South Arcade: “We want to be able to provide that nostalgic escapism”

“2025 is the South Arcade takeover!”

Vocalist Harmony Cavelle’s proclamation isn’t wrong. While 2024 has been an unbelievable time for the Oxford Y2K core trailblazers, plans are already in place to take the band’s rise even higher. Truly, this time next year, they could be anywhere.

Joined by guitarist Harry Winks, bassist Ollie Green and Oodie-wearing drummer Cody Jones, South Arcade meet Kerrang! amid a “crazy week of announcements” to take a breath and look back at how they got here, as well as what’s on the horizon.

“I think the beginning of the year was pretty tough,” admits Ollie, “because there’s no definites in this world, and especially doing music. But when it all started getting a bit better is when we stopped worrying. There’s a lot of pressure to have a good TikTok or good whatever, and it was the moment we sort of went, ‘Let’s just try and enjoy it, and capture the bits we enjoy.’”

It’s an approach that’s worked wonders. With the quartet picking up new fans and followers thanks to a steady string of superb singles throughout 2024, not to mention behind-the-scenes social media videos inviting people in their brilliantly chaotic world, South Arcade are killing it on every level.

And, crucially, they’ve proven that online numbers can translate into reality, as they found out when they stepped onstage at August’s Reading & Leeds to a packed BBC Music Introducing crowd. (If you want an idea of just how well that went, next year they’re coming back to play the main stage.)

Today, South Arcade cap it all off with their debut EP 2005 – a six-track release that collates their five latest singles, and the new title-track. Here, the band tell us all about it, and reveal why they’re so excited to take it across the world next year.

“I don’t know if I’ve got a suitcase big enough,” laughs Harmony. “I need to buy some new clothes! We’re excited to have a proper plan, and meet all these new people. It’s gonna be incredible…”

How would you rate 2024 for South Arcade? From the outside looking in, it feels like everything’s pretty much exploded…
Harmony: “Definitely! It’d be rude not to give it a 10/10, right? Well, it’s a 10 so far, I don’t know if anything will change in the rest of the month (laughs). But honestly, I don’t think we could have asked for more this year. The support we’ve had – whether it’s from people coming to gigs, or online, or whatever – we’ve been so lucky. People have really been reacting to the videos we’ve been doing, and the music… I don’t want to jinx anything, but it’s all gone very well! We’ve been very lucky.”

Has it all caught you off guard, or did you start the year like, ‘Things are going to happen for us’?
Harry: “I think stuff like numbers online doesn’t really feel real until you see people in the crowd. We had our first gig back at Reading & Leeds after some stuff had happened on TikTok, and we got to see the new audience that we’d gained for the first time, and that was really special.”
Cody: “I cried. In a good way! It was one of those things that you can’t really comprehend – it’s just, ‘Oh my god, this is crazy.’”

The whole year has probably been like that – just constantly going, ‘How do I process this?’
Harmony: “Oh yeah, definitely. We totally set out at the start of the year, ‘Come on, guys, we’re gonna really hammer this home and do everything we can.’ But like Harry said, until you step out on that stage and see people’s mouths actually moving along, it feels so surreal! But also, I think it’s spurring us on for next year, going, ‘How can we take this to the next level?’”

You’re wrapping things up nicely with the 2005 EP. Was it always the plan to get the singles together and put out something a bit more substantial?
Harmony: “It was a really big thing for us to have people see the world and everything that we’re trying to create with the band. And when the singles started falling into the EP – the first one on it is Nepo Baby – it’s the first time when we really started to feel like we’d found our sound. It was like, ‘Okay, this is our lane and we feel strong here.’ We know what we want to create.”
Harry: “It was very natural. Nepo Baby was the first song we dropped in 2024, and it felt like a new era of music, so it was the natural thing to put all the songs together. And it also feels like it encapsulates the whole vibe.”
Harmony: “It’s been such a fun EP to make, and there’s different vibes in each song – they all create a different world. And now it’s so nice to have them all together, and for people to have that as a thing to listen through and know that it’s how we want it to be presented. It means a lot to us, and it’s really exciting.”
Harry: “We’re doing something different with each song. People know that we coined the ‘Y2K core’ – well, I don’t know if we made that, I think I heard it on the radio…”
Harmony: “It’s what I put in the bio of Spotify!”
Harry: “It’s a cool phrase to simplify what we do, but it is more than that. Each song pulls from a different favourite genre of ours from the 2000s – whether it’s nu-metal or pop-punk. There’s a lot of Britney and Gwen Stefani, even if it’s just subtle.”
Harmony: “And then there’s the Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park reference.”
Harry: “With Linkin Park coming back recently, too, that’s spurred us on. That sound is cool again.”
Harmony: “Yeah, it’s like, ‘We’re on the right track!’ But with the EP as a whole, there’s the Y2K core thing, but we also do like to add a modern spin to that. And what we all really want from it is to end up in everyone’s playlists. Whether it’s the people who get the references and are in that demographic, or the young kids who are finding this music for the first time – that’s awesome, too. We just want to be able to provide that nostalgic escapism.”

