Hello one and all, and welcome to a special post on This Does Not Make Me A Journalist - an interview with Louise from the band Wartime Sweethearts. And not only that, some free MP3s! Wartime Sweethearts were responsible for one of my top 10 albums of 2010, Pancake Orion, which blew my mind a little with its giddy chaos and general brilliance. Louise was nice enough to answer a few questions for us which are located just about here...
TDMMAJ: Firstly, why and how did you get started with making music?
LOUISE: Hmmm, I suppose I started singing when I was 5, because I was often complimented on my voice in preschool. A couple of years later I started recording onto cassette tapes in my bedroom, trying to layer my voice for a choir effect - it got really distorted but was still kind of exhilarating, and if you half depressed the pause button while playing it you got a badass chipmunk version in double time. My family (particularly dad) were really encouraging and they're all very musical. My dad, my sister and I got lessons together in various instruments. I chose keys and started writing my own songs on them when I was 10... I think they were all instrumentals in C minor on a harpsichord synth sound.
What's the significance of the name Wartime Sweethearts?
When I was conjuring up some band name inspiration a sepia photo of my great Aunty Betty was gazing at me from my desk - it seemed like the kind of photo you would take to war with you and refer to now and then to draw strength from before battle. Not that I support war. But I really liked the idea of a bandname that carried a whiff of a romantic story. It was that or "Bird Atlas"....whew.
A good choice I think! Who else is in the band and how did the current formation come together?
It's still a little up in the air, but my sister Kirsten is playing drums and singing harmonies, a lovely dude by the name of Bryce Kerr plays bass and my housemate Angus Cornwell sings awesome baritone harmonies and sometimes plays cello. My bf Wyatt Moss-Wellington was playing guitar and singing with us but he's taking the year off gigging so I'm looking around for a new guitarist as we speak. He'll be super hard to replace... Resisting urge to refer to his "magic hands".
Keep it clean! Your debut album Pancake Orion seems to cover a lot of ground musically, was it a conscious decision to make a record with a very varied sound?
Hmmm, no! I was trying to reign my tastes into something a little more matchy matchy. Damn. Next time perhaps.
What are Wartime Sweethearts' live shows like, both for yourselves and the audience?
For us they're usually a mixture of wootiness and stress. The stress comes from my decision to almost always include a fresh song that was written last minute... but that I like too much to exclude. My bandmates are generally good at putting up with my neuroticism over these things. Having a "omg-shit-a-brick-this-is-
Who and what would you say are your main influences? (Not necessarily musical acts if there are other things that influence you!)
Haha I trust you're referring to the "moths" on our myspace. (On the band's myspace page Moths are listed as an influence) I guess I put there because I get influenced by visual things a lot, and I was enjoying a lot of brown, mothy autumnal colours and patterns at the time. I like the idea of trying to express very visual things with sound. I'd like to play with that connection more in the future. I grew up loving Sega megadrive game music and Disney, but I was probably more heavily influenced by Jeff Buckley and Radiohead who catered to my escapist whims during my late teens.
Which musicians/bands are you really into at the moment? Are there any new acts you think we should be looking out for?
In the last couple of years I've been enjoying St Vincent and the Dirty Projectors - I think they're amazing. Here in Sydney my bf Wyatt Moss-Wellington plays a radically mean tune and Brian Campeau does some magnificent stuff too.
If you could invite 5 people, living or dead, round for dinner and to hang out with, who would they be?
1. Stephen Hawking 2. Geoffrey Rush 3. Richard Feynman 4. Jeff Buckley 5. Julie Andrews. Wouldn't it be cool to jam with the latter two? Though I'm sure Hawking could lend something saucy to the mix.
Most definitely! What was the first song you fell in love with? And the first album?
Either "Wind in the Willows" by Judy Collins or perhaps something from Mary Poppins. I also loooved the Monster Mash when I was 8, but my first purchase was Ace of Base - Happy Nation after hearing "All That She Wants" on the radio.
What does the future hold for you?
The immediate future holds the last year of my Graduate Diploma in Psychology then hopefully Honours - but I'm looking forward to a little gigging this year, and would really love to record another album soon when time and money permits. Pancake Orion stirred up so many other ideas that are starting to bloat my brain
One final question - When you sing "She keeps coming back like a bad boomerang" what do you mean? Surely a boomerang that comes back is a good boomerang?! Or am I missing the point...?
Bah! You're clearly off the chart there Chris. If you look at the context her "badness" was evident in the earlier lyrics, and the boomerang refers to the cyclical nature of her problematic relationships with men. They're probably some of my crueller lyrics - I don't like the idea of bad people - just bad behaviour. But that was too many syllables. Just sayin'!
Well, that's me put in my place! So I'll retreat with my tail between my legs and see you back here tomorrow with another edition of 3-4-FREE! Take care!
You can find Wartime Sweethearts at www.myspace.com/wartimesweethearts and www.wartimesweethearts.bandcamp.com, where you can listen to the whole of Pancake Orion for free.
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