From her isolated upbringing in rural Wisconsin, combined with a passion for opera, philosophy and industrial music, Nika Rosa Danilova aka Zola Jesus has created a name for herself as being a successor to the great Diamanda Galas and Lisa Gerrard with her haunting, otherworldly vocal style.

Over the past three years Danilova has reached the point in her career where she is no longer an experimental, teenage noise-maker but an internationally celebrated electro-pop artist. Her third album Conatus is her most accomplished work to date, pushing beyond the dark melodrama of Stridulum II toward something that is emotionally breathtaking.

From Conatus alone, it’s clear that Danilova confidence to follow her instincts her paid off, but in conversation she remains tight-lipped, holding her cards close to her chest, as Static’s Chris “Man of 1000 questions” Berkley would quickly find out.

It’s only been 12 months since Stridulum, you’ve put out EPs and toured a lot. Do you sleep?

Um, not much. No. (laughs)

Have you found yourself out on the road these past 12 months especially?

Yes, I’ve been touring a lot this past year.

How do you find time to fit in tours with making records? You seem to cram a lot in.

Well, I just make it work. There are a lot of hours in the day. Not enough, but there are enough (laughs).

Have you always been this way? Were you a prodigious child?

I don’t know. I’ve always felt like there’s so much to do and there’s so much to get done and you gotta do it, you know? Now or never.

How did you discover that you wanted to be a singer?

It was very natural. I just loved to sing and would always be singing. As long as I remember I’ve always wanted to do this.

As a child were you having those ‘Sound of Music’ moments where you’re walking around the hillside singing to yourself?

Maybe (laughs).

You seem to be drawn towards opera or classical singing as a kid, rather than rock n’ roll, right? Was that your first love?

Well, just singing was my first love. I just wanted to be a better singer and I wanted to be able to do things with my voice that you needed training for, so that was just the natural course.

What point did you become aware of the power of vocals, or being a singer?

I don’t know. Like I said, ever since I was born I would just be singing. It’s not even something that I remember the impetus. Music has always been something very innate to me, like an impulse.

Were you shy of jumping up on stage and doing Zola Jesus stuff when you first began as well?

Oh yeah, I was terrified at the beginning. I mean, I’m still terrified really. It felt like if I wasn’t going to do it then I’m never going to do it and I need to get over that fear if I ever want to do this. So I just had to do it.

At the same time, your early recordings as Zola Jesus were obscured by murkiness or programmed noise. Was that your way of hiding behind a veil?

In a way, yes.

How much did you learn to program at the same time as learning to sing?

Well, programming and producing came a little later on when I felt like I needed to make songs and do everything myself. I didn’t have anyone around me to make music so I just did it for myself. I just had to learn the skills.

Did you have some bands that were touchstones then, that you were kinda discovering or looking to, to make the sound of Zola Jesus?

No, not really.

So when people have compared you to other bands have you been pleasantly surprised by what they’ve said?

It just confuses me. I don’t think about my music in that way.

Did embarking on some of those big tours last year then impact on how you wanted Conatus to sound? It seems like this album is definitely borne out of live shows?

I actually thought it was going to be a lot more poppier and a lot straighter. When I started making it, it became much more introspective and atmospheric and exploratory in a way. It wasn’t as much of an immediate pop record as I had envisioned it to be in the beginning.

So in the first place this was going to be a feel-good happy-go-lucky Zola Jesus album and something went wrong?

Not necessarily, but I thought it was going to have much more of an immediate impact as far as the songwriting went, but as I started working on music I felt like whatever came out, came out. For some songs it was that, but it wasn’t that completely. It feels a lot more subtle and introspective.

A couple of those big tours that you’ve done were with Fever Ray and The XX. Both of them have powerful female vocals and sparse instrumentation, did you find inspiration touring with a couple of artists who might be kindred spirits?

Not really. I was inspired by their work ethic and their conviction in what they believe in and everything but musically not so much.

You’ve certainly cut back the programming on Conatus. To use a lofty word it sounds more ’earthy’ than anything you’ve done before, there’s strings and pianos, did you find yourself enjoying some of those earthier tones on this record?

Well, actually I feel like this record is much more programmed because the beats are much more intricate and sophisticated in a way, but at the same time I wanted to bring in a lot of acoustic and organic elements and balance it out instead of it being a completely electronic record. But it feels more electronic to me than Stridulum. I don’t know, it’s kind of a strange dichotomy.

Some of the songs seem to have that breathing space where you can just hear piano and strings which might’ve been obscured in previous years on your records.

Yeah, I wanted there to be a lot of space on the record. I tend to write and put everything in the song and then weed it out and bring out the space in the songs just to allow them to be more breathing room, I guess.

A song like “Skin” is a total torch song. Some kid is gonna cover that on American Idol, I’m sure.

Oh god.

Does it feel like that? Does it feel like your power ballad?

It kinda felt like my point of no return in a way.

Why is that? Because it’s such a naked song?

Yeah, so stark and for me, very cathartic. When I wrote it, I felt very low.

Was it one of those five minute songs that came very quickly? It seems like such a great impulsive or spur of the moment song…

Yeah. It came very quickly.

Another way that you’re going to be infiltrating teenage bedrooms this year is the M83 collaboration ‘cos you’ve turned up on Anthony’s record. Was it a thrill to be able to team up with him?

It was wonderful. I’ve always been a fan of his work and I guess he’s been a fan of mine too, so getting to work with him was very exciting.

Was this one of those horrible 21st century things where you weren’t in the same room together, or did you spend time with him to make that song?

We went into the studio together and we worked on the vocals and did it together. It was a lot of fun.

Interview broadcast on Static on 10/11/11. Static can be heard on Sydney’s 2SER (107.3 FM) and via the Internet (www.2ser.com) every Thursday evening (AEST).

San Francisco’s Girls self-titled debut of 2009 garnered widespread acclaim based on its fancy-free and free-love attitude that offered irresistible pop gems bathed in x-rated video clips (“Lust for Life” anyone?). Sex and pop, what more do you want out of music these days? For their sophomore album Father, Son, Holy Ghost, the Girls duo of Christopher Owen and Chet “JR” White have upped the songwriter stakes to put together an album that’s impressive straight out of the blocks, from the rolling surf riffs of “Honey Bunny” to the epic Pink Floyd psyche-pop of “Vomit”. Static’s Chris Berkley spoke with Girl’s JR over the phone in the midst of a very suspect (if you’re to believe what he says) video shoot.

You’re in the middle of doing a film clip, huh?

Yeah, we’re doing a video for the song “Honey Bunny“, which I think is going to be the first single, even though “Vomit” came out before.

“Vomit”s already got a film clip as well, so you’re racking them up…

Yeah, I guess so. We want to do it, and the label sure doesn’t mind.

From past history of Girl’s film clips are there any penises on display in this one?

Lots of penises. Basically what we did is we casted the whole bands penises and put little moustaches and painted eyes on and stuff and we’re acting out scenes with our dicks.

I can’t wait to see it. This is obviously all part of the roll-out of the Girls album, which is pretty on time for exactly two years after the debut. It’s a pretty prolific work-rate you guys have got going on.

Yeah we started the recording of this album on the anniversary of the band basically, February 14th, Valentines Day.

Oh really, so you have a band anniversary?

Yeah. Well, of our first show, yeah. It worked out that it’s Valentines Day. I kinda do that with all the anniversaries of my life. I try and line them up with holidays as I have a really bad memory.

And do you and Christopher give each other flowers on band anniversary day? What do you do?

Yeah. But no, it sorta goes by without much notice to be honest. After the fact we realised it was the anniversary of the birth of the band when the record was begun.

It’s a pretty good work rate you‘ve got going on. Not only are you into the second album, you’ve got the mini album last year. Does it feel good to get this body of work together?

Yeah, it feels great. Definitely when you’re playing live and you’re touring for 9 months out of the year it’s great to have more and more songs to choose from. It’s a plus to getting more recorded material out there. I think if it were up to us, both of us would just work in the studio all the time and increase the output even more.

You really seem to have honed your craft these past couple of years. Did surrounding yourselves with the band to tour the first album sort of change the dynamic as well, from just being you and Christopher?

It would change the band a lot, and sometimes because people wanted to move on, sometimes it was personality things. This time we kinda started the record with a whole new band. We came out of a hell of a lot of touring with a specific band and when most bands do that, the smart thing to do is keep that band before you go in the studio but we kinda flipped that and decided to get rid of everyone except for our keyboard player and get a whole new band. It was a fun process. It makes the band feel fresh definitely. It’s not necessarily something we want to do every time though.

Did it mean that you had a break from the music you’d made before to going into this new record? Did it feel like you were making this fresh start?

In a way it makes you look at the older stuff in a different light when you’re playing with different people and their interpretation of it as well. Definitely it feels like the band has moved on a little bit, getting farther away from what we did on the first record. But that said I actually still enjoy playing the early songs. There’s a definite difference between the new stuff and the old stuff when we play it and I appreciate the old stuff as much as I appreciate the new stuff.

For this new Girls album you worked with an outside producer for the first time. You got this guy Doug Boehm. Did you do that with much trepidation, because you had always been the one that had the hands on in the studio?

With Doug, the intention was he was just going to be the engineer. We chose him because he had worked on a lot of records that were part of my childhood — he worked on Beck’s first record. My whole view of what Los Angeles was in the 90’s when I was a kid, Doug basically worked on those records that formed that view for me. It was kind of a cool thing. Definitely my role wasn’t played down but Doug’s experience doing records over a long period of time and working on bigger records came into play where we felt like he had invested enough of himself in it to deserve the co-production credit that we decided after the fact. He kept the sessions moving much better than I could do it, you know.

He’s also got a bit of an Australian connection as well. He’s done Powderfinger and The Vines records, so if he’s got the Australian dollar touch, you guys might have a hit record here.

Yeah, he’s done a lot of Australian records he was telling us, and The Vines record he did with Rob Schnapf is a great, big sounding record.

This Girl’s record is a big sounding record too. The songs seems to have gotten bigger and more epic. I guess the nature of the new Girls album probably hinted at on the song “Carolina” from last year but did you guys decide to draw the songs out and really go for it on this record?

The big embellishment on this record is using back-up singers on parts of some of the songs. I think when we went in originally we had intentions on taking it farther, so I think it shows a little bit of restraint in some sense. I’m the one who’s always trying to pull back and use less guitars and create space. My view is we did hold back, and spent a lot of time making sure things sounded big and clean, making the sounds and tones more immediate.

