Laura Marling Interview
The Sugar Club, Dublin
December 8th, 2007
by Gareth Williamson

I enlisted my friend Shawna to take photographs for me. The payment was me buying her booze for the night 'cause even friends don't do shit for free, really. You know how it is, there always has to be an insentive.

I loafed in Pravda after work, and had a quick google for "Noah and The Whale" to see what I could find out about them other than what was on their myspace page. I'd only decided to try get an interview with them that day, after being exhausted at Okkervil River two nights before and thinking that it wasn't worth missing the last bus for the possibility of an interview. Taxi fares add up.

After I met with Shawna outside Stephens Green Shopping Centre, we went to The Sugar Club, and waited inside as Laura and Marcus (Mumford and Sons) were soundchecking. Marcus was sitting at a snare with two peddles. His left for a tamourine, and right for a small kick-drum. Once they were finished I wandered down and introduced myself, hoping that Laura remembered me from Tuesday. She'd played a Ruby Sessions gig at Doyle's, and I'd organised an interview for that day, but she'd barely slept in the last few days, so I asked her if it'd be okay to interview her at her saturday gig. She remembered me.

G: You're from Reading -- I'd heard you moved from there to London recently, was it just to pursue music?
Laura: More to get out of Reading. Do you know, do you know that sort of, that area? South of London.
G:Not at all.
G:What were you when you...
Seventeen.
G:So it was fairly recent.
Six months ago.
G:Six months ago... alright (laughs)
Shawna:I didn't realise you were so young.
G:When did you start writing the material for your album. Had you been working on it for a long time, or was it just recently when you got to London that you kinda found, eh -- a different perspective?
L: Uhm... right, yeah, Well originally when we started to write the Album we had quite a couple of old songs, and then I decided I needed to start new 'cause the old songs were so different from the new songs. So, I wrote most of it completely new other than two songs. So that was in the past... eight months. That was uhm... that felt really good, I don't know if it sounds really good. It felt completely right.
G:Did you know anybody in London when you moved there?
L: Yeah yeah. Reading's only 25 minutes from London.
G:I should probably read up on my geography -- a little, I dunno. Can you remember when music first fasinated you?
L: Uh, yeah, when I was like... around the same time my dad was playing me Joni Mitchell, my sister was playing me Bob Dylan and Ryan Adams. So that was when I was like ten or eleven. I'd been learning a lot of different musical instruments since I was like five.
G:What instruments were you playing, or being taught -- or told to learn.
L:Classical guitar, drums, piano, saxophone, and then jazz guitar.
G:All by choice, partially by choice...
L:Yeah yeah yeah yeah, I gave up classical guitar pretty quickly. The drums and jazz guitar were quite fun.
G:Do you find, uhm... having a background in drums it's easier for you to write songs with good rythm?
L:No.
G:No?
L:I was always terrible, I was always terrible at drums, but never got the hold of it, but I carried on doing it 'cause it was so fun.
G:It's just that, I noticed in a lot of bands I like everybody in the band can actually play the drums, like, to a moderate degree. It just seems to make. It let's everybody gel well. Like a lot of people can play their parts seperately, but for them to play together well as, a unit, it takes something else. And, I dunno. That's a theory of mine. Drumming helps, a little.

G:You became fascinated with music when you were ten, but you'd been playing it since you were five -- or learning instruments. For the five years were you just doing it for the sake of it.
L:Yeah, I think that's it, really. I dunno, well I must of obviously gotten a passion for it, but I can't really remember. But I was doing all those things, so I must of had a reasonable desire to. Well, wait, I got a musical scholarship to my school. I got music lessons free. So that probably would of helped with all the, choice of instruments.
G:What school was that?
L:Layton Park School.
G:Was it nice?
L:It was like a hippy school. It was bit, it was a bid weird. You called all the teachers by their first name. I left early.
G:When you were younger, who did you understand best lyrically, uhm, of the musicians you were listening to -- being inspired by. Who did you...
L:Sort of around now. I wouldn't of wanted to do it when I was like ten or eleven. Joni Mitchell, is a godess, in many ways. Jeffrey Lewis, I think. He's quite, he's new. He's the kinda person that -- and Kimya Dawson, he's the kinda person that write things you didn't even know you were thinking. I like that kinda thing.

Shawna: It's interesting that you mentioned Joni Mitchell, 'cause Gareth was like, you've got to listen to this girl, she's really really cool sounding. And the moment I heard you I thought, Joni Mitchell. She, her voice sounds very much like Joni Mitchell's.
L:Ah that's wicked.
S:Yeah. It's a good thing.
L:Yeah, deffinately.
G:She's not the first one actually. My friend Shannon as well, she's a really sweet voice. Everybody I know who's listened to you after one song. My mate Pete text me back, she's fucking awesome. I've told him to listen to a lot of music, and he's always disappointed. Half and half, depending on what he listens to.
S:You've got bad taste in music.
G:I haven't got bad taste in music. I just have... a broad taste in mus-ic. Uhm, yeah no, everyone I've told to listen to you is impressed by what you do. My mate Conal was at the gig Tuesday. After the first song, I kinda kicked him in the leg. He turned around and his eyes were glazed over. I was like, dude are you okay? 'cause he was still vibing off Thurston Moore as he was at his gig that night. I said, what'd you think of her? and he was like, she's fucking brilliant. There was no change of expression, just a grin.
L:That's so sweet.
G:That was probably the best compliment. The person I'd look toward for heavy criticism would be him. That was just after your first song.
L:Oh wow.
G:Yeah.

G:Getting into EP's. You had two. Check notes *reads through moleskin*. London Town EP.
L:Yeah, that was the first one.
G:When was that released?
L:March/April this year. All those songs were written a long time ago.
G:How many tracks were on it?
L:Four. Yeah that was like an EP to put those songs out of the way. Release them. I don't know why. I still don't know why to the day that we bothered releasing it. But ehm, the second EP was...
G:How you progressed?
L:Yeah, progression, or difference. So that's what we were trying.
G:So that's what you wanted, like any musician you listen to yourself, you wanna go, here's that one Album and here's the new one. I don't want it to sound exactly like it, but I want them to be the same people. Just a bit different. So were the songs on London Town EP written when you were younger which you weren't so happy about.
L:Yeah.
G:It's just kinda like, I guess, just to clear your head a little.
L:Yeah, they were just bad songs.
G:Bad songs. I'll have to pick up a copy.
L:I wouldn't, I wouldn't bother. They're just bad songs.
G:By copy I mean burnt copy.
(laughter)

G:And on My Manic & I (EP), was New Romantic on it? -- those three songs that everybody likes so much. Nightmare.
L:Night Terror. And Typical is the last track.
G:Oh.

G:You played Underage Festival in August. Was that the first festival that you played?
L:Uhm... no, I played ehm, Wireless, I think I played Glastonbury before that. Was Glastonbury in July?
G:(laughter)
S:Glastonbury was in the end of June.
L:Yeah I played Glastonbury before Underage.
G:It's uh, I think I played Glastonbury.
L:I just couldn't remember what month it was in, yeah I played Glastonbury. Played a couple. I played Wireless, Uhm... there were a shit load of Rubbish festivals in London that year.
G:All those park festivals.
L:Yeah, they're so boring. They really are so boring. Anyway. (laughter) Moving on.
G:Ehm, was that all off your own back? Off your own publicising of your music, or were you signed to label.
L:I was signed to a label yeah.
G:Who're you signed to?
L:Virgin.
G:So, once you signed to Virgin, they kinda sorted you out.
L:Yeah well we've got our own management.
G:Yeah.
L:We don't use their in-house thing.
G:Do you find that better? -- do you find that a lot more personal.
L:Yeah. It's a risky business. They're the least major of the major record labels. But it's still, keep as much to yourself as you can. Another rant, sorry.
G:No no, that's good. Have you read my 'zine? It's full of rants -- either by me or musicians. Uhm... so, I was at Underage Festival.
L:Were ya?
G:Yeah, I was there with Mystery Jets.
L:Ah cool.
G:But uhm... what'd you think of it. I never got to see... you were actually in the same tent. I wrote that in the myspace message I'd sent you.
L:Yeah.
G:Yeah, you were in the same tent, which I ended up scrawling my 'zines name, and myspace address. Ehm... on it. But, ehm, how'd you find it? The crowd I thought really calm, 'cause it was just kinda weird. I felt -- I was sober, but I was sober-er by the experience.
L:It was really weird wasn't it. I've never seen so many police in my life. (laughter) It was so weird wasn't it. And uh, I was like, genuinly that was like, when I found out 'cause -- they said -- somebody asked me to play Underage, and I was like, are you kidding me, no way am I gonna play that. Then I saw Johnny Flynn was on the bill. Do you know Johnny Flynn?
G:No.
L:He's British. He kind of runs in the same circles as Noah and the Whale. He's just the most amazing folk-songwriter. Anyway, he was playing -- he was just above the bill on me, so I was like fine I'll do it. And I thought it was gonna be the most horrific thing in the world, but there were enough police to make sure it wasn't. So... it was fine. So that was the end of the Underage gigs.
G:Oh. I thought it was lovely. Ehm... really weird. I thought it was lovely.
L:Yeah it was really well done actually. And Field Day was really nice aswell.
G:Were you at Field Day?
L:Yeah. Just before Ardem on the bill.
G:Ardem? (note: the spelling here is phonetical, and I couldn't find either Ardem or Bestiva with those spellings.)
L:Yeah, Ardem. Do you know Ardem? It's like, do you know Bestiva?
G:(laughs) I feel really bad...
L:Ah no, they're just uhm, they're like... Bestiva plays with Devandra Banhart a lot, and Ardem's kinda like a cool musician. So that was really cool. And that was the next day after Underage.
G:Yeah yeah, I was there. But I had to break in. The police weren't helpful at all. (laughter) I nearly impailed myself on the tall fence thingy.
L:Ouch.
G:Yeeah. Anyway. Uhm... have you recorded all the songs for the Album yet?
L:Yeah. Yeah, we're just like, we're trying to make it... we just have to go to the studio one more time, to eh, we're trying to make. 'Cause it's like a continous work in that all the songs were written in a very short time, it's quite fixed to that subject. We're trying to make it one long continuous noise. So we're gonna put noise inbetween the tracks so it's one long block. We're gonna do that, and then it's finished 'cause all the tracks are done.
G:That'll be nice.
L:It's like, we, I bought a dictaphone the other day and we've been doing it all over Ireland. Basically rain in the car, and like street noise, and like ehm kids laughing. It's gonna be quite fun.
G:That's, that's really lovely. Uhm... so you've got a lot of gigs just to kinda push it, up until, what's it -- February 8th in London.
L:February 4th.
G:February 4th. It's February 1st here, for some reason.
L:Is it? That's my Birthday. I'm gonna be Eighteen.
G:Awww. Bless ya. (laughter) Uhm...
S:I'm a February 25th myself.
L:Are you? That's my Mums birthday.
S:Oh really?
L:Weird. (laughter)
G:Whatever (said in a sarcastic tone). Just kidding. Uhm, It's called Song Box.
L:It's called -- the actual Album's called Alas I Cannot Swim. But the box, the limited edition box which is the first release. So you won't be able to get cd's. You'll have to buy the box first. I think it's a number. I think it's the first six thousand or five thousand copies. You get to go to a gig in England if you want.
G:Any gig?
L:No, It's my gig.
(laughter)

L:So you get a free ticket to see me somewhere in England.
G:Ah, too bad. (laughs) I was thinking, Radiohead ticket.
(Laughter) So any of your gigs in England, or just a specific one.
L:Well basically in the box is like, a ticket and a cd, and uhm, some artwork that I've done with this guy who does woodcuts, and it's got like a storybook. But the tickets are for five gigs. There's one in Glasgow, one in Edinburgh, one in Manchester, one in London, and one somewhere else.
G:Do you know when the one in London is?
L:It's in March, sometime. It's at the Union Chapel.
G:I'll put some money together. (laughs) Hopefully. I need another trip over there anyway.

