All posts by Olivia Mayumi Moss

FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON CONCERT Press Release

For Immediate Release: 12 September, 2012

FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON FUNDRAISER CONCERT IS OVERWHELMING SUCCESS

On Sunday 9 September, London’s Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen saw its busiest Sunday for some time. The event, which drew in the bustling Hoxton crowds, was a fundraiser concert hosted by SHATTERJAPAN, POPULAR COMPANY and WHITE ON WHITE, in support of the three jailed Russian Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich – AKA Nadya, Masha and Katya.

Continue reading FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON CONCERT Press Release

Karin Park blows the venue in Hoxton London – twice!

Karin Park has been impressing us with her live shows ever since her London album launch where, despite a sudden power cut, the Swedish electro ice queen performed, unfazed by the unexpected glitch.

The new album Highwire Poetry also won Karin more brownie points — listening to the album on loop, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before UK audiences discovered the Swedish sensation. Live shows at London’s Shacklewell Arms and Manchester’s Castle convinced us further that Karin was an icon in the making.

Continue reading Karin Park blows the venue in Hoxton London – twice!

KARIN PARK Interview

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Swedish electro goddess KARIN PARK is a rare phenomenon. She has distinctive killer recorded and live vocals. She has a killer look. She has killer lyrics that push the boundaries of imagination and sensation. She and brother David give killer live performances. To match her high-level professionalism, she demonstrates sincere appreciation for her fans and colleagues, and profound consideration for other artists, having been a critical voice of support in our pussy riot commemoration concerts. One could argue that it is her upbringing in Japan that may have sparked her imagination and professional ethic, but one could also argue that it is simply her natural charm and energy which she has successfully projected into her work. Either way, the music world is a better place for having Karin Park.

No stranger to the music industry, Karin is onto her fourth album with 2012’s “Highwire Poetry.” Needless to say, it’s one of those albums that stays with you. Having supported the likes of Gary Numan, SBTRKT and Azari & III, she’s also due to support Toronto’s Dragonette in Zurich in April and we’re hoping to see a lot more of her in 2013.

We meet up with Karin on the terrace of the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, the London venue where she was preparing to give a live performance and where just the day before she brought down the roof with a pounding DJ set at our FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON CONCERT. After reminiscing over the previous day’s activities, we move on to talk her love of music, creative evolution, and Japan.

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How did you get into music?  What was your first love of music?

I grew up in church – my parents are Christians – so the first music I ever heard was us singing ourselves. There were always people playing and singing in our house, but it wasn’t until I was 12 when I heard Depeche Mode that I had a musical “love” – something that I really, really loved. Of course I listened to singers like Whitney Houston, like all girl singers do really, but it wasn’t until I was 16 that I started to make my own songs and actually found my voice. I could’ve sounded like anyone else before that. I was quite technically good and was singing all the time, but it wasn’t until I found my own voice that I discovered that side.

So, did you never sing solo in church?

I sang solo as often as I could – I hated when the others were singing at the same time as me. I didn’t take singing lessons, because if you did then you had to sing in the choir. I wanted to sing solo. I had my first performance when I was 4, so the singing part came really early, and then as I got older I realized that I could actually write songs. Writing just started to mean so much more to me. I decided that I wanted to go deep and not sing anyone else’s songs – I just wanted to do my own thing.

Why did it mean so much to you?

Because I discovered that my voice can be something much more original, and instead of just singing the song I could live inside of the song in the music, which is a completely different sensation when you’re onstage. I can never get into a song in the same way as when I’m creating it myself, because it has to come from the heart.

What were you writing about?

It was just what I was thinking about or frustrated with at the time – quite childish, I guess, and it’s still quite childish in a way, because it’s about basic human feeling. I can’t decide what a song’s going to be about – it’s just what I really care about at the time. When you try to write, you just open up to something and you just have to roll with it. Sometimes I’m like, “I don’t want to write about this – it’s stupid!” but I know this song is going to be, because that’s what I really feel.

What were you creating your melodies on?

When I lived in my one bedroom flat when I was 16, I just had a guitar and I wrote songs on that. In the beginning, I didn’t really care about what my sound was, I just wrote with whatever I had at hand. I didn’t know everything from the beginning – I just did whatever I felt at the time and didn’t think too much about it, and I hate the sound of acoustic guitar but that’s what I had then. I felt really lucky that people liked my songs. So, I was like, “Hang on, let’s do stuff I want to listen to.” Then I started to care more about the sound, so I developed it slowly.

So, you were developing your tastes over time and figuring out what you wanted to create?

Yeah, I’m much more into rhythm and bass. When I heard Kelis’ album “Tasty,” I realised I could have so much fun with rhythms. I didn’t want to do the same thing, she’s soul and I kind of liked electronic music – so I did a lot of research to try to find my exact sound.

So many musicians say they block out other people’s music when they’re creating, but you were looking for inspiration?

Yeah, I’ll just steal from everyone and make it into my own thing! [laughs].

So, your career evolved in Norway?

Yeah, I’m Swedish but I moved to Norway when I was 20 and I’ve had my whole career in Norway. I lived in Bergen – you know, Kings of Convenience, Annie… all those guys are part of that scene.

I love a lot of Scandinavian electro, alternative bands. Why do you think there’s so much edgy music coming out of that part of the world?

Climate and nature – there’s not much to do there. You can’t go to the beach 6 months of the year, and you have a lot of time… In Bergen, it rains 250 days of the year, so the studio is the best place to be. Musicians there are hardworking and they build off each other to create a scene.

When you were in Bergen, did you have a sense of that creative intensity? Was it easy to build a network there?

Yeah, because there’s a lot of open honesty there. A lot of musicians come from Bergen. Everyone knows each other – they have open mics, they have studios in the same houses, they meet each other all the time, you can meet artists everywhere in cafe’s… But, I don’t live there now. I live in Sweden, together with Kjetil (Kjetil Nernes, lead singer of noise-rock band Årabrot) in an old church in the countryside where I’m originally from, and also part time in Norway – I split my time between the two. But, most of the time, I’m here in London. I’m everywhere!

So, you spend a lot of time in London for your music?

Yeah, I have my label here. We’re doing a lot of promotion and shoots lately. Also, I like the fact that there are so many different subcultures here, and so many different people who are into their individual thing and are very nerdy in their field. You don’t have that in Scandinavia because there aren’t enough people – there’d be one person in every genre. But here, it’s like people are into the weirdest stuff – they’re used to hearing alternative music and make references to all these different street things, all the different types of dubstep, drum and bass… so not only those genres, but the small genres within the genres. And I just love the melting pot of different cultures. Where I live in the church, it’s like only Swedish people there – they don’t know much about the world I live in, so I want to take all this experience to Sweden and try to educate them about it.

And your brother David plays with you now – how did that partnership come about?

We didn’t really know each other that well when we were growing up. He took care of me when we were really small of course, but when we got older, we didn’t really hang out much – we didn’t live in the same city so we didn’t see each other. When I lost my drummer from my old band, I called David because he is a light and sound engineer who can do a little bit of everything. I asked him, “Do you want to try? We might argue all the time, but let’s try for two weeks and see what happens.” It worked really well, so I said to him, “Let’s try for a couple of months.” He was used to deciding all sorts of stuff, so I made it clear to him from the beginning that I was the boss, and I think that’s what makes our balance really good because he knows that I have the final say. Our tastes gradually got closer – we both like a heavy sound and he listens to a lot of metal, as well as jazz and country and other stuff.

It’s cool that you found a point of overlap…

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So I get the impression that you are very comfortable thinking outside the box – have you always been creative like that?

Yes, I think I’ve always been open-minded. We moved to Japan when I was 7 years old – my mum and dad took the whole family and just moved to the other side of the world when no-one in my family had been outside Sweden before. They were just like, “Ok kids, we’re going!” It was a really brave thing to do. My sister was 1 year old when we went. She was so disappointed that she didn’t remember any of it that she moved back there, and my younger brother did as well – but after the Fukushima incident, he moved back home because he has children. We speak Japanese in my family…

Japan has a very distinctive culture. Would you ever want to go back there?

Yeah, definitely. Japan has a lot of soul. I have a really strong connection with Japan, and I understand the Japanese culture. Actually, when I went to China I was like “What?!” – Sweden and Japan are much more alike than China and Japan…

So you didn’t have much exposure to pop culture or role models when you were growing up, but how did that affect you?

I always felt that I had to lock down my personality. I felt that maybe I was a little too wild sometimes. Especially when I came home from Japan, I was completely different from anyone else and people looked at me as a very different thing. It wasn’t easy, so I just tried to blend in. I didn’t try to shout it out loud, but just tried to “be.” I didn’t know how exactly to do it – I just tried to be normal. I didn’t understand that clothes say something about you. I thought, “Can’t I just wear whatever I want? Why does everyone have to care?” In the end, I was wondering, “What makes me so different from everyone else? We don’t look that different. We aren’t that different… Well, we look different I guess…” And then I thought, “Oh! Just wear the same things as other people!” That was the result of not knowing any bands. When you grow up, there are so many fashion codes. You don’t realize they’re there, but they exist. And if you didn’t grow up with any codes, you don’t know them. I definitely didn’t know anything about that.

So, your childhood in Japan was really liberating…

In Japan, we lived almost in the jungle. We were 30 people in a missionary village, completely isolated from other people. We watched a little bit of TV, but not much. We had to find out our own things. I felt very free when I was there, running around in the woods – I felt like a beast. And then I felt completely locked in when I came home because I realized I couldn’t do what I’d been doing. I moved back to a small countryside school. So, it wasn’t about trying to lead fashion, it was just about making people think I wasn’t crazy. That’s all I wanted… people to love me. My family was encouraging, but everyone else was like, “What are you doing?” So, I had the music which saved me – that was the only positive thing. Then I moved to Stockholm when I was 15 to live alone, and that was just perfect because I could do want I wanted. It took me a long time before I realized that maybe it’s actually a good thing to be different…

Yeah, I guess it’s about building your own self-confidence, isn’t it? There’s still way too much pressure on girls and women to conform to fashion stereotypes. You mentioned that it takes a while for audiences even in London to get used to your short hair look onstage…

Yeah, it’s weird… but I don’t know if I’d have it any other way either, because it’s quite nice. I like that now…

You’ve evolved your music quite a lot over the years. Did it ever scare you to experiment and switch direction? Or were you pretty confident with that process?

Well, in 2007, I had a kind of musical identity crisis. I knew what I wanted and I knew that I didn’t want to do the thing I had done, but I didn’t quite know how to attack a new record. Then I was misdiagnosed with cancer. They called me and said that I had a really aggressive type of cancer in the uterus. I asked if I was going to survive and they said, “Uh, we don’t know what to say – can you just come in?” You’re not really supposed to tell people they have cancer on the phone. From that message, I felt I got a clear view suddenly, because all the stupid things in life like what perfume you’re going to wear kind of disappears and only the most important things are left. So, instead of being depressed about it, I started to think very clearly really fast. When I arrived at the doctor’s, it turned out that they thought it was going to develop into cancer but if I had an operation I’d be fine. So, I did that, and that was part an emotional period after being depressed for a while. So, getting that sort of thing actually just straightened me out completely, then I kind of knew: “Ok, now I know this is what I’m going to do – I’m going to work with these rhythms, I’m going to dance on stage, I want to move around, I want to be alive.” You don’t really think when you go to the doctor that that’s the way it’s going to go. It made me quite fearless I think: if I’m going to die, it’s not really a big problem, I’ve had a good life, I’ve done a lot of cool stuff, it’s not such a bad thing, my mum’s going to be sad but I’m going to be fine… So, if I ever get that message again, I know how I would react.

In terms of knowing what you want as an artist and in your life?

Yeah, I’m happy about that. I told the doctor I wrote a song about it, because they were shocked that someone told me on the phone, but I said, “It’s fine – but just don’t ever do it again.”

How are you feeling now about where you’re at, after that journey?

I feel I get to do cool stuff right now and I meet a lot of cool people who I admire who like the album. I go out into the world and get to eat these nice foods from all these different countries. It’s very exciting and I’m very grateful. I have been to the States but would like to go to Poland, Estonia, Romania… In Western media, you never really hear what’s really going on in East Europe…

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If you could talk to yourself when you were growing up, what advice would you give to yourself? Or to other young musicians now?

I just want to say to people, “Do stuff!” Instead of watching TV, there are so many things to do. Your imagination is the most important tool. I look at the world sometimes and how people live. It’s so easy to paint yourself into a little corner: “I must do this in my life…” so you can’t really don’t do anything. But, you can do everything – that’s what I think about every day. You can actually do it. Don’t be lazy, just do it.

