Q&A: London-based Trio thredd on their Debut Record, Songwriting as Prophecy, and the Art of a Good Pub DJ Set
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY EMMI SHOCKLEY ☆
Photo courtesy of Night Swim
MEET THREDD, AN ARRESTING NEW UK BAND BORN FROM THE LYNCHIAN, VELVET-SHROUDED BASEMENT OF A WEST LONDON MUSIC VENUE — Their debut album It’s Lovely, Come On In (via Scenic Route) is just as strange, singular and brilliant as the setting of its inception suggests.
thredd is the union of three long-time friends and collaborators, Imogen “Immy” Williams (Imogen and the Knife), Will Lister and Max Winter. The band wrote and recorded their upcoming debut album during the final, infamous Laylow residency, as the Notting Hill venue and recording studio was quite literally being sold out from under them. It’s Lovely, Come On In encapsulates a fleeting and formative moment in time for the burgeoning group, the shift from early twenties to those middle ones, and the end of an era for a once-hallowed creative space.
While the trio describes their sound as “cold pop,” the album doesn’t exude even a hint of high-brow, avant-garde inaccessibility. Upon my first listen, just as the title track suggests, I was welcomed into the dancey, dark, synth-imbued sonic world of this trio–and I didn’t want to leave. The record feels like fresh heartbreak; it feels like a night out with your best friends in a dank, subterranean club. Most of all, the record sounds like a work of uninhibited creative risk-taking born from collaboration between trusting, tight-knit contemporaries.
thredd’s cited influences range from Portishead and Massive Attack, to Britney Spears and Lana Del Rey. And while the trio possesses a clear reverence for their trip-hop, shoegaze and popstar influences, their inspiration exists simultaneously with a seeming dismissal, even disavowal, of genre predictability. Just lyrically speaking, the record exhibits an impressive, unpredictable range. Williams, (who has established a haunting, mournful voice as Imogen and the Knife) writes as the lead lyricist for thredd. Her lyrical prowess and versatility cuts to the forefront of the record as her lyrics range from cheeky lines like, “Now, I’ve decided to have a party / A big fat f*ckin hoorah / Cos’ I’ve been hiding, but I’ve confided / And now it’s time to hit the bar,” on “Party,” to the desperate and vulnerable “Funny Girl” where she sings, “Like a mattress on the ocean, I’ve been holding on ferociously / I really wanna stay. / When I get better / When I get better / I will be your funny girl.” The record coalesces Williams’s depth with the driving beats and experimentation of producer Will Lister and the improvisation-informed freedom of Max Winter’s songwriting style and vocals. Winter’s vocals on this record are not to be overlooked in the slightest, especially when he steps into the lead on the record’s most tender track, “Something For My Head.”
The band describes their debut as “a record for people who are up for a party, down for a cry.” If you’re one of those people, then come on in.
I spoke with Imogen Williams, Will Lister, and Max Winter during the early afternoon hours, the day after their very first thredd DJ set. Lister and Winter debriefed me on the unexpected, late-night pub event.
Photo by Miyuki Wang
WINTER: It wasn’t quite what I was intending. It sort of ended up being just, DJing in a pub, really, and playing party tunes. People were requesting like, S Club 7, and sh*t. I thought it’d be kind of more ambient and interesting, then we’d play some of our tunes-
WILLIAMS: Did you play any thredd?
WINTER: Yeah, we played “Vimeo.”
WILLIAMS: Oh well. That’s all we need.
LISTER: I feel like between pub DJ bangers and good pop songs, it’s all kind of the same vibe. So I was pretty happy playing JLS at one point-
Williams stops Lister and addresses me.
WILLIAMS: I don’t know if you know who we’re talking about. I was thinking this when Max said S Club 7 as well. This is all very British.
LUNA: I’ve heard S Club 7. I haven’t heard JLS, though.
WILLIAMS: You should definitely check them out.
LUNA: I will. So the first thredd DJ set was…?
WINTER: One for the history books.
LISTER: Yeah, it was fun.
LUNA: But you really kicked off this past Friday with the fundraiser show for the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, right?
WILLIAMS: Yeah, it was an amazing night. I don’t know if we have the final figures, but I think about £5000 was raised, which is amazing. And it was a really cool lineup to be a part of that came together quite last-minute. Moth Club is such a historic, iconic venue. It’s just a dream to play.