S:What kind of art do you do. You said the guy does woodcuts. Do you do illustrations or paintings?
L:I kind of give... I'm not in no way shape or form an artist. I give him vague drawings and he makes them look nice, and makes them into woodcuts so he can use over and over again.
G:They're all handcut. Thus the limited. Six thousand copies. His hand must be sore.
S:Are you going to be doing much press once the Album comes out. As far as radio interviews. Do you have anything like that planned?
L:I try and steer clear of those kinda things. I think people let me away with doing that 'cause I'm quite young. They can't put too much pressure on her, she's too young. I can get away with saying no no no I can't do it, because the way I think the music business is going promoting yourself everywhere is not working. It just makes people get annoyed. Kate Nash fucking over-did it man. Nobody wants to see her face anymore. She just did every magazine, every radio thing, she's fucking everywhere. She's on every tv program. Like, it's not going to make your records any higher. England's totally small. People download music, whatever. It doesn't matter how much you promote yourself, it's the way in which you come across that's important. So I'm not going to do a billion radio interviews, and I'm not going to do a million magazine interviews. Anyway rant over.
G:You don't like being interviewed.
L:I hate being interviewed. But I like I like this kind of thing 'cause it's very, ya know, honest. I find the music magazines, and newspapers very dishonest in some way. And I find people, especially radio people they haven't chosen to interview you. It's just them being dishonest and trying to find -- pretend that they're interested in what you have to say. So anyway another rant, it's over.

G:You prefer not to have people around you with alterior motives.
L:Yeah. I just like to keep the rootsy vibes, you know what I mean?
G:Yeah.
S:Are there any festivals you're looking forward to in the next year -- or do you wanna play very many next year?
L:Yeah, well, I think they're a great thing to play and watch. I hate going to Festivals. I mean, I love the, I was happy to play Glastonbury, but I was in there for four hours. I want to do South by South West (SXSW).
S:I have friends that play that, and say it's amazing.
L:Everyone comes back saying it's brilliant.

G:When do you plan on releasing the Album on it's own?
L:Ya know I don't know. When that one (The Song Box) sells out I guess. When the limited edition sells out. If you want it, you're gonna have to buy the Box.

Laura Marling's "Song Box" is available in Ireland February 1st, and February 4th in the UK. She has two EP's available to buy in the UK. London Town EP, and My Manic EP. She's brilliant, but that's just my opinion, and I think whoever's reading this really needs to check her out to make up their own.

www.myspace.com/lauramarling

Tags: interview, laura marling, ptsil 8, the sugar club

Noah and the Whale Interview
The Sugar Club, Dublin
December 8th, 2007
by Gareth Williamson

Noah and the Whale are: Charlie, Doug, Urby, Laura & Tom.

There had been some noise during the Noah and the Whale support set from the back right (looking from the stage) by a group of girls and a few lads. Seated at the top beside the door that led to the smoking garden, you could hear them over the music when it was it's quietest, which would of ruined it if I weren't able to block them out. The band couldn't. I noticed Laura usually settled face become stern, holding in a grimace. Charlie kept playing, singing. His intensity made me wonder if it was due to his anger at the crowd or if he always played with such vigour.

They were obviously all close friends, playing casually but tight. Marcus (Mumford and Sons) was on the snare, with a two peddles. One for a kick drum, and the other attached to a tamborine. It wasn't long before he started glaring at the noise in the corner.

Inbetween a track Charlie said, "When Laura's playing, there better not be a sound, or I'm gonna come up there and kick the shit out of someone." Or something to that effect. Everyone in the audience clapped.

I interviewed Charlie and Urby from Noah and the Whale just outside The Sugar Club.

From a conversation about dictaphones...

Charlie: I've been trying to record samples for doing Laura's Album. This looks so much... is that a camera or a dictaphone?
Yeah, it's a camera.
C: And a dictaphone.
And it does video.
C: Ah, it's a video, okay.
Yeah, but that's just the audio. Dude, it's so fucking high-quality. I recorded my mate Conal -- who gave out to the DJ (she'd stopped playing Nico's "Chelsea Girl's" 10 seconds in. He told me later she'd had to due to having to play the in-house playlist). He played Whelans, and I just had that on my lap, and it picked it up so well. It's a ridiculously good recording. Which I wanted to do when you guys were playing from the start of the night, but I thought I should of asked. I wish I could of, 'cause the sound was great.
C: Well next time you can.
Really?
C: Yeah yeah.
Urby: Just don't give it to anyone. Just don't make any money out of it. But if you do, give it to us, and then it's fine.
I should of known -- I should of asked.
U: You know for next time.
Yeah yeah.

When did Noah and the Whale come about?
C: We started about... just over a year ago. But it's been kind of year long evolution. It started out as like a three-piece with my brother who plays drums and the violinist. And then Matt and Laura joined six or seven months ago. And yeah, it's kinda been constantly evolving, constantly moving. Bigger, better, stronger, faster (Matt laughs in the background) ... yeah.
Was this your first band?
C: Well, it's quite weird, we all... me, well obviously my brother, and I've known Matt. Matt's been friends with my brother since they were like three/four. And Matt used to teach me guitar when I was younger. We used to go on holiday together. Even though he's two years older than me.
U: To Wales. Where we coincidentally got the Ferry from over to Ireland.
C: He used to teach me "Parklife" (Blur) or whatever. And uhm... yeah. Matt was kinda in a band with my brother for a while. And then, Matt started a couple of bands. I had a couple bands. And then we kinda...
U: ... we merged.
C: Yeah.

When it comes to songs in your band, seeing as they focus on these little stories either about people you know, or your opinions of things, uhm... do you find it hard to choose where to take the inspiration from, as in, first impression.
C: I guess it's, I mean, songwriting's a very erratic process. There's obviously no formula, and it's kind of, I dunno, It's somewhat imposed from somewhere I don't know where what you your song matters. I don't feel like I pick topics, as much as like, I just ehm... just like an idea will come to me and I'll roll with it. Interesting question though.
Do you find that uhm... well, once you get the start right, that everything else flows better.
C: Yeah. The first... 'cause it always starts from a little stanza or a line or... once you've got that initial seed, growing the song tree (laughs) it isn't that hard.
U: You were saying deciding what to do with it aswell...

My friend Conal wanders out of the venue and over to us.

Different energies, from different people in the band obviously come about to make the music, and eh, did you find that once that and Laura were there. Everything just felt right. As opposed to having just the three of you.
C: Yeah, I mean like, it's difficult. When you write a song there's the first piece, and you imagine it... it quite depends. A lot of people write songs and it's there, and it's how Laura plays it. But I've always written songs with a bigger picture.
A bigger sound.
C: Exactly, yeah. You don't neccessarily know what that is. But when we started playing as a five-piece it felt like that's what it was meant to be. I think that's what it's about. As in, everything is as it should be. I think with songs, that's the best life can make.
U: And we didn't really hear that till live. We didn't really know how it was gonna sound until it happened.
C: We kinda only exist on stage. We don't rehearse and stuff, so... we kinda just, like, when it happens on stage that's Noah and the Whale. That's the only time that it exists.
M: Having said that, without sounding lazy, we do. It's largely because we have done a hell of a lot of gigs after night, after night, after night. So with a soundcheck.
C: We get a fair amount of practice.
M: We're not winging it totally.

What's planned? You had a single out which was, Five Years?
C: Five Years Time, yeah.
U: Got a second single out (2 Bodies, 1 Heart), well, on radio.
C: It comes out, downloads Christmas Eve. Physical release, mid-January. It was meant to be like a little Christmas present as a NewYears Eve download, but then someone in an interview said that if it's not for free how is it a present. Buy it for someone else, I dunno. Then hopefully recording the Album in January. Guess that'll come out early Summer, late Spring.
How many songs have you finished, and what do you want to put on the Album.
C: We deffinately want the Album to be coherant. Like, ya know, the songs are all written as an Album rather than a collection of songs.
Without songs that you'd written when you were twelve... oh, this a good idea, lets put that in.
C: Totally. All the in the same session. All with the same sounding instruments.
U: We're really lucky 'cause Charlie's written loads of songs, and we've got a really nice collection. We're not scraping around for tunes. We're in the luck that we can just can go in and do that, 'cause we have stuff to pick.

Any big tours or gigs coming up then?
C: Yeah, we'll hopefully be doing. Our Label: Young and Lost.We're hopefully doing a tour with their... They've done a lot of limited release things before. We're gonna be their first Album, so we're hopefully gonna do a joint tour with them sorta djing and us gigging, and another one of their Single Artists playing. I dunno if that's gonna go abroad or not, but we deffinately will be doing that in England.
U: February isn't it?
C: Yeah I think so. Then yeah, finishing the Album's the first thing. We've done like, it must be like 120 gigs this year, so it's been quite a busy year. Time-off to do the Album will be, will be
nice.

You were saying that when I was talking to you on Tuesday at the gig (Ruby Sessions at Doyles. Laura was doing a short acoustic set) that you were supposed to be supporting...
C: At the Tripod (Broken Social Scene presents Kevin Drew), yeah.
... and you couldn't do it 'cause of the costs of getting a Ferry ride over. Which is ridiculous, but I've talked to a lot of bands that suffer that same problem.
C: It's amazing now after signing the deal with Young and Lost, that we now can afford to get around. Previously we had like six or seven tours, like the Feist tour... the Broken Social Scene tour, Lonely Dear...
U: ... the Swedish band...
C: ... and a few others. We did it all in my Ford Fiesta, like five of us rammed in with our gear. Sleeping on mates floors. That's a really fun way to do it, but I'm glad that chapter's over for the moment.
U: In fact we have just gone around Ireland in a Fiat (laughs). Ya know.
C: That's true. But staying in Hotels though.
U: That's the odd thing about being in a band. It's just covering costs and stuff, while you're doing that. Everything's split five ways, there just isn't enough. Especially on the support tours you need to do. The BSS tour I'd actually booked in advance. So I came out here to see them, and it was wicked. It was really really cool. Like because we were sleeping on mates floors we got told off for smelling too much. In the BSS tour...
C: ... we got told to shower if we wanted to stay in their dressing room by their tour manager. They didn't mind.
U: BSS have got something like the length of this road to stay in and for gear, and they're just like, don't you ever shower, couldn't you shower at the hotel? I was like, No.
C: But we get by. Don't print that we smell.
C & U: We don't smell.

That's fine. Be Honest. A lot of the punk bands I've met, or the hardcore scene.
U: Do you consider us to be a punk band. Smelling like a punk band.
It's about the fact that, a mate of mine Lee is in a local hardcore band. He's going over in March to London to play a gig at an inside festival in a small venue. They're just crashing on the floor. That's very much that scene. It's not insolated in a negative way, but a possitive way that everybody looks out for each other. And that if they want to tour, people just line up couches.
C: Jeffrey Lewis, we did a few dates with him. He did a six week tour of mainly floors, and he gets lifts from his fans and stuff. It's great, I love that ethos, but like, with me, my quams are I'd happily travel by any means to play a good gig. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
C: But, if you travel in a car, and you sleep on a floor to play to a chatty audience. Sometimes it's quite killer.
U: Especially on the road you live by your last gig. If you do a gig when no one's there and everyones chatting. The next 24 hours there's a marked difference in everybody's mood, until the next gig that picks you up.
C: Obviously we don't do music for the money, 'cause nobody fucking makes any money. We do it for the love of music, so we're happy to do whatever we have to do, but you know. We just wanna be...
U: We want the music to be as good as it can be.
C: So there's people to consider it. That's it really. They don't have to like it. They can hate it, as long as they consider it.
U: The bizarre thing is, since we've been playing and doing shows where they hadn't been free. Ironically at free show's, that's where you get the worst audience. 'Cause they know they're getting a free show. In a way the more people pay -- if you charge them seven quid people will turn up and go I paid seven quid I'm gonna listen to this. What?!
I'm gonna give it a shot.
U: Maybe all of our early gigs should of been seven quid on the door.
C: From now on we're gonna charge fifty pounds a night.
Modern times dude, everybody takes shit for granted.

C: That's the thing. In England we've got two more days of our first headline tour. And we've been really like, cool venues and stuff. And it's just been amazing to play to people who wanna be there. It's such a treat.
U: After about a year, Noah and the Whale only did their first headline show two and a bit weeks ago? Really ridiculously recently considering we've done so many gigs. Especially since we have silent bits. I think that's the big thing that sets us apart. Not only are we acoustic, but we kinda need silence, and use silence. When you can take it right down, so that when you have that person in the front row chatting. I think by vetoing the drummers mates coming down to the gig. It's gotten to that stage.

