friendly chat with gwenno

A Friendly Chat With... Gwenno

Cardiffian Gwenno had already had something of a career in Irish

dancing and Welsh language singing/media (she also speaks fluent

Cornish, a fact which we guarantee will earn you pints in a pub quiz

one day) by the time she became one third of the Pipettes last April.

It's been nothing but upwards and onwards since as they've become a

proper cult pop band unleashing classy modern girl group records

effortlessly. That's her on the Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me chorus

and taking lead on sound of the summer Pull Shapes. Her nascent

electropop solo side project fascinated us too, so plenty to go at...

So you saw the Pipettes supporting the Go! Team in Cardiff, and two

months later you'd become a member. Surely it wasn't as easy as that?

I'd bought my ticket to see them about two months in advance, we all

knew the show was going to sell out and really didn't want to miss

out. I'd heard through their manager at the time that Julia wanted to

leave and got chatting to everyone after the gig, went down to a

couple of rehearsals and moved to Brighton - it really was as easy as

that!

The band's sound is fairly evidently rooted in the 60s girl group

template, but how much do you look to evolve it from there?

The 60's girl group template is our starting point. Those bands and

their sound is one that was cast aside and forgotten as soon as The

Beatles came along and standardised pop. We're trying to look at our

popular music history in a different light and that includes many

bands that came after that era. We're very interested in evolving our

sound and ideas and we have very different music tastes and interests

within the band so there's plenty to draw from!

Attempt, if possible, to describe Becki and Rose.

All I will say is that they're both incredibly strong and beautiful

young women!

The Go! Team's Ian Parton said recently that he envisaged them as a

pop/hip hop outfit but they hadn't been able to cross over from the

indie audience. As an unashamedly pop band, might the Pipettes face

the same problems?

I think that we've taken a very different approach to the Go! Team. We

obviously come from an independent background but that doesn't mean

that we can't cross over to a wider audience. I don't think we'll ever

have to change what we do to achieve that but I do think as a band you

have to be open to compromises along the way without losing sight of

what you set out to achieve initially. We're on tour at the moment and

yesterday we did an in-store at HMV which was a three song PA to a

backing track. We'd never played without at least one of the boys

before so we were a little apprehensive but if we hadn't done it then

those extra few people that might never have heard of The Pipettes

wouldn't have bought our single and got to hear us. As it happens it

went really well and the audience seemed to enjoy it. I think you have

to take certain risks if you want more people to hear you and we've

been lucky to have had the opportunity.

What is it that makes Brighton's music scene so prolific?

There are so many bands in Brighton, even though it has a reputation

as a hedonistic town there's not much to do if you live there and

don't have the money to eat at fancy restaurants or stay in nice

hotels so people have had to entertain themselves. There's always a

certain campness to Brighton bands and a real sense of wanting to put

on a show which I think ties it all together but in terms of sound

there never seems to be a specific one.

Your solo project - how did it start and where would you hope it's

leading?

I've always written songs and was doing a lot of Cornish and Welsh

electronic pop before I joined The Pipettes. I'd always been

interested in classic pop and a female voice in music but coming from

Cardiff, which is a very industrial, working-class town there didn't

seem to be many people around that had a similar mind set. That was

the great thing about seeing The Pipettes at the Barfly in Cardiff,

they were making exactly the sort of music that I hadn't been able to

do on my own and shared a similar vision and approach to me. The songs

on my Myspace are just songs that I've had lying around for a very

long time and Myspace was a perfect forum to put them out without it

being about releasing records or putting too much thought to it. I

think it's always important as a writer to get rid of your songs and

let other people have a chance to hear them, there's always something

nice about letting them go so they almost don't belong to you anymore.

Who did you grow up listening to, and what have you liked recently?

I grew up listening to a lot of tradional folk music from all over

along with Irish, Welsh and Cornish music. My mum sings in a socialist

street choir called Cor Cochion Caerdydd which translates to 'the Red

Choir of Cardiff'. They've been going for over twenty years (and have

had many a line-up change!) They sang a lot of anti-apartheid songs in

the 80s and now sing pro-Palestine songs alongside The Internationale

and songs like that. Pop music was my form of escapism, I loved

Freddie Mercury, early 90's R'n'B and speed garage when I was growing

up. I've been listening to Field Music, LO-FI-FNK and Datblygu

recently.

Anything you can tell us about that's coming up, apart from the album

and tour?

Everything is centred around the album and tour at the moment. We're

gradually getting to the point where we can commit to The Pipettes

full time, which is great. That's going to free up a lot of time which

will mean that we can rehearse and start performing all the new songs

that we have. It really is all about playing the album live to as many

people as possible and looking ahead to the future!

Many thanks to Gwenno, especially for getting back to us on her one

day off the Pipettes' current tour, which is all but sold out but we

do recommend trying to get a ticket for. For band business you'll want

their official website or Myspace, while two downloadable side project

tracks are available here. We Are The Pipettes is out on July 17th and

is really very good.