Father, Son, Holy Ghost is a very fearless record. There are a few nods to some of your icons on that record. The female wails on “Vomit” sound like Pink Floyd. They are big songs.

Yeah, definitely. That’s kinda where that came from in a sense, letting her go. That came from an amazing back-up singer by the name of Makita that we worked with in Los Angeles. After we tracked the basic back-ups on that song it got to the point where I wanted her to just riff, I wanted her to, we would say, “take it to the church”, take it to the dark side of the moon, you know? That song definitely has that influence in it. Those influences a lot of the times are found halfway through the process, you realise as you’re working the song it’s going some place and as we see those parallels with other music, or create homages to other things, it’s not something that starts out when Chris writes a song, it’s not something that starts out early in the production process. Usually about halfway or three quarters the way through we start adding the nods.

Another great nod on the Girls album is “My Ma” which has got that George Harrison-esque guitar solo in the middle of it.

(laughs) Oh yeah, I love that solo. That’s probably my favourite song on the record.

Definitely, but also there’s no tongue in cheek or pastiche to what you guys do. It seems very sincere these nods.

Yeah, I mean it’s all we have. It’s not really a joke.

Do you think a lot of bands fall into that trap though, of trying to ape their heroes and end up just covering them?

Yeah, a big thing I do if I work with another band too, for putting away stress for young bands, is realise what those things that are that make your band your band. Like the way you do things that are different that change the result of your record. If you go on trying to do something or sound like something there’s always a filter which is the people in the band. The more you get to work you start to notice what kinda makes your band your band. The weird little things you do within your working process. This is our third sorta record and we’re very aware of those things. We really relish in them and those are the things that give our music a signature sound.

And so does that mean you’ve read descriptions of bands these days being Girls-esque? Is that a phrase where other bands are being compared to you now?

I don’t know, that’d be pretty cool though. I hear it, though I don’t think it’s necessarily intentional. Like our first record came at a time where a lot of people were trying to do similar things. I hope so. That’d be cool. I wanna be that band that some older brother or sister plays to their younger siblings and says “this is cool, you gotta listen to this”.

Interview broadcast on Static on 15/09/11. Static can be heard on Sydney’s 2SER (107.3 FM) and via the Internet (www.2ser.com) every Thursday evening (AEST).

Quietly released last year was the first proper solo album by Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier. A touching tribute to her sister, who in Sadier’s words “went on a million year trip/and left everything behind”, The Trip saw Sadier step out from the shadow of Stereolab to make a very revealing album, not only in the way she dealt with her loss, but in how she paid tribute to artists that influenced and inspired her. An album that sparkled in its minimalist approach, The Trip showed a side of Sadier unseen, one that was filled with warmth and emotion, and those little philosophical quirks that you’ve come to expect.

Whilst in London to play a show at Cafe Oto on what was to be the hottest day of the year, Webcuts pulled up a couch with a very suntanned Laetitia to find out what a trip for her it has been.

How have things been for you since Stereolab wound down? You’ve been keeping yourself busy since the release of The Trip, playing the odd solo show here and there. Have you been enjoying yourself?

It’s been great. I didn’t know what to do when Stereolab stopped. I thought that’s it, I’m finished, but things didn’t quite happen like that. First I was offered some money to do a record, and then I lost my little sister and I needed to put all this grief into my art. So I had a reason to do a record, a very sad reason, and although I was really questioning if the world needed yet another record, somehow the universe decided that yes, I should, and then Facebook had people saying ‘Hey, do you want to come and play in Portugal or Belgium?’. All sorts of places.

It’s quite easy to do these things, to pack up a guitar and go, when it’s just you.

Yes. I went to Greece and that was my first show and I could barely play the guitar, and I can still barely play it. Then I went off on tour and supported Mice Parade on their European tour and that was really good to have the momentum of every night playing a show for ten days and then I toured Spain for ten days, and Germany for seven nights in a row. I played in New York and Brooklyn in June and then South America to Brazil and Chile.

Being a left-hander I’m fascinated by the way you play guitar, because you play left-handed but you don’t change the strings around. Is that the way you taught yourself?

Originally, I turned the strings around and realised that whenever I saw a guitar I couldn’t play it, because it was right-handed, so I got fed up with that and thought ‘Sod it, I’m playing right-handed guitar and I’ll play it upside down’. I’m not like a proper musician, a trained musician, so it’s (my playing) is all by ear and ‘oh, I like this chord’ and I don’t know what I’m playing, but they all have names apparently…

You’re playing solo at the moment, how do you feel being alone onstage after decades playing with a band bashing away behind you? Is there a certain clarity in being able to hear yourself think while on stage?

I can hear myself sing, which I enjoy very much! It’s a very different experience but I did find it was hard not being able to hear myself. It was really hard and it made it very frustrating at times because I wanted to hear myself and a voice cannot compete with a loud drummer or a loud amp, and a lot of singers in bands have exactly the same thing. So I did feel a bit crushed and alienated I must say, although I loved the music we were playing, really loved the music, and I still do. But now it’s very, very different. The responsibility is mine and I really enjoy having to fill up the space with a minimum amount of equipment. I always had a frustration with Stereolab that it couldn’t be simple, yet the songs were so beautiful they could’ve stood with just guitar and a voice, but with the dynamic of the band it was always full on, full on, full on… and I thought “How about sometimes we pare it down, and then go full on” but there wasn’t a question of that. I guess I’m repairing certain things with playing alone which I really enjoy at the moment, but I think once I’m stronger with this alone, I will be better prepared to play with new people.

Is that something you’re looking forward to doing in the future?

I think the future is more modular. It could be one, it could be two, it could be three. I’d really like to be a trio. I’d really like that.

As you mentioned before, recording The Trip was a means for you to express your feelings toward the loss of your little sister, but had you made plans to record an album before this happened?

As I said at the time I was wondering whether I should or not, whether there was a reason. A raison d’être, you know. My view on working in the creative field like this is that things are going to have a raison d’être, and Tim was like that. You just don’t do things because it is time, or it’s in the contract. For me it’s more with an emotion there, or a desire. I work really with a desire to do something. So I was questioning whether I wanted to, and things kind of fell into place, and it became a means to act therapeutically around a sad event, and it’s amazing how it worked as well. When I received the final object after it was made, with the sleeve and everything, I just burst into tears because there it all was.

Because of this, do you find it hard to listen to?

No, to me it’s not a sad record. I don’t particularly enjoy listening to my own stuff. Sometimes it comes on the ipod, or sometimes someone will put on, but no, I don’t listen to my own record particularly, but sometimes it’s nice. I’ve rediscovered my old Monade record, A Few Steps More recently, and I thought ‘Oh, that’s quite a nice record. I made a really nice record’, and I didn’t realise at the time that I made a really nice record. Maybe because there was a bit of a complex because of Tim, and he’s a genius and all that, and because of Stereolab and somehow my work could not possibly have the same value. It’s not the same value, it’s different, but I did realise it really has a value.

Your choice of covers on the album are quite interesting and diverse. Gershwin’s “Summertime”, Les Rita Mitsouko’s “Un Soir, Un Chien” , and Wendy and Bonnie’s “By The Sea”. Were these favourite songs of yours or ones that you felt fit within the emotional core of the album?

They all had different reasons to be on the record. “Un Soir, Un Chien” I loved and I always wanted to sing it, so it’s me completely indulging in a long-time fantasy. Richard Swift helped putting that together. With Wendy and Bonnie, I wanted to do a cover version, but it would have to be very different from the original. That was the idea. So I thought this is a really nice poppy song if you speed it up. So it’s a very silly little thing that we knocked together in an afternoon, and it was also honouring Wendy and Bonnie working together at a very young age doing really quite mature and beautiful stuff, and a record that fell into a trap with a bad contract and the record never came out properly until two years ago or something. And “Summertime”, one night I found these chords and I just stated singing “Summertime” over the top of it. When it came to picking tracks to go on the record, I didn’t want this one, because it’s so uncool (in a mocking voice) “Summertime”… but the song was like “Look, I want to be on this record. Let me be on this record”, so I thought “Well, Ok”. The idea about my work is to be guided by it, rather than over-controlling everything to suit my ego.

I would imagine that recording your own music is quite different experience, a more freer and involved one, than with Stereolab. Do you enjoy having that autonomy?

Yes. It’s funny how it’s being in charge, but it’s also letting go and not wanting to control the every aspect. The people I work with, like Richard Swift and how that happened and fell into my lap. It was like the most gorgeous thing that happened to me, getting to work with this guy and his bassist, Yuuki Matthews. Richard supported us in America, and I had asked them to come on tour with us but I could not enjoy them because of some trauma I was going through. Just right at the end I managed to speak a little bit to Richard and go for a walk and somehow we must’ve said ‘Let’s work together one day’. A few months later they come to play in London, the bass player played one note and I nearly fainted. He was such a good bass player. I’ve never really felt that about any bass player. Just one note… They were fabulous, and after the show, Yuuki gets off-stage and comes straight to me and is like “ So I hear you’re going to record with Richard and I would like to be part of this project’ and I was like ‘Oh really? Yes, yes!”, and it happened. So that process I found so enjoyable and I’m really ready to work with Richard again, and Yuuki if he wants to.

Where did you make the album?

In his studio in Cottage Grove near Portland. It was such a fun time. I met a community of people there that was so super, intelligent people, no big egos, people were down to earth, who get on with their lives, who are in charge of their lives rather than sitting and moaning on their asses complaining it’s not good enough or whatever, or having nervous breakdowns or taking drugs, well, they do take a little drugs, but they just do things. Life’s not easy. They understood that, they’re responsible for it. It put me in such a really beautiful space, so I’m ready to go back there.

It’s been said by Webcuts in the past that Destroyer’s Dan Bejar is the Woody Allen of pop music. His idiosyncratic, poetic touch is less that of a lyricist but a storyteller with a revolving cast of characters (mostly women), and picking up on the ripples and waves they create to make them a part of his own interior monologue. An essential eighth of the mighty New Pornographers, Bejar has been recording as Destroyer since the 90′s. Kaputt, his ninth album is a sumptuous, rhapsodic slice of 80′s melodrama, immersing itself entirely in the era from the vintage instrumentation to Bejar’s own penchance for seeking the sublime out of what some might find the ridiculous.

