It\u2019s a Saturday night in Camden, London, and Getdown Services\u2019 fans are getting the beers in before \u201cBritain\u2019s best band\u201d play one of their final gigs of the year. The Electric Ballroom is heaving, despite this being their second show here in a month. There\u2019s no shortage of twentysomethings with shag hairstyles to explain why the duo live up to their slogan. \u201cThey\u2019re fun, which we need right now \u2013 life is bleak,\u201d says Dulcie. \u201cAnd they\u2019re socially aware,\u201d adds her friend Lotte. \u201cEven though they are quite silly, they\u2019re grounded.\u201d<\/p>\n
Across the bar, Dylan, 22, says that he finds Getdown Services and their genre-agnostic beats empowering: \u201cThey\u2019re a laptop garage band that are having fun doing what they love, and seeing that makes me want to do what I love as well.\u201d His pal James, 29, has returned for a repeat performance. \u201cI came to the other Getdown Services show and I felt more jubilant than I did at Oasis,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Move over Gallaghers: Ben Sadler and Josh Law come on stage to Status Quo\u2019s Whatever You Want and immediately begin the high-octane crowd interaction. Everyone on the balcony who got guestlist for tonight is pointed to en masse and told to \u201cfuck off\u201d; the pair stomp wide-legged like sumo wrestlers, egging on the roars and occasionally shredding a guitar. It\u2019s part chaotic aerobics video, part Butlin\u2019s gameshow \u2013 and though it\u2019s blokey, it\u2019s also a satire of blokey-ness. \u201cThis is what my fat body looks like!\u201d yells Sadler, pulling off his T-shirt to delighted cheers. \u201cThis is not LadBible!\u201d Law shouts.<\/p>\n
Back in Bristol where they\u2019re based, Getdown Services are home-town heroes. No sooner have they stepped into a pub, they\u2019re asked for a photo. They\u2019ve had a mammoth 2025: 130 gigs, two sold-out UK tours, festival stage shut-downs, well over half a million monthly listeners on Spotify and, amazingly for a band with song titles like Vomit, Piss and Shit, a red carpet shout-out<\/a> from Hollywood A-lister Walton Goggins. \u201cHe\u2019s doing PR for us!\u201d quips Sadler, though it\u2019s clear they\u2019re still getting to grips with the attention. \u201cI guess we are bigger than we thought we were,\u201d says Law.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The band\u2019s origin was an \u201caccident\u201d. As childhood friends who met at school in Minehead, Law and Sadler, both now 31, had messed about in various musical projects over the years. But when they started swapping ideas in lockdown while living in different towns, their unselfconscious approach to sound and subject matter clicked: pop culture word association, louche electro-house grooves, and lyrics about snacks and skidmarks. \u201cIt feels genuinely liberating to talk about that stuff,\u201d says Law of their more scatological lyrics.<\/p>\n First came debut album Crisps in 2023 \u2013 its ace title track is a loafing anti-rockstar anthem that begins \u201cI\u2019ve got choccy in my pocket\u201d \u2013 then a succession of EPs, including last year\u2019s Primordial Slot Machine and Crumbs 2. \u201cLow hanging fruit\u201d such as the pop troubadour James Bay and Jamie Oliver\u2019s 15 Minute Meals get a ribbing \u2013 \u201cbeing annoying is worse than being evil,\u201d says Law \u2013 but these observations are usually a front for social commentary, expressing small-town frustrations and embracing anti-toxic masculinity in all its belly-jiggling messiness: \u201cWake up, first thought, hope I don\u2019t piss myself today\u201d goes Drifting Away.<\/p>\n No joke \u2026 Law, left, and Sadler. Photograph: Si\u00f4n Marshall-Waters<\/p>\n Their music shares the same stream-of-consciousness DNA as many of the post-punk shouters who\u2019ve come through in recent years \u2013 Fat Dog, Yard Act, Big Special \u2013 but their songs are more of a supermarket sweep through a 00s indie disco, especially the chonky electro of Daft Punk and Justice. \u201cI really love that compressed sound; they\u2019re distilling an idea down to something really pure,\u201d says Sadler. \u201cI think that\u2019s in our music a lot. We get compared to the Streets and Sleaford Mods, and I do like that stuff, but the stuff we\u2019re really ripping off seems to go under the radar.\u201d<\/p>\n A lot of people see two white blokes with their tops off, shouting and swearing, and think we align with [macho behaviour] and it\u2019s nice to remind people we\u2019re not on that side<\/p>\n If there\u2019s a shared vision, it\u2019s that \u201cthere\u2019s a real desire to crack each other up\u201d, says Law. Their influences include the TV shows Bottom, Alan Partridge and Phoenix Nights; indeed, it\u2019s easy to imagine Peter Kay delivering lines like those on Caesar: \u201cI don\u2019t care if you\u2019re working class \/ You\u2019re a fucking twat \/ You don\u2019t care about music \/ You just like trousers\u201d. But Getdown Services stress they\u2019re not a musical double act like Tenacious D; they\u2019re a band that happens to be funny. \u201cAs soon as someone says \u2018it\u2019s comedy\u2019, the joke\u2019s gone,\u201d says Sadler.<\/p>\n And besides, there\u2019s lots to be serious about. In August, they slammed Victorious festival for censoring another band\u2019s pro-Palestine protest (Getdown donated their fee for playing the same festival to charity) and they call out transphobia on social media. \u201cA lot of people see two white blokes with their tops off, shouting and swearing, and probably think we align with that [macho behaviour],\u201d says Sadler, \u201cand it\u2019s nice to remind people that we\u2019re not on that side.\u201d<\/p>\n As for 2026, there\u2019s a second album in the works and while big labels have been knocking on their door, they\u2019re happy on the independent Bristol label Breakfast Records<\/a>. And what about that tagline? It started as a joke, they say, but now they\u2019re owning it. In the beginning, \u201cwe were barely even a band,\u201d says Law, \u201cand now I think maybe we are Britain\u2019s best band.\u201d<\/p>\n