Guest Blog: FES Break Down Their Top 5 Essential Pieces of Guitar Gear

Having just released their debut album, With Regards From Home, Leeds-Peterborough band FES have previously received acclaim from the likes of Guitar World, BBC 6 Music and Noizze, and have also wowed crowds at festivals such as Portals Festival and Bad Pond, and supporting LA duo Standards on tour.

Reflecting on themes of grief, loneliness and front-person Pollyanna Holland-Wing’s identity as a young queer woman, with the new album FES showcase their knack for delivering fuzzy, swirling riffs, creating quirky math-pop melodies with a catchy punk-pop energy. With its slick, scuzzy, emotion-rich anthems, With Regards From Home is sure to propel FES further into the stratosphere of music fans’ hearts.

To celebrate the release of the album, we spoke to Pollyanna about her love of her guitar equipment and the five favourite pieces she used on their 2017 single ‘Inside Out’. Read more below and watch a new, awesome ‘play along’ video of Pollyanna playing guitar to the track at the bottom of the feature…

For so many years I’ve always had to borrow equipment. It wasn’t until we started on ‘Inside Out’ that I started my own collection of equipment. It’s been a long journey getting our sound right and finding budget friendly equipment that still has a lot of oomph behind it, but I think I’ve nailed it now!

Marshall DLS 20
I really believe the amp is the most important part of my core guitar setup. I think you can plug a rubbish guitar into a great amp and you’ll be alright. But a great guitar into a crap amp will do you no favours. As well as sounding great, I needed an amp that was going to be slim and light to carry- my Marshall is just that! To help get my sound for ‘Inside Out’, on my amp I have the bass turned to 10 o clock, the mid at 12 and treble at about 1. I love a crisp clean sound from my amp that’ll rock a punch, but I believe it’s important to let the actual bass take charge of that low end. There’s no need to let our sound get muddy.

Stratocaster Guitar
I’ve always been a Tele girl for the most part and I think I even use one for the studio version of ‘Inside Out’. That middle pick-up sounds great on record, and I have no regrets! However, since then I’ve come to love the classic Strat. I can’t go back now! I love the total uniqueness and variety in tone. ‘Inside Out’ uses the middle pick-up which I find has the perfect balance in bass and treble alongside my amp. I think they’re quite complementary of each other. However, being in a three piece it’s imperative to still achieve those big sounds. The Strat definitely takes the cake over the Tele in this regard!

5 Ages Walrus Overdrive Pedal
Okay, so I believe I used the Fulltone OCD in the studio, but damn do I wish I used the ‘5 Ages’. This pedal just can’t be beaten in my eyes. I just love the versatility of it! It has five different types of overdrive which has been so handy when double tracking guitars in the studio. I used to swear by the Fulltone OCD but like many others, I fell out of love with the company and frankly the Ages does everything the OCD did but with so much more flavour. My personal favourite mode to use is the 3rd mode with the gain turned up to 12 o clock. I find that although I pretty much always have the overdrive switched on, I don’t like the sound to get too muddy. In ‘Inside Out’ there’s a lot of chord progressions and chord voicings that are important to not get drowned in overdrive. The major seven chords hold so much emotion in them, I can’t let them get lost.

MXR Micro Amp Pedal
This pedal is great! I don’t use it often but that doesn’t mean it isn’t as important as all my other equipment. I use it for the breakdown at 2:16 in ‘Inside Out’ to thicken out the sound. Like I mentioned earlier, being a three piece it’s important we sound as big as possible with the limited musicians in the band. Utilising pedals is our best bet at doing so. The MXR is straight to the point with one stomper and 1 big dial to control the gain. Bish bash bosh!

Walrus SLO
Gosh, this pedal is so dreamy! The thing I love about the Slo is the added low octave that it adds to reverb tails. This again comes in handy when wanting to create bigger sounds, but I find that it’s not too overbearing. Whilst some reverbs can sound like a huge cathedral, the Slo adds colour without losing itself in massive swirling worlds of reverb. I use this setting live just after the breakdown at 2:42 in ‘Inside Out’.

FES’ new album, With Regards From Home, is out now via Small Pond Records.

