Man/Woman/Chainsaw/Interview
Man/Woman/Chainsaw are a six-piece London-based indie band, and having just released their debut album, Cannonball, their penultimate pit-stop on the tour was the staple Brum venue: the Hare and Hounds in King’s Heath. Before their show, Chloe and I interviewed bassist and vocalist Vera Leppänen, and guitarist and vocalist Billy Ward.
Speaking of their first full UK and Ireland circuit, the pair agreed it had been a resounding success.
B: ‘We’ve been around the country and Ireland. It’s been amazing, so many great moments, so many full rooms. I think Dublin was a real highlight; Whelan’s is the best, and the room was just on fire. It was mine and Louise’s – our tour photographer – birthday that night, so we came out and had a cake on stage which was very sweet.’
Being born-and-bred Londoners, playing several dozen shows at Brixton’s Windmill before getting signed, MWC are still in the early stages of exploring the rest of the country’s grassroots scene.
V: ‘It’s been nice, we’ve got to visit some familiar cities we’ve been to before and see some venues again. But also some new experiences too, like we’d never been to Newcastle before –’
B: ‘Yes we have.’
V: ‘No we haven’t! North-Shields is not the same! The Geordies won’t like it!
Safe to say to anyone who has listened to both Cannonball and compared it to their earlier singles/EPs will notice that their sound has evolved and grown more mature. Gone are the walls of sound – the Black Midi-esque math-rock cacophonies – and in its place is a record with clear direction and narrative that still retains the distinct MWC sound.
B: ‘I think working on a full-length record, being a bit older, and having been in the studio before all helped, but we were still green. But as it went on, we learned how to be more comfortable within that space. With a record you have more scope because the songs can’t all sound the same. I’m really proud of the songs on there, it was really fun to mess around and do different things with them – it’s still carrying on from stuff we were doing before, but it feels more mature.’
V: ‘Well, before we made the album, we had always played everything live before we recorded it. It was weird, because half of the album we didn’t have time to play live in front of an audience. There’s one song, ‘Canyons’, where there’s a key change in the middle and a modulation to accommodate the live version because it’s high as f*ck. And then there’s another one –’
But coupling these additional instruments with the amount of texture in their songs creates a logistical challenge for the stage, though the pair take this complication as a good thing. From an outside perspective, having six band members could seem quite daunting in terms of getting anything done – you can only imagine the potential issues with scheduling, decision-making, or creative choices. But these lot seem to have boiled it down to a science.
V: ‘It really depends! Sometimes, a song will be almost finished individually, and then we all learn it and work on it from there. But especially with Cannonball – we really started from ground-zero, just jamming – all six of us – and going from there. Like ‘Nosedive’ we split up into groups – one group wrote the instrumental and another group wrote the topline. They were going to be two separate songs, but they just happened to go together. We experiment a little bit, but it’s nothing too thought out, it’s whatever feels intuitive.’
B: ‘Yeah, it’s whatever works in the moment. It’s a very democratic process, so even if it’s one person’s original idea: the moment it’s in the room, it becomes all of ours.’
Arguably what makes MWC’s distinct sound is their expansion on the classic indie quartet with keys and vocalist Emmie-Mae Avery, and violinist Clio Starwood. Credit where credit is due, Starwood’s strings are second to none. Both on the record and live on stage, her performance piles on the emotions in every song, whether that’s the twisting defiance of ‘Something Else To Give’, or the frantic, powerful, and aptly named ‘Ode to Clio’.
But coupling these additional instruments with the amount of texturing lots of MWC’s tracks have, it creates some logistical challenges for the stage, though the pair take this complication as a good thing.
V: ‘Well, before we made the album, we had always played everything live before we recorded it. It was weird, because half of the album we didn’t have time to play live in front of an audience before we recorded it. There’s one song, ‘Canyons’, where there’s a key change in the middle and a modulation to accommodate the live version because it’s high as f*ck. And then there’s another one –’
B: ‘I think ‘Still Angry’ and ‘Lighter’, they’re some of the ones where there’s wider vocals or wider strings that we can’t do live. In the studio you can create textures by layering things and making things sound crazy, but obviously because there’s only six of us, sometimes we get the same impact by making things heavier live because we don’t have four violins.’
