Interview

South Arcade: “A lot of fun is missing from music now”

South Arcade talk nostalgia, their refusal to take life too seriously, and why the music industry is in real need of some fun right now


Fuelled by a shared love for the anthemic energy of early 2000s rock and a mission to inject fun back into modern music, South Arcade have emerged onto the UK alternative scene with a bold purpose. 

Reminiscing on the days where they would come home from school and be transfixed by the weird and wonderful music videos on their TV screens, the four university friends bonded over a nostalgia for a time that felt much simpler. Struck by the timelessness of artists that defined their childhood – such as Linkin Park, Korn and Limp Bizkit dominating some of the world’s biggest stages – an idea was born.

Colliding nostalgia with innovation, South Arcade’s unique sound combines punchy rock riffs, glitchy pop textures, and irresistible hooks. Resonating across generations and introducing a brand-new audience to the sound that defined their childhoods, with a tongue-in-cheek humour, a vibrant aesthetic, and immersive storytelling – including the fictional rivalry between South Arcade and their alter-egos ‘North Arcade’ – they’re opening up a fully realised creative universe. 

Creating animated music videos inspired by 2000s culture and handing out party bags to fans at shows, every detail of South Arcade is centered around creating an experience. As they gear up for their biggest headline shows to date, the band reflect on their journey, the joy of rediscovering the sounds of their youth, and their determination to keep the good vibes rolling in a world that could certainly use a little more fun.

South Arcade - 2005 (Official Video)

Let’s go back to when this project started. When the four of you came together with the idea of making music, what sound and vibe were you drawn towards?

Harmony Cavelle: At the very beginning when we met at uni, there wasn’t necessarily a sound that we had all felt aligned on. We just knew that we wanted to be in this band, so me and Harry [Winks, guitarist] made some demos that had a little pinch of some things here and there. They were futuristic, but we wanted an arena-ry sound to it, that live sound. We couldn’t pinpoint what it was yet, but after working on songs together and honing our craft as a band for a year or so, we got to know each other more. Then, we found this point in musical time where we said, “Okay, everything from this era actually slaps… Why is stuff no longer as good as this?” We realised that this is what we should be making and bringing back.

Ollie Green: Yeah, we were a bit heavier to start with, I suppose. I’ll be honest with you, that doesn’t come that naturally to me. I’m more of an indie guy, so I was wearing Slipknot t-shirts even though I don’t like them. If someone said name three songs, I’d go, “Do not ask me that question!” We lived together whilst we were at uni in Guildford though, and then we all moved to Harmony’s house in Oxford. We lived in dining rooms and in spare rooms just to make it work, and that’s when we got into the real nitty gritty of it. We rediscovered this 2000s thing where rock was pop, and everything was good. It’s timeless, and people still listen to Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit. It still sounds great, and my TikTok is always showing me lots of great 2000s tunes.

Cavelle: Yeah, if you go to the club now, it’s still 2000s stuff. It’s about making music that isn’t for a phase or a point in time, it’s stuff that is still going to sound good in 20 years.

Green: That’s what we love. What’s interesting about the 2000s is that for us, it’s nostalgic, but for some people at our gigs it’s their first time round. It makes me feel quite old, but it feels great because we’re trying to make the music that was our favourite music.

Cavelle: We’re getting to make the music that we loved listening to but also semi-reinvent it with modern facilities. It’s cool because there are 14-year-olds that have never heard it, but then there are 44-year-olds at our shows that also love it because it’s a nostalgia hit.

South Arcade - DANGER (Official Video)

The moment that a lot of people were turned onto what you’re doing with this project was when ‘DANGER’ had its moment on TikTok a year after its release. When that track started to blow up, did that give you some reassurance that you were headed in the right direction?

Green: I don’t like heavy music, as I said earlier. It’s not my bag, but even a pop and indie boy like me can get behind a song like ‘DANGER’. There was something about it that felt exciting.

