The Femcels: Holy Noise, Horny Despair and the Art of Dreaming Yourself Alive

The Femcels didn’t form so much as coalesce: one broken pink toy guitar, a lobby miracle, four songs recorded drunk in a single night, and suddenly London had another problem. Rowan Miles and Gabriella Turton (Gabi) talk like they make music—fast, feral, funny, allergic to sincerity—ricocheting between hymns, horny despair, indie nihilism, and the sacred fantasy of Pitchfork hating them. They met online, dated the same men, stole pick-and-mix, coded homework in dark cinemas, acquired yuppie older boyfriends, posted ads for go-go dancers, and woke up to discover they were already a band. Their debut album I Have to Get Hotter, produced by Ike Clateman (Bassvictim), is out now and easily the most exciting, deranged thing I’ve heard in ages — its tracklist reading less like songs than a series of threats: “Even Though Ur Blonde,” “She Seems Kind of Stupid (Draft),” “Please Don’t Stab Yourself Like Elliott Smith.” They skewer pop feminism, sneer at boy-run music culture, loot Catholic hymns for melodies, and flinch (briefly) at the terror of singing in front of another human. If people are going to misunderstand you anyway, the logic goes, you might as well make it unforgettable. Less an origin story than a shared hallucination, documented in real time.

RICHARD TURLEY: When did this start?

ROWAN MILES: On the 24th of February 2024, we went into the studio with no music. Just a name: The Femcels.

GABI TURTON: A month before, I was styling Mariah from Bassvictim and I brought this pink toy guitar and she sat on it and broke it. That night we asked Ike if he’d produce for us. The next day in our lobby, the same pink guitar appeared but fixed—it’s a sign from God.

ROWAN: We were scared, so we got really drunk. We recorded four songs in one night and they’re all on the album. Ike understood exactly what we were and made perfect beats for us in what felt like 45 seconds. We were so scared to sing in front of someone. We’d just been handed this whole thing of being musicians in one evening.

TURLEY: So, how did you meet?

ROWAN: Online. Then I saw her across the room. She had her mouth open for a really long time. Then later on you invited me to an awkward girly sleep over.

GABI: Me and my friend used to do this thing where we would just invite girls we thought were cool on Instagram.

ROWAN: We realized we’d dated all the same boys.

GABI: Then she tried to set me up with her ex-boyfriend and he said he’d bring his friends to the date. I got really freaked out so I brought Rowan along.

TURLEY: Describe the date.

GABI: To watch CSGO live—it’s like a shooting game. I went to the pick-and-mix section and stole some sweets and they came into the cinema room and it was really serious then I got bored so I started coding some homework in the dark cinema.

TURLEY: What happened to the boy?

ROWAN: He loves Airsoft and recently got recruited by the SAS because he’s so good at it. I feel like when we went out together that night, we were going up to random people and asking them fucked-up questions—I’d never met anyone else that just goes up to strangers and tries to freak them out.

GABI: Everyone already thought we made music. People would just assume we made music. So we made music.

TURLEY: Why music?

ROWAN: We used to go to Starbucks and make mind maps and have e-girl meetings. We were like, “We look cool together, what do we do?”

GABI:  We think people take themselves too seriously and people need—everyone’s making sad music. I think we make very joyful music, be funny. It’s quite cathartic to make music about being crazy in a funny way, not in an earnest way.

ROWAN: Mixing it with all big funny stuff and the deepest darkest depths of our souls.

TURLEY: Tell me about the lyrics.

Photo by Bruno Mosso.

ROWAN: They are just all from real life experiences. I was heartbroken and you were a Femcel. They are basically all about this relationship where I was flown out to New York by some rockstar. I was a wannabe groupie and was harnessing the musical powers of these guys through this type of science magic I invented.

TURLEY: Who was the rockstar? What happened?

ROWAN: ******** ******* of The **********. I wrote a song about him and he asked for redemption so I said ‘not interested – I have my yuppie boyfriend and we are going to get married’.

GABI:  When we first started making music, I was like, I’m not making any sad music. Even though I liked screamo, I was like no sad music. Then I got really depressed and I could only make sad songs. And then I started having sex after we made that album, and you got a 30-year-old boyfriend.

ROWAN: I’ve got yuppie boyfriend and I live in Clapham. He wears Ace and Tate glasses and a top that says ‘What The Dog Do’.

GABI:  Sometimes you need sad songs. They’re nice when you’re sad and you’re enjoying the sad feeling. Also a lot of the lyrics, I kind of take inspiration from hymns. I went to a Catholic boarding school and I had to go to church two hours every day. Actually, the song “I’m So Fat,” the main chorus was kind of just taken from a hymn. We have an interpolation of a hymn on “Come Let Us Adore Him”. That’s from having to do that every day, sing hymns—the only melodies I can make sound like hymns.

TURLEY: I love “I’m So Fat”. Actually, I love them all. But let’s start at track one. What’s going on with this one.

GABI: For me, if I saw two girls being like, “I’m so fat” and singing about how they feel fat, I’d feel way better. Everyone who’s skinny is like, “Oh I’m effortlessly like that and I don’t ever stress about it.”

ROWAN: It’d be good if people hate us…

GABI: Yeah, I think so. We want to get a four on Pitchfork.

ROWAN: Yeah, I mean I feel like maybe one of the reasons why we haven’t released it in so long is we’re being a bit scared. Scared to release something that you know that lots of people won’t like—this is not Charli XCX. Do you think Charli actually does drugs? We don’t think she does drugs. I think it’s fake.

GABI: I just think we’re just being ourselves, to be honest.

