Honeyblood Is Stina Tweeddale's Soul On Wax

The sight of people on their phones on the street has become quotidian, but Stina Tweeddale still feels self-conscious when she does it. That's because the leader of Glaswegian garage-rockers Honeyblood isn't just talking. "I'll walk down the street holding my phone to my mouth, recording, humming into it like a crazy person," she laughs. "I'll get a melody in my head, and I want to capture it before it flutters away. I have this endless collection of melodies that may one day become something. My phone is overflowing with them."

"There were only two other girls there who played guitar, and they were both in the band. We played the four chords that we knew, and just screamed."

Tweeddale grew up in Edinburgh, always making up songs. Her dad was a musician (in local pub-rock institution Blues 'N' Trouble), so she picked up the guitar early and by adolescence was in thrall to riot grrrl. "When I was 14, my first band just wanted to [be riot grrrl]," Tweeddale recalls. "People at my school really did not get it at all. There were only two other girls there who played guitar, and they were both in the band. We played the four chords that we knew, and just screamed."

When studying economics and social history at University of Glasgow, she sang in the indie outfit Boycotts, but grew frustrated by not having "any say in how the music was". So, she quit that band — "that was difficult for me" — and decided to throw herself into her own songs. "I'd always written my own songs, so I felt like it was time to take them as far as I could," says Tweeddale. "Honeyblood is the band I always wanted to be in when I was 14. Honeyblood is just my personality, my soul, who I am, put into music. Honeyblood is really my little creation."

It didn't take long for the decision to pay off: at the duo's second gig Alex Knight from FatCat was there and signed the band, expectations setting in immediately. "It all happened very quickly. We were still very, very young, barely out of my bedroom, when we already had management and a record label," Tweeddale says. "Before the first album came out, I wasn't even sure if anyone would care, that people would want to listen to us."

Yet, the response to Honeyblood's self-titled 2014 debut emboldened Tweeddale, and its follow-up, 2016's Babes Never Die (a phrase she first got tattooed on her torso), sounded bigger, bolder, louder. Each LP evinces Tweeddale's mastery of earworms, her three-minute rockers all big on melody.

"When I write a song, I'm waiting for a 'click'," Tweeddale offers. "With [beloved single] Killer Bangs, I had these two separate [ideas] that I'd worked on and, when I put them together, I got that click. When something works, it clicks. And when it clicks, that's when I know I've written a good melody. I don't let a song go out in the world if I don't get that click. Melody, for me, makes a song. If you can create a simple melody that anyone can sing along to, then your music will be memorable."