Growing up in Hampshire can be a weird old time. The smell of cheap cider on park benches, the endless, grey coastal drizzle and hours spent in town centre shadows of the dockyards.
Back then, we were just kids in lessons scribbling lyrics and brand names into the margins of our textbooks, arguing about music taste and taking any opportunity to run away from the mundanity of school life.
Out of these bleak days, however, have surfaced a band called Thorne. Over the past year-and-a-half they’ve been silently making waves in the South coast alt-rock scene.
They’ve been gaining traction with their music at the heartbeat of the steady incline, and today they’ve released a new single in the start of a new era for the four-piece, ‘Better Known’.
With three songs already under their belt (‘This Feels Like Heaven’, ‘A Maimed Melody’ and ‘Nightmare Dreaming’) Matt, Peter, Joe and Alfie look to ramp things up to the next level.
The alt-rock band have become known for their signature sound of hard-hitting, melodic riffs, balancing the heaviness of rock with the melodies of indie.
Playing a handful of shows so far, including a sellout headline at The Hobbit, Southampton, they’ve already built an undeniable local reputation as well as highlights from industry tastemakers like BBC Introducing and Voice FM.
The band cite ‘Better Known’ as being about losing your voice within a creative space. It’s about the feeling of being undermined, overlooked and compromising on your art so much you question if it’s even still yours.
Frontman Matt Dudman said: “It honestly came from two places at once. An internal battle with what I actually wanted to say and write about, and having been in environments where that/I just wasn’t being heard”.
He continued: “As a band, we always put everything into our music, and that matters to us deeply so we wanted that to be reflected not only within the lyrics, but within the instrumentation as well”.
Dudman is joined by Peter Wright (Guitar) and the pair have previously worked on other musical endeavours in their careers. The band is completed by Alfie Bowers on bass and Joe Lambton on drums.
Recorded at The Ranch in Southampton with Daly George, who worked with the band throughout recording, production and mixing, ‘Better Known’ builds on an established creative relationship following their work together on THORNE’s previous EP.
The single represents the first real step into the direction the band have been developing towards, combining their increasingly uncompromising sound with a more confident sense of identity. ‘Better Known’ is the first release from this next chapter, with a forthcoming EP set to continue that progression.
Written by Brad Halcrow for The Songbird HQ
Live photography by Photosbylorna