Howling Bells on Their New Album “Strange Life”

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Howling Bells on Their New Album “Strange Life”

Unbroken and Unbowed

Feb 11, 2026 By Andy Von Pip Photography by David Titlow

UK-based, Australian-born band Howling Bells have always seemed within touching distance of greatness. Over the years, they have released Howling Bells (2006), Radio Wars (2009), The Loudest Engine (2011), Heartstrings (2014), and now, 12 years on, they return with their first new album in over a decade, Strange Life. At the heart of the band are Juanita Stein on vocals and guitar, her brother Joel Stein on guitar, and Glenn Moule on drums. Their 2006 debut announced a band with a fully formed sound, cutting through the lad-rock-dominated UK indie scene like a breath of fresh air. Working with Ken Nelson, coming straight off producing Coldplay’s X&Y, Howling Bells crafted an album widely regarded as a classic debut by critics and fans alike. It was recorded at Liverpool’s Parr Street Studios in early 2005, when some of Coldplay’s equipment was still scattered around the famous studio. Reflecting on the studio’s closure in late 2023, Juanita Stein says, “It’s such a shame. It should have been preserved as some kind of cultural landmark. So much magic was created in that building.”

That magic is evident on the album itself. Stein explains, “We just kind of dived in and didn’t look back or overthink anything. It’s a lonesome-sounding album because a lot of the songs were written in my bedroom after one of the biggest heartaches I’d ever experienced. It really pushed me to the limits of creativity, and you can really hear that. When I listen to it now, I still relate to it, and I have a funny relationship with it. I’m proud of myself. I listen back to those songs and think I’m proud of the risks and chances we took as musicians. You can really hear that on the record. There’s nothing but joy and respect for who we were back then.”

Despite the praise, the band were initially slightly baffled when critics pegged their work as “goth country.” “I was really surprised,” Stein laughs. “A lot of the artists they thought I was influenced by or copying, I had never listened to. I hadn’t listened to PJ Harvey, and I’d never heard Bauhaus. The songs were already written, but while we were in the studio with Ken, he’d ask, ‘Have you heard Television?’ and we’d say no. Then he’d play them or ask about Wire, which I’d never heard of either. That opened up a whole world of British post-punk for me. Essentially, it’s still rock and roll, but these bands were using really innovative chord progressions, and diving left when you didn’t expect it, and that blew open my world.”

Looking back at photos from the time, Stein adds, “I don’t know why I was surprised because we kind of looked goth. I mean, we were always in black and wearing sunglasses. Then there was the country element, because Glenn grew up in the Australian outback. Growing up in Australia in the 80s is very different from growing up in England. There’s so much more space, and I guess that landscape seeps into your music.”

The move to London in 2005 was another pivotal moment. “Relocating to London was my idea,” Stein explains. “A lot of the bands that I had loved and grown up listening to were British bands, so I figured it made the most sense to head straight to the source.” It wasn’t an easy transition and required a particular kind of tenacity, something that Strange Life repeatedly circles back to. Stein traces that resilience back to her father, a musician himself. “My dad always had a boot up our butts about never giving up,” she laughs before pausing. “I don’t know if I ever told you this story.”

In the early eighties, during Bob Dylan’s Australian tour, her father decided to find a way to get a song he’d written (called ‘My People’) heard. He parked himself outside the hotel where Dylan was staying and waited all day, either for Dylan himself or his manager. Eventually, persistence paid off, as Juanita explains, “He spoke to his manager and said, ‘Listen, I’ve got a cassette. I really want Bob to hear it.’” Contact details were included. Later, unexpectedly, the phone rang. “It’s his manager saying, ‘Listen, Bob would like to meet you. He really likes the song.’” They met backstage after the show. “And the legend is Dylan asked, ‘Did you really write this?’ My dad said yes. Dylan said, ‘I’ll study it,’ and threw the tape over his shoulder.” She laughs. “That’s as far as that story went.”

But the ending was never really the point. “That’s the kind of guy my dad was. He’d hang outside hotels and call people and send letters.‌ He hustled. And he worked. And he never, ever, ever gave up.” She grins. “By the way, just to clarify, I haven’t ever stayed outside a hotel, FYI. But you never know.”

Their determination paid off with a one-album deal with Bella Union. “Then it grew legs,” Stein reflects. “We signed to another label, and suddenly there was pressure to come up with a second album, and we had a couple of years to do that. How much have you lived in two years compared to a decade? Not that much.” The problem, she says, wasn’t ambition but compression. “You’re forcing an accumulation of experiences and summaries in your mind that probably, for most artists, need a lot more time to brew.”

Internally, some of the band wanted to repeat the formula on album two, working in the same way as their debut, while others wanted to expand their sound. “When you’re young, ambitious, and hungry,” Stein says, “your instinct is to move.” That ambition had been there from the start, pushing the band to try new things, change environments, and take risks without knowing how they would land. Looking back, she’s reluctant to rewrite that period. “You just do what you think is right at the time.”

Eventually, the constant touring and relentless pace took its toll. Stein recalls, “In the past, we had done so much, went so hard for so long, and toured so heavily that we just got to a point where we needed a break. No one knew how long that break was going to be, and we never discussed it or planned it.”

The hiatus that followed was never formally announced; life simply intervened. Children, distance, and parallel creative paths reshaped the band’s orbit, with all members remaining musically active in the interim, most notably Juanita through four solo studio albums.

