Interview: Pale Honey

Gothenburg alternative duo Pale Honey returned to London on Tuesday night to play a free gig at Old Blue Last in celebration of the release of their second album, Devotion, and they disarmed the crowd with their modest, melodic sounds.

I had the pleasure of meeting Tuva (vocals/guitar) and Nelly (drums) backstage before the show, where we sat down to talk about devoted fans, their favourite tracks from their new record, and highlights from their current European tour…

How are you feeling about tonight’s gig?

Nelly: I think there’s going to be lots of people.

Tuva: Me too, I hope so.

Nelly: We have some friends coming and some people we’ve emailed with for a very long time who we’ll meet for the very first time – so that’s exciting!

Tuva: And a guy who came to see us in Malmo in Sweden last Friday, who actually lives here in London, but he didn’t know we were playing this gig so he flew all the way out to see us!

That’s true dedication. You’ve just played shows in Iceland & Sweden. What were the highlights from these gigs?

N: I liked all the drinks that we got – well – that I took…

‘Got’, ‘took’, ‘stole’ – I mean, what’s the difference?

N: Yeah, it doesn’t matter. ‘Tomato – Tomahto’ (laughs). I’m surprised that so many people came to the shows actually.

T: I think the highlights have been that people are singing along to the songs when we’re playing and some people even play air drums!

N: Yeah! here was one lady standing in the front row playing air drums and I was like “you go girl! I see you!”

That’s a genuine level of fandom! You recently released your second album Devotion. Can you tell us how it differs from your 2015 self-titled debut record?

N: Our debut album had songs on that we wrote when we’d just met, so there’s some really old songs and lyrics on them. We didn’t really have the courage back then to change anything. We didn’t want to change or touch anything.

T: We got signed on that album based on those songs, so we thought we couldn’t change them because this is what fans and our label like, you know?

N: So second time around, we just tried and re-tried things and we had a lot more courage, and we were a bit more spontaneous. I’d be like “Okay, I have an idea, it might be good, it might be bad – but lets try it anyway.”

Do you have a favourite track on the record? If so, why?

T: The fourth song ‘The Heaviest Of Storms’. It was very easy to write the song, it just came out…

N: Because you’re a genius…

T: It just felt so natural, and it’s also very fun to play live.

N: It’s not so good for my right arm when we play live though. I’m so small and fragile, I get tired easily. Mine is ‘Why Do I Always Feel This Way’. It’s quite an old release, but I remember listening to the demo and I could barely hear what Tuva was singing. I wasn’t sure if it was in Swedish or English, but I remember hearing it and thinking (sighs). My boyfriend was like “What song is that? Is it a famous song?” and I was like “Shut up! This is work!”

I also remember when we were recording it we tried to sing it in a different key and it changed the whole song. I was like “this is wrong, it sounds like a Disney song!” So we changed it back and I was happy again.

Great choices, my favourite is ‘Get These Things Out Of My Head’ by the way…

I’ve noticed there’s quite a lot of electronic/indie music coming out of Gothenburg and Sweden in general – including ShitKid. Would you say Gothenburg in particular is a hub for new music and musicians?

N: I think people are very welcome to play new music live there. Even as kids growing up, they were always like “If you want to play here when you turn 18, you can play at our place”. It’s always been a music city, lots of indie and metal kids.

It’s such a cool name for a city too, it sounds like it’s something out of a comic book. As a female-focused new music blog, we’re always keen to know what new music our favourite artists have been listening to. Any bands/artists you can recommend?

N: We always recommend Shitkid, so it’s good that you’ve already mentioned her. She’s very eccentric. She spilled blood on my drums, destroyed some things, but she was great to see live! Pink Milk are another Swedish band we like. They opened a couple of shows for us. They actually live near me, but I’ve never seen them out. I was like “What do you guys do?” and they were like “We just sit at home”…

Hibernating between shows?

T: Kind of like us really…

N: True. I just watch Netflix all day and pretend to be a musician sometimes.

If you had to describe your music in three words, what would they be?

N: Fun?

T: Minimalistic?

N: “Minimalistic”, really?

T: Yes…

N: There you go: Fun, Minimalistic, Yes! – actually, I would say we are more dynamic than minimalistic… so “Fun, Dynamic, Yes!”

Perfect choices. Finally, what does 2018 hold for Pale Honey?

T: Everything. We really hope for more recording and definitely some more shows here in the UK.

N: We’ve played here too many times to not have a full tour in the UK now!

Huge thanks to Tuva & Nelly for answering my questions. Follow Pale Honey on Facebook for more updates.

