Pillars 0f Influence: Y’s five essential inspirations
No band is an island. Music doesn’t exist solely in its own little bubble but is inspired from far and wide. From films to people to places well beyond a practice room, a great act is always a jigsaw piece of a hundred random things, and London’s Y are a fascinating amalgamation.
As one of the buzziest, must-see acts in the London scene, Y have been building that reputation for some time now. Racking up the gig stats, they cut their teeth playing the city’s bustling circuit as a regular appearance at The Windmill, but also zig-zagging back and forth across the river for shows in East, West, North and wherever else will have them.
Successfully putting their live chaos onto tape, their new EP Enter is their finest attempt yet to capture the energy of their shows on recording. Packed with layered instrumentals and noise enough to give your head a rattle, it’s not just the best of the band, but it feels like the best of the broader scene and all the other random inspirations that made them.
Sharing five of the most essential influences that have played a role in shaping the group, Y let us into their world, from comedy TV to gripes with their home city.
Y’s five essential influences:
The Damned – ‘Strawberries’
Inspiring the band’s own theatrical chaos, vocalist and guitarist Adam Brennan recalled the power one tape had over him. “When I was a young teenager, my friend found his much older sibling’s record collection and cassette tapes in the loft at his family home, all covered in dust but still in good nick. We started to listen to them endlessly together whenever I was around his house on the stereo at high volume, the way that music was intended to be heard,” he recalled, “The collection was full of ’80s goth, punk rock, and everything in between. The Cure especially became a favourite, but discovering The Damned changed everything for me.”
The music hit him hard, but Strawberries was the record that stuck. “Strawberries is the one I always go back to, it’s a pretty polished sounding album for a punk band, but they had become so much more than just a punk band by that point,” he said. It serves as a reminder that wild tunes can also still be slick and skillfully done, adding, “The songwriting and musicianship is exceptional.”
But above all else, the record reminds a musical companion that had steered him well, stating, “This album has always felt like a hug, a hand on the shoulder that says ‘Come on, Adam, stop giving a toss about everything’.”
‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’
Surely on a giant spectrum of all of art and culture, The Damned and Larry David sit pretty far apart. But in the world of Y, the two were strangely united.
“A long time favourite, shared by Sophie and I. Larry David is hilarious, and it has such a great cast,” Brennan said as the show is a regular watch for the group. “It’s semi-improvised, which is one of the reasons it’s so good and feels so natural and awkward,” he said as the power lies in its spontaneity, much like the band’s music.
However, the band aren’t a sitcom cast, and I don’t think Larry David could hope to write a tune anywhere near as loud as the group can, so Curb Your Enthusiasm’s influence says more about the offstage and their downtime, adding, “Larry’s relationships, particularly with his manager Jeff and in the later episodes with Leon, really make it zing”.
‘Star Wars’
Staying in the realm of other pieces of culture that feel disconnected but as vital as anything else, Y love Star Wars.
“It’s such an obvious one. One of the most popular and highest grossing film franchises ever but in terms of inspiration and the effect it had on my imagination I couldn’t picture my childhood ever being the same without the original Star Wars trilogy, especially the second one, The Empire Strikes Back,” Brennan said. Joining the generations upon generations of kids whose minds were blown by the movies, Star Wars endures as a franchise that made everyone dream bigger.
It could be linked back to their music, too, as Brennan credits the movies as some of his first musical interests. “The soundtrack is too good,” he said, “Absolutely perfect score, some of the earliest music I was ever into”. But overwhelmingly, the love for Star Wars is simply a love for nostalgia, a permanent tether to a past and more innocent version of the self, one that never knew the awful CGI additions to the movies or the terrible re-edits that Brannan sees as a crime.
Needing a permanent reminder, Brennan got his ultimate inspiration inked: “I’ve got the worst tattoo on my arm, a stick and poke ‘R2D2’ inked on my arm. My favourite character, we are forever linked in ink.”
London
It feels like a band like Y could only come from London. Hear one section of one song, and it’s as if you can see the path, see them playing at The Windmill, at Old Blue Last, at Shacklewell Arms, hear them cutting their teeth in the city’s distinct and dingy venues that buzz with life. London undeniably has its own sound, coming from an endlessly thriving scene, and Y has now taken their position within it. But even long before that, it has also been London or nowhere. If they’re ever away from it, Brennan finds himself wailing, “Get to the motherland asap!”
The city is one huge melting pot of unending inspiration and connection for them. “How can you not find at least a handful of like-minded people out of ten million to start a band with?” he said, “Our band could only really have been formed in London, given that Dan, our bass player, came here from Italy and Fells came from Brazil via Germany and Portugal, both looking for work, good music and a good time. We could only have found each other in London, with the amount of opportunities on our doorstep.”
Don’t call them a South London band, though; they won’t be limited like that. “We are a London band. We are not a ‘South London band’. Most of us have lived all over London. The South London band tag actually annoys me,” he said, “I think it’s because it’s one of the only places we could regularly ever get a good gig was at The Windmill in Brixton. It is a great venue that we have a sentimental history with.”
Despite its ups and downs, good and bad, there’s nowhere like it: “If you’re tired of London, then you’re tired of life, but being priced out of London is a very real fear that everyone I know is contending with at the moment. Despite that, London will never cease to inspire me. The good, the bad and ugly, it’s all under your nose.”
Lou Reed
“Where would any of us be without Lou Reed?” Brennan posed, and doesn’t that just say it all?
Throughout history, Reed has taken on the position of a supermuse, inspiring and informing basically every band you love. Y are happily in that lineage as they said, “His influence is so immense, The Velvet Underground and his solo albums. There is such a wealth of great songs, I think he was the most realistic, funniest, saddest songwriter; it’s all there in his art.”
Not just an essential pillar to Y, Reed truly feels like an essential pillar to all music makers working in the world of weird rock that refuses to stay in its lane.
