Black Honey unveil caustic new single ‘Shallow’, ahead of Kubrick-inspired album Soak

Black Honey have released their latest single, ‘Shallow’, a slyly anthemic cut that pairs festival-ready swagger with a barbed critique of modern superficiality.

The track arrives ahead of the Brighton band’s fourth album Soak, due 15th August.

Built around a sardonic, chant-like chorus and a defiant guitar riff, ‘Shallow’ is Black Honey at their most acerbic. Frontwoman Izzy B. Phillips doesn’t pull punches, delivering lines like “Drank your rider dry, it’s so…sha-la-la-la-low” with a smirk and a sneer. “It’s about the brain rot,” she explains, “being a hypocrite and still participating in a social discourse despite feeling shy and uncomfortable.”

The track continues a run of intriguing previews from Soak, which Phillips has described as a Kubrick-inspired reckoning with ten years of music-making, touring, and addiction. Where earlier Black Honey albums drew from the aesthetics of Tarantino (Black Honey, Written & Directed) and Wes Anderson (A Fistful of Peaches), this record trades vintage style for unsettling retrofuturism. Phillips says Soak explores “messy, romantic, confusing, woozy, beautiful and fucked up things,” unearthing truths about identity and transformation.

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Previous singles include the unhinged ‘Psycho’, which came with a surreal dystopian video critiquing modern digital realities, and ‘Dead’, a scuzzy taunt wrapped in lyrical eyeball torture. ‘Insulin’, perhaps the band’s boldest yet, explores the psychological fallout of sexual assault with unsetting clarity and emotional instinct.

Black Honey have steadily risen from cult status to chart success, with their past two records hitting the UK Top 10. Yet they remain proudly independent, building a loyal fanbase with theatrical shows and an unflinching creative vision. Soak looks set to be their most thematically ambitious release yet.

The band headline DORK’s 100 Festival today, and will tour the UK later this summer in support of the album, including dates in Manchester, Brighton, London and beyond.

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