A wordsmith second to none, taking a ride on record with Bejar is one entirely absent of dull moments. Given the list of many themes and inspirations Bejar revealed that may or may not have contributed to the making of the album, including “fretless bass… the hopelessness of the future of music… the pointlessness of writing songs for today… the Linn Drum… Avalon and, more specifically, Boys and Girls…”, Kaputt is Bejar recast as Bryan Ferry searching for his own Avalon. Static’s Chris Berkley (a man who’s love for the 80′s also knows no bounds) caught up with Dan Bejar on the road to talk Kaputt.

How have audiences been taking to the Destroyer live show this year? You’ve been out for quite a while.

I usually have my eyes closed but it seems that people for the most part are into it and more importantly the band seems pretty into it, so I take those as good signs.

Do you have your eyes closed because you’re nervous or something, or that‘s the way you have to be to do the performance?

Sometimes I open them. It really depends. It depends on what I’m hearing. Sometimes it helps me sing. It’s not ‘cos I’m nervous.

It’s just because you don’t want to look at all the ugly people in the audience, right?

The ugly people? Yeah, I have a hard time staring at those ones.

I was kind of curious to know what audiences had been thinking of the Kaputt live show. Was it a record that was designed to pull the rug out from under a few people?

I didn’t really design it with any specific intention, excepting at some point I designed it to be a record that it would be so impossible to tour I wouldn’t have to go on tour.

Well that didn’t work, did it?

No, it didn’t, and in fact it’s actually been pretty fun music to play. As far as people’s reactions to it, I don’t know.

It just seems with each Destroyer record you tend to really try something different and perhaps maybe want to confound expectations. Did you feel like you wanted to do that with Kaputt?

No, I’ve never really done that. I kinda just try and do things I like and the records change depending on who I’m collaborating with. I don’t think there’s that many expectations to confound. At this point I’ve made enough records where if one album sounds really different from the last there’s still not that much confounding going on.

So you said you designed this album as something you didn’t want to tour. Is that because, like you say, you have made a hell of a lot of records not only as Destroyer, but whether it be The New Pornographers or Swan Lake, do you feel much more at home in the studio, or is being live still exciting for you?

I think it can be really exciting. I do like tooling around in the studio a lot, but that also comes with its own set of dread, imagery, and also excitement. It’s all just about trying to make something that’s good, that’s not garbage. I would never make something specifically so that it was un-performable, because then I would just probably lay a sine wave to tape for 45 minutes and hand that into the label.

So you kinda do feel, I guess, the necessity to go tour an album?

I don’t really think about those things when I’m making music or in the studio. It’s the furthest thing from my mind. It’s only when things are done that I start to think about how it’s gonna work out on stage, or if it‘s gonna work out on stage.

To that end, how was it like making Kaputt in the studio?

Really casual. It took a long, long time. Way longer than anything else I’ve ever done. I kinda wandered in a couple nights a week for a while. A lot of meandering. I had a few demos that we used as templates. A lot of building things up from scratch. Then towards the deadline things got more intense. People started coming in to play as hard on their leads, and that‘s when the sax and the trumpet and the lead guitar and background vocals. All that stuff happened pretty quickly, and then just the madness of mixing and trying to make sense of it.

So how much of a vision do you have for an album like this? You say if you were calling up saxophone players and folks like that, you must have an idea of the way you want each Destroyer album to sound and in particular, Kaputt.

I had specific people in mind that I wanted to play, but at the same time I gave no guidance to anyone. No one had ever heard the songs before. No one heard what anyone else was doing. They just kinda came in and just really laid into it for an afternoon. That was kind of the working model that we had. We did have a template, we did have a palette for specific instruments and sounds that we had in mind from the get go. We tried hard to stick to that, you know.

Were you bandying words and phrases around? It feels like parts of Kaputt are soft-rock or sophisti-pop or whatever you want to call it, which are dirty words to a lot of people. Did you have certain records in mind, or like you say, a template that you wanted to base yourself on?

Some stuff, but I’m pretty fearless when it comes to things like that. There’s no genre that I find abhorrent. I don’t really see things in terms of genre. If there’s actual instruments that people despise, that has a knee-jerk reaction to, that’s fine, but I’m not like that. People hear like, a saxophone, or a treated trumpet, or a certain drum sample, like a linn drum sample or softer synth sounds, and when you pull it all together, it adds up to soft-rock, that’s cool if they think that. I personally don’t think that anything that Joseph played on the sax sounds like “Careless Whisper”. I don’t think that JP played anything that sounds like Simply Red. You just have to listen to the music for 30 seconds to figure that out, but there’s all sorts of shorthand that people use to get a point across.

You also seem to approach all this material in a very sincere way. It probably suffers at the hands of people trying to being ironic. Whereas apart from a few lyrical jibes, the playing is top notch and consummate on Kaputt.

Yeah, I think that’s a good point actually. The playing is really good, it’s not hack, and we’re all older so it’s not mining uncharted territory looking for something that was considered horrible and then holding it up to the light in a new way. I’ve done that when I was a kid, and that’s cool and it’s good that it happens, but that’s not what was happening here. John Collins who did a lot of the mixing work and a lot of the synth stuff, he was buying Kraftwerk records and Avalon and things like that, when they were coming out as proper albums.

So you were using guys that lived through it the first time?

Exactly, yeah. You know, I’m getting up there. I remember that stuff.

You said you referenced a few of those albums already. Did you grow up on some of those records you mentioned, be it even George Michael or Simply Red. A track like “Suicide Demo For Kara Walker” wouldn’t sound out of place on Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen. Were they all records that you already owned yourself?

Yeah, I did own those records. What happened was when I first started getting into music in the early 90’s, I kind of put all that stuff in a box and stopped listening to it for a long time. For some reason I started thinking about it again. Even if I wasn’t actively listening to it, like Prefab Sprout records or New Order records, and also things like people that I always listened to lots, but kind of abandoned once they hit the 80’s, like Roxy Music and Bowie, and then I started thinking about what they did when they got older and started listening to Avalon and Boys And Girls and stuff like that.

Well a lot of those English bands for someone like you growing up in Canada were probably a bit more exotic or underground. I guess if you grew up in England they would’ve been chart bands, but they were probably bands that not everyone from where you grew up would’ve come across.

Yeah, I think you’re right. I started thinking about pop music for the first time making this record and examples of pop music or radio music that I actually liked, because it’s pretty few and far between and I couldn’t really think of American examples. All I could think about was for the most part maybe English examples from my youth, whether it was, like you said, a Prefab Sprout song or a Style Council song or a New Order song. Stuff that would’ve made it to the radio over there, but over here it was still considered new wave or college rock. That’s mostly what started this going.

There’s this great line in the song “Kaputt” which says “Sounds, Smash Hits, Melody Maker, NME, all sound like a dream to me”. Did it feel like that when you were growing up? Did it seem like another world?

I wasn’t really thinking in those terms. I was thinking of like someone on a sick bed who was thinking about things that had died.

So it’s almost like a bygone era or something?

Sure. Words that barely mean anything to them, but just trying to remember what it was that they even were.

Well, I’m glad you’re not on the sick bed just yet. I’m glad that Destroyer is an on-going project. If this thing has been a real chore to tour, does that mean an Australian tour is looking pretty unlikely for this album?

No, there’s been talk about it already. It’s just a matter of going to Europe for a few weeks in June, and then go back and play some festivals in August, but after that we don’t really have anything planned for the States or anything. There’s been some initial talk of trying to get over there. Just trying to figure out how to do it, when to do it.

Well if you can’t manage to bring the full band down, we have some consummate professionals I’m sure could be dialled up down here. There’s a lot of sax players who’d be chomping at the bit to get out on stage with you.

I think you guys would like these people. I think you would get a kick out of them. It would be good if all of us could make it over.

Interview broadcast on Static on 21/04/11. Static can be heard on Sydney’s 2SER (107.3 FM) and via the Internet (www.2ser.com) every Thursday evening (AEST).

“The best things in life are free” was first thing I ever heard Greg Dulli sing, albeit mimed on screen by Ian Hart playing John Lennon in Backbeat. I didn’t know who Greg Dulli was or anything other than the name of his band The Afghan Whigs but his voice, as if Lennon had inhaled several Cuban’s and gargled a mouth wash consisting of bourbon and razor blades, tore out of the screen. Apart from the occasional glimpse of the Whigs in NME, I paid them no mind as I let precious few American bands into my UK-pop musical sphere at the time. It remained that way until a couple of years ago when a friend professed her love for Dulli and The Twilight Singers on facebook and I sought out The Gutter Twins’ Saturnalia, his project with long time colleague and friend Mark Lanegan and The Twilight Singers’ Powder Burns, and wrote on her last.fm “he does have a set of pipes on him”. Impressed as I was I parted ways with Dulli again, I still wasn’t ready to delve into those five Afghan Whigs albums.

Until the new Twilight Singers album Dynamite Steps, their first in five years, arrived on my doorstep. I expected a solid album, but not much else. Oh what kind of fool am I? Dynamite Steps is an extraordinarily cohesive album in every aspect: from production to the vocals (Dulli’s own of course and also Mark Lanegan and Ani Difranco on two separate tracks), the masterful songwriting to the clever sequencing . It starts off with a sinister piano melody that morphs into a swirl of throbbing synthesier and drums. From there grunge guitar workouts (“Waves”) give way to piano balladry (“Get Lucky”), Shoegaze meets folk (“The Beginning of the End”) and punchy rock (“On The Corner”). These are all anchored of course by that remarkable voice which ranges from ragged roar to velvety tenor to strained falsetto singing of love, libido, mortality and the devil. A couple of weeks before the release I talked to Greg, a man who has seen more than his share of highs and lows in his twenty odd year career, clearly relaxed and affable, about all things dynamite and twilight, from the gutter to the (guest) stars.

Is there a narrative thread to the album, the first song is “Last Night in Town” and the penultimate song is “The Beginning of the End” and the record as a whole has quite a cinematic quality?

Well I think “The Beginning of the End” being the second to last song is a bit cheeky actually, in a good way. I looked at “Last Night in Town” as a flashback starting a movie with something that happened in the past and the second song begins in real time. I’m always loath to say what I think songs are about because whatever a record is about I like to decide what it’s about as the listener but I realise that I’m anachronistic in a hit and run world.

Ir seems to me a lot of effort went into the selection of songs and the track order for the album.

