Bristol’s JUMBO deliver a tantalisingly wonky indie-pop debut on “Platypus / Witch”

Remember those long, hazy summer evenings spent lounging around a campfire with your best friends? JUMBO have bottled that feeling, popped a couple of choruses on top of it, and shared it with the world in the form of their instantaneous double A-side, “Platypus / Witch”.

The duo’s knack for a straightforward pop chorus is evident – by their own admission, the project was born out of Sherrin and Eagle's “messing around with very poppy songs" – so it should come as no surprise that the raw, organic sound of “Platypus / Witch” is at the very heart of JUMBO’s origin.

“We used to spend a lot of long and silly evenings treating my neighbours and housemates to obnoxiously loud musical offerings”, explains Sherrin. “We came up with and recorded most of ''Platypus' in one night, and then finished it off over lockdown by sending each other vocal/instrument parts to add to it. Kane then recorded 'Witch' at home and sent the files over to me to arrange/mix/add more vocals to. Since doing these two we decided to make a fresh project out of it and have since got a bunch of songs in the works which we plan to drop out in twos.”

“Platypus” pairs a woozy, reverberated guitar riff with a classic pop melody that Ray Davies would be proud to call his own, while the effortlessly infectious “Witch” sets its inherent charm against the kind of cloudy, lo-fi production style that Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker has spent the last few years thrusting into the spotlight.