The most striking thing that comes across when I talk to Millie Manders, of Millie Manders and The Shutup, is the absolutely crucial and continuous role of music in her life. The London band released their sophomore album Wake Up, Shut up, Work on 2 August 2024, and start touring in October. The record is full of powerful, energetic ska-infused punk rock, with Manders’ vocals leading the overdriven guitars, drums and horn section to explosive heights. Praised by Vive Le Rock magazine as the album that should “[elevate] the band from punk heroes to household names”, I sat down to talk with Millie Manders about all things Wake Up, Shut Up, Work.
The few weeks since the album was released have been chaotic in the most amazing way, she tells me as she describes the “mind-blowing” reception the record has released. Manders paints a picture of the close-knit and loving community that has developed around the band’s music, with many concert patrons becoming close friends of the band’s over the years: “I’ve always gone out to create community rather than that divided sense of artist and listener.”
Manders cites Pink as one of her top five vocal influences, as well as Aretha Franklin, Gwen Stefani and Dolores O’Riordan (of The Cranberries) – there are “all these strong, very different vocalists who have helped me shape my dexterity as a vocalist.” Further inspiration comes from Stand Atlantic, Skindred, Rage Against The Machine, Skunk Anansie and Scroobius Pip, “all very rock and hip-hop and in some ways ska”. Generally, “lots of spoken word and politicism have shaped my understanding of where I want to be in the music industry, and how I want to project my musical ability”. Manders comes from “a very eclectic base of musical knowledge”, having started out learning musical instruments aged five. She started out with classical jazz, old school R&B, and ragtime and these have shaped her musical preferences and style of writing.
I wanted to know how this meshes with the rest of the band – how have they created this distinct sound? Millie Manders and the Shutup have undergone several lineup changes over the years, and each iteration of band members has brought different influences with it. “I think it’s really important to write with lots of different musicians, I’ve always wanted my band to be part of that writing process.” Their first album, 2020’s Telling Truths, Breaking Ties, featured a different guitarist and drummer, but Manders and the group’s bassist, George, stayed on for the next. “George and I created that sound and the guitarist and drummer respected its ideology and brought their own influences and style, which developed the maturity of the sound…We’re all really eclectic musicians anyway,” she adds. Delving into other influences, she shares “Joe is much more of a pop punk and dramatic rock fan, George is massively into K-pop and has the biggest vinyl collection I’ve ever seen, so it’s hard to say which influences made it onto the album.” Millie Manders and The Shutup truly seem to be a melting pot of a million different influences, fusing together to create a unique sound.
“I think creating the record really pulled us together as a team and group of friends,” she says. George has been in the band for five years, Rebellion Festival in August was Pete’s second anniversary, and Joe started out as a session guitarist before taking a permanent place two and a half years ago. “You don’t form really strong friendships before you’ve been working together for at least a couple of years.” When I asked what the band’s dynamic was like while writing, Manders told me that they wrote the record while staying in different Airbnbs for a week at a time, and would be in that space together from 10am to 5pm everyday, with phones off, going on walks and socialising in the evenings and cooking and eating meals together. “It helped solidify our understanding of each other’s musical influences and how we liked to write, how we were going to fit those musical parts together.” That immersive experience also helped the group understand one another as people. “I think that’s been a massively important and integral part of how we work together now, it’s given a foundation of real love and respect for how we are individually and how we can look after each other on the road.” They plan to do the same for the next album as well. “No way we’re not going to use the same process! It was so important to be able to hash things out right in front of each other. If there was a bone of contention there would be four people in the room and it was majority rule.”
I also ask what excites her most for the upcoming tour. “Oh gosh, so much!” Manders speaks animatedly about the UK tour, beginning in October. “We’re playing some bigger venues, which is really scary but exciting that promoters and our team have that faith in us.” By October it’ll be four years since the last record came out. “We’ve got real ideas about how to improve the show, make it more fun.” There is also an exciting one-off show in London’s Camden Dingwalls on February 13th that will feature a full string trio and a horn section; every aspect of Wake Up, Shut Up, Work will be live for the night. “We really enjoy being out on the road, seeing friends, family, fans, getting to chat to people and find out what they connected to most. Again it comes back to being part of that musical community which will be really fun.” Ramona’s Tea Party are coming from Norway to open on the tour, and Manders describes them as “fun and vibrant, a blur of pink and blue and red and stripes and high kicks and spinning and jumping off of the stage and ADHD”. More personally, “they’re full of gratitude and fun and love, really lovely people to be around and absolutely amazing live.” Manders feels that if Ramona’s Tea Party had more of a following in the UK, they could easily swap roles and be supporting them instead. “I want people on tour with us who are going to excite the crowd as much, if not more, than us being on stage.”
The tracklist for the tour isn’t set yet, but Manders says that choosing will be a difficult task. The singles, “Can I Get Off”, “Angry Side” and “Rebound” are definite, and likely “Me Too” and “Fun Sponge” as well. She says that with the warm reception to the album, every track has been mentioned as someone’s favourite, which is “incredible, unexpected and wonderful.” “I feel very very lucky but it’s going to make choosing the setlist very hard!”
