ON THE RISE
“I live my life in sounds;” Bailey Grey, indie-pop, singer-songwriter shares. New Jersey-based, globally trained musical theater and performance artist unpacks the creative channeling of her life’s chapters into her newly released LP, Love it All.
Bailey rewinds us back to a young age, where she grew up immersed in music. Her dad was a music teacher and band instructor, and having been regularly exposed to a diverse range of eras and genres, Bailey knew she was immediately drawn to the language of music. Much of her early artistic foundation came from theater, growing up as a Broadway child actor in NYC and then eventually earning her master’s at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
While she admits that she has enjoyed the imagination and discipline of it all, she also found herself living in other characters’ storylines, or within the realm of auditioning spending a lot of her time trying to fit into certain boxes, which understandably kept her from knowing parts of herself. She strove for an art form that would help her discover and process her truth, her authenticity, and the world around her. And voilà! An album was born.
Bailey Grey’s debut LP, Love it All, explores her journey of self-discovery in the midst of a chaotic yet beautiful world. Writing in a range of genres, from indie-pop and jazz to alternative rock and blues, Bailey reflects on what it means in her life to “love it all”: the adversity, the triumphs, the process, and the lessons. Both playful and introspective, the album reveals how embracing her music has helped her validate the lows, ride the highs, uncover her strength, and celebrate her resilience and humanity.
The EP’s Title track “Love It All,” helps us understand the intertwined nature of her creative process and her life story.
I want to think that I could love it all,
I wanna reach into the sky and let the stars fall
Create a spark, a wave,
Embark on something beautiful
Bigger than you
Bigger than I could ever be
I fall in love with every song that I hear,
Polyrhythmic harmonies reflect my atmosphere,
The intervals, my neighbors
The chords my fresh air
When I misplace my key the rhythm still lingers here
Another integration of her identity and creative process is how she embraces imperfection, and what makes us human. While there’s so much beauty in what humans can be, there are also reminders of the darkness we create when we’re at war with and within ourselves. In those moments, it can be hard to find love. Bailey shares the power of music as both an outlet to cope with the senseless imbalance, and a way to unite and connect with others despite the growing divides.
The world can be overwhelming at times, and finding a platform to make a positive impact and share love can be challenging, but it’s part of her spirit. It’s a loaded and overarching theme behind the album and the title track, “Love It All,” sets the stage for unraveling what that means.
Bailey points out the intentionality behind the order of the LP’s songs and takes listeners on a roller coaster of these interconnected experiences. The music genres and corresponding energies both reflect the emotional turmoil and the appreciation of it all.
She explains that each song comes to her differently…sometimes it starts with lyrics, other times with a full-blown orchestra in her head, or even a simple guitar riff and chord progression. The process is different every time. She especially loves the collaborative aspect of bringing each vision to life with her counterpart and producer, Sam Cook-Stuntz.
From the jazzy pop-twist in “Out in Under” to the vulnerability of “Battle Cry”, complemented with an emotive harmonica, Bailey Grey sings:
It's what I need to make the truth seem loud
Sometimes farthest away from the crowd.
She elaborates on growing up with the pressure to conform to certain standards, and how, in the noise and chaos of trying to fit in, you can end up feeling totally isolated or buried. In those moments, she’s learned the importance of creating space to find clarity and reconnect with herself. For her, that solace “away from the crowd,” often comes through journaling and poetry, which serve in pulling pieces from within or seeding new songs.
Then there’s “Use Me,” with its playful piano groove and delightful imagery that explores a healthy take on death.
Since its release as a single a few months ago, “Use Me” has struck a chord with listeners and fans resonating with the many ways of recycling your body after death. One particularly moving moment came when a mother reached out to Bailey on TikTok, and asked to use the song for her son's end-of-life ceremony. He had passed away at a young age, and the message gave her a sense of connection through a really difficult grieving period.
From the power of those messages, to the blue-eyed soul of “Get Lost,” with its expressive and cinematic vocals...
To the alt-rock vibes of “Nothing”...
To the springy, sweet ukulele in “When I Fall”, a song Bailey shares was one of the first she ever wrote and then reimagined recently during a new chapter of falling in love...
And finally, to the intimate, acoustic, and perfectly imperfect live rendition of “Easy,” which closes out the LP.
The twists and turns of Bailey’s creativity in this album are endless, so take the listening ride and enjoy the spontaneity of Love it All.