I don't know what it's like in England, in order to gather support, if it's slow going. Even here.
U: But the good news is that it is possible, and it is picking up.
C: The great thing for us is that it happened now. If it'd happened six months ago it would of been shit you know what I mean Urby laughs).
U: Yeah!
C: That's what's great. We had that year and a bit to learn what we're doing, and learn how to do it. 'Cause other-wise you rush. A lot of bands get picked up right away. Rush into an Album and then they're just not ready for it. We've been through the training man.
U: That's why I was so looking forward to doing the first record as well. You get one chance to do a first record. To present yourself in that kind of medium to people. Like in fact (Charlie's laughing) here we are, bang! You don't want to be like, five days, let's go, let's go, we're pushing for it. There's a big, ya know, it's gonna go global guys, five days go.
Push the Album forward. It's out tomorrow -- what?!
U: Yeah, exactly.
It's out tomorrow. What?! We only recorded it yesterday! It doesn't matter! Enjoy it.
C: Don't worry about it.
Don't worry about it. You won't know any difference.
U: No Noah and the Whale.
High compression...

U: We're in a very good place right now. Especially going on tour and watching Laura every night. It keeps you trying to get better.
Playing with friends is always lovely to see.
U: Playing with friends, yeah, I think, ya know, playing with friends, it's the way it's pretty much always been. I think you always make better music. It's just a general accepted rule. If you're playing with people you like (laughter). There's less communication problems isn't there. If you know eachother.
C: Although brothers. Me being in a band with a brother, always a risk.
(laughter)

Noah and the Whale's new single "2 Bodies, 1 Heart" is released January 14th. Also available is their previous single "5 Years Time", and their Christmas download "To Cyril at Crunkmas" is downloadable for free off their myspace page.

www.myspace.com/noahandthewhale

Tags: interview, noah and the whale, ptsil 8, the sugar club

You Say Party, We Say Die
November 2nd,
Radiator @ The Hub,
Interviewed by: Gareth Williamson

You Say Party, We Say Die is a Canadian dance-punk outfit that Play The Song I Like really identifies with. They’ve got DIY roots, a fondness for ice cream, and a rather unusual approach to practicing their songs… -- Shannon Duvall (Co-Editor/Transcriber/Cover Illustrator)

Gareth: So it was you and Becky that started the band?
Stephen: Actually, it was me and Krista, the keyboard player.
G: Oh, okay.
Stephen: And I guess it was our original idea. And then we got Becky and our original guitar player, Jason. So technically there are four founding members.
G: What did you guys sound like back then? Did you out to create the sound you’re making now?
Stephen: I kinda had an idea for the sound I wanted…which was, like, a keyboard-driven punk band that people could dance to. Not taking any cues from any of the major trends at the time…like the dance-punk movement: I wasn’t a fan, nor did I have any knowledge of, like, the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s or anyone like that. So yeah, I didn’t know what dance-punk was, but I’d grown up in a punk scene and really liked it…
Becky: (interjecting) Wolfnote.
Stephen: Oh, yeah, there was this band from Edmonton [Canada] called Wolfnote who are, like, this post-hardcore group…they really inspired me to start this band.
G: So when did Devon and Derek join up?
S: Derek joined the band in January of 2005, when our original guitar player quit. He replaced him. We probably practiced with him, like, 3 times…a total of about 5 hours before he played his first show with us, opening for Pretty Girls Make Graves. At the time, that was our biggest show ever, so he really did a good job. Devon joined the band in April of 2006, shortly after our first European tour. You know, our original drummer chose to stay with the other band he was in. You know, it came to a choice. We needed him all the time, and the other band did, too. And both bands were starting to suffer because of it. And drummers are worth their weight in gold, man. Like, guitar-players are a dime a dozen, but drummers are important, so they always end up in lots of bands. Such is the case.
Becky: The what?
S: The case, as in such is the case.
Becky: Oh! I thought you meant The Case, as in a band called The Case.
(laughter & joking)
G: What, you’ve never heard of The Case?
S: I can’t believe you’ve never heard of them before, ‘cause they’re amazing!
G: Yeah, totally amazing. So underground they don’t even know about themselves!
S: Yeah.
G: So, Steven, growing up in Abbotsford, [near Vancouver, Canada] were you in many bands when you were younger?
S: Not many…maybe four or five. They each only lasted a couple of years and then broke up. Nothing of notoriety, anyway. I think Devon [drummer] played in some of the better punk bands in our home town, like the Blue Collar Bullets, and White Note. They were much better than any band I was ever in. Actually, when Derek and Devon were teenagers they were in a band together called Swillin’ Villains. They had one song that was awesome!
Devon: (interjecting) Uh, we actually had about 9 songs that were awesome. (laughs) But you only ever hear about The Beer Song.
Stephen: The Beer Song was awesome! It went like this: Na-nana-Na-nana-Na-nana-Na-nana / Na-nana-Na-nana-nana: BEER! / Na-nana-Na-nana-Na-nana-Na-nana / Na-nana-Na-nana-nana: ONE MORE! And it repeats. Then there’s this part that goes:
S + D: (in unison): I want my / I want some / BEER! BEER!
D: Yeah, and then there was this breakdown part and that was pretty much it.
S: Lots of Na-nana’s.
D: Yeah, (joking) we were an a cappella band, like (Wavy Pork Judd Judd). They’re an a cappella hardcore band.
G: Really?
D: Yeah, for real. They’re hilarious, and awesome. All their songs are like Jud-jud-jud-jud-jud…for the rhythm.
G: Cool. So when you guys made your first CD Danskwad, you recorded and released it yourselves. Did you find that expensive or difficult?
S: No, we just recorded them on CD-R’s and put them in cardboard sleeves. We sold them for $5, but I think it cost us about $2.50 to get them all made. The CD-R’s we got from Staples [American office supply store] for, like, a dollar. Then the photocopy and paper was, like, 75 cents. Then there was the glue to glue it all together. We made 100 at a time, 4 different times. We sold them on our merch tables at gigs and sent them out to the college radio stations in Canada.
G: And how about practice? Do you do a lot of it or do you just jump right in at gigs?
S: We had a strict rule about practice in the beginning. It went like this: Practice, Drink, Practice, Drink, Practice, Fall Down. And we literally did practice till we puked. So it was normally about 45 minutes long. And when we’d write the songs, we’d make it so it never changed from the first time we played it. We’d play it, and if we could get halfway through with nobody fucking up, we’d be like, ‘Sweet. We’re done. Next!’. Then we’d drink some more.
Devon: It was pretty pathetic to see, actually. I used to go and watch them practice sometimes before I was in the band, and I’d never seen a band practice like this before. I was actually appalled that they could even play through a full song at a show, because they never seemed to practice a full song.
S: Pretty much.
D: Yeah.
S: We thought that sloppiness was part of our endearing qualities. We got away with it for about a year.
D: You know what that’s like? That’s like when you first start playing punk songs and you think ‘Fuck, too many men. Too many pop-stars and shit. We don’t need that!’
S: We also didn’t believe in tuning. We tried our best, but it didn’t work out. It wasn’t until we went on our first tour and recorded our first album that we realized what being a real band was all about. We bought tuners, and we’ve gotten a lot tighter; especially since Devon’s joined that band. For the last two years we’ve played over 150 shows a year. Next year’s looking like we might take some time off, though.
G: To record?
S: Ahh, no, to write and just NOT TOUR. We’ve been going pretty non-stop…anyway, Ziiip! That was my lips. For when you’re listening back to this recording later, that was me zipping my lips shut.
G: Actually, I won’t be listening to it right away. My co-editor does the transcribing.
D: Oh, really?
S: Ohh! Co-editor, eh? You source people out?
G: (laughing) Source?
S: Well, I guess if it’s co-editor…
G: She designs the covers and edits and transcribes.
S: What’s her name?
G: Shannon.
S: Hi, Shannon!
D: (confused) Wait, Stephen, why’d you zip your lips? Cause we are gonna tour?
S: Well, I…kept on…almost…saying something…and I noticed the Dictaphone kept…drifting…towards my…mouth…and I thought maybe I was making things difficult so I zipped them.
D: Oh.
G: I could play it like there was a secret I shouldn’t be telling…
D: Yeah, yeah, yeah! Me and Steve are gay!! (laughing) Derek watches and masturbates!
S: (to Gareth) Band secrets. You’ve discovered everything.
D: Becky doesn’t know about any of this yet. And Krista has a hairy back!
(laughter)
G: (laughing) Anyway, umm….damn, I had it…
[Gareth takes out a sheet of paper with questions on it.]
Oh, yeah!
S: (laughs) Let it be known that in this part of the interview you took the cheat sheet and put it behind you...with a small bit of frustration; that needs to be in the interview. We frustrated you that far!
G: Uhhhh….okay, dance-punk isn’t just like playing rock music. It’s got its own specific crowd...
S: I always found it was really disappointing when people wouldn’t dance at shows. Or, you know those shows where, like, people are just standing there like ‘Impress me’. Arrgh…I always preferred when people would get into it, so I help these people by making sure I write songs that you can get into.
G: Well, what I like about your songs is that, even on the ones that start out slow, they always pick up halfway through. Like on Lose All Time.
S: With the bell!
G: Yeah!
S: Well, that was kind of an accident.
Devon: No, it was totally on purpose. We were trying to fuck with people, ‘cause they thought we were so consistent. So we were like, we’re gonna throw them a loop. See, Krista’s actually a classically trained piano player. Everyone always expects us to be an exclamation point factory, 190 BPM, rockin out all the time. So we gave them that.
G: Like the bonus track on Lose All Time as well.
D: Yeeeahh! I wanted to confuse people who heard the first couple seconds of that bonus track and who thought, ‘Wonder what song it’s going to be this time’, and just drag it on and on and on…
G: When writing material for Hit The Floor!, how did you find writing lyrics, especially for the faster tracks?
S: Well, when we originally started we were a political dance-punk band. Krista and myself were both basically like, ‘It’d be awesome to raise some awareness with our lyrics!”. But then we decided we wanted Becky to sing for us. And Becky’s political, but in a really poetic way, and as things carried on we realized we couldn’t really force her to sing our lyrics, so she took over writing. So some of the songs on Hit The Floor! are leftovers of that political writing style. There’s an obvious gap there. But there are other songs like You Did It, Don’t Wait Up, with politics in it, but not in your face. It’s there in the undercurrent.
D: Stephen and Krista’s political lyrics were like a sledgehammer smashing you in the face with a message, whereas Becky’s is more like taking a shaving razor and…slooowwwwly shaving the skin off your head ‘til you’re dead. That’s the dichotomy of Party & Die that we strive for. A perfect balance of complete opposites all the time.
S: Sledgehammers and razors.
D: Yeah. And ice cream.
S: Especially ice cream.