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Five Favourites: Erasers

Perth-based ‘dungeon synth’ duo Rebecca Orchard and Rupert Thomas – aka Erasers – have recently released their hypnotic new album, Constant Connection. Flowing with hauntingly captivating soundscapes evoking the raw beauty of their native landscape of Western Australia, the collection offers a truly unique and utterly immersive aural treat for the senses. Showcasing the ethereal splendour of Orchard’s vocals with a poignant, layered musicality, Erasers have created a truly stirring release.

We think one of the best ways to get to know an artist is by asking what music inspires them. So, to celebrate the release of their new album, we caught up with Rebecca from Erasers to ask about their “Five Favourites” – five albums that have inspired them the most. Read about their choices and watch their beautiful new video for ‘A Breeze’ at the end of this article!

Pikelet – Self-Titled
I first heard Pikelet when I was around seventeen. Rupert and I spent a lot of our late teens making mixed tapes for each other, sharing favourite songs and curating playlists on cassette for drives in my first car – a 1970s Beetle. Pikelet definitely featured on one of these, because I’m sure Rupert introduced me to their music, always being ahead of the curve with artists coming out of Naarm/Melbourne. Rupert and I started playing music together in 2009 after Rupert recorded some demos in his bedroom and spent weeks convincing me to do vocals for it. As someone not trained in music-making, I took inspiration and courage from seeing Evelyn aka Pikelet perform as a solo artist – recording and releasing music. It was the first time I’d ever seen someone using a loop pedal and it blew my mind to see what they created with their voice, looper and a few instruments. All of Pikelet’s albums are iconic, releasing a steady stream over a decade or so, eventually parting ways with the persona Pikelet and releasing under their own name Evelyn Ida Morris. Sonically, their albums have been diverse, shapeshifting over the years, but always resonating with something deep in my being. Evelyn is not only a talented artist – their work in advocating for others and themself in the community is inspirational. We’ve been lucky enough to play some of our first ever shows with Pikelet when they toured Perth, as well as bringing them back over to Perth years later to play a show. I feel incredibly grateful and lucky to know, learn from and listen to Evelyn in whatever form their voice takes.


Love Of Diagrams – Mosaic
Name a more iconic trio! Post-punk from Naarm/Melbourne released in 2007. I can’t remember when I first heard this album but it was around the time I turned eighteen and could legally go and see live music. There’s so much I love about Love Of Diagrams – the interplay between vocalists, Monica’s captivating drumming, catchy melodies, juicy bass-lines and winding grooves. The lyrics in their songs remind me of art school. I remember being inspired by Antonia’s powerful vocal delivery – almost yelling or chanting, with that amazing reverby tone. I’m sure I took inspiration from this in how I use my voice and the repetition of words and phrases. This was from an era where anyone creative from Perth moved to Melbourne, which was seen as the ‘arts capital’ of Australia. I have strong memories of going to Amplifier Bar with Rupert and friends, the only place in Perth at the time that played more alternative music. The DJ played from upstairs on this platform, which you could access via a dodgy ladder that we would drunkenly climb to request ‘Pace Or The Patience’ by Love Of Diagrams so we could sing and dance to it obnoxiously on the dance-floor with our friends. We were so lucky to have formed Erasers around a time that Love Of Diagrams were touring, and got to play one of our first ever live gigs supporting them in Boorloo/Perth. Seeing them live, playing together in both cities and later inviting them back to Perth for a show was a musical highlight. Once again, all their albums are too good to miss and they are each amazing artists in their own right, whether playing in other music projects, being visual artists or writers.


Mei Saraswati – Hypermeditations
It’s so tough to pick one Mei Saraswati album to talk about, because they’re all so damn good in different ways! I’ve chosen this one because it was released in 2013, probably around the time I first saw Mei perform live. Mei is one of my favourite artists from Boorloo/Perth and, although she hasn’t released new music for a little while, hearing her bedroom recordings still gives me the shivers. Mei Saraswati effortlessly fuses soulful vocals, sounds and themes of the northern suburbs, sampling, field recordings, electronics, Eastern instrumentation and influences, spirituality, RnB, drifting somewhere between meditation and music to groove to. Mei produces everything herself and is not only an incredible musician, also a visual artist, exploring weaving and printmaking, while also being a mother. I always admired Mei’s humble nature, she is effortlessly herself – often hilarious in her down-to-earth stage banter and in the way she would casually release whole albums for free download. On Bandcamp she describes Hypermeditations as “many different windows of philosophies open all at once – like when you have a hundred tabs open and you keep opening more”. Each of her albums is like opening little windows into her world and discovering fascinating ponderings, thoughts and feelings. Her anti-capitalist attitude to creating and producing art is something I truly admire. We’ve been lucky to play many gigs together over the years, as well as an exhibition a few years back called Deep Heritage. It always blew my mind that more people hadn’t heard Mei’s music because it’s too good to have not reached the furthest corners of the globe. Highly recommend the deep dive into Mei’s back catalogue on Bandcamp, it will not disappoint!


