All fired up to paint town red

Photo: ALEX WAUDBY

EXCITING times ahead for Paintbox Fires.

PAINTBOX Fires are a hungry young band determined to make a big impact - sooner rather than later.

The four-piece outfit — singer Roxy Mawdsley, drummer Will Brooks, guitarist Alex Goodall and bassist Jake Higginbotham — describe their sound as “straight up rock with a twist” and many punters will agree after hearing “Ghosts”, a downloadable original track on SoundCloud.

Recorded at Studio Studio in Whitworth alongside “Cordelia”, “Lies And Laws” and “Yours To Find”, the tunes are piercing and at times delightful, with Roxy’s powerful voice truly hitting the mark in much the same vein as Rita Faria’s in another great local outfit, Louie Louie.

Paintbox Fires have played some prestigious venues in barely 14 months together, with Manchester’s Academy 3, Ruby Lounge and Deaf Institute already among them, with more to come.

Guitar star Goodall said: “We’ll try and cram as many gigs in as we can because we don’t see why we should ever stop. We’re always ready to play.

“Certainly we’ll play a number of gigs before Christmas. We all love what we’re doing and hopefully we can make a career out of it. Being able to live off the thing we like doing most would be brilliant.

“Most of us are studying music at college. As far as 2016 goes, we’re hoping that will be the year we can get our first proper release out.”

Raucous rock outfits Foo Fighters, White Stripes, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin are among the iconic bands listed as Paintbox Fires’ chief influences, but there’s a twist to their sound too.

Brook said: “We all bring different elements. We’ve found we can create some weird sounds and hopefully people feel that’s a bit different. There’s a bit of everything in there, to be honest — from funk to rock and punk. It’s heavier than some, and that’s down to me: I like Black Sabbath!”

The four have taken a short break from gigging recently to concentrate on new material - and they now have some great new tunes to unleash on audiences.

Goodall added: “We’ve written a lot of new tunes - around six good new tracks are in the pipeline.

“We have dabbled with a few covers, including one of Florence and the Machines, a White Stripes one and one by Muse, but we are trying to focus on our own stuff. That’s really important nowadays.”



LISTEN to Simon Smedley’s exclusive audio interview here:

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