G: What label was Hit The Floor! on?
S: It was called Sound Document. It was a small label that had only made two records before ours. They’re from Vancouver. They were really awesome, really good to us. And we returned the favor by being so successful that we bankrupted them. Kind of a bummer. But they’re really good, so I hope someday that she puts out another record.
G: So it was successful in Canada?
S: Yeah, it definitely exceeded our expectations there. It was a record that was originally supposed to get us to Western Canada. Western Canada is like the physically larger-but-with-a-smaller-population part of the country. Not like Toronto, which is like the bread and butter. So we just basically wanted to tour the West of Canada with that first record. Instead, it ended up being a record that took us all over the world. It got head of us so fast that the publicity budget for Sound Document went through the roof.
G: So you played Pop Montreal when you toured Hit The Floor! That’s pretty big; kind of like the Canadian SXSW…
S: I guess it kind of is, except not as many people care about it as they do SXSW. It doesn’t have the media presence that SXSW does, but Pop Montreal’s really good. We had a lot of fun playing it…though we did have kind of a fucked up evening, because there was this really crappy house band – like a jazz/funk/blues trio – who had to play at midnight on Friday and Saturday night, and there was a miscommunication with the festival [organizers], so everybody’s slot got bumped to a different hour. So we were supposed to play at midnight and ended up having to go on at 10 o’clock. So all the fans were showing up at the original times for the bands they wanted to see, and they had all already played. It was a big nightmare. It was the first big festival we’d ever played, and we knew there were people arranged to come check us out and review the gig, and stuff. But that’s the way it goes at festivals, always changes in plans. We can’t deny that we had a good time.
G: What’d you think of The Hub [Dublin]?
S: Like it. This is our second time here. We played here a year and a half ago, on our very first tour of Europe. It’s really rad.
G: It’s really rad?
S: (laughs and puts on a moderate, careful tone of voice) It’s nice. It’s pleasing.
D: It’s awesome. I…would never recommend trying to catch a cab from here after the show…
G: (laughs)
S: …last time I spent, like, an hour and a half trying to get one. And there isn’t even courtesy here, like, where the cab will wait, and there’s no, like, queue out on the street, people are just grabbing them left and right. It’s like, ‘Man, you just stole my cab!’. But there’s a trick I’ve found: if you walk that way…
G: Towards Stephen’s Green…
S: …yeah, you can get them as they’re coming back into town. It doesn’t take nearly as long.
G: You must have been playing on a Friday or Saturday, then.
S: Yeah, we did. It was a lot of fun, though. We played with some really good local bands. I forget their names…(to the rest of the band) what were the names of the bands we played with the last time we were here?
D: Oh, Sickboy, they were great. And…another one that was really good, too. I can’t remember. We’re big fans of Humanzi. The Things are really cool. Or, The TINGS, as they like to be called.
G: It’s all about pronunciation.
(There is an interruption and some confusion over the location of merchandise; medium t-shirts and 7-inches seem to have gone missing.)
S: We’ve been on tour for eight weeks straight now. We left in August, and we don’t finish up until December. That’s 16 weeks of straight touring. We’re tired. But we’ll make it. And that’s why I said earlier that we probably wouldn’t tour the first half of next year. This tour is soooo friggin’ long. But we love it.
G: How is it on your relationships back home?
S: Hard, yeah. Sometimes you lose friends, just because they fade away. You don’t see them as much as you used to when you were just playing around town at home. Some of us really miss our families. It’s like losing a best friend from high school. You just grow apart and start doing different things. I’m doing this band and they’re doing what they’re doing. I have four of the closest friends I’ve ever had now, whom I love very deeply, in this band with me. It’s like a new family…or a creepy marriage.
Krista: I don’t think that multiple marriages are legal in Canada.
S: Yeah, well, wait…down by the border the Mormons do it. I don’t think polygamy’s been officially declared illegal. It just isn’t done.
K: Filing taxes would be a process.
G: Life insurance would be a bitch. So what do you make of the scene this side of the world as compared with Canada and the US?
S: It’s good, but it’s hard to crack, particularly in England. Most people in the UK who know us by Hit The Floor! don’t even know we have a second album out.
G: The scene’s very local as well. Home grown.
S: Yeah, it’s weird. But, hey.
G: Most of my interviews are foreign bands, come to think of it, but there are magazines in Dublin that spearhead the local scene a little more. And there’s a radio station, Phantom FM, that really focus on local music.
S: Phantom FM? That’s run by a Canadian!
G: Is it?
S: Yeah, it is. He’s so awesome, too. I hope he comes to the show tonight.
G: So, Devon, you were on board for Hit The Floor!?
Devon: Actually, no. Derek was in the band then. I went into the studio a few times and smoked some joints, but that’s about it. And watched them write songs in the studio.
Stephen: We had to do a lot of writing in the studio because we…we weren’t very refined at that stage, let’s put it that way.
G: Well, you were just starting out.
S: Yeah.
G: Some bands it seems who go into the studio with an almighty attitude just come out sounding like other bands they idolize.
S: Like, ‘we wanna sound like the hottest current band on the radio’.
G: Or, ‘we wanna sound like out favorite ‘80’s band’.
S: (laughs) Yeah. It was the damnedest thing…we went in trying to make our record sound just like the Killers but it didn’t work. We don’t know what the fuck happened!
D: Stephen was joking, of course.
S: Don’t worry, Devon, sarcasm is an international language, I’ve discovered.
G: You guys played Glastonbury this summer. What the fuck!
S: Yes. We did. It was awesome. It’s the bees knees!
D: Yeah, it’s something you never expect to do and then when you’re there on stage…
S: I think they make the stages there 2 feet higher than other festival stages, just so that when you’re there you know how prestigious it is. You just look out over the crowd and think how high up you are.
D: Or maybe the mud just sunk everyone else down.
S: Yeah, that could be it.
G: Or maybe it’s to make sure you don’t try to stage dive.
S: (laughs) Yeah, you’d just be lost forever. I think if you tried to jump off a stage at Glastonbury you’d just sink into the earth. I’ve never seen so much mud at a festival before. It was insane.
G: So, back to joining the band, Devon. When you were hanging out at the studio, did you want to join the band?
D: Oh, it was never even a thought at the time. I was in my own really good band. Stephen had always pestered me to, in the future, think about joining. Because they always knew that their drummer, who was in two bands at the time, and he’d been with the other one longer than YSPWSD. So there was always an awareness that once things really got rolling that he’d have to make a choice one way or the other. So when they did ask him to choose, he went with his other band, Fun 100, which he and his brother had started years before.
G: Wasn’t You Say Party…’s first gig in the basement of a church supporting Fun 100?
S: Yeah, it was, actually! This guy’s done his homework!
D: Eventually things in my band started falling apart, and that was right around the time they asked Bruce what his plans were, so it made it pretty easy for me to decide. But, no, before when they were recording Hit The Floor! it never even occurred to me. I thought they were a fun band, but they were really sloppy. And they were! But they were great. They had really good songs. Which I personally think is more important than being a good musician.
Derek: Like David Berman, from the Silver Jews. He has a song called All My Favorite Singers Couldn’t Sing. And it’s about artists like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, who didn’t have great voices, but had great songs. They didn’t sound like Pavarotti. The Beatles couldn’t play when they started. The Ramones didn’t know anything about sound, they just cranked everything to 10.
S: I think what Derek’s trying to get at is just ‘add us to the list!’.
(laughter)


G: (to Krista) So you and Stephen started this whole thing?
K: Yeah, it was his idea. I’d always wanted to be in a band.
G: You were never in one before?
K: Nope. I was a classical pianist and chorister.
G: Where?
K: In Abbotsford.
G: And you were paid for that?
K: No, no, no. I’d just been taking classical piano since I was 6. It wasn’t professional by any means, I just did it.
G: So how was being in your first band?
K: Just totally different. Getting used to the idea of jamming, and how to do that. Playing with other people, figuring out parts, getting comfortable writing and trying things out. I’d never written music before. I was playing Beethoven.
G: Did you want to pursue classical music?
K: No, not really.
G: Is it true you wrote all your songs just by jamming?
K: A lot of it, yeah. Someone would have a riff, or a part, and bring it in and we’d add to it. It was all pretty collaborative. I do remember practicing until we were too drunk to finish the songs. (laughs) I smoked my first joint with these guys.
G: Big moment?
K: It was a…monumental occasion.
G: What were your original lyrics like?
K: Well, really early on we were really political. I was studying Political Science at school, and going to rallies and protests. I was really into all that stuff. Not that I’m not now, I think maybe I’ve just mellowed out a little bit. But I was at all the anti-Iraq war protests in Vancouver.
G: What was your idea for the song Overture?
K: That happened in the studio. We wanted a crazy intro, something dramatic. We just started throwing ideas at our producer, like ‘Let’s have an explosion!’ and ‘Sounds of footsteps! Make it happen!’. And he did. (laughs)
G: And how about the Bonus Track on Lose All Time?
K: It’s meant to be just a load of people getting really stoned and playing around with instruments. (laughs)
G: Did it have a name?
K: Oh, jeez…hey, Derek? What was the name of the bonus track on the album?
Derek: The Robots Have No Ears, I think.
G: And how was Glastonbury?
K: Cool. Not one of the better organized festivals…
G: Really?
K: Yeah, but really incredible to be a part of. Backstage was really just not enjoyable, because the mud was just insane. No one told us you were supposed to bring Wellies, or whatever, so we all totally ruined our shoes. I mean, that’s not that big a fucking deal, I mean, you’re playing Glastonbury, right?

Tags: interview, ptsil 7, radiator, the hub, you say party we say die

65 Days of Static,
November 3rd,
The Button Factory,
Interviewed by: Gareth Williamson & Emma Mackey
Transcribed & Edited by: Shannon Duvall

Emma saves the day in this interview with Paul from the English band currently making waves with a new album and an upcoming tour with The Cure. Paul tells us about curses on the band, why he wants to toss his Apple Mac into the audience, and how they almost snubbed Robert Smith and Co. Read on… (Shannon Duvall -- Co-Editor/Cover Illustrator/Transcriber)

