The Lounge Society - Silk For The Starving (EP) - 45RPM

Released on 18 June 2021 through Speedy Wunderground, Silk For The Starving is the kind of debut EP that makes you lean in and turn it up. The Lounge Society arrived as teenagers from the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, signed to Dan Carey’s label, and sounded like a band that had already done a few hard yards in tiny rooms. It’s taut, punchy and political, with no bloat. Just four players, ideas firing, everything locked to the drum kit.

Carey’s fingerprints are here in spirit as much as sound. He’s produced Fontaines D.C., Squid and Black Midi, and he knows how to bottle nervous energy without sanding off the edges. The guitars have that wiry, spring-loaded snap, basslines bounce rather than brood, and you can hear the air around the cymbals. It feels tracked with bodies in the room, the kind of chemistry you get from a group that learned to breathe together on stage at places like Hebden Bridge’s Trades Club, not one that stitched parts together on laptops.

Cain’s Heresy sets the pace. It flicks between pointed chants and slaloming riffs, built on a rhythm section that refuses to sit still. There’s a sharpness to the writing that goes beyond the post-punk tag people throw around. The band use space well, ducking out to let a bass run speak, then piling back in with gang vocals that sound less like sloganeering and more like mates finishing each other’s sentences. It’s lean, but it swings.

Burn The Heather is the one that cuts closest to home. The song takes aim at moorland burning on the Pennine grouse estates near where they grew up, a practice that has sparked environmental debate across Yorkshire. The track leans into a simmering mood rather than a rant, with a chiming guitar figure that keeps folding in on itself while the drums pull you forward. It’s protest music that remembers to be musical, and it sticks because the band never let the groove drop.

If you were there for their early surge, you’ll hear how those first blasts shaped the EP’s bite. Generation Game, the 2020 single that turned heads for Speedy Wunderground, laid out a template of shifting gears and restless hooks. Silk For The Starving doesn’t just echo that rush, it focuses it. You can tell they’ve been listening closely to each other, finding little pivots in feel mid-song and giving Cameron Davey’s vocal room to jab and weave rather than simply shout over the top.

What sells it, beyond the playing, is the sense of place and purpose. These aren’t abstract broadsides. When they sing about land and power, it lands because the band came up in a valley that has seen both industry and its absence. That gives the EP a lived-in weight you hear in the details, like the way a lyric will snap from local to national, or the way a chorus feels less like a big radio moment and more like a roomful of people picking a side.

Press were quick to clock it. NME praised the EP’s venom and verve, and The Line of Best Fit called out the band’s knack for wrapping thorny ideas in propulsive songs. They were right. It’s a tight, replayable set that rewards volume and attention. Put it on a decent system and listen to Archie Dewis drive the band with bright, unfussy drum work while Herbie May and Hani Paskin-Hussain tangle their guitars just enough to keep the floor moving. It’s busy, but never cluttered.

On vinyl, it hits even harder. The low end feels nicely glued, and the treble bite suits the arrangements. If you’re crate digging for The Lounge Society vinyl, Silk For The Starving vinyl is a no-brainer, especially if you like a concise side you can spin between longer LPs. Those looking to buy The Lounge Society records online will find this EP sits neatly beside their full-length Tired of Liberty, and it’s become a staff favourite in more than one Melbourne record store. For anyone building a shelf of new British guitar music, The Lounge Society albums on vinyl belong right next to your Speedy Wunderground staples. And if you’re hunting around for vinyl records Australia wide, this one is worth the postage.

Two years later they would push the scope wider on Tired of Liberty, but the spark is here. Silk For The Starving captures a young band staring down the present and answering with hooks, grit and a real feel for the room. It’s sharp, it’s spirited, and it turns righteous anger into something you want to play again. That’s the trick, and they pull it off.