Adult DVD - Adult DVD Adult DVD

When the members of Adult DVD first started experimenting with synths the Leeds-based band had zero expectations as to where it would take them. Now signed to Fat Possum Records, their debut album Adult DVD, establishes their landing point, an irreverent new voice existing in the space between electronic euphoria and spiky hardcore energy. 

Both unique in their approach and thrilling in impact, the band’s music has been shown love by Stereogum, Rolling Stone UK and The Line of Best Fit among others. Their breakout moment came with the single “Bill Murray,” an incessantly catchy distillation of people on the internet believing Tom Hanks and Bill Murray are the same person. More recently, the glitchy and anthemic “Real Tree Lee” was an A-list record at BBC 6Music and had support from BBC Radio 1.

At both Brighton’s The Great Escape and SXSW in Austin this year the band were championed as one of the buzziest acts of the festival with snaking queues of people waiting hours to see them perform . A relentless touring schedule in 2025 saw them hone their status as festival headliners in waiting, picking up a global army of new fans and playing to huge crowds at Glastonbury, Green Man, End Of The Road and more. The band recently toured Japan where they were greeted by fans in homemade Adult DVD merch, played a series of sold-out shows and saw posts about their performances go viral with millions of views. 

In the making of their exhilarating debut album, vocalist Harry Hanson and synth-player Greg Lonsdale, alongside Danny Blackburn (guitar/synth), Jake Williams (synth), Jonathan Newell (drums), and George Manson (bass), went harder on what was already working for them: witty observational songwriting based in real-life characters and a pulsating synth-punk sound perfect for both the rave and the mosh pit. Fusing together an intense musical workout with depictions of a motley crew of figures ranging from 5G conspiracy theorists to an existential cowboy, Adult DVD is the electrifying sound of a band exceeding their own expectations while going just as hard, if not harder than their adrenaline-fuelled live shows. 

On Adult DVD Hanson and Lonsdale continue to take a screenwriter’s approach to songwriting, filling their lyrics with stories pulled from the outskirts of society yet painting a vivid and comic picture of modern Britain.  “We don't take things too seriously,” Lonsdale explains. “The lyrics have got sillier, the songs have got sillier. We make music for people to enjoy, so let them have a laugh.” 

Produced by the band at The Nave Studios Leeds , the general theme of the album is to let go and take life a little less seriously. “Cowboy On Aisle Three” conjures an image of a wrangler swapping the rodeo for a supermarket over a swaggering synth riff . It’s an EQ-pushing beast that merges an existential crisis with the band’s playful spirit and relentless pursuit of bangers. Speaking about the song, Hanson says: “I came up with the idea when I was in Lidl. I’m sure everyone has thought, ‘Imagine if I just went nuts now,’ to get out of doing the big shop.”  

Adult DVD might favour fiction over facts but that’s not to say these songs don’t tap into something real. Album opener “Do As I Please” unpicks the myth of community spirit and zeroes in on the post-pandemic sensation of the self-serving individual. “World’s Best Boss,” meanwhile, rages against authority figures warped by tiny amounts of power (“I’m shaking your hand just because I get paid”) and the importance of establishing an identity outside work. Another hit of pure unbridled energy, the industrial clatter of “Jesus Christ Supercar” finds the band taking aim at life’s bullshitters all too quick to explain away their lack of adventure. It stands as the opposite to their song “Do Something,” one of a few occasions when Adult DVD tips its cap to the band’s  older material. “‘Do Something’ was about somebody trying things,” Lonsdale explains. “‘Jesus Christ Supercar’ is about always putting an excuse in the way.”

Simmering with boredom, wasted time, scams and a preoccupation with death and sex, the Adult DVD universe is a place to escape to and also get lost. These are songs that untangle the complicated ways in which people find themselves living, mining both laughter and energy from thinking. “There isn't that much down time on the album,” Hanson says in reference to its pulsating energy and high BPM count. “It's got harder in both directions. It’s like the EPs but on steroids.”
 
Adult DVD closes with a two song salvo that pushes things to new heights. “Real Tree Lee” shows what happens when questioning the truth leads to falling down the “cretin side” of the internet and into a bog of conspiracy theories. “I remember my mate from school whose dad used to make his own diesel in his shed,” says Lonsdale. “There was another guy who had loads of guns, too. We were interested in writing about these old boys with wild shit going on and where they go when they spend too much time online.”
 
“Rolling Face”—an acid house exploration of a wild night out that ends with its main character out of his mind — brings the album to a close. Its frantic pace, heavy breakbeats, and chanted vocals captures the band’s pulsating live show, concluding a journey that hurtles out of the screen and into real life. “The album starts in the evening and by the end of it, it's like it’s 3am,” says Hanson. 

That release, from the twin streams of mundanity and chaos of modern life, makes Adult DVD one of the most entertaining and essential albums of the year.