Who are Y?
We chat with one of our favourite breaking bands, Y, in another deep dive into our 2026 line-up for Rockaway Beach.
Imagine you’ve been given the gift to physically create anything beyond your wildest dreams and you decide to create a toaster.
You’ve been described as “a fever dream scored by a jazz band having an existential crisis.” Fair or unfair? What kind of crisis are Y actually having right now - musical, existential, or something weirder?
Adam: We are 100% not a jazz band. Although there are some elements of that approach at times. We don’t sound like your usual rock group either; That stuff has been done to death and perfected already. We have a wide range of influences and we draw on them all. I think that’s why some sections of our songs can be a bit like a musical panic attack. Crisis? We are often having some sort of silent crisis just before we get on stage and on stage we are having a heavily amplified crisis!
Sophie: Always in crisis. Crisis has become the new sense of calm, it’s when you’re not in crisis these days you feel unsettled.
The new single ‘Skipper’ just dropped last week, and it’s a punchy one - part class warfare, part psychedelic meltdown. What triggered that lyrical vision of the rich skipping through the world like it’s theirs? Was it anger, absurdity, or just a really bad commute?
Adam: I think it’s a fairly relatable subject. Sophie wrote most of the lyrics, I just did a few lines and the “CABIN BOY”part. The whole idea and vision for Skipper was from Sophie. I did my fair share towards it musically.
Sophie: That’s a question I can’t really answer in detail or it’s going to get real juicy over here. It’s a personal gripe if you will; a diss track. But the sentiment remains strongly universal.
The track’s got that chaotic elegance - punk energy with a saxophone that sounds like it’s trying to escape the building. How do you balance total disorder with structure in your songwriting without losing the spark?
Adam: Everything starts small, with just a spark of inspiration, a little draft of something, then before you know it you’ve got something huge. It all happens in a blur. Whenever me and Sophie sit down together we just get stuff down pretty fast. We demo everything and write lots of parts, so as soon as we get around to playing it with the band, it works straight away. It kind of has to as we can’t afford to rehearse as regularly as we need to. The band are all incredible players so that really helps, everyone has their own super power they bring.
Sophie: It’s just the way we’ve jelled playing together as a group. The disorder has become part of the harmony; It’s something we can all flow to. I find we’re always more comfortable pushing boundaries than we are playing something simple and safe.
You’ve played venues like The Windmill to the 100 Club - two institutions at opposite ends of DIY mythology. How did those stages shape your sense of what Y is?
Adam: The windmill is somewhere we have all been playing at for years, It’s the best grassroots venue in the country. We are lucky to all be so close to it being in London. Our headline show at The 100 club felt like a triumphant moment as it’s a lot bigger capacity than the windmill and our EP had just come out too. It was just a real celebration and that place has such a history especially with all the punk bands I love.
You’re part of this new London wave - bands like Fat Dog, KEG, Warmduscher - all unafraid of looking slightly unhinged on stage. What’s in the water over there? Or is it something you’re all breathing in from rehearsal rooms?
Adam: London is a huge place. There is so many bands, some great, some terrible. You’re bound to find something interesting going on. I like all the bands you’ve mentioned. If anything ties us together, it’s the energy and being a little forward thinking. Purely retro stuff doesn’t interest me very much. Mashing up genres and attempting to do something fresh is a good approach.
Sophie: Do we look unhinged on stage ? I think we go into mind blank mode. I remember live shows as if I barely move but the whip lash I have post gigs has led me close to calling 111 about.
Our pals at DORK called your sound “fearless,” but there’s something quite studied about the chaos too. Do you ever talk about what kind of world you’re building sonically - or do you prefer to let the songs make sense later, if ever?
Adam: We don’t really decide anything before we start doing it. Occasionally we might suggest a basic concept to kick things off like, wouldn’t it be fun to do a song that is just a throb on one note or whatever. I guess me and Sophie know what we really don’t like. Anything too boring or stale, we avoid. We like taking little risks and trying to make each other laugh.
Sophie: As a band I find we never discuss a vision for a song. It’s just a ‘get or don’t get’ when we first try it out. If on the first few go’s it doesn’t get the fluids moving, we tend to drop it without much communication. Trust in collective feeling.
‘Skipper’ feels political without being slogan-y. Is there a conscious choice to make your social commentary surreal rather than literal?
Adam: You have to play with words and have fun with them. There is a bit too much captain obvious and box ticking already in music. It’s good to take a very serious subject and obscure it somehow, throw in a little bit of misdirection. There is no formula, although we have a friend who is a fairly well known songwriter and he thinks there is. He thinks it’s like the magical circle, you can’t betray the musical circle.
Sophie: For me, absolutely. I despise it when literal lyrics are laid on thick. Imagine you’ve been given the gift to physically create anything beyond your wildest dreams and you decide to create a toaster.
Was the sax always part of the blueprint for the band, or did it creep in?
Sophie: Harry is an OG member of the band. Saxophone has always been part of the music but his lead parts were formed unconventionally. Most of the top lines he plays were written on keyboard or guitar and then transcribed to sax. On reflection, I guess, quite an effective way of reinventing your classic sax line.
Adam: It’s great having someone skilled like Harry who can also just go off on tangents and blow something mad to fill a space or create some added drama too. The sax takes a lot lead parts but we have plenty of lead guitar parts too, it’s not always the sax doing the heavy lifting, although maybe in the first few songs we’ve put out so far. Fells has a few tasty drum sections, especially in our newer material and Dan is insanely good and expressive on the bass.
There’s a definite visual world to Y - your artwork, videos, even the way you move on stage. Who’s steering that side of things, and how important is the visual chaos to the overall project?
Adam: That’s mainly Sophie when it comes to the videos, she’s a great visual artist. She has directed and edited all our videos so far. On zero budget pretty much. We all have similar tastes. Slick, bold and a bit freaky! The way we move on stage? God knows what happens up there, that’s just a passion overload. We like to get ourselves very fired up. We don’t like to do things by half.
Sophie: Yeah I like visuals. I really love a challenge too, with the goal to make a lot from very little. I was once was told our music and live shows are like ‘thunder’ and I’ve since held that close to me. That’s not been an aesthetic we’ve been consciously aiming for, but that comment was certainly an affirmation to just keep doing how we’re doing it.
You’ve got your Third Man Records show this week, then Rockaway Beach in January. That’s quite a jump - from a Soho basement to a seaside holiday camp full of music obsessives. Will the show change at all between those two scenarios? What can we expect in January?
Adam: From Soho to Bognor it’s all the same as long as there is a stage with some decent lights and amps turned up nice and loud, then we approach it the same way, 5 people or 500 people. Everyone’s a winner!
Sophie: Absolutely. We’re full of something all the time, far more than people can see at this point. It’s only just getting started.
What’s next for Y once the dust settles - or does the idea of “settling” make your skin crawl?
Adam: We never settle, we can’t afford to! We work as hard at this as we can. We cant afford to be lazy. Life is short but sadly so is money. We are always cooking up something. We keep ourselves as busy as possible.
Sophie: No dust, only strobe lights.