A Chat with The Bitter Lemons (08.09.2026)
Blending rockabilly, garage rock, punk and R&B with sharp modern songwriting, The Bitter Lemons have unleashed their sound through their debut album Peel A Little Deeper. Across 12 tracks, the band looks at topics such as identity, self-destruction, mental health, misogyny and regret to the tune of murder ballads, rock escapism and dark humour. We had the chance to chat with Hayley and Richie from the band to find out more about the album, their sound, creative processes and much more!
OSR: As a band, you bring elements of garage rock, punk and rhythm & blues to modern sensibilities, but how did you start making music together?
Richie: The band originally came together in 2020 after Hayley and our original drummer were essentially dared to form a band for International Women’s Day, just before lockdown happened. Dave, who’s been a long-time collaborator and best friend of mine, and I backed them for that first gig.
A couple of years later, the band restarted properly, although at that point we were still finding out what we actually wanted to sound like. When Dave eventually came back into the band, his blues background really helped shape things. He’s heavily influenced by players like Rory Gallagher and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and that brought a much stronger blues element into what we were doing.
That mixed with our love of rock ’n’ roll, garage, punk and bands like Hot Boogie Chillun and Nick Curran, and the identity started becoming much clearer. Then Michelle joined us on drums last year and really took everything up another level. She gave us that solid foundation that helped turn it into the sound we have now.
Hayley: When I first envisaged the band and what it would sound like, I saw it being very much in the vein of the rockabilly and R&B women I admired: people like Janis Martin, Connie Francis, Wanda Jackson and Ruth Brown.
That first International Women’s Day gig was definitely a reflection of that. We covered each of those artists and had a much smoother, almost bubblegum kind of sound.
As I’ve grown in confidence, though, and we’ve settled into who we are as a band, we’ve become much rougher and edgier. I think it takes confidence and boldness to shrug off the tropes of very pigeonholed genres and present something that feels uniquely you.
OSR: You’ve recently released your debut album Peel A Little Deeper, which is a 12-track collection that was built around the idea that things are usually not as perfect as they look. What was the driving force behind the theme of the album?
Richie: A lot of the concept is about appearances versus what’s underneath them.
The artwork probably makes that clearest. At first glance you’ve got this idealised 1950s image: the picket fence, the picnic, the pin-up dress. But when you look closer, things are slightly wrong. Hayley’s wearing Dr. Martens, reading a book about misogyny, the picnic is messy and there are stains on the washing. It’s that idea of vintage style, not vintage values.
We love a lot of the imagery and music associated with that era, but some of the attitudes from that period, and sometimes within the modern scene around it, are things we absolutely don’t subscribe to.
Musically, it works the same way. We might initially look like we fit into a rockabilly, psychobilly or garage-rock box, but when you actually listen to the record, it goes in a lot of different directions.
Lyrically, I’m the main songwriter and I tend to write truths. Sometimes they’re mine, sometimes they belong to people around me, but the idea is often the same: the perfect relationship, person or life doesn’t really exist. You have to peel underneath the surface.
Hayley: For me personally, the album was an opportunity to reflect what it is to be a loud and opinionated woman within a music scene that can sometimes romanticise eras that weren’t necessarily aligned with how I view a woman’s role in the world.
That’s particularly prevalent in ‘Expectations’, where I call out the contradictions, biases and expectations I feel are placed on women.
The title ‘Peel A Little Deeper’ is also a logical follow-on from our EP Zest and Rind. Zest and Rind was the sharp, flavourful edge, giving people a taste of our revived sound. Peel A Little Deeper invites you to experience the whole fruit.
OSR: The album was recorded over a year, do you find that the length of the recording time impacted the overall style and sound?
Richie: Absolutely. We first recorded in October 2025, then went back in April and again in June, so the band had changed quite a lot during that period.
Michelle was still relatively new to the band during those first sessions, and over the following months we played a lot of shows together. That naturally tightened us up and helped define the sound.
