Long Read // “People are inherently sheep”: Bilk’s Sol Abrahams on individuality, nostalgia, and the power of rock ‘n’ roll
Unlike so many emerging artists, Bilk frontman Sol Abrahams already has a reputation which precedes itself. Perceived by some as the straight-talking saviour of rock ‘n’ roll, but dismissed by others as arrogant and performative, Abrahams is a divisive figure in the UK indie scene. What kind of person he is depends on who you ask, but what does he make of his marmite status?
“There's no in-between, but I like that”, he declares. “The way I dress and carry myself, I think some people really get behind it and they go ‘that guy's confident and he's rocking his shit’, and then you get people that look at me and go ‘why are you wearing sunglasses indoors you twat’, you know what I mean?”. Pairing a Johnny Rotten-esque willingness to provoke with the earthy swagger of Liam Gallagher, Abrahams appears to be the latest in a long line of angry young men looking to make their mark on music.
“I do think it's important to have a bit of attitude”, he asserts. “You can't play it by the rules and play everything safe all the time”. Bilk certainly couldn’t be accused of doing that, having been banned from Rough Trade East last year after an instore descended into chaos. “It was just because the fans had it off”, he explains. “Nothing was damaged, no one was hurt. It was all good fun, man”. Rough Trade higher ups would probably have something to say about that, but Abrahams is clear in his reasoning: “300 Bilk fans in a record store, you've got to come prepared for that shit, you know what I'm saying?”.
The unbridled energy of the Rough Trade show is a staple of Bilk gigs generally, the band’s almost exclusively under-25 audience ensuring that every performance results in sweaty, drink-soaked mosh-pits, and, more often than not, raucous, unplanned stage invasions. “They go fucking mad, man”, he smiles. “You’ll see some scrawny little kid with glasses on who looks like he couldn't hit water if he fell off a boat, and he's there acting like fucking Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson because he's got all the fucking energy in the world”.
Why does he think Bilk’s music resonates so much with their predominantly teenage fanbase? “When you're 16-17 like that, that’s the prime age that you get into music and really feel passionate about it”, he observes. “When I was 17, I would have died for the Sex Pistols, you know what I'm saying?". Having played the iconic 100 Club, earned a devoted following amongst Britain’s youth, and attracted as many critics as fans with their anarchistic antics, Bilk are in many ways a modern version of the Pistols, right down to their gender-balanced fanbase. In the same way that original British punk gave women a space in which to form abrasive bands - as well as write about them - Bilk’s live shows are notable for their evenly balanced audiences. “I wouldn't want to be one of them sort of lad bands that only play to a load of geezers shouting”, he admits. “The same way that I wouldn't want to go to a show and play to just all girls, because then you just feel like you're a boy band. I like to have that good mix of girls and blokes, I think that's cool”.
Refreshingly for a self-confessed rock star, Abrahams goes further and reveals himself to be a passionate feminist when talking about ‘Slag’, the second song on the band’s recently released sophomore record ‘Essex, Drugs and Rock and Roll’. “The point I’m trying to make is that obviously slag is a derogatory term for a girl if she sleeps around a lot, right? But from what the song's telling, it’s sort of flipping that on its head”, he explains. Quoting the song’s chorus, he highlights the hypocrisy of societal expectations when it comes to sex and gender: “‘Let's all just have sex and make the most of life/ And why is it wrong for girls, but it's okay for guys?’, that's genuinely how I feel about the matter. I think there's a lot of sexist, misogynistic bullshit about, it makes my fucking skin crawl”.
Sexist double standards are one of the many themes explored on Bilk’s second studio effort, with others including living for the moment, dashed relationships, the beauty of young love, and, er, bed rotting. Perhaps the most prominent lyrical theme of the album, however, is very concept of rock ‘n’ roll, and what that means to Abrahams. “Rock and roll to me is freedom, you know what I mean? It's freedom to be able to be yourself and be liberated, to be able to live in a certain way without boundaries”.
This goes some way towards explaining the decision to open the record with ‘RnR’, a barnstorming tribute to the power of rock ‘n’ roll, and one which positions Abrahams as a “rock and roll star today”, much to the annoyance of some Oasis fans, who have taken to Bilk’s comment sections to accuse the band of ripping off Oasis’ ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’. As an advocate for individuality, surely Abrahams finds this response frustrating? “The way I see it, you're either a person that's getting bitter and jealous, so you feel like you want to comment, try to slag us off and make the obvious comparison, right? So, in that sense you're a bitter, twisted little internet weirdo. And then if you do genuinely believe that it sounds the same, you're an idiot and you can't hear music properly. If you've got two ears and you can hear it, you can hear that it don't sound the same”.
Some would argue that while the melody is indeed far removed from the Oasis classic, the lyrics in the chorus come a little close for comfort. However, as Abrahams points out, Oasis weren’t the first band to declare their own rockstar status. "If you listen to AC/DC, there's plenty of songs with him saying that he was a rock'n'roll singer and that”, he argues. "But yeah, I don't really sweat it man. It’s like, I love Oasis as well, so obviously if my music sounds a bit like Oasis... you know, it's not going to sound like fucking Michael Bublé is it?”.
