Brighton formed trio Dream Wife return this week with brand new record 'Social Lubrication'.

Their live sound is an incredible force and one they have tried to capture in a studio, and this time around it feels almost exact.

We caught up with the band to discuss festival season, their upcoming headline dates and much more.

Your new record ‘Social Lubrication’ is out this week – is it starting to feel nervy or are you quite calm about it?

It is very exciting, but I am just surprised it's actually happening! I'm hyped to have it out in the world, and for people to hear it. We are in this weird limbo period where it would be nice for it to already be set free!

You produced it yourself – does that add more pressure to the creative process, or does it offer more freedom?

Alice - our guitarist - produced the album, which was amazing! Our main goal was to sound as close to our live show as possible and it was exciting to record everything in the same space together. We could really feel a rawness that we hadn’t managed to get on an album so far, so having it back in our control definitely helped with that because who knows our sound better than ourselves? It is so easy to play around in a studio and have a beautifully polished sound, but we had so much fun stepping away from ‘perfection’ and stripping it back to a punk kind of set up.

You released ‘IRL (Live in London)’ a couple of years ago – did you struggle to mix that recording without losing the ‘live’ feeling?

That live record was strange, because our sound engineer recorded just because he likes to record shows and mix them afterwards. He recorded that show in January 2020 and we started it by saying “this is our first show of the year”, then it ended up being our only show of the year. We thought it’d be fun to release it as a live album – but we didn’t really plan on releasing a live record until we realised that the recordings were mixed and ready waiting.

Is it difficult to keep things completely unscripted when playing a show, or does the chemistry come naturally when you step on stage?

There are definitely rehearsals, but it is wonderful when we play the new songs and they start to create their own lives on stage. You never really know what is going to happen on stage, but we’re always determined to put on a great show because of the gratitude we have for the fans that come out. We don’t take anything for granted so the chemistry you see on stage whether it is for 30 minutes or an hour is a completely authentic version of us having the best time. There's something so magical about live shows that I've never seen replicated in any other form of group activity!

You have a few festivals lined up this summer, including Deer Shed – where previously you’ve finished your set and spoke to fans of all ages. How important is that fan interaction for Dream Wife?

It is so important to be present, and we’re always grateful to be in a position where we can play shows and meet the audience. I think Deer Shed was the first time we played to a family audience so we had to change some of the lyrics on the spot –“I spy with my little eye, bad witches” for example – and it was wonderful to look out and see so many kids on shoulders. It is important for us that after our shows we talk to anyone that is hanging around. At Deer Shed we were talking to some five year olds, so it is really cool that they’re part of the Dream Wife community now.

Alongside festivals you've got the headline tour – now you’re onto your third record does it become difficult to curate a setlist?

We started doing festivals a few weeks ago and it was quite a shock to only be playing 30 minute sets because we wanted to play so many songs. We’re really looking forward to playing headline shows because they’re obviously longer and we can fit more in there. We especially want to play to new songs and it has been beautiful seeing the audience already embracing the new material. At our first festival show of the season in Cardiff we could see people mouthing along to ‘Who Do You Wanna Be’ which is really impressive.

If anyone is still on the fence about coming out to a Dream Wife show later in the year, what advice would you give them?

Please join us! You won't regret it. We’re going to have so much fun playing the live shows. We are a live band and that’s where we’ve cut our teeth – we always joke about the only reason we go into the studio is to write music so we can be on tour, but really the UK has an amazing music scene and we can’t wait to revisit some of our favourite venues!