Last summer we featured enigmatic Brighton act The New Eves, writing on how double single Mother / Original Sin introduced their “idiosyncratic blend of punk and pagan sensibilities, owing as much to Picnic at Hanging Rock as The Velvet Underground.” Now the quartet of Kate Mager (bass), Ella Russell (Drums, flute, vocals), Nina Winder-Lind (cello, guitar, vocals) and Violet Farrer (violin, guitar, vocals) are back with a brand new single, ‘Astrolabe’, a song which again combines the weird fervour of ritual folk music with an energy usually found in punk rock and garage.
The band say the song is inspired by “lovers across the centuries; from the love letters between Heloise and Abelard in medieval France to Bonnie and Clyde’s romantic partnership in crime in 1930s America,” blurring the distinction between time periods to evoke the fundamental forces present in perpetuity across such relationships. So for all of the anachronistic strangeness of adding cello, violin and flute to a retro punk sound, the lasting impression of the track is instead that of familiarity. As though in reaching across history The New Eves have identified a common thread running through human experience. An emotional state capture in the refrain, which is taken from a seventeenth century posy ring held in the British Museum:
Many are the stars I see
but in my eyes no star like thee