The Mocking Jays coming to Bilston

The Mocking Jays are a four-piece pop-rock outfit from Nottingham. With a deft balance of pop sensibility and rock’n’roll swagger, since their formation in 2014 the band have received support from the likes of BBC 6Music and BBC Introducing, impressed at major festivals such as Y-Not and earned a fervent reputation in the East Midlands for their live shows.

The quartet have now released I Can’t Be Without Your Love, which came out on September 13 and is available to listen to right now on their Soundcloud page.

Talking about the track, frontman Jay Smith says: “I Can’t Be Without Your Love came from a sense of insecurity I had at the time of writing it. I constantly felt like I needed affirmation from other people all the time. In person, online.

"It made me so angry because I knew the indulgence was so menial when I got it, and you only want more when you do. The song touches on the fact that despite being true to who you are, everybody has anxieties and sometimes addictions towards certain feelings. The hook of the song, ‘love me, I can’t be without your love’, is referring to receiving gratification from masses of people, mainly through the means of social media likes.”

A spokesperson added: "From its gutsy vocal performance and trampolining basslines, to those sprawling guitars that clash at its thrilling climax, I Can’t Be Without Your Love is testament to a band breaking their own mould and expanding their horizons.

"Falling somewhere between the out-and-out freneticism of bands like Kasabian and the pop pomp of the 1975, it’s a dichotomy both accessible and irresistible and best summed up in the band’s own accurate words as 'sexy, funky, dirty, pop'."

Recorded at their rehearsal space in Nottingham, the track was further produced by Jamie Dodd at The Animal Farm studios.

To hear that and their previous releases live, they can be caught at the Robin 2 on October 9. Tickets, costing £11, can be bought from the venue's website.