It’s only a matter of time before UNIVERSITY earns its own line on Crewe’s Wikipedia page. The North West quartet are quickly becoming local legends-in-waiting. They are emerging from chaos with swagger, wit, and a delicious disregard for convention.
Hence, their debut album, “McCartney, It’ll Be OK”, is the sound of a band gleefully blowing up the rulebook. At the same time, they rebuilt it with duct tape, distortion pedals, and in-jokes.
Spread across eight tracks, “McCartney, It’ll Be OK” is a riot of clashing influences and unfiltered instinct. It’s a noise-drenched collage of punk energy, internet-age absurdity, and genuine emotional release. “We might be a bit fidgety,” one of them jokes during a crowded Zoom call. He is all nervous energy and cigarette smoke. “We’re going to have a statue built in the area,” deadpans drummer Joel Smith, half serious, half self-aware.
This is a band that thrives on the unpredictable. If you like your music messy, loud, unhinged, and a little bit brilliant, then you need UNIVERSITY. So, they might just be your new obsession. “We’re not trying to appeal to everybody; only certain people will like it, so it sticks out,” Joel says. That kind of honesty is refreshing. Additionally, they fit for a band that sounds like they built their identity in a basement with zero adult supervision.
UNIVERSITY Is On Top of Chaos
So, the story of UNIVERSITY’s formation is as chaotic as their music. The culprit? Eddie—the silent, masked wildcard of the group. He is the one who posted a simple ad: “Band Members Needed.” Enter Joel, guitarist/vocalist Zak Bower, and bassist/synth player Ewan Barton. What followed was, as Joel puts it, “a three-year haze… one long acid trip that just went out of control.”
Their bond was sealed less by musical vision than by humour and mutual discontent with the current music landscape. “We properly hate what a lot of music is doing right now,” Joel says. “We’re very, very spiteful.”
With no thriving local scene to lean on, UNIVERSITY made their home in Ewan’s dad’s house. There, they had daily jam sessions and, as they call it, “medicating.”
Hence, they watched grainy live videos of math rock bands. They’d mimic, adapt, and eventually mutate those ideas into their own warped vision. The band name-checks acts like Hella and Nouns, but insists their sound emerged less from admiration and more from inability. “When you find out you can’t play like that anyway, that’s where your sound comes from,” Joel muses. “It’s like how you draw.”
The Band Makes References Being Relevant
That messy originality pulses through “McCartney, It’ll Be OK.” Tracks feel like they’re stitched together from frantic late-night jams. Sometimes they sprawl to nine minutes, sometimes barely holding it together. “You have to lasso the good bit,” Joel explains. “It’s all trial and error.
Hence, Eddie’s stage presence only adds to the band’s mystique. Clad in a mask, he communicates through video game-like text boxes. He also introduces tracks like “Massive Twenty One Pilots Tattoo” and “History of Iron Maiden Pt. 2” with dry irreverence. It’s theatrical, bizarre, and totally intentional.
The band’s debut is not polished, nor is it trying to be. Instead, it’s an exhilarating, stubbornly original blast of creativity. In a world of streaming-service sameness, UNIVERSITY is a glitch in the matrix. It’s one that yells, laughs, and melts your face off in the best way possible.
For now, they’re Crewe’s best-kept secret. But if “McCartney, It’ll Be OK” is anything to go by. It won’t be long before UNIVERSITY’s chaos becomes everyone’s favourite kind of noise.
