Zoot Woman's Johnny Blake performs with the band at Hoxton Bar & Grill, 2007
It’s six years since synth-rockers Zoot Woman released their last LP and now they’re back with a new album,‘Things are what they used to be,” which proves the old adage ‘if it aint broke don’t fix it.’ At the Berlin HQ of their new German record label Snowhite, the very affable Blake brothers are already showing some signs of promotion fatigue, but are happy to talk about band dynamics, influences and covers that they just wont do.
How do you write songs as a band? What are your individual roles?
JB: I think 9 times out of 10 with a lot of these songs, Adam will start off. He might have a song title and I might then work on a vocal, lyrical idea, and that’s kind of the start. Certainly on this record, most of them have started off that way
You’re brothers- doesn’t that create huge potential for inter-band conflict during the creative process?
AB: Someone said to me: “How can you work with your brother? I can’t even walk down the same street as my brother.” It’s funny because the ideas that have gone onto this record or things that actually work, are the ones that we haven’t actually sat down and talked about. Usually the things we talk about doing, don’t happen. If we just come up with something and give it a try or whatever, things tend to come from that. When we sit down and say ‘This is what we should do,” it’s like anything – it’s all talk and no action. It doesn’t matter that we’re brothers, because usually you communicate and argue as brothers. If you let the music do it, it works for itself.
JB: We will do a lot of our work on songs individually but there’s always a time in our band where the actual result only gets done when the three of us work on it together, but a lot of our creative ideas we do separately.
But is not a case of one waiting for the other?
AB: But it’s just like that. We can only put the feelers out, you can just say “Well, I’ve tried this, what do you think?” You can think it’s the best thing ever, but if you get no feedback, you leave it. Johnny will send me something and I’ll think, “Its good but its not as good as the other ideas you’ve had.” It’s the same with Stuart, it’s the same with me. I’ll think “Can’t anyone see how good this is?” If it’s not to be, it’s not to be.
JB: Yeah, and I think, the three of us have been working together for a long time, I think there’s a certain confidence you have in each other’s opinions. And I’ll give an idea, and I know from the reaction I get, if it’s worth pursuing.
AB: Yeah, I think it is quite democratic. We’ve all got respect for each other’s ideas
Do individual tastes in music within the band lead to conflicts in the creative process?
JB: I think I can often go down too songy a road and I think Adam will say ‘You’re getting to songy’. Its important to have that cross-section, because we approach things differently. I’m not really a producer, but I do melodies and stuff.
AB: We’ve all known each other for so long, so no-one holds back. And the phrase that gets used on everyone, by everyone, is ‘who do you think you are?” You come up with an idea and you go “OK, its great but this isn’t going to work.” I think that’s the beauty of it. You’ve done two records before ,and you think, ‘What can we get away with?” and we tend to cut out the crap, because we can talk to each other and say “I don’t understand that. Who do you think you are?”
JB: I think if we didn’t have that, those contradictions, we’d have a lot of dodgy ideas. At the time, when you’re working on it, it can be quite annoying, but you don’t always see the result until you realise that that’s there for a reason.
So friction can produce good ideas as well?
AB: Yeah, if someone says “Who do you think you are? That’s not going to work.” There’s a challenge there. You go back and you try to make it work. You can be quite relentless, in trying to make it work. But there comes a point where you go, ‘Fair enough, let’s leave that” you just focus on what’s working and that’s kind of what we did in the last month of this record. It’s funny, because that doesn’t mean to say that the songs that we rejected won’t appear in the future. It just means that you need to have a bit of an epiphany, production-wise or lyric wise. You just all have to feel the same.
Zoot Woman's new album: 'Things are what they used to be'
Onto the new album… What was the idea behind the cover?
AB: There was a team of artists. ‘Destructed’ is the magazine, and they had some brilliant ideas, which we wanted to include in the booklet, but what actually happened in the end, was that Matthias Krauser and Norman Perker came up with this (shows me album sleeve). I just saw this bust idea and thought “that’s fantastic.” The idea is, depending on how you’re feeling when you listen to the record, if you’re feeling like looking to the future, you have the face, facing forward, if you feel like referring to the past, it’s looking back. We just thought it was a good concept.
And that’s basically the idea behind the new album title?
AB: It’s all related to that. Referencing the past, or moving forward and not referencing the past and moving forward. It’s all about youthful ideas. I feel like I’ve said it too much.
JB: It’s quite a popular feeling, I think a lot of people feel like they want to return to certain points in time. There’s a certain universal feeling about it, I think. Yeah, I’ve said it too much as well (laughs).
Speaking of looking forward, your melodies can be quite optimistic-sounding, especially the more dancey tunes. Yet the lyrics seem to often be fairly melancholic – ‘Taken it all’, ‘Snow White ‘ and on TAWTUTB: ‘Lonely by your side’, ‘Friend of mine’ etc.
AB: Someone else said that to me, “Maybe its your British reserve”. It’s easier to express the confusion than anything else, isn’t it?