Cavelle: That was the first time that me and Harry actually had that thought of nostalgia in our heads. The whole look and branding came a couple months or so after, but ‘DANGER’ was the first one where we thought, “Wouldn’t it be so cool if we could take aspects from Limp Bizkit or Korn tracks, but then put in a pop vocal and sensibility?”. It was the first time that we’d consciously done that, and we didn’t know how it would land. The way that it has resurged a year later reinforces that whole timeless thing. We realised that the 2000s thing works, and people want it. It was really reassuring.

Green: It makes you feel like you’re not going crazy… “Maybe we were the only people that liked this music?!” It was reassuring, but a bit confusing, because you don’t really expect something old to do that. You spend all your time saying, “We’ve got a new song out”, and each time you almost give up on the last one. Then, one of those old songs does a whole load of stuff, and you realise that maybe you were onto something. Maybe it wasn’t a complete waste of time, so let’s make some more like that and capture that feeling. 

Within your sound there are obvious nods to 2000s pop-punk and metal, but there are also some great glitchy pop moments and huge rock riffs. Every song you release had a slightly different take on that core sound, but what always sits at the centre is a huge hook. As fans of music, where do you think your appreciation of a simple, undeniable hook comes from?

Cavelle: I think a lot of that comes down to the actual writing process. It starts out with our guitarist, Harry, who is our producer as well. He’ll make about 20 little minute-long song ideas, he’ll show us all of them, and I’ll end up liking one or two out of the 20. Then, we’ll sit for a week trying out all these random words as freestyles, almost like Simlish. There’ll be parts that stick, and I live with my family, so you’ll hear them singing one of them around the house. That’s when you know you’ve got it, and a big thing for us is to not overcomplicate it. We’re trying to make it catchy and not too highbrow. It needs to be enjoyable for people that like heavy music, but also for people who just want a catchy tune.

Green: It’s a feeling as well. If it feels cool, then why over complicate it? We don’t want to do a Jacob Collier and make something crazy, that’s his niche. None of the stuff we love is complicated, it all just has a good feeling. Less is more, and it just makes you feel good. 

Cavelle: What we’re realising now with our music is that having that hook is a big thing, but it’s also about having that coolness or sassiness to it. We’ve got some stuff underneath which is quite heavy, so we could easily go down that angry, sad route, but we love putting fun into the songs. We love the tongue-in-cheek stuff, and we love having a bit of promise in our tracks. We’re making them fun, rather than taking the easy route of going angry.

Green: I don’t know what other bands are like, but we’re not really into brooding or making angry songs. We like listening to music that has at least a bit of optimism, a bit of hope. 

Cavelle: We feel like a lot of fun is missing from music now. When people come and see us live, we just want to give them a fun night. You should have a good time listening to music, it doesn’t have to be serious, arms folded and highbrow all the time. There’s a time and place for that stuff, but a big thing for us and all of our newer fanbase to is just to have fun with it. Everything else is so sad and depressing right now, so let’s just have a good old time.

It can be easy to get caught up in the game and forget why you started, especially with how tough the industry is for new artists these days. Now, you have to think beyond music. You have to consider the story, the art, the visuals, and the videos… Your overall identity. When it comes to tying everything together and experimenting with different aspects of your creation, is that something that excites you?

Cavelle: The 2000s are our thing, but we could pay homage to anyone within that. We love putting modern stuff in it as well, and what’s exciting about it. There’s such a vast thing that it could become, and we’ve never got to stay in a box. We’re free to do whatever we want.

Green: Harmony does all the artwork and all the tour posters, and it’s all linked. We’re not giving it to someone random who doesn’t really know who we are or what we’re trying to do, and we enjoy that. It’s less enjoyable when the deadline is looming and you’ve got promoters calling to say, “I need it now”, whilst we’re in the back of a van on the way to Glasgow though! However, it all marries up because the band is all one big thing. All of the output of it, the visuals and the sounds, it’s coming direct. It’s not being diluted or done by someone that doesn’t get it.

