We hang out with the best claimants to the Iron throne of indie credibility to discuss why all the bands are doing it wrong, Ed Miliband’s Desert Island Discs, the best parts in musical theatre and come together to offer the all the rock’n’roll top tips you need to start your own band and be a guest on a future podcast. Also, they play some of the best music you’ll hear in your life.

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For PART ONE, go here: http://www.indelicates.com/2013/12/30/julia-indelicates-review-of-the-year-2013/

Much of the merchandise we made for Diseases of England was stuff we’d not tried to make before. We’ve been making our legendary Lyric books with footnotes and essays in them since our second album Songs For Swinging Lovers, but Diseases of England saw us sewing dolls and designing magazines and authoring DVDs, among other things, so it’s been a year of both shouting “Motherfucker!” at our respective sewing machines/ computers, but coming out of it with some entirely new skills. I am thankful for youtube tutorials: people of the youtube, you rock.


In May we released the video for ‘Not Alone’, a sparse, quiet, and simple video which lots of people seemed to like. It was track of the day on GIITTV and Joyzine and a bunch of others, and was viewed by people who had never heard of us thanks to the ever gracious and always kind Neil Gaiman sharing it (he has a wonderful new book out here, go see: http://amzn.to/1cAPBBS





At the tail end of May, having asked a few times on the internet to see if anyone wanted to do it, and had no takers, we released the video for ‘Dovahkiin’ (after the character in the Skyrim game). Simon spent a while learning how to make Machinima (which for those who don’t know is when you use hacks on, usually, the pc version of a game to make it do something more specific than you would otherwise be able to. For example have a massive fight or, in our case, have us perform as actual Skyrim characters). I fucking love this video. It’s totally different to any other we’ve ever done, took HOURS of fiddling, and has a man beating up a dragon with Simon’s guitar at the end. I also really like the bits where the main character just looks really depressed. Even though I appreciate it is in ‘computer pictures’ which some people just aren’t that familiar with, I genuinely think it communicates perfectly what is going on in the song. Plus there’s proper Joy in that song, one of my favourite things 🙂





In June, Simon was invited to speak on a panel at OrgCon2013 called “Lessons From Creative Citizens” at which he demonstrated all the things we’d made for the latest release, and said some very interesting things about what we do and how we do it. Also on the panel where author Diane Duane and musician Steve Lawson. It was a fascinating panel, go watch it.




Also in June we played a great show in Emma’s hometown of Oxford, where she was in charge of the advertising…



… and we put up the Video Nasty Trailer for the Diseases of England Special Edition DVD (which you can buy here: http://bit.ly/KfGPOQ )





We played a few Super Special Edition shows this year, one of which was in July in Dumfries in Scotland for Kieren Kerr. I think it fair to say I have never met men more able to drink than I have in Dumfries, Scotland. You’re all legends. Especially Dan Brun 😉 Here’s Kieren signing the contract after we’d sung some Spandau Ballet and Springsteen covers.



In August we fooled around with Vine (@simonindelicate and @juliaindelicate if you want to find our ridiculous vines on there) and we played one of our favourite ever shows with Martin White and his Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra. The thing about writing the music for songs is that if you’ve been doing it a long time you tend to write all the other parts in your head as well. Well we do anyway. This gig was like having the orchestra in my head come to life behind me. It was so SO good. Some of the songs from Diseases of England sounded so perfect with this backing that I forgot what I was doing. I actually managed to get through most of I Used To Sing without fucking it up, and it was so wonderful to hear the parts I’d scribbled out and Martin had fixed up actually WORKING. I think it’d be fair to say that the performance of ‘Class’ that we did at this gig was by far the most spectacular. When the brass came in at the end and Simon and I were spitting out our lines, it was MIGHTY. Watching the Orchestra then perform with both Mikey Georgeson and Martin himself was proper, proper magnificent. We’ve got to do it again. We’re going to next year, you should definitely, DEFINITELY not miss it…



