The New Eve Is Rising

The New Eves came up a couple of times on my social feeds recently as they just released their debut album: The New Eve Is Rising. The imagery of the artwork cover is intriguing, suggesting some kind of mysticism, and giving out strong alternative indie vibes. I got curious and decided to give it a go, see what it is all about. The first listen definitely got my attention. The sound reminded me of some American psychedelic sound of the sixties, and more notably strong Velvet Underground vibes. But I was also thrown off by the quavering vocals and the occasional dissonance. I wasn’t too sure whether I loved it or hated it… so I decided to give it my full attention and dive into this debut album by the Brighton band.

A Pagan Mystic

The name of the band basically suggests a link to religion, or a certain mystic on a broader level. The opening song of the album serves as a manifesto and sheds more light on what the band is all about. It is a paean to free women, “animals among animals, human among human,” unashamed of the blood running from their thighs, which is too often conceived as a taboo. This Eve doesn’t fear the forbidden fruit — she eats it, spits the seeds into the ground, and grows an orchard. She is a figure of liberation, breaking the shackles of societal expectation.

The New Eves — Violet Farrer (guitar, violin, vocals), Nina Winder-Lind (cello, guitar, vocals), Kate Mager (bass, vocals), and Ella Oona Russell (drums, flute, vocals) — met in Brighton, and formed shortly after the pandemic. The band coined their sound as hagstone rock. “There’s a lot of mythology around a hagstone, and it’s different in different places, but generally if you look through the hole of a hagstone you can see the truth,” explains Ella. “We see ourselves as a rock band, but there’s a lot of depth in there, and putting ‘hagstone’ in front of it felt better… It also has the word ‘hag’ in it, which we really identify with.”

A well-honed sound

Even though The New Eve Is Rising is their debut, it plays with the confidence of a band whose sound is already well-honed. And rightly so… The band has already been making a name for themselves on the underground scene. The New Eves have been touring around the UK with sold-out gigs, and featuring in many festivals. Their music blends broad influences from freak folk and garage rock from the sixties, infused with intense poetry.
While a lot of bands out there are the fruit of various revivalisms of different exciting eras of rock ‘n’ roll, I wouldn’t say The New Eves fall into that category. The influences are there, but the sound is their own.

A perfect opening

The opening song and manifesto is the perfect introduction to this album. Beyond the lyrical aspect I mentioned earlier, the orchestration starts with droning low strings and builds up progressively. The pace intensifies as layers add up — first the bassline and drums, then fuzzy guitars — to end up with a climactic maelstrom of dissonant strings, giving a more dramatic flair to the lyrics.

A hypnotic and loud bassline — reminiscent of an early Pink Floyd sound — marks the intro of “Highway Man“. It is supported by a driving rhythm and remains as the backdrop for the track, upon which will be added layers of vocals and mesmerising improvisations with strings. Nina Winder-Lind, from Sweden, was introduced to the poem by Alfred Noyes by her bandmates during a jamming session. Inspired by it, she rewrote the poem, making it their own, and turned it into this impressive track.

A music to feel in the body

“Astrolabe” is another standout track, with a very strong Velvet Underground vibe. “The song is not just about a romantic love, but also a universal love that’s so big you can’t write about,” explains Farrer. “There are many things which are hard to express with words. With our music we create expansive spaces which people feel in their bodies,” adds Russell. Which seems like an accurate description, as it sometimes takes me places when I lean into their sound. When the chorus comes up, like some sort of medieval chanting, I could visualise people dancing around the maypole.

The rest of the album is equally impressive. “Cow Song” rides a steady axis of bass and drums, but surges into trance-like frenzies before dropping into a lulling close of flute and cello. The track is laced with kulning — the traditional Swedish herding call that makes the voice carry like wind across a hillside. “Rivers Run Red” locks into a groovy, hypnotic pulse of strings, flute, and chants. The closing track, “Volcano”, swells from soothing ballad to eruption before cooling back into stillness — its fire and snow imagery carrying me straight back to Iceland.

Final Thoughts

The New Eve Is Rising definitely works for me. I like it. It is new, and yet out of time. Their music is raw, intense, and sometimes trance-like. I like the mystic of the album, using religious references, while giving out a pagan vibe. Just like The Velvet Underground — to which drummer Ella Russell clearly refers — or Pink Floyd, their debut album comes out strong, thanks to years of honing their sound and skills on the underground scene. I can’t wait to see what comes next.