Born over a shared love of classic songwriting – from John Cale, Harry Nilsson to Randy Newman and Todd Rundgren – The Vaccines frontman Justin Young and bandmate Timothy Lanham found themselves writing together for the first time on the band’s top 5 album Combat Sports, released in 2018. Nurturing a new sense of freedom outside of The Vaccines powerhouse and quickly realising they were able to strike a different tone, the pair took themselves to Paris where they began writing proper. Cut to March 2019 and the pair are in Oakland, California recording with Luke Temple (Here We Go Magic, Adrianne Lenker), the first body of work from Halloweens.

Speaking about Halloweens Justin Young said, “the record came from a period of writing without consequence or compromise where the only requisite was ‘do we love this?’. Being able to write and record a record that nobody expects is an incredibly empowering and exciting process, free from the fog of ambition or fear”

Applying classic songwriting to a more technicolour production, Halloweens find themselves flirting with the idea that with every generation we become slightly more enlightened, but at the same time, slightly more entitled. Blurring themes of the old empires of Rome, Greece and Egypt with modern day decadence Halloweens arrive on a wave of curiosity, asking the questions, are decadence and decline intertwined and is history really repeating itself?