Armed to the teeth with dry wit and dynamic '90s inspired pop hooks, Cheshire's Plastic have plenty going for them. After guitarist Elliot Bird and vocalist Matty Awbery left Leatherneck (formerly known as Bohica), they set towards a new project, taking a back to basics approach to rock music.
Transitioning from deathcore to hardcore, to emo, Awbery says he only properly started writing songs at the age of 19, with Leatherneck being a learning curve of sorts. Plastic also shares a close relationship with shoegazing outfit Brine who are also from Cheshire. “Tyler their singer, kind of reached out to me a bit when I went through a pretty rough break up. I think we just liked what each other’s bands were about and stuff, so we just ended up doing the split and naturally we decided to take them on tour. I wish I’d never met Tyler now, he eats dimps.”
Whilst ’90s-revival is a somewhat controversial tag that bands either embrace or disregard, Awbery is selective with how it’s used to describe Plastic’s sound. “My entire music taste is consumed near enough by the ’90s, so I love it, however, I’m not actually into the scene of music that’s going on at present, as much as people would probably think. There’s something about it that I find really boring. If you wanna talk about Failure and Oasis I’m your man, but I nearly fall asleep talking about Title Fight. That’s just because too many bands tried sounding like that at a time, so I just got bored of it really quickly.”
With bands like Healing Powers and Nai Harvest that hardcore and emo fans share a crossover interest for, the north of England has a particularly interconnected alternative scene. Awbery, however, isn’t the biggest fan of trying to actively contribute towards it. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that I’m not really into scenes. I have a pretty big problem with the whole trend based thing around it; I love the bands that try and do something that not everyone is doing. I think Autumn Diet Plans are the best thing to come out of it. Though we don’t want to confine ourselves, Sam Bloor who produces our stuff kind of subconsciously has got a really special group of bands around him which created a bit of a scene I guess.”
Having released a steady set of singles throughout 2017, Plastic finally dropped the tongue-in-cheek video for ‘Flossing’ in April. It clearly looks like it was a lot of fun to make, despite its intentionally slack production values. “We did the video for ‘Flossing’ at my friend Tori’s house. She was moving out so she said we can do whatever we like with it! I felt sorry for Bobby who videoed us, my brain was addled and the others smashed it a bit I think as well but the night before I passed out so I was all over the place.”
Like a lot of emo music, songs about failed relationships becomes familiar territory. Awbery admits that a lot of the material he’s written recently revolves around an eight month grieving process. During this time, he drank heavily, only giving himself a few days off a week, but spent most of this time in a self-destructive cycle. “I had a real problem at that time; being off your head makes you a lot looser and your head isn’t working the same. I found I was writing really graphic, intense content, but I prolonged that grief for myself for far too long, so I try to not write about it anymore. Occasionally I write about other peoples’ issues I feel for, but I am pretty scared of writing anything internal now because I went through the motion of ‘when the fuck am I going to get out of this?’ so many times.”
Awbery says that Plastic plan to release more singles up until December, but don’t want to rush trying to find a label to join instantaneously. “We said, unless we get a label that is kind of a step above the ones we have worked with, we just won’t go with one. All small labels really offer most of the time are tape releases and we want this out on everything. I think in the era we live in, PR and touring is the most important thing.”
You can check out all of Plastic’s music on their Bandcamp page.