Yeah, absolutely. The sequencing was kind of key, but I had begun to sequence it as I went. By the end I knew I needed three positions filled. I needed track two (“Be Invited”), three (“Waves”) and ten (“The Beginning of the End”), so those were the last three songs that were written.

Does it bother you that in this digital age people will listen to it out of sequence?

Sure, people will just cherry pick something. I make these things for myself first with the express hope that someone else shares my enthusiasm for what I’ve done. Once it’s finished it’s out of my hands and it’s not mine anymore. I’ve had my time with it and I’ve already begun another record so I’ve kind of moved on now, but I am looking forward to playing the songs live.

So you’re not the kind of artist that gets nervous about what sort of reaction an album will get from the press and the fans.

I think this is my thirteenth record, so I’ve been lifted up and put down and everything in between. So bring it on, whatever the reaction is. I’m hoping of course that people like it and I’ve already seen some early things where people do like it but life goes on either way Caleb!

You’ve said that you’d like to be able to play all of these new songs in concert but apparently there was one song that you didn’t think you would be able to pull off.

I have yet to put the title track on the set list yet because I need to see what we can do with the other songs first so I’ll hold off on that one and see if we can pull that off. I also wonder if we can do the “Beginning of the End” that one is very produced, but it’s not out of the question. The other nine are go. They’re all on the play list.

That must be hefty list that you’ve got now?

Yes, this is our fifth record and combined with the four EPs that we’ve done and the various covers that I’ve got planned this round, there’s a wealth of material. There’s a forty song set list that I’m staring at right now. I’m not going to play forty songs every night but I’ll know forty.

So how do you select the songs? Do you have a dart board lined with song titles and throw darts?

It’s usually me and Scott Ford (bass). We sit down and we go through them and he’ll continually throw songs at me that I don’t really like and I’m like “No!”. He’s a contentious fellow, Scott is, but he keeps me honest. If I was left to my own devices, I always seem to like the songs that people don’t like as much, I like the weirder songs and I love the sad ones too.

I take it there’s no room for any Whigs songs on the set list.

I just did a six week acoustic tour and a third of the set was Whigs songs and it was really fun. That was Greg Dulli. Greg Dulli wrote all those songs — I hate that just spoke in the third person, it just made me throw up in my mouth! — Well I tell you if Scott Ford had his way we would be doing Whigs songs, but that’s just not where I’m at. Those songs get older by the day.

I’m not even going to ask about the reunion because I’ve seen your last couple of answers to that question.

(laughs) There you go.

I want to talk about two musical relationships that have lasted for quite a number of years. First of all Mr Mark Lanegan. How far back does that friendship go?

The friendship itself is probably about twelve years old, but I’ve known him for twenty-two years. We met in 1989 and then we played a couple of gigs together with our former bands, but we both ended up in Los Angeles at the same time and that’s where we started to hang out and play music together. We would just get together and play country songs and blues songs, other people’s songs, and then we wrote a couple of things together. We sing well together, and we’re really good friends. He’s one of my favourite people that I’ve ever met and one of my favourite singers that I’ve ever heard in my life.

He sings on the song “Be Invited” on the new album was that written while on tour with The Gutter Twins or afterwards?

Actually I wrote that alone and I’m playing everything except for what Mark played and what Nick McCabe (The Verve) and Rick Nelson played. I built and sang the song and then first I gave it to Nick, then Mark and then Rick Nelson who put the “Kasmir” strings on it. Then it was done. But it was originally Tommaso Colliva, a friend of mine from Italy who I worked with years ago who over in LA working with Muse and he had some time off and we went into a studio and cut that song in thirty-six hours. Then I farmed out the parts, but on the chorus I needed to bring some weight to it and there was only one person that I knew I was going to ask to bring that weight. That was Mark.

I’m assuming that at some point in the future there will be another Gutter Twins album.

Absolutely. I don’t know when it will be, Mark is making a solo record now and Mark hasn’t made a solo record in a really long time and I think me just as a fan of his I want to hear his thing, and I’ve heard a little bit of what he’s working on and it’s fucking amazing! That dude’s got the Midas touch.

You and Mark are also like minded artists in that you continually collaborate with not only each other but other musicians constantly.

I’ve met so many amazing musicians in my years of doing this and that I have the ability to go to Ani Difranco and Nick McCabe or Petra Haden or Joseph Arthur or Corina Round or Mark Lanegan or any of the people that I have played with it just speaks for my good taste and my good fortune. I sort of imagined The Twilight Singers as me and other singers that I admired and I’ve kept with that all along.

The second musical collaboration is with the label Sub Pop who were obviously important for The Afghan Whigs and you returned to them for The Gutter Twins record and now Dynamite Steps. What makes them a label you keep returning to?

They’re my friends A. B they know me and C they’re extremely good at what they do. Watching them adapt to change over the last twenty-two years has been amazing. From Nirvana to Fleet Foxes, their two biggest bands, who could not be more opposite on the spectrum except they do share great song writers, amazing songs and performances. So I think they (Sub Pop) have excellent taste. They’re really good at what they do and they love me and take care of me. For me to have come back from the wilderness and they open the door and have me come sit in the living room with them.

Returning to Dynamite Steps, “The Beginning of the End” has got this great My Bloody Valentine guitar effect in the intro and chorus. Where you a fan of that band and the shoegaze genre as a whole?

Yeah, I loved them. I loved Slowdive and Ride, I loved that whole sound, the shimmering but heavy weight. To me, that song was like a Loveless wave smashing into “Major Tom” by David Bowie. That was the sort of juxtaposition that I was looking for.

It’s a beautiful contrast, the noise and then the acoustic guitar.

And, after the acoustic, it goes into an almost Curtis Mayfield soul song. That track is extremely schizophrenic and I don’t know where it came from but it was a fun one to do. It was also the final song that I did for the record.

I know you don’t like talking about song themes but with “Never See No Devil”, Greg of all people I would have thought you may have actually seen the devil.

(laughs) Well if you listen, I clearly have seen the devil. There’s no irony going on there!

That song wrote itself, I was just a vessel. There have only been five songs in my entire life that I’ve written all at once: That one (“Never See No Devil”), “Front Street” by The Gutter Twins, “Tonight” by The Afghan Whigs, “What Jail is Like” by the The Whigs and “Love” by The Twilight Singers being the others.

You’ve already announced European tour dates but of course there’s a lot of fans waiting for American dates. Is there any chance of an Australian tour?

American tour dates will be announced this week. I know what those are. Australian tour dates I don’t know, I hope so. I want to come there.

You were last out here for Splendour in the Grass with The Gutter Twins in July 2009.

Right, but we played acoustically. For me to bring the big band over I have to pay.  It costs so much to come over there or I can come over and play acoustic style or whatever. I love Australia, in fact the second time I came I loved it even more than the first time. The first time I was there it was raining the whole time so I didn’t really feel like I saw it.

Oh yeah, Australia can do that to you.

Well if you go anywhere and it’s just raining all the time what do you see but rain? When I came for Splendour and the sideshows it was incredibly beautiful and I had a great time in all three places.

In case you were wondering, yes I have since listened to all of the Afghan Whigs output, Gentlemen being the current favourite, but still think Dynamite Steps is the best album Dulli has done. Certainly it’s the best album to listen to if you’ve yet to become acquainted with the man and while not free it’s certainly one the better things in life.

Dynamite Steps is out now through Sup Pop (via Inertia in Australia).

Photo: Dani Canto (slideshow)

The first time I heard of Foals was in early 2008 when an old friend mentioned the name “Foals” when talking about new bands to listen to adding, “I think you’d like them”. As he knew my tastes, specifically my shoegaze/Britpop obsession, I took notice and promptly sought out Antidotes from the Oxford quintet. Ostensibly an indie rock record it took cues from the weirder sides of post-punk: the danceable bass lines of Gang of Four, the shouted/sung vocal style of Wire, the skeletal guitar lines and brass of early Hunters & Collectors and the rhythms of Talking Heads combining them with more modern maths rock timings and percussion, unsettling synthesizer and obtuse lyrics with a predilection for avian creatures, flight and insects. It wasn’t an easy listen but it was a totally unforgettable one.

So to say expectations were high for their second album Total Life Forever, both personally and from the listening community at large, would be stating the exceedingly obvious but from the grandeur and exquisite melancholy of “Spanish Sahara”, the frenetic indie-pop of “This Orient” to the dance funk of “Miami” it met and exceeded them with uncommon ease. Total Life Forever elevated Foals into the rare league of artists who maintain credibility with a more accessible sonic palate, and thus gaining a larger listening base, whilst still remaining true to their experimental pop principles. Chris Berkley spoke to bassist Walter Gervers while the band was in Australia for the St. Jerome’s Laneway festivals and as it turns out some recording on the sly.

Is the Australian summer heat is treating all you poor pale boys in Foals okay?

Yeah, it’s factor fifty plus at the moment! It’s kind of killing us but, it’s amazing. Couldn’t have picked a better time to come over, actually.

You guys in Foals actually snuck back into Australia a couple of weeks ago and not to soak up the sun, but to do some work. You’ve sort of been ensconced in Sydney in the studio, right?

Yeah it’s been great, we’ve been just doing some work with a pal of ours called Jono at this studio in Sydney just for a couple of weeks. We thought basically we’d come out early before the shows started, not only to get over the jet lag but actually get some stuff done, get back to the studio before we forget any new bits and bobs that we’ve got going for the next record.

This pal of yours, this is Jono Ma from Lost Valentinos right? Who had done remixes and stuff like that in the past for you guys.

The very same.

Was he at you to come over and get you in the studio or did just work out that way?

Well it kind of worked out that way. His brother, Dave, has done the majority of our videos and photos and various things with us and we’ve known him for years so it just made sense to go with someone we knew and we’d met Jono a few times. It just seemed like fun and a good opportunity for him to do some engineering for us and we’ve been really pleased. It’s kind of cool to be recording bits and pieces already, it’s very early stages, everything is in it’s infancy, but it feels like we’re buying ourselves some time which is great.

I mean the last Foals album Total Life Forever came out less than twelve months ago, so this is not a proper actual recording of an album, this is you guys just getting some ideas down is it?

Yeah, it’s getting ideas down, just recording some bits before we forget them because we have a tendency as a band to jam new things and quite often in sound checks when we’ll be in a rush and we’ll be like “Oh you’ve got to remember that thing that we did!” and stuff gets lost. So it’s kind of important to document these things.

