Unhinged Rock n Roll. That’s how guitarist/vocalist James Walbourne describes his garage rock duo, His Lordship.
With the other half of this two-man gang rounded out by drummer Kris Sonne, His Lordship is two albums deep into a sound overflowing with abrasive riffs, runaway rhythms and primal vibes in tunes that clock in at three minutes or less. The newest collection of songs is Bored Animal, which dropped earlier this year and was the follow-up to the duo’s 2024 self-titled debut. The band’s origins date back to the pandemic, when both musicians were laying low during the lockdown while their normal gig as members of The Pretenders were under the yoke of the existential pause button the world was laboring under at the time. Like so many great ideas, His Lordship got its start in a bar.
“His Lordship started when we were very bored and no tour was happening for us with anybody,” Walbourne said with a laugh. “We just started playing some rock and roll for fun in a pub on a Sunday afternoon. It just went on from there. We had a big turnout that kept getting bigger and bigger and word spread. One weekend, we had Glen Matlock and Paul Cook from the Sex Pistols, Slim Jim Phantom, Chrissie and a bunch of other people all at the same time in a packed pub. We thought we were onto something here.”
Walbourne and Sonne quickly recognized the creative chemistry they had together. The band’s name came about after the duo played at the Goodwood Festival of Speed where they stayed at Goodwood House.
“We played this gig in some lord’s house—it was an actual lord,” Walbourne explained. “We started calling each other His Lordship for a laugh. We couldn’t think of a name for the band and we were in this recording studio trying to figure out a song and saying, ‘What do you think His Lordship?’ ‘I don’t know what to think His Lordship.’ We realized that we were actually slightly fucking mad and decided to go with that as a band name. It made us laugh and still makes us laugh when people say it.”
While 2022 saw the twosome headlining a sold-out UK tour and then opening for Jason Isbell on an equally in-demand European string of dates, it would be another two years before His Lordship were able to record a proper debut record. But not unlike the band’s manic punk rock meets ’50s rave-up sound, the new album came together quickly despite the fact that they had to schlep out to record in the remote Scottish Highlands.
“The debut was recorded over maybe a year because of COVID-19 and all that,” Walbourne said. “We were trying to start the band and every time we cut a session, they’d shut the borders down. This new album was recorded in two weeks straight and we wrote a bunch of songs in those two weeks too. It was a very finite amount of time to do it. We just reeled them off. It was touch and go for a while. We thought it was going to be the shortest album ever, but we managed it by 29 minutes or something like that. We worked pretty hard. We went with having an element of seat-of-your pants stuff and got it done. I think sometimes it could either work or not.”
The slap-dash approach works in spades as Bored Animal is anything but staid and is instead a runaway train of spontaneity and wild abandon. The opening title cut is a bash-o-rama flurry of cadences lending itself to a catchy chorus that gives way to songs like the frenetic “Downertown,” which somehow goes from rambunctious riffing to slower psychedelia within a few bars.
Elsewhere, “The Sadness of King Kong” drives home the pathos of the big guy via a barrage of machine-gun riffing while “Weirdo In the Park” uses off-kilter rhythms and vocal phrasing that has if fall somewhere between The Cramps and Buzzcocks. And while the spirit of the album is one of wild abandon, the closing instrumental number “Gin and Fog” not only has a diametrically opposite vibe to the other 11 songs, thanks to its Santo and Johnny vibe, but is a touching ode to the late Shane MacGowan. For Walbourne, whose history with The Pogues goes back double-digit years, it was a nod to his dearly missed friend.
“I’ve been playing with The Pogues since I was in my mid-twenties,” he explained. “I wrote ‘Gin and Fog’ for Shane MacGowan, who was a friend of mine since I was in my early twenties. He was a big influence in many ways—I miss the guy, and the world is a lesser place without him. I wrote a song for him because he loved his rock and roll. We would talk about rock and roll, books, music and things like that for days. It was a great time for me growing up and being around someone like that. Having him and Spider [Stacy] ask me to be in the band when Philip [Chevron] was ill—those were big shoes to fill and it was a big part of my life. I wanted to say goodbye to him. I was lucky to be around a lot of people like that. He was sort of a one-off, wild person.”
The 45-year-old vocalist/guitarist came to his rock and roll bona fides thanks to a father who started taking his then six-year-old son to see early music pioneers, including Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash and Fats Domino. An Elvis Presley devotee, Walbourne’s love of the genre is a constant, as he’ll eagerly go from discussing the King’s ’68 Comeback Special to Peter Guralnick’s recent book about the relationship between Presley and Colonel Tom Parker. That enthusiasm carries over when he’s asked about what fans can expect when they go to see His Lordship.
“The show is a blast and is meant to be fun,” Walbourne said. “I think we play for an hour and it’s pretty intense. I’m exhausted when I come off. It’s not a recital and it’s not a chin-stroking performance. It’s loud rock and roll. That’s what it does and what it’s meant to do.”
Related: Our coverage of His Lordship’s American debut at Red Flag: https://bandsthroughtown.com/his-lordship-interview/