Chemtrails

The post-garage-punk and psychedelic power pop anomaly that is Chemtrails started out as the DIY bedroom recording project of romantic partners Mia Lust and Laura Orlova, evolving into a full band in 2016. Their uncanny talent for blasting out weird but irresistibly catchy pop songs was quickly noticed by Swedish label PNKSLM Recordings, who signed them just after their first gig — at Trans Pride Brighton. After relocating from London to Manchester in 2019, Lust and Orlova joined forces with a ferocious new rhythm section, putting the final piece of the puzzle into place. With Ian Kane on bass and Liam Steers on drums, the Chemtrails machine is now souped up with a turbocharged rhythmic engine, propelling the hook-filled songs to new levels of raw power, as the band sashays between sleazy punk, frantic krautrock and sardonically sassy grooves.

Served on a bed of twangy and fuzzy guitars, primitive synths and polychromatic pop, Mia Lust’s tongue-in-cheek lyrics tackle alienation, the absurd, the human condition, the impending apocalypse and, occasionally, her place in the world as a transgender woman. The band cites their biggest influences as Pixies, Blondie, Oh Sees, Fat White Family and sixties psych and garage punk, but what has always held the whole project together is the endless supply of catchy melodies, delivered with the band’s relentless excitement and energy.