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| Photo by Edward Scotland |
Shock Treatment: Let’s kick things off by telling me about your first practice as a band? Did you all more or less have a sound in mind or did your current style evolve over time?
Matilda: At the very start I was pretty shy around Gabe, Hayden and Ollie cos I only knew them vaguely, through school or mutual friends. Our first band practice was sorta tentative, definitely a little awkward. But fun! Thankfully, it took very little time before we were all getting on like a house on fire. They’re nice boys, my bandmates. That means a lot when you’re a teenage girl DESPERATE for people to take you seriously enough to join a band with you.
We all had a vague idea of what we wanted to sound like from the offset, yeah! It’s definitely evolved since we started - I hope it will continue to! That’d be cool.
Shock Treatment: Quick Romance is a pretty young band, is that fair to say? You’ve listed Fatal Microbes as an influence (awesome!). And the B-Side of your single is a cover of Stefan’s “Zero Tic” (another killer tune!) How did you all move past surface level stuff like The Damned, X-Ray Spex (who you’ve been compared to many times) and get into these killer obscure tunes?
Matilda: I suppose we are a pretty young band, yeah! For me, lockdown was the catalyst for getting really obsessive about music. Here goes my sob story: I was, like everyone, extremely lonely during lockdown and EXTREMELY. BORED. Luckily, I found a remedy. I turned to that old, time-honoured teenage tradition of devouring as much music as humanly possible. Thanks to the internet, I spent hours holed up in my room falling down musical rabbit holes. One song led to another, and another, and another, ad infinitum. I listened to anything that even vaguely caught my attention, without bias. It was extremely formative for me. I don’t think my parents really saw me for the entire year I was 15, I was so preoccupied.
Shock Treatment: Can you go through your song writing process a bit? How does a tune come together for you?
Matilda: I would say our song writing process is nicely haphazard. I really struggle to write music so I do a LOT of writing and I send my (only semi-intelligible) word soup to Tim, our manager. Through some kind of superhuman songwriting prowess, he’s then able to straighten that out into a song. Maybe one day I’ll get better at doing it all myself but for now, that’s how it’s done!
Hayden also writes a lot of our songs. He’s able to do it all for himself, no help needed. So efficient. I’m not jealous at all. (I am.) At the risk of sounding a bit full of it, our Hayden might be something of a musical prodigy.
Shock Treatment: What do you like about being in a band most: writing songs, the recording process or playing your music live?
Matilda: ALL OF IT!!!!!!!!!!! It’s all a dream come true to me. Sorry if that’s naff but it’s the truth. I get excited by even the most boring aspect of it, ‘cos it’s what I fantasised about doing for SO LONG.
Shock Treatment: And speaking of playing live, how did Quick Romance end up on the Bopflix Youtube channel? It’s such a great collection of live music with so many phenomenal bands! It kept me there for way longer than it should have!
Matilda: That was SO much fun!!!!!! Chris Bopflix messaged us asking if we’d be keen and, after about six months of faffing (entirely our own fault, not Chris’s), we were able to film with him! He’s the nicest guy ever and his belief in us at a point when we hadn’t even released anything was extremely touching.
Shock Treatment: Going back to your brilliant debut 7”, the A-side is a track called “Brian Jones’s Hair.” True to its title, the song is an ode to the late Rolling Stone's shiny golden mane. But did you ever consider Brian James’s hair? Or even The Brian Jonestown Massacre frontman's Anton Newcombe’s hair? They've all had some seriously luscious locks!
Matilda: Hahaha! It really could only ever have been Brian Jones’s Hair, in my opinion. Brian James’ hair is very lovely, to be sure, but it’s got nothing on ol’ Jonesy. That sort of Prince Valiant thing he had going on was like a HELMET. It’s almost cartoony. The only other person I can think of on the spot whose hair would definitely warrant another tribute is Johnny Thunders. No comment on Mr Newcombe’s barnet..….!
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| Photo by Tallulah Tog |
Shock Treatment: How did you hook up with Damaged Goods, the label that put out your debut 7”?
Matilda: Our manager Tim did some sweet talking for us and sent our demos over to DG. We were doing SOMERSAULTS when they got in touch to say they’d be interested in putting out a single. That’s not to suggest we had no confidence in ourselves but it was definitely a combination of self-belief and wishful thinking. A HEALTHY dose of wishful thinking. Sometimes it pays to think wishfully!
Shock Treatment: Why do you think punk rock has endured the test of time so well? I mean, it continues to touch the lives of so many people of all ages to this day!
Matilda: Hmmmm. There’s no way I’m going to be able to explain this without sounding like a bit of a pretentious tit, so here goes. I think punk rock appeals to a universal need to create stuff and express ourselves (by any means necessary) that is as old as time. Making for the sake of making, to hell with the end result. There’s no one who hasn’t felt that urge to some extent.
By the same logic, I think punk rock has ALWAYS been around. We only think of it as starting in the 1970’s ‘cos that’s when people started really calling it something and doing it en masse. With music in particular, people have always been making outsider/DIY/lo-fi stuff, whether intentionally or not. Probably due to a lack of any alternative options, more often than not. I like to think that I could time-travel back to, say, the 1600’s or something and find someone messing about on an out-of-tune guitar, making the kind of racket that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Ramones album. That’s my rather long-winded punk rock manifesto! Did I even answer the question? I’m not sure now…
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| Photo by Freya Burgess |
Shock Treatment: So Matilda, I was listening to a radio interview you did last year and you talked about how The Monkees were a gateway of rock ‘n’ roll discovery for you. And that from there, you started digging for more great rock ‘n’ roll bands. I feel like, even with so much at our fingertips nowadays, one’s musical journey of discovery has to be a decision. There is still work that has to be done if you’re going to start at The Monkees and end up at Fatal Microbes. What do you think?
Matilda: YESSS!!! I GET TO TALK ABOUT THE MONKEES! It’s true, I got SO into The Monkees as a 13/14 year old that it sort of instilled this need in me to find other bands that excited me as much as they did. There is no greater feeling than falling so in love with a band or musician that you let it totally take over your life for a little bit. It’s addictive. I had that with The Monkees as a young teenager and I kept chasing that feeling around all sorts of different genres: rockabilly, junkshop glam, freakbeat, motown, proto-punk etc etc. That’s how I eventually arrived at bands like the Fatal Microbes. ALTHOUGH, I would also like to argue that the road from The Monkees to punk isn’t as long and winding as people might imagine, though perhaps that’s a (lengthy, entirely too heartfelt) discussion for another time!
Shock Treatment: So what does the rest of 2026 hold in store for Quick Romance?
Matilda: Hopefully, world domination. Failing that, another single……….. perhaps more than that……….. Keep those eyes peeled, folks! We’ve been EXTREMELY hard at work behind the scenes! Exciting stuff’s a-coming!
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