Track By Track: Willoughby Vine – Willoughby Vine

After reviewing Honey recently, we asked Willoughby Vine talk about their self-titled EP as part of our Track By Track feature. Thank you so much to band member Brad Willoughby for sharing this with us.  

They may describe their music as “whimsical shoegaze,” but their self-titled EP is deliciously serious. Comprising just three songs, it is nevertheless a complex work. Vocalist Ceren Aygün comes from the lineage of Brel and Cave, one where the story of the lyrics is brought to life and amplified by their performance.

And, to be fair, even though the EP isn’t in a visual medium, that’s where the best comparisons lie: films like L.A. Confidential, Mulholland Drive, and Chinatown. It’s full of colour, laden with drama, a soundtrack for events that seem small initially, but the band plays them wide and in Technicolor for the widest silver screen of all – your imagination.   

Blue Whispers

Blue Whispers was my first real attempt at songwriting, and the song developed over the course of a couple of years. While I will follow David Lynch’s lead of refraining from providing too much explanation, I wanted to bring something a bit fantastical into the shoegaze dream pop genre.

Outside of music, I’m a criminal defense attorney, and as a result the writing I do for work tends to be very straightforward and logical, so I wanted to chase something more surrealist in the lyrics. A couple of the musical inspirations for this song were Sonic Youth’s The Diamond Sea and Pink Floyd’s Burning Bridges.

Honey

Honey, the second track on the EP, was also the second song I wrote. I wanted to maintain some of the vibe of Blue Whispers while simultaneously taking it in a bit of a different direction. For me, this is the most melancholic of the three tracks. One of the perhaps unlikely musical inspirations for this song was Pink Floyd’s Seamus.

The Monster’s Drunken Lullaby

The last song, The Monster’s Drunken Lullaby, evolved from a chord progression that I’ve always found enchanting and haunting. Ceren, who breathed wondrous life into the lyrics and melodies across the whole EP, brought her Turkish background to the foreground here, shifting the song from English into Turkish near the end and elevating it to new heights.

Willoughby Vine was released on the 22nd of June, 2026, and is streaming on Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube – to find more about the band, connect with them on Instagram and TikTok.