Perfect harmonizing quartet The Deep Blue are coming to the end of a nationwide tour ending tomorrow night in Nottingham. The quartet have a unique dreamy mix of heavenly vocal harmonises with their own musical backing. With an appearance at  Glastonbury in their back pocket and a series of stellar singles behind them, it looks like the next step might be to release their debut album.

Bassist Niamh sat down with Gigslutz for this exclusive interview:

Can you please tell me a bit about your upbringing?

We’ve all come from households that loved music and grew up singing in choirs, perhaps where our love of harmony singing came from!

What was the first music you can remember hearing?

Niamh: The Waterboys, Sophie: 60s classic soul music, Katie: Omara Portuondo , Georgia: The Seekers

What was the first serious music you can remember hearing?

We were all obsessed with Joni Mitchell & Fleetwood Mac growing up! Had it on repeat throughout our childhoods.

Who influenced you to starting singing?

We all sang in choirs with very motivating choir directors!

Who influenced you to begin playing the bass guitar?

Niamh learnt to play the bass for The Deep Blue as we tried to find a female bass player and couldn’t find one! She’s really glad about it now as she loves playing it.

Were you in any other bands before The Deep Blue?

A couple of folk projects, a big band for Katie & Niamh & several metal bands for Sophie!

How did The Deep Blue form?

We formed in lockdown! Niamh & Georgia wrote the set in the summer of 2020 and recruited Sophie and Katie to start gigging. The rest is history!

Have the 3 part harmonies always been part of the bands repertoire?

Absolutely! We’re all about the harmonies

How do the songs come together? Do individual members have an idea for a song and then you all come together to form the song proper?

Niamh & Georgia mostly write the music, the songs come together between them from conversations or songs that each of them bring to the band

I would like to ask you about a number of songs that have stuck out to me as favourites and if you can expand on the meanings behind the song:

Jealous Sea:

I think we’re all vaguely sick to the stomach with airbrushed social media. It’s both brilliant and terrifying but we can’t evade the pervasive jealousy that comes coupled with constant comparison to others. So we wanted to capture that in a kind of hair-down mask-off song. We reached for a gritty rawness and paired it with our soft folky singing.

He Said She Said:

This song is inspired by stories in the news and  some of our own experiences, we offer this song a voice for the countless women who have been harmed by or lost their lives to domestic or sexual violence.

Take a Good Long Hard Look at Yourself

‘Take a Good Long Hard Look at Yourself’, (catchy title we know), is a very cathartic song for us to sing as it’s an uplifting rant within a song. It’s a musical rant to vent our frustrations when people are being unreasonable and you just want to make them see sense. So next time someone annoys you, have a listen to this!

In terms of the bands musicality, are there any influences behind this? I picture in my mind a mixture of Swimming Tapes, The Mama’s and Papas and Fleetwood Mac

Haim, definitely Fleetwood Mac & Big Thief are our biggest influences

New song Water Water is a stone cold harmonic pop guitar classic, what was this song about?

This song paints a visceral picture of a land without water. Hot and dry and dusty. Ask yourself, have you ever been truly thirsty? How would it change you? For an increasing number of people, water scarcity is a reality.  Approximately 10% of the global population – around 720 million people – lived in countries with high and critical water stress levels in 2021 [UN Water]. As our summers become hotter and our world becomes drier, will we find ourselves dreaming of crystalline rivers and shimmering lakes when we’re surrounded by rocks and sand? During our live shows people dance to this song and we embrace it, but it’s also a question; what will we sing when all we need is water?

What are the bands plans for the future, is an album in the pipeline?

We’d love to record an album but for now we’re doing lots of writing and building up to some big shows next year (got to keep it hush hush for now!)

You’re going out on tour at the end of 2024, what can audiences expect at the gigs, any covers or other surprises?

We have a little Fleetwood Mac number hidden in one of our songs & plenty of wintery harmony moments in this December set, it’s been so fun so far! Can’t wait for our home show in Manchester on Saturday 14th December!

Do you have any solo projects on the go?

We all do lots of singing in various choral, jazz & folk groups in Manchester but The Deep Blue keeps us very busy!

Finally, what’s on your turntable?

The new Laura Marling album & any album by Everything Everything!

 

The Deep Blue can be found via their Instagram page