"But they soon realised Hannah wasn't having any of it. "I think when we started, all our team assumed that at some point we'd get a 'look'," says Dan. It's just that's not what they're interested in. She enjoys dressing up for a show, "the same way I would for dinner with my girlfriends", and they're happy to wear the young Brit designers in this Observer photoshoot (but Dot bemoans the proliferation of superfluous gubbins: "It's like having a lovely chocolate pudding – great – and then you just go and ruin it with some orange zest, or in this case, a massive pocket.") It's not that they don't like fashion, Hannah says. Early on, people creating "look moodboards" were quickly shot down. The band refuse to be drawn into the obsession with image in the modern pop industry. It probably helps that the album went in at number two and has sold more than 100,000 copies. Now the record's finished they say they never even tiff. "In the end we just kept the parts we could agree on and scrapped everything else – that's why the record is so stripped back, because everything else we'd argue over," says Dan. But writing was a struggle, exposing frictions between the band as they argued over the direction it should take. They were signed to the Ministry of Sound label and given time to work on the record. "Then three months later we were spotted, and from that point on it all changed." "I remember telling the band that I didn't think I'd be able to do this much longer because I had to get a proper job," he says. They played around their uni a few times, but it was all supposed to be a bit of fun. They spotted Dot playing the djembe in the student union and the trio started writing together.
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Dan went to the Jewish Free School in London and Dot spent his teens drinking in fields near Northampton.ĭan and Hannah met at Nottingham University, where, in their first year, they shared halls, a malfunctioning toilet and a permanent smell of damp.
Hannah worked as a hairdressing assistant in Acton after school, a job she enjoyed bar the occasional "overexcited gentleman" receiving a head message. Perhaps that's down to their unpretentious upbringings. They're stars with little profile and, as Hannah says: "We don't feel famous." The band have become successful without styling, social media or plunging necklines.
But it's more likely that the band's burgeoning profile is unable to keep up with the runaway success of its music. True, you could spot Hannah's backcombed bob and Dot's unkempt bird's nest in silhouette. "I think it's because they've got better hair than me." The other day I was at our merchandise table, selling fans posters with my face on, and no one knew it was me," he sighs. "Everywhere, Hannah and Dot get recognised. The band's guitarist, Dan Rothman, is fuming, but not out of brotherly protection. Photograph: Julian Broad for the Observer With special thanks to 42 The Calls Hotel in Leeds. 'We don't feel famous': Hannah Reid, with Dan Rothman and Dot Major.
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