What are you most excited about for fans hearing the title-track today?
Harmony: “I want it to be the one where, for everyone who hasn’t got us yet, they’re like, ‘Ah, okay, I get what this band’s about now!’”
Harry: “It’s sort of like us slowly but surely finding our sound. It’s got the riffs but it’s also got the TikTok-coded glitches… if you listen to that song, it explains what we’re trying to do really well. People will get South Arcade when they hear this song.”

Do you feel any pressure in terms of this being a proper debut body of work? Or because people have heard most of the singles already, you’re pretty relaxed?
Harmony: “I think because we’ve been waterfalling the tracks, it’s nice to have everyone on this journey with us, from the start to the end. We’ve picked up all these new people on the way, and then with 2005, we’re hopefully introducing even more people. It’s almost like the family or fanbase that have been with us this whole period, it’s a gift for them, and it ties us all together.”
Harry: “We’ve had this journey with the fans, song by song.”
Harmony: “Because they’ve been the ones where, all this amazing stuff that’s coming up next year, they’ve made it possible.”

As you’ve been picking new listeners up along the way, how much do you stress about, ‘This single has to go really well’ every single time?
Harry: “There’s lots of things we worry about (laughs), if certain songs or videos do well. But at the core of it, it’s about making music that we really love – which we’ve only really started doing with this EP. We like the songs we’ve made in the past, but discovering this sound has been really fun. We do stress a bit about venturing into new territories, because people might be used to a certain sound, but hopefully in the new year, whatever comes next, that will continue to push things forward even further. But as long as we have fun with it, it’s cool.”

Looking back at what you’ve done this year, one of the standouts was performing at Radio 1’s New Music Live in Halifax. What was that experience like for you?
Ollie: “It was petrifying – that was a hell of a day! I’ll give you the redacted highlights: we had a six-and-a-half-hour drive on icy, snowy roads, with Cody stuck in motorway traffic and couldn’t show up until the last five minutes of the soundcheck. We were stressing in the dressing room and then went upstairs knowing that it was technically the biggest gig of our life, because there’s so many people listening on the radio. Then I realised one of the laptops with our click track wasn’t set up properly, so I had to re-AirDrop something. I said to Harry, ‘I need one minute,’ but everything is run to military precision, and Harry said, ‘You’ve got 34 seconds.’ I was onstage watching this laptop loading…”
Cody: “And the presenter had started announcing us…”
Ollie: “And luckily it wasn’t filmed at that point, because everyone would have seen me crouched behind her by the laptop, desperate to try to get it set up in time! I loaded it up, and by some miracle, just as we played the first note, it all kicked in.”
Harry: “It was like a joke – it was right to the second.”
Harmony: “It adds to the drama, and makes it all more exciting!”
Ollie: “After that, the adrenaline was amazing (laughs) and it was one of my favourite gigs. It’s always the important ones, isn’t it? At Reading we broke our equipment, because we gave out loads of water pistols, and then people sprayed us with them…”
Harry: “And it broke all our pedalboards!”
Ollie: “And you can’t really stop midway through and go, ‘Could you please not? This is actually quite expensive!’ It makes you look a bit naff, so we had to keep going.”
Harmony: “But it was worth it! And it goes hand-in-hand with everything that people see of us online, which is chaotic.”

What’s been your favourite show so far?
Cody: “It was Reading.”
Harmony: “Yeah, I’m gonna agree with Cody. When it’s your own gig, you know people are coming. But when it’s a festival, and we were the last slot on that stage, you don’t know if anyone’s gonna come and check you out.”
Harry: “And it was the first gig after we’d had a wave of new fans on TikTok – we hadn’t played a gig in six months, and we had no idea if people would show up. We didn’t expect anyone to come!”
Harmony: “And then when you step out from behind the screen, it’s like, ‘Oh my god!’”
Harry: “But they arrive so quickly, so 10 minutes before, it was literally about five rows of people. And then in the space of 10 minutes, it just filled up.”
Harmony: “It was so scary – but a really good scary feeling.”

Are you already thinking about that moment next year, on the main stage, where you’re peeking out from behind the curtain?!
Cody: “I had a nightmare about that the other night, where I ran towards the drum kit, because I’m the first to run onstage, and I tripped over my drum stool and absolutely decked it in front of however many people were there.”
Harry: “I always have dreams where I’m running to the main stage to play, but I can’t quite get there, and I never get there and things are always in my way (laughs).”
Cody: “It’s going to be a long eight months…”
Harry: “We’ve joked about how with the drama last time and the crowd spraying us, maybe we’ll try to get them back somehow – get revenge on them, on a much bigger scale!”

2005 is out now. South Arcade play Slam Dunk Festival and Reading & Leeds next year.

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