Not your average Gay Old Funk band.
Alex Hill talks to Congratulations
How would you describe yourselves?
“I was asked that in another interview” said Leah, “and I said “Gay alt funk” and they wrote it as ‘gay old funk’. So that's how we'll describe it. Gay old funk.” I don’t know about you, but if I was hearing about them from a friend and they said that, I’d be sold.
We’re in the Pink Moon cafe talking to Jamie and Leah from Congratulations, probably the hottest new band in Brighton. Actually… lose that ‘probably’. They’re the hottest new band in Brighton. And things are just about to get hotter.
“We’re right in the middle of it all and it is exciting, but right now we've just got things to do”. Those things include their debut album, Join Hands, which has just been released, they’re just about to start on their biggest UK tour to date and round the corner is America and South By Southwest Festival. That’s kinda crazy.
Congratulations - Jamie Chellar guitar, Greg Burns bass, James Gillingham drums and Leah Stanhope vocals - are bright, colourful, loud, poppy… Congratulations are exuberant. Listen to “Join Hands” and there are more ideas than most bands manage in a lifetime. There are times when you think “One more twist, one more idea and this could be a cacophonous mess”. And then there’s one more twist, one more idea and you just smile. Somehow it works. There’s no handbrake. There’s no “Maybe that’s too much”. It’s a melange of styles and sounds, all grounded in 80s pop soul funk. Think primetime Prince, throw in some Madonna and Devo and you won’t be far off. It’s music to make you smile. And dance. And smile again.
“What if aliens made music?” said Jamie, who along with Greg is the main writer. Then a laugh. “It’s like we’d eaten too many sweets”. The high energy, distorted guitar riff, heavy basslines and and pop beats combined with beautiful, high-range singing over top of the catchy melody of each song demonstrates the bands unique formula.
“I think we're just gearing up to it, just getting to feel ourselves a little bit, yeah, having the confidence to do that. I think we can be a little bit reserved for how we'd like to be. You know, the way we dress, the way you present ourselves…”
A bit reserved? I think not. Congratulations look as bright and bold as they sound. Big primary colours, each member of Congratulations has their colour - Jamie’s blue, Leah’s green, Greg’s red, James yellow. The combination of sound and vision, it’s a fabulous creation.
Where did the clothes thing come from? “Jack White and The White Stripes were a big thing for us, they way they always wore red and white, it was so bold, we always so influenced by that. The front cover of “Elephant" is just so iconic, and especially, like me and Greg talk about all the time, and he had the tassels on his jacket. So that was an influence. We could never understand how you could turn to a gig and then just play what you turned up in”.
And the primary colours thing? “There's no point in us trying to all wear the same thing because all of us are so different,” says Jamie. “It's exactly the same in songwriting, isn't it?” said Leah. “We're never going to agree, are we? Jamie's definitely a soul-funk kind of thing, whereas I used to be in metal bands so I'm trying to make it as heavy and gritty as possible. James is really into contemporary pop, so he's trying to make everything musically intense and challenging. And then Greg's like a classic Beach Boys surfer dude.” Mix that lot together and let it stew.
The Prince thing. You get that a lot? And yes, there are many worse things than that. “Without a doubt. I mean, even though everyone knows amazing he is, he's somehow underrated as an actual guitarist. When you listen to the beginning of When Doves Cry. I don't even think he could play that again. I really like Talking Heads and Adrian Belew, people like that, but Prince’s funk sound he gets on Parade, it’s so compressed and spanky. I remember when we recorded ‘This Life’, and… “
This Life is a great song, but - and we say this with love, that guitar part, that could be a Prince sample. “Absolutely, I was so into Parade and Around The World Today. That’s exactly where I was living when we came up with that. We wrote that all together, literally like, you know, how you imagine a band when you're a kid, we wrote that song like we actually did that”.
That 80s pop thing. there's something about those bands that seem a lot more fun than what followed. “Yes, yeah, I definitely agree” said Jamie. “I mean, we saw Nile Rogers and it was the most fun experience of my life. When you go and see a band, it's nice to go and have fun. We're all in quite depressing bands before Congratulations”.
