You worked with Flood, who produced the album. Did he bring exactly what you thought he would to the album, or did the experience surprise you at all? Flood surprised me by how familiar and easy to work with he was. Besides completely knowing what he's doing sonically, he's also really good with artists and letting their own voice be heard. So many producers like to come in and put their stamp on an artist but he just acts more like a perfect conduit… a piece of circuitry that has its own colour, yet doesn't dominate. He's a master.
Do not draw comparison, but instead take context from the fact that before Warpaint, the 21st Century was severely lacking in all-female bands. Now, we see Dum Dum Girls,
Vivian Girls, Savages, and so on, all charging over the top of the hill. I say, “lacking in all-female bands”, but what I really mean is “all-female bands who don’t use it as a gimmick”.
Their 2010 debut, ‘The Fool’ was a line in the sand; it can be critiqued in terms of its originality, musical prowess, lyrical dexterity and emotional connection, and not that they don’t have a bollock between them. We talk to them ahead of their UK tour for the second, ‘Warpaint’. Self-assured and
introspective, it doesn’t beg to be listened to, or appreciated: sisters are genuinely doing it for themselves.
A
pproaching the writing of ‘Warpaint’, your second album, what were the rules you
imposed on yourself? Or was the rule that there were no rules? We wanted more space in our songs this time, so we made it a point not to clutter the songs with too many layers. I suppose in a way that was a little rule that we played by. We do have one longstanding rule that we always abide by: because we write everything together, we have to try out every idea that someone has
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when it comes to structuring and building parts for songs. Sometimes that means that things can take a while to come together, but it also means that we are all in agreement.
Tere certainly is more space in the album, and I often think that comes with more confidence – would you say that’s true of ‘Warpaint’? Oh… well I suppose yes, that's true. It does take more confidence to let your parts be heard. Tat's what I love about pop music. It can be very bold and uncompromising.
Aside from your instruments, and voices, what couldn’t you have written ‘Warpaint’ without? You might not even have had Stella without a serendipitous mushroom ingestion… Haha, yeah... Warpaint has to have all four of us on the same page, or the magic isn't gonna happen.
What were your days at Joshua Tree like? How did an average day pan out? We would get up and make some tea and breakfast or go down to the local cafe and just sort of collect our thoughts; chat, laugh – generally get on the same page. Ten we would start playing, either working on something we started the day before or just start something entirely new. We'd do that for a while, recording everything. When it was time for dinner we would listen back to what we'd done or just rock some favourite tunes and make food together. It was so nice. And after that we'd play more or watch a movie together or just hang. It was a really special time for us.
I’m always interested in when a band eponymously titles their album. It’s a real statement of “this here is who we are.” Is that true of this album? Yeah, I think that was the simplest way to say that we felt we'd really become Warpaint. It's our first album as the version of Warpaint that the world knows us as, i.e. with Stella. She played on our first album but didn't write the songs with us. Tis time we've all done it together from the ground up.
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