65 Days of Static are: Paul, Joe, Rob & Simon

Gareth: Did all of you grow up in Sheffield?
Paul: No, Joe and Rob did. I grew up in Manchester. Si grew up in Wales and ‘Chester. He and I went to University there…well, I went to University as much to start a band as to study.
G: That’s a hell of a plan. Go to Uni to start a band.
P: (laughs) Well, I did get a degree in film studies. Not practical at all, but I think it’s great. I liked learning how to learn. I think that’s what’s best about Uni. The actual subject matter I could mostly care less about.
G: So were there any other bands before 65 Days…?
P: No, Rob was in a metal band when we first met him, but then he realized he wanted to be in 65, so that was cool. This is Joe’s first band ever. I’d had some in secondary school, but nothing worthwhile…just learning how to play an instrument. But 65 is the first real thing.
G: And when did that start?
P: I guess in 2001…me and Joe got together. Then it became 65 after that, but only as a three-piece: electronics, two guitars and a bass. We went through a couple different bass players. It wasn’t really until Rob joined that we started writing songs that we thought were good enough that we could call ourselves a proper band.
G: Did you set out with the sound in mind or let it evolve?
P: In fact, it was really weird…Joe was showing me the other day this photo album he keeps of, basically the history of 65, and he’s still got a copy of the advert for musicians I put out, which turned out to be surprisingly accurate in terms of sound. See, when we started I couldn’t play the guitar at all. Most people would say I still can’t…(laughs)…but I could program, and that’s what I was doing. And Joe could make lots of noise on the guitar…distortion, pedals and shit. There was loads of really exciting stuff happening back then that never really took off with me, like that new breed of electronica that was kind of messed up; a little bit punk rock…and it was all exciting, but…people being stuck behind laptops will never be fun to watch. It’s not the kind of thing you put a poster on your wall of. It’s great…musically, really innovative and some of those guys are geniuses as far as I’m concerned. But while all that was happening I became aware of the band At The Drive-In, this heroic group of four guys with their guitars doing something I’d never heard before. I just wanted to mash it all together, the two sounds.
G: What ages are all of you now?
P: Between 24 and 27. I’m the oldest. Rob’s the youngest.
G: So when you went to record your first album, how did you find the actual act of accomplishing the sound you’d talked about making?
P: Well, I think we were really lucky, because we’d made a prior EP, in a rehearsal room, all by ourselves, and learned a lot about the recording process. It took AGES. So when it came time to do the album, at first it was only going to be another EP, and then the label that wanted to put it out suggested making it longer. We had three more tracks anyway so we went back into the studio and recorded them. So we were never intimidated about writing an album because we didn’t realize we were writing an album, you see. And as for the sound, we really didn’t know how to make the sound we wanted so we just made everything LOUD, and put it all on top of each other. Like, you’ll notice the drums, for instance, there’s all kinds of electronicky noises plus an electronic kick-drum, plus Rob playing a kick-drum at the same time, and a snare as well. So it all makes this big noise. As soon as you hear it you get really irritated. So we’ve learned how to weave the programming in and out with the real instruments.
G: And what about the latest album?
P: The reviews about our latest album actually freaked us out quite massively at first, because we seem to have split opinions about our production style. Some people liked it and some thought it was just awful. We were trying to make it a bit quieter, to give it more dynamic. We did it, for better or worse. And it doesn’t sound good on iPods or car stereos, which is a shame because that’s where a majority of people listen to their music these days. You’ll notice, if you put one of our songs on a playlist, it’s a lot quieter than the rest. So we were freaked out at first, but then we started touring and playing the songs live, and we realized that they’re the best songs we’ve ever written. So anyone who has a problem with the recording; hopefully they’ll come see us live and experience the full-on noise.
G: So if one were to listen to the album, what would be the best format?
P: Well, with vinyl, the quietest level is not as good. Technically, CD’s are the best because of the digital recording, though I personally like vinyl the best, because with CD’s, people seem to have misunderstood the point, and started making things louder because you could get away with it, digitally. The louder it gets, the more squashed the sound gets and it kind of loses the dynamic. Like, if you look at a sound wave of a band, like, oh, I don’t know…The Kaiser Chiefs…I’m not saying that insultingly, just using them as an example of a big, expensive pop band…the sound waves will be like this thick brick wall, whereas a band like Godspeed [You Black Emperor] have sound waves with peaks that will only be as loud as The Kaiser Chiefs for a second or so. So, yeah, and MP4’s just squash the sound. Haha…I don’t know…I’m making this up as I go along. I hope it makes sense.
G: Yeah, I can tell you’re making it up. I’ll just relax for awhile and have a cigarette.
P: Can you smoke in here?!
G: No, it was a joke.
P: Ah, right, I didn’t think so. Actually, I’m one of only two on the tour bus who don’t smoke. Even our driver smokes. So it’s nice to be somewhere where it’s not allowed.
Emma: It’s [the smoking ban] just come in over in England as well, hasn’t it?
P: Yeah, it has. I don’t think the English are adapting too well to it, though. Especially now that it’s winter.
G: When it first came in here, Irish males were quick to catch on and start casually popping outside for smokes, because there’s no music outside, and loads of girls out smoking, so your chances of having a flirt were better.
P: Ha-ha!
G: And bright lights so you could tell what they looked like. It worked both ways, though, so I suppose that was the downfall.
P: I can see that. I don’t want to start smoking to pick up girls, though. That just seems, like, really desperate.
Emma: How was the gig in Amsterdam with the Besnard Lakes?
P: It was really good, and so were they. At gigs in Europe, the quality of the support bands is…I’ll try to be diplomatic here…sometimes a bit strange. But they were great. We were hoping to play some more shows with them, but I’m not sure if it’ll happen. We’ve got another week back in England now and then on to The Netherlands and Germany…maybe France. A bit of a random tour, really.
G: So all-in-all, what do you make of the tour for the newest album?
P: Well, when we toured the first two, we’d been playing live for a really long time beforehand, as it should be, I think, but for this third album, we wanted to make a record that sounded really good – on the record – so that came with its own batch of problems when it came time to translate the songs to performance. We have, at this point, managed to get the computers to stop crashing, though.
G: Why were they crashing?
P: Because there’s a curse on this band. That’s the only possible explanation. Either there’s a curse, or I have some sort of magnetic field around me that interferes with the workings of computers whenever I go near them. Because things just crash when I approach. I’ve already done it to everyone who has a laptop on this tour. I’ll just start pressing keys and they’ll just stop – it’s not even funny! But now we’ve bought new leads and taken all the junk off the computers and it seems to be working. We even bought an Apple Mac, because that used to always be the heckle; whenever something would go wrong, someone in the audience would shout ‘Buy an Apple Mac!’. We only got it a month or so ago, and to tell you the truth it’s been a fucking nightmare, really. It can’t do half the stuff the other computers could do.
G: I’ll take it if you don’t want it.
P: Ha!...If you see me throw something small and white into the audience in frustration, that’ll be it. It’s yours then.
G: Cool.
P: Anyway, we think Joe’s cursed as well. He was working in some random retail job, and he offended someone – which is quite common, actually; he does that – and they got pissed off and put a curse on him.
G: What, literally?
P: Yeah.
G: Like, ‘I curse you, Joe’ ??
P: Yeah.
Emma: That doesn’t bode well.
P: No. But, whatever happens tonight, it can’t be as bad as it has been, so that’s a progress, of sorts.
E: What it that like, when you’re on stage and things just go dead?
P: It’s horrible. There was one time, on this tour, in Newcastle, where we had a load of dead stage time. But luckily we had a guy called Josh on stage with us, who’s this 6-foot-tall, incredibly skinny cowboy, with a beard this big. Like, from Texas, cowboy hat, boots, the real thing. And he makes these incredible, guitar/wind, noisy songs – you’ve got to check him out, he’s brilliant – but so he was supporting us so he was hanging around, and our computer crashed and he just jumped on stage and did a stand-up comedy routine for about 15 minutes. And the audience was loving it! More than the show, I think...but there we were all hunched around computers, plugging and unplugging things, but no one was looking at us. He had their full attention.
E: Brilliant.
P: It’s on Youtube, I think. It’s worth checking out.
E: I will do that, cool. So you guys are about to go on the Cure tour. Your profile is about to be massive.
P: Well, we’ll see about that. It may just bankrupt our label. (laughs)
E: Are you prepared for that, though? Are you shittin’ it, like?
P: Well, sort of. We flew out to San Francisco to play a gig with them, played it, then started drinking. I have no memory of the evening at all. I did meet Metric, which was really exciting, though I can’t remember what I was chatting to him about (laughs). It was funny, we knew the sound guy out there, and he accidentally led us into The Cure’s dressing room, not realizing which room we were walking into. There were crazy fans outside gagging to get in and inside all these really high-profile record company guys, clearly thrilled to be there, and there we were just standing around. So the band came in and greeted us and we were like, ‘Uh, we’ve got to go, our taxi’s here. But, hey, cheers for the show.’ We must have seemed so ungrateful, but in truth we were just too drunk to process what was going on.
E: That’s probably the best state of mind to be in if you’re meeting someone like that. No nerves.
P:Yeah, I suppose. But you know, I think Joe had a conversation with the bass player and they all turned out to be really down-to-earth guys.
E: So how did this tour with them come about, anyway?
P: Well, we were doing a couple of warm-up shows for this album in Brighton. Robert Smith came to one of them and then just came backstage after and shook our hands and said ‘Hi. I really like your band. We should do some shows together some day’. We didn’t believe it would happen at all. Then, maybe three weeks later, through the official channels, we just got an invite.
E: Well, listen, good luck.
P: Thank you.

Tags: 65 days of static, interview, ptsil 7

My Brightest Diamond,
The Sugar Club,
October 17th,
Dublin, Ireland
by Gareth Williamson
Transcribed and Edited by Shannon Duvall

My Brightest Diamond is: Shara Worden, and whomever she happens to be playing with at the time.

It's never easy to do interviews. I'd gotten so settled by the idea after London, that when people asked me if I found it hard I shrugged it off by saying, "I don't get star struck anymore. They just seem like ordinary joes, ya know. I've done it too many times that the magic's gone." Well, that's what I thought but once this interview was a day away I started getting butterflies as if I were on a first date with a girl I liked. The kind of girl that makes you excited when you bump into her by chance and you can't help but smiling.

I originally saw Shara play Whelans, Dublin on February 6th. It's like so many other times and stories I tell, where and when this 'zine kinda started. I'd gone to a few local gigs in January of friends bands, with one night in Whelans green room having me knocking a tambourine off my thigh, trying to keep the beat while part of The Blood Red Mountain Band jammed with members of their support band. A great night which ended up with me going onto ticketmaster.ie and scouring for gigs in Whelan for the next 3 months. Out of all the acts I found through that (checking All their myspace pages), I liked maybe 4, and My Brightest Diamond were one of them. I went on my own to the gig like I always did and watch Shara play half the set without her band. I'd never been so mesmerised. Ofcourse, once the band joined her they played a riotous set of everything heavy off Bring Me The Workhorse such as Freak Out and Something Of An End. I wrote a small gig review about the gig which ended up going on the PTSIL myspace page when it was created. Re-reading it I'm embarressed. I roughed it out on folded A4 pages as if it were for a 'zine.

Before that February show I met Shara before the gig, and wished her luck. Some passing conversation with her husband and manager James Worden, and with Nuno her tour manager made my day. If even if it was as a fan of a musician who I'd only heard 4 songs from.

Meeting Shara again I was nervous. I didn't want to be that guy that had introduced himself back in February nervously. Well, I did it again, and sweatier this time after power walking up the keys and late by 5 minutes for the interview. Being punctual is important, even if you're an hour early to make sure you're not late. I'm there because I want to be, and showing that to the artist is important. Luckily I was welcomed and introduced myself as "that guy from February".

After the gig I waited for a follow up interview to fill in some things I know I missed. Shara had Alot of people wanting to talk to her, so I spent the time chatting to the drummer and bassist. To be away from your loved ones on the road I found out, was harder than I'd thought, if even for two weeks.

