Start Listening To: Pyncher

Pyncher Maneuvers To Musical Stardom.

Post punk is a musical category with many different definitions, depending on who you talk to. Born in the 1970's the genre mutated from traditional influences including The Sex Pistols, Death, The Exploited, The Dead Kennedy's, The Business, The Dead Milkmen, Black Flag, etc. into more evolved acts that combined classical punk's frenetic energy with modern rock's cool discipline without selling out. Funk, metal, psychedelic, surf, soul and even disco combined with old school punk, creating innovative groups and artists like The Who, The Cramps, Rick James, Sonic Youth, Public Image Limited, The Talking Heads, The Cure plus many others that opened up new dimensions of audio entertainment mere rock could never explore. Whether it's new wave, alternative, funk, goth, indie, grunge or EBM, many modern bands grew out of post punk, and the worldwide music scene is richer for it.

Pyncher is an underground post punk band from Manchester, UK, a town known for the genre. Sam Blakely and Harvey O'Toole are half of the ensemble, with Sam supplying vocals and guitars while Harvey plays lead, Britt Dewhurst on bass and Jack Rainbow playing drums. The two had the time off from their recent tour of England to talk about who they are, where they are going and why they do what they do so well.

Sam, in his own words, was "ridiculously eager to start a band," learning guitar for a year before attending university in Manchester. "I was looking for somebody who knew what they were doing. I met Harvey and he was my ledge. We had never played in a band before." Getting noticed wasn't easy. "We didn't think we were getting any gigs when we first started. I expected us to be more of a recording kind of band. We kept getting gigs when they heard us. We played whenever we could, even if it was for just one person."

Harvey remembers how the Covid lockdowns prevented any initial momentum. "When we started we couldn't do gigs." The band had rehearsed enough and just wanted to perform. "We took awhile to get properly going." Pyncher wasn't the first choice of names for their bands. "We went through a lot of bad names." Sam came up with a few, too. "I wanted to call it Monkey Trousers." The band had a plan.

"Pyncher happened because we just kept sending names to each other over a month period. We wanted our name to sound like a blank slate." Sure, groups like Pyncher can be compared to others. Harvey points out that, "Post punk has become massive. It's getting to the point where it can encompass so many types of music." Sam agrees. "Post punk is such a broad genre." Modern listeners shouldn't be too concerned.

"It's always a bit of a brush stroke." Harvey says. "You can delve too deep into genres. If you like it, you like it." Sam appreciates the past while he enjoys where Pyncher is at. "Most of our influences are post punk. Lou Reed, Velvet Underground. Bob Dylan and The Beatles. There's a lot of bands we meet in Manchester. They all say we sound like some bands like Witches or Black Sabbath."

Harvey prefers another term. "Unlabeled. We like the idea of people not seeing us as a specific type of band." One trend in Manchester is long songs radio doesn't always approve of. Tracks from post punk bands like Sonic Youth frequently defied the mandated 3.5 minute mark. "I've seen that a lot more like that in the UK," Harvey says. "They release six or seven minute songs. That's a big thing about post punk. It's been a punk thing to make the song longer than expected."

Pyncher is too evolved to be concerned with labels, especially when the young group is still enjoying their journey together. Sam likes that. "A lot of what we do is quite instinctual. We try to add a kick to it. Obviously I'm not great at my instrument. When we are together it gets better." There's an element of zen involved. "If we think too much about our songs the less good they'll be."

Harvey enjoys working that way. "We've had songs where we have different ideas that merged together. When we first started we were inexperienced. The only way we know something works is if we play it and people like it. Someone said to me that if you like Pyncher you'll really like them, if you don't you'll hate them." So far, Pyncher's done good. "I don't know, we've never had anyone tell us they hate us."

Sam describes Pyncher this way. "Sort of like Harry Nilsson. With some darkness from The Cramps...the surfiness...the trembler and beach sound. We need to get better at describing our music. A lot of riffs that I've written were based on spaghetti western music. Something that isn't used enough. I can't get enough of it. I would love to be in a band that rips off The Cramps completely. If I could copy anyone it would be them."

One of their first official EP's, "Dirty Feet" got a lot of rave reviews and public approval. "It was a while before it came out," Sam says. "There was a bit of hype around us. A lot of people were asking when our first song would come out. We picked that out of several songs we had. It gets straight to the point. People remembered it a lot from our live gigs." The band has learned to discern good material from the less inspirational kind. "We start off playing stuff live and then go back and make an EP."

Harvey knows that a positive fan base can be inspirational. "It was nice releasing something people really wanted to hear, especially when recording is so expensive. Everything we record we know they are the ones that have to get out there. It'd be bad if we recorded a song and hated it."

Sam knows how to grow a good song like "Dirty Feet" from strong roots. "We changed it over the course of the first five gigs. The same with the lyrics. Sometimes we play a song and I just start shouting random stuff and then we eventually have lyrics. It's a fun way to write. I'll do it in rehearsal. Just make random noises and write the lyrics later."

Harvey suggests checking out new live musical bands like Pyncher because it can spice up your social life. "There's something about seeing a band you've never heard of and then falling in love with them. It's a different thing watching a smaller band get popular later and saying, 'I was there when they were small and now they are bigger,' compared to seeing a band you've never seen before."