Music

Interview

Seb Lowe: “You find things that people already feel, and then you write something about it”

The singer-songwriter and band on musical activism and putting a tune to what we're all feeling

Like many young people, Seb Lowe took to TikTok in the pandemic to express his frustration with the government. Less typically, he did so armed with an acoustic guitar and a lyrical eloquence far beyond his years. Now with an audience of over 400k and a deal with Manchester’s LAB Records, Lowe is one of the hottest new voices in the UK indie scene.

Enlisting bandmates Kate Couriel (violin), Ben Etches (guitar) and Joel Goodwin (drums), 2025 has so far seen the release of two wave-making singles – ‘Here Come The Aliens!’ and ‘A Westerner Walks Into A Bar’, the latter of which inspired a particularly huge response on social media. Lowe has a knack for conversation-starting, politically charged music, tackling everything from British classism to immigration policies. In celebration of their upcoming UK tour and the release of their latest single ‘We Must Defend Ourselves’, we checked in with the band to see how it’s all going.

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Your UK tour kicks off soon – can you remember a favourite live show that you’ve played so far, before you head into these ones?

SL: I always say, the first Neighbourhood Festival I did – this was before Kate. We hadn’t really had any indication that there were people who wanted to see us live at this point in time. It was that long ago, and we came out, and there were so many people there who were up on shoulders and knew the words… That’s always been a big moment for me.

People knowing all the words and getting up on each other’s shoulders – is that something you’re used to now?

SL: It’s still pretty crazy. There’s something really unique about that first headline show on a headline tour, or even the first festival of the year, when you suddenly hear this song that you’ve been practicing for months being sang back. It’s always completely mind boggling, really.

Do you think a lot about the public response to the music that you’re writing as you’re writing it?

SL: That’s a good question. I think musically, we sort of do what we feel. It is a lot of activism. We’re kind of not even thinking about the public response, but it’s more sort of influenced by what people are feeling – lyrically speaking – and then musically, we sort of just have fun and see what we can do.

KC: And see what sounds good.

Seb, do you do most of the lyricism on your own and then bring it to the group?

SL: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, we’re very collaborative in the studio. I don’t want to speak for you guys, but everyone brings sort of varying expertise and creativity on the music side, and then lyrics is mainly me, with the exception of the odd thing like ‘Mr & Mrs Human Race’ and stuff like that.

How did all of you get involved in this project?

BE: My mate sent a TikTok to my brother, who’s also the manager, and then he reached out to Seb and just said, “Do you wanna come round and record in this in our little studio?” We ended up going to the pub over the weekend and just we had a bit of a piss up, really, and then recorded about 30 songs. Seb started doing gigs and doing a bit of electric stuff, and then he was like, “Right, I want a band.” Me and Joel were playing and doing things together before anyway, and then it just went from there. I was playing guitar and then Joel started playing drums. We started practicing in Joel’s old practice room in Stockport.

JG: Well, yeah. I mean, I’ve been played drums since I was a child. I never really found a band that I was a comfortable with. Then Jake, our manager, asked me to go and play for Seb. I just jumped on it. The rest is history.

KC: I’d worked with Jake and Ben before, and they mentioned that Seb was looking for a violinist. I initially was like, “Oh, I’m not sure where a violin is going to fit in this sound”, but then it worked really well. I did one show, and it felt like, “okay, this is what I’m meant to be doing.”

Mr & Mrs Human Race (Official Music Video)

It does work brilliantly, but it’s definitely not a typical instrument for this kind of group. Why were you looking for a violin specifically?

SL: I think I’ve always been dead into violin. I think what really kick started that craving to have a violin was listening to ‘Hurricane’ by Bob Dylan. I think since listening to that, I was sort of like, “Wow, what an instrument.” When we’ve been in the practice room, when we’ve been having fun and jamming about, it always tends to lean in a slightly kind of proggy direction, which the violin’s really suited to. I think it’s just really cool. There’s so much you can do with it.

Was your songwriting always very political and activism-focused, or did that evolve over time?

SL: It definitely evolved and kind of intensified as I came to know more. When I first started writing songs, I was 15 and not very well read or anything like that. As we went into [the] Covid [pandemic], I think that was the period of time where everyone’s eyes were fixed on the government. Inevitably, and still to this day, I would sit to write a song and that’s what would come out.