“I’ve not really ever done anything else!” Manders says when I ask what drives her to continue creating music. She’s done catering, bar work, management, other “real jobs”, but throughout her whole life “the one thing I’ve ever held onto is music, there’s not been anything else that’s given me passion and drive in the same way.” She says that poetry, lyricism and melodic intent are the only ways she’s ever been able to express her inner workings and emotional states. “I can’t not do it,” she says. “I can’t walk around on a day and not be making silly little lyric snippets or humming a tune into my phone and regurgitating it later.” Wake Up, Shut Up, Work may have just come out, but Manders says she is already collecting lyrical contenders for the next, “mostly subject matter that has pissed me off or made me really sad.”
I take this chance to dive into some specific songs from the record. First up is “Halloween” – I ask Millie Manders what advice she would give someone dealing with similar heartbreak. “Write a revenge song! It’s really cathartic,” she jokes. “Time does heal, and no matter how painful it is in the moment, any grief or funeral of a relationship, or a lifespan, or a friendship, all these things come to pass. While it may not go away, it does soften.” Next I ask about “Pressure”, which closes the album with an anxiety-inducing crescendo of sound that perfectly reflects the subject matter. “George had written this bassline that becomes a 7/4, weird time signature, and we really wanted to tap that onto the end of the song. It does throw the listener off even if they don’t understand that the time signature has changed, and gives it a jolty, seasick carousel feel.” She then decided to sing the chorus over it, because “it just about fits, but in a really weird way, which just jangles it further” and then “screaming” the refrain ‘Am I a disappointment? Am I a disappointment to you?’ as another layer. “There’s the feeling of hatred towards you being pushed back out and that anxiety where you want to scream and feel trapped.” She says she wanted people to think, “I kind of like this but I also want to run and hide,”and that it all just about fits together even though it “probably shouldn’t.” She is candid in her discussion of the role that music plays for her mental health. All of the band either are or have been on anxiety or depression medication, Manders tells me; her first support network on the road is her band. “For me to write about those sorts of things is cathartic, it helps me process what I’m going through and be introspective about why I’m going through it. “Pressure” and “Windows” both helped me with that.” She says the latter is also about “feeling like you’re nuts”. “Monster”, a song from her 2018 acoustic EP Upside Down, was written during a panic attack. “The first verse was while I was unable to move.” In addition to her band, “the fanbase is always absolutely amazing.” She’s had to stop shows before while having a panic attack onstage, and says she feels “very privileged” to have support networks at home and on the road.
“Threadbare”, towards the end of Wake Up, Shut Up, Work, deals with the struggle to afford heating and food in times of economic hardship; The Guardian states that 90% of surveyed UK musicians deal with the same thing. I ask Millie what changes she’d like to see in the music industry to help combat this and she says she isn’t sure that the music industry can change the current situation significantly. Lauding our EU counterpart, she says that some governments, such as Germany’s, have subsidised music venues to keep culture alive; here, however, it seems they “don’t want to see the importance of arts and culture” and have cut arts funding “over and over again”. Berlin’s culture budget for this year is £798 million, whereas the budget for the entirety of England – with eight times the population – is £458.5 million. Despite studies showing the importance of participating in music and its correlation with developing children’s spatial and temporal skills, cuts have continued to be made to arts education budgets in the UK. She critiques the dominion of Spotify and Apple Music over the record industry, and says that there is an “onus” on the government, as well as royalty-collecting subsidies like PRS and PPL, to force tech companies to give money back to artists and record companies. “Artists have to keep themselves above water and do everything they can to keep pushing forward, and it’s so important to keep paying it forward.” She feels there is a responsibility for artists such as herself, having attained some financial stability through music, to help out young musicians on the rise and offer knowledge to help the next generation of artists navigate “this very difficult industry”.
Millie Manders and The Shutup’s consistent commitment to fundraising for charitable causes, as well as creating eco-friendly merchandise, is refreshing and inspiring to see. “It’s a decision I made personally, from very early on, that if I earned enough to sustain what I was doing, a percentage of what I was making would have to go to causes that I believe in.” She says that the band has given out probably tens of thousands of pounds to charities in the last five years. This year alone, they raised £4000 for a Palestinian relief charity, £1500 for Mermaids, £860 to Gendered Intelligence, and more. There will be another fundraiser this winter for charities against domestic and sex worker abuse. “Just because I’m on a knife edge of finance doesn’t mean I can’t find ways of giving it to people who need it more than me…there are so many worthy causes, I have a platform and it’s a privilege that I have the ability to speak to a very large group of listeners who will consider the causes that are close to my heart and bring them close to their own to give generously.” She feels that if every person with a platform started using it for bettering other people’s lives, so much more would be done.
Millie Manders and the Shutup play Sheffield’s Yellow Arch Studios on 3 November 2024.