I’ve come to learn that music listeners have long been turning to Dutch rock bands for inspiration because the Netherlands’ contemporary indie rock scene is widely recognised for its raw authenticity and community-driven DIY spirit. Bands like Zuid-Holland’s After Eight, a five-piece, female-fronted alternative indie rock band, have just begun to carve out their own place in this thriving scene, with the release of their debut EP The Reach. Led by the charismatic exuberance of Sonja Wilhart, they blend the ethos of indie rock and folk to shoe gaze and post-punk into a cohesive energetic sound, where power chords collide with raw vulnerability.
I recently caught up with After Eight’s Sonja Wilhart about their promising debut EP The Reach. Here is some of what we talked about.
Sonja, can we talk a bit about your background? And who plays what role in After Eight?
I don’t come from a musical family at all. None of my family members were really into music. I remember the moment I knew I wanted to play guitar. I was around ten years old, I think, and someone I knew needed to drop off a guitar somewhere. So I got the assignment to sit in the back of the car with the guitar on my lap, because it didn’t have a case. I remember being so mesmerized by the instrument. I knew I wanted to play guitar. A few years later, I got a guitar for my birthday, and that’s when I started playing and writing songs.
When I became very close friends with Jelle, our rhythm guitarist, we started writing songs together and decided that we wanted to start a band. We started with two guitars and a piano and mostly played covers. We then asked Joram to join us as our drummer. And later Sako and Tim joined, with bass and lead guitar.
Jelle, Joram and I focus more on songwriting and arrangement, and Sako and Tim put their own spin on those ideas in the studio and really bring the songs to life when we play them at our live-shows.
I’m not at all familiar with the flourishing Dutch indie-rock scene. What is something surprising about it? Who are your influences home-grown and abroad?
One thing I’ve noticed is that the alternative music scene is much more present in the bigger cities. For example, The Hague has a big alternative music scene, with a lot of music-focused venues and bars. In the villages, the music scene is much more limited. The villages we come from have very little alternative music. We try to focus more on The Hague, but we also try to bring a bit of alternative indie rock to our hometowns.
I think our influences mostly come from international music. Each member of the band listens to a variety of different artists, and we bring all those influences together in our songs. We listen to Black Country, New Road, Fontaines D.C., Geese, Paramore, Jeff Buckley and many other artists.
Listeners wouldn’t immediately associate your sound with the Netherlands. How does being Dutch affect your musical identity?
I’m not sure how much being Dutch influences our music, to be honest. We focus more on the international music market. Joram, our drummer, is really good at English pronunciation, and when we record, he is the one who focuses on our Dutch accent and pronunciation mistakes.
Where did the decision to sing in English rather than Dutch come in?
I have written a few songs in Dutch, but I’ve never performed or released them. I like writing in Dutch, and I like how you can play around with grammar and sentence structure. But in English, I think I can express myself a bit better. I think English is a beautiful language, and I feel like I can capture what the songs are about better in English.
Is music a reflection of your experiences, as much as it is about creating interesting melodies?
It’s both. I usually start with a song by writing lyrics or a melody that speaks to me. Then I bring it to the band, and they bring in their ideas. What we had to learn, and what mostly came to us in the studio while recording ‘The Reach’, is that not every cool melody makes a song better. Sometimes we had to hit the brakes on all our ideas, which come from different influences, and really think about whether that musical part is adding something to what the song is about and what story we want to tell with it.
For example, in the song ‘The Medicine You Take’, we had a sort of Bach-esque lick that was really cool, and we really loved it. But it didn’t fit the song, so we scrapped it.
Please tell me a little bit about the way the new EP developed and gradually took its final form?
We wrote the EP ‘The Reach’ in the last two years. All the songs started out with a lyric or simple riff, where me and Joram or Jelle would jam together. Sometimes I write lyrics, but don’t know yet what to do with the musical part. Then Joram or Jelle came up with a riff that would fit perfectly with what I wrote and then all the pieces come together. From there, we would work on the song together as a band and see what worked and what didn’t. A lot of the songs also changed during the recording process.
After writing all the parts, we made demos in our home studio and booked studio sessions to record them for real. I will never forget recording the songs in the studio. How special it was to see our songs come to life. Especially when I heard the acoustic guitar and toms in ‘All By Myself (So Quiet)’ for the first time. It made me a bit emotional. I love the song so much, and to hear it translated so well was really special.
A lot of your songs are quite earnest. What are some of the themes that come to the forefront of your new EP?
All the songs are about experiences in my life, where the underlying theme is wanting something real, a real connection to others and a real connection to yourself.
For a while, it was hard for me to connect to my emotions. Writing was a way for me to translate to myself what I was feeling. Sometimes I would just write, without really knowing what I was writing about, and only later realize what I was feeling and what the song was really about. I was connected to those emotions while writing, but the understanding of them sometimes came later.
Later, I started letting my emotions in and stopped running away from them. You can also see that in the songs. ‘Running Just To Hide’, for example, is about escapism, while ‘The Medicine You Take’ is about choosing someone else’s needs over your own, while being aware that it goes against your own emotions.
Which song on the EP is dearest to you and why?
That is such a hard question. I love them all because they make me remember certain parts of my life. I think I love ‘All By Myself (So Quiet)’ and ‘The Medicine You Take’ the most.
I love ‘All By Myself (So Quiet)’ because it’s about wanting a real connection, but also about being comfortable with being by yourself and finding it hard to be vulnerable. That is something that I’ve really grown in, but still struggle with.
I love ‘The Medicine You Take’ because it’s about a moment in my life where I chose someone else’s needs above my own, because in that moment, it was necessary. It was a big step for me. It forced me to let my walls down for a moment, and that was okay.
You definitely have a sound that lends itself to live performances. Have you had the chance to play these new songs live?
Yes! Over the last year, we’ve also worked on our live performance and on bringing the EP to life when playing it live. We’ve soundscaped the songs to make them sound as much like the studio versions as possible. Jelle, our rhythm guitarist, has a really good ear and is really good at soundscaping. He also has experience in producing, so we are very blessed to have him.
We celebrated our EP with an EP release show at Musicon in The Hague. It was a night we will never forget. The joy, the support, the dancing, the singing… It was insane.
Finally, what is the best advice, if any, have you received that has helped you along the way musically speaking?
It wasn’t necessarily musical advice, but it’s something that has really helped me with music. It was advice from a tutor at my old school. He talked about capturing ideas and beginnings, like capturing butterflies. They disappear so quickly, that you have to hold on to them when you find them.
When I have certain moments or certain words that I find meaningful and that speak to me, I try to write them down as soon as possible. It might turn into a song, and you never know when they might resurface.
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