Dutch Uncles

Dutch Uncles fuse indie and electro-pop with an arty edge, thanks to their detailed melodies, off-kilter time signatures, and the yelping vocals of Duncan Wallis. Their influences range widely from Steve Reich to XTC, and the group emerged amid a late-2000s cluster of Manchester-area artists intent on showing the local scene offered more than laddish rock outfits such as Oasis. The band demonstrated this breadth on their self-titled debut album from 2008, which moved through post-punk, indie disco, and Baroque pop while signaling their larger goals. Over subsequent releases they continued to broaden and polish their approach, highlighting chamber-pop tendencies on the 2013 album Out of Touch, In the Wild and shifting back toward raw rock on the politically charged Big Balloon in 2017. Their 2023 return via the deceptively smooth synth-pop of True Entertainment confirmed that their commitment to forward momentum remained undiminished.

Duncan Wallis on vocals and piano, guitarists Pete Broadhead and Daniel Spedding, bassist Robin Richards, and drummer Andy Proudfoot first played together during college under the name Headlines. They adopted the Dutch Uncles moniker in April 2008, and their inaugural performance under the new name was recorded by the local station Channel M. A copy of that show reached Tapete Records, which signed the group and sent them to Cloud Hill Studios inside a Hamburg warehouse. Their debut single, “Face In,” surfaced late in 2008, several months ahead of the self-titled album that October; the record’s agile sound earned positive notices and drew parallels to the Futureheads and Vampire Weekend.

In 2010 the band issued the single “Ink” on the Love & Disaster label before moving to Memphis Industries, which put out their second album, Cadenza, in April of the following year. After appearing at Bestival and Latitude in 2011 and supporting Wild Beasts across Europe and the U.K., they began work on a third album. The 2012 single “Fester” previewed the more refined, streamlined sound of Out of Touch, In the Wild, a collection of songs about addiction that arrived in early 2013. The group then toured Europe with Paramore.

Dutch Uncles resurfaced in 2015 with O Shudder, songs centered on a “twentysomething everyman” that drew from the Blue Nile, Prefab Sprout, and Igor Stravinsky while blending classical and rock instrumentation. Spedding departed shortly after the album’s release, and the remaining members turned to their fifth record. Shaped by their tour with Garbage as well as David Bowie’s Low and Kate Bush’s The Red Shoes, the February 2017 release Big Balloon addressed politics and corruption with some of the band’s loudest and fastest material to date. Later that year Robin Richards served as artist in residence at Gefail Yr Ynys, a forge in North Wales, where he wrote several pieces; he also composed works such as 2018’s Rebellion and 2019’s From the Crowd, and released his debut solo EP, Castel, which featured some of the residency pieces.

By 2022 Dutch Uncles were completing their sixth album. True Entertainment arrived in March 2023, taking cues from Yellow Magic Orchestra, Roxy Music, and the Blue Nile for its pointed yet playful reflections on the nature of success.