Talking of which, Leah, were you really into metal? “Yeah, a massive metal fan. I like Meshuggah and stuff like that, going into goth rock. That’s definitely my area. I love Type O Negative. I run to Type O Negative. I couldn't run 5k before I started to listen to Type O Negative on a run. They’re one of my favourite bands of all time. So, yeah, horny gothy music. Metal’s a thing here. Jame’s dad is a guitarist in a metal band called, with a Spinal Tap nod and wink, Spit Roast.
Do you look ahead, are you already thinking “What’s next?’”
“We want to go a bit harder, don't we?” said Leah. “I'm a bit of an exhibitionist and I want to do it because it's funny and I like it and it makes me feel like sexy and brilliant. But then I'm like, does it get in the way? Is it like and all these things, but we want to incorporate all these things”.
Standing out though makes you stand out. “Some of the shows we play, you know, because we're still finding our audience who are supporting a lot of different bands, their audiences either don't appreciate it or understand it, or, you know, you know, or abuse us for it.
What's the “it” in that sentence?
“Just how we are, even just the way we dress. A lot of audiences, male audiences, have a problem me coming out in makeup and things like that. We’ve had some really tough gigs this year. We won't say who, but we supported a band in Wolverhampton, and the crowd didn't like what I was throwing out, giving it whatever. And then they started doing Tommy Robinson chants.
What did you do?
“I think I just said “Oh, I don’t know that one” and just went into the next song. But it was the first time that I actually felt unsafe and thought ‘This isn’t fun’.”
You’re not in Brighton now, Dorothy.
“By the end of that gig, we were ready to go again because I think ultimately all art is to provoke a reaction, and I think to split people down the middle is a really great thing, because it shows that you're not making something for everybody. I think that's kind of cool.
Maybe we need to have those experiences. I think it made us want to double down, didn't it? And I think that's our next step, is figuring out how to do that in a way that we feel like we're expressing ourselves, but also making other people feel seen as well”.
They did their first show together in 2021 - “It was a Halloween show at The Green Door Store. I dressed like Freddie Mercury in “I Wanna Break Free”, but my moustache kept falling off, so.. I just looked like a woman” - but really took off in 2023. Like a lot of bands, the pandemic gave them a chance to write and hone their style and sound.
Was there a point when you looked air each other and thought, blimey this is real?
“A few years ago, we all had matching jumpsuits made, bespoke jumpsuits with tassels” said Jamie. “Coolest thing I've ever worn in my life. That was the moment, yeah, when we walked on stage with them for the first time.”
“That, and when we got our first tour. That was just after The Great Escape with a band called Thumpasaurus”.
Thumpasaurus. Let’s take a minute. That’s a great name.
“Yeah, I really liked it. I'm not cool enough to know how to describe them. They’re from America. They're all very fiercely trained musicians, like, jazz people”
"It's like cowboy funk rock” says Jamie. “I'd really recommend them”
Were you with Bella Union at this point?
“No, Simon (Raymonde, head of Bella Union) came to the Halloween show the year after our initial one. So our anniversary show. He came to that and saw us there, and we were talking and we started going for breakfasts with him”.
You’d go for breakfast with him?
“We’d just go to the Marina and have breakfast with him. We were skint and I was like I want to know where we are as a band, but I also want some breakfast”.
“You did the eating, I did the talking”.
Everything you hear about him tells says that they're a nice bunch to work with which, of course, you're going to agree with.
“Yeah” says Leah “but I can't really tell my face not to lie. To be honest, he's never got in the way of us. I think he's never, ever.
“No, that's the really amazing thing. We could have turned this album in and most places would be like ‘What is that?’ - you’ve heard the album, you know what I’m talking about - but he said, ‘No it’s brilliant. I see what you're doing”. So yeah It’s great. It's amazing to never be limited.”
Join Hands by Congratulations is out now on Bella Union
