Sing & Tell :: Property

Credit: Eleonora Collini

The snap, crackle and punk pop of London quartet Property comes together on latest single 'Adult Cereals', released on September 19.


Who are you?

I'm Morgan Hewitt, the lead vocals. Then there's Josh ‘Jags’ Holliday who plays bass, Michael ‘Woody’ Woods provides guitar and backing vocals and Ryan Grieve is the drummer. Collectively, we form Property.

Tell us something about yourself and how you came to be where you are today. 

Much like Dick Whittington, I found myself drawn to London from a provincial town called Norwich, complete with my hopes and dreams in a little satchel casually tossed over my shoulder with all the naivety of a newborn lamb in the spring sunshine. Unfortunately, the brigands and vagabonds of London did me over and left me a jaded and angry sort, so for a few years I pottered around after university working menial jobs being glum, until I reinvigorated my friendship with Woody from our halcyon Norwich times (both going to the same punk-rock gigs) and realised we both sort of had this DIY spirit wanting to eke out of us. So we decided to sit in a cold room in Stoke Newington, crafting some workings of songs at the tail end of 2015 with the full and immediate intention to unleash them upon the public.

Things took a turn for the worse somewhere in 2016: personal dealings took their toll, and we soon realised it would be better to get in some other musicians to fill out the sound as the songs would benefit from this – bass and drums produced on a laptop didn’t sound as full and wouldn’t translate as well in a live setting, which segues into how we met Jags and Ryan. Jags was a dynamite scribe who realised his writing about live music and so on was not fulfilling his urge to play music in a band again. In early 2017, his previous band having hit the skids, Jags was also feeling a little bit down on his luck and after kicking around the streets of West Kensington for a few months (keying Land Rovers and upturning bins), he suddenly noticed a call to arms sitting in his Facebook Messenger inbox from Woody (their acquaintance bonding during/ in and around the great Indie Band Famine of ’10) and heeded the call for a bass player provocateur.

Ryan’s story is less easy to translate; he, as drummer, had found himself on the wrong side of the Atlantic – being as he is from Canada – and not for the first time in his life. Ryan broke into Property during the summer of 2017 after losing his mind in a time/ space accident – initially, after attempts to approach him earlier in the year through his girlfriend working with Woody, Ryan finally succumbed to his ‘drumming arm’ (I am told this affects a mere 1 in 10 drummers) which refused to give up the paradiddling. This, despite his best efforts to attempt to work a 9-to-5.

Give us an idea of your musical style and influences.

Lyrically, I am influenced by whatever’s around me. Once you take the rose-tinted specs off, it’s not so easy to put them back on again. Musically, influences include: Wipers, John Reis, Wire, The Smiths, Justin Beck, Norwich Ferryboat, Fist City, Canada, Kilburn poor lads. It all comes together as a harder version of the post-punk formally of the 80s.

Explain the production and writing process behind your songs.

Woody considers an idea, wipes the floor with a clean cloth, finds his spot, picks up his guitar, juggles the sound around, records it into his phone, sends to a social media group, and we listen. We then flesh it out in the practice space. Sometimes it takes me months to form the lyrics and vocal melodies, and sometimes it’s instant. If it’s instant, I thank the gods of rock ’n’ roll.

Tell us a little about your new single.

The single is called 'Adult Cereals', its title taken from supermarket aisle wordings of wares meant for adults. It’s about the luxury idylls of military drone ‘pilots’ on a summertime camp; think the Apocalypse Now scene in which the Willard and the crew come across the cabaret act on the river. The horror...



Can we catch up with you at any forthcoming live shows?

Yes we have a show with Mur Man at the Sebright Arms on November 19th. There’s a likelihood we’ll be playing before that too, subject to booking.

How's the rest of the year looking, plans-wise?

See above, but we are also waiting on the mastering of another new single which we have recently recorded. To be released in due course... excited..? Of course you are.

Where can we hear more of your music?

The single, along with all future releases, will feature on SoundCloud and Bandcamp.

What social media platforms can we find you on? 

The usual suspects, so:
Facebook // Instagram // Twitter