Enya – Oceans
Rupert and I both had very different musical upbringings. Rupert was brought up listening to music like Joy Division, Brian Eno and recalls long road trips around Australia listening to Ministry of Sound annuals on CD – his dad in particular was an avid music-lover and listener. I have distinct memories of my parents having Enya and Sade on CD and the rest of my musical upbringing was mostly listening to commercial radio, until I reached my angsty – but formative – teen years. I can’t remember exactly which Enya CDs my parents had, but I remember listening on long drives to visit grandparents and selecting either this or Sade from the CDs and cassettes we owned. I can’t pinpoint what particular influence this has had on me, but I’m sure it soaked somewhere into my subconscious. I like the resonating, angelic vocals, whole albums based on environmental themes and the opening track just feels iconic if you grew up in the ’90s.


Pauline Anna Strom – Trans-Millenia Music
I bought this on vinyl for Rupert a few years ago after discovering it and completely falling in love with the often melty and warm, often weird and intriguing, otherworldly sounds. Recorded in the 1970s or ’80s, gaining popularity in recent years with its re-release, I love the blurring of lines between this new age synthesizer music, fusing with Pauline’s other interests of spirituality and healing practices. These were recorded in single takes, with synthesizer manuals being read out to Pauline before recording, as she was born blind. There’s something so magical and healing about the depths of these sounds – like little shooting stars out into the cosmos. What I find so inspiring is not only the music itself, which is like a journey through time and space, but the fact that she made these albums in isolation at home – in the company of her reptiles, using influences from her areas of interest and fusing them into the sounds to create a healing, therapeutic body of work. Diving deep into her senses and letting intuition guide her creativity; the type of authenticity I hope to have in my own music, creative practices and life itself.


Massive thanks to Rebecca from Erasers for sharing their five favourites with us! Watch the band’s latest video for ‘A Breeze’ below:

Photo credit: Karl Halliday

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Introducing Interview: Gabi Garbutt

Having received acclaim from the likes of Steve LaMacq at BBC 6Music and shared stages with legends such as The Libertines, London-based ‘punk-poet’ Gabi Garbutt has now announced the release of their second album via lovely label Trapped Animal Records.

Taken from the album, latest single ‘Never Never‘ showcases Garbutt’s knack for creating instantly catchy indie-pop anthems. With a soulful, impassioned energy propelling the jangling, uplifting musicality, it’s an emotionally-raw, fiercely gritty earworm, leaving you longing to hear more.

We caught up with Gabi to find out all about the new single, upcoming album, their thoughts on the industry, and what inspires them most… Have a read!

Hi Gabi Garbutt! Welcome to Get In her Ears? Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Hi Mari! I’m a half-Chilean singer songwriter from London, then Gloucester, then London, writing mainly lyrical soul punk songs.

Are you able to tell us a bit about how you initially started creating music?
The first band I was totally obsessed with were Green Day. I remember for my twelfth birthday being taken by my mum and dad to see Green Day at a festival in Nottingham. Iggy Pop was the support act and I was right up there in the mosh pit being thrown around, the crowd howling around me… My baptism by fire. That’s when I discovered rock and roll. From there, there was no going back. Bowling around school with Clash City Rockers tipexxed to the back of my school jacket. Next birthday my mum and dad bought me a Squire Strat and soon after I started learning songs. When I was in my mid-teens I used to borrow my sister’s acoustic and busk in town at the weekends, then spend that money on buying records. Another watershed moment was when I was sixteen – my English teacher lent me his copy of Patti Smith’s Horses, and hearing how she merged poetic lyrics with punk, I realised that’s exactly what I wanted to do. I started writing songs and when I moved back to London when I was 18 I started my first band.

