Jeanie and the White Boys’ punk drunk love summer
The first time I spoke to dauntless frontwoman and art-scene guru Jeanie Crystal of Jeanie and the White Boys, we were both on the edge of thriving and surviving, bemoaning the misanthropic nature of the music scene, the sheer unaffordability of London, and the fascist rise of the far-right.
We were women operating from within the belly of the beast, attempting to puncture the connective tissue as much as possible with a pen, a voice, and a scuzzy amp.
This wasn’t the last time we met, far from it; the iconic rock and roll group tearing holes into the British capital are situated proudly in Far Out’s ‘Ones to Watch’ list for 2026. It is set in stone that we shall meet again to chart the trials, triumphs, and tribulations of the first half of the year. For our second interview, it appears that in both cases the pendulum has shifted closer to thriving than surviving.
In February, Jeanie and the White Boys had several epic gigs on the horizon, including the coveted headline set of Far Out’s very own live event. This time, the band is facing down the barrel of a very different gun: An EP and an album, recorded with former Fat White Family founder and Insecure Men frontman, Saul Adamczewski. Plus, something neither of us could’ve seen coming, love.
After our first meeting, I made the bold claim that Jeanie Crystal “is rock and roll in London, distilled down to its core”. And what does rock and roll feed on if not passion, love, and danger? This summer, the rebellious band is experiencing all three.
Creating the monster
To this day, Jeanie and the White Boys have very few recorded tracks online. While on stage, the band barrels through plenty of hits with “an alchemic plume of rock and roll’s bite while actively kicking into touch its many stodgy orthodoxies”, fans who aren’t privy to the room where it all happens are waiting for an official body of work. Aware of this responsibility, Jeanie reassures me that the album is coming, and it’s surrounded by all the mythic vampirism and mysterious fable we might’ve expected from a band embodying all the chaos of the genre.
Earlier this summer, Jeanie and her entourage made their way to Brighton to record with Adamczewski, known in equal parts for his curdling, caustic solo work and his candid confessions of drug-fuelled psychosis. In Jeanie’s words, he’s “the most temperamental but formidable man in music”. Adopting the same absurdist narrativisation shared by the ever-experimental Adamczewski, Jeanie promised, “It might take us drawing each other’s blood, but we get there in the end.”
Though we’ve little insight into the sonic terrain of the nascent record, Jeanie pledges greatness with the same grandeur we can hear in fan-favourite single, ‘Queen Bee’: “It was an experience that will be etched on my mind till death,” she admits of the recording process, “It was a meeting of the great dictators. I’ll let you imagine the scene, but at this moment, as I speak to you, I adore the monster we all created together.”
As ever with the band that utilises three guitars on stage as an “assault” on the senses, in “true White Boy style we went into the studio with no real plan,” Jeanie admits. After a string of hush-hush recording dates, the band has come out the other end with the near-threatening insistence that “we will deliver, we promise”. The point was the ensuing challenge, the delightful duel of her “very strong vision” fighting and sometimes conceding to that of Adamczewski’s.
From the way Jeanie speaks, it’s evident that making this album is life or death for the band. Slightly less on-the-nose than oft-referenced inspiration and female artist Cosey Fanni Tutti’s 1976’s ICA ‘Prostitution’ exhibition, which challenged the patriarchy through way of soiled items like nappy-liners, Jeanie explains her own creative process: “I truly believe it’s the exact same energy and frequency as birthing children to that of making art, the emotions surrounding the process are intense and then add a dash of ego and narcissism that all artists need to the mix and all sorts of challenges arise in the studio.”
“A very fine line between passion and violence”
Jeanie and the White Boys might be in the process of sculpting something electric and experimental to fill the sagging gap in the British rock and roll scene, but it mightn’t be what we expect.
“There’s a very fine line between passion and violence, and this is something I had to learn, which involves letting go of your baby,” Jeanie admits. That’s about as much as I get. As a music critic, it’s strange not being able to put words to what comes next, left only with the notion that something wicked this way comes.
As a loud woman in music, there are many things Jeanie must champion: Equality, de-platforming bigotry, revolutionary politics, and community. Unlike the impish prime minister in the process of waddling from 10 Downing Street, Jeanie becomes a vessel through which the weight of this responsibility manifests. When she sings on stage, she flings herself every which way.
When she speaks, she burns with a raging fire. It can be rewarding and exhausting in equal measure.
“The world feels so cold; some romance definitely won’t hurt”.
Jeanie
Perhaps this is why she is a perfect collaborator with The Moonlandingz, a psych-pop supergroup consisting of members of the Eccentronic Research Council and Fat White Family. There’s a scuzzy, infinite kind of playfulness, a “freakish bunch”, in Jeanie’s terms, mirrored by their raucous presence onstage.
“From the start, when I joined, they just let me do anything I wanted, literal free rein of the stage,” Jeanie shares.
She adds, “Not that they could have stopped me, but Lias [Saoudi] really lets me rag him around the stage, which I thoroughly enjoy. Lias is one of the greatest frontmen this country has produced for a while, even if he is a massive wind-up and we don’t see eye to eye politically sometimes. Adrian [Flanagan] is a really brilliant songwriter, and I’d love to do a record with them in the future. I’m sure we will when we get the time.”
Jeanie then makes a confession that fights neither of our narratives. Within the band line-up she deemed “tumultuous”, the impossible has bloomed. She admits brazenly, “I’ve fallen deeply in love with one of them, which I didn’t see coming at all as I was gearing up for a feral woman summer, but the goddess had other plans for me.” She scrimps on official details (ones we’d omit here, anyway), but adds pointedly, “If I’m honest, it’s been quite divine. The world feels so cold; some romance definitely won’t hurt”.
On second thought, might we be so surprised? Little Richard once famously said that rock music “freed people from their inhibitions, unleashing their spirit, enabling them to do exactly what they felt like doing”. What is rock and roll’s greatest asset if not love becoming more desirable than hate?
With an eye on the future (still, as ever, so unknown for a band so rambunctious), I ask if this means the ever-mysterious White Boys are now a solid formation. But a band so enmeshed in the politics of today cannot divorce itself from the relentless chaos they seek to represent: “The lineup is definitely starting to cement, but no one is ever safe. How can you be in the current times? We are all hanging from a thread collectively,” offers Jeanie.
She concludes, “I started this band as an antidote to my own despair to this fucking hellish time in history… I can’t see it slowing down any time soon, so neither will the only force that makes [life] bearable for me… It’s chaos day in, day out.” Jeanie and the White Boys are neither idealistic nor disillusioned, but somewhere captivating in between. Is there any other way to be?
Never Miss A Beat
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