ON THE RISE
Cincinnati band Orchid in the Ivy has only one cover, Midnight Oil’s “Burning Beds,” among the three albums and two EPs, almost 50 tracks, they have put out since forming in 2013.
Their “Burning Beds” is not at all like the sedate, measured, summer evening Midnight Oil contemplation of the world. The Orchid “Burning Beds” regards the world from the middle of a fast, loud, raucous punk-rock wildfire.
“I love the bass line,” said Brett Scharf, one of the band’s two founding members. “It has such a groove to it. We didn't change the structure of it, but we really sped it up and gave it more of a punk, hard rock feel.”
How can we dance when our earth is turnin’?
How do we sleep while our beds are burnin’?
How can we dance when our earth is turnin’?
How do we sleep while our beds are burnin’?
They also cut about two minutes off the 5-minute-long original.
Since first appearing on that 2013 album, Minus One, the song has become a staple in their performances. Their audiences like it and expect it, which is one reason the band has released a remix of it in advance of their push into a new phase of their career.
“It’s always done really well wherever we play it, and everybody knows us by doing ‘Beds Are Burning.’ We got an EP coming up, so we’re releasing one song at a time, and we thought it might be a good introduction to lead with something that people know, but it’s got a different twist on it.”
“I don’t really like covers being done where they sound just like the original,” said Brett. “What’s the point, you know? We put our own spin on this. We sped it up and added some distortion to the bass, and I thought it had a great groove.”
They remixed their own original cover to bring the vocals up and out front more. It is a rock track that sweeps you up as it flies through and carries you down the line.
“It always did very well, but we never pushed it really hard in the past. So, as a lead-in to this EP, we thought it’s something people could recognize and jump on as we start releasing the other stuff.”
The musical torch they take to the burning of beds is also a better fit with the world vibe of 2025.
“The lyrics, you know — the beds are burning. Right now, with politics and all, it seems like it’s just — God, you can’t even keep up one day to the next! If you read it every day, you’re just going to be depressed. So, the whole beds are burning thing, it just resonated.”
The band is Brett, vocals and guitar, Mark Schulti, drums, and Chris Saalfeld, bass. Brett was in the band Spindle and toured with Fallout Boy, Motion City Soundtrack and Plain White T’s. After that, he returned to Cincinnati and formed Rosemary Device, which is where he met Mark Schulti, formerly a member of the band Krinj.
Rosemary Device’s singer left for New York, so Brett decided to take a shot at vocals. Brett’s voice is a high baritone with an edge, perfect for the rock they love, and after he and Mark recorded a song, they thought they were on to something but needed a bass player.
They recruited Chris, who Brett met in college when they were music majors together. Both are classically trained guitarists.
The result: “We are a three-piece band kind of like Nirvana — a three-piece powerhouse.”
The band is a candidate to be picked up by a booking agent, and preparing for that they are building their next EP.
“We feel like we’ve got something really good here, and we’re excited about it. I think the EP is really phenomenal.”
He said the band has been developing its sound, and for the EP has circled back in the direction of “some of our earlier stuff, because we really like that sound.”
“It feels very personal, and this one’s got a lot of energy. We always talk about some of our favorite bands, the three or four bands that we really like, influences like Rise Against, Alkaline Trio, Thrice, Bayside. We’re in that genre of bands.”
They perform four or five times a year, he said, mainly in the tri-state area around Cincinnati.
“We’d love to tour more, but we really need a booking agent so we can get out there and get on some good shows. We really need to be on some decent tours, and that’s what we’re hoping happens here.”
The plan is to release a single every six to eight weeks until they have the five for the EP (“Burning Beds” will remain a stand-alone).
“I’ve toured in the past, and I’ve played for the cigarette machine and the pool table before. I’ve already done that, so, this time around, I’d like to have more support before we hit the road.”
He would like, he says, “to be the biggest band in the world,” but what he really wants is “musically driven” fans.
“I would love to tour, and I want fans that are musically driven — they’re not there because they saw it on some TikTok. They’re there because they love music, and they’re diving into it.”
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ON THE RISE
As Belle & Sebastian share their buoyant 2026 Scotland World Cup anthem ‘It Only Takes One Lion’, frontman Stuart Murdoch has spoken to NME about capturing the feeling back home and his hopes for the team since childhood.
Released today (Tuesday June 2), the Scottish indie heroes’ bid for their nation’s tournament anthem was written after the team’s surprise 4-2 qualifying win against Denmark.
“I felt like we were watching history in the moment, like the hand of God from the old National Lottery adverts was pointing at us,” Murdoch told NME about that game-changing victory. “It was meant to be. Scotland aren’t a terrific team and Denmark are better, but it just felt that day that Scotland were destined to win. Three out of the four goals were things of beauty.”
Produced by and co-written with Pete Ferguson and premiered at the band’s recent London Royal Albert Hall show as part of the anniversary tour for their classic first two albums ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’, the soaring song is intrinsically Belle & Sebastian as it morphs from a hymn to a an orchestral disco jam as Murdoch sings of a nation’s hopes and his own boyhood dreams.
NME spoke to Murdoch from the band’s North American tour, where we found him in a graveyard in Texas. “I was just looking for a park because Austin is a pretty scary place downtown now, so I’ve ended up in the Texas Cemetery,” he shared via Zoom.
