Folly Group return with first new material of 2023 in “Strange Neighbour”

London’s Folly Group return with their first new material since early last year, sharing “Strange Neighbour”, a motorik, accessible slice of paranoid funk and a track that shows yet further growth from a band who’d arrived so seemingly fully formed from the very beginning.

Following an acclaimed debut EP “Awake And Hungry” on So Young Records, and its follow-up in last year’s “Human And Kind” – an EP that received a perfect 5-star review from Dork, and a glowing 4-stars from DIY – “Strange Neighbour” is the exciting first taster from a series of rewarding recording sessions that took place earlier this year.

Folly Group’s Sean Harper had the following to say about the themes behind the new single:

“Strange Neighbour walks a couple of related lines at once. Louis’s verses and choruses are an ode to community as it dematerialises. Urban areas become un-neighbourly as spiraling rents force most people our age to move annually, and that’s if they’re lucky. At the same time, when it was being written, we had a sense that some of the music our peers were making came from a sneering, holier-than-thou place, voyeuristically skewing strangers’ perspectives to misrepresent another point of view and make their own more righteous.

So, “Strange Neighbour” is about recognising your own strangeness and that of your neighbours, because when two people from opposing walks of life meet, who’s normal?”

Paired to a beer-drenched fever dream of a video, and directed by the wired and inspired minds at CLUMP Collective, they gave the following quote about how they birthed the visuals:

“On hearing ‘Strange Neighbour’, we felt we wanted to make something fast paced and a bit silly – something that we felt Folly Group could have fun with. The concept was born after coming across James Rooney’s unnerving creations, then drawing influence from How To Get Ahead In Advertising and the films of Edgar Wright to flesh out the look and narrative. Everyone on the shoot was a joy to work with, and we were really keen to get Gabby Hillman in again (who we worked with on Do Nothing’s ‘Amoeba’) with some more fleshy prosthetics. She did an incredible job on Louis, everyone on set reacting with a mix of repulsion and amusement – a tone we’d love to hit with this video. We couldn’t be happier with it!”

The band’s last EP featured songs that were the subject of acclaim from the likes of CRACK, DIY, Dork, NME and So Young magazines, among others. The band have also seen support from Lauren Laverne, Steve Lamacq, and Huw Stephens at BBC Radio 6 Music (where they were B-listed last year), and has drawn support from Sian Eleri, sitting in for Jack Saunders, at BBC Radio 1, John Kennedy at Radio X and Jamz Supernova at Selector Radio.

Folly Group were also invited to collaborate with Metronomy on the Posse EP Volume 1 which featured Biig Piig and Sorry, too.

The band will return to live stages this September, in support of New York’s Geese, who are signed to Partisan Records.

Catch Folly Group on the following dates:

September

6th Brighton, Patterns
7th Bristol, Thekla
8th London, Lafayette
10th Glasgow, King Tuts
12th Leeds, Brudenell
13th Manchester, Hole In The Wall
14th Nottingham, Bodega

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