By Darren Grayer. Pictures: Sandra Ebert.
Art-rock four piece Modern Woman, fronted by primary songwriter Sophie Harris, will be one of the must- see acts at Southampton’s excellent Wanderlust Festival in May.
The band are set to release their debut album, Johnny’s Dreamworld on May 1st via One Little Independent Records.
Initially starting out as Sophie Harris’ intimate songwriting project, Modern Woman are now a fully fledged band that mix avant-garde innovation with a highly captivating mix of post-punk, folk and whimsical psychedelia that centres around Harris’ remarkable and expansive vocals.
Johnney’s Dreamworld features nine tracks that draw the listener in with a collage of sound, arrangements and lyrical themes that shift from gentle acoustic and string laden beauty to explosive feedback drenched alternative rock that literally pins you to the wall, at times, all in the blink of an eye.
It looks set to be an exciting time for the band, with live dates through the spring and summer – as well as appearing at Wanderlust, they are also at Green Man and End Of The Road festivals. With that in mind I jumped at the chance to catch up with Sophie Harris and get some insight into Modern Woman’s background.
I began by asking Sophie about the early incarnation of the band and the journey it’s taken to get to the stage where the debut album can be released.
“We’ve been going for a fair time, and it kind of began because I’d just started writing music and I didn’t have anyone to play it with. I hadn’t really met anyone yet, you know, the right person or right people for the band.
“I started playing the songs live and slowly met various people until I got to the point where the current band just suddenly clicked, so we decided to record and eventually make the album.
“Once we’d finished it, we got signed to a label, One Little Independent, who are going to release it. But, yes, it was a long process, we obviously had to write a lot of songs and then record them. Domino Studios let us go in and record some demos and that’s how me met Joel Burton, who was the in-house engineer. He really understood the music, so we asked him to record the whole record, basically. It still took a while, as we couldn’t go in every day, as we were all working, so we had to do it in stages”.
As I’ve already touched on, the album is a very captivating listen. I put it to Sophie that it’s definitely a record best played loud, as you then get to fully appreciate the arrangements, something she was in full agreement with. There is a quiet/loud theme that frequently has the listener totally engrossed in its tranquillity one minute before blowing you away in its explosivity the next. Songs such as Killing A Dog start off with tenderly picked acoustic guitar and violin before building into an absolute frenzy of pounding drums and screeching guitars. I asked Sophie if this was something she deliberately set out to do?
“Definitely, I think I see it as kind of theatrical a little bit. I’m not into theatrical music, but it’s like, interesting to me. It’s interesting to play and feel as well when you’re writing certain lyrics you want to be able to express them in a certain way, whether it’s with the music or vocally. It’s something that just naturally happened.
“I really like the idea of this sort of delicacy and the idea of this heavy ‘gratiness’, and I like the fact that as a woman you can kind of do both.
“I like to try and express that through my vocals and lyrics, and that in itself, I would say was a conscious thing. Then when the band formed and we started playing songs together that quiet/loud sort of thing came quite naturally because of their interests in music and what makes them excited. We matched in that sense, and I think a lot of great music does the same approach. Songs like (latest single) Daniel are ones that I was conscious of not relying on it too much, but in the heavier songs it was definitely a conscious thing to do”.
I was intrigued where that had originated from and asked Sophie about the things that she felt had influenced her and what had she listened to in her formative years.
“I listened to so much stuff, and I find it tricky when people ask that because I don’t think there are set influences that influenced the record, but I think that we’ve all listened to a lot of stuff to the point where I would hope some of that does come out.
“I grew up listening to the White Stripes and, actually, a lot of country because my grandad, who taught me a bit of guitar, was very much into country music, and I used to stay with him in the summers.
“I was never interested in music until I got to 12 or 13. I know kids really get into their music but it sort of passed me until I got into my teens and then I really got into it, obsessively, and that was in part because my grandad would play something in the background, and I’d hear this music without fully paying attention because it was always there, but then he would teach me pieces by people like John Prine and Bobby Gentry. And then my parents, well my mum would say herself she’s not that interested in music, but she’s very creative in her own way, and my dad was very into disco, which is something I’ve never got into, but he loves a lot of new music and electronica. He introduced me to Bjork, so it’s been a bit of a patchwork, with some of it being my own discovery.