Cavelle: Yeah, it’s all done very in-house. We all stress about it sometimes, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. 

South Arcade - HOW 2 GET AWAY WITH MURDER (Official Video)

We have to touch on the battle between South Arcade and North Arcade that started out in the ‘HOW 2 GET AWAY WITH MURDER’ video. Talk us through the inception of that story and the encounter that takes place…

Cavelle: It was majorly inspired by Scott Pilgrim. The song itself is a bit tongue-in-cheek, even just in the title. If you see a metal band with the name ‘HOW 2 GET AWAY WITH MURDER’ you think, “Oh god, okay. This is going to be some heavy stuff!” We were thinking about how we could put it into a cool concept video, and we have our reality in it, but it links to the cartoon. We love Gorillaz, and you can get a cartoon to do anything. If it was us in the music video, knocking someone over and knocking them off a cliff… I’m not sure if that would fly. Since it’s cartoons though, you can get away with it. It was a super fun one, and the animator that we chose to work with got what we were going for. With the North Arcade thing, that was just a one-off idea we had about some alter-ego thing…

Green: South Arcade is on a sign in Oxford. There’s a shopping centre called the Westgate, and it’s there. We’ve been round and looked at all the other signs, and there is a North Arcade. It became a thing that friends would say as a joke; “What band are you in? North Arcade?” At one point, someone probably had a drink and thought, “Oh, I wonder what North Arcade would be like?” They ended up taking the form that they did as weird alter-egos of ours, which was fun. You don’t want a serious music video for that song. If you do a brooding live performance thing…who wants to see that? You want a bit of fun, and being animated, you can tell much more of a story with it. The possibilities are endless, and Harmony is a big fan of cartoons. That’s another thing [that was better] about the 2000s. Now, you’re seeing 3D live-action Bob The Builder – get me the 2D guy back! We just love that time, as well as the art and culture that was around then.

Cavelle: Everything had so much more integrity and a sense of meaning. It sounds so snobby, but it’s not. Maybe it’s because we were younger and naiver, so stuff from then seems more magical and creative, but now everything seems so soulless.

Right now, there seems to be a cohort of bands focused on bringing the idea of the music video back. Music videos used to be a way to discover new music, and often fans would actually discover songs through seeing these iconic videos. That artform seems to have been lost recently…

Cavelle: When I was younger, the first thing I did when I got home from school was put on the Top 40 music charts. The way you found your music taste was through watching these videos, and it’s so cool because the concept is exactly what the artist wants you to see. The song is playing as well, and it makes you put two and two together. You get the artist; you get what the whole thing is about. That stuff started dying down, and I can’t even find the charts on the TV now when I want to. People don’t care about music videos so much now, and a lot of people argue that it’s a waste of time and money, but I think that visuals are so important in understanding the meaning of the song. You see how a band’s meant to be perceived, if they’re serious or not serious, and you get that from watching one video. That’s how you used to discover stuff from MTV, and I don’t think that’s the way anymore, but we are seeing it through YouTube now. We haven’t even tapped into our YouTube that much. We’ve only posted about 40 videos in total there, but the way that people are finding us through that now is reassuring. 

Coming back to the battle between South Arcade and North Arcade, the rematch is coming this year in the form of your biggest headline shows to date. It’s one thing to be able to bring that story to life via video, but how are you planning to translate that to a live show?

