There is a stage in a young band’s development where they begin to find their form and understand how to harness their collective power, but remnants of their original free form remain. That’s where we now find Man/Woman/Chainsaw on the emerging buzz band’s timeline. It’s a thought-provoking moment for a listener, a window into the chaos being put into order while volatility still exists.
The youthful London combo, self-declared makers of ‘noisy, unadulterated art punk’, drops their music Eazy Peazy EP Friday. Produced by Daniel Fox of Gilla Band, who has also worked on great LPs from Sprints and Silverbacks, it is Man/Woman/Chainsaw’s first release for the long-standing US indie label Fat Possum. Featuring multiple lead vocalists and structures that never seem to repeat from song to song, it’s one of those records where each song has its own unpredictable flavor, but they all seem to come from the same collective consciousness.
Opener ‘The Boss’ surges forward with an intensity that only seems to increase as it goes, as bassist Vera Leppänen rails against a concoction of terrible authority figures while Clio Harwood’s violin turns into gnarled noise showers. One song later, on “Sports Day,” guitarist Billy Ward relives traumatic adolescent athletic experiences through an off-kilter, dissonant groove. Next comes ‘Maegan’, on which Pixies-like banter quickly gives way to a wonderful sonic blitzkrieg. The second half of the tracklist moves into both gentle and surreal territory, while paring back the explosiveness in strategic steps. One of the lessons they learned in Fox’s studio: “If everything is loud, nothing is loud.”
The band has come a long way since Ward and Leppänen were 16-year-olds covering Nirvana and Lana Del Rey in a bedroom. (They also made a noise-rock version of Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me,” unfortunately not for public consumption.) The duo spent lockdown learning to play music, then recruited a rotating cast of bandmates and performed like crazy up in London. DIY locations once they go to college. “We would sometimes do three or four shows a week,” Ward says during a noisy video call with four of his bandmates. “We just did a lot of shows in London. There is so much music here that you can just do that when you are young.”
All those shows helped Man/Woman/Chainsaw figure out where they thrive — “on the thin line between beautiful and loud, often trying to jump between the two,” as Ward explained in press materials — and build a reputation as one of London’s most exciting young acts. The collective approach and orchestral flourishes lend themselves to comparisons with London contemporaries Black Country, New Road, while the interplay between Ward and Leppänen reminds me of indie pop bands like the late, great Goon Sax.
Last year, the lineup became more consistent with the addition of Harwood’s violin plus singer/keyboardist Emmie-Mae Avery and drummer Lola Cherry. A series of early singles on Bandcamp – best of all ‘What Lucy Found There’, on which Ward and Leppänen trade vocals over a hyperactive bassline straight out of a jazz or drum ‘n’ bass song – are now playing as snapshots of the growth that leads to the downright accomplished Eazy Peazy. The band members are now only 19 or 20 years old, but they sound like a seasoned whole.
The EP is full of sharp songwriting and captivating arrangements. Songs feel epic without going much beyond the three minute mark. Each song is full of clever details, like the dance between Harwood’s strings and Avery’s keys on ‘Sports Day’ or the way Cherry takes ‘EZPZ’ to the next level with drumming that shifts from hollow calm to outbursts that Ward compares to black metal blast beats. In the middle of the tracklist is “Ode To Clio,” so named because Harwood’s violin melody transformed it from its Coldplay-esque beginnings. The band has thus far highlighted it as an ideal introduction to their sound.
“I feel like this was the song that best summed up the different types of things we have on the EP. Like obviously ‘Grow A Tongue In Time’, which is more singer-songwriter-y, quite beautiful, and ‘The Boss’ is a bit heavier and more punky,” says Leppänen. “We wrote that somewhere in the middle, and I feel like it brought the two sides (of the band together).”
Although a large part of the Eazy Peazy material is new to the outside world, for Man/Woman/Chainsaw these songs are old fashioned compared to the new material they have been working on. “For the EP, we wrote the songs to play at gigs because we needed material,” Avery says. “And now when we’re writing, obviously we’re writing them to play for gigs and stuff, but it’s fun because it feels like they’re tied to a project, that we’re writing them for an album.”
Ward says the band wants to release more music soon instead of “taking ten years to make the album.” In the meantime, there’s plenty of touring on deck in early 2025, including a winter jaunt to Britain and Man/Woman/Chainsaw’s first trip to the United States for next year’s South By Southwest. It’s a milestone the band is looking forward to, even as this week’s presidential election results make them feel more wary about America’s future. “I’m scared,” says Leppänen. “But other than that, I’m really looking forward to next year.”