Come on, there’s even those voice recorders on iPhones now, there’s no excuse for not recording something all the time!

True, that is very true. Yannis has just got Logic going so we can actually fiddle with parts and actually do things proper!

So you’re slowly joining the twenty-first century are you?

(Laughs) It’s taken us a while but yeah. You see us walking around with those boom boxes!

Each Foals album has been recorded far from your Oxford home, I mean you did Antidotes in New York and you did Total Life Forever in Gothenburg. Do you need to go away to think about recording Foals now? Is it hard to do it at home?

It’s not that it’s hard to do; I just think it’s really healthy for us to go away on an expedition somewhere with an aim to not come home until we’ve finished the record basically. It’s nice to be away from distractions, it’s nice to let the environment where you go to have an effect on the record, which it definitely has in the last couple of albums and it just gives you an opportunity to work elsewhere and meet other people and be out of your comfort zone.

I think that’s what you need to be doing when you’re making an album because then the studio becomes home, it becomes headquarters and it’s more productive rather than going down the road to London a couple of days a week and then breaking out of studio mode as it where. You’re just completely engulfed in it which does make it hard work and it does mean that sometimes you do lose focus as well because you’re listening to too much and you’re there too much but it’s worked for us so far.

For both those first two Foals albums you guys used outside producers, both of whom coincidentally enough had been in other bands like Dave Sitek from TV on the Radio did the first record and Luke Smith from Clor did the second one, are you thinking about using an outside producer again for the third Foals album or are you ready to actually go it alone?

We’ve actually been talking about this already, but it’s always good to have an outside influence and an outside perspective and someone to stop us over working things and point us in the right direction. Because as much as we’ve learnt as a band we don’t know everything by any means and it’s really healthy to have somebody there who can say “Trust me, this song needs to go in this direction, let’s strip this out, stop noodling around” that kind of thing, and I think that if we were to do it amongst the five of us we’d never be satisfied and we’d just keep re-working songs and we wouldn’t leave things alone. So maybe in the future when we learn a bit more restraint then we’ll do that but I think definitely getting a relationship with a producer and with the engineers as well is incredibly important and it affects the records, usually.

Even if sometimes that can be fraught, because I know famously that you guys didn’t end up using the mix that Dave Sitek did for Antidotes, but it’s still healthy to have that person in there initially offering ideas and being the peacemaker sometimes when you guys in Foals are making a record?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Dave was so valuable for that and for advice to how to operate as a band. We hadn’t even made a record before and it was all quite alien to us and we felt the pressure a lot as well as people were waiting to see if we could actually make a good first record so he was really good at kind of tutoring us in the right direction. With Luke as well doing Total Life Forever, he had such good ears and a good head for sound and he was all about the quality of the recording like the input going into tools, or going into the desk, it needed to be of a high quality so we’d do a lot more live takes with all of us in the room and actually trying to nail it, play the song all the way through rather than going into a booth one by one which can be little bit soulless at times. He really made us work hard for it and it was quite tough graft but it was great. Without people doing that we’d probably just operate in a sphere that we were comfortable with.

And to that end, how cerebral an experience is putting a Foals album together and how much of it is gut instinct? I mean, you guys are probably quite a thinking man’s band, do you put a lot of thought into the way that Foals’ music turns out on record?

Yeah, definitely. We have quite a weird relationship with each other, the five of us, without being able to articulate to each other we really know what kind of direction we want once things start rolling. Yannis obviously writes all the lyrics and he’ll explain things and we’ll be on board so it’s really sort of a group thing but it’s always very difficult to explain, if that makes sense? We say to each other we all know what this song needs to do; we just may not be able to do it yet.

I’m quite envious that you guys in Foals get lyrics explained to you by Yannis, he should be doing that in a broader term. There should be lecture tours!

(Laughs) Yeah, I know! It’s very important to be on board with everything like that.

I think also lyrically though he also likes being that little trapped in an enigma as well, doesn’t he? It must be nice sometimes to not have to explain himself to the broader populous.

Sure, I think things get diluted a bit if they’re explained too much. Some things should just be left for people to make of them what they will. Often the lyrics don’t have huge messages behind them, he uses a lot of imagery in them which is just helping paint a picture. I think sometimes people read too much into things, but that’s fine.

(Laughs) Well you guys must be doing something right because you’re nominated for five NME Awards so people are getting it in some way.

Yeah I was thrilled about that; we’ve never won anything before so maybe we will this time.

I reckon this is your year for prizes, let’s make it happen!

Let’s hope so! To be honest it’s been such a good year anyway and we’re just so pleased that the album has been so well received that kind of stuff it’s not what makes it for us at all, but it would be funny if we got something!

Photo: Lee Gwyn (slideshow, thumbnail) from Brisbane Laneway.

Interview broadcast on Static on 03/02/11. Static can be heard on Sydney’s 2SER (107.3 FM) every Thursday evening (AEST) or streamed at your convenience at Static’s Mixcloud site.

Even with the worldwide chart-smash of “Bang Bang Bang” under her belt as part of Mark Ronson’s Business International, Amanda Warner aka MNDR is still something of an underground unknown to the general populace. Having spent the last 10 years making music, with psychedelic oddities Triangle, or more recently as MNDR, it’s been a non-stop battle that’s about to pay off for this Fargo, North Dakota farm girl. With the media baggage ascribed Ronson in the UK from to his work with Amy Winehouse and his own Versions album, MNDR’s French-slinging co-write on “Bang Bang Bang” arrived at the right time for everybody to sit up and take notice.

With her own work drawing from a broad dance-based electronic palette matched with a crazy knowledge of vintage keyboards and of obscure electronic bands that Webcuts had never heard of (but pretended we did), it’s clear that MNDR is a cut above your Lady Gagas and your Lady Sovereigns (remember her?). We caught up with Amanda in the forecourt of the Bermondsey Square hotel in London in July of 2010 while she was touring with Mark Ronson and playing her first UK solo shows. Along for the ride was Amanda’s sister Rachael, photographer and maker of Spratters and Jayne knitwear. Be warned, this isn’t so much an interview, but a (heavily edited) free-for-all conversation, acted out in numerous voices, hilarious facial expressions and random breaking-into-song moments, all of which in a textual reproduction, you’ll just have to imagine.

So…

Amanda: Hellooo, hello blogs, my name is Amanda.

Alright, let’s talk about the “Caligula“ 12″ that just came out here. What’s with the ridiculously limited pressing of 138 copies?

Amanda: A good friend of mine who has a label called Drone Disco, he’s an experimental noise guy, and this is a sub-sub label that isn’t available on the internet. It’s like total trades market only and he’s just interested in doing interesting small runs of anything, therefore it’s (the label) called “What The…?”. It’s cool because he’s a good friend and it’s cool to have the first MNDR vinyl be involved in an experimental vinyl label and aesthetic.

How did the track come together?

Amanda: The spirit of the track was “let’s make this into a dance track, but a taboo one” (starts singing Space Cowboy’s “My Egyptian Lover”) and I was like, in this day and age what is still a taboo topic? I wanted to make one of these naughty dance records where you listen to “My Egyptian Lover” and it’s “oooh, that’s a little titillating”. I was laying in bed thinking what was still taboo? … the movie Caligula. It’s not really taboo, but kinda taboo and naughty, and it reminded me of one time in the Bay Area, I was kinda normal with a steady boyfriend and a job and I was still hauling PA’s around and playing shows, but all my core friends went crazy, just partying and wigging out and it’s kinda a song about that time period.

I really love the “Isis in the control tower” refrain. You only sing it a couple times in the song though.

Amanda: Yeah, it would be fun to revisit that one. I’d like to rework it, to make the refrain happen more. That’s the only song that feels like a work in progress. I think with that one you’ll see a lot of different versions (download one for free here). For all the dance songs we have, I think next to “C.L.U.B”, “Caligula” is a better track.

Before you started making music as MNDR, you had a band for a while called Triangle. What happened there?

Amanda: Triangle’s still alive. Dormant now. I’ll always do that project. We made a second record Decimal Places. It was a little jaunty, ahead of it’s time but we just sucked it live so heavy that nobody could get down with it.

Rachael: What do you mean, how did you “suck it live”?

Amanda: We just sucked live. We just weren’t good enough. We came here one time to do a big campaign and at the time it was The Strokes and “rock and roll is back” and we were doing shoegazer music and our A&R people were like (singing) “Where’s the fucking craziness?”, “Where is the 70’s in your music?” and we were more insular. They were like “You’re American, you’re from New York”, but we weren’t, and we sucked live, but the record is good. So then we made a third record, which is my favourite record of ours, and we did an ATP and we just (singing, again) “left of centre, out of the grip”. But The Shins loved us! We were kinda one of those bands that when we started we became the darlings of the town, and then we had a record and went touring and scooting around the US, and then we made another record and there was a lot of buzz and then we blew it and then you make your third record and 7 million gigabytes of music every day and then no-one cares ‘cos they think you’re kinda weird. Triangle fans will always take a bullet for us. People who like Triangle are like people who like Phish. They’re just in-fucking-sane about it. They want everything. We have one fan who records every show, takes pictures, sends them in the mail. I have like 4 years of later period Triangle, full documentation. Brian and I made music almost every day, I think it would take a year, two years to organise all the material chronological. But that would be a pretty big box set for the nerd-bag fans.

How did you first meet up with Mark Ronson?

Amanda: I met Mark just through friends at the very end of 2009 and I was invited down to the East Village Radio Show and he was in town. It was kind of a blizzard outside and I wasn’t going to go down, but I went and he asked me to give him a song, so I gave him “The Sparrow Song“. He’s the only DJ that has it. He liked it right away and we just started talking and I thought he was really nice, but you know, whatever, you have my song, you‘re DJ, that’s cool. It was just kinda casual, and then he was like “I’m making this record, would you like to write on some of the songs?” and I was like (mimes nodding). He asked me down to his studio in Brooklyn and I was like “yeah, I’ll come over and see if I can write to it”, ‘cos I can’t always write to other people’s music. I’m not that kind of writer. He played me a great song on the record called “Lost It” that Jonathan Pierce from The Drums wrote that was really good. I have to be really, with zero ego honesty, I didn’t know who he was. After I wiki’ed him, I knew he produced Amy Winehouse and was a part of Lily Allen. I wasn’t participating in music that way, nor was I buying Amy Winehouse or Lily Allen, but I respected their talent. It’s clear a manufactured pop artist and someone who has clear talent. There’s a big difference.