TURLEY: Music is still run by boys in record companies who have a very specific idea of the music they like, because mostly they’re really only liking it because they want other boys in record companies to think they’re it.

ROWAN: So they’re all gay?

GABI: Well, yeah. It’s the same as football, isn’t it?

TURLEY: The Dua Lipa brand. Safe for men. Book clubs ‘cos I’m deep. Branded partnerships. Sponcon. Marrying an actor.

GABI: She can look good and she can do yoga. Those functions are well within her control. But she’s just a sort of puppet, isn’t she really?

TURLEY: Who do you think is pretending the hardest right now?

ROWAN: Paul McCartney, his senile permanent PR mode is terrifying. He’s up there in my favorite people though, I’m just horrible.

GABI: The president of France is trying really hard.

TURLEY: What supplements do you take?

GABI: I don’t remember to do that kind of thing, but I have some vitamins left over from a longevity bro I used to date.

TURLEY: When is the happiest you’ve ever been?

ROWAN: Probably the first Femcels session. It was like a dream I had never let myself have.

TURLEY: You sat on the album for two years. Why release it now?

ROWAN: We had a manager and then we decided we were going to do this record deal and then we really decided that wasn’t what we wanted to do.

GABI: We reclaimed our indie-ness. We decided to self-publish. That’s what makes sense for us.

TURLEY: How seriously are you taking this?

GABI: It would be awesome to do music, just music, but London is really expensive. I think we both really enjoy playing shows. I’m just excited to play a show and people actually know more than two songs.

ROWAN: That’s most exciting for people to sing along. There’s two girls that want to audition to be our go-go dancers one of them has black hair and one is blonde so its kinda perfect.

TURLEY: Describe your music to someone without ears.

ROWAN: Lollipop.

TURLEY: Chuppa Chup or Ice pop?

ROWAN: I love strawberries and cream Chuppa Chups. The logo is the only good art Salvador Dali ever did. Chubba Chups are like an indoor cigarette but sweeter, so much sweeter.

GABI: I think our music is more like a doughnut. It’s more like pieces of a doughnut squished in a bag.

ROWAN: We want to get a four on Pitchfork. Do you think Pitchfork would rate the album? They gave me and Leo (Worldpeace DMT)  a 7.6 couple weeks ago for the Velvet Underground and Rowan. It’d be good if people hated it. If people don’t hate it, they don’t love it.

GABI: It would be bad if we got a high mark from them.

TURLEY: What’s scarier: people loving you or ignoring you?

ROWAN: I kind of think everyone is in love with me and I do tend to ignore it. We wrote a song about having a boyfriend who’s a fly because I literally think flies fancy me if they get too close. Uhhh, I dont think I’ve ever experienced either love or ignorance. I hope to one day though.

TURLEY: You have very long song names. Resplendantly so.

GABI: Yeah, we wanted them really long. I feel like that’s quite Midwest emo, having it really long. You only get so many chances to make an impact.

ROWAN: The songs are only about a minute long so the titles are just the full lyrics.

TURLEY: Who do you admire?

GABI: Elvis. I love Elvis. I used to be really into screamo when I first started making music with Femcels. At the moment I’m just more into nineties stuff, Beat Happening.

ROWAN: I love the Beatles and the Beach Boys, The Roches, Leonard Cohen, the GTOs Most recently I’ve been into the Beach Boys ‘Love You’. That’s basically a Brian Wilson solo album.

TURLEY: That album is so crazy. The only Beach Boys record I’ve ever wished for Mike Love to have had more input in. What song do you hate right now?

ROWAN: Anything my boyfriend plays to me. Especially his own music. He’s on the next Worldpeace DMT album.

GABI: Last month the only thing I could listen to for a week was One Silver Dollar by Marylin Monroe and now every time I hear it I want go bald.

TURLEY: What would be the most humiliating way to become famous?

ROWAN: Probably porn where I am also burnt alive and have face-covering impetigo and genital warts and where I’m also revealed as being the owner of blue waffle and I’m wearing a dunce cap.

GABI: For being authentic and not clout chasing.

TURLEY: What outfits make you look like the way you feel inside?

ROWAN: Maybe my dress that says ‘End World Hug Hunger’ because I feel like a little hungry bug and it’s such an important cause. Bugs are hungrier than you are of them. A bird clip. Mustard boots. “I want to hang out skirt”. Shirt. Tie. Little hat.

GABI: I wish I was a little bit less punk, but I feel like that is just me being myself. I wish I looked better in pinstripe, but I just can’t not add a million accessories.

TURLEY: Make yourself as unappealing as possible and you’ve got more of a chance of making it.

ROWAN: Working with Ike—the first time I made music he was like, “Oh yeah guys, you’re going to be big.” Americans make you believe in yourself.

TURLEY:  Very true. Europeans give up on themselves so easily.

GABI: He said to me: ‘My senses are tingling, you’re going to become really rich’.

TURLEY: Amen. What’s more embarrassing: trying or pretending not to try?

ROWAN: Probably trying to try.

GABI: Trying to pretend you’re trying and trying and pretending and not trying but pretending to while trying and pretending and pretending and trying.

GABI: Do you know about Woke 2?

TURLEY: What, like the libs strike back? The revenge?

ROWAN: The redemption.

TURLEY: What’s worth hating right now?

GABI: We don’t like mice.

ROWAN: We had hundreds in our flat. Why are they so small?

GABI: I wonder if anyone finds it distressing how small we are?

TURLEY: What’s the smallest space you can fit into.

ROWAN: Saddam Hussein’s hiding spot.

GABI: The very tiny space that exists just after crossing the ‘taking it too far’ line.