G: You’re not in a rush, are you? ‘Cause I rant a little…
Shara: Oh, it’s okay!
G: Okay, when I started my ‘zine, I’d just seen you guys play. Well, I interviewed Tilly & the Wall for my first issue, but to get that interview, I said I’d written a gig review about My Brightest Diamond in February. In truth, I’d only written half of it, but I still got the interview!
S: (laughs.)
G: And recently, I was staying with a band I was interviewing over in London, and playing your album for them loads, and they fucking loved you, but they’d never heard of you.
S: Oh yeah?? Well, we re-released the record this month.
G: That’s right, I was reading about it in NME…I think they gave it an 8…that’s out of 10…
S: That’s nice…
G: Well, I really loved the album, like, ridiculously.
S: Awww…thank you.
G: I’m boyish.
S: Awww…
G: Anyway, see? Focus: gone.
S: (laughs) Well, that’s why we decided to tour here again. We have two weeks in the UK because of the re-release. We didn’t have press, like, at all, for the record last year. So the label decided to switch distribution, and now here we are.
G: A weird thing I noticed was that, over in London at the time of the re-release, I was reading several reviews of the album, which stated incorrectly that My Brightest Diamond had just signed to Sufjan Stevens’ label. And I was going, wait a second they’ve been signed to Apothecary for ages!
S: Yeah. But it just has to do with the fact that we got, like, zero press in the UK. Or maybe not the UK…but England.
G: Well, England’s market is notoriously hard to get into. It’s very much a local scene, pushed by local press.
S: Yeah. It’s a strange market, yeah. They’ve got their own little system…which is kinda cool, in a way, because it seems to preserve their own national musical identity. Every country has sounds that work and sounds that don’t, you know? On the one hand, you know, for someone like me, it can make it really hard, but I also think it’s really cool. Do you know what I mean? The States are the same way, you know, music --- James, can you make sure that door is closed?
G: Brother?
S: Husband.
G: Oh, husband! I think I met him before…he had a nice beard, then, though. (to James) Why’d you shave it?? What’re you doing??
(Shara & James laugh)
G: Breaks my heart…
S: You like ‘em shaggy?
G: I’m a big, shaggy person myself, so…I even wrote about James’ shaggy head in that first review. But, copping on now…I read somewhere that you wrote your first song at the age of three?
S: Well, yeah, but I think every little kid does that, you know? So, yes, it is true…there is a recording of me making up a song, but kids are always doing that. They’re always in the elevator singing about the elevator buttons, or something. It was interesting, we were at a rest stop (on the Interstate in the US), and there was this child with his mom, and the kid was singing some non-defined tune…I don’t even know what it was about, but his mom was like, Shh! Man, it was the perfect example of how everyone begins as this creative individual, who’s imaginative, and to whom dance and movement are normal, and then, as we get older, it gets squelched, and squelched, and squelched…because social norms…
G: …it seems the older you get the more susceptible you become to peoples’ criticisms.
S: Yeah, but you know what? When you get OLD, you don’t care anymore! You can be crotchety and say what you think. Sometimes I try and practice being old. (laughs) So it won’t be a surprise to anyone when I turn into a crotchety old biddy. (laughs)
G: (laughs) That’ll be interesting to see.
S: (laughs) There are these education programs...the Kodaly method…it’s basically about teaching children music with their bodies, and giving the kids the basic structures of songs and allowing them to make up the songs from there. It’s cool…they give them the rhythm, and, I think, three pitches to work with. Something like 90% of popular songs all over the world begin with the same three pitches, like, (sings an example intro) Da-da-da, Da-dum, Da-da-da-da, Da-dum…you see? They’re kids’ songs! So the Kodaly method is taking what kids already do naturally, and allowing them to work with it confidently. A lot of kids believe that they’re tone-deaf, because from a very early age they’re given music that is too complex for them. But if you start them in a small, natural scope, then very slowly increase their palette…their pitch palette, their rhythm palette…and you keep them in touch with their bodies, they won’t be inhibited from what we all can naturally do.
You know, at school, it’s always, Sit down at your desk, and just this very cerebral approach to education.
G: That reminds me of the Japanese method of teaching children to play classical instruments…I can’t remember the name of it…
S: Oh, uh, Suzuki!
G: Suzuki! That’s it.
S: Yeah, but that all begins by ear.
G: Don’t you think that’s a lot to put on a child of 2 or 3?
S: If it’s done properly, it isn’t. They won’t even feel it.
G: Just like watching Barney.
S: (laughs) Uh, slightly more educational, I think, but…you know, I just know so many people who started out learning music like the National Anthem, or, Christmas songs, and people don’t realize this but Christmas songs are hard! Like, teach them something they’re going to be able to do well, and they can learn pitch arrangement and instrumentation. It’s because people don’t have that that they believe they aren’t musical. But I don’t believe that. I don’t believe anyone is tone-deaf.
G: It’s just they’ve learned for so long that when they sing, improperly, that it sounds a certain way, they think it will always sound that way?
S: Exactly. Give kids the tools and the education and they will develop the skills to use later on. I think that because my parents were musicians, we gravitated to music because, on the one hand it’s inherent, but it’s also environmental. We were comfortable with it. But it all depends. I have a friend; one of the most amazing drummers I know, and his son is just not into music at all. He’s in the chess club, and he’s gonna go study biology.
G: What’s the mother like??
S: (laughs) I don’t know, actually.
G: Hmm. Just curious. So, I read your interview lately with Totally Dublin magazine, where you were asked if, with a surname like Warden, you were destined for musical greatness. What do you think of that?
S: Oh, well, it’s my married name, so….what does that have to do with anything?
G: I was just asking how you respond to questions like that.
S: The way press is now…you know, in an ideal setting, press is about creating an open dialogue of critical thinking; a way of discussing ideas, and saying This is happening, and, This is an interesting thing, and, I think this about it…but when it’s at its worst, everything becomes shortened into Top 5 Lists and is actually very dehumanizing. But that’s the way pop culture is. We all want things fast, we want to be able to understand them quickly, and we want to be able to make associations with other things and people so we can feel safe. So in interviews, when 7, 10, or even 20 years of your life get reduced into two sentences, of course you get gross generalizations. And things you say as an artist get turned, or made untrue; because when you said it it wasn’t a complete sentence…you know what I mean?
G: Yeah.
S: The form in and of itself very rarely deals with…what’s the word I’m looking for? Paradoxes! It wants everything to be very black and white. And it’s hard! To be…also, it’s selling something. You can’t forget that the magazine in question is selling itself, which in turn is selling all these products. And whether you’re a painter, or an actor, or an artist, or a politician, you, by being interviewed, become part of a machine that is about commerce. That’s when it’s at its worst. Someone said about Myspace…that when you can take something: television, internet, any media, and move it beyond being just about commerce, and make it instead a place for connecting with one another, or of expanding ideas, then the tool becomes something more profound. But it’s also true that selling things is the way that we live. I also have something to sell. If no one buys what I have to sell, how can I survive? I’m not Mozart in the service of the king, I don’t have a patron. I have rent to pay and making art costs money. I’m in the business, whether I like it or not. Do you know who Richard Serra is --- you’ve got me on a diatribe, now (laughs) --- Richard Serra is this incredible sculptor. He makes these absolutely massive steel sculptures --- huge things --- never makes replicas, the sculptures are always site-specific. He just had an exhibition at MOMA. Anyway, he was in debt to his investors until his mid-forties! Did you know that the United States government had one of his pieces destroyed? The people in the area it was built simply didn’t like it anymore, and Richard refused to move it, because he said it was built specifically for the place. So then the government tried to sell it, and Sera got upset, and said No, you do not have permission to sell my art. So they demolished it. At the time, he was receiving an award in Germany for his works, and in his acceptance speech he was just brutal, just asking why he should be getting an award in Germany while in his own country they were destroying what he’d made. But the fact that he was in debt into his forties --- he’s now in his sixties, and regarded as one of the greatest American artists of the century --- just shows how stubborn you have to be.
G: I see your point. But art doesn’t always have to be so stubborn.
S: Ha-ha, no. I guess not. It gets crazy, though. Like, I have to pay my band. And everyone in my band has to pay rent. So my creative process is never completely free. There are always things to consider. I have to really think, you know, do I want fourteen people in my band? Somehow, even as much as I could want it, I don’t see how that could really work. Even down to little ideas, like, wanting a clarinet for a few songs. But I might not always want a clarinet in there. Then you’re responsible for letting that person go. But that’s always the challenge: being able to live, and to do what you do.
G: That reminds me of a recent interview with another band. I’d become quite friendly with them, so that by the end of one of the interviews with one of the members, I was stressed and we had a bit of an argument. Then, later that day, we both came back and hugged and said sorry and were right back on the same page again. I had to learn to respect the artist’s space, but still get my job done, too.
S: Yeah, because, as a journalist, in a way you have more of a right to ask certain questions, and less of a right to ask other ones.
G: Haha. I consider myself more of a ‘zinester than a journalist.
S: A ‘zinester, huh?
G: I ask the normal human questions.
S: Cool.
G: Like, what was the first instrument that you really loved to play?
S: Piano. Yeah. I didn’t play guitar till I was 19.
G: Did you choose the piano yourself?
S: Ahh…my parents made me do it. I liked it in the beginning, but as lessons get harder, sometimes you (laughing) don’t like your instrument anymore, haha!
G: Why aren’t I learning this quickly enough?
S: Yeah. And I had a couple of accordion lessons with my Dad, but the accordion was just too big for me at the time, and I lost patience with it. Guitar was something I picked up a little bit more naturally. It was something I could do for five, six hours a day, and be super-excited about it. I’d never sit around and just play the piano.
G: Was that because it wasn’t classical music and you could play what you wanted?
S: I think it was more that the people I was around were all guitar players. I was in a cover band…
G: What did you cover?
S: Oh, gosh, anything awful.
G: Awful??
S: Yeah, bad. I don’t even remember most of it. There was one Shawn Colvin song we did that was good. I wanted to do Whitney Houston covers but they wouldn’t do it. In hindsight, it was a very bad idea, but it was actually because they wouldn’t play the songs I wanted to play that I started learning guitar.
G: Did you start writing your own material then?
S: Yeah.
G: What were your first songs about?
S: Well, I made a record when I was 20, 21…and it’s very eclectic. It’s all the first songs that I’d written, so it’s really all over the map. Then I moved to Russia for a year. And I wrote a song a week when I lived there. That’s when I first started to recognize a constant…
G:...your own voice?
S: Yeah. Then I put out two records with my band Awry. You can hear little bits of My Brightest Diamond in that material, but it’s still over-trying, like, extra-angsty.
G: Your songs now seem quite quizzical and simple. How did you make the transition from songs you wrote with Awry to the way you write now?
S: I think some of the metaphors and stories are still there, but the language has become more and more simple. I was trying to strip away any…because it’s one thing to tell a story with a metaphor, and it’s another thing to hide what you really mean. So in a lot of my earlier material there’s still quite a lot of fear. Because even though you’re adding a layer of distance between yourself and the listener with metaphor, it’s still quite scary. But you have to be careful and learn to recognize if you’re really saying what you mean to say, and if the feeling is really coming through, or if you’re just dancing around the subject, you know?
G: Well, as a listener, it’s really refreshing when a song is honest.
S: That’s the great thing about Gnarls Barkley; he uses such simple language, and it gets taken for granted because it sounds like pop music. But then you go, wait, a second, he just said something really confessional, and quite deep. Or sarcastic. I just find him really cool that way.
G: Everybody has his/her own voice, and it’s important to know it. The more you write, the more you can understand and develop it. Then when you’re older you can look back at early stuff and pick out the influences from that time. So how do you find touring the new album? Did you start back in 2006?
S: It was released in August 2006. It wasn’t really touring back then, it was kind of opening-band stuff, playing with whoever was around and could learn the songs quickly. I’m excited about this tour, because up till now we’ve been an opening band for four other bands this year. And festivals this past summer. This time we actually get to play, you know, for a much longer time, and get to develop a flow in a set. It’s exciting. Exhausting, though. Hard on your relationships with people at home. Hard to keep in touch. When I’m home I try to go out and go to as many shows and parties as possible and catch up with everyone all at once. Then it’s like, Bye! Leaving tomorrow! (laughs) It’s hard on your body. But, like with anything, you keep pushing your limits, musically as well as physically. Like, last year, my pedal board consisted of a tuner. Now it’s filled with pedals. For me, that increases my sonic palette, and keeps me thinking of new ways to interpret these songs. It remains to be seen how far you can go. I mean, Prince, for example, has been playing Purple Rain for 20 years, whereas I’ve only been playing my stuff for 2, you know?
G: (cringes) Not a Prince fan.
S: (gasps) You’re not? Well, all right, you’re allowed. You and James can bond on that one.
(laughter as the Stop button on Gareth’s trusty dictaphone is pressed and Shara heads off to hair & makeup before heading onstage.)

*** END OF PART ONE***

The gig is over and our loyal reporter has a backstage pass and a few more questions up his very tidy sleeves.

Gareth: I wanted to know…I heard two new tracks played tonight. Are you working on a new album?
Shara: Mm-hmm. I went to Berlin at the end of August and worked with the drummer that recorded with me on the current album. There were 8 tracks that weren’t on Bring Me The Workhorse…
G: Yeah, didn’t I read that you’d planned on releasing two albums simultaneously?
S: Originally, that was the plan. But what happened was, those 8 tracks, I had envisioned having more layers, and at the time it wasn’t really possible to achieve that sound, so they got put to the side. Now I’m going back and revisiting that old material, with the capability of actually doing what I wanted to them. Additionally, they were very introverted songs, and I had to ask myself the question of how do I want to feel every night? Like, what kind of feelings did I want to generate every night on stage. And for that, I needed some more extroverted things, because I didn’t want to just get up there and navel-gaze. So I’ve injected some of those old songs with new stuff, which is what you heard tonight.
G: Do you know when it’ll be out?
S: Soon as I finish it.
G: Any ideas for the title?
S: A Thousand Shark’s Teeth.
[ a pause ]
G: I won’t ask why.
S: (laughs) You can ask why next year!
G: (laughs) Yeah, next year, the magazine won’t even be going…
*** HYPOTHETICAL CONVERSATION TIME!***
Gareth (one year from now) - I just wanted to talk to you, Shara, isn’t that a
good enough reason?
Shara – Does that even record? What is that thing??
Gareth – What, this? It’s a cardboard box.
Shara – It’s a telephone!

G: So, really, how’d it go tonight?
S: It is just so good to play with these guys. Really enjoyable. And the reception was just so generous.
G: Yeah, they were just cheering their asses off. It was really good.

Tags: interview, my brightest diamond, ptsil 6, the sugar club

Lemuria
Hideaway House
October 18th
Interviewed by none other than…Gareth Williamson, ‘zinester. -- (Shannon Duvall: Co Editor/Cover Illustrator/Transcriber)

Lemuria are: Sheena, Jason and Alex

Something to get across before the interview, which I forgot to mention at the start of the recording, is that I found out about Lemuria through a punk web comic called Nothing Nice To Say (NN2S) which is drawn by Mitch Clem. I've been reading his comics for 2 years now, and it was in a recent one that he did a 3 part ark about Lemuria. I decided to check them out, and well, I loved their music and saw they were playing Ireland and contacted them straight away.

I arrived at the venue 10 minutes before the gig, at a small house in an undisclosed area with my eyes bloodshot and watery with two hours sleep and 13 hours of mindless work in Powerscourt behind me. The gig took place in a small room which could -- if squeezed, hold around 30 people. It must of been a dining room before, as connected to it was the living room, with guys and gals hanging out on couches like they were just hanging out at their mates gaf. Dylan who hosts the night is also the sound engineer for the gigs, and the kind of guy once you meet him that you can tell straight away he does this for the love and nothing else. Behind the stage a window looked out back to a wall, where more people were crowded looking in during the gig. A friendly atmostphere, with hardcore fans up front singing along to every lyric and getting excited when their favourite songs were played made this one of the best gigs I've been to.

