Tummyache

Tummyache is an alternative rock project led by songwriter and producer Soren Bryce. The group forms in 2018 and is based in the United States and London. It includes Bryce, Linus Fenton, Bianka Baranova and Arthur James.

Background

The name Tummyache comes from one of the physical side effects associated with severe anxiety. The project develops from Bryce’s wish to work through a new set of feelings that arise while she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Releases and style

The debut EP, HUMPDAY, presents personal and interpersonal themes, along with ideas about the human condition filtered through absurdism. The project’s later album is written in a shed in her parents’ backyard at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its first single, DIY!!, uses harsh guitars and deliberately trivial lyrics to examine American DIY scenes in a blunt, ironic way.

The title track Soak appears as a single and video from the album of the same name. Bryce describes the song as drawing on anxious, tedious habits that form during pandemic isolation and on the experience of adjusting to a new country. The project’s sound is linked to the early 1980s indie surge, 1990s alternative rock and a present-day DIY approach.