E
lena Tonra is walking around somewhere in London. I assume it’s London because over the course of our interview I hear about three police cars go hurtling
past, each of which she apologises for profusely. Frontwoman for dazzlingly emotive, “fucked-up folk” band Daughter, Elena is nowhere near as pretentious as she could be. She went to a music school in North London, sings and plays guitar, has a cool-as-fuck haircut, and seems totally out of everyone’s league, yet I’m pleasantly surprised to find that she’s exciting, charming, genuine, and heartfelt. I found it very difficult to stop myself becoming totally infatuated Elena and her band, and with thousands of others seeming to agree, it would appear the British music scene has a new addition to their family…
So Elena, are you excited about playing Latitude? I’m really excited, I haven’t been before, to be honest I haven’t really been to many festivals, so it’s going to be kind of new, but yeah really excited about it.
Do you like playing festivals, or do you prefer your own shows? It’s kind of weird; I think it’s always safer at your own shows because
18 /July 2012/
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you’re expecting the room to be full, so you have that security, whereas with festivals you can just sort of play and see who turns up to listen. Reading 2011 was our first big festival performance; we didn’t think anyone would be there and then pulled quite a good crowd. We didn’t really expect it; we looked a bit like frightened deer about to be shot.
You’ve blown up in the last year and
are playing to much larger crowds, how is that? I find it quite difficult to perform, so it’s a weird love hate relationship; I love it and it’s the only thing I’d want to do, but it terrifies me as well. I have a bit of a difficulty in not just looking at my shoes for the whole set, so I sometimes don’t even notice the people that are there cause I’m not looking up [laughs, endearingly nervously] It takes a bit of time to adjust to the fact that people are listening to you. Te whole feeling of playing in front of people is amazing, but I get a bit scared.
My friends that play music feel the same way; that putting yourself on stage alone brings a great feeling of catharsis, but also a lot of nerves. Yeah I think that’s the whole reason why Daughter started; I knew that I wanted to perform, and wanted to make music, but I needed people around me to give me support on stage. We’ve got a bigger sound now, and with a band it does feel a lot more comfortable.
Is it odd playing with your boyfriend Continued >
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