JOOLS - Live 2025

To experience Jools at their most chaotic and unpredictable, the band was once told, is to not know whether you're about to be kicked in the face or kissed on the cheek. But even that is an understatement. Jools' punk rock is simultaneously fierce and violent, cathartic and confrontational, and the next moment jubilant and exhilarating. The band plays with this duality, which gives their music tension and originality. Mitch Gordon and Kate Price (vocals), Chris Johnston and Callum Connachie (guitar), Joe Dodd (bass) and Chelsea Wrones (drums) came together in 2023 by chance rather than design. Together, they serve as a creative repository for inspirations ranging from the punk and post-punk of The Smiths, Fontaines DC, Iggy Pop, Amyl & The Sniffers and PJ Harvey to the shoegaze of My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive to metal, rap and pop, incorporating these influences into their music as wild compositions.

"Our music has an unconventional nature that builds an intensity and tension and an atmosphere that is unique to Jools," Gordon says of the band's layered sound, from which his and Price's mostly spoken vocals burst forth. "The combination of all these sounds is in some ways deliberately counter-intuitive, so Jools doesn't allow himself to be pigeonholed into conventional genres. I'm proud when people tell me that they find it hard to categorize our band. We are simply Jools." This ethos runs through all facets of the band. If their music is often confrontational, sometimes funny and always loud, Jools' fashion is equally so, an embodiment of their spirit and message. "For us, the freedom with which the band dresses means reinforcing the ideal that people can live their lives carefree and without prejudice," says singer Kate Price. "Rock'n'roll and fashion have always gone hand in hand, and we are very inspired by the pioneers who came before us and the theatricality of their shows. Fashion gives us the freedom to reinvent ourselves in any way we can and constantly question reasons for who and what Jools is."

Jools' world is a space in which this evolution can flourish. It's there on stage, and it's in your headphones. Jools is a freedom of sound and a freedom of self, an unfiltered expression of and a search for truth, expressed with indelible outrage. Be it a punch in the face or a kiss on the cheek, Jools is always up for a surprise.