Strabe share new track ‘Together Whenever’,
Praise for debut mixtape, JUVENOIA
“A larger than life, exuberant sound…it’s full throttle excitement from start to finish” NME
“STRABE hit the ground running…a surging, inspiring piece of alt-pop” Clash
“Euphoric…captures the sentiment of post-lockdown life” The Line of Best Fit
“Pulls all the emotional strings…the promise is obvious” Dork
“Highlights STRABE’s ability to wring out life’s darker moments with a soft cloth” District
The band will release debut album How Our Love Grows on October 20th, introduced with first single with ‘All My Heart’ (alongside a stunning, AI-generated video) & followed recently by queer disco floor-filler ‘Honey’. Having gone viral for their first track ‘Best Worst Year’ – which surpassed 11 million streams over the pandemic – and dropped acclaimed first mixtape ‘JUVENOIA’, STRABE will launch the record at a London headline date at The Lower Third on September 14th.
‘Together Whenever’ showcases a different side to STRABE, stripping their richly-accomplished DIY sound down to its raw and affecting essentials. In Angelica’s words, “if wholesome could be a song, it would be ‘Together Whenever’. Creating music with our friends has always been one of our favourite things, so for this tune we got as many people as we could to bring their own sound to the track. A special thanks to the wonderful Lewis McLaughlin for singing with me, bringing such a tender note to the song. Singing with someone I’ve known for so long brought me so much joy, and having both of the McLaughlin brothers on the album makes it just that wee bit more special.”
STRABE are alt-pop duo Angelica and Emmet, whose debut album proves a bright, bittersweet exploration of grief, growth, gender, and personal evolution. STRABE originally met in the smoking section of Cork Music Festival, bonding over their eerily similar music tastes before quickly realising that they each represented the missing piece of the other’s creative dreams. Angelica, who is originally from Edinburgh, had pages upon pages of lyrics without a real home, while Dubliner Emmet had an electronic solo project without a voice tethering it all together. Back then, Angelica was on the run from themself without even realising it, grappling with both their sexuality and their dad’s death. Many of the earlier STRABE songs that formed debut mixtape ‘JUVENOIA’ tap into this shimmering sense of escapism, with the anthemic ‘Best Worst Year’ or ‘Life On Pause’ soon appearing prophetic for a generation whose own coming-of-age was seized by the pandemic.
A furiously prolific group, STRABE moved to London between lockdowns and set about making music IRL again at last. Before their first body of work had a name, it had a colour – a deep vivid blue, beaming out of the cyanotype prints that Angelica began making throughout the writing process, and percolating like rushing water through the genre-fluid production work of Emmet. With a sound that summons the wistful alternative-pop of bands like The Cranberries and The Cardigans – together with the emotive, electronic dance influences of Fred again..or Romy – How Our Love Grows navigates those choppy waters of young adulthood: from the swelling highs to what happens when the wave breaks. In moments both euphoric and – on ‘Together Whenever’ – broodingly intimate, one constant proves to be the tight friendship of Angelica and Emmet themselves: an opposites-attract bond allowing STRABE to weather whatever life throws at them.
Watch out for more from STRABE to follow soon.
