The Chase is the Nottingham-bred Dream-Pop quartet starring brothers Tyler and Dion Heaney, their cousin Luke Childs, and their life-long mate, James Cahill.
The four pop-rockers are influenced by their council-estate centering childhoods and the sinuous flooding orchestrations of British guitar-pop bands like 'Oasis,' who regularly garnished the band's adolescent heydays as the soundtrack to their lives.
Their latest single 'Wondering' thrives with an equivalent—if not more jovial—beckon of the same dynamics found in Noel Gallagher's songwriting from his prime, versifying pristinely over a winding stanza, and booming anthemic glee for the chorus. The passage opens with a kaleidoscoping spectacle of carbonated bass slides and nostalgia-inducing synths that explore jaunty melodies, conspiring together with a keen aptitude for encouraging dance.
At first, the synths sound something like the old Yamaha key-stations you got as a youngster and convincing played twice, before donating it to a foaming-at-the-mouth audiophile enthusiast friend, totally unaware of the magical tones you've just unwittingly contracted away. The pounding drums and their classic nuanced fills, boastfully slapping bass guitar, scintillating guitar solos, and elegist-like vocal stanzas, render up similar to what a détente between the Gallagher brothers would sound like if it happened in 2020, and if they were singing about juvenile love.
Over the spirited and catchy ornaments of Tyler Heane's cheekily rolled 'r's, the nostalgia-inducive pads heaved straight from the 80s, a slapping bass guitar, and the 90s-inspired yeses pointed at inquires of their Brit-pop influences, this Nottingham collective's new music feels like an exacting bid for the position of UK's household name in Dream-pop—asserted through a growing dossier of hard-jamming British drive and melody titled, "Wondering."
What were the inspirations for the aesthetics and sound you chose to incorporate with your instruments and vocals on "Wondering?"
For every song we write, we never want to do the same thing twice and with ‘wondering’ we ended up creating something really different compared to our previous releases. The lyrics have a sober voice that takes a more optimistic angle in contrast to a lot of our tunes. We’re all bored as fuck about everyone going on about Corona so we wanted something more colorful and positive to put out there! Our sound is massively influenced by the ’90s and we wanted to encapsulate this by going down more of a groovy, baggy, electronic route than normal but by keeping true to our Brit-pop sound. Primal Scream and Oasis were key to us creating Wondering! Can you tell us about what the meaning behind "Wondering" stands to promote, and how the song itself holds genuine to your vision and ethos as a band?
Wondering is pretty much about escapism - feeling trapped by your surroundings and feeling stuck in the everyday loop of working life. We wanted to write about this without hitting the rock n roll clichés which everyone’s heard before (but not in a negative way). There’s a lot of hope in the song and it’s the hope that drives you to want to get out. Do you feel like 'The Robin Hood Chase' significantly influenced your sound and union as a band? If you grew up elsewhere in the UK, do you think "Wondering" would stand changed?
Without the Robin Hood Chase and St Ann’s, there would be no us and it’s as simple as that. The place we were raised was our starting point and is central to who we are, and we’re not one of those bands who try to hide their real selves and where they come from. We see so many singers (especially from Nottingham) sing in American accents... and the fakeness irritates us massively! You can hear Nottingham in our music, especially in Wondering, and we’re proud of that. There's always going to be an added dynamic when you have siblings in a band like myself (Tyler) and Dion, and then when you add my cousin Luke and school friend James to the mix you can imagine the result. But that makes us tightly knit. The great thing about being in a band with your best mates and family is that everything is always unfeigned, and it shows in how we are as a band. If you were to give your audience a few words that would act as a prologue to the experience behind "Wondering," what would you say and why?
90s Britpop vibe with an electronic sound… The lyrics are reflective but sweetened by the energy of the track. Wondering is going to make you want to dance...why? Because we said so. What has been keeping you inspired in 2020?
2021.