Meet Chloe Slater the new-generation indie guitar hero on her whirlwind rise and using satire to write “protest music”
Having grown up shy and introverted in Bournemouth – a picturesque British seaside town without much of a music scene – a young Chloe Slater felt “trapped” there when she was younger. “All I really wanted was to move to the city and be around other people that liked the music that I liked and start a band,” she recalls of her early aspirations, talking to Guitar.com backstage ahead of her packed performance at this year’s Eurosonic festival in Groningen.
In her formative years, Taylor Swift made her feel as though such dreams could come true. “I was a big fan,” Slater recalls, having decided she wanted to play guitar when she was just 13-years-old. After straying away from country pop and discovering Arctic Monkeys, Catfish & the Bottlemen “and any big indie, thrash-y guitar bands”, she received an electric guitar for Christmas.“I practiced quite a lot when I was younger,” she recalls, citing Alex Turner as her guitar hero and half-joking, “I was probably better at guitar when I was younger than I am now.”
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Although her mum would always be singing back then, it was actually Slater’s music teacher at school who encouraged her to record demos. “I was trying to decide what degree to do, so I needed a way to get there,” the “straight A” student recalls, adding that she had planned to study English literature “because it’s what I was good at”. However, she realised she didn’t enjoy it that much and, following a casual suggestion from the aforementioned teacher, opted for a music degree instead.
Having moved to Manchester for university at the age of 19, she started performing at open-mic nights and got into different guitar tunings, particularly a lot of dad rock – “the moody sounding chords”, she says. Those types of tunings and chord shapes have been integral to her artistry since: “I find that it helps to build a sound world,” she says, describing her music as “happy-sad, but in an angry or excited way.”
Image: Jono White
Nowadays, Slater uses the guitar as “a vessel for songwriting”, and cites Declan McKenna and Sam Fender’s more political songs as what inspired her passion for writing “protest music”. She says this was “the first time I’d heard young people singing about things other than just love and relationships.” It also made Slater realise “there are so many other things to care about and be creative with than just your own personal life and relationships.” As someone who has always “loved digging deep into the context of things,” she found these aspects interesting.
All this has made Slater – whose guitar collection includes a Custom 1 Humbucker Telecaster, 1976 Vintage Fender Strat, Yamaha Revstar, Gibson WRC and Fender 1975 Precision Bass – an artist who embeds different layers within her music. Lyrically, her songs focus on millennial-relevant topics such as Vinted jumpers (‘Nothing Shines On This Island’), “people freezing under streetlights” (‘Thomas Street’), “crap landlords” (‘Death Trap’), Turkey teeth, and growing up in the digital age.
But, as is proven on her equally brilliant singles ‘Price On Fun’ and ‘24 Hours’, there’s always a witty edge running through them. “I think it’s a certain level of satire,” she suggests, “but it’s also silly and funny, but also kind of true,” she ponders. Though she recognises that some of the things she writes about are “weird” and not the typical theme for most artists, Slater likes that her songs make people think.
By balancing her not-so-subtle comments on society (“blue tick, new money, artificial sense of notoriety”) with playful riffs, such relatability with her generation has found her an audience on TikTok. With one of her song titles being ‘Tiny Screens’, the irony that she’s found success on such a platform is not lost on Slater: “a lot of the stuff I talk about is relevant on TikTok, like doom scrolling, jealousy, being influenced and buying things…
“You’ve got so much access to other people’s lives now that you never used to,” she offers as the reason for dissecting such subjects. “It makes it so much easier to criticise your own life and think ‘why don’t I have these things?’” At the same time, through her lyrics she contemplates her own morality, including her impact on important issues such as the environment and sustainability. “Do I really want to contribute to landfill by doing loads of Shien hauls?” she ponders.
What’s for certain, though, is that the last year has been a whirlwind success for Slater, who only released her debut EP in 2023. “I don’t think I really believe it,” she says, adding that she is still adjusting to the vast change in routine. With a second EP, ‘Love Me Please’, out in now, her schedule looks likely to remain just as busy. “I can’t wait,” she says; “I’m feeling really good about it. I’m really proud of it”.
Image: Jono White
The rawest song from the five-track collection is the uncharacteristically downbeat ‘Imposter’, on which she dissects her rise over acoustic guitar. “I still live my life like I used to, but then there’s a lot of crazy stuff that gets put in my calendar, and I sort of just show up and think ‘why am I here?’” On a wider scale, she chose the EP title – which is taken from a lyric in ‘Tiny Screens’ – to convey an important and timely message: “whether it’s about me personally or other people, I think everyone just wants to feel like they deserve to exist and be loved; it’s a hopeful plea for that”.
Slater hopes her live shows have an escapist effect too. “I want them to be a cathartic experience for people – a place for people to come and put their hands in the air after a shit day at work.” In several months time, she will be joining rising star Alessi Rose on her UK tour – a run that is sure to expand her fanbase. “She’s got such a dedicated audience, especially young girls,” Slater says, adding that while her own crowds are currently a mix of ages and genders, “there are a lot of 6Music dads with their daughters.”
Looking to the future, her goal as an artist is simple: “reach as many people as possible, go on massive tours and keep releasing music”. The literary world’s loss is guitar music’s gain.
Chloe Slater’s EP Love Me Please is out now.
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