The Herons are taking flight

By Ilena Day-Dell’Olio

At Edinburgh's one-room music venue, Sneaky Pete's, neon lights cut through smoke-machine fog and left the night looking like an overexposed film photograph. The crowd was full of faces unfamiliar to a St Andrews recluse like myself but through the settling haze were The Herons, unmistakable in both sound and air. The a capella testing of each microphone blended seamlessly into their Edinburgh-Fringe-esque set as a crowd slowly trickled in from Cowgate. With as many cans of Tennents as people on stage, Felix delivered a lecture on cereal nobody knew they needed. An audience member’s interrupting “get on with it!” became part of the act and, with a side of breakfast-table philosophy, The Herons were about to play like you’d never heard them before.

As of this year, two of the three Herons have taken flight from the three-street-nest of St Andrews. If you’re thinking of continuing a band after university, Ben’s advice is “don’t live in three different countries” – a plight he turned into a passing joke as he greeted the audience: “we’ve come from all over the world to be here.” The band insists, however, that nothing has changed. They’re “still doing punk for undergraduates,” Ben says, and Felix is quick to back him up: “It must be known that we are still a student band,” though where they play and who they play to is different. The student band so familiar to us now plays to crowds no longer made up of St Andrews rave-cave enthusiasts. Whilst a change of audience usually brings a change of sound, a bid to mould yourself into something more palatable, The Herons have done the opposite, planting their boots further into the mud and doubling down in front of a room of strangers. 

The Herons want to avoid becoming another indie band whose music must be appreciated “in a darkened room”. Pop is too easily treated as a lesser art, as though a song’s immediate appeal must come at the expense of substance. The Herons seem uninterested in that distinction: they want to scrap the Teflon and make something that sticks. Fontaines D.C.’s punchier early sound was meant to leave a dent on the audience’s sceptical psyche. The Herons take a similarly direct approach, albeit with their own brand of rock-pop jingles about curries and chapatis.

On the second leg of their “Reading Week Tour”, The Herons were to play a sold-out set at the Troubadour, beneath the watchful eyes of every music legend who had ever performed there. Descending the turquoise-blue staircase into the cellar, The Herons submerged themselves in a room steeped in musical history. “Punk for undergraduates” has stirred the waters where folk music once reigned, and where Bob Dylan’s acoustic strumming had filled the stuffy cellar air. Now, Joni Mitchell’s operatic highs have given way to Felix’s falsetto and baritone, rising to the surface in their place. 

It wasn't, however, the Troubadour's musical history that commanded the room that Thursday night. The venue felt less like a shrine to folk legends and more like one to St Andrews' students, with every recognisable face from the main library’s smoking area singing back the lyrics of each song. Whilst this was a stark contrast to Sneaky Pete’s, the breaking of Felix’s guitar strings heralded a performance that seemed to once again thrive on the possibility of something going wrong, and on the band's ability to turn it into part of the show.

Having recorded five songs over the summer, with a first single expected soon, The Herons now face the challenge of getting the energy of their live performances onto an EP. With the help of Alaska Reid and producer Liam Brand, The Herons have approached the studio as an extension of the stage, tracking the songs live rather than assembling each performance piece by piece. This echoes producer Dan Carey’s approach, where recording consecutive songs to tape helped recreate the ceremony and momentum of a gig, while avoiding the overproduction and sterile sound that can come with recording songs in isolation. “We actually managed to keep a decent live energy,” says Felix. Part of this meant “leaving some of the mistakes in, some of the random, spontaneous stuff,” Ben explains, pointing to Pavement as an example of why a slightly wayward guitar part can be worth keeping.

Where The Herons will go, or where they hope to go is outlined in Ilya’s five year plan: 

1. Play in Windmill

2. Get picked up by a producer

3. Second full length album 

4. Make it big in America

5. Gulf state tour

Whilst said in jest, it might be hard to rule any of it out. From years spent being the soundtrack to St Andrews’ Saturday nights to having a debut single on the way, we’re soon to find out what happens when the rest of the world gets to listen to The Herons.