in the moment and embrace it all, makes you more grateful when the music connects with more and more people. It really stuck with us; it’s been a crazy seven years.
You’re playing Brixton and charging a quid for tickets. Tell us about that decision.
Brixton Academy has always been THE venue. We’ve seen so many of our favourite bands there – Foals, Bombay Bicycle Club, Two Door Cinema Club. It’s always been the dream. It’s even more special that we get to do it for just £1 a ticket. In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, we wanted to make the show accessible to everyone. It takes place days after the albums released so it’s as much a celebration that we’ve come this far in a venue we’ve always wanted to play, alongside being able to give back to small venues through the LIVE Trust – we wouldn’t be here without the grassroots venues. We’re incredibly proud of that, it’s going to be wild.
How important is it that live music remains accessible?
It’s something we feel incredibly passionate about. It’s the reason we picked up instruments and became a band. It gave us a place to escape, a sense of belonging, and a way to express ourselves like nothing else,
It impacts the whole industry eco system, where does the next generation of bands come from if access to live music isn’t available to everyone ? It should be something we can all access.
And what does an Only The Poets live show look like?
One big party, with some important vulnerable moments we can all share together.