Yeah, talking about not putting limitations on things, when I think about yesterday’s Pussy Riot concert, we prepared that in 3 weeks which seems crazy now…

I really admire that you did it. You actually did it!

Thanks to you guys, of course. I did it out of frustration – I just couldn’t bear watching my own country’s music community do nothing. We needed more action, we needed artists to stand up together and protect ethics.

If people go out there and do stuff, it’s because we need it. It’s important not to blame the men who live now, because they are also a victim of the patriarchal system. When I look at a lot of men now, there is hope, but I think the whole patriarchal system needs to be broken down a bit. Men go out and do stuff. But I think women aren’t encouraged to go out there and do stuff because they don’t have as many role models – but that’s what we need.

Yes, it’s important for women to have strong role models – whether it’s a singer, politician, mother, sister…

And, even if you don’t have a political agenda, you can do something. You have to do what you want to – do something!

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BO NINGEN say FREE PUSSY RIOT

Next up in our ARTISTS SAY FREE PUSSY RIOT photo campaign is London-based Japanese band BO NINGEN AKA Taigen, Yuki, Kohei and Mon-chan. We took this shot in the beer garden late night just after they played a full set as a full band inside a tiny upstairs room of a pub in Manchester! Smallest room we have ever seen a band perform in. The room next door was the bathroom, occupied by the night’s DJs. Radical…

Continue reading BO NINGEN say FREE PUSSY RIOT

ARTISTS SAY FREE PUSSY RIOT Photo Campaign – KATHLEEN HANNA

Here at SHATTERJAPAN, we are launching today a new photo campaign called ARTISTS SAY FREE PUSSY RIOT. We give all the musicians and artists we come across a chance to voice their thoughts and feelings about the imprisonment of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (“Nadya”), Yekaterina Samutsevich (“Katya”) and Maria Alyokhina (“Masha”) of Russian group Pussy Riot. We will post all the photos we receive one by one, right here on SHATTERJAPAN’s dedicated PUSSY RIOT blog.

Continue reading ARTISTS SAY FREE PUSSY RIOT Photo Campaign – KATHLEEN HANNA

FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON CONCERT 9 Sept

This Sunday 9 September, the UK will see a Free Pussy Riot benefit concert take place in central London. Events kick off at 530pm at the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen with a DJ set from Zoetrope, with main proceedings beginning shortly after 6pm.

LINE-UP: Zoetrope (DJ), Lisa Gornick (Speaker), Vuvuvultures (DJ), Kerry McCarthy MP (Speaker), SKINNY GIRL DIET (live), Night Works (DJ), Pratibha Parmar (Speaker), NEUROTIC MASS MOVEMENT (live), Novella (DJ), GAGGLE (live), Esben And The Witch (DJ), PEGGY SUE (live), New Young Pony Club (DJ), Karin Park (DJ)    * See FB events page for set times

Continue reading FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON CONCERT 9 Sept

PATTI SMITH brings her love to Manchester and to Pussy Riot

Walking past the long box office queue outside Manchester’s Academy, one woman is shouting, “I LOVE Patti – Hurry up, will ya!?” The touts are out in force, because this is one hot gig and on-the-door sales are moving fast. There’s a curious energy in the air – that of enigma and history, indescribable yet palpable. Edging my way to the front side of stage, all gazes are on the glowing ear-to-ear smile and twinkling eyes of the one and only Patti Smith, who looks like she wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else on the planet. We suddenly find ourselves in the Patti Smith living room, leaving our cares at the door. We have a 2-hour set before us, no support, just pure Patti and her phenomenal band. Continue reading PATTI SMITH brings her love to Manchester and to Pussy Riot

AUSTRA – PART 2 Interview

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Toronto band Austra’s live shows are nothing short of magical – fans of the band will know what I mean by that. Within seconds, you will be entranced by the band’s stage presence and smooth, dark, lilting and edgy sounds. You will be impressed by lead singer Katie’s vocals and intense energy, as well as the fabulous harmonies of sisters Sari and Romy, Dorian’s tight bass and Ryan’s playful electronics. But, what gives the band its soul and sexiness are the drums – you will be seduced by the stomping beats of drummer MAYA POSTEPSKI and her laidback “I can do this in my sleep” attitude. Performing live, Postepski sits coolly at back of stage – her cockpit – pounding out those iconic Austra beats like a walk in the park while keeping the rhythms and tightness of the band in check, taking the image of the cool, sexy, talented drummer to another level. This band would not be the same without her, you will start thinking – and you would be right.

Female drummers have been overlooked and ignored for far too long in the music industry. Many have had to fight long and hard to break down stereotypes of what female percussionists can bring to the game – to prove that their gender has nothing to do with their invaluable contribution to the band and its success. Some of the most talented and iconic female drummers have suffered such terrible prejudice that they were eventually forced out of the band altogether – just look at the fate of Patty Schemel, former Hole drummer, whose life was completely blown to pieces after her scandalously calculated expulsion from the band by the then-producer Michael Beinhorn. Despite his criminal tactics, Beinhorn controversially went on to receive a Grammy nomination in 1998 for the band’s most successful album to date “Celebrity Skin” (Schemel’s face and name adorns the album sleeve even though the drum tracks are not actually hers – she was replaced during recording by an unknown male session drummer after Beinhorn set her up) – not an atypical industry story, as Courtney Love has resignedly confessed. Love later took her comments a step further, calling Beinhorn “still a nazi fuck” at a screening of 2011 documentary Hit So Hard which details the producer’s relentless bullying of Schemel and the awful tragedies that ensued. The commercial industry, it seems, continues to embrace industry males above and beyond female musicians and ethics.

Getting back to Postepski, not only is Maya one of the best drummers out there right now, finding herself ranked alongside other iconic drummers, she is a powerhouse of energy and productivity – a master remixer, producer, multi-instrumental percussionist. In addition to Austra, she has been a key member of TRUST, and continues her own project Princess Century. Ever humble, we get to know her better in this interview, where she tells us about her passion for the drums, sleeping in ex-asylums and why singer Katie Stelmanis saved her life.

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Well, let’s get to know you a bit better – we like to have the artists speak openly about their backgrounds and what drives them. So much of mainstream journalism is just regurgitated information…
I don’t know why people do that. It’s like: just use your brain a little bit…

Well yeah, exactly.
I’d never become a journalist if I wasn’t actually interested in investigating things. But anyhow, that’s another discussion…

So, what’s your family background?
My family’s from Poland and I was born in South Africa. My parents were working there – they lived there for like 10 years and they had me. It was getting really weird there, so they were like, “We need to get out of here.” They applied to emigrate to Canada and Australia, and Canada just responded a couple months faster… So, I would’ve either ended up in Canada or Australia, but I ended up in Canada…

If they’d moved to Australia, do you know which city?
No…

So, it’s that path of life that never happened and that you’ll never know…
Yeah, it was kind of random. I was thinking maybe I’d be a surfer or something! Or maybe I’d end up a drummer, who knows?

Your parents are both Polish by origin?
Yes.

Did they speak Polish with you?
They did when I was a little younger, but I think they really tried to assimilate themselves into the new country. So we still spoke it a little bit, but when they were in Austria my parents spoke German, and when they lived in South Africa they learned Afrikaans. So, I guess they’re just into being wherever they are. It’s kind of cool – I guess I respect that because if I moved to Sweden tomorrow, I’m not going to just get by on my English just because everyone speaks English – I think you have to try to get into wherever you are.

Are your parents inspirational for you, in terms of branching out, not staying in the same place?
Yeah! I mean, without getting too political, I think a lot of cultures get stuck in themselves. I found that a lot of Polish kids at school wanted to be my friend just because I was Polish, and I was like, “That’s kind of not a good reason to be my friend…” It is if it’s because you’re an artist or writer or whatever, not because you’re from a country. So I find that kind of a small, closed-minded way of thinking about things. And yeah, I guess my parents were always kind of international and interested in other places and other things, and they were never scared of that. They ran away from their country because it was communist and they hated that. So yeah, I think that they are brave.

Talking about being an artist, you’re quite the musical multi-tasker. But, how did you get into music and why did you decide to focus on the drums?
Well, I went to this art school when I was a kid – all through high school, actually – so it was for kids who were into music, dancing or acting and stuff. I was really lucky to go there, because it was a very untraditional education and I remember it was like a fantasy world – it seemed like we could do anything we wanted. I took mime class when I was like 8 – that’s pretty weird. And I had been playing piano since I was 3 or 4, so I had this strong musical background. And when I was 10, I had to choose what major I wanted to go into, which was your class that you do for 4 years. So, you choose art, drama, dance or music, and then there was a brand new category this year that I started called “percussion.” And I was like, “I don’t want to dance, I don’t want to sing, I don’t want to paint, I don’t want to act, I don’t want to play violin…” Then I was like, “Huh, what is this percussion thing?” I honestly took this form to my mum and I checked “percussion” and she didn’t even know what it was – she was like, “What IS this?” But she signed it for me and I just went to this class honestly not knowing what the hell I was going to do.

My teacher Adam was awesome, and I was really intuitive with the drums from the very first day. He did this very simple exercise where he played a rhythm and we played it back – we went back and forth and there were only like 8 of us. So we were just playing, copying him, and I was getting the rhythms perfectly because I played piano and it’s highly repetitive, but all the other kids didn’t get it and I got it straight away every time. I was actually very proud of myself. I thought, “I’m very, very good at this,” and when you’re 9 years old that’s a really big feeling. I was terrible at math, I was terrible at writing, I didn’t really care about that stuff, and so I was finally good at something at school and I was like, “Wow!” It just felt so good to be exceptional at something, finally. It just felt like I was special all of a sudden.

Yeah, it’s important, isn’t it, for kids to have access to the arts and to know they can excel in anything, even something different from the norm?
Yeah, it makes me so sad, because later on I started teaching drums to kids privately. I didn’t do it for too long – maybe for a year because then the band picked up. They were so interested in learning and practising and they were telling me, “I never do anything at school – I don’t feel challenged.” I was like, “Man, this sucks!” Kids are like sponges – all kids, no matter what they do or where they’re from – they just want to do something they’re good at, whether it’s dancing or singing or anything, you know? And so, if I have kids someday, I think I’m going to have a non-traditional education for them. The public education system’s just not good enough – I mean, there’s just no money in it, right?

Yeah, talking about education in Canada, the student protests this year were really intense – some very brave people over there looking out for the kids of the future…
Yeah, that’s all happening in Montreal with the university students – that’s really cool. But that’s Quebec: that’s like totally different, because Quebec has its own spirit. It’s incredible! They’re just so revolutionary – they’re so not afraid to just get into the streets and make a noise.

So, when you were drumming as a kid, did you already envision making music your future?
Yeah! All I remember from when I was a kid was that I left this class the first day and I was like, “I’m going to do this with my life.” I was a 9 year old girl playing the drums and I had this realisation. I don’t know, I guess other people have had that too when they’re young – just this overwhelming sensation that you’ve found what you’re supposed to do. I didn’t really care, I knew that somehow I’d make it work. And now that I’m a little bit older… yeah it’s tough and it’s been a long, hard road to get here, and I’m still not entirely satisfied with every part of my career, but you just have to keep going. What I always tell myself too is: if this ends, that’s fine – at least I tried and at least I got somewhere. There are always going to be normal jobs out there – they’re just not going to go away. So if I’m 36, and I have to go back to school for a couple of years and become a real estate agent, I’m fine with that. But I try not to think about that. You get hung up on that stuff like, “Man, I’m not making any money, I’m not having any savings, I’m just kind of living like a pirate…” but you have to not think so much about that, otherwise you can drive yourself crazy.

Yeah, it’s really tough. You made a brave decision.
It’s not a good future – I still don’t know if I’m going to ever make any money from this – REAL money – but I’m okay with that right now. It’s tough, but you just have to keep going and I’ve always believed that people who work hard will be successful and so far it’s paid off.

Did you have any role models, growing up? Anybody who spurred you on…
Yeah, in high school I was in this jazz band and this guy Arden was really, really good – he was always practising after school. He was like, “I’m going to do auditions to be in an orchestra” and I was like, “Wow, that’s so cool!” So, I would practise after school with him sometimes, and eventually I had the same teacher as him and did an audition to go to the University of Toronto to study classical percussion for orchestra. I got in, so I stayed there for 4 years, got a degree in percussion, and that just really made me go to a next level – you learn something about listening, I mean REALLY listening. I feel that a lot of musicians don’t really listen to who they’re playing with – they’re kind of in their bubble: “I’m playing drums, I’m going to listen to the drums…” You should just listen to everybody because it’s incredible. Playing with different people over the years, you start realising that most musicians don’t know what they’re doing.

