Words by Art Jefferson
Photography by Ilana Xup, Angus Rolland

Furrowed Brow are special. Not in the cliche description of what some would call a fly by night act who has received the popularity vote of the day, but rather in the traditional meaning of the word itself. The 5-piece outfit are truly different from the norm. Hailing from Manchester, the band’s name almost sums up their sound – scouring and direct, yet deep with that of a ponder like a chess player with eyes on the Queen. However, there needs to be an emphasis placed on ‘almost’. The fact is, Furrowed Brow can’t be quite placed in any specific box. One minute the group may deliver hard hitting post-punk, another they may craft reeling glam rock or new wave. And while many bands have tried to record multiple styles of music for eons at this point, often times failing miserably to the point of fostering the death of their careers, Furrowed Brow have managed to do each varied sound well…insanely well! Sure this can be attributed to their talent as musicians, but equally Furrowed Brow’s fearless and uncompromising approach to their ideas of creating combined with brilliant songwriting, play just as important of a role.

Furrowed Brow released their Dead Dead Dead Still Digging EP back in 2020. The record featured stripped down punk, catchy punk-funk, hot-stepping new wave and even nostalgic glam rock. Considering that the EP had clearly shed a spotlight on the group’s versatility, their song ‘Pissing Superfluous’, released the same year, was a dark post-punk meets coldwave offering that contained a twisted 60s sound that, of course, worked. By the time Furrowed Brow released their ‘Punctual Punk’ record in 2021, they had already added surf rock to their repertoire. At the end of last year, the band unveiled their single ‘The Endless Shouting Tomorrows’ which now found them delving more into cosmic space rock which was extremely dance floor friendly. And you guessed it, they even nailed that sound.

Their forthcoming track ‘I Threw The Bathwater Out’ features Furrowed Brow doing what they do best, further expanding their already wide palette of styles which now include spaghetti western. Factor in the clever songwriting of lead singer Richey Ostrowski, great melodies along with fun backing vocals, and voile, you have another Furrowed Brow slice of brilliance.

In a short time Furrowed Brow have configured a place that allows them to pretty much make and record whatever sound they choose, allowing that sense of freedom to explore while still providing the quality that gives fans the confidence to travel with them. Maybe this was the plan from day one. Nonetheless, the Manchester outfit is already achieving what many long career artists only dream of – creating on their own terms.

Can you give a little history on the formation of the band?

Richey – It started with just me looking around in 2018/2019 for anyone else weird and stupid enough to want to be in a band with me. It took a while… I finally managed to get a merry group together. We’ve had a couple of casualties along the way but the current line-up is I think the best we’ve had. Ruben only joined at the beginning of this year; he’d never played drums before the day I met him. I marched him straight up to our rehearsal room and we recorded a track right there and then, you can hear it (a cover of The Modern Lovers’ I’m Straight) on our Bandcamp-only conspectus/rarities release ‘What Good’s A Hat Without A Mirror?’. He’s come on a lot since. https://furrowedbrowband.bandcamp.com/album/what-goods-a-hat-without-a-mirror

Based on the content in your songs which is ripe with social commentary, the name Furrowed Brow would make me think of someone who is displeased with something. What was the idea behind the band name?

Richey – Yes well that exactly. Displeasure, disappointment, frustration, impotent anger, anxiety but also deep thought… it’s all in there. The name was – would you believe – totally unique, till some Canadian guy thought up the same thing and now his (already obsolete) youtube song videos are all mixed up with ours.

Hailing from Manchester, a city that is already musically cemented in stone for some of the most influential bands…period! How does living in Manchester influence your sound or does it?

Richey – I suppose it influences is just as much as anything else, it’s not as if I go outside and lick the cobbles every morning, and to be honest Manchester’s ‘legacy’ wears a little thin sometimes. It’s in the past, isn’t it? People can get very conceited – the Council keep putting huge murals of Ian Curtis’ face up everywhere.

Sonically you all incorporate so many elements that I love from post-punk to new wave, glam to even traces of rockabilly. Even when combining styles, everything flows together beautifully. When in the studio together, what has been the process to achieving that perfect blend?

Richey – Thank you. It’s not as easy as it looks being this brilliant. We’re pretty ramshackle as a live band so a lot of work goes into recording the instruments (separately), then mixing and producing. After all we want our recorded output to sound different than on stage. We recorded our first EP live in one take standing in the same room and it was a nightmare to mix because all the instruments were bleeding into each other – the songs are good but it ended up sounding very weak overall. We’re always learning.

Having watched a few videos of your live shows, it’s safe to say that your stage performances are wild and exciting. When working on music, are you already thinking of the live element beforehand?

Richey – Not really… not when I’m writing songs. In rehearsal we sometimes say ‘oh wouldn’t that look great on stage’ – it’s always how it looks that counts. You can sound like the best band in the world and still bore people’s faces off.

I have to ask about your track ‘The Narrative of Hugh Gordon Pym’. Immediately my mind jumped to the Edgar Allen Poe novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Was that book a part of the inspiration behind this song? I’m also thinking of the sea references.

Richey – I’m amazed that anyone else has heard of that book, I’m constantly trying to explain it to people. Yes it’s a direct influence. I’d been wanting to write a song about BBC News for a while and when I read that book I thought well this is the perfect opportunity. COVID happened to be running wild so essentially it’s a mixture of the three – Hugh Pym’s the health editor at BBC News by the way. As an aside, a few months after the song came out I was contacted by somebody doing research into ‘Sea Cucumbers in Popular Culture’. Isn’t the world a wonderful place?

I absolutely loved ‘Punctual Punk’. However, by the time you released the next single ‘The Endless Shouting Tomorrows’, you were now incorporating bits of space rock, psychedelic, and krautrock, all the while stirring it with goth and coldwave. It’s almost unfair how good you all are when it comes to, again, making a perfect mixture. Can you talk about the creative process with making ‘The Endless Shouting Tomorrows’?

Richey – Hmm…I’m an archaeologist in my spare time and I can remember writing the bones of the song, both chords and lyrics, in a caravan I was staying in whilst on a dig. I then did a demo of it – which, again, can be heard on ‘What Good’s A Hat Without A Mirror?’. It was a dark song to begin with and it came out even darker once I’d added the violins and reverse delay to the guitar. I took that to the band and it basically morphed into what it is now – Alex had a lot to do with that, adding what she did on the keyboard. Then it was just a case of recording it. It’s never really been me sitting down and saying ‘Now I’m going to write a coldwave song’ – well sometimes it is, but however I go about it it often ends up turning into something quite different with new ideas being tried along the way.

Your new single ‘I Threw The Bathwater Out’ is landing soon. I love the cheeky lyrics in it, and yet again, you all musically venture in another direction. What motivated the new record in terms of the content and the slight shift in sound?

Richey – The lyrics I half dreamt but they’re all true – I woke up drunk, I fell off the toilet, I collapsed on my floor. OK so maybe the bit about the bird of prey was creative license. I don’t like giving too much away. That’s the trouble nowadays everything has to have a reason, justification trumps outcome. All our songs tend to sound wildly different but at the same time they all have that ‘Furrowed Brow’ thing running through them so you know it’s us – I couldn’t have worked it out better really. I’m just getting a bit bored of the whole leather-coat wearing po-faced ‘post-punk’ thing that’s around in the UK at the moment. Maybe I’m trying to find my songwriting stride. I almost hope I don’t because this song’s almost perfect.

Finally, what’s forthcoming for Furrowed Brow?

Richey – More gigs, more releases, more getting scorned by the gatekeepers of the UK music industry. It’s frustrating. It really furrows my brow.

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