I love your uplifting, colourful sounds, but who would you say are you main musical influences?
Thanks! Ezra Furman and Patti Smith are two of my main influences – that lyrical urgency fuelled by euphoric punk energy is something I really aspire to. I love a lot of Motown and Stax soul artists and they inspire a lot of the upbeat brassy sounds. Julian Casablancas’ band The Voidz are really exciting, totally original wild pop verging on chaos, and they’ve inspired the more electronic songs on the record. Nina Simone is a big inspiration; I really admire her fearlessness and conviction, and how she turned her vast musical vocabulary into really raw and emotionally charged songs. I’m a huge fan of Valerie June, particularly her latest album Prescription for Dreamers, it’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before, totally stratospheric soul. I’ve got it on repeat in the tour van and often put it on before we go on stage. It’s a totally energising, mind expanding record that at the same time gets me in a calm and collected state. Lyrical masters like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Lou Reed are big inspirations too.

You’ve recently released your single ‘Never Never’, taken from your upcoming album Cockerel, which is out in May. Are you able to tell us a bit about the album? Are there any particular themes running throughout it?
This record is musically exploratory. It’s got a restless energy and considered sincerity too. There are lone cries and there is sorrow shared. There’s also a celebration of the beauty of existence and the power of human connection. The music takes twists and turns that echo the shifting emotional landscape of the lyrics, but not quite in step. There’s euphoria where there’s raging sadness, otherworldly sounds when the lyrics run closest to the beating heart, but I feel it’s more interesting that way.

How have you found recording and promoting an album during these strange times?
In 2020 we had a bunch of tours and festivals planned that were cancelled. It meant that I had more time to work on writing this album and as soon as rehearsal studios opened up, we started playing these songs as a band. We recorded the album in Spring 2021 but because of the vinyl backlog, it didn’t make sense to release it in a rush. The timing has worked out quite well as we’re doing a fair bit of touring at the moment in the build up to the album release in May. I really thought that all we’d been building would disintegrate during the lockdown, so I’m really happy that the adventure’s continuing.

Do you feel much has changed over the last few years in the music industry’s treatment of female and non-binary artists? 
I do think things have changed. There are still assumptions about females not writing their own songs, crafting the arrangements or being involved in production, which is incredibly frustrating, but luckily I work with a progressive bunch of guys. The label we’re signed to – Trapped Animal Records – are really excellent at nurturing female and non-binary artists, I highly recommend people check out their roster. I was a total tomboy when I was a kid, I remember a girl at school throwing her shoes at me when I was five, and when the teacher asked her why she did it, the girl said it’s because I had said I wanted to be a boy. I’ve always been androgynous and remember hearing the word gender-fluid a few years ago and realising how much that resonated with me. The freedom of expression that music encourages means that the process of creation itself reveals things about ourselves. It also means musicians are perfectly placed to lead the way in starting new conversations, changing perceptions. Artists like Ezra Furman, who recently came out as a trans mum, and consistently promotes trans joy – that’s really powerful, I admire her so much. It just shows the role our musical heroes have in pulling us all into the future.

You’ve previously supported infamous indie acts such as The Libertines – how was this experience for you? And has there been a particular gig you’ve played that stands out as a highlight? 
I’ve been a huge fan of The Libertines since my early teens, so it’s been a brilliant experience. We joined them on a couple of dates of their recent tour – Kentish Town Forum was a highlight, but back in 2019 playing Paris L’Olympia then racing across Germany playing Cologne, Munch and Berlin with them was some of the best fun I think I might ever have had.

As we’re a new music focused site, are there any other upcoming artists or bands you’re loving right now that you’d recommend we check out?
Label mates Jemma Freeman & The Cosmic Something are ferocious, one of the best bands around. I’d also recommend Catherine Rudie who’s Glasgow based, a total one of a kind making otherworldly folk. Veronica Bianqui, who creates garage soul stateside, Sasha & The Shades make raw bluesy rock n’ roll, and Magda Goncalves is a brilliant London based r’n’b/ soul singer writer. A lot of the acts that come out of the Lantern Society, a singer-songwriter night in Clerkenwell are really ace too… Sam Nicholson (who also plays with Jemma Freeman), Jeremy Tuplin, The Violet Hum, Dead Writers, Peter Doolan, Chris Brambley, Gabriel Moreno to name a few. My cousin Paula Arismendi and my brother Leo Garbutt are really talented musicians and songwriters. Also shout out to Real(s), our bass player’s band and Hackles, our drummer’s other band who are both well worth checking out. 