So, are you quite fussy now about who you play with – can you tell straight away if it’s clicking?
You can tell within the first 10 seconds.

Wow! That’s fast…
But, there are also different objectives with every band. I like to play with people who are really listening and play really ‘in time’ who are willing to practise really a lot. I’m quite strict with rhythmic things and it’s hard because that’s not what everything is about. So I’ve had to learn to loosen up a little bit about that, because I’ve become a bit of a perfectionist after practising with an orchestra for 4 years – you get into a really nitpicky mentality: “That pianissimo violin note was just a hair too soon…” even though 99% of the audience won’t notice. Being in a band is a totally different mentality – there are different goals: you want to create a vibe, an ambiance, a feeling rather than playing a ‘perfect song.’ So, I’ve learned to compromise and just loosen up a bit.

So, does that mean you get to be a lot more creative now?
Exactly. And when you’re working with a strong singer, you start thinking about the song as an overall mood, rather than these little pieces of information that all fit together perfectly. It’s also a smaller ensemble, right? When you’re playing to an orchestra, there are like 50 people sometimes so you have to worry about each little ant being in the perfect place, whereas with 4 to 6 people it’s more about “Can we make this feel good?”

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So, what are you up to right now?
I’m in a small town in Michigan with Austra – we’re recording in the middle of nowhere. It’s a really cool studio that our manager told us about and there’s all this old gear and analogue synthesisers, so we’re just kind of messing around. We’re just sitting in the studio all day because it’s like 50 degrees outside and we’re just playing with all this old crap…

Nice! So, are you actually recording or just trying stuff out?
Well, there’s a lot of that but we’re actually recording, yeah. We’re just kind of making demos. We don’t know if we’re going to keep everything but we’re definitely going to try and keep stuff.

So, what’s the recording lifestyle like? It must be pretty different from being on tour…
It’s funny because we’re always together in close quarters for 24 hours a day on tour, and we’re kind of doing the same thing right now. I mean, it’s a little different, because we all have our own bedroom and we sleep in the same building – it’s kind of like we’re at summer camp! And that’s cool because it means we don’t have to stay in a hotel and we get to go swimming in the lake – we’re going swimming every day. Today is our last day here, so we’re just going to review everything we’ve laid down and do a rough mix to take home with us. And tomorrow we’re going to drive home and keep writing. Maybe we’ll go for a swim later!

And at least you get some sleep, right?
Oh my god, I’m still in my bed right now! We’ve been sleeping SO MUCH lately. This is like early morning for me. I’m in a bunk bed right now – just me and 2 giant bunk beds. We’re barely like an hour and a half outside of Chicago, but that’s like nowhere in America.

Wow, so it’s very intense…
Yeah, but it’s really good. I feel like we’re all working at maximum efficiency because there’s no driving to the studio, meeting up for coffee… we all just roll out of bed and make a coffee and work.

And when you’re on tour, you make a point of not staying in regular hotels? When we talked in Manchester, you said you were excited to stay somewhere in nature…
Yeah! Sari, one of our backing singers – her job is to book us hotels. She always tries to find us weird places to stay – or weird hotels that were converted from insane asylums into hotels! There’s one in Amsterdam that’s really, really cool – we stayed in this room once with 8 beds. We were checking in and we’re like, “So, there’s 7 of us” (because we have a tour manager) and they were like, “Okay – so you’re staying in this room.” And we were like, “Um… but there’s 7 of us…” but they were like “Yeah, yeah.” And we were like, “What the fuck??” So we get into the room and there were 8 little single beds all in a row… and they’re all connected! So we all slept like little matchsticks next to each other!

They were connected?? So you couldn’t even move them around?
No! And the bathtub is like really deep – it’s like you can drown in it. It was so cool…

And this was a converted asylum or something?
I think so. But when I met you in Manchester, we were staying in the Peak District.

How did that go?
Well, it was pouring rain all day when we stayed there, but we just stayed at this inn in the middle of the Peak District. It was like a pub, so we just drank cider all day and went to bed at 8 o’clock drunk – because we couldn’t go outside.

You’ve done quite a bit of moving around on this tour, but which city did you particularly enjoy?
It was really nice to be in Barcelona actually at the very end of the tour, because my girlfriend used to live there, so she showed me around and we stayed in an apartment, and I didn’t have to worry about getting lost. It was my first time really seeing that city properly and I really love it – I think it’s amazing.

Can you see yourself relocating one day? Or does it depend on what’s going on with the band?
At this point, if I suddenly was to buy a house, if I had money, I don’t know where I’d want to live. I feel like after travelling around the world so much, you just want to live everywhere. I mean, I love Toronto, which is where we’re from. I just feel like I don’t know at this point – it depends on where my life is when I get there I guess. I like everywhere! I want to live in this corner, in that corner… I could live in Sydney or New York or London… I don’t even care anymore…

It sounds like you’re really into the big cities?
Well, I don’t know why I said those 3 things actually because I feel like I would have to live in the country! I mean, I’d like to ideally have a small flat in a big city like London and then live in the country.

And only go into the city for work or shows?
Yeah. The thing about being an artist or a writer is that you don’t need to be in the city all the time.

In fact, it may drive you a bit crazy being in the city the entire time…
Yeah. I grew up in the city – I love big cities, it’s a vibe I really like. But the older I get, the more I appreciate the stillness and quietness and isolation, in fact. Not forever – I just appreciate those things after all this moving around, you know?

Yeah, definitely. So let’s talk about your creative relationship with Katie – you’ve known each other for a while…
Yeah, we’ve been working together for like 9 years.

Almost a decade!
It’s the longest relationship I’ve ever had with a girl! It’s like our joke.

It’s so inspiring to see creative relationships that work well and evolve, where you respect each other and don’t end up in some massive breakup…
Yeah, I don’t like that. I’ve recently gone through one of those with my other band, Trust. It’s so awkward and sad and drama, whereas Katie and I kind of keep it real all the time.

It’s pretty difficult to find the right collaborators and you’ve worked on different projects. You were also in another band with Katie before Austra…
Well, when I was 17, I met Katie and our friend Emma and we started a band called Galaxy – it was a riot grrrl band, so we did that for 3 or 4 years. Then we broke up and Katie started doing her solo stuff and she wanted me to play drums live with her. So, I didn’t write any of that stuff, but I always kept going with her. And then eventually after a few years, it became Austra and we added more people. So, that was kind of lucky – Katie and I just met and we never stopped working together, so we kind of grew up together in that way. And we had all those shitty tours that we went through – sleeping on people’s floors, dragging gear across Europe on boats and trains. It was hell, but also at the time we were so motivated. If I had to do that right now, I’d be like “Fuck this…” and I’d probably never do that again. But I’m 5 years older now and you get comfortable with all of the luxuries, right? Like now we stay in hotels, have a driver and a tour manager. Now we’re just these lazy princesses, even though, by any normal human being’s standard, it’s not nice.

Was Austra a natural evolution or did you guys actually plan the band’s concept and setup?
No, it was like Katie doing her weird music and then she picks this weird band. Like, I was at one point playing stand-up drums, marimba and glockenspiel and singing backup – it was just a circus! And, we had this awesome guitar player. The band switched around so many times, and so now the 6-piece that we have is a very kind of ‘normal’ setup: 2 backup singers, a bass player, a key player and a drummer – it’s WAY more traditional in my mind, even though it’s still kind of ‘out there’ by most people’s standards. Most people were like, “Who IS this? It’s like a circus…” So it was never calculated. It was all just like, “Oh, we met Dorian the bass player… Oh, and then we met Ryan…” – it was super natural.

Austra has gathered a very loyal following because you’re known now for your brilliant performances as well as the music – you’ve got the whole package. Were you aware that the crowds love the setup?
No, it makes me really happy to hear that, because I think that my band is really great and everybody in it is really special. I’m glad to hear that people like us together.

Yeah, for sure! People are really appreciating each of you individually in the sound and on stage…
Yeah, it makes me happy that people know that it’s a band and it’s not just Katie with a bunch of studio musicians.

Yeah, talking about musicians not receiving credit, drummers – especially female drummers – have tended to be overlooked or boxed by the media which makes it hard for them to be taken seriously by the industry. Do you think this is getting better?
I don’t know. I still watch music videos and even concerts sometimes. I try not to watch anything to do with us, because I find it kind of weird – I don’t like to read press or any of that stuff. But sometimes I see videos of us and it’s not anything to do with the band, it’s just a stupid camera person who only focuses on Katie’s face – that’s not interesting first of all, by any aesthetic standard, and then it’s just weird how camera people don’t cover the whole band… It is a project that incorporates all of us, so it’s weird to me when people with cameras only focus on one person.

Let’s talk about you on stage. You all look like you’re having so much fun, and you’re probably the most laidback drummer I’ve seen live…
I think that on stage I just try and relax and have fun, and just enjoy playing my instrument. I really love playing drums so much that I think it’s kind of relaxing – it’s like having a glass of wine and a cigarette.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a musician talk about being on stage like that!
It is! And not because I want to seem casual, but I just feel calm and so happy, you know?

Yeah, that’s impressive. So, if that’s your relaxation, what stresses you out? And what else do you do to blow off steam?
There’s lots of stress on tour. I like to do lots of stretches before I play and I like to go for a run usually after soundcheck before dinner. And yeah, I kind of like to be alone, because there’s so little alone time on tour. Before I get on stage, if I have a lot of things to do, I get a little stressed out – if I have to do some little photo thing or do my makeup, or if there’s lots of friends backstage, I get stressed out sometimes.

I guess that’s the good thing about being a band and not a solo artist – you can understand and help each other, especially I guess with Katie?
Yeah, the whole band is really intuitive with each other at this point. It’s like we don’t even have to speak to know what we’re feeling. Everyone in the band is really sensitive to everything, really gentle and open.

Now there are a lot of electro bands coming out of Toronto or Montreal, Austra is one of the bands heading that new wave electro sound. But, I heard that when you and Katie started up, you found it tricky because people didn’t really get what you were doing…
People thought we were like freaks! I think people thought we were really interesting and they could appreciate that Katie’s really good at singing and that I was good at drumming, but they were kind of baffled by us as a duo – they were like, “What the fuck are these girls doing?” But, when I look at an old show I’m like, “Wow, we were total freaks.” Now the band seems so much more dumbed down or traditional or something… I still feel like Austra’s going to go back there though. I think in the future it’s just going to go crazy – it’s just going to go into full opera mode! If we could get like a set designer, I just think it’s going to go crazy!

The Austra opera – it’s doable. Electro opera!
People love that stuff!

Yeah, it’s true. Your performances now are so honed and tight that it’s exciting to imagine where Austra’s going to head in the future…
When we first released Austra, I was like, “I don’t know what people are going to think of this – it could go one way or the other.” But when “Beat and the Pulse” comes on, it’s like we’re really cool… It’s like “the nerds made it!”

Yeah, what I love is that you guys also really care about your look – you have a perfect combination of music and edgy videos (“Lose It” is a surrealist’s wet dream, “Beat and the Pulse” was controversially censored by YouTube for some very tame bearing of female flesh). The UK industry has become quite stale so it’s great to have inspiration from bands from North America who invest in creative videos, style and sound…
I don’t know why a band wouldn’t do that – that’s where you can have fun, that’s where the magic is, so why make a shitty, boring music video?? It doesn’t make sense – it’s totally weird… when you could be making something fun and imaginative. I’m happy to hear that there are a lot of bands coming over from North America, and Canada has a lot of incredible talent, so I’m glad that you guys are open to it because the UK is a very important market for bands from North America – it’s kind of like if you make it in the UK, you’ll be fine for a little while.

So where do you feel you’re at? Are you breaking the UK market?
Well, it’s hard to tell – we haven’t done a huge tour of the UK ever. We did a bigger one this summer, but I just think we haven’t spent enough time out there. But, hopefully with the new record, we can make sure we’re over there more often because it’s such an important place for music. All or most of my favourite musicians, bands or DJs come from the UK. It’s such a small place in the world, but so important for our music history – for some reason, there’s such an incredible amount of talent on this tiny island!