Rachael: What do you think about Lady Gaga in that respect?

Amanda: She has a vision and she’s very talented. I think she’s more interested in being bigger than life. There’s this quote where she says “I never want a song of mine to be bigger than me” and I feel exactly the opposite. I would absolutely love a song that I was involved with to be so big that I don’t matter. I want the songs to transcend the ego, where she’s more about the ego. I respect her, that at a very young age she has a focussed vision and she can execute it. It’s very difficult to do that in the system she’s in. I would never sacrifice the music aspect that I think she’s sacrificed. That’s how I feel about her, but I think she’s a talented vocalist and I’ve heard her demos on piano and she’s a very talented songwriter. I will always give a tip of the hat to real talent.

How did “Bang Bang Bang” come about?

Amanda: It was one that he gave me that was sort of difficult to write to. It‘s a shorter phrase structure (mimes synth part) that modulates within a short amount of time (mimes again), in a new key, and (mimes again) back into the other key. It’s a little bit tricky, I think, but I liked it and I thought it was a really hook-y line.

What did he want you to do with the song?

Amanda: He just gave it to me and was like “Can you write vocals? Can you write a top line?” and I took it, and at the time I had a really bad bout of vertigo that I got from a cruise ship and I was extremely dizzy and ill. I knew I couldn’t sing and have him engineer the vocals, because I was so dizzy. I was dizzy for three months and had to go see a specialist. It’s like vertigo, but it’s a neurological disorder that some people when they’re on uneasy ground for a long period of time, their brain panics. It’s trying to push you to the ground to save yourself. To sing you have to feel the music, but I couldn’t move because everything was moving all the time. I was like, why don’t you give me the tracks and I’ll send you ideas. But I knew what I would do, Peter (Wade, MNDR collaborator) and I would write it, engineer it and send him a finished version. Which we did and he liked it, and then he played it for Q-Tip and he liked it and then he rapped on it. Mark beat me up on lyrics and vocals and asked me to redo stuff. He said that I wasn’t projecting enough on the choruses and he had me redo them. He knows what he wants.

What was the inspiration behind the lyrics?

Amanda: The lyrics are… I was listening to the track and the way I write vocal melodies is I sing gibberish to get phrasing down and I kept singing the phrase “Alouette” and Peter got on Wikipedia and read what the song is about and it’s a French Canadian children’s nursery rhyme that the furriers would sing in the fur trade there, because the work is monotonous and they would sing the song about the birds flying around their heads and they were going to pluck their feathers and pluck their heads off. At the time, Peter and I had been dealing with a lot of people in the music business that are telling you “I can get you this” and “No, I believe in you this way” and they’re talking above what they can actually do, and at the same time, the Ponzi schemes in America with Bernie Madoff, it’s a comment on rich baby boomers who all protested about Vietnam and then they go to grad school and learn how to manipulate the banking system for their profit, ruining it for the whole globe, and about dealing with people on a personal level, who are talking above their means and lying. Lying to you to profiteer, but kinda a bigger comment on the people that manipulate money for themselves, selfishly.

So it’s a serious pop song then…

Amanda: Yeah, Q-Tip picked up on right away. So, it’s like (reciting the lyrics) “feathers, I’m plucking feathers, one by one by one, no more skylarking around my head, you’ll get no last word, ‘cos it’s too late, you’ve clipped your own wings”, so it’s about that. My favourite lyric is “those stories in your head is what got you dead”. Like believing your own bullshit. I think like in art and with anything, and you’re here and making stuff and people want to get involved because they’re excited about it, and people want to get involved because they can make a lot of money. If you start believing what they’re saying then you become watered down and you become irrelevant and start believing their bullshit when it has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with the kid who’s gonna buy your record and read your lyrics and come to the show and connect with you.

So this all started in December and then 6 months later you’ve got a top 10 hit in the UK. Has this all happened a little fast for you? Plucked from…

Amanda: …from a rave squat in Oakland with no shoes? Um… yeah! When Mark called and said “I think we’re gonna have this be the single”. Sometimes someone can say that to you but you don’t really understand what it means. I didn’t really understand how well he’s done and how well Version did over here, and what kind of opportunities he would have to promote this record and what budget he’d have for videos. Those sort of experiences. I really believe in this song and I believe in Mark’s record and I believe in Mark. It’s a really solid record. I think we’re really good collaborators and I want to support our single. I’m excited to play in his band. I haven’t played in a band in a year. It’s really unusual for me. It’s fun being able to play keys and bass and drums and sing back-ups and be that role. In-between doing Mark’s promotion, it’ll be 3 or 4 days on and on the days off I’ll go do MNDR stuff. So we’re going to have another limited vinyl single out in the UK in the fall and at the top of the year we should have a record out. We have a records worth of material already done.

How much fun did you have doing the clubs gigs over here?

Amanda: I had a great time. The first show on Tuesday at Madame JoJo’s, it was earlier and it was more industry and a little bit more frigid but I felt like I warmed people up and they stayed. I think when no-one knows your material you need to realise they’ve never heard it before and if you can convince the people and keep them there, you’re doing a good job. It was great though. Some of the Business International came down and supported and people stayed and that was goal. I thought that one went well but it was a little more formal, and then Thursday at Yoyo I thought was great. It was like a party I’m used to playing. But the London audience was a little discerning, like a New York audience.

London audiences can be a little standoffish…

Amanda: Yeah, like “let’s see what you show me, let’s see what you got and if you can deliver”. I think it’s more pressure to play her than it is in New York.

Rachael: Really?

Amanda: Yeah, ‘cos you can blow it here. There’s people that I know who’ve done it and it sucks. But there were a lot of people talking and people wasted, and while I was singing there was so much talking, was like, all I’m going to focus on is the talkers. For the first show I did with Mark Ronson at the 100 Club, I fell off the stage. I try to connect so heavy that I hurt myself. I’ve done that like 3 times, fallen off stage during shows. My whole deal is I want to try and quiet people down by the end and they’ll stay, and the people that hate it, I want them to stay and hate it, but really hate it, and the people who love it, really love it, but if you’re apathetic, I know I’ve failed. I didn’t feel like anyone was apathetic, but there was one girl who came there in her heels and her dress and she stared at me with the most disgust and she wasn’t moving with everybody and she was just disgusted by me, and I just bent down and sang at her for an entire verse, and I’m like “let’s just hate each other”. Hate me harder, hate me more.

Rachael: There was this one show that Amanda played at the Mercury Lounge in New York when you were with Neon Indian and it was the same thing. All the crowd were standing back like and this girl was texting and you got up in this girls face and you were like “hate it, I know you hate it!”.

Amanda: I’m not going to go up there and pop music out. “Everything’s right and I’m doing it right, it’s happening, it’s perfect”, you know or whatever. It’s going to be messy, and if you’re standing on the stage and someone’s texting, I’m going to grab your head and tell you to hate it more. Let’s just break this barrier.

That’s the best way to do it, confront your audience.

Amanda: It’s confrontational, yeah. You want me to stand there and be pretty and sing a pretty song at you. Go see a show like that. This is about connectivity and it’s not about “how dare you text while I’m playing”, it’s nothing to do with the ego, it’s more like “I know you hate this, and I know your hatred is because you don’t know if it’s cool or not” and it’s more about the reflected mirror, so what if I just went up you and broke that and was like (whispers) “let’s just hate this, let‘s just hate this experience together”. It’s just so ridiculous. It’s such a ridiculous thing. People were really pissed off I fucking did that.

Really?

Amanda: I got a lot of bad comments on blogs for that, and it’s like am I supposed to be a certain way, or am I supposed to do things a certain way? It was really interesting ‘cos I think in California there’s more of an underground that has nothing to do with the music industry but when you’re in New York, a lot of the bands are there to make it. In California, grabbing someone’s head and screaming in their face or breaking that barrier is not as weird, but in New York it’s like this is a formal show.

Rachael: What did they actually say?

Amanda: Like “she flipped us off the whole time”, and I was like really? really New York? You‘re that fucking stuck up your own ass? It was so weird. I was like, why are you so square? Why are you so square, New York? What happened? That just sounds smug. I don’t mean it to sound smug. I was shocked.

Do you think London’s going to be more difficult than your snobbiest New York crowd?

MNDR: I see London as discerning, but also I think the music is bold and I’m brash and kinda loud, and you’re either going to love me or hate me. I don’t have an indie rock attitude, like self-deprecating (puts on fake voice) “I don’t know, I’m just up here and I’m weird and awkward about it and they got stuff on me that‘s weird”. I’m just an awkward person in general. Like, I’m not in a fucking thong and in a bustier with a dancer and wig on (stands up and starts doing a hilarious, vaguely Lady Gaga-esque dance routine). Like, why would I ever do that? Why would that even happen? So I think you’re either going to hate it or you’re gonna love it, but I think you’re going to feel those emotions loudly. It’s what I’ve noticed with my personality. Sorry, does this sound really self-absorbed? I really don’t mean it to….

Is there anything more cliched than the rock and roll break-up? Secret meetings in dark alleys. The guitarist that suddenly pops up on other people’s records. The singer who doesn’t return their calls. You either see it coming a mile away, or it creeps up on you like old age. It happens to the best and it happens to the worst, and eventually it will happen to them all. Piss and moan about it all you like, but what’s done is done. The latest induction to the rock and roll hall of “fuck this shit for a laugh” are Webcuts’ favourite punk sons, The Scare.

Having triumphed against expectation (honest opinion of The Scare circa 2005 – “exciting live, less so on record”) with their second album Oozevoodoo (which received a 9.5/10 on this site), The Scare finally evolved into the band that at least this writer had hoped for them to become — a sharp, hip-shaking incendiary rock and roll outfit.  Oozevoodoo was a true lock up your daughters, lock up your liquor cabinet, tie down the television record. It was The Scare ascending to the rock realm of The Stooges and The Birthday Party on their own terms.

Denied access to shove Oozevoodoo down the throats of the ROW where a greater return lie in wait, The Scare inevitably succumbed to the caged circuit of traveling back and forth around Australia, calling both “bullshit” and “time”. Regular readers of Webcuts will know we’ve carried a torch for these rock and roll orphans. We’ve featured them twice over the past 4 years and witnessed the transformation firsthand from shouty emo-punks to their own bad Bad Seed selves.

