Six For ‘Sick For A Week’: Ivies’ Debut Single

Last Friday, student band Ivies released their first single ‘sick for a week’. The song has been a staple of their live sets since the band’s first gig, not even 7 months ago!

Their debut release marks a big milestone for the group, whose infectious brand of indiepop saw them win Purple Radio's Battle of the Bands last March, in one of their first ever gigs. Since then, Ivies have become one of the premier Durham student bands and they are now a staple of the Durham music scene.

To commemorate the single release, I asked the band six questions about the song…

1. When did you write the song?

Cole wrote 'sick for a week' in 3 sessions, after ivies first or second ever rehearsal. He set out writing it thinking 'I want this to sound like an ivies song' and it all came together from there. The exact date was February 8th. He was really nervous to show everyone, but we all loved it, and we've played it at almost every gig since! We all made our instrumental parts our own and it always goes down so well live which is super nice to see.

2. What is the song about?

The ongoing joke is that it's literally just about being sick for a week...Specifically, it's about the feeling when your mental health decreases when you're sick and you feel like it's gonna last forever.

Some of the lyrics are about how you're in and out of sleep on medication, giving you crazy dreams and thoughts - 'I fell onto a beach and broke all of my teeth and bones'.

3. Do you remember the first time you played the song as a band in practice? What was it like?

Again, Cole was really nervous to show everyone. It was shortly after writing it where he said 'I wrote it thinking this sounds like an ivies song', to which Alfie said 'What does an ivies song even sound like, we have none'. We had Hannah (previously from Minus 5) in the rehearsal where we first played it through together, and she said it already sounds like an completed song which was a good sign for how well we work together!

3. Do you remember the first time you played the song as a band in practice? What was it like?

Again, Cole was really nervous to show everyone. It was shortly after writing it where he said 'I wrote it thinking this sounds like an ivies song', to which Alfie said 'What does an ivies song even sound like, we have none'. We had Hannah (previously from Minus 5) in the rehearsal where we first played it through together, and she said it already sounds like an completed song which was a good sign for how well we work together!

4. Why did you decide to release this song as your first single?

We really wanted our first release to be an upbeat one that listeners or the crowd could jam with. And since it was the first ever ivies original, it only felt right.

5. What was the process like from recording to releasing?

Funny thing is most of what you hear on the track was actually our first ever take of the song. We had some technical issues in the studio which meant we had less time than we thought. We were actually pretty happy with the first run through and just went with that before recording another song. But fun fact, the guitar solo is actually two takes with two completely different guitars edited together!

We also quickly realised we were perfectionists when it came to mixing (specifically Alice and Kiko who spent hours listening to two words over and over to fix a timing issue lol). We recorded it about 3 months before it was actually finished, hence our 'coming soon' tiktok that we posted way too early!! We worked closely with Ben Bave (recommended to us by Canary Records) who mixed and mastered the track for us. After pestering him with many emails, we were so so happy with the results. Really grateful to Ben for working so hard on it with us. <3

6. What's next for Ivies?

'Gig in Newcastle' - Alfie

'Release an EP' - Kiko

'Launch party coming soon?' - Ed

'Opening for Thomas Headon' - Alice

'World domination.' - Cole

Huge thanks to Ivies for answering my questions, and at Purple we’re all excited to see what they get up to next, even if it isn’t quite ‘world domination’ yet!

Stream ‘sick for a week’ now!

By James Woodward