And how is the Toronto music scene these days? I guess you don’t get much chance to be there since you’re on the move…
Over the past 2 years, we’ve been away so I don’t know any Toronto bands. I haven’t seen a show in Toronto in 2 or 3 years because we’ve been on tour, so I’m out of the loop to be honest. Every time we go to Toronto, I’m like, “Holy crap, that city’s changing so quickly… wow, that bar’s closed, there’s all these new restaurants…” I don’t know what’s going on in Toronto, but apparently it’s good from what I hear. It’s fun to be away for so long and come home, and you’re like, “Wow, it’s been 2 years…”

So do you have a timeline for when the new Austra material will be coming out?
Yeah, so we’re doing demos now, then we’re going to go back on the road one more time – we have a tour in September. Then we want to record in the fall – in October. And if everything goes smoothly, we’ll have something out in May or June… spring/summer…

It’s a long haul, isn’t it?
There’s so much lead time, right? Like press, and when you’re putting a record together a lot of other things happen


So, how are you feeling about the new album?

After this week in the studio, I’m SO excited – I wish I could tell you how excited I am! The new material’s sounding – I mean, it’s just crazy – it’s like all my dreams for Austra coming true! And also we’re collaborating more, so it really feels like a lot of different spices are being put into the pot, not just one.

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Austra is proving to be a very successful collaboration, but working with other artists comes with its ups and downs and there was some controversy with the other band you were in, Trust. Has that blown over now?
I wouldn’t say it’s over… I have a really good attitude about it – I love working with Robert, but we’ve had a bit of a falling out. I wish him the best of luck on tour. He’s a very talented person and I just want to work with him again one day, but it’s just not the right time right now and that’s it. I’m doing one thing; he’s doing another. Hopefully we’ll meet up someday again in the middle.

You sound very philosophical about it…
I’m really proud with the work we’ve done – he’s my colleague and I wish him the best. I just can’t be in 2 bands at once – that’s just the reality of it. Too bad, eh…

It makes total sense if you’re being stretched too thin. And of course your Austra backing singers Sari and Romy are doing their own thing too?
Yeah, they have an awesome project called Tasseomancy. We’ve all kind of sacrificed our own things to focus on Austra. I have a solo project called Princess Century which has been a bit on the backburner for a while, but I’m releasing a record I think in the fall. I made a record last year and it’s being made right now: it’s mastered and it’s done – I just need to get it out, and it’s coming out on a little label in London called Kennington Records.

That’s cool, we’d love to hear some of the tracks…
Yeah sure! It’s really introspective – it’s like my journal. I don’t really write a journal, so instead I just write tracks. It’s terrifying! Onstage with Austra and Trust, I’m super confident, but with Princess Century it’s the most terrifying experience of my life.

So, it’s very personal? All your thoughts go in there?
Exactly. And then if it’s a good song, I donate it to Trust or Austra!

I’ve often found that artists have 2 sides to their personality: the ultra-confident person who’s enjoying their music and the other person who’s kind of fragile and introverted. Do you relate to that?
Yeah, that’s why I’ve got a therapist! I think any good artist puts on a very good mask, and I’m trying to break away from that and just be more honest with all of the work I do, but it’s hard. I mean, the work I do is very pure – I don’t hide anything. But when you’re onstage, or in interviews or meetings with people, it’s easy to put on this shell that’s like, “I’m cool, I’ve got my shit together, I’m doing everything.” But really, I’m just like a little ant – I’ve just got a little ant inside here that’s like “Hello!” and I’m in this big shell. I think a lot of musicians are like that – they can easily pretend to be totally cool.

Yeah, it’s hard to stay confident. Many musicians suffer from a kind of creative block and go through sometimes long periods of not even playing their instrument. What would you say to artists who are struggling to be creative?
Yeah, I went through that maybe 4 years ago. I was like, “I need to get better, I need to just work, I need to write, I need to…” and I just kept talking and talking and talking about it. And my best friend, Jenna – she’s a painter and quite successful – she told me, “You just have to try every day, go into your studio and try and write a song, or try and write a drumbeat, or try and write anything… anything you do that sucks, at least you know you tried.” So, if you’re a writer: try and write a story, a poem, whatever! Even if you chuck it in the bin, eventually you’re going to do good stuff, right? So that’s what I did – I went into my studio every single day for like 8 hours and the first month or 2 was like crap… terrible crap. Then eventually, I just kept doing this routine and really good stuff happened – REALLY good stuff! And then, I started working with Robert [Alfons] and then we wrote a record. And all of a sudden, we had things happening, and it just goes and goes – it’s like a train, once it starts, it just goes…

I guess it’s like when an athlete is training…
Yeah! Like, the first time you go for a month you’re going to be stopping, but if you train for a month, you’ll be totally fine to run for like half an hour. I think it’s just discipline and not pitying yourself, and not being like, “Oh poor me.” Just shut up and do it! It’s a really harsh approach, but a lot of people talk and talk and talk… Go play your instrument and get good at it! Go write a story! Go write 25 stories and get really good at writing! Just stop talking – and do it!

Yeah, everyone really struggles in different ways and the key is to find your own rhythm that works for you…
Yeah, I made a routine every day. I like to work in the morning – that’s my power time. Some people work at 5 in the morning. I found that my best productive work was from 9am to 5pm, so every day I worked from 9 to 5 and I treated it like my job. You’re committing to yourself, you know? It feels so nice to give yourself power – like, “You know what? I’m not going to go out for lunch with my friend today – I’m working…”

Yeah, building your own rhythm and structure is really hard, and it’s important for people around you to understand that. Do you have a good balance now?
I don’t think I’ve actually found a balance. It’s really extreme being on tour because you’re giving 100% to your music all day, every day. I’ve had to teach myself to stay in touch with people and communicate better, and make sure I call my mum every couple of weeks. Time and space are so different on tour as well – anyone who’s gone on a long trip knows that suddenly a week goes by and it’s like, “Whoa, I forgot!“ I think the people I’m closest to in my life just get it now when I don’t call for a couple of weeks or don’t send an email back right away, but it’s not very nice and I’m still struggling. I think what my problem is right now is that I give everything to music, so it’s difficult for me to keep a good romantic relationship. Not just because I’m not in once place, but it’s because I’m not willing to give up all that energy, you know? And it’s selfish for sure, but I’ve been given this moment in my life to really do something that my dream is, so I’m okay with it because not a lot of people get here, and I feel like I can’t just fuck it up – I want to do it 100% right now.

Some people in the band have longterm, committed relationships, and I’m just not that good at it right now – I’m kind of like, “Ok, I can give 100% or 0%.” So, I’m figuring it out. I’m seeing someone right now and we’re sorting it out a little bit, but every month is different – some days are good and some days are not so good. Luckily, she’s also a musician and she’s toured so she kind of gets it more than a normal person would – she gets when I don’t call for a few days, because sometimes on tour you’re just exhausted and you can’t go on Skype at 2 in the morning after your show. So, we’re figuring it out but it’s not easy…

I guess that’s just the way it is when you’re really into what you’re doing – it can be challenging. And your mid-20s can be a very intense period if you have dreams you want to pursue…
I’m 26 – an old lady! I always wanted to be successful by the time I was this old…

Well, you’re doing pretty well!

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It’s great that you and Katie can be such brilliant role models as artists but also with being openly gay. Do you think role models are important, particularly for kids?
Yeah, I’m so happy that Katie’s so open. I think it’s important she’s a role model for certain people – I mean, she never ‘tried’ to do that, but it’s cool that she’s open and talks about it. And I think it’s really important because, growing up, I was like, “I don’t know anything – I’m gonna watch The L Word!” I grew up in the suburbs, so I’d just watch The L Word in my room. It so terrible… but it was something, right? I just wanted to see girls making out…

So, meeting Katie must have been a major turning point for you…
Yeah I didn’t have any friends in my high school. I was friends with Katie and Emma and I was like, “These girls are saving my life! They’re gay, I’m gay, and we’re in a band – this is so empowering!”

Especially as it was a riot grrl band…
A couple of years into the band, I didn’t even know what that meant. I was like, “I don’t know what I’m doing…” I was just this girl from the suburbs and it just felt really cool, and these girls saved me…

I guess music really changed your life. And on that note, let’s end with a message of advice for people who want to do what you do?
Get on with it! Go do something!!

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<< READ PART 1 OF THIS INTERVIEW HERE >>

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THE JEZABELS – PART 2 Interview

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Hayley Mary is the lead singer of award-winning Australian band The Jezabels. The first time I met Hayley was backstage at KOKO in February where I had a wee chat with the rest of the band before witnessing them set the famed London venue alight. Tracking their progress, we joined them again at The Ruby Lounge Manchester a month on, where Hayley acerbically spoke out on stage against the indifference shown by British press towards the band, apologizing for not talking much on stage, having been pegged as “too Australian” for British music journo taste. This was all prior to the band’s Australian Music Prize (Amp) win and their Garbage support slot announcement of course. Since those announcements, the mainstream British media and public have been playing catchup on a band who has long struggled to break the UK but who has successfully held our attention as one of the tightest bands out there, not to mention one of the nicest we’ve ever met. Considering their widespread success in Australia, we’ve been shocked by how little radio play the band still gets and how few people have even heard of them in the UK.

The night before Manchester, we had already captured our first glimpse of the Jezabels/Garbage lineup in Wolverhampton: earning themselves a barrelful of new fans, The Jezabels impressed the crowds to make way for Shirley Manson’s dramatic entrance and killer set. Now, sitting serenely together backstage at the Manchester Academy in an unusually zen atmosphere of calm, with the comforting hum of Manson and crew in the background, smashing the stage in their typical flamboyant style, Hayley and I chat all things Garbage, women in music, ethics and top tips on how to survive the touring lifestyle. Reflective and relaxed, Hayley gets right down to dinner and chat, leaving tour manager Neil to beaver away on his laptop and fellow Jezabels Sam Lockwood, Heather Shannon and Nik Kaloper to enjoy well-earned beers after delivering a blistering opening set. Oh, and we receive an unusual offer from Sam part-way through…

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So, you’re on tour with Garbage! What’s the atmosphere like backstage?
Oh, it’s pretty chilled. I mean, they’re big venues so it’s not like you’re in each other’s faces. We’ve got our own room, Shirley’s got her own room, the Garbage crew have their own room and so do the Garbage band – so everyone can have their own space if they want, but in the hallways it’s a free-for-all. They’re very talkative and lovely people, so it feels like you could go in and talk to them. I just went and stole some cokes from them actually because there was a diabetic selling merch, so I thought…

Your merch person?
No, theirs – not that anyone who’s a human being wouldn’t be fine with giving some cokes to a diabetic, but I think that if he wasn’t diabetic they would also be fine with it.

So how did the whole Jezabels/Garbage connection come about? Did you indicate that you wanted to support Garbage or were you approached?
It’s probably a bit of both. Well, I have no idea what their process is or the level of involvement they have in choosing the supports. But I have heard and did confirm with Shirley today that when you have females in the band, you have a little bit of an “up” on the other possible supports. So, it helped – well, it didn’t hinder, let’s put it like that.

Right, they’re known for that I guess.
Yeah, you can sort of tell. The more I think about it the more it makes sense, but I don’t know if they would have thought about it this much. I guess all the people working with us and them were like, “semi-pop, semi-alternative female-fronted band…”

Because you maybe have a similar vibe?
Yeah, but the music is not actually that similar so it won’t be TOO similar, so it’s good.

I guess the lineup was decided behind closed doors…
Yeah, I mean doors that I could open but I really can’t be bothered. At this point I’m very satisfied with not knowing…

It’s exciting, because you didn’t know about the pairing until quite late in the day…
Yeah, we knew there was a possibility of it but we didn’t know we would.

So now you’re actually in the midst of the tour, are you feeling more blasé about it?
It’s not blasé, but it’s all about your actual experience on tour because there are so many subtleties that could make it suck but they’re not here – all subtleties point towards it being a really great experience. Like, straight away all of them were really nice and introduced themselves and were not intimidating – I mean, they’re intimidating as musicians but not as people so that’s a good thing. With the whole team that they’ve got working for them, you can tell the niceness kind of trickles down and everyone’s nice and helpful. That really helps, because it’s hard when you just feel like you can’t ask for a bottle of water, you can’t ask for anything and you’re just there ignoring them.

Yeah, and that’s all about the atmosphere created by the headlining band, isn’t it?
Yeah, it’s just about the atmosphere being really good, and the fact that they’ve given us plenty of time to sound check – normally the support doesn’t really get to sound check. They’ve just been really good. I mean, I guess it helps that it’s just a 2-band bill.