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

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Introducing Interview: Slothrust

Having met at music college in New York, L.A based Slothrust released their third album earlier this year, and have just supported Manchester Orchestra on a number of UK dates.

With their unique brand of energy-fuelled scuzz rock, the band are now back with a mega exciting new release – a covers EP featuring the band’s take on tracks by Al Green, Black Sabbath and none other than Britney Spears.

We caught up with Leah from the band to find out more…

Hi Slothrust, welcome to Get In Her Ears! Can you tell us a bit about the band?
We like to have a good time, and we leave it all on the stage.

How did you initially all get together and start creating music?
We met in college and played together in a bunch of blues and jazz bands. We vibed well creatively, and so we started playing original music as well.

Your new EP Show Me How You Want It To Be is out very soon – can you tell us what it’s all about? Are there any themes running throughout the EP?
The EP consists of songs of different genres that we thought would be fun to do interpretations of. More or less the only theme is that we dig all the songs and have fun playing them and putting our own spin on it.

And you’ve recently shared an awesome cover of Britney Spears’ ‘Baby One More Time’ – what inspired you to do this? 
Well, we love Britney Spears and ’90s pop and RnB. Kyle learned the bass line perfectly on his own, so we figured we might as well fill it out. It’s a favourite to play live.


You’ve been compared to the likes of Deerhunter, but who would you say are your main musical influences?
We all like lots of different types of music, but some artists I enjoy are Fiona Apple, John Fahey, Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Fats Waller and Erykah Badu.

How is your local music scene? Do you go to see lots of live music?
We used to live in New York, where there are tons of shows every night. We played out a lot and I went to plenty of shows. Many of my friends there are in a band. Now we live in LA, and are on the road a lot, so I like to favor quiet time these days unless there is a really special musician coming to town. Which there often are, so, I suppose yes – I still go to a decent amount of live shows.

And what can fans expect from your live shows?
An honest performance.

As we’re a new music focused site, are there any new/upcoming bands or artists you’d recommend we check out?
I really like the new Big Thief record. I also dig Noname – she played at Lollapalooza with us this year and she is an amazing rapper.

And how do you feel the music industry is for new bands at the moment – would you say it’s difficult to get noticed?
Yes, it’s a really difficult industry to make a living in as an artist. It is very competitive and artists are overworked and underpaid. There isn’t any government funding in the United States for it, and I think that leads to a lot of struggle for musicians that manifests in a bunch of different ways. That being said, if you love something enough, you keep doing it. And we all truly love to play music.

Finally, what does the rest of 2017 have in store for Slothrust?
We are finishing up the music for our next record, which we will start recording next year. We are very excited to put some new material out into the world!

Huge thanks to Slothrust for answering our questions! Show Me How You Want It To Be is out 10th November, pre-order it here. 

Photo Credit:  Shervin Lainez

 

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Guest Blog: Dream Nails’ Janey – “What It Means To Be A Punk Witch”

From the very beginnings of Dream Nails in the summer of 2015, we identified as witches more than musicians. It was a special summer of sisterhood, feminism and direct action where the power of women and non-binary people coming together in spaces without men felt radical and insurmountable. 

Throughout history, the label “witch” was branded on a person (usually women) who transgressed gender or sexual norms, or who challenged traditional power and knowledge structures. But it’s not necessarily our queerness or curiosity in herbalism and natural healing that makes us embrace the identity of “witch” – it’s our ability to channel the instinctive, magic energy of womanhood together. 

To say that Dream Nails is more than the sum of its parts is an understatement. We are four women with instruments, but there’s something else: the magical, invisible power of combining four women’s anger, joy, trauma and love through the medium of music. Not only that, but using that music to build and hold spaces that welcome all the women in our audiences to bring their rage, joy, pain and emotion, and collectively pool it into a dancing, sweating tidal wave of release. The amount of women who come up to us after shows and thank us is testament to this. 

Our rehearsal room is a sacred space. When women come together in spaces to be vulnerable and to make something together, there’s a collective energy that you can almost taste. And we drink it with an unquenchable thirst. It’s thrilling. It bristles with potential and it’s addictive. It’s the liberating rush of knowing you are safe to be yourself, make mistakes, explore and be free from shame, competition and judgment. Maybe that’s the true definition of confidence? What’s more, it gives you a space to produce and create something honest and whole together that you’re proud of; to access this place as a woman is to be reborn. 

