Now that the successful Lush reunion has filled all its duties and obligations, it was perhaps unlikely that Miki Berenyi would resurface with something new. But a few weeks ago she teased a freshly-formed band called Piroshka, a guitar-pop supergroup enlisting the talents of KJ “Moose” McKillop (Moose), Mick Conroy (Modern English), and Justin Welch (Elastica), and today (November 7) we have music in the shape of blissful new single “Everlastingly Yours.”
There’s a real ’90s-kissed gaze-pop beauty in the calm but confidently searing track, and it suggests a whole bout of greatness to be found in Piroshka’s debut album Brickbat. That arrives February 15 via Bella Union.
“We didn’t want Piroshka to sound anything like any of our old bands,” says Conroy. “When Miki sings, you can’t get away from Lush, but for me, we sound like four people exploring and having fun, knuckling ideas into shape, trying to make them sound new and different.”
Though its entirely its own thing, Piroshka was inevitably born out of the recent re-boot of Lush. For that reunion, Welch filled in on drums (original drummer Chris Acland died in 1996), and Conroy joined the band as bassist at the very end, replacing the sudden, last-minute departure of Phil King. The final Lush show, presumably ever, went down in Manchester in November 2016. From there, the seeds of Piroshka were already planted.
“After the Manchester show, Justin asked if I’d be up for something else,” Berenyi says. “But I’d never made music outside of Lush, and I’ve never wanted to do anything solo. I have trouble with self-belief, I need someone else to motivate me, and in this case, it was Justin. He sent drum tracks with guitar parts and odd words, so I wrote some vocals and lyrics… When Mick added bass, it sounded great. When Moose added guitar and keyboards — I’d never written like that before, it was such good fun.”
Featured photo by Neil Stewart.