Yeah, it’s interesting because back in Australia of course you guys would be a headlining band but here you’re supporting Garbage on an international platform. What do you think you’re learning from them or even with them through that experience?
A lot. Again, when we first started touring – just little tours supporting Australian bands – you learn from the people you’re supporting about how to be good and professional, how to treat support bands, treat your crew and stuff like that. I think that kind of continues here, and you see musicians who have been doing what they do for over 20 years and they’re really nice – still! They’re not all tainted and bitter and diva-ish. I think that kind of proves that that’s definitely the best way to go about it – you’re not trying to have some power trip over people.

Especially for a lead singer, I’d assume it’s quite hard not to fall into that trap.
Yeah, it’s a struggle to tame the diva within… but we must try.

But, it’s legitimate on stage, isn’t it? I mean, if Shirley Manson toned it down on stage, people may start questioning her performance…
Well that’s the thing! She’s got to have this persona but not really BE it.

It’s the ultimate trick to be able to click into your other persona as soon as you step on or off the stage…
The stage is a powerful place. It can transform people, I reckon. Just quietly…

Are you talking about yourself or other performers as well?
Everyone. Anyone. Shirley Manson… I mean, look at when she comes on stage, it’s like, “Fuck… fuck ME!” Did you see her when she came on stage??

Yeah… of all the stage entrances…
…hers was the bomb!

Yeah, and she doesn’t even need to really DO anything …
She just walks on and like, “Yeah…”

Yeah, she just struts on and looks at the crowd as if she’s saying, “Yeah, go on then… adore me!”
I’d never seen them live – and I know she can sing on record but it doesn’t always translate live. And you know what, she came on at the first London show, and I went, “I don’t CARE if she can’t sing!” [laughs]

She can just stand there…
Yeah. That’s enough for me. And then she COULD sing and it was like, “Fuck! Alright! She’s great!”

Yeah, and she hasn’t really aged…
No! It’s mental!

I think she must love what she’s doing so much that it keeps her fit…
I think so.

And the energy she has is incredible, because it’s a long set…
Yeah, it’s a long set. It does provide inspiration when you see people you knew growing up – I was in year two: I was 6 or 7 when they released their first album.

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Before I forget, a guy in the audience wanted me to tell you that he loves your hairstyle…
Really? It’s quite bad at the moment. I’ve just let it go – I might just let it go forever…

…and he was talking about what a crazy music period the 90s was for kids in the UK, with the Britpop battle between Oasis, Blur, Pulp, the emergence of the Spice Girls…
We’re in Manchester talking about the 90s. That’s cool!

…and then there were much darker bands like Garbage and Placebo…
Yeah, alt sort of stuff – I feel like the word “alt” IS the 90s. And Doc Martens! These [points to the Docs she’s wearing] are fake because I don’t wear leather. I’m going to buy some vegan ones…

So, was 90s music a major influence on you?
I loved bands like Concrete Blonde and I did grow up with Garbage songs around – they were pretty massive, you couldn’t NOT have heard them. You see, I’m strange because I’m really influenced by the 90s, but I’m also one of those people who’s actually really into the 80s. I know that’s a paradox, but I’m really into the 80s. It’s a strange thing because – I don’t want to talk about Shirley Manson again but I did just have a conversation with her about all this stuff, and so it’s kind of relevant – Shirley was talking about whether it’s easier or harder for girls today in music, and she thinks it’s harder because something happened in the “noughties.” There were heaps of alternative girls in the 90s – the Alanis Morissettes, the Skunk Anansies (Oh, we’re also supporting Skunk Anansie by the way, which is funny…). But there were fewer females in the alt scene after the 90s. I guess the alt music and the darkness allowed women to come into a realm that wasn’t necessarily objectifying themselves – it was still sexy. But pop – where most women still are in music – is a different thing altogether. It’s arguably still objectification because a lot of them don’t write – they’re there for aesthetic purposes and I’m not saying aesthetics are a bad thing, but you know, but they’re good-looking and they sound “nice…”

So you’re basically saying that if Shirley Manson were to do now what she was doing back then, it would be harder for her maybe?
Maybe. There are still not a lot of alternative women – like, most women are still in pop I guess. I don’t know what happened. I think that maybe because the 90s was a bit of a reaction against the 80s, then there was a reaction against the 90s.

It’s very interesting because there is a timeless quality to tonight’s show….
I find them a timeless band – I do…

But BOTH bands have an air of timelessness. Maybe this goes back to the type of music? You both do quite different things but there is a connecting point, isn’t there?
Definitely. And although those things can draw from, say, a decade – like, if you looked at our band you’d probably say we draw from the 90s – musically, you can draw from everything and everywhere. I think a lot of the time people think the image of a band defines them but they often sound like a lot of things – like, Garbage are rock, pop, alternative…

…and they have transitioned a lot.
Exactly.

Congratulations on getting the support slot for Skunk Anansie, by the way – that’s so exciting!
Yeah, we have good people, angels watching over us…

So, is it a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle on this tour? Pampering by hotels? Warnings not to trash rooms?
No, they just go: “Breakfast isn’t included…”

That’s tame…
I think it might be different for Garbage, but then again they’re not in a hotel – they’re in a bus. I don’t know where all these things come from. I think there was a generation of rock ‘n’ roll where the systems were not developed yet – that’s where the stereotype of throwing TVs out of windows comes from. You’ve got to remember that it was the 60s – things were happening, revolutions, etc. Now, we’re all postmodern – you can sort of do what you want… So musicians have become less rebellious…

Things have really changed – the commercial and independent industries which were traditionally at war have become almost one and the same, to the point where everything looks so clean-cut and commercialized…
And Adele is the pinnacle of both. She’s the biggest independent act – she’s great. She’s indie AND she’s the biggest-selling artist in the world. I mean, what can you say? I’m sure there’s some Christian artist that I’ve never heard of that’s bigger-selling but… Yeah, I think she’s good – I think she writes from the heart.

In terms of how female musicians are doing, some female musicians do talk openly about how important they feel it is for women to make their mark in this industry, but I’m always surprised by those who insist that it’s not an issue anymore…
They’re having a laugh, I think. It’s like history existed and it doesn’t just STOP when you make it official that we’re equal – it takes a long time to transform.

Right, but what I often hear is: “Well, we’ve got Adele now so everything’s fine…”
Yeah, but then you’ve got the argument about pop… There’s SO much to talk about… like why we commercialize “the other” – and that has been black people and women in the arts for a really long time. We’re so obsessed with buying this emotion of “the other” that maybe having successful women in the arts doesn’t necessarily suggest that it’s equal between the sexes at all. It’s like saying racism is not an issue in America because there are successful rappers. It’s just ridiculous. Rap music, black music, R&B dominates pop music but that’s arguably objectification by white consumers so it’s not necessarily significant…

And then you have commercially successful female artists like Nicki Minaj out there, who – going by her shows in the UK at least – boasts a very white following.
Yeah. Well I mean, Nicki Minaj is really white in a lot of ways as well. It’s like in the 50s and 60s when Elvis was blacking it up. Nicki Minaj is like Lady Gaga but slightly more tanned… she’s drawing on a lot of really white traditions as well. I think it kind of blurs. It certainly appeals to that demographic it seems…

Totally. But this is what you guys also have to deal with, isn’t it? You depend on people buying your music…
Yeah, you do.

So, how are you finding it in the UK now? Because when we met in Manchester the last time, you felt the press response to the band wasn’t great…
I still do, but it’s funny. It’s really because – like any human being, in human nature for some reason – insults stick more than compliments. There possibly ARE more compliments than insults, but when you get a criticism you notice it and you’re like, “Right, ok.” You don’t notice any of the good stuff. I also talked to a lot of other bands and the UK’s just hard and weird. Like, these guys [points to the other Jezabels] even in London were like, “We’ve never had a reception like this – what’s going on?” because, you know, you’ll go to any other place and people will be like, “Waaahhh!” and then you’re here and they just fold their arms.

If you look at INXS for example…
How they’re also Australian…

Yeah, they also had a rough time when they got going… It could be that Britain is difficult for certain bands to break?
It is difficult to break because it’s got a fickle industry and very critical people – I’m pretty sure they invented criticism. But that’s cool, I’m down with that. However, being an Australian in Britain, there is a kind of stigma, a kind of cultural cringe.

So do you hear the phrase “Australian band” being thrown around a lot?
A little bit. I think it came from one of our first reviews where people said, “I felt like I was watching Crocodile Dundee” or something…

No way! That’s quite severe…
And it was like, “Are you serious?? Really? Is that REALLY what you felt like – or did you just not come and know that we’re Australian?” Like literally, I don’t know how you could get that from us at all, apart from the accent and we hardly talk.

That’s just how irresponsible the media can be though. They might not even go see the band live, and might not even know who the band is…
Totally. They’ll just read a review and absorb it and that’s all they’ll know about that band. Yeah. If you read about this band, some people think we’re emos – which I find quite funny – but that’s more accurate than “Crocodile Dundee!” And I do have a black fringe, to be fair, but that’s about it…

They may have seen you at least!
Yeah, they saw a picture and they know our nationality… Exactly. But hey, it’s fine. I don’t mind being Australian, but the truth is that that whole aesthetic that people associate with Australia – the blokey, bogany Crocodile Dundee – is so wrong. I mean, Paul Hogan is to blame for many stereotypes. No one calls them shrimps, I’ll have you know! We call them prawns. And a few other things: none of us carry knives – it’s illegal; we don’t wear those hats; the majority of us live in cities and wear shoes; there are no kangaroos in our backyards; and we have women in our country – contrary to popular belief, there are some girls.

Well, now you’ve toured various corners of the globe, England must seem pretty provincial?
I love England – I love how they’re kind of bastards. It’s great. My Dad is Scottish and so I kind of have that hatred for England. But I also have love for the British people in general and how they have this dark humour and can just cut straight to the point, whereas you go to other places like America where they’re very “nice” but you’re not entirely sure of what they’re really thinking. So on any day, as much as I say it’s pretty hard in the UK for bands, you’d rather honesty.

At least you know where you stand. Like, you knew where you stood at that point, didn’t you, back in Manchester?
Yeah, we knew we were going to have to kick and scream in this country and we still do and that’s fine.

But you’re definitely more at ease this time round, aren’t you?
Well, we’re supporting…

Exactly, you don’t have that same pressure maybe…
I think we know we’re playing to music lovers on this tour. Garbage fans are a mix between alternative goths, really normal people, people who love music, and young people who’ve just discovered it and it’s not intimidating at all because it’s Garbage fans: they’re just awesome and weird – weird and awesome but also really normal. So we’re just like, “Yeah, it’s going to be fine.”

And you’ll get more attention now, won’t you, off the back of this tour?
Off the back of this, yes.

What impressed me the first time I met you guys at KOKO was how tight a team you are not just on stage but also backstage – Heather mentioned that the two of you pretty much grew up together…
Yeah, I’ve known her for probably 15 years, but we’ve been friends for about 10/12. And we’ve been doing this, writing together, for about 7 or 8 years and playing in this band for about 5.

Are you pretty much like sisters?
Yeah, it’s a bit more like sisters than friends even. It’s like… Heather.

Does that help in terms of honesty?
Not in a bad way – it’s just almost a taken-for-granted situation which is good and bad, but it is what it is.

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The Jezabels/Garbage lineup seems all the more appropriate when you look at that great piece you wrote for Q on misogyny in the music industry, and the recent report where Shirley Manson called the music industry a “dinosaur” and impressively halted an Atlanta show to throw out a male fan who punched a female fan. You’re both on a similar page when it comes to ethics…
I think that’s what I meant before. I haven’t followed her statements but I think I can just tell… You know what I mean? I mean, I don’t even know if that’s a gender issue – that’s just crazy that someone punched someone.

Yeah, she’s clearly not interested in hiding her views or hiding behind her stage persona even when she’s on stage – it’s cool that she suddenly let the “diva” fall to one side…
Well, if you can call it the “diva” element of someone like Shirley Manson, the cool thing is that it’s not a “pop” diva – it’s a “staunch” diva. I feel like that is all part of her whole thing – it just comes across. Like, I haven’t heard any quote but I already know what her views are. You know from her songs, her attitude and how she carries herself, the way she talks to girls, the way she talks to us – you can just TELL.