JB: Often what you don’t normally talk about in conversation, you can often find yourself coming up with in lyrics. Whilst some people’s lyrics are quite conversational, and some people can sing a shopping list and make it sound really good, I’ve never been able to do that. I think it’s a theme that lends itself well to our music.
Speaking of contradictions – your music also combines the two opposing ends of the musical spectrum – rock and electronica. Not many bands are able to carry that off.
AB: Yeah, that’s really dangerous territory. I think of things that have done that in the past, and I think,”Hmmmm,is that going to work?” But yeah, it’s one of those things you can’t always help. I think you just do what you do and try and pull it off.
Although the new album does take some new musical paths, it also has what I regard as ZW trademarks, such as building up layers of sound.
AB : It’s funny, because I’m thinking in my head is – I think you are totally right - next time I don’t want to do that, I want to do something different. I think we kind of tended to try to build on the whole emotional thing with the production. We tried to create drama by bringing things down and then for choruses, bringing them up. We tried to do things we wouldn’t normally do.
JB: I think we also tried to go a step further with the songwriting, I liked what we put out before this record, but I’ve always thought that we could go a step further with the actual songwriting.
You’ve done a few cover versions. Have ZW ever thought about collaborating with other musicians?
AB: I think it’s the kind of thing where if I did do it, I’d want to do it differently. Speaking on behalf of ZW, it’s important to have a consistent sound, and the thought of giving someone else the responsibility of changing your sound, I find it quite tough.
JB: What’s funny, is that it’s always the most unlikely song that you end up doing a good cover of. I think there’s something in the challenge of doing a song that really isn’t you, and that’s often why it sounds good. If I covered a song by an artist I really liked, it’d probably be awful.
So no David Bowie covers then?
JB: Exactly! Well, I haven’t tried it.
AB: We covered ‘The Model’ on our first record, and we did that out of respect, and it was quite difficult, because if we tried to do it like their version, you just stay away from that, because they got it so right. And it was our debut album and it helped association, to show people what we were doing, but a lot of people think ‘why are they doing that?” It’s dangerous territory, the cover version, unless you do a lot, and you pull them off in your style. I think you’ve got to be quite selective.
So you basically don’t ‘need’ to do covers now?
JB: I think when you’re a debut act there’s quite a pressure to hit people in the face. I think that we have quite a loyal fan base, and when we were writing this, we were thinking of the people who like our stuff. I think you can’t really do it more than once, because you start to look a bit nichey. Well nichey’s good in its place, but you like to think that songs can go a bit further than that.
AB: It’s funny though, cause you don’t really have a plan do you? You kind of follow what works, whether it’s live, or what people say they like.
Could the same be said for your image? Do you think in retrospect, the emphasis on image (when you were starting out) has overshadowed your music a bit?
AB: It probably did, but I don’t think you can have one without the other. If we’d put out one record and hadn’t been given the chance to evolve, then I’d begrudge it a bit. If you’ve got anything for people to get into, then that will happen over time, and I think we’re lucky to have that.
JB: Yes, I think the first time around, the image possibly was eclipsing the music, but there’s nothing wrong with that, I think it happens with a lot of bands. I think it’s quite important to get through that.
AB: I think a lot of people don’t realise how they get turned onto things, and you can see something and wonder why you get into the music. It depends on how your brain works, you can listen to things and get turned onto things, I really think the two go hand in hand. Its important to look like your music.
You gigged a lot in 2008 . You tend to re-work a lot of your songs live. Have you ever thought about releasing them?
AB We’ve never wanted to do songs just like they appear on record. I think there’s always strength in a song when you can hear it in different forms. And I think especially with electronic acts, when people hear that something’s been produced a certain way, people can be quite sceptical about how it sounds, how it is as a song. You hear this thing in an acoustic fashion it makes you appreciate it in a different way.
JB Yeah, that’s true ,and there’s always a part of you that wants to record songs in that way. I think it was Elton John who said that in the days of the 70s, they used to record something and it’d be 15 minutes writing it, 15 minutes playing it, and then 15 minutes recording it, but that was a different thing. And I think there’s a romantic part of you that’s like, “Wouldn’t it be great to do stuff like that?”
AB You can only do what you’re used to. He was a club singer or a piano player. He played piano for blues bands before he did his own thing. And we grew up children of the 80s, and so we grew up with Midi and technology, and the synthesizer. That’s what we’ve always referenced, and you can’t shake that, no matter how much you try and write in a more traditional way. It’s always there.
JB: And a lot of the time, the actual creative idea you have is really quite fast, and I think the labour part is the actual getting the song to sound just how you want it to sound. That’s probably what takes the longest. And I think that more and more – ’cause nowadays there is so much more music coming out. It’s harder to sound individual, so that’s probably what takes quite a lot of time, I think.
Zoot Woman’s upcoming tour dates:
02 October – Melkweg, Amsterdam, 1017 PH – NL
03 October – Rotown, Rotterdam, 3014 GB – NL
05 October – Dingwalls, London, NW1 8AF – UK
10 October – Otto Santral, Istanbul – TR
Video for Zoot Woman’s new single ‘Memory’
(apologies to the band for this interview’s non-appearance in SP!)
Check it!
