Ahhh, siblings. The people we have literally zero choice about being glued to for 99.999% of our formative years, be it in the back seat of a six hour long car as they stick chewing gum in our hair, or jammed in the spare single bed at your parents’ friends’ house while all the adults play limbo with a Nebuchadnezzar of bubbly downstairs.
Despite the fact we’ll wang on about how annoying it is when they never answer your texts and rip you for literally everything you do, we love them. Dearly. And us sibling-ed folk will look at people with a little bit of patronising sympathy when they tell us that they’re an only child.
So while the thought of starting a band with your blood brothers and/or sisters may kinda sound like an diabolical shambles of Oasis-fallout proportions, it also makes total sense — if there’s anyone who’ll be forced to still love you after you get overexcited at the post show McD’s party and end up passed out on the tour bus from nugget fatigue, it’s your siblings.
Besides — don’t pretend like you haven’t seen The Sound of Music. You have. I have, hip-hop artist blackbear loves it so much he roped in Gucci Mane to do their own version.
So with that in mind, gather round children, because These Are a Few of Our Favourite Sibs.
Billie Eilish (and her brother Finneas O’Connell)
At first glance, it looks like Billie the kid (actually though — she’s fifteen) is a solo act. Because she is a solo act. But we have her brother to thank for bringing this next gen popstar into the world and making us feel like the definition of Uncool and Unaccomplished to her prodigious, Vetements-adorned teenagedom. Billie initially teamed up with her older bro to make a track for a project with her dance school, which turned into the banger Ocean Eyes, which got an Astronomyy remix that now has 25 million listens on Soundcloud.
Since, she’s been drip feeding us minimal dark pop songs with lyrics as entertainingly dry as her tweets (“command z my whole life”), accumulating 109k followers on her Instagram (@wherearetheavocados), releasing an EP this past Friday (Don’t Smile At Me) and selling out tours (almost everywhere).
Haim
If you’ve got long hair and a penchant for flares, or you’re Brie Larson, chances are you’ll have envisaged yourself as the fourth Haim sister. It wouldn’t been be a bad gig — the trio seem to live in perpetually sunny LA summers and corresponding 70s heavy outfits, and they get to travel the world with their best mates (yes, siblings can be your best mates, you don’t want to tear all their hair out all the time, just lots of the time. And if you’re the Haim sisters, probably not at all — have you seen that hair?).
This year they broke the the dreaded sophomore album curse with Something to Tell You, which has a touch of the pop/rock/Fleetwood Macs. Other highlights include: Este’s bass face, Danielle’s guitar shredding solos, Alana’s perpetual lolz, and their best release yet — this cover of Shania Twain’s That Don’t Impress Me Much. Because anyone who celebrates Shania is celebrated by us.
Honey Hahs
We’ve already covered child prodigies and talented sister trios, and in Honey Hahs we have their love child. The Peckham based sisters — aged 10, 12 and 15 — are signed to Rough Trade and have released two songs with them, cramming in a few live shows between normal kid duties (“a few times we’ve been in such a rush that I’ve had to perform in my school uniform”).
Actually, their back-to-back timetable is probably because their multiple extracurricular exploits are not just run of the kid-duties. They’re more the duties of those overachieving kids who manages to get straight As while playing for seven top teams and running a fortnightly Save the Elephants bake sale, or Hermione Granger, when she got a time travelling thing so she could go and take double the normal class load. As the Guardian notes, “Rowan does ballet, singing, piano and African drumming. Robin runs long distance, plays rugby and football and draws. Sylvie does ballet, drama, gymnastics, football and plays the steel pans. She’s also a model.”
Ahh, that blissful energy of youth. Can we have some plz?
Broods
Their name says it all really. These synth savvy siblings hail from New Zealand, because sheep and rugby aren’t the only thing that the kiwis are good for thanks v much. They cut their teeth as young’uns singing about Dancing Queens via an ABBA tribute band, before Georgia became an actual dancing queen herself (and Caleb more of a dancey-thing-behind-a-keyboard-king). Fast forward a bit, and they started working with Joel Little — producer of that other quite big musical act hailing from NZ, Lorde (of the Onion Rings). Two albums, a few tours, and many a festival appearance later, they’ve decided that maybe two siblings aren’t enough. Maybe they should adopt us too?
Lemon Twigs
“I think I went a little nuts at the grocery store, I walked through every aisle and threw things on the floor,” the two long haired Twiglets open their latest single Night Song. The somewhat chaotic (but still harmonious) melange they sing of kinda fits their music — if you took a dash of the Beatles, a sprinkle of Broadway, a double helping of the 1970s then whizzed it all up in a Vitamix with some fancy hair conditioner, then you might get a something akin to a Lemon Twigscake batter.
But the two Twiglets are far from sour: they’re fun and upbeat and a whole lotta glam, as evidenced by this video where they play sword fighting Marie Antoinettes, or this one where they don psychedelic silky suits and sunnies in the desert. Fans include none other than Questlove, Alice Cooper, yours truly, and hopefully you too.
So, the final question is — hey big bro, you wanna collaborate? I know you were inclined to punch a hole through the wall every time I woke you up at 7am shrieking the theme tune from Fun House in the shower, but apparently the whole sibling thing kinda works? Just a thought.