On the eve of their final ever Sydney show, Webcuts’ man of the airwaves, Chris Berkley, invited a couple soon-to-be Ex-The Scare band members to come down to FBI Studios in Newtown to speak about their impending farewell and to reminisce over the good times/bad times.

We’re joined in the studio by Wade and Sam from The Scare. Gentlemen, welcome in. This is a big, momentous, night for you guys. The last ever Sydney show for The Scare.

Sam: This is a momentous occasion of being the last ever Scare interview (laughs).

There’s also some Brisbane shows to come so if people for some reason…

Wade: Yeah, but we’re not doing interviews up there though…

Sam: It’s a new band. That’s the launch of the new band up there. This is the last Scare show and we’re changing the name. NME doesn’t like us anymore, so we’re trying to keep it fresh.

You need to reinvent yourselves, do you?

Sam: Exactly.

Wade, is there a 25 words or less story about why The Scare are breaking up?

Wade: Shiiiiiit. That’s it. (laughs)

One word?

Sam: Yeah, it’s quite an ambiguous thing. But you know, it’s been a long run, eight years. We’re kind of, I guess, restarting our lives, probably how they should’ve been started, when we were 18. Kiss is applying for Uni.

Oh really? You’re getting on track with your lives? The Scare has just been a diversion all this time?

Sam: Yeah, exactly. It’s like an alcohol and drug binge that’s coming to an end, I guess.

Not a lot of bands break up after two albums though. Was it better to burn out than fade away, Wade?

Wade: I don’t know. We were ready for another one and it’s just not going to happen now and the world will never know.

Do you feel like you’re going out on a high or have you been winding down for a while?

Wade: I feel like we’ll be going out at probably the highest point of our career, which is like us shooting Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes into the desert. Like we’ve died and this is the last hurrah tonight.

Sam: And it probably hasn’t really kicked in, in a sense, yet. But it will. It has been a long time. It’s weird thinking about something that we all, collectively, cared about so much, coming to an end. It’s kinda like, even though there’s a possibility of some Queensland stuff, this night tonight was always going to be the end for the band. I’m actually nervous. Excited, but nervous.

Wade: Potentially everything could go wrong tonight and we’re just hoping to get through it.

This could be the way that people remember The Scare, Wade, the final show.

Wade: Yeah, that’s right.

(Sam and Wade are invited to program three songs).

First song – Suicide – “Ghost Rider“

Is this because of the MIA song that’s just ripped it off?

Sam: It’s because Brock’s a redhead and the MIA video kind of…

Gave you some ideas?

Sam: Gave us some ideas, yeah.

Wade: When we met Alan Vega and Marty Rev, I remember Liam saying to Marty Rev, “Hey man, we’re big fans”, and he just looked at us and went “I get that all the time” and just walked away.

Don’t meet your idols, that’s the story, Wade.

Second song – Hot Chip – “Boy From School”

Sam: We got given a bunch of CDs from three labels when we were in England when we first arrived there. I remember my iPod broke, so I was living off these records in a sense. Our van didn’t have an iPod connector, so we had to listen to records on our van trips because we were touring so much. Brock sat in the front seat. That was his assigned position and he played “Boy From School” from Hot Chip so many times and it was at a point where we were all really young, around 19 to 20, and that song, I remember lying in the back seat, feeling hungry, missing whoever and wondering why were we in the middle of Leicester playing to three people.

Wade: Hearing it just then, really took me back to that cold van.

It’s funny how it’s the weirdest songs of all that soundtrack those moments, even years later. Have you told Hot Chip this, then? They’re here this week. So Suicide will remind you, because you said at the start Wade, you had that brief encounter.

Wade: We supported them and that was one of the highlights of my downward spiral. That was a very funny incident. Alan Vega and Marty Rev — just the baddest old guys in the world.

And couldn’t even care less who you guys were…

Wade: Just didn’t even look at us.

Sam: The best thing about the whole experience was we kinda did the off-shoot show for their tour with Grinderman in England and with Grinderman we saw the night after and they played for an hour and 20 minutes, but for their own show, it was a tiny venue called the Buffalo Bar is Islington and it was just Suicide and The Scare and there were 300 people lined up to get into a 100 capacity venue (Webcuts was there, fact fans) and they played for 10 minutes (slight exaggeration there, Sammy…) and walked off, saying “I wanna go home. Where’s our van? Where’s our van?”.

Punk as all hell.

Sam: Yeah, more punk than The Scare.

It’s a good thing to have on your resume to say that you supported Suicide.

Wade: Absolutely.

Sam: We should’ve ended then!

Third Song – Mick Harvey – “Harley Davidson”

So speaking of Grinderman and all those guys, the Mick Harvey connection, Wade.

Wade: It’s funny just because we saw Mick on the weekend while we were doing our last Melbourne shows and he sort of had a few drunken kind words to say to us about moving on, and if anyone knows anything about moving on from an ego-fronted man, from the ego of the century, then it’s Mick Harvey.

Sam: Was he in The Stooges? (laughs)

So is it a purely musical decision then, the end of The Scare? Had you done everything musically with this band that you could do, Sam?

Sam: I’d like to look back on it as a really positive growing up experience. I think every band could potentially move on to greener pastures, or just continue progressing. What I do like about The Scare is we never had to write a record that really compromised what we wanted to do. We were around great people, in a label sense, producers and whatnot that kind of let us be creative, and I’d hate the fact that if we went in again, hypothetically, and had to do a record to try and cater to sell more records and be a tad more successful than we were. So that’s my final note on The Scare.

You’re all, already, moving on pretty quickly. Wade, you’re about to go do some shows with Wolf & Cub overseas…

Wade: Yep. You just realise that I am a musician first and foremost, and when your band breaks up, it doesn’t end there. You’ve gotta move on and find something else.

Liam’s already got another band called Myth & Tropics, Kiss has just done vocals on the Itch-E & Scratch-E record, and Sam, you’re joining The Amity Affliction?

Sam: (laughs) Yeah, Trad and I are doing a solo record, or duo, together. Sort of in the vein of Savage Garden.

Wade: No keyboards though because neither of them know how to play them.

Sam: It’s a little bit less gay than Savage Garden, but we’re trying to get there.

The Scare play their final ever shows ever on August 13/14 in Brisbane. Hopefully the Webcuts Brisbane chapter will be in attendance to document the sorry occasion. Filmed June of last year on the day Michael Jackson died, this is how we prefer to remember The Scare — getting loose on stage in Melbourne while psychically instructing the ladies in the front row to get loose too. As you can see, it worked.

Villagers is the nom de plume of one Conor O’Brien, the young Irish gent with the piercing blue eyes positioned above these words. Having released his debut album Becoming A Jackal on Domino Records last month to widespread acclaim (surely topping the album charts in Ireland is nothing to be sneered at), O’Brien has been steadfast in moving his Villagers around the country, like a pack of wayward Irish gypsies.

A beautifully orchestrated record, …Jackals is a wild, vibrant ride from the hushed, understated tones of the title track, to the rollicking Arcade Fire-esque brilliance of “Ship of Fools”. Already in the throes of on an extensive tour of Europe and America, Chris Berkley of Static sits down to chat (in opposite hemispherical corners it should be made clear) with O’Brien as he explains the birth of the band, the origin of the name, the surprising popularity of Miss Fast Car herself, Tracy Chapman, and how to unleash your inner werewolf.

Are things looking a bit hectic now? You never know where you are when you wake up in the mornings?

Yeah. I’ve been travelling a lot at the moment. It’s a good time. I’ve never done it before. It’s all new (laughs).

You brought this busy schedule on you anyway, because you used to be part of a four piece band. Are you having to handle everything for Villagers?

Yeah. I have brought it on myself. I’ve been thinking that recently. I pretty much do all the writing and recording and all the creative parts but in terms of actually touring and everything it’s very much a band show. I let go of the reigns a bit when we go on tour, which feels nice.

But all that means is that the band turns up to play and drink your rider. You’re getting the raw end of the deal here.

(laughs) Well our rider’s a bit of water, a bit of ginger, a bit of honey. It’s ok. I don’t mind.

Were you ready to leap back into having band mates around again? You were in this band called The Immediate a few years ago which seems, from what I’ve been able to piece together, to have dissolved. Did you go out on your own after that or were you always looking to be part of a band again?

When The Immediate broke up that was my childhood band, they were the guys I went to school with and were my best friends since we were very young. It’s a big deal in someone’s life, I guess. I didn’t really want to start a band. I just started writing songs. I didn’t even know if I was going to release them or get anyone to play them. Then I went on tour as a guitarist with a girl in Ireland called Cathy Davey and during that whole period I was writing the songs for the Villagers album. And when I’d gotten a bunch of songs together I thought I should put them up on the internet and when I’d put them up people were asking if I was playing shows. So I called a couple of friends of mine and asked them if they wanted to play and they did. It was very gradual, I hadn’t really thought it through, it was step by step. I didn’t really want to make music with anyone else I was a bit scared of that.

Did you play some shows on your own as a solo troubadour or did you never had the guts to do that?

The first time I did a solo show was in front of five thousand people in Nantes, France, opening for Tracy Chapman. So that was a bit freaky. I also had to get there through walking through all these motorways. I just made it but it was good.

I’m amazed Tracy Chapman was playing to five thousand people in recent times. That’s incredible.

Oh yeah. She’s got a proper solid fan base. I toured Europe with her.

Were you sort of bricking it then being solo on stage after having different people around you for all those times?

I wasn’t really bricking it. It’s a nice mixture of a new found freedom. The thing that really struck me was that you don’t have anyone else to bounce ideas off in the songwriting stage. That was something I had to get used to. But it also can be quite liberating. Which is what I tried to focus on.

Is it liberating in the fact that there’s no one telling you that you can’t do stuff?

Yeah, you’re looking at blank page and it’s your blank page. You can do whatever you want with it.

How did you settle on the name Villagers were you always going to use a band name? were you nervous about going out under your own name?

That was after I recorded a bunch of demos, and I’d played all the instruments myself — there was drums and pianos, organs, bass, electric and acoustic guitars. I figured if I was going to recreate this live I’d have to get a band together. So I named it before I even got the band together. I wanted something describing a group of people, a really anonymous name, something that wouldn’t affect the songs, wouldn’t tie the songs down. You can’t really tell what the music is going to be. It’s just a really nice faceless, anonymous name. I want the music to change and grow as well and I think that name will help it.

