Hooray! I’ve been championing previous Playing House releases back in 2016 and 2017, and it’s great to finally have some new music from them.

‘Not Good’ is a change of direction from those first two EPs, with more of an electronic flavour, but as always, the urge to listen to the track again before it has even finished playing is there once again. When Mel Patman sings ‘tell me where you been hiding?’ the urge to yell ‘well, I’ve been waiting for you, too!’

Playing House openly identify as queer, feminist, body positive and readily support such causes, playing at queer spaces and charity events. (That’s the PR man talking, but he’s absolutely spot on!) Through their music conform and express ideas of love, identity , politics, as well as growing up and living outside of the heteronormative. Given the politics of the US and the UK at the moment, this is needed more than ever.

In the words of Mel herself ‘“Not Good is a surrealist look at the absurdity of the ambivalence to all things not good. “It’s a song that could only be written in the surreal reality that we’re living in right now, in the middle of the destruction of the planet, consumerism, inequalities, sexism, increased anxiety and depression. The song takes a pop at ambivalence, watching everything go wrong and doing nothing. It’s also about how those abuses take place in relationships. It was written following a really damaging relationship where there was gaslighting and manipulation but I couldn’t leave. Sometimes the safest thing is ambivalence when you are not permitted the power by people or society to change things. I wanted to write something that is both truthful and empowering.”

I’ve long been convinced that Playing House deserve to be playing massive venues, and hopefully this single will make that one step closer. Welcome back!

Photo credit Veronica Aguilar photography

It’s probably not fair to judge a band on the basis of one track alone, but before my first play of ‘New Haircut’ by Playing House had even finished, I knew I had to feature them on the blog.

Formed just ten months ago in East London, Playing House are Mel Patman (vocals & guitar), Izzy Cox (vocals & bass) and Killian McCorley (guitar). Shortly to release their debut EP New Haircut, the first track to be released from that is the title track. To describe it as youthful is not to infer it is naive or unpolished; rather it is to say that there is an optimism and freshness in the sound, an excitement that is infectious, and like all decent pop songs, before you’ve even finished playing it, you know you want to play it again and again.

Playing House say that their name ‘comes from the idea that we are all learning how to be a grown up and the pressure to keep it all together” and their songs are full of honest observations on life, love and a fear of everything.’ On the evidence so far, they’re going to be just fine.

This is a live video of another song from the forthcoming EP ‘Grapefruit.’

This is another song from YouTube ‘Lion and the Lamb.’