“When I was in my late teens I got into Cat Power and the Velvet Underground, Tom Waites and people like that, and then as I got older, I was introduced to more current bands like Girl Band, now Gilla Band. I then got into Kate Bush quite late and the Cocteau Twins, so that maybe fed into the record a bit, I’m not sure,” she chuckles.
Johnny’s Dream is certainly centred around Sophie’s vocals, which have an amazing ability to go from Aldous Harding-type sereness to the type of riot girl vociferating of Corin Tucker ( Sleater-Kinney) or even Courtney Love. The influence of Kate Bush is never far away either.
The songwriting on the album is steeped in literary detail and filmic atmosphere and draws fascination with the dark underbelly of the everyday and the contradictions of womanhood. I asked Sophie where the inspiration for those themes comes from.
“Again, it’s tricky, I think I have this habit of trying to be as genuine as possible, and more recently I’m trying to express myself in the most genuine way and I don’t know if that’s the most important thing.
“I’ve gone through different phases of trying to write different kinds of songs a little bit, just because the music sometimes makes me fall naturally in that direction. It’s only since we’ve been working on this record that we’ve developed what could be a certain sound. I have a process of writing that I’d be quite nervous to change now, and I think that mainly relies on the genuine thing and going in the feeling of what the song wants to go in rather than forcing it in another direction.
“The person who made me realise that was Leonard Cohen, because he is just the best at writing lyrics, he’s incredible! Every time I listen to him, I’m so impressed with the way he approaches lyrics. A lot of that is in his ability to be genuine.
“The album is a build up of a lot of songs from the last ten years of writing songs and I’d hope that going forward I can try and home in on that a little more.
“In terms of vocally, there’s people that I’m impressed by that I assume then comes through in the way that I write melodies. Sinead O ‘Connor was a big influence to me, but I’ve never sat down and tried to recreate her voice, but again, I’m just consistently impressed by way she performs. Her ability to move through a song and give emphasis in certain areas of the song, and I listen to the music, and I’m still bowled over by how incredible she is.
“I was actually lucky enough to see her once, and it was so influential because you could see the way she moved the mic to and from her mouth to be able to express things in a different way.”
That led to me recalling the time I too was fortunate to see Sinead O’Connor on her first visit to Southampton in December 1987. As support to Aussie rockers INXS, who were on the verge of global stardom with their frontman, Michael Hutchence rapidly becoming a household name. O’Connor had just released her debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, and in her band that night were a certain Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce, rhythm section from the recently split Smiths. Some night, as I recall, but not wishing to digress, I wanted to ask Sophie about some of the arrangements on Johnnie’s Dream, and particularly songs like Dashboard Mary, which has all the elements already mentioned- gentle keyboard opening with beautiful vocals and a sound that kicks in at 58 seconds that makes you feel like drifting away in a technicolour dreamland before absolutely exploding into white noise and feedback. “That’s Joel Burton actually, and the incredible sound that he added are synth flutes. It’s an Arpège synth flute that he just came in one day and was like I was messing around last night and I thought this would work. He’s so good and so young, I mean I really hope he continues to do production, because he could go in any direction. He’s one of those geniuses that could become a musician, he’s so clever and so good at amplifying a song like that. I’d never have thought of putting that on.”
And what about the noisier elements in songs, or is that more input from the band?
“Yes, it’s the band as well, we have a real interest in that, although Joel will have contributed as well. The end of Dashboard Mary, that has always been how we’ve approached that part of the song, but Joel definitely got us to play rawer, in terms of keeping the energy within the song and recording it live but getting us to go back in again, and again to make sure it was right”.
At that point we were nearly out of time and Sophie politely suggested that she has a tendency to talk a lot, to which I replied I was grateful, as it would hopefully give me some good content to work with!
Johnnie’s Dream is released on May 1st and you can catch Modern Woman at Wanderlust Festival in Southampton on May 23rd.
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