Jungle: From ‘Accidental Band’ to London Phenomenon

It’s September in London, and it’s album release week for Jungle, one of the biggest young British bands worldwide—and the rumble in Jungle is, keep on movin’.

For Josh “J” Lloyd-Watson and Tom “T” McFarland, the Londoners at the heart of Jungle, it’s been a flurry of flights, interviews, sessions, takeovers, pop-ups, in-stores, and lunchtime DJ sets. Now, on Saturday night, capping off a busy few days, the pair is back for a homecoming Spotify Fans First event to mark the release of their much-anticipated second album, For Ever.

Here in Village Underground, a turn-of-the-century warehouse turned cultural hub in the heart of Shoreditch, London, Jungle is setting the seal on a triumphant week with an immersive experience. With their ever-present eye for detail, J, T, and their team have recreated the set of the video for their summer single, “Happy Man.”

This has meant somehow inserting a full-sized rally car—a 1985 Ford Escort Cabriolet emblazoned with “Jungle Sport” and “JFC Fuel Injection”—and a mini repair garage into a compact club space. That, plus a long queue of fans snaking around the block.

“The people at this kind of show are the most passionate fans,” says T. We’re talking a few minutes before showtime in a dusty corridor behind the stage. “They know everything back to front. It’s great to play gigs for them because they’re your bread and butter. They’re the ones who queue up, literally ’round the block, to come and see you.”

[Editor’s note: They’re also the ones upset if tonight’s “Happy Man” detail is at all wanting.]

“Exactly,” affirms J. “So we’ve got the car out there, and lots of stuff from our house. When it’s a Spotify Fans First gig, it means your top listeners—which basically means my mum and my dad!” he laughs. “Seriously, it’s funny: We have been trying to work out who’s out there and some of our mates got [invitation] emails. They’ve obviously been blasting the last album and the new singles.”

Jungle-takeover at Village Underground

For Ever is the irrepressibly enthusiastic duo’s follow-up to their self-titled debut. Released in the summer of 2014, Jungle was an accidental worldwide hit by an accidental band. J and T, pals since their school days, were bedroom producers from Shepherd’s Bush. After years making music together and playing in other bands, they had no public or commercial aspirations—and not even an overall band name—for the new songs they began dreaming up.

But after quietly releasing the tracks “Platoon,” “The Heat,” and “Busy Earnin’” and giving away zero information about their identities other than their initials, J and T found themselves at the heart of a phenomenon. Jungle, the street soul sound of London, quickly went global, helped by their equally innovative, homemade viral videos.

As J recalls, “It was kind of a bit shocking, ultimately. We dreamt of being in a band that people knew, but we didn’t expect anything like that. We’d been through a load of bands previously, started Jungle, didn’t tell anyone—and then all the dominoes started falling.”

A now legendary performance at Glastonbury ’14 in a packed John Peel Tent. Brit Award and Mercury Music Prize nominations. Noel Gallagher anointing the album “f*cking amazing.” The dominoes fell … and keep falling. At time of writing, Jungle has 2.5 million monthly Spotify listeners.

“That’s the strange thing for us,” reflects T. “We can do this—play shows—in Mexico, in Argentina, in America. That’s the most exciting thing.”

Adds J, “We can go and sell two and a half thousand concert tickets in Mexico City because of streaming.”

Indeed: Dig into the Spotify data and the Mexican capital is second only to London in terms of the number of Jungle listeners, beating Los Angeles, Paris, and New York.

“The support from Spotify has been absolutely incredible, I have to say,” continues J. “Big billboards, events like this … Mental!”

After touring for two solid years, J and T took the briefest of breaks before starting work on their second album. The situation was complicated, as it so often is, by love. J relocated to Los Angeles to live with a girl he’d met when Jungle played the Hollywood Bowl. T stayed in London to be closer to a girl he’d met the week before Jungle played their first-ever show. The situation was further complicated, as it also so often is, by the end of love: both relationships ended. But from romantic breakdowns came a creative startup. J’s American dream going awry found form in new songs like “Heavy California” and the ironically titled “Happy Man” (which states: “buy yourself a dream … how’s it looking?”).

“There’s no getting away from it; it’s real life, it’s what actually happened,” J says matter-of-factly. “In fact, I managed to meet up with my ex recently in LA and actually resolve things. We drove ’round LA listening to the record, which was f*cking bizarre. You’re listening from two angles: First, you’re thinking, ‘Oh, this mix is poor.’ Then, second, ‘She’s not reacting! Next one!’ I was trying to impress her with my music.”

“Can you imagine that intense experience,” wonders T with a grin. “Hearing those tracks on the album that are directly jabbing at her?”

Still, J admits the playback-on-wheels was a healthy, healing moment.

“Massively,” he nods. “I felt like I’d completed something, like a weight was lifted. That’s a good thing, and the title became more meaningful: Jungle For Ever. It started to become apparent that both the women in those relationships were terrified of the relationships being forever—the idea of commitment. That’s why my relationship ended: her fear of commitment.”

T has had some closure, too. “My ex has been in touch, saying that she could hear in the music that she’d meant something to me. We knew the songs had done their job for us, helping us resolve our feelings. But it was great to know it was ‘job done’ for others, too.”