CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE ISSUE 2: PLATFORM

kermes
“There’s a meme that’s a panel
from an anime,” Emily, lead singer
and guitarist from Leicester fourpiece
Kermes, tells me, “and it’s
the two men wearing the same trilby,
and they’re both going ‘SAME
HAT’ and that’s what I always think
of. ‘SAME HAT!’” She’s speaking
about visibility and representation
of queer people in the music scene,
and the importance of recognizing
yourself in a setting that perhaps
you wouldn’t normally, what with
the cishet white dudes permeating
the stage as of late.
We’re sat in a circle just outside
The Red Shed, a Labour clubhouse
turned music venue for Wakefield’s
Long Division festival, on a cool
early summer evening, giggling at
a slew of silly anecdotes that seem
to be one of two levels acting as the
theme for this interview. The two
levels seem to mirror Kermes’ outlook
on how they hope to impact
their audience – share that feeling
of ‘same hat!’, feeling a connection
between two people in a room full
of the majority where you’re the
minority, but also have a whole lot
of goddamn fun while doing it.
As a band with a wide pool of influence,
each member drawing
on their respective and unique
backgrounds and interests in music,
they’re creating content that
doesn’t quite sound like anyone
else. With a synth-esque guitar
sound that Cass, bass player and
newest member of Kermes, describes
as somewhere between
K-pop and eighties hair metal but
with a boogie, a depth that adds a
swampiness, plus angry screaming
over the top, there’s an onslaught
of influences that have brought
them to the sound they’re playing
with now. “I think in a lot of ways,
we’re just a rock band, but on a
more granular level, I don’t think
we sound like one thing specifically,”
Emily says.
When Emily first started making
music as Kermes, it was as a folk
band, mainly focusing on sadder
and slower songs. “I was just doing
solo stuff that was really miserable
and slow,” she tells me. “It was
sad boy jams, because I was still
pretending to be a boy, and I was
sad. And then I got angry.” What’s
stayed the same is Emily’s journalistic
approach to writing lyrics, taking
her experiences as a queer person
and trans woman, both positive
and negative, and pouring them
into heartfelt songs over groovy
tunes. Now, they’ve released their
first full-length album, We Choose