The Interview took place in Dylans bedroom, with me sitting on a computer seat and the band on the bed. I could see a poster for a gig my mates band played on the wall which made me smile a little.

Gareth: Is this your first band – actually, what age are you guys?
Sheena – I’m 23
Jay – I’m 28
Alex – I’m 24.
G: You released a couple of EP’s before your most recent work?
Alex – Yeah, we’ve recorded our full-length. It’ll be coming out in either December or January on Asian Man Records. Right now we just have a few 7” EP’s and a split LP and a demo, stuff like that. But not a full-length yet.
Jay – Jann from Yoyo records has put out a collection of everything we’ve done over the years.
G: How do you all know each other?
Alex – Sheena and I met 6 or 7 years ago at the end of high school.
G: In Buffalo?
Alex – Yeah, in Buffalo. Actually, in (Oleander?) which is about an hour south of Buffalo. Then we ended up moving up to Buffalo together, and then we started the band, recorded a demo, and then Jay joined the band. We’ve been doing it since the Fall of 2004, so about 3 years exactly.
G: Did you tour locally when you started out?
Alex – Yeah, we just did weekend tours and stuff like that.
Jay – Within 6 months of being a band we’d done a month and a half East coast tour of the United States. So they were together for, like four months, then I joined, we recorded our first 7”, then we left to go on tour, like, a week after it came out…for a month and a half.
G: Does that happen a lot with bands in the States? This hardcore approach?
Jay – I don’t think so. We’ve all been in bands that have toured before, so we knew what we were getting into. And we knew some people…
G:…some friends were going on tour and you said you’d tag along?
Jay – Well, no, we just had friends in other cities, and we called them up and said Hey, we have a new band! Do a show for us!
Alex – The three of us were in bands before with people who couldn’t tour. So we got together because we were the ones who wanted to go tour and have fun. Sheena was in a band called Team Chocolate. Me and Jay were in a band called Still Ill.
Sheena – Yeah, we all decided that we were gonna make the band priority over anything else, really, job-wise or college-wise. We all just wanted to make this happen, so…
Alex – Yeah, travel and make friends everywhere, and have fun. This is the most fun I’ve ever had. I never dreamed I’d be in Ireland, so it’s exciting.
G: That’s how to spend your 20’s, really, isn’t it?
All – Yeah!
Jay – 15 years ago this month I played my first concert ever with a band, at, like, the high school dance.
G: Covers?
Jay – No, it was all originals. We were horrible. I played drums at the time, and if you’ve ever heard me play drums, you know it’s like, the worst sound ever. At the time, I thought that was going to be the greatest moment of my life! Playing one show: I never thought it would happen again. Now we’ve been invited to come to Europe, and we’re just seeing the world and doing what we wanna do.
Sheena – We’re really lucky.
Alex – Yeah, very.
Sheena – We’re still broke, though.
Alex – Yeah, still broke. We also live in one of the poorest cities in the United States: Buffalo, New York. It’s one of the cheapest cities to live in, so it has a very thriving art community.
G: Do you feel like you’re sacrificing a normal life back home to be able to come out on tour?
All – Nope!
Jay – That word doesn’t even come into it. I graduated college…six years ago, and had a job as a computer programmer, and I quit so that I could go on tour. And I’ve never regretted it a day in my life. So no, I don’t miss not having a normal life. This is all I wanna do.
G: I wouldn’t blame you for quitting a job as a programmer, because I know a few, and they aren’t very happy people.
Jay – Yeah.
Sheena – This is my personal opinion, but if we weren’t doing this, we’d be regretting not taking the opportunities that we were given.
G: Nothing worth doing is ever easy, and risks are meant to be taken.
All –Yeah.
Alex – Also, the more we tour, at least in the US, when we play the same places we played before, it feels like home, because we’re staying with the same people as last time, and seeing old friends, making new ones. Every city is a second home.
G: You usually crash with people?
Alex – Yeah, there’ve only been a few instances where we had to get a hotel or motel, and it’s been because we were, like, in the middle of nowhere on a long, overnight drive.
Jay – But people are the friendliest at most shows. They just offer their homes to us. And we all do the same for them, of course. But it still blows my mind that we can go to city and play and someone will welcome us into their home, when here we are, complete strangers. I feel like, in any other facet of life that idea would seem ridiculous.
Sheena – Yeah, this whole entire community is based on something really great, and it’s about giving and getting back. You know, you’ll show up to a place and they’ll make you food, and let you sleep in their house, and play shows in their basement, or their living room, and they bring all their friends. It’s just a really great thing to be a part of.
Alex – Yeah, and like we said, we always try to do the same for bands that come to our town, or bands we play with on tour
Jay – Yeah, like, Dylan, who was at the show tonight, is heading to the States just after us, and I think he’s going to come and stay with us for awhile.
Sheena – Hopefully.
Jay – We can show him our world. If he can make time for us.
Alex – He’s a busy man.
(laughter)
G: How would you describe your music?
Alex – I don’t know, I guess just Indie rock. I don’t know how to explain it. Some of the bands we can all agree on listening to in the car would be, like, Jawbreaker or Superchunk…uh, Ireland’s own Thin Lizzy. They’re influences, but we don’t sound like any of those. It’s hard to say. What do you think we sound like?
G: I couldn’t really tell you. I don’t really listen to punk or power-pop at all.
Alex – Give me a look at your I-pod. We’ll go through it and tell you the bands that we like…
Jay – I feel like a lot of our sound comes from our roots in that style of pop-punk, but, like I have roots in 90’s Indie rock, and I think some of that has gotten into our sound. Like, we’ve had comparisons to Velocity Girl, which I don’t see at all.
Alex – (looking through I-pod) Okay, we love the Lemonheads. Their new album is really good.
G: Haven’t heard it yet.
Alex – It’s self-titled, it’s really good. Also, Pavement. Tegan & Sara: Jason listens to a lot of them.
Jay – No, stop…
Alex – So there you go. (goes to hand back the I—pod)
G: Three. Three bands.
(laughter)
G: So what happens when you get back to Buffalo?
Alex – Well, we fly back to Buffalo October 16th, which is Sheena’s birthday, and we play a show on the 17th. Then about 2 days later we leave for 2 more weeks for an East coast US tour, because we’re playing a Fest down in Florida, so we’ll play some shows on the way and back. Then we get back again on Halloween, and then we’re home for awhile. We’re not going to do much until the album comes out in December/January. Then probably a little spring tour. We’ll have the winter to relax and hang out.
Jay – It’ll be our first really long break in a long time, where we won’t have any band obligations.
Sheena – Sometimes ya gotta take a break. Are you gonna come visit in the snows of Buffalo?
G: (laughing) You want me to come visit you?
Sheena – Well, snow isn’t for everyone. We don’t have any legendary rock bands from our area, or anything.
G: I don’t care about legendary rock bands.
Sheena – Good!

www.myspace.com/lemuria

Tags: hideaway house, interview, lemuria, ptsil 6

The Emperors Nu-Rave Clothes


Tia Clarke


There once was a band. They named themselves after the Greek word for shriek: klaxon. They had a moronic idea to make a name for their band, in a frenzy of hype, in under a year. They aimed to cram as many irrelevant psychedelic lyrics, abstruse literary references and ‘stuff about the future’ into their songs as humanly possible. The next step was to mix this with dysfunctional bleeps, disjointed ‘going nowhere’ bass lines and lots of feedback, then resurrect and rework a cult rave tune and spear-head a new genre with the help of NME. It wouldn’t really be new, actually; it’d just be a revivalism of the 90’s scene, but they’d call it new rave, because it was new, kind of. 


Their mission? To be hailed as the kings of the near future of music. To have minions of impressionable teenagers slavishly marching to Topshop’s most overpriced section to buy ridiculous neon-colored oversized T-shirts with slogans like ‘FEEL THE BEAT’ or ‘SAVE THE RAVE’ and combine them with spandex leggings and fluorescent protractors hung around their necks, all in honour of this band, the Klaxons. The band would then confuse people by switching tactics and claiming that they never had anything to do with the genre and that their sound was not ‘New Rave’, right before accepting a prize for their album in that very category.

Wait didn’t this actually happen? And didn’t we just reward these idiots with a prestigious music prize and a £20,000 cheque? Doh!



I, like many readers (unless you’ve got a luminous protractor round your neck, in which case go measure the angle of your fringe) was royally pissed to learn that the Klaxons had won the Mercury music prize. It is a prize that matters to music fans in the British Isles. It isn’t like the phone-company-sponsored ‘music’ events we see on our TV’s every other weekend. The Mercury, in its 15 years, has gained a reputation as a credible award for musical achievement. It’s extremely positive, in that, if awarded to a relatively unknown artist, it can help push album sales and open the artist up to a much wider audience.


The crack team of judges, who this year included Lauren Laverne and Guardian journalist Jude Rodgers, were supposed to sift through the shit but somehow these Klaxons slipped through the filter. The Mercury is known for its high-mindedness and explains, on their website, that “the music on the album is the only thing that counts.” However, it seems like The Klaxons were picked because of the (be it contrived) ‘new genre’ they ‘created’ and the hype that surrounded it. I imagine it was a case where the judges thought ‘the Klaxons have spear-headed a new genre, revitalized music and created a new youth sub-culture phenomenon’. They also must have thought ‘the kids are down with this despite the fact that we think this is a steaming pile of horse shit and is barely listenable, however we do not want to appear out of touch.’

Apparently Klaxons capture what it’s like to be young, loud and alien to your parents. But wait, their bass-player is 27 years old. You’d think he would be over all that by now. 
The record also created a generational divide between new ravers, who thought that Klaxons were saviours, and the old ravers, who thought they were shit - namely because they are. The judges probably took this into account too, along with the fact that it created a strong divide and such controversy: which The Mercury is no stranger to. 
What was the clincher? Was it the fact that the Klaxons had the ability to rhyme ‘snow’ with ‘go’ in the song ‘Magick’? On the night of their win a bleary-eyed Jamie Reynolds, Klaxons singer, grabbed the mic and spoke earnestly into the camera,

“ I think the judges have rewarded forward thinking music. We have made the most forward thinking record in I don’t know how long.”

That he had the audacity to make this grandiose claim baffles me. Surely people like Kieran Hebden, who is making some of the most genuinely forward thinking, extraordinary and inspiring music on the planet right now should be up for a nomination? But no.


In not so many words, the Klaxons won the Mercury for all the wrong reasons and not one of the right ones. The judges would have been wise to remember the mantra ‘the music on the album is the only thing that counts’. Maybe in the near future they’ll get it right.

In Addendum: A Delve into the Near Future.


Disjointed drumbeats mixed with utterly trite and pretentious lyrics on ‘Myths of the Near Future’ combine to create a musical mess so cringe-worthy it’s barely listenable. I listened to it so you don’t have to…… 
Here are some of the best (of the worst) lyrics I found on their debut:

‘Rose there’s seven more miles to go/before the isle of her/before the peacocks tail’. 


‘At club 18-30 I met Julius Caesar, Lady Diana and Mother Teresa.’ 


‘Galloping beans faster/faster/faster.’ 


‘Light the bridges with the lantern/you know something’s going to happen.’ 


‘Come with me/Come with me/We’ll travel to infinity.’ 


‘Fallible flags and hypersonic’. 


‘Glitter on the snow/The place to always go.’ 


These lyrics are neither clever nor witty; they just expose the Klaxons for the shallow fashion victims they are who name-check all the ‘right books’ but have probably never so much as read the first line of any of them.


People seem to be of the opinion that this is ‘groundbreaking’. I don’t understand why. Is it simply because it contains some warped guitars and squealing intermittent bleeps of feedback? In my opinion, the only thing Klaxons are masking through their heavy distortion is the fact that they can’t actually play their instruments. 
It all feels like we’re caught up in a giant ugly episode of Nathan Barley that’s gotten horribly out of hand.

As Dan Ashcroft would say, THE IDIOTS HAVE WON (and they glow in the dark).

Tags: article, klaxons, ptsil 6

Chancho en Piedra

Santiago, Chile,

August 17th 2007
By Matthew Osborne



Rock and Roll has been personally responsible for some of the most heinous crimes against fashion in modern history, most of them largely involving spandex and perms. The latest of these dubious crazes currently sweeping like a Narnia-sized snow storm through the wardrobes and hat racks of the kids whose musical tastes come down on the heavier side of the watershed is the emo look. This is essentially the famous goth look with sillier haircuts, if you can get your head around that, and also stripy clothing.



