Brighton’s own forest-dwelling, fiddle-wielding, feminist folk-punk witches The New Eves are back with ‘Highway Man’, and it’s a thunderclap of a single that rewrites the rules, the rhythm, and the romance.
Where Alfred Noyes gave us doomed damsels and dashing bandits, The New Eves rip up the script and scrawl something far more feral and furious in its place. Forget the passive, pretty corpse at the window – this is her story now. There’s blood on the boots, dirt under the nails, and one hell of a guitar solo tearing through the trees like a banshee on a mission.
Nina Winder-Lind’s urgent vocal delivery carries the weight of every wronged woman across the centuries, while Ella Oona Russell’s drums gallop like hooves across moorland. Violet Farrer’s guitar howls, screeches and snarls – less “solo” and more spell-casting exorcism. And Kate Mager’s bass thrums like the heartbeat of something ancient waking up and choosing vengeance. Think Patti Smith meets Vashti Bunyan, but they’ve both just come back from summoning storms in the woods.
The song pulses with a strange, ritualistic energy – part krautrock stomp, part English folk séance – and the production is deliciously untamed, allowing space for every shriek, shimmer, and percussive stomp to breathe and burn. It’s theatrical and primal, like a folk horror soundtrack rewritten by four riot grrrls who’ve read a lot of Angela Carter.
And the video? A dreamscape of dark myth and surrealist beauty. Not your average band-in-a-room job – more like a feminist fairytale acid trip.
With their signing to Transgressive Records and a string of festival dates incoming (Great Escape, Dot to Dot, End of the Road…), The New Eves are clearly ready to cast their spell far and wide. This is a band who don’t just play music – they conjure it, with twigs in their hair and fury in their hearts.
Catch them live if you can. Bring your coven. Leave your corset at home.