POST-BURNOUT
“I remember seeing Carys play, and, as she was performing, I was texting her, saying, ‘Can we start a band together?’” remembers Arty Jackson, one-half of the alt-folk duo Humm. Formed out of a “Jam and Chat” during their first week at the Bath Spa University in 2018, Carys Lewin remembers the performance which Arty is talking about: “You had to play, like, one song in front of everyone, which I found really, really terrifying, and I left mine until the absolute last minute! I was the last person to do it, because I hated it so much!”
While Carys had been playing, singing, and writing music since age nine, had been involved with musical theatre, and studied music in secondary school, college, and university; Arty, on the other hand, didn’t consider himself a musician prior to university. “Before I started uni, I really wasn’t sure if I was going to study Ancient History at Cardiff [Laughs] or do Commercial Music at Bath Spa,” he says.
“And it was very much a last-second decision to do it, because I messed up my final year of A-levels, as well, which…[Laughs] So, I didn’t get into Cardiff, anyway. Like, A-levels, I actually started studying Music, and I dropped it for Archaeology. So, I’ve always been a bit back-and-forward between it, and then I just decided to go for Music, and I went for it.” “Wasn’t there someone on a bus?” asks Carys. “Yeah, someone on a bus told me about the course, just by chance,” says Arty.
Fortuitous as it was that Arty failed his A-levels (which is something that he said, to be clear) which made him realise that music was always his passion, even for the more experienced Carys, the collaboration between the two rejuvenated her love and passion for music. “I had been doing it for a while, but not been doing what I actually loved, which is this,” she says. “Because, before, it was just like, ‘I’m doing all these things. I’m not sure what I want to do. Not very confident in myself, at all.’ And then I got to uni and finally found a person, like, ‘Ah! Same brain!’ [Laughs] Then we could finally make music that I really felt happy with. And, so, I feel like I fully became a musician when I went to uni.”
Photo by Kate Feast. Courtesy of Memphia
Beyond music, the pairing of Arty and Carys as collaborators made sense, as they shared similar political and sociological concerns, particularly surrounding ecological awareness, which is something that they would utilise their art to speak about. Yet, it was their similar interests in obscure art and music which solidified their friendship and working relationship. “We had a lot of the same kind of loves of different genres,” says Carys.
“We both liked a lot of different music, but those lined-up. So, I’d say a very obscure musician that people wouldn’t normally know, and Arty would know it, and I was like, ‘Huh! Huh, hold on!’ And when we’d write songs, they were quite similar, and we both wanted to make the same sort of sounds, if that makes sense. So, some very obscure things. It was, like, a quite left-field thing, I’d say it to Arty, and he’d be like, ‘Yeah, OK! Let’s do it!’ and the same with me.”
The course provided Humm plenty of opportunities to get their live footing, something which Arty, in particular, was amazed at how quickly he began to enjoy. The other benefit of their course was access to students studying music production (with modules and exams requiring material results) and on-campus facilities, which enabled them to begin recording their work and getting it released.
Humm’s music is beautiful in its delicacy, almost glassy in its presentation, and feels like it could smash into a thousand pieces if not treated with care. The tenderness presented almost feels comparable to the ecological fragility that the band are aware of, as if a slight change in decibels may do to their crafts what a slight change in Celsius may do to our atmosphere.
Today, the band released their latest single, “Danced Alone (who I am when I’m in love).” “I found the voice recording on my phone, the first ever demo, I suppose, and it was March 22nd, 2021,” tells Arty. “I was listening to a lot of Kinks. A lot of Kinks. And I recorded the guitar part and the melody, but I was just making up lyrics, just for the purpose of the demo. None of the lyrics were used. But I was really listening to the song ‘Afternoon Tea’ by The Kinks. That was a huge inspiration, I think, for the melody for the song, especially.”
He adds, “I was just obsessed with the song, really. And then, I mean, to be honest with you, [Both he and Carys start to laugh] the chorus line came, like…I was having a poo, and I…[Everyone starts laughing] I had this idea for, like…I knew the chorus had to be good, the melody, like, the lyrics. And then I was on the toilet, and it just hit me. It hit me in my head, and I just wrote it down, instantly. I knew it was there, and then sent it to Carys, and then Carys just did everything else and took the chorus line and wrote all the lyrics for everything else and got meaning from it.”
Carys adds, “And I listened to that, and I was like, ‘Ah!’ ‘Cause I had just been through a break-up – a nice break-up; we’re still friends – but it was still a break-up, and I was realising exactly that, that I wasn’t in love anymore, and that I needed to be alone for a while and figure stuff out, and then Arty sent me that, and I was like, ‘Ah-ha! Here we go!’ And then I wrote the lyrics to the song, and they’re literally some of the best lyrics I feel like I’ve ever written, and I don’t think that I can get better than that. I really, really like them. It’s all just about living for the day that you’ve got and just appreciating the small things, which lots of people never do, and, also, I never do.” “It’s a reminder to yourself,” adds Arty.
With their continual growth as musicians, songwriters, and people, a certain irrefutable sign of vindication came for the fledgling act, last year. While Arty and Carys initially bonded over their mutual love for obscure musicians, another of their shared inspirations is one of the biggest musical acts in history: The Beatles.
In 2022, a drunken Arty wrote a 500-word essay on what The Beatles and Sir Paul McCartney mean to you, to enter The National Trust’s Forthlin Sessions competition, to be in with a chance to record music at Sir McCartney’s childhood home of 20 Forthlin Road, Liverpool, two hours before the deadline. Unexpectedly, they were one of four winners chosen to record a song.
“I just applied. I sent in our songs. I really didn’t expect anything from it,” says Arty. “Because we have applied for quite a few things before – just as everyone has – and we assumed it’s quite a big competition, we weren’t going to hear back. And we just got an email back, and I remember I called you straight away – I don’t know if you saw it first or I saw it first – but we called each other as soon as someone saw it. We literally spent, like, the next half-an-hour checking that it wasn’t a scam!”
Humm wrote a song in the house, and a recording of it was livestreamed by the National Trust as part of Sir McCartney’s 80th Birthday celebration, and they have plans to release it at a later date. “And we met [Paul’s brother] Mike McCartney, and that was really nice,” says Carys. “He’s lovely. And we were sat, playing some music, and there’s a picture he took of John and Paul, like, sat around the chair, and one of them’s sat on the chair with the guitar and the other is sat on the floor or something, and we were doing that. And he looked at us, and he was like, ‘It’s like going back in time!’”
Humm’s latest single, “Danced Alone (who I am when I’m in love),” is available to stream from today. You can keep up to date with the band on their website, Facebook, and Instagram. Tune in to the latest episode of POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews…, today at 14:00 to hear this interview in full. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.
Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.