In August we also released the video for ‘Everything Is Just Disgusting’, featuring every band member as a puppet (I made the puppets, it was funny as hell. Both Julia and Emma puppet are so far the rudest when they’re at home. Always swearing and knocking things over). We had a lot of fun with Al Guitarist and Stuart of Turtle Canyon, and Andy and Jen and Oscar at the Watershed in Milton Keynes filming all the sadness followed by all the rocking out. My favourite part of this, though you can’t tell, is when I was the head of Emma puppet, and Emma was the arms. Then we played the drums. I got pulled all over the shop. I bet that happens all the time on the Muppets 😉





In late August/ early September we started recording our new PODCAST. We’ve had LOADS of people on already, and lots of mental and deep and silly and philosophical and scientific stuff has been covered. Want to listen? Go to http://www.indelicates.com/jukebox/ or search on iTunes or Stitcher. Want to be on it? @juliaindelicate on twitter


In late September we decided to release four extra tracks as PART IV of Diseases of England, a DLC if you will, with loads of demos and extras as well. It looked like this (I’m a PRINCESS, yeah?) and you can get it here: http://corpor.at/A360





In November we were lucky enough to support Art Brut at The Village Underground with their new line-up and our new line-up! It was an ace show, with proper lush sound, everyone who played was brilliant, and we had PROPS…





In late October Simon wrote a very interesting essay defending democracy. If you haven’t already, you should read it, it does a great job of making clear some of the basic principles of western democracy… Don’t have a fight with us about it though, we can’t be bothered with that 🙂 http://www.indelicates.com/democ.html

In November I SOLD GOBBLES HAND PUPPETS EVERYWHERE. My merchandising and music buddy Paul Stapleton, of Pog, and the BN1 Game, and me sold things every weekend leading up to christmas. If I wasn’t sewing puppets, I was working Nights and finishing puppets, then going home, sleeping, waking up and sewing more puppets. IT WAS AMAZING, I AM SO TIRED! If you want to participate in my hard labour, you can purchase these super cute ever enchanting naughty little friends here: http://is.gd/gobblepuppet
Here is a photo of Paul before we both switch on our APPRENTICE style sales patter.

Want to hear our Cultural Review of the year with Lydia Snodin and Tom Wylie? It has all the things we consumed in it, and is AUDIBLE… http://indelicates.com/jukebox


NEXT YEAR WE WILL… Play with Martins Orchestra again, be developing a new musical, making a new toy, and learning how to make a WHOLE BUNCH OF NEW STUFF. Simon’s been making ice cream. I don’t think we can post it just yet, but have no doubt, I’m sure we will find a way 😉


The Credits of our lives for 2013: People who have been on things, been with us, worked with us, and generally been positive influences in our lives this year ARE (in no particular order)… Keith Totp, Ed East, Sergey Mareyno, Laurence Owen, Max Saidi, Al Clayton, Danni Read (for marrying Al Guitarist, hooray!), Nathan Thomas, Nathan Haymer, Martin Whaley, Hannah Donovan, Kate Benjamin, Sarah Mears, Robert Chatley, Paul Winkler, Penny Clayton, Graham Clayton, Martin White, Alex Beitzke, Mark Jones, Emma ‘Cwps’ Cooper, Mikey Breyer, Les Carter, Fran Graham, David Barnett, Charley Stone, Peter Murrells, Ed Barnes, Dave Hughes, Austen Jux-Chandler, Jonny Solway, Joie Mikitson, Alexander Velky, Ed Van Beinum, Nick Long, Campbell Edinborough, Lydia Snodin, Caroline Hatwell, Paul Stones, Ros Barber, Lily Rae, Paul Stapleton, Emma Lewis, Nick Kos, Adie Nunn, Mikey Georgeson, Foz Questionmark, Philip Jeays, Michael Parker, Tom Wylie, Chris Hodges, Jon Seagrave, Arec Koundarjian, Andy, Jen, and Oscar WatershedMK, Kieren Kerr, Jamie Woods, Mary Hampton, Sam @ Raconteur Magazine, Stuart Laws, Eddie Argos, Akira The Don, Sara Passmore, Grahm Eberhardt, Joel Durham Jnr, Jordan D. White, Btwothree, Maria Schurr, Neil Gaiman.



