We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Phwoar a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

PHWOAR, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Three years ago, we released our first EP, Just Matter. At that time, we didn’t know much about the process and we were pretty much out of our depth. Although we love the resultant collection of songs, we didn’t want to release another until we knew we could make something better and until we had something more cohesive to talk about. For three years we worked at getting better at being musicians and live performers, as well as refining our songwriting craft. It was so much fun playing around with ideas and discovering our voices, both individually as musicians and together as an alternative indie rock duo.
We knew we wanted to write something about our civil society’s slide towards dictatorial politics, the loss of our democracy and the rights our forebears had fought so hard to gain over the last two centuries. But we also knew we didn’t want to write a gloomy, woe is the world record. We’re both pretty positive, fun-loving, I mean, let’s just be honest, fairly dorky people, and we wanted that to come through. Because it isn’t the end of the world, it’s just another twist to it, and so when we started pulling all these fragments of songs we’d jammed on into cohesive songs, we ended up with five tracks we loved that really spoke to this idea. Flowers Through the Concrete is the result. It’s brazen, it pulls no punches, but it also doggedly refuses to succumb to the anxiety of the present predicament we’ve all found ourselves in.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

We’re PHWOAR, a fizzy indie-alternative-rock (or whatever) two-piece from Birmingham, with DIY sensibilities and catchy tunes. We are Helena on drums and Paul on guitar, with both sharing vocal duties. We formed during the first Covid lockdown, starting as a project to pass the time. This has since grown from a pastime to a passion to a goal that we wish to pursue full-time.

It’s a tough, gung-ho industry that really only rewards those at the very top and barely covers the cost of petrol to the shows and rehearsals for around 70% of musicians. And yet, we are starting to see more faces in the crowd singing along to our songs, bigger festivals taking an interest in putting us on stage each summer, and bigger names in the industry agreeing to work with us.

Exciting things are happening in 2025 as we gear up to release our EP ‘Flowers Through the Concrete’ in April. This will be preceded by the singles Waiting for the Sun’ on Jan 20, ‘Reckless’ on Feb 21, and ‘Surge’ on Mar 14. The record was written and produced by ourselves, with Adrian Hall (Tori Amos, Nova Twins, Depeche Mode) also producing, as well as mixing and mastering.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Nothing beats having a creative outlet for making sense of the world. If either of us is trying to process one of the big questions about life, we have music as a way of setting things straight in our minds. It’s pretty incredible how and where the subconscious can drive a song.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Why on earth we would spend so much time and money learning to play, buying instruments, travelling, dealing with some pretty awful, unprincipled players in the industry, and generally not being particularly good at times, in pursuit of a creative career that promises increasingly diminishing rewards for that effort? This desire to keep going, keep improving, keep creative, in the face of such seemingly overwhelming odds, is something many people simply view as a form of madness.

So why do we keep going? Well, there’s really no substitute for the feeling you get after playing a great show or finishing a new song. Having somebody come up to us afterwards to say how much they enjoyed the show, or listening back to something that wouldn’t have ever existed, had we simply given up, or never even tried, is unparalelled.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://phwoarband.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phwoarband/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phwoarband
• Twitter: https://x.com/phwoarband
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@phwoarband
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/phwoarband
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4mcPq4KgblTZ8BHq7cGafR

Image Credits

All photographer credits, where applicable, are listed in the file names. Where no photographer is included, the photo should be credited to Paul Stafford and PHWOAR.