Harry & Jimmy Morris grew up in a musical household in Laleham where their Dad introduced them to some of the greats like Lou Reed, The Police and The Pretenders. The brothers found a natural penchant for capturing the creative energy of a tune and, at the age of 16, were fronting spikey pop-punk bands around London. Just beyond the M25, in Southend, Chris Bourne had recently turned his focus to writing. Having played bass in a successful US group, he toured the states extensively with his own brand of hook-heavy pop-punk, before burning out and heading back to his Pops’ Garage home studio. After lending his songwriting talents to several high-profile names, Chris met Harry & Jimmy somewhere through the cracks of the London live scene, “I didn’t think I had the energy to start another band. I thought Harry and J were rad guys and originally I just wanted to write for their thing,” Bourne recalls from those early days. ‘A few songs later I realised that I was emotionally invested and couldn’t imagine myself out of it, missing out on the live shows – serious case of future FOMO”.
The trio headed down the coast and set up camp at Chris’s brother’s place in Cornwall to continue writing / producing with no distractions. “This was when the sound of The New Twentys was born,” says Harry, ‘the first song we recorded on that trip was ‘Inside Out’ which set the tone for what was to follow.’ With the lack of a ‘drummer’, the three musos all have a hand in recording/programming the percussive bed for the band’s output, as well as all contributing to the lyrics, giving each track on their debut album a cohesive voice and direction. “We recorded the whole thing on an £120 scarlet interface.. we’d spend a lot of time trying to get the right sounds, although initially these were all just demos that naturally morphed into the finished track,” Chris adds. This is a group who wear their DIY ethos as a badge of honour – everything is 100% in-house and entirely independent.
The 3-piece indie-pop rockers have been developing their sound over the last year, dropping critically acclaimed tracks ‘Inside Out’, ‘I Never’, ‘You Got Me Good’ and ‘I Can’t Afford Her’ in the process. This is real-talk, infectious song-writing delivered with passion from start to finish, and ‘Dancing On A Sunday’ is no exception.
Undeniably catchy and downright likeable from the get-go, the uplifting vocal harmonies are built upon the festival-worthy foundations, weaving intricate guitar work and bass licks. On creating their new single, The New Twentys added:
“This song came about from a random conversation with comedian Jimmy Carr at a party. He said ‘all these girls are doing tracks like ‘I kissed a girl and I liked it,’ but no guys have come out with ‘I can’t think straight when I’m with you,’ you can have that for free.’ That sparked ‘Dancing on a Sunday’ a song about a homosexual boy who grew up in a religious household and how it wrongly complicated his upbringing. If you listen very closely to the bridge you can hear us saying ‘Jimmy Carr’ in the background as a percussive element, which we basically just did because we thought it was pretty funny.”
After racking up support from Chris Hawkins, at BBC 6 Music, Jake Peach at BBC Intro Essex, Melita Dennett BBC The South and XS Manchester, few can lay claim to having such an instant global impact, yet The New Twentys are being heard on a global scale, including spins at LA’s Idobi Radio and Australia’s Bank Radio too. This is the start of something truly exciting, and they’d love every single one of you to join them. Who’s in?
