Freshly Pressed – Alfie and the Avalon “Not Where I Belong”

Hailing from Huddersfield, UK, Alfie and the Avalon are a four-piece band creating anthemic indie rock. Their third and latest single, “Not Where I Belong” offers infectious mainstream appeal while staying true to their guitar-rock roots. We caught up with Alfie and the Avalon to chat about the single, their local music scene, and their experience self-producing the song.

From The Strait: Tell us about the new single, “Not Where I Belong”.

Alfie and The Avalon: This track was written on acoustic guitar by our lead singer Alfie during the global pandemic. Many of our songs started out this way and when restrictions were lifted Alfie had the idea to form the band and this is one of the first tunes that we arranged as a group.

FTS: The band members hail from Huddersfield – are there any local Huddersfield bands or artists that should be on everyone’s radar?

Alfie and The Avalon: Huddersfield is home to some great bands. In our opinion it is a pretty underrated music scene. A personal favourite band we’ve gigged with called ‘Quentin’ studied with us at University. They were the main support for our first headline show and they are great guys too. Check them out!

FTS: What are some of the band members’ non-musical hobbies?

Alfie and The Avalon: Hard to say really! We all spend a lot of time thinking about and making music in some way and we are lucky enough to have it incorporated into our ‘day jobs’. I wish I could say that one of us has a really obscure hobby but we don’t as yet!

FTS: The band produced this track themselves – what was that experience like?

Alfie and The Avalon: Producing the track by ourselves allowed us to really get the sound that we wanted. We have played the track live several times and we knew that we wanted to capture a certain live energy (drums and bass were recorded live) and use studio techniques and layers to really enhance the dynamics and emotive lyrics. Our good friend Josh Kime engineered the session and helped us get some great raw recordings which led to a great mix and master.

FTS: If you had any advice for new musicians, what would it be?

Alfie and The Avalon:  In terms of advice, we are still figuring out a lot as we go along but most of all, make music for the sheer enjoyment of it and write some songs you can be proud of.

Check out “Not Where I Belong”, the new single from Alfie and the Avalon!