Some songs actually changed quite noticeably. ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’, for example, was originally recorded in a different form. We later slowed it down and added more space into the arrangement, and it became much stronger.
Between the recording sessions, we were playing in places like Barcelona, York and Leeds, as well as touring with Hillbilly Moon Explosion. Those gigs gave us the chance to road-test songs and develop them before going back into the studio.
So although the record still feels like one complete piece, you can hear a band becoming more confident as it progresses.
OSR: There are a lot of topics covered in the tracks of the album from self-destruction to misogyny, regret and identity. Are there any personal stories that you drew on for the tracks?
Richie: There’s a lot of personal material in there, although I deliberately don’t explain every song completely because I think listeners should be able to bring their own meaning to them.
‘Rebel Cry’ is one example where our lives and beliefs are very directly involved. Both Hayley and I have felt uncomfortable with some of the entrenched misogyny and racism that can exist within certain parts of the rockabilly and psychobilly scenes.
There’s a lyric about “breaking through glass ceilings everywhere I go”, and Hayley is an archaeologist who has built a career in a male-dominated industry. That lyric was absolutely informed by watching her do that.
‘Toxic Waste’ is much more internal. I’ve struggled with that voice in your head telling you that you’re not good enough, and with imposter syndrome and self-destructive thinking. I turned that into a kind of murder ballad about a lover who won’t leave you alone. The idea is that sometimes nobody is capable of being quite as cruel to you as you are to yourself.
There are plenty of other personal references and in-jokes buried across the record, but some are probably better left for people to discover.
Hayley: Richie is really good at taking anecdotal stories I’ve told him over our decade as a couple, or even just passing comments I’ve made, and turning them into funny, dramatised stories or one-line song hooks.
‘Catfish’ comes from a small-town anecdote, ‘Give Me The Keys’ grew out of something I’d said about creating opportunities for women in music, and ‘Big Name On Campus’ draws on failed high-school romance. It goes on and on. There are little pieces of our lives all over the record.
OSR: You are known for a fiery energy when it comes to live shows, do you feel this has been captured by the tracks of the album?
Richie: Yeah, definitely, and that was really important to us.
Our earlier recordings were mainly about getting music out into the world. I don’t think they completely captured what the band actually sounded like onstage.
With this album, we wanted that grit and live energy. Not messy in the sense of badly played, but that feeling of a band pushing against each other and making something slightly dangerous.
That was one of the reasons we went to Chris Wilson at Stourbridge Studios. Friends of ours in Kings of Hong Kong had recorded with him and their records had exactly that live energy we were looking for. Chris understood what we meant straight away and gave us that in spades.
Hayley: Live, I like to lean into my love of burlesque and bring a raunchy but tongue-in-cheek stage persona.
Trying to reflect that when you lose the visual element and only have the audio to work with is something I’ve really worked on. I wanted some of that attitude and theatricality to come through in the vocal performances on the record too.
OSR: What was the creative process for the album?
Richie: Most songs start with me. I’ll usually come up with a melody and lyrics, then find a bassline underneath them.
I’ll often record little ideas as voice notes so I don’t lose them. There’s probably something useful in the fact that the melody has to stay in my head long enough for me to remember it. Maybe that helps explain why we tend to end up with quite memorable choruses.
From there I’ll take the idea to Dave or the band. Dave and I have been playing together in different bands for around 20 years, so there’s a pretty natural shorthand between us. He’ll flesh the song out harmonically and add the guitar parts, then the drums and the rest of the arrangement develop around it.
So the initial spark usually comes from me, but it becomes a Bitter Lemons song once everybody gets their hands on it.
Hayley: Often I’ll take lyrics Richie has written and edit them quite heavily, taking something that might be longer and more prose-like and turning it into simpler statements, purely so I can actually get the bloody words out!
We’ll also play around with the key and musicality afterwards. Richie and I have very different vocal ranges and comfort zones, so there can be quite a bit of refinement before something sits exactly where it needs to.