Love It All is available now on all streaming platforms.
Bailey closes with a few reminders to listeners and readers alike,
“Make more stuff. Make more art. You can find yourself through your creativity and really uncover who you are. Too many people stray away or give up because it's a hard industry to break into, but even if you do a little bit each day, it’s worth it because it’s what you love.”
To stay connected with Bailey Grey follow her on social media:
ON THE RISE
M.O.T.H.E.R. – the new collaborative band helmed by Robbie Furze of The Big Pink and currently featuring Jamie T and Jamie Hince of The Kills – have given their first proper interview, talking to NME about the emotional origins of the project, their aim to be “the guitar version of N.E.R.D.”, and their hit-list of future collaborators.
Revealing the new project at the end of May alongside the blistering anthemics of debut single ‘My Love’, Furze shared that the seeds of M.O.T.H.E.R. had come from losing his own parent after a prolonged illness. “My mum got sick about five years ago and was ill for about four years before she died,” he told NME.
“In that period I had a daughter, which was this real juxtaposition of death and birth. My mates – Jamie T and Jamie Hince – came together for me, and then sadly Jamie [Hince] lost his dad too,” Furze went on, sitting in a West London pub alongside Hince.
Hince continued: “I lost my dad four days after Robbie [lost his mum], and it felt like, if ever there was a calling, it was that. But it didn’t all come out of that doom and gloom. I hate mentioning COVID but everyone had so much time on their hands and there was this open creativity back then. I was working on music with Jamie T, sending each other stuff, and the idea for the three of us to do something together came out of that. It felt nice, like we were buying into this camaraderie, and this gang.”
The three musicians have previous credits together, with the two Jamies also writing on The Big Pink’s most recent album, 2022’s ‘The Love That’s Ours’. Fully collaborating on M.O.T.H.E.R., Furze joked, was like “the clash of three egos”. “Everyone wants to work with each other because you like what each other does, and so it’s not quite imposter syndrome but you have to live up to [that idea] and jump in and be a character,” Hince continued. “You can’t be too humble about it.”
Recording between Hince’s studio in LA and Furze’s studio in London’s Bethnal Green, the current trio have also dropped their self-titled debut EP featuring three further tracks: ‘Real Human’, ‘Traitor’, and ‘Surrender’. The ethos of the band, meanwhile, is for the line-up to shift with each release, bringing in familiar faces from other groups and working with whoever might be available at the time.
“We did a little bit [of recording] with Jenny [Lee Lindberg, bassist] from Warpaint who I love; I really want to get something solid down with her,” revealed Hince, while Furze suggested that names including Zach Hill of industrial hip-hop trio Death Grips, and electronic producer Skream have all been in the mix for future iterations of the band.
“We ran into Zach and he seemed into it but then he started ghosting me,” he noted. “Whether or not he decides to text me back, it would be wonderful to have that kind of thing. Jamie Hince, Skream, Rhys Webb from The Horrors [who played on their recent radio session], and Zach – if I saw that, I’d wanna hear what that nonsense sounds like!”
Check out the rest of the interview with Furze and Hince below, as they discuss their endearing bromance, their admiration for Jamie T, and why the band are unlikely to ever make an album.
NME: Hello Robbie and Jamie! You must have been kicking about at a lot of ‘00s parties, how far does your friendship go back?
Robbie Furze: “Me and Jamie T started becoming friends on the circuit of festivals when the first Big Pink record came out in 2009. Then me and Jamie Hince met at Corona Capital in Mexico in 2012.”
Jamie Hince: “He had a reputation – I think we all had reputations… I remember his wife giving me these dried insect snacks and I didn’t eat them because I thought he might have laced them with something…”
Furze: “Every band playing Corona Capital was staying in this massive hotel, so it was just chaos.”
Hince: “It was at the height of ego. Everyone had bodyguards. Bands were trying to outdo other bands. Like, The Black Keys – you’re two guys from Ohio, you don’t need armed bodyguards…”
Where does Jamie T fit into all this?
Hince: “Our orbits crossed quite a bit. I remember seeing him at some tiny little pub when he was probably about 19, and I love how it’s come full circle. My heart sinks a little bit when I see Jamie T working because I know I’m nowhere near [as good as] that. I have to chip away at things and stand back and then dive in again to get the feeling, whereas he’s just got the feeling from the start.”
