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 Classical folk-pop trip ME & THE GROWNUPS are on the road introducing audiences to the new textures found on current single The Perfect Storm. TOPHER HEALY finds out more from vocalist ANITA LESTER and violinist/composer JONATHAN DREYFUS.
TOPHER HEALY: On this tour, how will you be replicating the more complex arrangements apparent on the Perfect Storm single?
ANITA LESTER: Something I have always believed is, a good song is a good song no matter how it is played. Not that I would dare us to compare to someone like Leonard Cohen or Joni Mitchell, but for example the song Bird On A Wire I have heard by various artists, highly produced with layers of strings and heavy orchestration, but I have also heard it just with a guitar and vocals. It is an amazing and beautiful song no matter how it is played. This, I believe, is how we go about our music. It adds a certain dramatic effect to the recording, but Perfect Storm is still a good song without the layers. We hope to give the same emotion and feeling to the audience through our songs with the bare essentials – but also, we have never been criticised for our subtle sounds. It is always noted that we produce heavy and large soundscapes.
TH: Was there a catalyst that inspired Jonathan’s more ambitious compositional efforts for the new material?
AL: Me. For a long time I have been arguing my point for more layered and cinematic approaches to our recordings. My argument was pretty much the previous question.
JONATHAN DREYFUS: When Anita heard one of the film scores I’d produced, with full strings, drums, electronics, choirs … her eyes just lit up. I was happy with it because I’d been working on my studio orchestra sound for some time, but I’d never imagined it’d become part of our sound. I’d been quite fundamentalist about my desire to keep the compositions to our trio of instruments, you can hear that on the second album where there’s no production at all, just the three of us playing. But having done that, which was in itself an extension of what we’d achieved on the first album (only much better played and composed for the instruments), it was the right time to think about doing something completely different, and to fuse my new love of orchestration (I did my first orchestral project in February and I’ve got the bug) with the band was just so much fun.
TH: As a group you seem to like playing with imagery and presentation (something bands would do well to think more about) – is being creative beyond the music in an almost holistic way important to the three of you?
AL: Art and music in my opinion fall under the same umbrella-ella-ella-ella-eh-eh. We all come from such diverse artistic backgrounds, and mine initially was an artistic one. As wanky as it may sound, music has always stirred up visuals for me. I have always seen images accompanying stories and poems, and musical lyrics is just that next step. But even without lyrics a chord progression or an orchestration can bring out the strongest visuals, just with the emotions it is stirring up.
Aside from this however, we live in a computer age, and the art of record covers progressed to CD covers, and what at first was a real art form (i.e. – commissioning people like Robert Crumb to do Janis Joplin’s Cheap Thrill’s) has somehow vanished. I believe now, the more you give with your music, the more you will draw people in.
JD: I think it’s important for a band to look the way it sounds, and it’s very infrequent, but often that’s the best thing about metal and emo, the image really fits the sound. We’re lucky to have Anita’s mammoth visual instincts because it give us that same synergy of presentation, which makes my job promoting the thing to press that much easier too…
TH: Anita’s poster designs are quite impressive – does she have formal arts/illustration training? And who/what would she consider her biggest influences?
AL: As with the CD art, the theory behind the posters are the same. Aside from that though, it’s kind of a long story. You don’t have to print it! My mum is a practicing artist and my dad was in the film industry and they both were professional comic artists – some of that certainly rubbed off. I didn’t watch TV really until I was about six or seven. We lived in the Blue Mountains, isolated, surrounded by pot smoking ex-hippies and a valley of art equipment. I went to a Steiner school (everything is art based), I teach art classes as my job, I have almost completed my Animation degree ... but no real art training.
TH: Would Me & The Grownups be best described as a family or a team?
AL: Ummmmmmm ... It’s kind of a strange dynamic. Because we are in such an intense business arrangement, completely self managed and we organise all promotion and TV, radio ... etc. In that respect we are a ‘team’ I suppose. But then on the flip side, we make this really full on music together, and we crawl into each other’s creative brains, which can often be the most intimate type of relationship. So in that regard, we are a family.
JD: Well, whatever it is, it’s a really, really awesome relationship. We feed each other’s understanding and confidence, we grow together professionally and artistically, we have fights and work things out and get things moving together. We listen to each other, we respect each others’ judgments. We fight, we break up, we kiss, we make up, thanks Katy Perry!
TH: When Me & The Grownups tour, is it a civilized affair? Or is there an undercurrent of secret rock & roll debauchery under the classy exterior the music projects?
AL: It’s a total mess. We each have our own fetishes. Jonathan will always have to steal a toilet paper roll from every bathroom he goes to – we end up with a year’s supply. With that toilet paper, I streamer it across communist houses...of-course I can only guess which are the communist houses...I generally go for anything slightly red in the front yard, and Adrian then seduces the women of these newly decorated households – no matter how old – and leaves their bedside with a fresh fig.
But seriously – besides the fact that Jonathan is completely unaware of his insanely loud footsteps (and that is not a joke) and his six am ritualistic violin practice, we are relatively well behaved.
JD: Whoever said anything about all-night parties, sex and drugs was full of shit. We eat microwave pasta with bottle Napolitana sauce, biscuits and dips, canned tuna and cuppa-soup. We drink whatever bevies are available for free at the cut-price motel we stay in. Sometimes Adrian and I share a double bed, but the sex is great so it’s no problem. We dutifully pine for and communicate regularly with our love interests if we have them. We go to bed early after shows so we can get up early to rehearse, practice and exercise. We take our dirty socks to the launderette and I keep detailed accounts of expenses and income, carefully filing receipts. Sure, we release biochemical agents into the water supply of whichever city we’re in before we leave, but even these are civilized: they just make you want to drink more peppermint tea and read DH Lawrence.
TH: Beyond the just-released single, what other material have you been working on, and when might we see it?
AL: We have pretty much written the third album. So much of it has not even been played, which is really exciting, because I believe it’s our best stuff. We will hopefully release it sometime next year, and like the single it will have a new level of orchestration and dramatic arrangements.
JD: I have been planning my greatest work: a violin made out of human skin. It’ll sound like shit, but the press coverage from my trial for multiple murder will be great for promoting the third record.
TH: Finish this sentence: In an emergency situation, you’ll find Me & The Grownups…
AL: Using one another’s intestines to build a giant rope to climb down from the tower we have been locked up in.
JD: Playing Silent Night as the ship plummets into the ocean at a 75 degree angle. Or strating my unfinished symphony.
ME & THE GROWNUPS play BarSoma on Tuesday Jul 7. THE PERFECT STORM and their February-released album KNOWING LOVERS, NAÏVE LOVERS are available now through iTunes and 666Records/MGM. www.myspace.com/meandthegrownups
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