“I think Bilk could bring it back and make it cool to be in a rock and roll band again”: Sol Abrahams on Bilk’s new album Essex, Drugs and Rock and Roll

Having made a name for themselves as one of the UK’s most exciting rising acts and the only band to be banned from Rough Trade East, Essex trio Bilk has generated a wave of anticipation for their second album, Essex, Drugs and Rock and Roll. Set for release on 24^th January, the record delves further into the band’s indie-punk roots, while experimenting with everything from acoustic singalongs to gritty blues. The album explores the quintessentially British experiences of youth – from love and lust to wild nights out, small-town frustrations and fears about the future – presented with a raw, no-holds-barred energy.

With the release of their highly anticipated second album fast approaching and their biggest headline tour to date on the horizon, The Upcoming caught up with frontman Sol Abrahams for an in-depth look at his most personal songs and music videos, as well as Bilk’s mission to make being in a band cool again in an era dominated by solo musicians.

To start things off, what can everyone expect from Bilk’s second album, Essex, Drugs and Rock and Roll?

Stories from Essex, stories about drugs and rock and roll – that’s what it’s about, really. It’s just a rock and roll album, but obviously, in our own modern way. It doesn’t sound like rock and roll in the ACDC sense – we don’t draw on the past. It’s the way that I summed it up to this guy that I was chatting with outside a gig the other day, I said, “We’ve got old influences, but a new sound.” That’s the thing that is often missing in band music – a lot of people just try and imitate. Whereas, obviously, I like to keep things quite modern. I think Bilk’s got a modern, new sound to it, with old influences like Oasis and the Sex Pistols and all the bands that I’m into, but ultimately, it sounds fresh and new. Just like, f*cking good tunes, really. I wrote the album pretty quickly before we got in the studio. And it just sort of documents my life and the sort of sh*t I get up to, and just a broad range of it, really. So it’s very versatile as well, it’s got loads of different stories and different vibes and all that sort of sh*t. It’s kind of hard to sum it up because I don’t really try and think too much about the music that I make – I just sort of go with it, it comes out and I just go with what feels good.

The album’s title is incredibly bold and unapologetic – what inspired the decision to go with such a straightforward name?

I’ll tell you the story of how we came about it, because that was a spectacle. We were out in Germany for a gig, and afterwards we were in the hotel at the end of the night. We were all just sort of sitting on the balcony, and Luke, because he’s always scheming about ideas for the band merch and things like that, just goes, “It’s drugs and rock and roll – like for a T-shirt design.” And I turned around straight away and said, “No, that’s the album name.” We were trying to think of an album name for a good while before that, we even had Bilk 2 as an idea. It was not very creative, but we were going to call it that for a while because our first album was self-titled and we couldn’t come up with another name, so we were just going to call it Bilk 2, like it’s a TV series or something. Then Essex, Drugs and Rock and Roll came about, with the whole play on words with Essex and the rest of it, and we were just like, “We’ve got to have it.” We recorded the album in two bits, and I think it was in that gap between, which was like a couple of weeks when we played in Germany, when Luke came up with the name. Then when we were in the studio recording the second half of the album, I remember there was a moment where we sort of sat there chatting, saying, “Realistically, we don’t get a lot of help from the music industry as it is.” With Bilk, we don’t feel like we’ve ever really had a leg up like that – we do get support from people in the industry, and obviously we appreciate anyone that does help us, but we were sitting there and thinking, “Is it going to really help us if we call it this name?” Then we were just like, “That’s what we’re about,” you know? Because the thing is, we are an unapologetic band as it is, it makes sense. And when Luke came up with it, it just summed up what the album’s about – when you listen to the album, it is sex, drugs and rock and roll, and obviously stories from Essex with my own sort of Essex perspective, being from where I’m from.

Speaking of Germany, you have your biggest headline tour so far lined up next year. Congratulations on that. Out of all the cities and venues you’re going to be performing at, which one are you the most excited for and why?

London, because we’re playing the Electric Ballroom, and that’ll be our biggest headline show to date. There will be 1400 people, and I’m up for it – I want it to keep moving up every year, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I feel we can take on the world of music, and I think we should be, with the sort of music we’re putting out. I think we should be playing main stages and all the festivals and getting bigger and bigger. But then again, I do enjoy going to Europe, because we’re travelling and meeting people and going to these different cities. They treat the English bands well there; they sort you out.

Could you tell me a bit about the process behind your latest music video for Summer Days? How did the concept come together?