What prompted you to start sharing them online?

SL: Great influence from family and friends, which took a while, because I think had to get over that school kid embarrassment phase and grow the guts to do it. Then I did it and it went surprisingly well. That sort of became my life and obsession – writing and posting songs.

Do any of you ever get nervous about the response to any of the songs before you put them out?

KC: Yeah, I think when you share anything with the world, and you don’t know how people are going to react, you feel nervous. That’s only kind of intensified by the political nature of things. But [we’re] more excited to see what people think.

SL: As time goes on, I think you’re more comfortable. You know that the listeners are supportive, and you’re more comfortable to try different things.

We Must Defend Ourselves

Do each of you have a favourite track that you’ve released so far?

JG: I was really excited about the song ‘Make Me Your National Anthem’. I think it’s just super, super cool. It’s the sort of music I enjoy. That’s the tune for me.

BE: I would probably say ‘Here Come The Aliens!’ There’s just something about that one. It’s quite simple in terms of parts and things, but they all just fit together nicely. For some reason, anything we threw at it just worked. It was just a nice song to mix and finish the production on – I thought was seamless process, really. It’s always fun when that happens.

KC: ‘Mr & Mrs Human Race’ was a pretty special one for me, but there’s a certain unreleased song that comes pretty close. It’s called ‘We Must Defend Ourselves.’

SL: These last few two or three years, we’ve centralised. We’ve been in the practice room putting the set together, and all the latest songs, I’m like, “Wow, yeah, I really enjoy playing these.” They just hit the spot.

The response to ‘A Westerner Walks Into A Bar’ has been huge online as well. What’s it’s been like witnessing that?

SL: Really weird, because it’s amazing, but I’m yet to see anything tangible. I’m really looking forward to playing it live and seeing what that looks like. At the moment, we’ve got that distant view of it. I messaged Kate in February, saying, “Oh, wow, 150k monthly. That’s crazy.” And now it’s like, 185k or something.

KC: I think we all expected ‘Aliens’ to do well, and it did well. But then, before it was released, ‘Westerner’ hadn’t got as good a response online, so we all kind of thought, “Oh, okay.” Then it reached 100,000 streams in three days.

A Westerner Walks Into a Bar

I guess with your music in particular, the social response and the commercial response to the music are two different things?

SL: 100%. Some songs maybe don’t sort of stream especially well, but then on social media, they incite a lot more conversation than others. You know, even thinking about ‘5168 Days’, that was, in itself, a bit of a moment on social media, uniquely. So, even it hasn’t streamed as well as others, you get all different sides of it.

Is the main hope always to start conversations on social media?

SL: Yeah, that’s the very first thing I noticed when I first started doing music on TikTok. Just reading through the comments, and seeing people who’ve related to the songs, or found the songs to be quite powerful, or seeing people who disagreed, and then someone would respond, and they would have a have a debate in the comments. I think that’s always a good thing.

What other artists do you admire right now?

KC: Black Country, New Road. They’ve got a new album out, and it’s great. We’ve been listening non-stop.

SL: Jesse Welles, who’s a fellow musical activist – he’s based in America, and he is unbelievably prolific. He’s just put out an album with 63 songs on it.

KC: And it’s his second album this year.

SL: He just does not stop making music. He’s one of those people where you’re kind of secretly jealous of their ability to just keep writing songs.

KC: Paris Paloma. She’s brilliant. I just think she’s doing really great things with her lyrics. Sofia Isella, her as well.

You’ve mentioned a lot of quite political songwriters there. Why do you think people often find it easier to relate to these issues or talk about them when they come through music?

SL: There’s a quote from somebody, a creative of some description, and it sort of talks about this idea that as an artist you’re finding things that are already there, rather than creating things out of thin air. I think that’s how this feels. You find ideas that already exist, things that people already feel, and then you write something about it, so inevitably that connects. When it does, it’s extra powerful, really, but it could be any art form. I mean, you look at Adolescence – an unbelievable show, and just as powerful, if not more powerful, than any song could ever be. It really feels like they found something that needed to be spoken about that everyone was feeling and yet hadn’t been wrapped up in a nice enough bow yet, and then they did it expertly, and now it’s triggered a response that was waiting to happen.

Seb Lowe’s UK tour kicks off in Sheffield on 27 April – find tickets here