WINTER: It was quite nice doing a gig after releasing the single (“Party”) as well. The single came out two days before that, so there was quite a nice buzz around the show. That was actually the first time we’ve played a thredd song that’s out.
LUNA: But you’ve toured as thredd before, supporting Nourished By Time (on their 2024 EU Tour), so you were playing all unreleased thredd tracks then? Playing shows as you were building?
WILLIAMS: Yeah. We’ve been making music together for our solo projects for a long time. Then at the end of 2023, we came together for a residency at this venue in West London called Laylow. It was a four-week residency, and we had to perform live every Wednesday. So we ended up making music for those shows, which is ultimately what we have now. So all of it, pretty much, was made in that month. That music is what we were playing when we went on tour with Marcus [Brown, frontman of Nourished by Time]. That came about because Max plays in Nourished by Time. So yeah, we were kind of honing it live, but not a huge amount had changed since we finished those tracks in the residency.
LUNA: I know you’d all been working in each other's orbits and sharing a studio for years, doing some singles together for your solo projects, so what was the moment that you decided to form a band? Did you all go into the Laylow residency planning to work together?
LISTER: Funnily, the idea of doing something that was an equal contribution, collaboration thing, was actually from Theo (Fabunmi Stone), who runs Scenic Route. We spoke to a couple of people, and then ended up being given the residency, and we went in not necessarily knowing what would come out of it. And because we did a show a week, and each one was ticketed, the first three shows just had the three of our names on the flyer. And by the end, we were like, this feels like kind of a self-contained thing. So by the end of it, we wanted to have a band name. And we had to come up with something. And that’s how, I guess, we formed.
WILLIAMS: And ultimately, at its root, it is a collective. I guess we just don’t like that word that much. But it is a quite seamless blend of all of our solo projects. Which is really cool. And we have featured heavily on each other’s solo stuff. So when we went into Laylow, we thought that might also be the case, that we’d do a couple of my tunes, couple of Will’s tunes, couple of Max’s tunes. And what we ended up with instead felt so fresh, and as Will said, self-contained.
LISTER: We didn’t really think about it. We went in just thinking more about the process. They have a studio on the top floor of the building, well, it’s shut down now. But there was a studio on the top floor and then the basement venue. Most people would come in (to the residency) and use the studio, then perform each week in the venue. But we basically set up our version of a studio in the venue itself and wrote in that space. So it’s heavily tied to that room. Which helps with the translation into the live aspects, because while writing in a venue, we were probably always subconsciously thinking about it being performed on a stage, or on a certain system. We were listening to it coming out of a PA, rather than on studio speakers.
WILLIAMS: And I think what we’ve ended up coming out with is these really tight, concise pop songs, because we didn’t have any time to think about it. We were working through these shows, so we had to kill our darlings, and not think about the lyrics too much, not think about the music too much, and just get it done. Working within those constraints has really led to the way it sounds. They’re immediate, concise songs.
Photo by Miyuki Wang
LUNA: In your words, what is it that makes you three click so well together? What’s the thing that each of you brings in?
WINTER: I guess the most obvious answer is that we individually each bring a distinct thing to the writing process. I’m very much from a background of composition. I’m into harmonies and chords and trying to push [the songwriting] as far as I can. Immy’s an expert songwriter and vocalist. Will’s a mad producer, beat-maker, like, extraordinaire. Then, I’d say deeper than that is the way we’ve shared a space for the last five years. And I’ve played in Immy’s band, Will’s played in my band, Will and Immy have made songs together. Immy and I have made songs together. Will and I have made songs together. We just know how to work with each other.
LISTER: It was very quick in that sense. And because we’re all a similar age, we’re all from outside of London. So that influences the music we listened to ten to fifteen years ago. We were all listening to stuff that made it out of London then, so we have similar reference points, then also have our own specific influences.
WILLIAMS: It’s quite satisfying because this is a project that I feel needed the amount of years it had preceding it to get to this point. We've developed shortcuts in working with each other, and we're really great friends, and we've all been making music for a long time. So I feel like this project wouldn't have been able to exist early on in our careers. It had to be now, which is a satisfying thing. Getting older is actually good. It’s useful.
LUNA: I wanted to ask about influences. After listening to your solo projects, then listening to all of you come together, I’m sure the influences are pretty expansive. So where do you all overlap? Are there any artists who stand as a point of reference for all three of you?
WILLIAMS: A lot of the trip-hop stuff from the '90s. Portishead and Massive Attack.
LISTER: I listened to DJ Shadow and stuff like that growing up. Gorillaz is another big one. They’re a good one because they’re very varied. They’re a real mixed bag of tunes.
WINTER: Um, I’m kinda thinking just, nineties in general? Nineties, bracket, general. Maybe bleeding into the noughties. The first tune on the record (“Horseshow”), once had the placeholder “Portishead.” But when I listen to it now, it sounds nothing like Portishead.
LISTER: There’s loads of Britney.
WILLIAMS: There’s loads of Britney in there! We need to give Britney her flowers for this. We love Britney. I mean the lyrics, for “Vimeo,” came straight from Britney because she has that one song where she’s like, “Did you check out my video?” [“Showdown”]. So I kind of reinterpreted it, and it ended up becoming “Vimeo,” because it’s quite an art school platform. It became this funny kind of nod to that. “Did you check out my Vimeo,” as in, “Did you come to my art exhibition?” And that’s the thing, really. Fun is at the heart of all these songs. Because we were really just having a great time.
LUNA: Immy, did you take the lead on lyrics for this project?
Photo by Miyuki Wang
WILLIAMS: Yeah, most of the tracks were me, lyrically. “Something For My Head” was a Max tune that we worked on together. But that’s what I brought mainly. Lyrics, melody, and a sort of structure in terms of songwriting. It was really cool for me to have a new kind of song to write with, because a lot of the time when I write my own material, I’m sitting at the piano working it out. This time, I got a little notebook from Notting Hill Bookshop, which was right next to us [at Laylow]. It’s quite an iconic bookshop, obviously. And I’d go away and write all the lyrics down, responding in real time to the music we were making. It was a really cool new way of writing. And I didn’t edit that much. Sometimes I do edit myself quite a bit, but this was like, whatever fell out, I kind of kept. Which is why some of the lyrics are completely nonsensical.
LISTER: Well, you say that, but with “It’s Lovely Come On In,” you wrote it, then we had this really weird realization, it was about Laylow.
WILLIAMS: That is my favorite thing about songwriting, I think. It’s why I'll never, ever stop. It’s the magic of it. Like, it really makes me believe in magic, because I’ll write something, and it'll be kind of subconscious, and the words will fall out onto the page, and then it's not until a few months later that I’m like, wait. I was almost prophesying something that was about to happen.
LUNA: I’ve never heard songwriting spoken about that way. That kinda gave me goosebumps. What are your favorite lyrics that came out of this writing process?
WILLIAMS: Hm. I really like the lyrics for “It’s Lovely Come On In.” It really captures the whole architecture of Laylow. I'm talking about the whole building. It puts me back in that mind, in that place. And “Party” is really fun to do.
LISTER: “Party” is fun.
WILLIAMS: Oh, wait, no. I’ve got it.
LISTER: Go on.
WILLIAMS: “Funny Girl.” For me, it’s actually one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. It came from a really sad entry into my notes app, but I hadn't yet found the right, like sonic space for it yet. When that sample was played, I was like, “Oh, right. This is where it needs to be.” It’s a desperately sad song, but it’s got a kind of tongue-in-cheek edge to it.
LUNA: Yeah. When I was listening to the record for the first time, that one hit me. I wrote down on the top of my page of notes, “talk about ‘Funny Girl.’” It worked, to go from that song, that is so vulnerable and kind of gutting, into a dance-y track like “Vimeo,” straight away. It worked without feeling jarring. You’re answering another question I have, which is, while writing, did you feel like you were trying to find a thematic throughline? Or did it just show itself to you?
WILLIAMS: It definitely showed itself. Doing the live shows helped us come to terms with what the arc needed to be and what songs could fit where. But when we were writing, we spoke about the constraints of the live show and the timing, but we were really operating under no other creative constraints. “Funny Girl” was one of the first ones we did.
WINTER: Yeah, jamming in our studio. Will, you put the piano recording on the 404, and that’s where it came from. There’s a half-hour recording of us just going and jamming on that. What’s mad is, if you listen to that, you can hear Immy start to work out the song, and the melody starts.
WILLIAMS: I think it might be why it is the most vulnerable moment on the record. That’s my go-to as a writer, moments like that. That’s kind of my bread and butter–sad, mournful melodies. And it makes sense that would be one of the first ones we write because it is like my solo stuff.
WINTER: But with hard-knocking drums. We played it recently at a gig at Bermondsey Social Club. Their sound system is definitely more club-leaning. And the reaction we got after “Funny Girl” was like, a guttural roar. Because obviously it is a desperately sad song, but when it’s on that kind of sound system, it knocks really hard. And if you have that alongside the emotional quality of it, I think it must really hit the audience hard. And we all looked at each other on stage like, “wow.”
WILLIAMS: Also, when we do it live, we have an extended outro where I play the flute, and it’s a whole thing. So I think that guttural roar was also an appreciation for like-
WINTER: The flute!
Photo courtesy of Night Swim
LUNA: You brought the flute out in the club. That’s f*cking sick.
WILLIAMS: Flutin’ in the club.
WINTER: Record two is just gonna be flute. And trap drums.
LUNA: I’d be into it. I wanted to ask all three of you: what’s your favorite track on the record? One, two, three, go.
WINTER: “It’s Lovely Come On In.”
LISTER: Personally, I think I’d say “Horseshow.” That’s probably a bit more self-interested in that, I think there’s a cool amalgamation of my production stuff on it. I feel really proud of that one, because it’s weird as f*ck, but it works.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, I think I’m really partial to “Horsehow.” I love that we open with that.
WINTER: Is that your favorite?
WILLIAMS: Hm, I don’t know. I think maybe, “Funny Girl.”
LISTER: I also really like “We Don’t Speak Anymore.”
WILLIAMS: It’s lovely to like all our songs.
WINTER: I love all of them.
LISTER: I was gonna ask you guys. What happens when we write more tunes and we have to take songs out of the set? Which ones are we gonna take out? I actually don't know.
WILLIAMS: We’ll have to play longer sets.
LISTER: At first, I thought “Something For My Head,” would go, because it’s the slow one. But, that’s actually a really nice moment that kind of makes me want to cry every time we play it. So why would we take that out? It’s the darkest, but I love that song. Laylow was really small, but quite plush, with red velvet-
WILLIAMS: Very Twin Peaks.
LISTER: Very Twin Peaks. And that song reminds me of spending late nights there.
WILLIAMS: That tune sounds like the basement. It’s so grungy, and entrenched in noise, and dark, and that’s exactly what the basement felt like.
LUNA: Y’all make me really wish I could see this place.
THREDD: It’s gone now. / It’s shut. / Done.
WILLIAMS: It added to how weird it all was. They were selling it while we were there.
LUNA: So you knew it was closing?
WINTER: Not at first. We didn’t know what was going on, but there’d be people coming down [into the venue] and doing inventory lists. Then you’d go up into the studio, and they’d be getting ready to sell all the equipment. We started to be like, something is going on here.
WILLIAMS: And there were crazy leaks.
LISTER: Yeah, we turned up for one of the shows and there was just the sound of running water. The AC unit was leaking behind the wall, so they couldn’t get to it. They were letting it pool up. We did a show, and we had people be like, “What was that weird sound effect you were using?” Just the wall.
WINTER: Not to say we need a residency to write, but it definitely made me want the next batch of tunes to come from another situation in which it's just different from how we usually work. It was a weird time, where all we had to do was make music. There was a projector downstairs, so we'd watch the football in the evening. There's a video of us at halftime, just jamming and playing music over the football. And I think having complete access to [making music] at all times and working in that very intense moment means you don't actually need that long. I've taken so long to write my own music and it's because I let myself just do it for ages. Yeah, we need another residency.
LUNA: I hope you guys get one. I have to ask, any U.S. tour plans? Because now I’m a big fan.
WILLIAMS: Put the word out, please.
WINTER: There’s a nice tie with Scenic Route [being half based] in New York as well. I think it’s a possibility.
LISTER: We’re really keen to build connections outside of London. With all of us not being from London, and then being involved in the music scene here, we see how London-focused it can all be. And we know that the people who connect with (our music) outside of London will probably appreciate it more. They kind of put up more of a fight. I don’t know, they're just like, more committed. Maybe because London people just have access to everything that they want all the time. And it's nice to build connections with people outside the scene.
WILLIAMS: We’re gonna bill ourselves as an Anti-London.
WINTER: Headline: “London People Get Everything We Want.”
thredd will go on tour with Slow Cooked in the U.K. Sept. 2025.
