A name change in music can symbolise many things; when Prince changed the title of his band from The Revolution to The New Power Generation the name change meant a total rebirth; a change not just in name but also in sound, image, narrative and personnel. On the opposite scale, when Badboy Sean Combs changed from Puff Daddy to P-Diddy, very little changed; same person, same sound, same, if you get the joke, executive producer being all up in the video. Changing to Diddy was more a symbol of stepping away from a certain lifestyle than it was about a new sound or a new approach to his music.
For three-piece fuzz guitar act Shallow, formerly ‘Creature’, their recent name change is a mixture of a number of reasons; “Calling ourselves Creature was getting a little bit confusing as there’s at least three other UK bands called Creatures” says Shallow frontman/guitarist Sam Avery ‘and whilst that was the main reason, the name change has also given us a good opportunity to change certain elements of our sound and experiment a little more’.
Not content with playing with new sounds, possibly pushing their alt-guitar Dinosaur-jnr styled sound into new territories, it also appears the change in name has also impacted the band’s past “the plan is to go back and refresh some of our really early material; it’s funny that some of the material sounds so different to how we play it live or how we see ourselves today. There’s an element of freedom that, indirectly, the name change has given us and we’re really excited about the future’.
Talk of the future brings us onto considering where Shallow might be heading, a new EP is done and ready for release (‘It sounds different to how we normally sound, as we’ve changed the way we record, but it’ll still be loud and full of guitars’) and new material is being written as we speak (‘I had real difficulty in writing material for a while but we’ve been making huge sounds recently in the practice space and the plan is to release more this year for sure’).
In the meantime there’s a EP launch gig for us, if not Sam, to look forward to; “we’ve got a really good line up for the EP launch with Pave the Jungle, Denis and Behold a pale horse ready to play. It’s a free show and it’s going to be an amazing night, I’m just a bit worried about following not just one but three of the best bands around. If nothing else though we’re a band who like challenges and want to get out and play with the best around; but part of me wishes I could stand at the back and watch the other three bands’.
With a new name, the promise of new material, and a (partial) change in sound to look forward to; 2020 could well be the year for a band clearly in a quest to never stay the same.