Having finished their stunning live performance at Southsea’s Record Café, promoting the new self-titled album, Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies kindly took time out to talk with Mr Teeth Reviews about playing live, recording with Jack White and carrying giant birds.
So you guys are quite local, do you make it back very often?
KB – “Well, we’re from London but we grew up in Chichester, we don’t come back as much as we’d like as it’s quite hard to get out of London once you’re in it. When you think you can get away something else comes up, but when you come to places like this you think you should come down more often and see the sea.”
Where did you record the video, you mentioned it being nearby?
JD – “Oh the video for “We’ve Seen Birds”, I went where we grew up and on a really rainy day we were trying to find the perfect hill as we had built this giant bird, really huge and really heavy and we had to carry it up this hill five or six times.”
KB – “20 times”
JD – “We were exhausted but really pleased with the video, it shows the bird coming to life and taking off at the end.”
Having grown up in Chichester, how did it come about playing together?
JD – “We were really young, like 12 so I guess you kind of just pick up things and we were both always interested in music so it just mutually happened.”
KB – “It was a mutual love of showing off I think and sort of trying to be more interesting than our classmates”.
Who were your influences back then, anyone in particular?
JD – “Loads of things but we did really like Cheryl Crow and stuff around at that time, I remember us really liking the Dixie Chicks.”
KB – “Anything country sounding that came from America and a combination of popular things and then I was listening to the recent BBC6 Brit Pop radio show and I used to love Blur, which was one of my first records. It’s strange looking back as we always say we’re influenced by old blues stuff but there was actually more from our time – so it’s strange going back to playing things that are quite raw.”
It does sound very natural when you two play and I guess that comes from playing together at an early age, so how does that influence the writing process?
JD – “There’s not really a process, so it’s surprising every time it happens as each song is written in a different way. For this album I guess we did join forces more, we just spent the afternoons making weird sounds and think it’s really funny and come up with something we don’t think anyone wants to hear and then the riff from that develops into with something to build around.”
KB – “I remember one song sounded so odd, but then it gained a uniformity to it and we slowly figured it out like a puzzle and then it becomes really serious… it’s strange, always bit of an enigma, a puzzle.”
What about collaborating with people, such as the tracks before this album with Jack white, what was that like?
JD – “He’s got a very speedy way of working on things, everyone’s different, their studio manner is different and it always depends on the situation and how much time you’ve got too. With Jack White we only had a day, so it was get in there and see what happens, it was very live and he records to tape so you’ve only got a few chances. Whereas this record the producer was our friend, we had more time, a lot of talking for hours.”
Did that put you under any pressure when it came to the actual recording?
JD – “There was less pressure really, as we had the time to think about things I guess.”
KB – “We wanted to give ourselves a lot of time but it’s still good being pressured in the studio, as it doesn’t go on for ever (we don’t have the money for that) but this time we wanted move away from those situations to see if it would pay off in a different way and we gave ourselves a lot of time outside the studio before the recordings.”
What about the in-stores, how does this compare to having the band around?
JD – “Some people really like it stripped back and aren’t always drawn to the band stuff but personally for us we want to explore the whole sound, so it makes sense to bring in other musicians. With these record store performances, the tracks are stripped of lots of different sounds so for us we’re not used to the raw thing yet on the new album – it’s not really how they were written to be played.”
KB – “You find yourself thinking does this sound good? I’ve no idea, but then it’s always been a duo, but a duo with a band and us duelling at the front. It’s exciting, the highs and lows more emphasised with a band but it’s still nice to be able to expose the songs for what they are.”
So following these dates it will be time for the full band tour?
JD – “Yes, we’re doing the band tour end of May and a bigger one at the end of the year, it’s going to be good, there’s something very intense about in-stores and they’re always a different atmosphere going from shows where you can change how you come across to those where you’re shown as the true idiots you really are!”
KB – “There was one store where we got confused and were trying to plug a guitar lead into both guitars and we were conjoined together so it will be nice to have the roadies back, that’s for sure.”
It was a pleasure to meet Smoke Fairies and as we concluded the interview with a mutual appreciation for Pie and Vinyl, it was then time for the duo to get changed and take one last look at the sea before jumping back in the car and heading off for their next performance.
Pingback: Record Store Day 2019 Review | MR TEETH REVIEWS