From listening to the Villagers album you seem quite self aware of the art or the act of storytelling. The album opens with song like “I Saw the Dead” which sets the scene, it’s very conversational in tone. Did you learn that from being on stage and presenting songs — the way to reel people into your music?

Yeah actually a lot of the stuff was written with the very specific idea of singing the song to a group of people in a room in real time. I was thinking that while I was writing the songs. I think that helps in terms of how directly communicative your lyrics can be. I definitely had an idea of performing it as I was writing it.

Do you find there needs to be that connection between storyteller and listener? A song like “Meaning of the Ritual” has that first person narration about it. Do you find it easier to write that way?

Sometimes it can be really helpful. I think first person is a really interesting tool to use in writing. Because the way I see it, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re talking about yourself. You’re using it as a way of getting inside someone else’s head or inhabiting other characters of people you’ve seen or known. So with “…Ritual” it made sense to say “I” but it could’ve just of well been “He” or “She” or any of those things. They’re all the same really. That’s the way I see it. I think everyone’s walking around with these massive fantastical palaces in their head and none of us ever communicate them to each other, so these songs are my way of doing that.

I also like the fact that some songs go beyond words. The wolf howls on “Pieces” tell the story even more so than words.

That from another demo experience I had. It went through a lot of phases, I think there were six of seven different arrangements and the version that made it to the album was the final one. I remember recording it at three or four in the morning and losing it a little bit and really, really, really enjoying it. It was a really pure, joyful experience getting that version down. Which contrasts with the lyrics quite a lot, but that’s kind of the way I like it. I think some of these songs may sound sad or tortured or whatever but they really weren’t when I was making them. They were the most joyful, blissful experiences I’ve ever had.

Hearing you let your werewolf loose is great, have you got to the stage yet where a lot of people know that song and are howling back at you? I can’t wait to see audiences do that to you, Conor.

(laughs). I can’t wait either. I don’t think I’ve seen it yet. Maybe they do. Usually my eyes are closed at that point.

You’re on tour forever at the moment. I hope you can come down to Australia sometime, there’s plenty of werewolves and other animals down here… so you can release the beast down under.

I’d love to come to Australia. I’ve never been. I’m looking forward to it.

First broadcast on Static on 17/06/10. Static can be heard on Sydney’s 2SER (107.3 FM) and via the Internet (www.2ser.com) every Thursday evening (AEST).

Transcription: Caleb Rudd

New York has definitely handed over its crown as being home to earthshaking epicentre of what’s hot, hip, and happening. These days all eyes are firmly focused on the eclectic sounds of the West Coast — as it seems that every single band we talk right now calls the place home. With Katy Perry (of all people) singing the praises of California Girls, just like the Beach Boys did in the 60′s, so are we with Los Angeles’ Dum Dum Girls.

Signed to the still cool Sub Pop records and riding a wave of praise from their debut album I Will Be, produced by the legendary pop songwriter and producer Richard Gottehrer (Blondie, The Go-Gos, The Raveonettes), Dum Dum Girls are kicking up a wall of fuzz with some peachy keen harmonies. Chris Berkley of Static recently spoke with lead ‘Girl’, Dee Dee in the midst of line-up changes, about recording the album and what it takes to be a Dum Dum Girl.

You’ve just had band practice — how are you sounding today?

We’re sounding great. I’ll let you in on a secret we’ve had a line-up change so we have a new drummer and our bass player is now singing. It’s been a pretty intense week of rehearsals. We’ve had a lot of ground to cover.

What’s going on there? Is it musical chairs in Dum Dum Girls?

Not so much musical chairs, Frankie Rose was drumming for us and she also sang, so we have a drummer now who’s just drumming. So it was a matter of teaching Bambi the high harmonies so that we would still have those.

Was that because Frankie was just too busy? She’s spent that much time in that many times, did she have other stuff to do?

She finally has got her own project underway and has been working on a record and she’s not the hugest fan of touring, she would probably do it for her own band.  But it was probably time to do her own thing.

You must be able to relate to that as well Dee Dee because Dum Dum Girls started out as a solo project. You had to look for members to get things happening didn’t you?

Yeah I did. It was kind of just a strange way to pass the time. I had been playing music in other capacities and was really burnt from the whole thing and the only way I could handle playing music at the time was just not to involve anybody else and make sure I was doing exactly what I felt like. Once I had gotten over that and was ready to play with people again I was pretty particular in who I chose.

Do you sort of work out your vision then? Did you formulate an idea of how you wanted Dum Dum Girls to sound and then go and get the band members and say to people “this is what I want to do”?

Kind of. It wasn’t planned like that. It really happened accidentally. Like I said it was just a recording project I didn’t have any intention or expectation that it would become anything real. I took some baby steps and put out seven inches and an EP, there was enough interest, even in that, to warrant playing a few shows, and then obviously when Sub Pop became involved I was like “whoah this is a crazy opportunity and I definitely want to take advantage of it” that was when I decided I just need to find some girls and teach them these songs.

So Dee Dee when you say it started out as a recording project was it more about crafting some songs or some sounds for you than thinking about a line-up?

Yeah definitely. I wasn’t thinking it of a band at all. In fact I would spend hours and hours recording things and you know they’d be like twelve vocal tracks just because it’s a nerdy thing I like to do, these crazy harmonies. It was just a matter of writing these songs on a acoustic guitar and not knowing that that’s not how I wanted them to remain. I didn’t want to be writing folk songs so much. It was just a matter of time before I figured out how to record myself and the sound that I got was something I instantly I latched onto — “Yeah this is how it’s supposed to sound”.

Was the sound supposed to be homage, I guess, to stuff that you liked?

I never do anything that contrived. That’s not my intention like “And this is my song that sounds like the Shangra-La’s” or anything. It’s more a unconscious or subconscious thing where I have things that I love, I have elements of different types of music that I love and I have collected all those sounds and styles and pick and choose what I enjoy. Like I love how Motown drums sound, on any given Motown track. I love how their mic is and the reverb and just the beats even. I love distorted guitar and fuzzy bass and I’m obviously addicted to reverb. It’s just a matter of putting all those things into the songs.

That’s a pretty great checklist to have, Dee Dee.

(laughs) Yeah, bare bones rock’n’roll.

Was it also a case, like finding the band members, once you had the bare bones of these songs to kind of getting them to the next level you turned to a man responsible for a lot these classics, you got Richard Gottehrer in.

I did. I think maybe it is unclear, because sometimes I read reviews of the album where they assume the band members played on it, which isn’t the case, it was just a continuation of how I had been demoing songs.

How Richard was involved was I had tracked all of these songs and I stripped them of all my effecting and post-production stuff and I gave that to him to work with, these raw unaffected tracks. It was really an extreme mixing job and a medium level producing job because it was after the fact.

Yeah, it’s not like he was this svengali or anything.

No, no but what he did made a huge difference. We did it over the internet for about half of it then I flew to New York and mixed with him in a studio for a few days but I remember getting the first track over the internet and hearing it and going “Oh my gosh” and that wasn’t even the final version. To me it was night and day. Maybe to people who aren’t listening as closely the differences may not be as apparent. But it just sounded warm. The distortion and the reverb when they’re digital can sound really harsh and metallic and he really warmed it up and it sounded like analogue production and the vocals were just kind of shining. I was so happy with what he was able to do.

For people who don’t know he was there at the start. He wrote  “My Boyfriend’s Back” as well as producing records since then for Blondie and The Gos-Gos and he even did that last Raveonettes album. So was half of it his production and half of it to get great anecdotes out of him?

I still have yet to spend enough time not working with him. I did have desert and coffee with him before we started mixing and begged him to discuss his time in The Strangeloves, some of their songs are some of my favourite songs. He’s a great storyteller and he loves to talk about what he’s been through.

Did he write “I Want Candy” as well?

Yeah he did. That was a Strangeloves hit that has been covered by probably a million other bands.

Apart from bringing in someone like that there seems to be a few more kindred spirits in terms of what Dum Dum Girls are doing as well. Is there a bit of West Coast resurgence in harmonic pop stuff? Your partner Brandon from Crocodiles was on similar tip in with his own album from last year. Are there some like minded bands around that you take solace in contemporaries apart from classic stuff as well?

Yeah, I mean there definitely are. A lot of it was attributed to that West Coast lo-fi sound from last year which included Brandon’s band Crocodiles and Wavves and now Best Coast. We’re all friends. I’m really happy to see everybody doing well. We definitely have similar reference points and taste in music. Anytime I DJ I’m always playing my friend’s bands because it fits right in.

And it also meant – you’ve done a Sonny and Cher song on the Dum Dums album – but it meant you and Brandon got to do your own duet. You didn’t have any nerves doing the husband/wife duet?

No, it was a lot more natural. I didn’t even really think about of it in that context. I was recording a song in our house and it just wasn’t working and I realised it needed to be a duet – it was more call and response parts. I just asked him if he could stop doing the dishes or whatever and come in, and he played guitar on it as well. For me it was a real treat because I’m not technically proficient on the guitar so the majority of the more intricate guitar parts on the record are performed by others – he did one, Nick Zinner did one and Andrew Miller actually did most of them. So it was just a treat to see the lead he came up with then to hear the song really come to life once it was a duet. It was a huge improvement.

So does that mean you have to call out for a male audience member to do it on tour the nights when Brandon’s not around?

(laughs) We don’t do it live for that reason. But we are going on tour with Crocodiles in June, just a little West Coast USA tour, so we will be doing it on that tour, which I’m pretty excited about.

I think that opens up the possibilities to be doing a Nancy and Lee songbook on tour for encores.

(laughs) Yes (laughs).

Now you guys need to come here, are there plans to bring Dum Dum Girls to Australia, Dee Dee?

Yes I believe there is. I just got an email from my booking agent who said she was going to start looking in to taking us over to your country.

You need to give Brandon a slap too as Crocodiles almost made it the end of last year then canceled. So put him on notice.

I know, they had to come home as I had some family problems. But they can’t wait to go back too.

You guys are on a promise for that. Thank you so much for the talk, I hope everything works out with the new line-up and everyone behaves themselves. Take care.

Yeah, bye.

Transcription: Caleb Rudd

First broadcast on Static on 06/05/10. Static can be heard on Sydney’s 2SER (107.3 FM) and via the Internet (www.2ser.com) every Thursday evening (AEST).