Do you think it’s important to ask yourself as a musician: “Who am I going to be? Am I going to be a role model for young kids? Am I going to behave professionally? Or am I going to be a brat?”
Very, I reckon. I mean there’s relevance to the rough rockstar or whatever. Because if music’s getting too sterile one day and everyone’s too professional, maybe there’ll be a wave of that coming and it’ll be very important. But I think you find out very quickly that musicians are not cool – they’re nerds. They’re very hardworking people. They might get involved in some substances at points, but generally they have to get visas all the time, be in a different country every day – that takes organisation and discipline. If you think about the actual reality of musicians’ lives, they’re not cool – they’re working very hard and not sleeping very much. They’re cool in another way but they’re not like rockstars. So I think it’s really important to realize the reality of it and how you’ve just got to wind your neck in…

Talking about keeping your feet on the ground: In your acceptance speech for the 2011 Australian Music Prize (Amp), you took the opportunity to make some excellent points on the principles behind the award, because there was really some bizarre controversy surrounding that…
That speech was actually in particular reference to the criticisms of the shortlist including us, Gotye, Kimbra – it‘s quite indie but successful indie. Do you know Triple J? It’s like the dominant alternative radio station in Australia – it’s government-funded and national. The shortlist for the Amp was called “Triple J friendly” so we were sort of getting criticised in amongst this group which a FEW bloggers called a “safe” shortlist – because it’s not supposed to be about commercial success, it’s supposed to be about excellence. But when we won that, the criticisms didn’t stop – they got worse and it was like, “Well, now you really are just picking on us…”

I guess those criticisms came from Australia, because there wasn’t much negative press about it over here…
Well here, we’re not successful – we’re just an emerging thing. Whereas there, I guess we don’t need help in people’s opinion and so they felt like we were actually TOO popular to perhaps win that award or something? I couldn’t quite work it out…

But your album did really well over there. So, if it’s an award for “excellence,” isn’t that still relevant?
This is the crux. A lot of people think that “excellence” and “popularity” are mutually exclusive. However, what I said specifically in that speech is that they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive. We recognised that there are a lot of people out there making albums, and we thanked people. Just because an album sold well doesn’t mean it’s not good, but I guess a lot of people think that if something’s commercially successful, it’s bad…?

I guess every country’s industry has different issues… But, how was the local media response to your speech? In the UK at least, the mainstream media aren’t generally interested in what artists have to say – it can even be the kiss of death for a band to voice their opinion.
See, Australia’s a little bit different. There is a little bit of a tall poppy syndrome in Australia actually, so if you show yourself to be a real person that’s down to earth and aware that you’re not the bee’s knees just because you’re semi-successful, they like you for it.

So why was it important for you to deal with the Amp criticism and put it out there?
Well, I wrote that before I knew we’d won it. They said, “The Amp’s coming up tomorrow. Write an acceptance speech in case it comes out so we can send it off to whoever, so it can come out as soon as it’s announced.” And it wasn’t really that we expected it, because we were over here and we weren’t in the hype of it all…

That’s right, you were here on tour…
But I think it’s just that you hear a lot of people assuming a lot of things about you, like: “You assume you deserve it (for a start). You assume that other people don’t deserve it. You don’t know anything about the industry. You don’t know anything about all the albums that came out. You’re just a dumb musician.” – there was a LOT of that being written. The whole criticism of the award was basically tailored to the idea that: “Musicians shouldn’t be allowed to be judges anymore because this is who is getting awarded this, and only critics and industry people should be allowed to, because they actually know what music’s about.” So, musicians were getting a pretty hard rap and so were we – we were getting really criticised and everyone was saying our album was crap. Well, not EVERYONE – this was just a few angry people. So we wanted to thank people but also acknowledge that it was a hard decision and you can’t please everyone.

But you weren’t ignoring it either, because that would certainly be tempting for a lot of bands…
Well that’s easier, definitely.

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If you were talking to yourself in the early days, what nuggets of advice would you give yourself?
Hmm… Part of me would say don’t read reviews because the good ones don’t satisfy you either.

Do the bad ones prey on you?
The bad ones annoy you because they never get it [laughs]. And the good ones, they don’t get it either because they were just ready to praise you, so it’s like, “Why am I not satisfied?” And then you realise that you will never be satisfied and that’s bad. So: Don’t read reviews.

What else have you learned, apart from keeping away from reviews?
Be nice to people …except Neil – don’t be nice to Neil! [laughs]

Your tour manager?
Find the whipping boy and only be mean to that person!! [laughs] It’s ok, it’s mutual [laughs]… No, seriously…

So, seriously, is there someone you can go rage to when things get on top of you? I guess you can’t really do that within the band, because you’re all in the same boat…
We get pretty negative sometimes. I would advise people to avoid negativity, but that’s not something I do – that’s something I SAY to do. I don’t know… I talk to my manager, I just vent and he just listens and then I go, “Sorry…” And he’s like, “That’s fine, as long as you don’t tell other people these things.”

Well, you guys have definitely won our award for the nicest band around…
HAYLEY: There you go!!
SAM: We’re actually really rude!! Do you want me to be rude to you..?? [room erupts in laughter]

Well, sure, if you want it on the record…?!
Ah yeah…

So do you always get on with each other all the time?
HAYLEY: Yeah, it’s just this all the time… [laughs]
SAM: It’s mostly like this…

So, what’s the most annoying thing that’s happened when you’ve been on tour?
Well, I think that “not-sleeping night” was good… We just recently played a show in Miami which started at 1am – we drove to the airport from the show to fly to New York so we landed out at 2:30am, checked in at 4am, flew at 6am, arrived at 8 or 9am, played at 12:30 or 12:50pm… and then we did press for the rest of the day! So, I think that when you actually book a schedule where you can’t sleep, that’s not good. That was a one-off.

So another valuable piece of advice: Try and fit sleep in.
Sleep’s good because you don’t get enough anyway on tour but when you literally don’t allow for it, that’s bad. And mealtimes – because the times when you haven’t been able to eat are the worst.

Yeah, people forget that being on stage and on tour can be very physically demanding…
You need to sleep. Yeah, sleeping and eating. And, another thing I’d say but don’t do is: Exercise – because that keeps you from being miserable.

Being on tour, it must seem endless and you must lose track of time – what do you do to get a break from the craziness?
Well, you get really obsessed with Wi-Fi. Like, if there’s no Wi-Fi you get really upset. You get quite anxious. Wi-Fi is important. And you get sick of the word “Wi-Fi” so you invent codes like “wing-wong.”

What did people do in the days they didn’t have the Internet?
Well, they were rockstars and they were known as arseholes because they slept with a lot of people, remember? Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. The internet allows monogamy to exist – coexist with rock ‘n’ roll.

It’s chilled it out. Ok, so internet safety…
Well, if monogamy is saving you… but, that’s a whole new discussion…

Top tip for a lead singer?
Warm up and warm down.

Vocally?
Yeah – sleep, rest. Actually: vocal rest. I’m actually really bad at vocally resting because I’m a talkative person, but yeah… Don’t drink – don’t drink too much. Be healthy, actually.

Wow, this is like a new generation of musicians isn’t it? Where have the rock-n-roll-trashing-hotel-room days gone?
No Wi-Fi back then! No Wi-Fi, no Spotify… no… What else ends with “-fi”?

Well, you’re doing really well back at home and the buzz is very good over here this time. Plus, Shirley Manson is promoting you!
Yeah! She is, actually!

Has Shirley given you any great tips?
You know what? It comes back to the question about how important role models are… just musicians in general but females as well. You learn a lot just talking to them and just seeing a band that’s a lot further progressed – Garbage have been around for a while. And Shirley was just like, “Don’t worry about it.” And that’s what every experienced musician says: “Don’t worry about it – you’ll never be happy with what people say about you anyway, so you just have to keep doing what you’re doing…”

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<< READ PART 1 OF THIS INTERVIEW HERE >>

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PATTY SCHEMEL Interview

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In an industry where band drummers continue to be overlooked by the mainstream media and business elements, it’s nothing short of an industrial crime that very few female drummers are welcomed into the drumming hall of fame, to be remembered and referenced for generations to come, to serve as an inspiration to young aspiring musicians. For good reason, PATTY SCHEMEL is one of those select few. And the 2011 documentary “HIT SO HARD” (aptly tag-lined as “the life and near-death story of Patty Schemel”) pays homage to one of the best drummers the industry has ever experienced.

“Hit So Hard” was a story waiting to be told, and you do not have to be a HOLE fan to appreciate the impressive talents and struggles of a woman who found herself living on the edge, left with the ultimate choice between fighting for her life or being resigned to the tragic fate surely awaiting her at the time.

The feature openly explores the links between Schemel’s troubles and her chaotic lifestyle during the Hole years (1992-1997) as well as her internal conflict over her sexuality. We are given an indepth insight into Schemel’s psyche and her experiences as a woman cracking under the pressure of the mania that comes with intensive touring and recording.

We’re left with no doubt whatsoever that as a musician of very high calibre, she was just one of many, many victims of the patriarchal bullying which took place and still is known to go on in the music industry, Courtney Love herself in a press event for the documentary naming and shaming producer Michael Beinhorn (“still a nazi fuck”) as the cause of Schemel’s untimely expulsion from the band during the “Celebrity Skin” album recording. Particularly unfortunate for Schemel was Love’s compliance with the decision at the time, suggesting that there was a real manipulation of the band taking place with critical business decisions being passed through a lead singer who was notoriously temperamental, for the most part not entirely lucid, and out of the loop with the conspiring mechanisms surrounding her. Add to that Love’s state of mind following Kurt Cobain’s suicide, followed shortly by the tragic overdosing of Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff, and her concerns for Schemel’s safety in light of her worsening addictions, and the fates were already conspiring to give the band and Schemel a severe kick in the teeth.

It’s an inspiring story, as we follow Schemel’s recovery from career disaster and the depths of Skid Row homelessness all the way to her mentoring young musicians at LA ROCK N ROLL CAMP FOR GIRLS, running dog care business DOGROCKER, working with musicians including Pink, Juliette Lewis and Linda Perry, drumming for new LA band THE COLD AND LOVELY, and meeting her eventual wife Christina Soletti with whom she now has daughter. Patty Schemel is indeed one of the fortunate few – not only in terms of earning herself the status of a top-class drummer, but also in terms of saving her own life. I’m sure that she will be honoured to no longer be remembered only as “that Hole drummer” but also as a role-model to women and artists.

In the depths of the BFI Southbank building, we meet and greet Patty Schemel who is having a rare moment of chill in the Green Room. There are few people that I meet and feel a sense of awe for, but Schemel lights up the room not so much with her legendary rock presence, but rather with her smiles and grace. She has survived, she is grateful and humble for any and all support, and she’s passionate to contribute more. I sense this incredible force of energy as I shake her hand and thank her for making the time. “Hit so Hard” was at the time being screening at the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival and she couldn’t be prouder or more appreciative. As we sit down, the only thought spinning in my head is: this will be a moment I shall not forget.

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It’s an emotional experience even just to watch the documentary. But how was the filmmaking process for you? It must have brought up a lot of memories…

During the making of it, there was a lot of footage to look through and it took quite a bit of time during one summer – the summer of ‘07 – to go through everything. So, every day I would go to the director David’s house and look through everything, and describe the scenes and footage. I’d leave there every day being transported back in time and then you have to come back to reality. Some days were harder than others, depending on the content, whatever we were looking at and the story that it lead to…

What in particular did you find emotional?

I guess for me, when I’m backstage just completely numb and altered, in the throes of my addiction… those scenes were difficult. And also, there’s some footage of Courtney in the crowd at the show in Chicago when she does one of those famous stage dives…

Yeah, that was quite shocking…

Yeah, it’s very disturbing. Back then, that happened often and I guess maybe the way things were then was part of being in that punk-rock scene. But to see it now as an adult, every time I see it, it’s so disturbing and it just affects me… like, “Whoa…”

You talk very openly about your sexuality in the film. How did the music help you to come to terms with that?

When I was young, I knew I was different because I was gay, and I chose the drums which was such a masculine instrument to pick – I wanted to be a drummer, and that was my outlet for all of that confusion and anger. Punk rock was where I went to find other people like me, so having that outlet for all that confusion and those feelings was really important. Also, having my parents that were supportive of me…

Yeah, your mum seems incredibly supportive from what we see of her in the film…

Everyone loves that part in the film! But, even though she was saying, “It’s ok to be gay,” it was so tumultuous within me to talk about it and to think, “Will I ever fall in love? Will I ever get married?” – and I did.

You talk so frankly about your addiction and your recovery. That must have been very tough for your mum – how familiar was she with the issues?