OSR: There are a lot of genres that have been picked apart and melded to form your sound, but do you find certain styles of music easier to work in?
Richie: Dave and I probably have our deepest roots in blues, although I bring a strong punk mentality into the songwriting as well.
I’ve never formally learned a songwriting process and I’m actually quite happy about that. Sometimes I think if you look too far behind the curtain you can ruin the magic. I’d rather follow an instinct than worry whether something is theoretically correct.
Hayley comes much more from a rockabilly direction, and Michelle has that background too. So when those different influences collide, you naturally get something that can move between blues, rock ’n’ roll, garage, punk and psychobilly.
That fusion is probably more important to our sound than any one genre.
Hayley: Because my influences are much deeper in rockabilly, I naturally hear things that Richie or Dave perhaps don’t. Often it’s just about adding a little more bounce or danceability to something.
For example, with ‘Rebel Cry’ I hear it as a “stroller”. As someone who’s a keen dancer, I’m listening to the song with a slightly different ear to the guys, and I think those different perspectives help shape what we become collectively.
OSR: You’ve honed the tracks of the album live at shows in Barcelona, the UK and New York, but what is your most memorable live performance?
Richie: New York was incredibly surreal.
We’d spent about a year looking forward to it, went through a line-up change during that period and had all the logistics of actually getting the band over there. Then we finally arrived at Otto’s Shrunken Head and the response was incredible.
It was probably one of the most attentive audiences we’ve ever played to. You could see people really listening to every part of the songs in this packed room thousands of miles from home, which was a strange and brilliant feeling.
The five dates we played with Hillbilly Moon Explosion also stand out for a different reason. They’re a band we really admire because they’ve written their own rulebook and don’t seem particularly interested in fitting neatly into one genre.
Those gigs were also formative for the album because songs like ‘Toxic Waste’ and ‘Expectations’ were being played live for the first time during that run. The songs were already written, but that tour helped us work out how they actually lived onstage.
Hayley: The Hillbilly Moon Explosion tour was a real game changer for us. It was so cool to tour at a completely different scale, playing new cities to new people. We even had people come and see us twice during the tour purely because they’d enjoyed us the first time, which was wild!
Aside from that, our album launch with The Deltas was incredible. It felt like a real homecoming, almost like returning grown-up, with a new makeover and fully striding into our confidence as a band.
OSR: If people could listen to only one track from the album, which would you recommend?
Richie: That’s horrible because as the songwriter they’re all your babies.
But if somebody said I had to choose one song that summed up what I wanted the album to sound like, I’d probably controversially pick ‘Give Me The Keys’.
It has so many of the things I wanted from this record: the driving riff, the rawness, the powerhouse vocal and that feeling of a band really pushing forward.
Ask me again tomorrow and I might give you a completely different answer, though.
Hayley: For me it’s ‘Expectations’. The themes, the fun vibe, the fact that every instrument gets a chance to shine individually and collectively. It’s a bop!
OSR: What can we expect from you in the future?
Richie: In the immediate future, we’ve got shows with The Meteors in September, Satan’s Lair Festival in October and another show before the end of the year.
Beyond that, I think 2027 is about expanding what we’ve already started.
We’ve made a dent in the psychobilly scene and that community has been incredibly receptive to us, but because our music crosses several genres, there are a lot of other audiences we want to reach too.
We’ve got plans and conversations happening around playing further afield, including internationally, although not everything is ready to announce yet.
Creatively, I want to continue challenging things with a smile. I’ve already got more songs starting to form and I don’t ever want us to make twelve versions of the same track. I want each record to have different kinds of songs on it.
Ultimately, we want to play this music to as many people in as many places as possible. Full-time jobs and musician wages may occasionally have other ideas, but that’s the ambition.
Many thanks to Richie and Hayley for speaking with us. Find out more about The Bitter Lemons on their Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Spotify.
This artist was discovered via Musosoup #sustainablecurator