To scream about rape, the crushing weight of navigating violence and the confusion around coming out is only something that we could do in a safe space. Forget the instruments, this is an act that can only collectively be done with the full spiritual participation and shared vulnerability of people who have lived on the vicious side of patriarchy. 

And this is why we term our music “witch punk”. We’re on the periphery of two genres, in our self-defined space: too femme to fit into punk, too raw to be indie pop. Witch punk is as much about the final product as it is the process of creation and the feeling of the live performance – it’s about the shared energy that’s created when we give voice to our collective fears and traumas in safe spaces. It’s also about redefining punk and resisting against the traditional toxic masculinity that is synonymous with the genre. It’s to subvert not only gender norms but genre norms. This is something our second EP, Dare to Care, celebrates.


Two years and two EPs later, we now identify primarily as musicians, but being witches is integral to how and what we create as a band. With every musical release, we create a zine together which involves careful curation, planning and sitting in circles cutting and sticking. We share our thoughts, our advice, our humanity. It’s a thoughtful and introspective process – the flipside to the intuitive and immediate rage that fuels our live shows. But just as essential to our identity. 

Our stories are important and our voices need to be heard. If you need release, come together with your sisters and channel the ancient power of witches – it will unravel something within you and bind you together with something that can only be described as supernatural.

Huge thanks to Janey from Dream Nails! You can buy the band’s new Dare To Care EP here. 

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Introducing Interview: Emily Magpie

Having wowed crowds at Green Man Festival and Sofar Sounds sessions, as well as us at Get In Her Ears when she came in – boombox in tow – to be the loveliest of guests on our radio show earlier this year, Bristol-based artist Emily Magpie is now set to release her sophomore EP.

Filled with all the dreamy, electro-folk sounds you could ever possibly need, The Witching Hour is a collection of utterly spellbinding offerings filled with sweeping soundscapes and a captivating ethereal splendour.

Having just shared sparkling new single ‘Leave It To Fate’, we caught up with Emily to find out more…

Hi Emily! Welcome to Get In Her Ears! Can you tell us a little bit about your new project?
I started this project a couple of years ago, just me and my ukulele, and knew I wanted to create a bigger sound and explore electronic elements, as in the eclectic array of music I listen to, as I’m very inspired by electronic music production. So, I started exploring, and my sound came from there.

What initially inspired you to start creating music?
I was travelling around quite a lot and had been writing poetry and singing previously, so started to form songs. It just felt like something I needed to do to express myself. I spend a lot of time day-dreaming and reflecting on the world and my life, so it’s a space for me to do that and see if other people connect with it.

We’re loving the new single ‘Leave It To Fate’ – what’s it all about?
Thank you! I wrote it when I went travelling solo in South America last year. I felt like I was walking away from a lot in my life that I liked – it was kind of weird timing and I thought “What the fuck am I doing?”, so I wanted to write a song to encourage myself to be brave and tread a path less trodden.

 

You’ve been compared to the likes of This Is The Kit, but who would you say are your main musical influences?
Thanks again, I love their music, it really connects with me. All sorts, hence why my sound is eclectic I guess! I love good songwriting – emotive beautiful stuff like Ibeyi, Bon Iver, Lykke Li, but then I’m a huge fan of electronic music too. At the moment I’m really into Tom Misch, Maggie Rogers, FKJ and Sylvan Esso.

How is your local music scene? Do you go to see lots of live music?
There’s a great scene in Bristol! It’s a hub, I see music most weeks. Being a musician, you get to meet and see lots of other people making great stuff at gigs you play at, but I regularly go to watch new bands too.

And what can fans expect from your live shows?
I’ve been working my arse off with a new live set up; got a loop pedal and launch pad, and it’s ready to go! So, I’ve been enjoying playing with that on stage now. I love playing live – I like connecting with the audience, which normally translates as me chatting shit in-between songs. I need to learn how to be cooler…

As we’re a new music focused site, are there any other new/upcoming bands or artists you’d suggest we check out?
Just went to see Nugget last week – she’s a brilliant dreamy Bristol artist. Also Jausme is awesome!

And how do you feel the music industry is for new artists at the moment – would you say it’s difficult to get noticed?
I feel I’ve been pretty lucky really, but then my focus isn’t really on that. I think just get your head down, create from your heart, be a good person and go with the flow.

Finally, what does the rest of 2017 have in store for Emily Magpie?
Now my live set up is sorted I’m booking up gigs to get it out there, and keen to get touring lots next year. And The Witching Hour EP is out later this month!

Huge thanks to Emily for answering our questions!

The Witching Hour, the upcoming EP from Emily Magpie, is out 24th November.

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