In addition to the album release, what does the rest of the year have in store for you?
We’ve got a few more U.K tour dates coming up with Big Country and I’m going to be playing a couple of acoustic dates in New York, including Rockwood Music Hall on 29th April. In the summer we’ve got a few German dates booked and will be looking to tie this in with a few other dates on the continent and some more U.K tour dates. I’ve also started writing and demoing the third record so I’ll be working hard at that, hopefully recording it by the end of the year!

Massive thanks to Gabi for answering our questions!


Cockerel, the upcoming album from Gabi Garbutt, is set for release on 20th May via Trapped Animal Records.

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Five Favourites: Barrie

Set to release her upcoming second album later this month, New York artist Barrie Lindsay – aka Barrie – has been charming our ears with her shimmering sounds for some time now. Ahead of the album’s release, she has now shared ‘Jenny‘ – a poignant reflection on falling in love with her wife. Flowing with twinkling melodies as her delicate crystalline vocals emanate a stirring emotion, it’s a beautifully uplifting offering, celebrating the comfort of finding home in another person.

We think one of the best ways to get to know an artist is by asking what music inspires them. So, to celebrate the release of her new album, we caught up with Barrie to ask about her “Five Favourites” – five ‘perfect pop songs’ that she loves and have inspired her sound. Check them out below, and listen to ‘Jenny’ at the end of this article!

The La’s – ‘There She Goes’
I first heard this in the Lindsay Lohan Parent Trap movie, and I come back to it constantly. It’s such a Motown song with the beat, melody, harmonies and loud, live-sounding production – it makes no sense that it came out in 1988. And it perfectly rides the line of happy and melancholy. It seems so simple but the structure and progressions are really hard to pin down. It’s particularly special to me because my dad and I used to play this song on guitar together — it’s really fun on a 12-string.


Robyn – ‘Call Your Girlfriend’
Robyn is a master of minimal maximalism, like SOPHIE. And she’s so committed to the character of Robyn, it’s really inspiring. The Robyn songs that click for me are the ones that have her special mix of drive and melancholy. She gets the perfect balance of hopeful and desperate. I’ve tried many times to write a Robyn song, and I’ll probably keep trying to for a long time. I love running to this song, and it blows my mind that a song is capable of making you physically stronger.


Alvvays – ‘Dreams Tonite’
Beyond the great songwriting (the anticipated chord change in the chorus!), there’s a lyric in this that I think about a lot when I’m songwriting: “On the turnpike, one of Eisenhower’s.” It feels like they are breaking a rule or something – lyrics in popular music don’t reference mundane parts of history like Eisenhower building the turnpikes; it’s a throwaway line that packs so much. The line makes me rethink the inevitability of the way society operates, how everything in our society was designed by some person- it sends me on an entire other existential thread. And particularly at a point where you’re songwriting and can’t or don’t want to delve into yourself for lyrics, why not poke at the things in the world around us that we take for granted as part of everyday life? And ultimately, they all shed light on human behaviour and therefore lead to human connection, like you hope for in a song.

Billy Preston – ‘Nothing From Nothing’
This song feels like pure joy. Great musicianship, great melodies. It’s playful, and after years of listening to it, I still get the same amount of joy from it; it reminds me of dancing in the kitchen as a kid with my family. He was an incredible pianist, and what a great rag-timey piano sound. I joined my school’s gospel choir in college, and got exposed to contemporary gospel music like Kirk Franklin, Fred Hammond, Kurt Carr, and Hezekiah Walker. This song has a lot of the same driving and uplifting qualities as contemporary gospel, which makes sense since Billy Preston came up playing in church. A lot of what I like about this song is the same as what I like about gospel music. So much flair and musicianship from the instrumentalists. They’re so tight.

Britney Spears – ‘How I Roll‘
I first heard this song in 2012 and I was blown away. So many great textures, so chaotic, and also somehow so pure. Underneath the micro beats and totally synthetic, unnatural sounds, it’s just a hand-clapping game song. I like that they threw everything at the song, like a no-bad-ideas session, and then honed every single detail. Everything feels deliberate; it’s experimental but in the name of joy rather than self-indulgence or pretension. How cool that Britney Spears went for this?!


Massive thanks to Barrie for sharing her Five Favourites with us! Barbara, her upcoming new album, is set for release on 25th March via Winspear. Listen to latest single ‘Jenny’ below.

Photo Credit: Alexa Viscius

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