WHO NEEDS FRIENDS WHEN YOU’VE GOT BILLY NOMATES?
“Why wouldn’t I have a go?” BILLY NOMATES GETS INSPIRED BY SLEAFORD MODS
TOR MARIES – AKA Billy Nomates – has been visiting old phone boxes on the Isle Of Wight. “They’ve got their own whole weird thing that I like,” she smiles. “The way that they beep and the way they talk to you.” An adept bedroom producer, singer and songwriter, this is no retro techno fixation: Maries was scouting locations for a video for Heels, from her latest EP, Emergency Telephone. Written at her dad’s place on the island, the new songs are full of missed connections, inspired by how a raft of communication platforms (“I must be in about 20 WhatsApp groups; Zoom, Twitter, Facebook…”) falls short in terms of nuance or real emotion.
Emergency Telephone comes just months after her self-titled debut album, for Geoff Barrow’s Invada label, and a limelight-stealing cameo with mentors Sleaford Mods on Mork n Mindy. Nomates’ process of writing wasn’t much affected by lockdown (“guitar, bass and piano, Logic, a couple of mikes and that’s it”), but the feel of the new songs ended up being quite different. They’re more upbeat and melodic than the brio and bile of her debut.
“Essentially, they have all come out as pop songs,” she agrees. “I don’t know what you do about that, so I just leaned into it.” Her vocals, meanwhile, tend to favour conventional singing, soulful conduits for melody, and – with the notable exception of Heels – shifting away from the spittle flecked Sprechgesang taken from formative inspirations Sleaford Mods. “Or perhaps,” she chuckles, “my cold heart has melted?” Billy Nomates’ creation story is set at a Sleafords gig in Southampton in 2018. A veteran of two failed bands, just out of a bad relationship and sleeping on her sister’s sofa, Maries identified strongly with the Mods’ cathartic rawness. “I thought, Why wouldn’t I have a go at that?” When someone she knew shouted: “It’s Billy Nomates!” at her, she even had a name for her solo venture. She sent demos, and got an enthusiastic reply from Andrew Fearn, as well as Jason Williamson’s wife Claire, who is now her manager.
The daughter of a school music teacher, Maries was brought up on Townes Van Zandt and Emmylou Harris. She loves Tom Petty and Devon Sproule as much as the ’80s pop of her teens and “rinses Bowie”, particularly Earthling, whose drum’n’bass patterns, sirens and restless energy are all heard in Billy Nomates. “I like it when artists adopt other genres and make their own thing,” she confirms. “I don’t know how you get from John Denver to Billy Nomates… but still.”
Jenny Bulley