Coach Party Tickets

‘Isle Of Wight indie’ is a sure-fire sub-genre in the making given the swathe of sardonic, female-led bands that the island’s musical talent has been producing of late. Coach Party are part of the aforementioned, a plucky four-piece whose witty lyricism and left-field pop hooks buck the trend of contemporary indie bands by being more engrossing with repeated listens.

From the same school of thought as irreverent fellow islanders Wet Leg and Lauran Hibberd, Coach Party have adopted a similar attitude in not taking oneself too seriously in the face of everyday mundanity - must be something with that Isle Of Wight air. Or it could be done to the bred-in ideology of never being taken seriously by an elderly demographic with little interest in the plight of young adults. An idyllic retreat for some and an Alcatraz of sorts for others, frontwoman Jess Eastwood describes island life as going “through pretty distinct phases of being a great, and a really frustrating place to live.”

With such a disparity between ‘old people’ sitting pretty and teenagers itching to leave for pastures new, it doesn’t take long for the island’s youth to cross paths. In Eastwood’s words: “it's only a matter of time until you meet pretty much everyone else on the Island.” And that’s precisely how Coach Party began, with Eastwood meeting future band members Steph Norris, Joe Perry, and Guy Page working in local cafes and bumping into each other at the same gigs before eventually playing music together given their shared interest in Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and The Strokes records, as well as their perspective of “the often entertaining struggle of real life” which serves as the primary drive to write and perform.

Working in an island-based music studio, drummer Page produced the band’s first batch of songs and soon after the upstarts were courting interest from the musos and label bosses from the ‘mainland’, without having to take the tried and tested path of crossing The Solent to further their ambitions. It was eventually Chess Club Records that released their 2020 debut six-track EP Party Food, the London label that’s built an impressive reputation for breaking burgeoning talent such as Wolf Alice, Mumford & Sons, Jungle, and more recently the likes of Alfie Templeman and Phoebe Green.

Their wry grunge-pop made an impression almost immediately with regional radio stations and online tastemakers, which served as momentum for their 2021 follow-up EP After Party. A continuation on the ‘sad-party’ theme of their first EP, Coach Party nestled into their knack of conjuring deceptively positive and danceable tracks like lead singles ‘Can’t Talk, Won’t’ and ‘Everybody Hates Me’ which are laced with self-loathing lyrics that confront their emotional repression, but subsequent obedience to lifelong habits of sweeping issues under the carpet. 

After the release of 2022’s spiky third EP Nothing Is Real, the islanders soon snagged support slots with Sea Girls and The Mysterines, and - with tongues firmly in cheeks - consider themselves a “stadium band now” having footed the bill for Parisian pop-rockers Indochine at the Stade De France in front of 97,000 people.