TRAAMS has premiered the video for “Flowers” from their debut album, Grin, out September 24 on FatCat. The grungy “Flowers” video was directed by James Burgess this summer, featuring TRAAMS being drenched in psychedelic goo. TRAAMS’ Stu Hopkins said, “We did the video on a sunny afternoon in my garden. We’d met James Burgess before when we played a show with his band, Boneyards, and really liked the videos he’d done for them and Flamingods. He pitched this idea of pouring gunge all over us and green screening stuff onto it. Which we thought sounded cool. The closer we got to the shoot we realised that we couldn’t find any gunge so we ended up dying custard green and using that. We sat in a paddling pool with the custard being poured over us while singing. It was a good day.”

Grin is the follow-up the recently released  Ladders EP and was recorded throughout 2012 and 2013 with producers Rory Atwell and MJ from Hookworms. The band has supported Parquet Courts, Fildar, Hooded Fang, Dope Body and many others in the past year.

TRAAMS formed in summer 2011 in Chichester, West Sussex after meeting at a club night that vocalist and guitarist Stu Hopkins started as a reaction to the city’s limited nightlife. The only options previously available to him and his friends were “boring clubs and bars which only played boring club music.” At his club night Hopkins would mainly play records by Wire, New Order and Le Tigre, supplemented with mainstream pop and hip-hop. Similarly, there is a pop immediacy coexisting with an expansive, experimental element inside the music they make themselves. Incorporating the two sides are vital when writing a TRAAMS song, as Hopkins elaborates; “we really want to push both those areas as far as we can. We like seeing people dance and having fun but we also want to be noisy and aggressive. It’s fun trying to strike a balance and seeing how far we can push it.” The band claim Mclusky, Abe Vigoda, Pavement, Television, and Women as influences. Hopkins specifically cites Stephen Malkmus, Iggy Pop, and Tom Verlaine as songwriters he admires because they all make what he calls “skewed pop”, a term that fits TRAAMS’ sound snuggly.

The band’s debut full-length, Grin, is the sound of a band finding true solace in music as a driving force. Bassist Leigh Padley has noted that the three members of the band felt compelled towards music as the only means to escape the mundanity of their hometown; “We had to start a band.”he says, “It was all we had.” As such, the album is bristling and vital – a sonic escape. The band has both a both a pop immediacy and a more expansive, experimental element and incorporating the two sides is essential when writing a TRAAMS song. Hopkins elaborates, “We really want to push both those areas as far as we can. We like seeing people dance and having fun but we also want to be noisy and aggressive.”

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