She was familiar with addiction and the process. There are a lot of parts of the interview that didn’t make the final cut, where she talked about how she didn’t expect me to live through it… She’s very supportive today of course and relieved, and she helps other parents as well.

Wow, that’s very cool. In the film, you openly admit that the drugs came first with you back then. But reflecting now on those dark days, how important for you is your health, family and love?

At this point, I’m so grateful that I had my career with my band and played music and that I still play music, but the simplicity of a day at home with my family is so important, and I love a schedule – that’s what early recovery gave me, like: “Get up, have the coffee, do the dishes…” All that stuff is so important, you know… my job is to go out and walk the dogs, and then have my shows at night…

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Do you think it’s important for young people to have cultural role models? And for musicians and artists to come out if they can?

Yes! Yes! Because when I was growing up, I looked to people I talk about it in the film like Patti Smith, Klaus Nomi, David Bowie and Boy George, who were playing with gender, and those were the people I was drawn to. I needed to know that there were others out there, and to find those other people like me – and these people were cool! And so today, when I talk about being gay, it doesn’t identify me 100 %, but it’s a part of me.

How does it feel now being referred as an icon or a musician role model?

Yeah… it’s uncomfortable… just simply put!

It’s not what you went out of your way to achieve…

No, no, no!

How important do you think it is for artists to be open about addiction and to help other artists?

I give back to another group called Musicians Assistance Program that fundraises for other musicians that don’t necessarily have funds to get in to treatment. I think it’s important to show that you can survive drugs and alcoholism in your chosen career, that you can survive through and continue to be a musician in that environment.

Talking about “giving back” to the music community, how important is it for those who have been through the industry to mentor young women and warn them of the traps?

Extremely important. For me, what it does is it brings me back to the beginning when I started to play drums and reminds me to stay grateful for what it gave me – it took me around the world and provided me a sort of focus and release, and introduced me to a whole new world of people and music. And what I’ve been doing with the girls rock camp (www.rockcampforgirlsla.org) is to share that with girls that are beginning to play. Mentoring them with other girls shows them that it’s about playing music, but it’s also about communicating with other women and that shared excitement about creating together – it’s about networking.

So what we do is we give them the opportunity to get to know each other and ask them, “What would you like to do in your band?” and they sort of find each other in that. One girl might say, “I’d like to write a song about skateboarding” and another says, “Me too!” They silkscreen their own t-shirts, make their own fanzines and come up with their own identity as a group.

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How has the process of being in a band changed for girls since your day?

In the ‘90s when we were playing, touring and just starting out, everyone had their fanzine – it was about touring and passing out your fanzine, mail order, PO boxes… Nowadays, it’s online, so everyone communicates on Tumblr or they write on Facebook: “Hey, I’m looking for a girl guitarist who’s into Siouxsie and the Banshees.” You can find people that way, or you can create your music online with other people and then put it out, never even needing to be in the same room. So, in a way, the Internet provides a great avenue for girls to find each other.

But face-to-face interaction is definitely important…

It is! It’s important for the girls to see each other, even down to what kind of style they’re wearing, like “Those boots are cool…”

After all your experiences, what advice would you give to musicians inspired by you?

Oh, that’s tough… If I could tell myself back then, I would say: Practise more – definitely! And really try and experience everything that comes your way – really experience it, don’t forget the special stuff, and be grateful.

And stand up to pushy producers?

Yeah! Don’t be a doormat!

 

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THE JEZABELS – PART 1 Interview

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I first met The Jezabels back in February at the legendary KOKO venue in London, as part of the NME Tour. Although there hadn’t been much hype about the band in the UK, I was personally excited to finally meet this Sydney band renowned for their intense onstage energy, emotive drumbeats and steely lyrics. Their 2011 debut album Prisoner was successfully launched in Australia to huge local media acclaim, and has since been certified Gold to date, earning the band the 2011 Australian Music Prize.

On 22 February 2012, The Jezabels blew the stage at KOKO, proving themselves to be one of the tightest and most entertaining bands on the international circuit (small wonder that they went on to support the likes of Garbage in anticipation of a Skunk Anansie support slot later in the year). The crowd’s delight was tangible as clumps of Jezabels fans bobbed up and down in the packed out venue. The Jezabels had landed and they weren’t leaving London without a massive bang! In tracking the band, we have found them to be some of the most gracious and down-to-earth artists, each one blessed with brilliant talent, poise and humility. They are a band with something to say, and say it they do through their trademark pounding sounds and hard-hitting lyrics. To my bewilderment, the band is still struggling to win the hearts of the British mainstream media and public, but if the opinions of Shirley Manson and Skin are anything to go by, it’s surely just a matter of time…

Holed up backstage at KOKO, in what has to be one of the best equipped green rooms in town (piano, sofa, TV, foosball table room, actual floor space), I meet and greet 3/4 of the band that is Heather Shannon (keys), Nik Kaloper (drums) and Sam Lockwood (guitar). Shuffled into the tiny-room-within-a-room, huddled around the foosball table, the three charming (and incredibly tall) Jezabels talk to me about commitment, gender equality, and erm… channelling Philip Seymour Hoffman.

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How did you get into music?
NIK KALOPER: When I was about 5, my mum noticed I was just always tapping on everything, so she found some pizza boxes in the trash and gave me a pair of drumsticks, so I could just hit them mercilessly all the time.

Was this a distraction technique of some kind, to stop you hitting the furniture maybe?
NIK: Maybe… We couldn’t afford a drum kit, so just used pizza boxes. That’s like the earliest musical memory I have. When I was 15, I started listening to bands and was really liking music as something to really sink your teeth into, not just as a form of entertainment like anything else. I can’t remember why or exactly how it started at all – it just felt buried in the back of my head.

But when did you start taking it seriously?
NIK: Well, considering the first band I was in was called “Power Flame,” I don’t think I was taking it seriously. But I knew I wanted to be in a band, just to practise being on stage or drumming with other people playing instruments. I guess I was about 19 at that time.

Where did you grow up?
NIK: In California and I moved out to Sydney when I was 15. I lived about the last 12 years in Sydney.

What about you, Sam?
SAM LOCKWOOD: Well, mum forced me to play the piano when I was younger…

It’s always the mums…
SAM: Yeah, it is! I really hated playing the piano at the start, but my mum forced me to and I got to a certain competence in piano. Then I got a guitar for my 15th birthday and since then I really liked guitar. I had a really cool guitar teacher up the road – I’d walk there and he taught me how to play blues and folk music. I always thought that I’d be a musician backing a folk singer, that’s what I used to dream about… I did that for a while in Sydney before The Jezabels but it was actually really fun to play with The Jezabels, so I kept doing that.

And you, Heather?
HEATHER SHANNON: Hayley and I knew each other at school and we used to play little folk songs and stuff on the acoustic guitar. I have been playing piano since I was about 4 doing classical music – I think my grandmother introduced me to the piano…

She was a pianist?
HEATHER: Not particularly – she just liked classical music. So I started learning and I’ve always practised a lot – I’ve played a lot of piano in my life.

Piano is one of those instruments, isn’t it, where if you want to do well in it you have to really keep it going…
HEATHER: Yeah. I went to the conservatorium and I was doing hours a day practicing so I was taking it seriously. It’s always been something that I wanted to do, so I just knew I’d have to put a lot of time and effort into it. And I just fell into playing in a band somehow…

How did you exactly “fall into” this?
HEATHER: You can’t really “plan” this…
SAM: I think the ones that “plan for” it are the tragics… it always happens like this in life: you perform a show, it works for some reason, the manager’s there and they pick you up, and from then on it’s serendipity…
HEATHER: I think when we all first started playing together, we knew we had something that was original. I think we could hear that…
SAM: Yeah.

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A lot of journalists struggle to box your sound and I read somewhere that you called yourselves “gothic pop”?
HEATHER: Yeah, Sam actually made up that word and wrote it on our Facebook page.
SAM: That was like years ago!
HEATHER: It comes up quite often in interviews.

People quote it?
SAM: Yeah.
HEATHER: It sort of just started out as a joke, but then we thought, ”Oh, that’s kind of cool!”

So, Heather, did The Jezabels’ sound start off with you and Hayley?
HEATHER: No, I wouldn’t say the sound started then, but we started the “dream.”

Was that just two girls saying, “We can do it!”?
HEATHER: Yeah, it was totally like that! And we ended up moving to Sydney. We would just spend every weekend after uni trying to find gigs anywhere. We’d find a pub, but they’d be like, “There used to be a stage here but now it’s full of Coke machines, sorry…” We just couldn’t find gigs anywhere. Eventually, we found a couple and played some open mic nights. We just wanted to challenge ourselves and keep playing stuff. And then we met Nik and Sam so we could do the proper full band thing and start playing indie nights and stuff.

So, was there any moment where you thought, “This is a bit crazy actually, what are we doing?”
SAM: It was just a really serious hobby for like 2 years… We spent a lot of time gigging around Sydney when we got together. You can manage a normal life still doing that – you can work and go to uni. But when it started becoming very time consuming going round Australia, that’s when I thought, “Yeah, we can’t do this…”
HEATHER: Yeah we were at uni, working and touring…
NIK: There was about a year in all our lives where we thought we were going to lose it…
HEATHER: Yeah, we had a few breakdowns.
NIK: Yeah…

So, what happened in the rough times – Did you just pick each other up?
HEATHER: Yeah, a little bit – there’s support between us. But I think we also saw more people coming to the gigs each time – it was steadily growing.
NIK: Yeah, there was always that sort of carrot on the stick. We started thinking, “Oh wow, maybe we can try and do that and see what happens…”
HEATHER: Then we’d write another song and think it’s better than our last one, and it just keeps going.

Your songs are very catchy but also darkly romantic in a lot of ways. Who’s the main thrust behind the energy and themes of the songs?
NIK: Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

You channel Phillip Seymour Hoffman…?!
NIK: I channel him to drum.
SAM: Which movie?
NIK: Er, Capote…

He’s your main inspiration, is he…?
NIK: For most things, yeah… [band falls about laughing] No, I’m just being a weirdo right now, I’m sorry…
SAM: I like to see us as collaborators when we write because we just get together and write everything together. But I’d say if there was one person who you could say constructs our sounds for most of our previous recordings, it’d be our producer. We all come together and write songs but he…
HEATHER: …he exaggerates us.
SAM: Yeah, he exaggerates what we do and he can communicate really clearly.
HEATHER: He’s a good facilitator for the 4 of us.

So it’s good to have someone outside of your own creative processes?
SAM: Producers are so underrated in the whole recording process. If you really like a CD and you like the artist, but then they go to another producer, you might not like that artist any more.
NIK: And not only that, but that song could have come out a hundred different ways with a hundred different producers.
SAM: Exactly.
NIK: I mean, you have chord charts and drumbeats on a piece of paper, all the sounds, the sonic landscape that ends up with the signature of that producer at the end of that day…

It’s true – but producers are getting a little more credit now…
SAM: They are, these days. I think that back in the day it was like smoke and mirrors – like some Wizard of Oz behind the scenes…

Your tracks have great balance and it’s been pointed out that your sound and stage performances are very gender-neutral…
HEATHER: Ah, that’s cool! That’s a nice thing to say.

Is that purely accidental?
SAM: Well, it’s something we can all agree on, because we’re all sort of, not politically-minded, but we like talking about issues and that’s the one issue that we all agree on or we all get frustrated by.

So what kind of frustrations are we talking about?
HEATHER: Gender equality.
SAM: Feminism. Because we’ve got 2 girls and 2 boys, it’s a good thing to talk about.
HEATHER: And questions come up. Like this morning when I was doing an interview, I was asked, “Because there are 2 boys and 2 girls, do you guys argue a lot?” And I was like, “Well, we do argue but it’s not because we’re 2 boys and 2 girls…”
SAM: It’s because we’re 4 people!
NIK: It’s because we’re 4 strange people!!

You probably have a lot of other music-related stresses which are way more important…
HEATHER: Yeah!

So Heather, have you ever experienced any negative treatment from the industry or the media in terms of being a female member of the band?
HEATHER: I think Hayley’s probably really different to me actually, but I only notice really small things but not even so much anymore. I think we’ve been really lucky to work with really open-minded people and I’ve never felt like I’ve been treated that differently. But I guess at the start, it was challenging even just in my own mind. It was when we first all got together, when we were in shitty bars and trying to play shows and a guy wouldn’t give me information because I was a girl.

A promoter?
HEATHER: Yeah.

So there is that element of maybe not being taken seriously?
HEATHER: Yeah, just a little bit. And it’s only happened a few times. I really like being a woman behind an instrument — If I say it myself, I really admire that. I can be pretty gender neutral, right?

