Having met through a shared love of live music many years ago, Maidenhead’s Sibling eventually headed into the studio to record their first EP, Miserable Love, late last year. Carrying on that record’s themes, new EP Dream You Away hones the five-piece’s sweetly seductive blend of sprawling post-rock and 80s pop to tackle some increasingly difficult subject matter.
“The entirety of Dream You Away is about breaking out of an abusive relationship,” explains frontman Benio Baumgart. “The four songs are based around different moments within the breakdown of the relationship and removing yourself from a toxic situation. We hope this serves as a comfort to anyone who is an onlooker to their friend or family member who might be in a relationship of that kind, or better yet, help open the eyes of a person in one.”
Primed to release the new EP on Friday, Benio joins us for a chat about the band, the record and what they have lined up for next.
Hello! Who are Sibling and who does what?
“Hi! Sibling is a five-piece pop band with heavy post-rock influences. I sing and play guitar, Sam Correa and Sam Gale riff, Lewis and James are the rhythm section. We all met through mutual friends in our local area and going to shows. Sibling slowly came to life after Sam C, Lewis and I discovered we share the same love of post-rock and decided to write a few instrumental songs together in the vein of Caspian and This Will Destroy You, to mention a couple of influences. This was all under a different name. However, we were also battling with another shared love of ours, 80s pop music and couldn’t help but think the songs we were writing could have reverb-laden vocal hooks over the top them. As with a lot of bands, we don’t want to put limitations on what we can write or what we can play live, so we decided to write songs under the name Sibling and create in a way that we had no choice but to eventually ask Sam G and James to join us and hit harder in our live show.”
Tell us more about the upcoming EP?
“The EP is called Dream You Away and we recorded it back in February with Bob Cooper in his studio in Leeds. Bob seems to have this amazing ability to up his game on every project he works on and in turn that really helped push us over the five days we were with him. We managed to spend 14 hours in the studio one of the days – ‘studio fever’ was in full effect by the end of the day, and we couldn’t stop laughing at the silliest things.
We’ll get heavy for just a moment here; Dream You Away is about breaking out of an abusive relationship, and each song is based on different feelings within that process such as denial, anger, and acceptance. It’s based on personal experience. If the lyrical content of the EP can provide anything for people in a similar situation that would be awesome, we’d just like you to know you’re not alone! As for the music, it’s dynamic and draws upon pretty much every one of our influences, ranging from every post-rock band ever, right through to The Cure and even some modern pop music.”
What’s next for Sibling?
“This band is only just starting out, so as with most in our position the sky is the limit – we’ve already expanded and know that it’s the best decision we could have made so far! We just want to show our listeners that we’re not your run-of-mill guitar band; there’s a lot more to us than that. The first EP was released November 2016, we’ve already toured (with Nervus no less!) and we’ll be touring the UK and mainland Europe in July which we’re damn excited for. The other tour will be with a really cool band from the US, that’ll be towards the end of the year. Up until then we’re going to be writing again with the new line-up and, hopefully, we’ll get a few new songs recorded too.”
Dream You Away is out on 30th June via Close To Home Records. You can pre-order a copy now.