South London’s Moreish Idols today announce their much-anticipated second EP, Lock Eyes & Collide, will be out April 28 on limited 12″ vinyl and digital release from Speedy Wunderground. The South London band released their debut EP, Float in 2022. They also share a final single from the Dan Carey produced upcoming EP, “Chum.”

Moreish Idols had the following to say regarding the themes to both their new single and the latest EP:

Our new EP ‘Lock Eyes and Collide’ is born out of a shift in artistic approach. Focusing more on personal experiences and how people can change when they collide with life’s challenges.

We’ve tried to shed light on the strengths of each of our roles within the band with care and vulnerability, giving each of us a place to be heard.”

Especially if keeping things hazy, and not smoothing away all the rough edges, and allowing all the seeming contradictions to find their own unique harmony with each other in their own time can result in the heady magic of Lock Eyes & Collide, the second EP from South London-based quintet Moreish Idols. Across these four tracks, Moreish Idols deal in tangles of hyper-melodic guitar, sleepy-eyed murmurs glowing with unassuming poetry, blossoms of wise saxophone, rhythms that pulse and purr to their own inarguable logic. You could spend days trying to define what exactly it is they are doing over these fifteen or so minutes, but you’d be wiser to just lose yourself within Lock Eyes & Collide’s laser-guided twists and turns.

Chemistry is key.

Old souls in young bodies with faith in the possibilities of music, the five members of Moreish Idols – singer/guitarists Tom and Jude, bassist Caspar, saxophonist Dylan and drummer Sol – first crossed paths while they were studying at Falmouth University. Jude had been playing in a shoegaze band in Brighton before relocating to the Cornish coast, and was looking for a new project. In the basement of a house party at Sol’s, he found Tom on drums, jamming with friends. “It was exactly what I was looking for,” he remembers. “It was like something out of [Richard Linklater movie] Dazed And Confused. Everyone’s stoned, listening to psychedelic rock.” They didn’t speak that night, but met some weeks later, at another party. Soon, they were jamming together, playing 20 minute sets of fragmentary songs at any venue that would let them. Tom had other projects on the go, including The Moth Club, an extended collective of musicians and non-musicians which obeyed a single rule: anybody could join, as long as they asked. “It was one of the worst ideas I’d ever had, and also one of the best,” Tom laughs. Moreish Idols was in its most protean state, but the members were coalescing, the connections were being made, the chemistry was gelling.

Break for the big smoke.

Tom graduated a year before the rest of the group, and relocated to London. Back in Falmouth, Caspar and Dylan were drawn into the fold, the group continued to evolve. Falmouth had no “proper” venue culture like other big university cities. “Amazing music was happening in Falmouth, but it was rough and ready,” says Jude. It was a vibe that suited Moreish Idols, who sought out “the weird shit, happening in cool, weird places.” But at some point you have to leave home, and a year later they followed Tom to the capital, to shit jobs and sweet dreams and making Moreish Idols something. In Falmouth, their music had remained a jammy, half-formed thing, but once they reached South London, they sensed their vague sketches had to take firmer shape. “It felt a little self-indulgent, playing all this singer-songwriter-y stuff at gigs – too easy, too formulaic,” says Jude (“easy” and “formulaic” remain alien concepts to Moreish Idols). Post-punk was the dominant mode on this new scene they’d found, and they dug that energy, that desire to entertain audiences. They worked in a new, dance-y vibe to their music, toyed with an idea of replicating a club-like vibe at their shows. Still, it wasn’t quite clicking. Then COVID happened.

The great reset.

When lockdown initially lifted, the group reconvened and attacked rehearsals with renewed vigor, and a new focus. Where before members had written songs alone on laptops for their bandmates to perform, they now committed to a more organic song-writing process, with tunes evolving in rehearsals and becoming group-compositions. “We all had this weird tension to release, post-lockdown,” remembers Sol. “It was one of the only times I’d leave the house, to play with the guys in this studio under a railway arch in Peckham.” This time was precious, and the ideas they yielded fresh and exciting. “We were creating this beautiful mess,” adds Jude, a phrase that encapsulates the Moreish Idols mission better than most, “and getting really comfortable with each other.” “Now, songs can come from anywhere,” says Tom. “There are no rules now. We’re still learning – it’s five times harder, basically. But it’s infinitely more rewarding. This is our unique thing, that only the five of us can do.”

Pulling into focus.

They passed tracks from these initial collaborative song-writing sessions along to Dan Carey, who signed Moreish Idols to his Speedy Wunderground label and produced their first release on the label, the Float EP, in the summer of 2022 (they’d released a pair of self-released 7”s before lockdown). Restless, jerky, jagged and rhythmically centered, many of Float’s energetic pleasures bore the influence of their earlier flirtation of post-punk, but the ruminative When The River Runs Dry spelled deeper treasures lay within, while the erratic, wonderful Speedboat spoke to Moreish Idols’ essential gift for mystery. Lock Eyes & Collide is something else altogether, though – a looser constellation of ideas, a clearer hint of the group’s future. The elements that compose the EP – swooning tremolo guitars, prickly melodic riddles, erudite saxophone improvs, loose and flexible rhythms – make perfect sense together, on vinyl if not on paper, sounding like Watery, Domestic-era Pavement one second and some bucolic Canterbury Scene prog the next, but always, always like Moreish Idols most of all. It’s their proprietary blend of these sounds, their openness to where their creative whims will take them, that define them, and the poetry they make of all their contrasts. “There’s no formula we’re following,” nods Tom, though he knows that it’s the combination of unique elements that makes Moreish Idols, even down to the way his and Jude’s vocals coalesce. “I’m from Brighton, Tom’s from Bakewell,” adds Jude, “and on the songs where we sing together, that contrast gives it a light and shade. It’s almost like we use our voices as instruments.” As for their lyrics, which are memorable and enigmatic and contain lines as effortlessly poetic as “A warm summer’s night, a cold heart beating”, Jude says “we’re entertaining ourselves, but also wearing our hearts on our sleeves. We want to create a personal conversation.”

The future that is undefined is limitless.

If Lock Eyes & Collide captures Moreish Idols’ present, what do they see in their future? “If we’d just made Float II for our second EP, people would be, ‘Oh, they’re the band that does that,” says Tom. “I’m so glad we’ve made this weird alter-ego of our first EP; now we feel we can do whatever we want.” “And that’s been consistent since the very beginning,” adds Jude. “We can try all these ideas and inspirations and play in all these genres, and it works somehow, and ends up sounding like nothing except for us.” “What matters is that we love what we make, and that it begins with enjoyment,” says Sol. “It’s like being in our own little club.”

Pre-order by Lock Eyes & Collide Moreish Idols HERE