Thank you for a wonderfully busy year full of stuff 🙂


Lots of Love, Julia Indelicate X

The Diseases of England Special Edition Package

What a year! I think me and Simon have made more things this year than in any previous, thanks to the different things we decided to make for the packages of our fourth album Diseases of England. We’d already started crowd-funding (directly through our sites) in October 2012, and released the first tracks from the album to backers of the project around then, and the second part at Christmas. We made two videos: ‘Class’ and ‘I Used To Sing’ with some help from Al Rhythm guitarist and the team at Turtle Canyon.







We were overwhelmed by the interest people had in the packages, and eternally grateful to everyone for sharing at the pre-order stage. In the January snows which blocked off our street it kept the lights on and the internet running 🙂

Our 'Cars' car in January

Julia Indelicate in the January snow

In February we launched a Kickstarter campaign SPECIFICALLY for VINYL copies of Diseases of England. We made a little video in the freezing cold on top of a hill in sussex to show you how much we wanted you to pledge for it, so we too could hold the beautiful thing in our hands. We had no idea at this point that it was going to work, and we enjoyed it’s production being entirely in your hands. It worked! If you have a copy, and are that sort of person, you might want to see how many Illuminati references you can find on it.




At the still-not-sure-if-this-is-going-to-get-made stage of the Kickstarter, simon made a little song to encourage Vinyl Junkieism…






Also in February we recorded Part III of Diseases of England with Austen Jux-Chandler at Keith Totp’s Dean Street Studios in London. Every session we’ve done at Dean Street has been wonderful, and testament to Keith’s genuinely being awesome, but this one in particular felt special. Singing at the end of ‘Dovahkiin’ felt good; it felt like the end of the album. Making albums with barely any budget, in a tiny amount of time, can be extremely stressful and fighty, so it’s always pretty astonishing when it comes together at the end. The amount of work Simon did on much of the mixing and mastering of the tracks, along with all the artwork (for literally everything) would have broken lesser men. BUT HE DID IT. I am proud of us, and so thankful that people like the results 🙂

The Clapping take feat. Keith Totp, Simon Indelicate, Charley Stone, David Barnett, Fran Graham, Emma Cooper and others

In April/ May Diseases of England COMPLETE was released! You can get it here:


http://corpor.at/A345





We played some fabulous shows to celebrate, welcoming Emma Lewis (Drums) and Nick Kos (Bass) to the lineup (WE LOVE YOU). My favourite quote from the shows came from Ms Charley Stone: “Kick down the doors! There’s something going down in Waco”. I like her. She’s the one I like.








…and people started to receive their pre-ordered packages. I say this in the manner of someone who has forgotten quite HOW MANY TRIPS I made to the post office at this time. Being a band with an admittedly limited but nevertheless global audience, yet still running as a small business from a house, is fascinating stuff. You make EVERYTHING, so you POST EVERYTHING. It is quite a feat. For the most part the mailing part involved walking up and down the (annoying) hill over and over and over and over again posting boxes containing cds and lyric books and art books and DVDs and magazines and tshirts and posters and tarot cards and jewellery and dolls and fudge and photographs and collectibles. Me and the post office? We’re like totally mates now. They humoured me despite the SHEER VOLUME of packages going out. I have never posted out more of our stuff than I have this year. They deserved holiday chocolates 🙂
Despite almost always having trouble with accepting help (I’m obviously a massive control freak, something I must try to remedy in 2014), this time around we got Grahm of Port Byron Illinois to handle much of the postage in the USA. You saved us serious money man, we owe you many free puppets and books 🙂
I also accepted help from Lydia, here is a picture of her helping me with box sets. She saved me literally hours of work. You rock.





FOR PART TWO of my review, GO HERE: http://www.indelicates.com/2013/12/30/julia-indelicates-review-of-the-year-2013-part-two/