Strangefruit
Interview
Saturday 6th of June 2009
Strangefruit's eclectic songs dabble in jazz, country, hook-laden indie and more besides. Stuart M caught up with Jamie Perrett and Jenny Maxwell after their recent headline gig at 93 Feet East to talk about writing and recording, moving on from Love Minus Zero and their stunning protest song, 'Bring Me the Head of Diego Garcia', which features the Only Ones' Peter Perrett on vocals.
How did Strangefruit come about?
Jenny: Jamie and Peter were in Love Minus Zero, and I came in with a friend to do backing vocals as they were playing Shepherd's Bush Empire for the first time, and thought it'd be nice to have two pretty girls on stage with them!
Jamie: She sung with us there, then on tour in Germany, then Love Minus Zero broke up...
That was a band with a brief but spectacular existence.
Jamie: Yeah, we did quite a bit in a short space of time, but it just wasn't the right line-up, and I think it was kind of inevitable it would fall apart. Like a dysfunctional marriage with three other people - well, two other people, anyway. Strangefruit blossomed out of that.
Jenny: Like a phoenix from the ashes!
What are the main differences between the two bands?
Jamie: More harmony - personally and melodically! This band has everything - harmony, melody - more so than Love Minus Zero, really - and rhythm. I'm a lot more experienced now. We're better musicians, we all get on, and we're not scared to say things to each other.
Jenny: Yeah, there's no hidden agendas.
Jamie: Will comes from a jazz background, as does Jen. He started off playing gospel piano, then moved on to drums. He's a musical drummer. Playing with him feels natural.
Jenny: ...and he plays clarinet, saxophone, triangle...! He plays piano on 'Man with a Plan'. He's added a lot more dynamics to the band, and the structure of the songs. The main thing is that there are two singers. I think the special thing about Strangefruit is we're quite hard to define. You can't really categorise what our sound is.
Your songs are very diverse...
Jamie: We approach each song with a different mindset. We don't say "Let's have this type of sound" - just whatever the song requires: let the song dictate the way it should sound, whatever feels natural. Obviously we try lots of different ideas, but if you try and mould a sound it becomes very contrived. If you don't feel it, don't play it.
It's great having a violin in the band, speaking as a guitar player; it adds another dimension - another string to the bow (!) We got bored of being in a two guitar, bass and drums band - not just because it's too similar to the Only Ones, but that format has been around for 60 years, and it's quite restrictive.
Jenny: If you give yourself a challenge, come up with an interesting combination of instruments, then naturally your sound is going to have to work around that, and you get more out of them, because you're doing things you wouldn't normally do with them. We don't really play by any rules.
Jamie, you and Pete have grown up with music, with your dad fronting the Only Ones. What's it been like touring and gigging with them?
Jamie: It's good. I think it's more enjoyable supporting them with this band than with Love Minus Zero, because it's a completely different sound. There aren't so many comparisons. With the old band, people were like, "your voice sounds similar, blah blah blah..." It got to the point where I was singing songs that were too high for me, because if I sung in a high register, I didn't sound like my dad. But you know, they really like the band, they like us supporting, and we're not going to say no. Although we don't want people thinking we're hanging off the coat tails of the Only Ones. That's why we try not to play with them much in London, or even in Britain. Most of the times we support them, we don't actually plan to support them!
This is how Strangefruit formed, really. In Japan, we literally just went on holiday, didn't have any instruments, didn't have a drummer. We just started playing some of Jenny's songs, which Pete didn't really know on the bass, and we played some Love Minus Zero songs too. John Perry played drums for us. He really enjoyed playing drums; it put him in a really good mood for their gig. Japan was great, amazing.
Jenny: The audiences there are phenomenal. They're so attentive; they'd be silent, staring at you. They don't go there to socialise, they go there to listen to the music. That's different to London gigs.
What's the story behind 'Bring Me the Head of Diego Garcia'?
Jamie: I watched a documentary a few years ago by John Pilger on the history of the island; it inspired me to write a song. It's just disgusting what happened. I wrote the song a couple of years ago but couldn't really do anything with it; it didn't work with Love Minus Zero. We played it twice. My dad said "I'd like to do that song; I can sing it better than you"! He loves that song. He can relate to it.
It was recorded in our bedroom! The way we recorded it was different from the conventional way of recording. We recorded the rhythm guitar and the vocal, the melody, and then we laid everything on top of it. As a consequence to that, everything is formed around the melody rather than the rhythm, and so the bass and drums are very much around the melody.
Jenny: That's very important in that song especially, because the words make it.
Are you going to release it?
Jamie: We're waiting to record a B side, and then we want to release it, definitely. It's a song that needs to be heard. Not many people know about the situation. I think now is the right time for it to be heard - before they close Guantanamo Bay.
What are your plans for the rest of the year?
Jenny: (Laughs) Greatness! We need to finish the B side to '...Diego Garcia', and then we've got about five new songs that we'd like to lay down, and finish off.
Jamie: Keep playing, keep developing, keep recording. At the moment, we just need to keep rehearsing, really. It'll be good to set some targets... I don't want to say "We want to be signed by this time, or release an album by that time".
To sum up, what is Strangefruit about?
Jenny: Love!!! I think we all believe in each other, and in what we're doing.
Jamie: Strangefruit is about great music, great songs. Someone said something about us at Shepherd's Bush, that though we're young as a band, we seem to have arrived fully formed. I think that sums us up!
Author: Stuart M
Found in: Interviews