You’re kind of an enigma in that sense…
SAM: Yeah, I think there are a lot of bands where they have the one female… token females, really…
HEATHER: Yeah, and it seems like it’s artificial. But I feel like with us it’s different because we’ve got equal parts.
NIK: But it’s not like there was any affirmative action at any point: we didn’t fire the third male to get a second female. It feels great that it did end up working out that way.

And a lot of female-fronted bands are actually doing really well…
HEATHER: Yeah, totally! Seems like there’s a movement.

Do you notice any difference between the crowds in Australia and in other countries?
NIK: I struggle with this question because I don’t notice huge differences in crowd energy or crowds. It’s only small, peculiar things, nothing sweeping. Like, Germans seem to be very happy to give you criticism, actually. [laughs]
HEATHER: Yeah!
NIK: They’ll have the biggest smile on their face when they say it, but they’re just letting you know how they felt about it…
SAM: …“The third song didn’t sound too good tonight. But I really like the fourth song.”
HEATHER: They’re very honest.
NIK: When I look out into the crowd from the stage, I would never have any clue what country I was in, based on what I experience just on stage.
HEATHER: Actually, even within Australia if you compare playing a show in Sydney to Melbourne, the Melbourne crowds always seem to just sit back and watch, and London’s a bit like that too.

They’re a bit like, “Impress me!”
HEATHER: Yeah!

You are one of the tightest bands out there – Is that because you’re on the same wavelength not just with the music, but also in other areas?
HEATHER: Yeah, I think that came first actually because we sucked when we first started playing together. It took heaps of practice, writing and stuff to get where we are today. And I think the reason we kept going is because we got along as friends and hung out. We used to just practise really leisurely, have a few beers and talk about stuff.
NIK: I find it peculiar. It doesn’t feel like a sibling thing or a romantic relationship or a friendship, it’s a weird type of relationship.
SAM: It’s very weird.
HEATHER: Spiritual…
SAM: I’d say it’s just below actually dating someone, because you have an intimacy with your partner. But with us, we’re always together and that’s the thing you have to get past. We share a lot of time together, go through stressful situations together – It’s like you’re in an army platoon.
NIK: Exactly!
HEATHER: You know what everyone’s farts smell like!

It’s about having a common goal?
SAM: Totally.

Has it been easy to get a balance between private life and band priorities, or is that something you think needs to be learned by musicians over time?
NIK: I think your balance will affect how far you get.
SAM: Yeah, you have to decide 100% band or relationship…
NIK: I mean, 100% band would probably make you go insane, so maybe give yourself that 3 or 4 percent the rest of the time!
SAM: 96% is the formula for success!

Do you think the commitment issue is the main reason why bands don’t work out?
SAM: It is, totally.
HEATHER: I’ve played with cover bands and stuff, and I just remember I’d take any opportunity that I could just to get experience, and I’d play in pubs and markets and stuff. I used to hate it and I was like, “Why would anyone play in a band that sucks? It’s boring.” I didn’t get it. It was because I didn’t get along with the people in the band, and they didn’t challenge me.

So it’s important to challenge each other?
HEATHER: Yeah, musically you have to challenge each other, to keep each other interested.

So how are you feeling about promoting your debut album Prisoner over here?
SAM: We’ve had a pretty successful run in Australia so I feel happy for it to be out and it’s finally coming out.
NIK: Well, it’s too late to even change anything. You can get pretty fatalistic about it. Everything up until we got it mastered was deliberating and worrying and stressing, and after that you just make it as accessible as possible so if people have an opportunity to listen to it, they’re either going to like it or hate it.

It’s been pretty successful back home.
HEATHER: Yeah it’s done really well.

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So, summarizing everything you’ve just told me in terms of what you’ve gone through and where you’re at now, what advice would you give to yourself 10 years ago or to musicians who want to do what you do?
HEATHER: Practise a shitload.
NIK: Yeah, practise, practise, practise. And I can’t help but think sometimes that there’s an element of timing and luck in all this as well. Half the problem would be finding 4 people who have the same musical ambitions as each other and if you don’t find that, you just don’t find it, no matter how good you are at playing music. So the fact that the 4 of us found each other and we all just, for some reason, knew that we were going to put the band first, that’s just a luck thing and timing.
HEATHER: Also, we’re all from very different backgrounds and we like lots of different music and I think that’s why it works for us. So I’d say: Don’t limit yourself.
NIK: Yeah: Put yourself out there as much as possible. I couldn’t think of 4 people with more different tastes.

What music are you all into then?
HEATHER: I’d probably say Eastern European classical music.
SAM: I like folk music but not pop-folk music. I like traditional Irish folk music or country music from America, but not Gillian Welch and people like that…

I feel like you’re going to say something completely wild, Nik…
NIK: No, it’s not that weird…. It’s just mainly… Hungarian indie pop… No! I’m stuck in the late 90s: American alternative music, post-grunge and a lot of metal: really rough stuff like Cattle Decapitation and Agoraphobic Nosebleed…
HEATHER: And then Hayley loves divas from the 80s. She loves Abba and Queen, really theatrical stuff.
SAM: So it’s basically North, South, East, West…
NIK: There’s no reason that the 4 of us should have been able to make a song!
SAM: But, it’s about the people rather than what they’re into.
HEATHER: Totally!
NIK: My drumming motto from my last band was: Play as much as you can, always. And learn from good people, no matter what their musical taste is.
HEATHER: I’ve totally undone a lot of my classical training as well because I just felt like, “I can’t make things up?! But I need to read it on a piece of paper!” and then slowly…
SAM: …Heather’s going to be a late bloomer! She’ll end up making like 50 albums a week…

So are you feeling positive about the future?
SAM: Yeah, I think we’re all on the same page now where we all just want to tour the world and keep making music. And I think we’re at the stage now where it’s starting to become a possibility, but we still have to get through this period. I think another reason we’re so okay with being together and doing what we’re doing is that we’re not too desperate about it. We see the world as a place where what we’re doing is very awesome but…
HEATHER: …this could all be over in the next month.
NIK: Totally!
SAM: Yeah. I’ve always said this but I’m totally happy to go back to being an English teacher, which I was.
NIK: I wanted to be a science teacher.
SAM: I’d obviously miss the travelling but I’ve been trying to maintain that headspace where if it all ends tomorrow we’ve had a really good run.

You really enjoy what you’re doing, but a lot of bands these days feel pressure to produce and don’t enjoy it…
SAM: Yeah, it’s understandable.
HEATHER: It can get like that sometimes, it’s so overwhelming…
NIK: It’s hard, you walk a tightrope. If you pay no attention to the business considerations of your band you won’t have enough money to go on tour. And if you spend all that time thinking about such things then you’re not really going to write decent music if you’re only focused on charts and stuff.
SAM: That’s why our manager’s good.
NIK: Yeah, our manager’s incredible with everything he does.
SAM: That’s another reason we’re successful at all: because of him. Another message for people who want to get into this is to find people who fit what they do.

Yeah: try to avoid that kiss of death from a commercial manager who doesn’t really care about you…
SAM: That happens a lot.

Thanks very much for the interview, guys!
NIK: That was a really great interview!

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AUSTRA – PART 1 Interview

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Austra is one of the most enigmatic under-the-radar bands to gather a loyal international following. Hailing from Toronto, they deliver the most spellbinding performances with beautiful vocal harmonies and a slick onstage synchronicity that would put many a commercial band to shame. Pushing the dark electro mood, their down-to-earth approach and distinctive style has made them incredibly popular with fans and has set Austra in a class all of their own. Hypnotizing crowds, they pick you up and entice you along, leaving you high and wanting more. An Austra gig is like taking a “good drug” – and once will never be enough.

Lead singer KATIE STELMANIS has long been working with drummer Maya Postepski of Princess Century and Trust fame, joined by bassist Dorian Wolf, backing singer sisters Sari and Romy Lightman of band Tasseomancy, and keyboardist Ryan Wonsiak, making up this impressive now 6-piece band.

The band’s stunning debut album Feel It Break (featuring Beat And The Pulse, Lose It, The Choke, Hate Crime) was shortlisted for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize, and a highly-anticipated second album is in the pipeline.

We had a brief chat with singer Katie backstage at The Deaf Institute in Manchester, where she talked about the band, Toronto and “trying” to be a freak…

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So Katie, you had a bit of a rough ride getting to Manchester this time?
Oh, it’s just there’s only one ferry a day basically from Dublin to here so we had one option and we were just running late, but it’s okay!

Austra’s really on the up and up and this year’s been a very busy year for you guys. What’s been the highlight for you so far?
I think the most exciting moment for us was we’d just put out our record and we flew to Europe and the first show that we played was in Berlin. We’d never really had people come out to our shows and want to see us play, but I guess when you put a record out, people know about you. We played in Berlin and were supposed to play in a venue for like 200 people but we got bumped up and ended up playing for like 800 people – we were so nervous that we almost threw up before we played!

Germany really seems the place to go if you want a following, especially in electro music.
Totally! Germany’s fucking great – it’s awesome.

I read that you felt Austra had successfully avoided falling into the stereotypes of a “gay” or “female-fronted” band. How did you manage to dodge that bullet?
I think that there are a lot of reasons. I think that firstly, we’re just not coming from a place where the main focus is to focus on sexual identity or any of these things, because we’re not writing about it. I mean, we all personally have our own politics about it, our own beliefs about it – we talk about it openly. But, I just think we’re not originally from a place of wanting to make a statement through music, necessarily. And also, I think it’s significant that most of the women in the band aren’t very visibly gay as well, like someone like JD Samson for example – that’s her thing, you know? She’s got the look, she’s got the butch vibe – and we don’t, so a lot of people don’t know, I think.

I guess what you’re saying is that it’s not an issue, but nor are you hiding it – it’s just the way it is. You do seem to have a large gay following though?
Yeah! That’s the thing – all the people that know are the gays! It’s like, the other ones may not know, but most of the gays know about us…

Yeah, we first heard about Austra from a male gay friend who runs an electro night in London…
There you go!

The band does have a strong female presence and vibe. Is that something you planned from the get-go or did it just evolve that way?
I think it just happened naturally. Like my drummer Maya and I have been playing together for a really long time – she’s the only drummer I’ve ever worked with! And then I have two backing vocalists and they’re women because all my vocal parts are female parts, so it just makes sense to have girls sing them. Yeah, so it just kind of happened like that and most of my friends happen to be girls…

Do you think it’s a good time for female musicians at the moment?
I definitely think it’s a very good time for it. I mean, even now compared to 5 years ago – it’s like people are just really into female-fronted bands. I mean, everything from Bat For Lashes, La Roux, Florence and the Machine, Zola Jesus… All these acts are very prominent right now – it’s a good thing.

Talking about which, the band Kool Thing who supported you tonight were fantastic!
Yeah, they’re awesome!

They just told us that they basically asked to go on tour with you when they met you in Berlin…
Yeah! They opened for us in Berlin and we loved their set – they’ve just been touring with us ever since.

So, any exciting developments for Austra in the coming year?
We’re pretty much just on the road until at least 2012, and then after that I don’t know…

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You’re from Toronto which has a great reputation these days for electro music. How was it to grow up in such a creative, cosmopolitan city?
Toronto’s a really open city. Until I was about 18 or 19, I pretty much just believed that homophobia didn’t even exist anymore. I was just like, “That’s a thing of the past – it’s great now!” I wasn’t out as gay at the time but that was just my belief on the subject. It was just very normal, very accepted in the community where I grew up.

And now you’re touring and seeing so many other cities, does it make you appreciate that openness all the more?
Oh yeah, big time!

Where has surprised you as being much less open, for example?
Kind of everywhere. To be honest, except for maybe a handful of cities, I’ve never been anywhere that has as much visibility as Toronto does, for sure. Toronto’s a very, very open city.

Have you had a chance to check out Manchester?
No – we’re always here only for 24 hours or something…

Oh that’s a shame…
Yeah, we always miss out…!

Finally, based on your own experience, do you have any advice for artists who want to do what you do, especially as the front person?
I would say: Never hold back!

Is that what you do?
I think so – I think you just have to not be afraid of being like the freak and just go with it…

Did you always feel like that?
For a long time…

And you don’t feel like that so much anymore?
Well, I feel like we TRY and be like a freak. I don’t think anyone wants to see something that’s easily digestible: you have to make it a little bit different.

Well, you’re definitely doing something different – and exciting!
Yeah!

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