The irony of these accusations is that back when they were on the rise, Oasis were frequently accused of plagiarism themselves, but today they’re generally considered one of the greatest rock bands of all time, as the feverish demand for their reunion tour illustrates. Could nostalgia be to blame for these double standards? “A lot of people that are getting into band music nowadays, they don't want to listen to anything new”, he notes. “I think it's a balancing act innit, there’s nothing wrong with appreciating music of the past, but the thing is, it gets wrapped up in the legacy of it. It gets wrapped up when there's documentaries and films made about bands like Oasis - people are inherently sheep, you know what I mean? The general population of society, a lot of people are sheep, they follow. So they see, ‘oh, this band is massive and they have this big legacy. Let's follow them’. Whereas when a band's still making themselves, and they're still coming up, there will be people that love it and people that hate it”.
This isn’t to say that Abrahams isn’t obsessed with older music himself: “All my influences are things that were 20-30 years ago, everything from AC/DC to Nirvana, to Oasis to Eminem and Dizzee Rascal, do you know what I'm saying?”. He’s keen to stress that this isn’t due to a predetermined aversion to new music, but rather a disconnect between his tastes and the popular guitar music of today. "To be honest, I don't really like the music, you know, Last Dinner Party, Fontaines DC, Wunderhorse and that, they don't really do anything for me musically. I’ve not got nothing against them, but it's not for me, that’s why I make the music that I make, because when I listen to it, it does do something for me”.
Contemporary guitar music is dominated by post-punk and art-rock, rendering Bilk’s no-frills approach somewhat of an anomaly in 2025. “I've always seen ourselves as the outcasts in the scene”, Abrahams agrees. “We've never been offered a support tour, we’ve never played a support tour with any other band. The only big support that we've actually done was for Louis Tomlinson, and that ain’t in the band scene”.
Why does he think other bands rarely offer Bilk support slots? “A lot of them are sort of different to us, you know, the way we walk, talk, the way we come across I suppose”, he reflects. “Bands are clicky as well. There's a very competitive nature of thinking in bands, it's like ‘my gang versus your gang’, do you know what I mean?”. One band that Abrahams has a lot of time for, however, are Hastings’ finest Kid Kapichi, who bucked the trend and booked Bilk for their hometown show last March. “Kid Kapichi are a band that we fucking get on with”, he confirms fondly. “They're a good band and they're obviously safe as fuck guys as well, I wish nothing but good luck to them because I rate them a lot”.
While there’s clearly some camaraderie with bands like Kapichi, Bilk nonetheless remain a noticeably unique prospect in the modern rock scene, something Abrahams enjoys. "I love it, it's great. I don't wanna be like everyone else and do what everyone else is doing”, he proclaims. "I've never had the slightest temptation to look at any other successful bands about at the moment and jump on what they're doing, because that ain't me. I want to stand now and do something different”.
Bilk are shunning trends not just musically, but also with their rebellious, care-free attitude, something which has been largely absent from mainstream rock over the past decade. “A lot of bands are kind of scared at the moment, everyone's pussyfooting around a little bit”, he sighs. “The internet and modern society has just made people so uptight, people don't want to loosen up and have a good time, everyone's so scared of being judged all the time. And I think that's absolute bullshit”.
Luckily for fans of Bilk’s humorous, hedonistic brand of rock ‘n’ roll, neither Abrahams nor his bandmates - bassist Luke Hare and drummer Harry Gray – are bothered what people on the internet might say about them. Instead, they exude confidence in ‘Essex, Drugs and Rock and Roll’: “It’s the best album that we've dropped so far", declares Abrahams with characteristic self-assurance. Can fans expect to hear most of the songs live when the band head out on a huge UK and European tour next month? “We're going to play the whole album I think, not in order, but we're going to play all the songs on it, they deserve to be played”, he divulges. “And to be honest, it's kind of selfish as well; me and the boys we just wanna play it, man. We spent all this time recording it, I spent all this time writing it - it's like, let's fucking play it. I ain't getting off this tour without playing all of the songs on it, do you know what I'm saying?”.
The future looks bright for Bilk, and Abrahams has a similarly optimistic vision for the band he first conceptualised 10 years ago: “I hope that people in 20 years' time still love Bilk, I hope they’re still banging Bilk, do you know what I'm saying?”. Time will only tell, but if anyone has the sheer, single-minded determination to stay the course, it’s Abrahams.
“The songs come out of somewhere, they're not just like, ‘let me write a song about being on a fucking jet ski in Yugoslavia today'," he deadpans when asked about the importance of authenticity. “I write about what's going on in my life, it’s real”. If the band’s star continues to rise at its current rate, we may well get to hear that hypothetical song at some point. One thing’s for sure: Bilk's fanbase will have grown from teenage to middle-aged by then, but that doesn’t mean they won’t still love those songs which soundtracked their lives when they were 17.
In fact, they’ll probably be nostalgic for them.
Words by Ben Left
