“When I first met her, she terrified me!”
Donny Lloyd remembers the moment they met bandmate Devin Papadol well. An 18-year-old kid fresh out of high-school, they’d travelled across the United States from Georgia to Los Angeles following an Instagram conversation about joining a band. When they walked in the room with Devin for the first time, they couldn’t help but be overcome by shyness when faced with someone who in many ways was their complete opposite. Devin, a naturally extroverted frontperson, had plenty of experience in the music industry and had been burned by past projects before, but once they and Donny sat down and started bouncing ideas off one another, the latter slowly began to come out of their shell. It was start of a special relationship, and the birth of a new band: Honey Revenge.
The pop-rock duo released their much anticipated debut album Retrovision last Friday. A spiky run of 12 tracks that are grounded in pop-punk but lean on R&B, alt-pop and metalcore throughout, it’s a vibrant record packed with the personality of its creators, and its entry into the world is a proud moment for Devin in particular. Having met Donny at a time when she was feeling defeated by the cut-throat environment that comes with trying to make it in music, Retrovision represents a spiritual and artistic rebirth for a musician determined to make her mark.
“I started off the process of making this album not in a good headspace,” Devin says. “I was feeling defeated by the dynamic of being in a band, self-funding everything and just wondering if it was ever going to work out. That feeling bleeds through into several tracks like our singles Airhead and Rerun. But as we started to get some acknowledgment from the scene and people became stoked on the first songs we dropped, things started to feel a little more hopeful, light-hearted and sarcastic. It all ties together as an album that’s ultimately about enjoying life.”