It was actually a handful of “Revive Live” shows not long after COVID, coinciding with the anniversary of their debut album, that helped reignite the connection. Stein reflects on playing the debut in full for audiences who had followed the band from the start, “It was very inspiring to play to people who had a relationship with the album, meet them that many years down the line, and hear their stories, how it had shaped parts of their lives.” That reconnection became the thread that drew Howling Bells back together and paved the way for Strange Life.

Over the years, Juanita Stein says, her relationship with Howling Bells’ catalogue has shifted. “My relationship to the other Howling Bells records has changed remarkably over the years. Not so much the first one, I’ve always had a really strong connection to that. It’s the others I’ve had to go back to and understand through the eyes of other people. That’s been a really interesting journey.”

That process of reassessment flows directly into Strange Life. It is not a comeback exactly, but a continuation, a reminder that the distance between then and now was never as wide as it once seemed. Writing for Howling Bells, Stein explains, does not start from an entirely different premise. “I don’t pick up the guitar and go, ‘Okay, I need to write a solo track today or a Howling Bells song.’ I’ll pick it up and I’ll know very, very quickly what spirit is guiding me. If it’s the spirit of the band, it’s usually very animated and very specific.”

There is a sense of urgency in Howling Bells’ music that does not always carry over to her solo work, she notes. “And I’ll take the songs to the guys, and we’ll know if it’s going to work or not. Sometimes I’ve taken songs in, and Joel’s just been like, ‘This isn’t for us. You know this is for you.’ The beautiful thing about working with musicians for decades now is that if something’s not working, there is zero time lost. No one’s egos are bruised. Everyone’s just like, ‘This is not working. Let’s move on.’ And yeah, there was a period where everything I was writing felt like a Howling Bells song.”

It must be rewarding, I suggest, to work with Joel again, given his ingenious, adventurous guitar work, which is perhaps underrated outside musician circles.

“Yeah,” Juanita laughs. “He’s so innovative, and he’s insane. And I love him. He’s crazy. But as ‌eclectic and innovative as he is on guitar, that’s exactly how his mind works. I think that’s why he’s such a great guitarist.”

She recalls a surreal encounter with Johnny Marr backstage. “I went up to fangirl and tell him how much of a fan I was, and he ended up coming up to me fanning about the Howling Bells record. My jaw was on the ground. He told me he’d listened to our album on car trips with his kids, and then he just waxed lyrical about Joel as a guitarist and said, ‘He’s incredible. He’s brilliant.’ I couldn’t talk. The guys standing around me were like, ‘You didn’t say anything back.’ I’m like, ‘I couldn’t. What do you say to that?’ So. Yes, he’s definitely one of those guitarists who gets appreciation from other guitarists.”

On their latest album Strange Life, “Melbourne” stands out as the band’s most personal track, written in the wake of Juanita’s return to the city and the death of her father.

“ Yes, ‘Melbourne’ is probably the most personal reflection,” Juanita explains. “It’s a song about deep yearning and ultimately grief. It was written about something traumatic, but the song doesn’t sound traumatic. There’s a wistfulness to it, and there’s love in there, you know what I mean?

“So, yeah, ‘Melbourne’ is very much storytelling. It’s telling one of the most traumatic things that’s ever happened to me, but at the same time, I’m balancing that with the wistfulness and the homesickness. I’m reminiscing about the beauty that Australia holds for me.”

“Sacred Land” comes from a very different place.

“I’m actually furious in that song. When I recorded it, I had to sit down for a moment after the vocal take because I was so angry. And I am so angry. I may not be as openly political as other artists are. But privately, I am. And that song was one of the easiest songs I’ve ever written. I mean, it was just picking up the guitar and having it flow out of me.

“And it is a war song and a protest song at the same time. I find all wars are made of the same thing. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s land, it’s religion, its male ego. And yes, set against the backdrop of having grown up in Australia and living in a culture where they’ve whitewashed an entire genocide of Indigenous people. So there are so many things brewing. I grew up in Australia learning about that. But then I also went to a very, very religious Jewish school. Holocaust survivors would come in and tell us about their experiences. Half of my family was wiped out in the Holocaust.

“So there’s generational trauma. And then you’re just a kid trying to make your way through the world, and then there are fires lighting everywhere geographically. And I just exploded one day. That’s the brilliant thing about music. It gives you somewhere to focus all that anger and that energy. And on this record, it was that song.”

She reflects on the difference between that kind of outlet and the online world. “There’s so much more power in having music than arguing online, where people try to force you to pick a side. It’s really, really important now more than ever that people do their own research and figure out that we’re complex creatures, able to hold two things at the same time. Don’t just have certain people tell you what to believe. That’s no different to propaganda.

“I think that people who are genuine fans of the band and pay attention to me as an artist know where I stand in the political landscape. But I don’t feel that it’s necessary to use dogma to expect the same thing from them.”

Another highlight on the new album is “Sweet Relief”, which in some ways feels like an echo of the band’s debut single, “Low Happening”.

“It is a distant relative of ‘Low Happening’. You’re correct,” Juanita says. “It’s kind of a quick fix, isn’t it? It’s just in and out.

“It actually came about because one of Joel’s mates, who was an addict, had become sober. We had an extensive discussion about that. I know the guy, so I can see that it really is a daily struggle. We were talking about addiction and how easy it is to judge addicts. There are so many reasons in life why anyone would fall into a pit of addiction or self-pity.

“And that’s what the ‘sweet relief’ part is. Everybody needs some kind of sweet relief, especially today. When we’re being pummeled internally and externally, there’s no break. There’s no breathing room for anyone. Part of me thinks you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to survive.” Thankfully, Howling Bells have done exactly that. In the strangest of times, Strange Life provides insight and a welcome, lasting relief.