Furze: “He’s pretty incredible. The song ‘Traitor’ on the EP was supposed to be for my vocal, and he was almost getting pissed off that we couldn’t get the verses right. He was just like, ‘I’ll sort it out’, goes up to the mic, does one take and it’s done. See you later. He’s that kind of guy.”
Do you have to leave your ego at the door in those situations?
Hince: “I did this amazing beat for ‘Traitor’ that I loved, and I sent it to Jamie T and got back a text saying: ‘One pound fish’. Fuck! I mean talk about leaving your ego at the door… I know what he was saying, he thought it was a bit ‘cor blimey’ waltz. But some of the shit he ends up doing, it’s totally ‘cor blimey one pound fish’!”
Furze: “But whatever works for the track works, and everyone has to be happy with it. You push each other without really knowing it.”
How did you envision the project?
Hince: “These things just come together. It sounds cheesy, but I wanted it to be the guitar version of N.E.R.D. – a production team of people that love each other.”
Furze: “We’ve got songs in the pipeline with other artists already, and it makes it like an N.E.R.D. or Unkle or Massive Attack thing. Being collaborative makes me more excited.”
Hince: “It feels like that time has gone where albums really last. Records seem to come and go quite quickly now. So I’ve shifted my enthusiasm because I think the attention span has gone. You spend so much time making records and so little time getting any reward.”
Furze: “I’d like to do standalone singles, or another EP of four or five tracks as a batch. I wouldn’t wanna go further than that.”
None of your individual bands and projects sound that alike – where do you think your tastes align?
Hince: “There’s something unspoken that we all seem to agree on which is this epic-ness. There’s a line in one of the songs that talks about ‘the last of the hooligans‘ and that seemed to be the feeling behind it all. If there’s a similarity with what everyone wanted, it was maybe just being a bit romantic and epic.”
Why do you think you were drawn to that?
Hince: “I don’t know, maybe we’re just lonely men?”
Furze: “Beaten down but being pulled up by hope…”
Hince: “We’ve all been bashing around, making all this noise and spending so much time doing it; I think it gives you that feeling. There’s something tiny and irrelevant about what you do but something life and death about what you do too, and I think the cocktail of that makes it… well, the last of the hooligans.”
Tell us a bit about ‘My Love’ – the first proper single.
Furze: “It’s one of the most basic songs. It’s a love song about hope, but it just has such an incredible energy to it with its simplicity. I’m not a massive Beatles fan but it has this relatable energy [like their early music]. ‘I wanna hold your hand’ – you don’t get more basic than that, in a great way. I think simplicity is power. Sometimes less is more, and if you mean it you can get away with it.”
Are there going to be live shows?
Furze: “Definitely. We’re playing a bit of catch up because we didn’t think ‘My Love’ would get the reaction it has, but we’re desperate to get out and do gigs.”
Hince: “In the spirit of the collaborative project, I’m really liking the idea of having different people in different countries playing with us; having a different vibe each time.”
Furze: “It would be really exciting to see different characters that you know from different bands. For the radio session [with Steve Lamacq on BBC 6 Music] we had Rhys Webb from The Horrors on bass, and I love that idea.”
You’re obviously very close – what are your favourite memories of this charming bromance?
Furze: “Jamie’s probably my best friend in the world and we’ve been through a lot together. In 2015 we both uprooted and went out to LA together, I went out there for about five years and he stayed, so we were pretty inseparable. It got to a point where it was breakfast, lunch and dinner together.”
Hince: “We just became one person. People would confuse us even though we don’t look the same. He had an ex-girlfriend who he went to say hello to and she said, ‘Hello Jamie’. We just started having the same vibe. The same embarrassing energy. We’ve chilled out a bit recently but when I was in LA and Robbie was in London we’d speak to each other for four hours a day. I was getting complaints from his wife.”
The ‘M.O.T.H.E.R. EP’ is out now.
The Big Pink returned with their third studio album, ‘The Love That’s Ours’, in 2022. It marked their first full-length effort in over 10 years. T and Hince worked on that LP, too, co-writing the single ‘Love Spins On Its Axis’.
The Kills released their sixth and latest record, ‘God Games’, in 2023.
Jamie T, meanwhile, made a comeback with ‘The Theory Of Whatever’ the previous year. He recently joined forces with Fred Again.. on the track ‘Lights Burn Dimmer’, and performed with The Maccabees at their big London reunion gig last summer.
