“We’re just going to wake up on 1st January 2017 and see what happens,” smiles Tali Källström. Estrons could have easily laid out plans for the new year, after all, they’ve been offered tours, and there’s more than a hint of buzz around the band, but they’ve turned them all down. “We’re not planning anything; we want to make sure the right thing happens.”
You might raise an eyebrow and look at the band’s grand plan, or lack thereof, with a tilted head but the band has experience in the right thing. Their 2016 has been a lesson in just letting things happen. This time last year the band, “couldn’t have predicted SXSW would happen, we couldn’t have predicted Slaves would have walked past our set at Latitude and taken us out on their Back In The Van tour, we couldn’t have even predicted Latitude would happen.” Writing ‘I’m Not Your Girl’ was unpredictable, as was the creation of ‘Drop’. “It’s just us wanting to make sure the right moment comes at the right time. It’s all very up in the air, but we don’t have a secret master plan. That’s what keeps it exciting.”
Kickstarted by the release of ‘Make A Man’, the past twelve months have been non-stop “but in a good way,” for Estrons. They’ve had to make a lot of big decisions, “We’re pleased we didn’t do anything silly or drastic.” They’ve learnt a lot, they’ve toured a lot, and they’ve reached a lot. “The reaction to that song was a whirlwind of industry and hype. We just tried to stay grounded, so we didn’t get pulled up in all of it. We wanted to build a proper fanbase and do it the proper way. I was surprised in the beginning, and now I’m trying to do everything the right way. ‘People like our music. This is good, this is positive, let’s move forward’.”
There have been moments of doubt, back to back tours with Slaves and their own run saw the band pushed to their limits, but the amazing moments always outweigh the struggle. “Your job can’t be amazing all the time,” reasons Tali.
“There are loads of negative moments for bands when you start out; we were playing to three people who were all our mates. It’s crazy to think of where we’re at now. It’s easy to forget where you started because once you’ve got a taste for it, you want to keep working your way up.”
“You can see it slowly happening over time,” she continues. “We’ve still got a long way to go; we’re never under any false pretences of ‘we’re here now.’ We’re never too big for our boots. We’re still a young band, and we’re still working our way around the circuit.”
Despite being shiny and new, there’s a history to Estrons. “We’ve evolved a lot into what we are. We started out playing very different music, and I don’t know how this happened. One day I was messing around, and I wasn’t trying anymore, I stopped trying to write songs and just started being myself. With ‘Make A Man’ it was me being myself and joking around. The lyrics started off as a bit of a joke, and that transpired to mean a lot more. I wasn’t trying to force myself into being any particular type of person or performer, and it just happened.” Playing in countless bands, Tali finally reached the point where she stopped caring about putting up walls and being something she wasn’t. “It was that moment where I stopped caring where thing started to happen for us.”
Cementing that journey with the release of their ‘She’s Here Now’ EP, the second half of a sentence that their now hidden ‘Whoever She Was’ EP started, Estrons used those three tracks to talk about “the musical and personal journey we’ve been on, as corny as that sounds.”
The Fat Angel Sings 