It is an indication as to how small our planet has become when you can travel six thousand miles across seas, forests and mountains to discover that the kids in Santiago, Chile are dressing almost identically to the kids in Dublin, Ireland. More alarming still is the fact that they all insist that their appearance is merely an idiosyncratic expression of their self. When I arrived at my first hard rock show outside of Europe the other night, I realized that I was no longer dressing to fit in with the hard rock cliques.



Cesilia and I had spent the day browsing in shops and second hand clothing stores and both picked up some nice new rags to wear. I had bought a sweater that gave me the appearance of a fraternity boy and Ces had picked up a pair of red shoes that were reminiscent of Dorothy’s in The Wizard of Oz. As we were going to see Chancho en Piedra, a side project for the two brothers also in Jaco Sanchez, another local group who Cesilia swore played in sophisticated, mainly seated venues, we wanted to appear smart and not be turned away for wearing trainers so we both dressed up and Cesilia added a beret to her outfit to give it that final touch of class.



Cesilia had met some of the band earlier in her stay in Chile and so our names were on the guest list. As we travelled in the taxi I wondered what our entrance would be like; would we seem like some kind of minor celebrity couple on the scene? Would people take our photograph? Would people want to touch us simply because we knew the band? Thoughts of starting a new life in Santiago courting the media spotlight soon vanished when we pulled up to what looked like, and in retrospect may well have been, a disused warehouse, and pushed through the hordes of emo kids in their differently identical clothes swigging from warm cans of lager and ignoring us entirely as we muttered our names to the bouncer who took some time to find them on the list.



When we finally got inside the place was rammed with kids of all types, but mainly those dressed in black, who gathered around the stage which was raised up from the floor of a room that looked like the kind of room that underground fighting rings meet in. The choice of drinks was either cans of Escudo, a local beer, or ron y cola (rum and coke). I ordered a couple of Escudos and managed to successfully carry off the complicated transaction that followed in Spanish just as the first act took to the stage in delicately lacy lingerie. For an all male band this was slightly repulsive, but for a group that seemed to take all of their inspiration and cues from Spinal Tap it seemed the perfect accompaniment. The idea of ‘cheese’ or ‘music snobbery’ has yet to reach the average Chilean music fan and although the first act wheeled out every rock cliché in the book - including tongue-waggling guitar virtuosity - there was something undeniably entertaining about them.



The main act, Chancho en Piedra, featured Cesilia’s new friend Pablo on guitar and his brother on an immense six string bass, and were fronted by a very hairy man who looked like a weightier version of System of a Down’s Serj Tankian. They had a sound which seemed to be openly influenced by the likes of Faith No More, Red Hot Chili Peppers and other acts who were in their prime during the nineties. Alongside a drummer was another percussionist who was as entertaining to watch as anything else because he was giving the drums the kind of deranged and frantic beating that I have only seen from Jimi Hendrix’s percussionist at the infamous Woodstock gig.



A couple of the numbers were incredibly funky and Pablo’s brother slapped the living daylight’s out of his six thick strings as band and crowd jumped in unison. It was good time rock music all the way through, but the crowd really responded to songs which had a more traditional Chilean flavour with faint wisps of Andean folk floating down from the mountains and this was refreshing; otherwise Chancho en Piedra would end up sounding no different to their North American counterparts.



Cesilia had said that when she met Pablo and his brother she couldn’t believe that they were actually part of big time, popular groups in Chile as they were so down to earth, held none of the familiar rock star pretensions and had an attitude that embraced the Spinal Tap philosophy of having ‘a good time all of the time’.



Music is very much a part of life in Chile and it runs in the blood. Cesilia played one of her own songs to the band and the guys were so enthusiastic about it that in no time at all they had learnt it and rearranged it into more of a rumba which Cesilia said gave it a new lease of life. There seems to be less emphasis on breaking through new boundaries here, the emphasis is on using what you know to play new songs, relying on tradition and history to fill your lungs and move your fingers. In fact, as I write this it is nine o’clock on a Sunday morning in Santiago and already I can hear flamboyant and showy South American rhythms floating up to our balcony from the street nineteen stories below.

Tags: chancho en piedra, gig review, ptsil 6

Lemuria

Sheena –
My Heart Is Home – Leatherface / ALBUM: Dog Disco
Not A Friend – Sebadoh / ALBUM: Bake Sale

Alex –
Buddy – The Lemonheads / ALBUM: It’s A Shame About Ray
Outdoor Type – The Lemonheads / ALBUM: Car Button Cloth

Jay –
Nineteen – Tegan & Sara / ALBUM: The Con
Radio Nowhere – Bruce Springsteen / ALBUM: Magic

Tags: lemuria, name two tracks, ptsil 6

[Note: All interviews were conducted seperately.]

The Mystery Jets

Gareth Williamson’s lost weekend.

Our tireless ‘zine creator trots the globe, or, rather, the British Isles, in search of refuge from the ceaseless Irish rain and perhaps a little material for the August issue of PTSIL... Here, for your prying eyes, are the resulting interviews with three of the band’s members, duly smuggled home to Ireland after a wild and wooly week on the Thames, and pieced back together, just because we love you. - Shannon (Co-Editor/Transcriber/Cover Illustrator)

 

Hailing from London, The Mystery Jets are:

Blaine Harrison - vocals, keyboard, percussion, effects

(Henry Harrison - vocals, guitar, keyboards, percussion, parenting)

William Rees - guitar, vocals, percussion

Kai Fish - bass, vocals, keyboard

Kapil Trivedi - drums

This was an odd one. I did it over a speaker phone after cooking Lasagne for Kai's, his mum Carol, his brother Aaron, his housemate Martin, and his friend Bogart. It was around 10pm, and I was wrecked. I actually had a knap just before it. For sound-proofing I pulled the windows curtain around me (everyone was still in the room) as I sat on the mattress on the floor, hunched over the phone so Blaine could hear me alright.

 

Blaine’s Interview

 

So the band started originally with you, Will, and your father?

Yep.

What age were you at the time?

We started playing when we were 8 years old, and had known each other since we were very young, and so when the band started, it was more me and Will. And my dad had, sort of, brought us up on his record collection, and we started to take an interest in what he was playing for us. And he asked us, Well, have you thought about actually playing any instruments? So we started off learning to play other peoples’ songs, like Doors songs and Beatles songs. And then, in about 1996 we started writing and playing our own tunes. And around then we decided we wanted to play gigs, so we got Kai involved, and Kai’s parents were mates with my parents in the 70’s, so that was our connection. So we played a good few gigs in and around town wherever we could, and there was actually at that time a girl in the band as well called Tamara. Then also I was singing and drumming, and we thought that didn’t really work too well, so we decided to get a proper drummer, and consequently we found Kaps. Tamara left, and that pretty much brings us to now.

When Kapil joined, you’d only done a handful of gigs with Tamara…

Yeah, we were mainly just doing acoustic gigs, and we decided we’d much rather play proper clubs…also we noticed that our sound wasn’t very popular for the time. The Strokes were just starting to come out so it wasn’t very appealing to have such a progressive, King Crimson-esque sound. We basically wanted to make space-rock. And, for most places we wanted to play, that just wasn’t on the cards.

Did you find it hard to get down to work on the Eel Pie EP, going from being a band who could loosely jam to having to tighten up for recording?

Well, kind of. I mean, we were young, so we had a couple of albums that we wanted to rip off, really. We had King Crimson’s first album, and the Yes album. I was also just starting to get into The Talking Heads, and we were all big Radiohead fans as well. In a way, kind of obvious influences, but we’d been into these bands from when we were very young, and so getting to making our own EP we really just wanted to attain those sounds. Which is what you do when you’re naïve. You want it to sound just like what you love. Looking back, it’s not something I’m hugely proud of, but it was our start, which eventually led to where we are now, so it was important to go through that.

It did get a short review in NME at the time it was released, didn’t it?

Yeah, it got a review, and I think even got demo of the month. It was actually also reviewed in Nightshift, which is the Oxford community paper, which is where I was living at the time, so it was something I was really excited about. Nightshift was kind of, like, my Bible growing up.

Then Sam approached you about managing the band, and shortly after 679 Records picked you guys up as well…

Yeah, that was a great time. Suddenly we had a bit of money to splash about, and could start thinking about things like getting creative with our artwork, which is something we’d never really been able to do before. At the same time, we still kept it very in-house. We never really let anybody take hold of how we’d be perceived, and, you know, we did all our own graphics and single covers and all, and I think that’s always been very important to us: to keep it kind of DIY.

When recording Making Dens, your first album, did you feel like you’d finally found your sound as a band?

Yeah, well, it was a natural step, really, I mean our influences had moved on a lot…we were listening to Can, and the Talking Heads, and this German industrial band (I couldn’t make out what he said, sorry). I think our influences were just coming from a wider spectrum at that point. We weren’t trying to be this pastiche, prog-rock band anymore, who were trying to make our sound conform to records made, you know, 40 years ago. So it was a big step, but a natural one. Recording the album was a real joy. We kind of surrounded ourselves with loads of different noise-making devices and instruments, and basically gave ourselves 6 weeks, locked ourselves away, and recorded about 14 songs. It was a very enjoyable process. The second album, the new one, has been a significantly longer process in the making.

So far, what has it been, 9 months?

Yes, well, the whole song-writing process has been different this time around. Now, when one of us produces a bit of music, we’ll all really go to town on it, and lock ourselves away, and not com out until we have something we’re truly happy with. Some songs have been through 4 or 5 drafts.

How are your old fans receiving the new sound?

Well, I think a level of consistency is still there. We haven’t dropped our ideas about bringing new sounds to the records we make. We’re always looking for new sounds to add. When you get down to the core of it though, all of that extra stuff can come and go, but as long as the songs stand up on their own, that’s the deciding factor.

What to you, does the new album represent? What is it about?

I don’t think it represents any one thing. A lot of the songs are written from the perspective of someone who feels quite cheated by the world, and also feels very fragile, resulting, really from the present perspectives we all share…just the changing things going on around us.

What did you think of the gig at Madame Jo Jo’s?

It was wicked - I loved it. People really let their hair down, it was great.

And what did you think of the Underage Festival?

I thought it was amazing. The kids were great, and their enthusiasm just goes to show that kinds of 15, 16 years old know just as much about music as people my age. I mean, when I was 15 I wasn’t even as clued up on all the latest bands as these kids are! It’s a different generation, really. The Underage Festival was a great time, and I really enjoyed it. The crowd responses were just insane.

How was it to play after Battles?

Yeah, Battles are big. They’re an amazing band. I told loads of my friends to come and see them, but I don’t think the sound system did them justice, because there was a problem with the Environmental Health System not being able to push the sound level over a certain amount of decibels because of people living nearby, and all, which sucked, because Battles are an outstanding band, and you need to hear them really, really loud. I was standing at the back of the stage at one point, and it was louder there than it was out front, which really sucks. Luckily for us, our sound man was pushing the levels up on the sly, so that was really nice of him. It was a really cool slot to play.

Any antics afterwards?

Yeah, it was a great night. About 30 of us all got on a night bus to a club where our friend was DJing, and we had an amazing time.

So looking forward to finishing up the new album and, can we hope for a single around October?

Yeah, that’s the plan. We’re going to go into mixing soon, and we’re gradually getting tracks back and getting feedback off the lives gigs, so we’re learning what it is we need to do to tie it all together. So we’re just putting the finishing touches on, then on to mixing, and then hopefully we’ll, you know, have a record.

And then on to the States from 15^th of September through October? Anything in particular you’re looking forward to there?

Yeah, the Klaxons are great, and the reactions are probably going to be pretty crazy…we’ve gigged a little there and so have the Klaxons, so word has spread a little. Also, when we released our first album there we had problems and didn’t really get a chance to tour, so this is like or second chance to get out there and do it. It’ll be fun to go and meet loads of new people and play our songs. I’m really looking forward to it.

Awesome. That’s it, Blaine, thanks a lot.

Wicked.

 

Tags: blaine, interview, mystery jets, ptsil 5
Current Location: Dublin, Ireland