Was there anyone famous buried there?
“I was looking around and I found the founder of Austin City Limits, which is pretty cool as that’s where we’re playing tonight. I’m looking at one now and it just says, ‘Martin: he loved the law’. Then underneath it says, ‘Billie Louise: she loved the lawyer’.”
We joke that there’s the opening to a Belle & Sebastian song if there ever there was one. “It’s great! It’s given me inspiration.”
For now, read the rest of interview with Murdoch below as he tells us about Scotland’s chances, 30 years of hurt, if fans will be singing it at the top of their lungs in Canada, the US and Mexico this summer, and what’s next for the band.
NME: Hello Stuart. Here we are with ‘It Only Takes One Lion’ Who needs three?
Stuart Murdoch: “Who needs three? Good question. I wouldn’t know!”
What’s the mood been like in Scotland since you qualified?
“It’s funny. I’ve noticed this everywhere: with the World Cup there’s a mixture of cynicism and anticipation. When the actual tournament starts, everyone will get excited about it. Because of FIFA, the peace prize, the ticket prices, people seem quite down about it. I found that in Mexico. They were quite fed up with the general hype about it. I’m in the States just now and you shouldn’t believe all the hype: people are people. The States are just as ‘great’ as ever. We love coming here, we love the cities. The general sense of North American optimism will make for a good tournament.”
“With Scotland though, people will definitely be excited about it. You have to understand, it’s been 30 years since Scotland qualified so I think everybody and their dog has written a song for the team.”
How do you meet the challenge of penning a World Cup anthem, when there have been so many legendary bangers and absolutely shite duds?
“I never planned it. I woke up with a tune in my head and a feeling. That’s the way it should always be for songs. I couldn’t control myself and it was quite straight-forward. I wrote this initial bit about how I felt about the current World Cup team and the qualifying game. It was more introspective.
“When it starts off with, ‘The days are dark and long…’, it’s just my general feeling about football. I’ve been going to see my own team quite a lot recently. It’s my little anthem for how I feel about football and following Scotland for the last 50 years, just the ups and downs. It’s quite a heartfelt thing. When I was eight or nine, the Scottish team meant so much to me, it the thing I was most invested in. There’s a line in there about how I used to memorise the whole squad before ‘78 and 82.”
Tell us about lyric: “This is Scotland, where everyone knows you start with nothing… where you can join an army for peace”…
“My wife made the video for it and she said, ‘I’m not sure I like that line about everyone starting with nothing’. Our first game is against Haiti and they really have nothing. Their country is pretty poor and they’re going through hard times. It was almost a throwaway line and I’m not sure what I meant by it, but in a footballing sense every game starts with nothing. Even if it’s against Brazil, you’ve always got a chance!
“The army refers to The Tartan Army, which has really been quite a remarkable institution for the past 30 years. We changed from drunken buffoons that used to wreck things to this excellent supporting brigade.”
It’s not your standard football sing-along. Can you see it being sung in the terraces?
“I’m not sure, I didn’t cynically design it for that. Many people have said to me in the past, ‘None of your songs have a chorus, you need to write one’. ‘This is Scotland’ is a chorus! They things need to happen organically. I’m sure the fans will still be singing ‘Yes sir, I can boogie’ for years to come.”
What do you actually think of Scotland’s chances right now?
“With the last Euros, they maybe got stage fright or didn’t have that tournament experience. I think Andy Robertson [captain] will be telling them, ‘We really need to produce our best stuff’. If they do and we see them actually playing football, then I don’t really care about the results that much. I just want to see Scotland exceeding our expectations of them. That Denmark game was so crazy that everything after just feels like a bonus.”
If miracles do happen and Scotland make it to the final, how will you celebrate? A free gig in Glasgow?
“Of course, yes! Free everything. If we even got close, I think the whole country would shut down for a year and the GDP would drop. We’d go into a massive recession but no one would care.
“We were playing a gig in Mexico City and I told the crowd, ‘It’s you and us, Mexico and Scotland in the final’. Mexico have never really got close either. I told them it would be five goals a piece, even after everyone takes a penalty and we have to share the trophy. I would settle for that.”
You released two albums in quick succession with 2022’s ‘A Bit of Previous’, 2023’s ‘Late Developers’ and then your debut novel Nobody’s Empire in 2024. You’ve been busy! Is there any progress on new material?
“We went through a period where we recorded a lot and we said, ‘Let’s not record for a while and give ourselves a couple of cycles off’. We’re doing these 30th anniversary shows so we’re just going to lean on the back catalogue and cruise for a while. We’re doing a year on and a year off so everyone can focus on different things.
We’re not looking at new Belles stuff for a while. I’m meant to be developing Nobody’s Empire into a film, so that’s my next task. It’s a long way off from being made but I’m going to write the script for that.”
Scotland’s first World Cup tournament match is against Haiti on Sunday June 14, before they go on to play Morocco on Friday June 19 and Brazil on Wednesday June 24.
The band’s ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’ anniversary tour continues throughout the summer, performing the iconic albums in full during across the UK, Europe, North America, Mexico, Australia, Singapore and Japan. Visit here for tickets and more information.