Green: There are a few ideas floating around, but I don’t want to say too much in case it doesn’t happen. Dressing up as North Arcade is on the cards pretty strongly though. What’s fun is that with the lore of the band and the music, the people there will get it. There’s something nice about being in on the joke, because we could get dressed up for a support thing, but no one would know. They don’t know what we’re meant to look like, so the unseriousness of it doesn’t land. If anything, it could be taken the opposite way… They could think that we’re meant to be evil! I’m looking forward to bringing that to reality though. I think my character’s got white hair, so I’m going to need a wig or to spray it white. I’ve got 1,000 teeth too, so I’m not sure how that’s going to work…

Cavelle: I’m so excited for it, because our whole thing is just that idea of fun. We could do a whole other run of shows, but how about we just play into this North/South divide properly by doing a South Arcade show and a North Arcade show. Each one will have special things about it and special merch, and maybe people will go to both because they want to experience it. It’ll be more of an experience, a cool night out with a bit of story and something to it, rather than just paying 15 quid to go and watch some songs. We want it to be a little bit more special.

Green: It’s important that it’s more than just watching some songs and seeing the band do a fake encore. We hate encores! We’ve got this lore now, and we’ve not really had a chance to explore that yet, but we’ve always tried to make it special. Even when we were playing 100- and 200-capacity rooms on our first headline tour, we made a party bag for everyone. It’s more than just a gig, and we don’t want there to be this weird, clinical divide where the audience just goes to watch this band play. When bands don’t interact with the audience then just leave… We actively hate it. It’s about the interaction between the crowd and us, the clapping, singing along, and getting involved. It’s about Harmony going down and singing with them, it’s a party bag, it’s meeting everyone and having a picture with everyone who wants one.

Cavelle: As much as we say that we don’t take ourselves seriously, we want to put on a good show. We care a lot about the music we’re making, but we don’t take ourselves seriously in the way where we see ourselves above anyone. We’re average kids that get together to make music for a good time, and we want to put shows on for everybody else to have a good time. I really hope we always do that.

Green: I think bands take the wrong things too seriously. They take themselves too seriously, but they don’t take what they’re offering seriously enough. That’s when you end up with the arrogance of thinking you can go out and just play a show, and that’s that. Without these guys, we wouldn’t be doing anything. We’d still be sitting in Harmony’s dining room next to Harry’s bed eating Jaffa Cakes, and no one would care. We owe them quite a lot, and I think the least we can do is put on a good show, have a chat, have a picture, and say thank you. 

South Arcade - stone cold summer (Official Video)

Looking towards the future for South Arcade, obviously it’s a tough time to be in the music industry right now. Despite that, what keeps you waking up each morning knowing that this is something that you want to keep pushing towards?

Green: We just enjoy it. The truth is, and I might be getting a bit overly earnest and sincere here, but we are quite good friends. All music aside, we get on, and there’s a bond between us that’s like siblings. We will gladly bicker to no end, but it’s in the same way that siblings do, it’s never deeper than that. We share a love for what we’re doing, and we share a love for going out and playing. We’re doing it because we like doing it. 

Cavelle: As a band, so many people have given us their time and come to the shows. Now, our listeners are going up, and it almost feels like we have a responsibility to provide this music and these shows for people. We’re very grateful and feel honoured to have that responsibility, and we want to be these people’s favourite band. Not just because they perceive us as these untouchable, higher beings – we want to be perceived as everyone’s friends. We’re just trying to have a good time, and I think that’s what everyone needs right now. That’s definitely what keeps us all going, and it is so much fun. We’re grateful for the opportunities we’ve had so far, and a year ago there’s no way I would have thought we’d be doing all of the stuff that we got coming up. It’s surreal. 

Green: We were doing it when we thought no one cared, and I think that shows that we’re doing it for the fun of it. We’d sit there and go, “What if no one cares?”, but we enjoyed it, and we liked making music, so we just kept going. We like going out and playing shows together, and even if it’s just to 10 people, that’s fine. That’s cool, because we’re doing what we enjoy, and if other people are getting some enjoyment out of it – job well done. Now, it’s just an extension of that. When you enjoy doing something so much, it’s not a chore. It’s a privilege.


South Arcade start their UK tour in Manchester on 13 March, then stopping at Birmingham, Bristol and London. The band will be back on stages this summer at Reading & Leeds festival. Find tickets here