So that was a really last-minute one, because we have a habit of leaving everything to the last minute with the music videos and that. Because we record the music, and then everything’s so fast-moving since it’s f*cking hectic being in a band! Doing what we do, there’s a lot of work behind the scenes that people don’t even see. That’s why we’re doing well; people are taking notice because the music’s good, and we work hard. I’ve always believed that if you have that combination of working hard and being talented at something, you’ll get there. But we left the music video until the last minute, and it was just a case of us not really having time to film a proper music video for it. Our video guy, who was working with us for the last two videos before it, left for Thailand or something so we didn’t have a video guy. But then, my girlfriend, for my birthday, had sorted out a trip to Brighton, and we were going to go around for a couple of days and stay at a hotel and everything. She was just like, “Look, why don’t you just bring a camcorder and just film loads of sh*t on our trip and use that as a video?” And then that’s what we did. We just walked around Brighton with a camcorder, went to the shops, went to the beach, and all that, and put it all together into a video at the end of the trip. And I edited the clips together – I edit a lot of Bilk’s videos, because I’m a bit of a control freak. I think I’m good at editing, and I understand the song, so I’m very much that sort of artist where I have a vision for something, and I like to execute it exactly how I’ve got it in my head. I’m quite strong-minded when it comes to that sort of thing – I don’t just leave it in people’s hands because a lot of the time it comes back, and I’m not too impressed by it. I trust my own process quite a lot and I think it serves us well. So that’s how the Summer Days video happened, really. It was very natural; my girlfriend stuck the camcorder in a bag, and we walked around Brighton, got pissed, had a good time, and filmed it all. And since it’s my girlfriend, it comes across as real – it’s not me with some actress that we’ve hired for the job; it’s my real relationship in the video. And I think that’s cool, because my music is real, the song is real. If you listen to the lyrics of Summer Days, it’s the story of how I met my girlfriend and how we came together and the rest of it. And if you listen to the lyrics of any other Bilk songs, it’s also all my story, my life. That’s how I write my lyrics. I’m quite like, on the nose with it; there’s not really much room to stand there rubbing your chin when you’re going through my lyrics. It’s quite obvious, and I like telling my stories and my music.

On the subject of telling your stories with your music, the song Band Life Blues really took us back to your early days of being a musician and how Bilk came to be as a band. What was the inspiration behind it?

I was getting into The Mamas & The Papas for a bit, because this is the thing as well, a lot of people wouldn’t expect it, because I listen to a wide range of music – I don’t just listen to punk sh*t or rock sh*t or whatever. I listen to f*cking anything that I like; good music is good music. So I’m listening to The Mamas & The Papas and I’m getting really into them, and there was this song called Creek Valley, and I didn’t really clock it at first when I was listening to it but then when I watched the lyric video, I clocked that in the song, Mama Cass and the other members are talking about how the band formed in the folk scene in the 60s. I found that quite cool, telling the story throughout the song of how they all come together. And I thought, “I’ve never really done that,” and then I just sort of put it together. I had my blues riff for a long while, because I got quite into blues music in the last couple years – I wasn’t really into it before, but my girlfriend sort of put me onto that sh*t, like Muddy Waters and BB King and all that sort of stuff. So I got really into blues music, even some of the early Rolling Stones stuff is really blues age, and it just came about naturally. And the lyrics just flowed, because obviously I’m just telling the story from start to finish of how we came together as a band, and what we’re up to now. It’s everything, from how band members leave, because the thing is, being in the band is not easy. It’s a rough road, and you have to go through so much with the music industry and band members. I was talking with my dad, who’s been our manager for years, the other day, and I was saying, no wonder people aren’t in bands as much anymore. There are people like Sam Fender and Declan McKenna and all these solo artists knocking about because being in a band is a long, rough road. It’s tough; you’ve got to manage people, and you can’t just rely on yourself, you’ve got to worry about everyone else in the band and getting the right members, and you’ve got to rehearse it and then play in a bigger studio. Whereas some people just record shit on their laptops in their room and then that’s it – all they’ve only got to worry about is what they look like and what they’re doing, whereas being the leader of Bilk I’ve constantly got to manage everything. So the song is sort of like a reflection of what being in the band is really like, the reality of it, the ups and downs. But ultimately, the sort of end message of the song is that I wouldn’t change a f*cking thing. I love being in the band; I think it’s the best job ever. I think it’s better than being a solo artist as well; I’d hate to be a solo artist going on the road just all by myself, sitting in the f*cking van playing Nintendo or something. I’m saying I want to be on the road with the boys – there’s like a gang unity thing going on where it’s like, you and your boys on the road, and there’s a camaraderie that I like. I want people to listen to the song, and I want it to make them want to start a band. I want people to listen to it and go, “I’m going to start a band,” because I don’t think that’s too appetising nowadays for people. At one point, if you were in a band, it was the coolest thing ever, whereas I don’t think it’s really like that anymore. But I think Bilk could bring it back and make it cool to be in a rock and roll band again.

On the topic of camaraderie among musicians, are there any bands or musicians you’d love to collaborate with or share a stage with in the future?

I’m not really bothered, to be honest, like, not at the moment. I can’t really tell you what I’ll be feeling in the future, because it’s the future, isn’t it? I don’t even know what I’ll be feeling in five hours time, let alone in five years. I don’t know what I’d want to do in the future – everything changes, doesn’t it? The path of life is always changing and going around in circles, and you don’t really know what happens. I had a plan of how things were going to go with Bilk in the early days, and it hasn’t gone to the exact plan, but it’s worked out in a different way. And that’s just what life is like – it’s unpredictable. I don’t really know what I will do in the future, but at the moment, I’m pretty content on my own. I like writing my songs – I like the process of it, writing my songs by myself, bringing them to Luke and Harry. We play it as a full band, and that’s my process at the moment. I don’t really have any need or want to get on stage with any big musician or anything like that, even though there are people that are great. Really, I’m kind of cool just doing my own thing. I think we’ve got our own wave at the moment in music, and what we’re doing really stands out. So I think I’m happy doing that for a minute.

Christina Yang
Image: Marie Lehman

Essex, Drugs and Rock and Roll is released on 24^th January 2025. For further information or to order the album visit Bilk’s website here.

Watch the video for the single Summer Days here: