Music / Get To Know
Get to Know: Grandmas House
They define their sound as ‘sweaty, frantic, raw,’ and one listen tells you it’s heavy, brooding and unapologetic.
The raucous trio recently became a four-piece, and they’re ready to take on the world. They’ve been through a lot together, and that’s helped shape their finest work to date.
Grandmas House tell Bristol24/7 why we should be as excited as they are.
is needed now More than ever
We decided to start a band, then learned our instruments from scratch…
“It began with Poppy (drummer) and Yas (vocals/guitar) wanting to start a band at uni. We all like writing, even poetry, but writing loads of stuff down in a journal…you just don’t know what you’re going to do with it.
“We were listening to a lot of music – things like Shame, Goat Girl, and Soft Play – and just thought, why can’t we do it? So we pumped each other up to take that step. We thought, ‘we’ll just have a little go and do it in our spare time.’ To begin with, it was very much just learning how to play and write songs.”
We were playing gigs every week and suddenly all our friends were musicians…
“When we moved to Bristol we really got into the swing of it. It was so inspiring. IDLES had just released Joy and the whole city was buzzing. Our first gig was at the Thunderbolt. We didn’t even have a name! Our (then) bassist had a tattoo of her grandma’s house. We thought we’ll take it – put it on a poster, quick!
“As soon as we started gigging, we really felt like we were in a scene. It was amazing, such a community who all supported each other. A lot of friends we met then are still in bands and doing well – like Katy J Pearson, who had just released her first single.
“When our bassist left, Zoe learned bass from scratch in two months in time for our (then) biggest gig, at Dot to Dot. We played Mothers’ Ruin, a real hub for everyone at that time. We even met Lewis Capaldi there once – he’d popped in after his gig at the O2! Mad.
“Then Covid happened. Mothers’ Ruin is shut now. A lot of bands didn’t make it through. But the scene is definitely picking up again. My First Time, The Family Battenberg in Cardiff, Heavy Lungs are all amazing.”
Our sound has changed from classic punk to more rock, grunge, post punk, indie…
“It’s hard to put a label on it. Someone told us recently, ‘it sounds like everything I love but nothing I’ve ever heard before’.
“Hopefully our new sound will shake the Riot Grrrl tag off. We get that label a lot and it’s just lazy. All-female bands are sick, but we’re automatically pushed into that genre because that’s what we are.
“The describing words of our music are so often our gender, our sexuality. Queer, female, punk, riot girl – yes, we’re queer, but that’s just one small part of us. We align with the mindset and DIY aspect of Riot Grrrl, but when it’s applied to our music we think: we can be women and empower other women and be feminists, whatever, but our music has got other layers to it.
“Being women in a band is us already changing things. We’ll always shout about that and help other women be inspired. But male bands actually get to talk about their music! It’s frustrating. We don’t want to be pigeonholed.”
We’ve learned so much over the last few years…
“We’ve had a difficult time personally so themes of grief and loss, death, breakups and illness have driven the new music. Poppy had a chronic skin condition for two years. She was bedbound for eight months, so we had to calm down a bit. But through all that she still played a lot of gigs! We went off on tour with Pops wrapped in bandages.
“That experience showed us how much we love the band and love making music. It brought us closer together. We were with Poppy through it all and determined to keep the band going.
“Going through that together, we wrote some of our best music. And we’re so happy now to be able to do exactly what we want: to play live without all that stress and pain. It’s just amazing. We’re back!”
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We’ve never been so excited to release music…
“We’ve been so lucky with our tour support. We played Athens with IDLES, which was just incredible, a huge stage on the side of a cliff. The recent ARXX tour was our first in Europe. It gave us a chance to gel as the new four piece, after Polly joined on guitar last summer. And we supported Big Special last year, who were the nicest people.
“But we’re very excited for 2025! We’re getting ready to release our best music so far. We’ve honed our skills and our hearts are in the EP. It’s a sneak peek into how much we’ve grown and our new sound.
“We’re very appreciative of life and playing and music and everything now. We’ve got the fire in our bellies. And we’ve got a very good EP ready to release.
Slaughterhouse, the next single from Grandmas House, is out on January 30.
All images: Marie Dutton
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