In a cute little café in Hackney I meet the band New Rules. Alec, Nathan and Ryan, all members of boy band who are taking the country and internet by storm. They are bubbly and keep laughing at Alec, who got the smallest coffee in the world. It looks like tea at the borrowers. We talk food, music and nostalgia.

How has the journey been? What has the experience been like?

Alec: It’s been a roller coaster, a few tours and a pandemic and a couple houses. It’s been a wild ride, but we’ve definitely enjoyed it.

Ryan: For this next sort of phase now coming out of the pandemic. We just can’t wait to go out and we’ve got new music coming and we can’t wait to go and play that for as many people.

Your recent track Cheers is a wonderful, summery song full of nostalgia. Did you tap into any nostalgia yourselves when you were writing? What was the process with that?

Nathan: I mean every song we write it’s got some kind element of truth about at least something that one of us has kind of gone through or is going through. Cheers was…the whole process of essentially going through a breakup and coming out the other side and being like, I’m better for it. I’m kind of a better person for it. And I’ve kind of taken look stuff.

Ryan: I mean I picture somewhere else. I used to go down the Irish countryside every summer. That’s kind of what I picture. I’m sure you have your places that you think of you when you hear that song.

Nathan: There’s a lot of Red Stripes. We mentioned Red Stripes in the song. And when we sent it out to people, people were going, “Do you sing Red Stripe in this chorus?” We’re like, yeah, if you’ve never had a Red Stripe, they’re great.

Ryan: It’s like, we sing ‘sweaters and Red Stripes’, it’s like are the Red Stripes on the jumper or are you drinking Red Stripes? It’s like, who knows?

Alec: We like to be elusive.

What’s something that each of you particularly miss from the past?

Ryan: We had a weekend after our last show in Dublin, in the Olympia theatre, which was a dream venue to play, so far anyway. We had a weekend to kind of go and enjoy ourselves. So I took boys to some of my favourite places in Dublin. There’s this pub where I used to play live music and I took the lad there and it was amazing. Alec loved it in particular.

Alec: I did, it was on my birthday.

Ryan: Actually, they got us up to play a song as well. We tried to bring a bit of that energy to our live shows. It’s kind of like a little bit, little bit buskery sometimes we do like, acoustic guitar. I think we miss that and try and bring it back all the time.

Nathan: Well there’s this really kind of sweaty underground club in the town where I grew up. And it’s called the Basement because it’s in a basement. And it’s terrible.

It’s a creative name though.

Nathan: I missed that because I think it’s shut down. I think the pandemic closed it down.

Ryan: That’s where our indie roots kind of come from.

Nathan: It was, they’re basically like a club that only plays like, every like cheesy indie song you ever heard in your life. And I miss it.

Ryan: Nathan’s our designated indie boy.

Nathan: Indie soft-boy.

Alec: I’m quite lucky. I go home as much as I can, but I miss it. I grew up with a lot of dogs, seven, and I miss them.

Seven dogs?

Alec: Yeah. It’s not a place, but it’s a feeling. I miss them because sometimes they forget about me if I’ve been gone too long. That’s quite, sad.

Ryan: Alec’s a family man.

Alec: It’s true.

Ryan: Dogs. Homemade food. It’s best going up to Alec’s house.

Alec: It’s good fun. You will get force fed until you’re going to pop.

Your new single, Go The Distance it’s peppy and bright? What inspired you to write it? What is the story behind that song?

Alec: I mean we wrote that song with some mates of ours, just on the other side of the pandemic. And obviously it’s about kind of going the distance in a relationship, and no matter how far away someone it’s from you that, your love is still there for them until the next time you see them. I mean, don’t want to say it’s a pandemic song definitely because…

Nathan: There’s been a lot of those.

Alec: But I mean whenever we’re away from the people we care about, if it’s touring, if it’s because we’re on lockdown, whatever, it’s like, making sure that the ones we love know we love them no matter the distance.

Ryan: There’s kind of always been a reason that we’ve been away from people, whether it’s away from each other during like the start of the pandemic; we all went home to our family homes. And then also when the three of us are touring which is before the pandemic that was like all the time. We’re always kind of like going the distance.

Alec: Going the distance with people.

Ryan: We also love Hercules.

You say you’re obsessed with pasta, hence the song, are you stir in sauce people? Or are you a full meal cooking…?

Ryan: Scratch.

Alec: Scratch. Fresh sauce, man. We don’t play around in the New Rules house.

Ryan: We used to play around. Now we don’t play

Nathan: We don’t play around.

Ryan: We’ve gotten very into our food lately.

Alec: And cooking. That’s true. We start using blenders in cooking.

Ryan: That’s a hack for the sauce; put it in a food processor. It’s good.

Perfect. What is next for the band New Rules? Are you going to move into other carbohydrates or do you have a debut album on the horizon?

Alec: Well, we never rule out other carbohydrates. Hopefully this year we’ll be touring a lot more and we’re definitely going to be releasing a lot of music. A lot of music in the pipeline, which we’re excited to share with everyone.

Nathan: There’s a lot more music coming we’ve been writing the whole time through pandemic. So we are basically sitting on a lot of music that we’ve been dying to just finish and get out now. So that’s going to be coming soon.

New Rules debut mixtape ‘Go The Distance‘ out June 3^rd’ . Follow them on Instagram @newrulesband. 

IMAGES: Edge Publicity