V: ‘‘Still Angry’ is a very different version I’d say, and the end of ‘Lighter’ is a switch up as well – its fun! Also, I think it’s nice, like if I’m watching a gig and the band plays something different, I enjoy that. Like if I wanted to see the same thing, I’d just listen to the music at home.’
In terms of prioritising the live or recorded parts of band-life, it seems that parts of ‘Cannonball’ pushed recording as a priority, which was a different approach than usual. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a profound decision, as the pair dissected.
B: ‘I mean we just write songs and then perform them, you know? Not to sound stupid, but sometimes it’s one way, sometimes it’s the other. Like the album was the first time when some of the recording has come before the writing, but I think –’
V: ‘We’ve never really prioritised recording that way before.’
B: ‘Yeah, but if we write stuff we can’t play live, then we’ll just learn to play it a different way.’
V: ‘I do think that is one of the most important aspects of being in a band and playing and the importance of gigs. You learn what your limitations are as a group and learn to play into what you can actually do. For me, the joy is playing live.’
B: ‘They’re just very different things: a project of performing an hour of music versus recording forty minutes of it, you just have to separate it in your mind.’
In any case, if you haven’t listened to ‘Cannonball’ then you probably should – as Chloe elegantly put it, “it’s like if Alice in Chains had a baby with HAIM and it wrote ‘Into the Woods’ with Andrew Bird.” Sounds pretty gnarly – get on it!
Footnotes
Thanks again to This Is Tmrw for having us
For more from Man/Woman/Chainsaw click here.
To catch Man/Woman/Chainsaw on their nexr visit to Birmingham get your tickets here.
Speaking of their first full UK and Ireland circuit, the pair agreed it had been a resounding success.
B: ‘We’ve been around the country and Ireland. It’s been amazing, so many great moments, so many full rooms. I think Dublin was a real highlight; Whelan’s is the best, and the room was just on fire. It was mine and Louise’s – our tour photographer – birthday that night, so we came out and had a cake on stage which was very sweet.’
Being born-and-bred Londoners, playing several dozen shows at Brixton’s Windmill before getting signed, MWC are still in the early stages of exploring the rest of the country’s grassroots scene.
V: ‘It’s been nice, we’ve got to visit some familiar cities we’ve been to before and see some venues again. But also some new experiences too, like we’d never been to Newcastle before –’
B: ‘Yes we have.’
V: ‘No we haven’t! North-Shields is not the same! The Geordies won’t like it!
Safe to say to anyone who has listened to both Cannonball and compared it to their earlier singles/EPs will notice that their sound has evolved and grown more mature. Gone are the walls of sound – the Black Midi-esque math-rock cacophonies – and in its place is a record with clear direction and narrative that still retains the distinct MWC sound.
B: ‘I think working on a full-length record, being a bit older, and having been in the studio before all helped, but we were still green. But as it went on, we learned how to be more comfortable within that space. With a record you have more scope because the songs can’t all sound the same. I’m really proud of the songs on there, it was really fun to mess around and do different things with them – it’s still carrying on from stuff we were doing before, but it feels more mature.’
V: ‘Well, before we made the album, we had always played everything live before we recorded it. It was weird, because half of the album we didn’t have time to play live in front of an audience. There’s one song, ‘Canyons’, where there’s a key change in the middle and a modulation to accommodate the live version because it’s high as f*ck. And then there’s another one –’
But coupling these additional instruments with the amount of texture in their songs creates a logistical challenge for the stage, though the pair take this complication as a good thing. From an outside perspective, having six band members could seem quite daunting in terms of getting anything done – you can only imagine the potential issues with scheduling, decision-making, or creative choices. But these lot seem to have boiled it down to a science.
V: ‘It really depends! Sometimes, a song will be almost finished individually, and then we all learn it and work on it from there. But especially with Cannonball – we really started from ground-zero, just jamming – all six of us – and going from there. Like ‘Nosedive’ we split up into groups – one group wrote the instrumental and another group wrote the topline. They were going to be two separate songs, but they just happened to go together. We experiment a little bit, but it’s nothing too thought out, it’s whatever feels intuitive.’
B: ‘Yeah, it’s whatever works in the moment. It’s a very democratic process, so even if it’s one person’s original idea: the moment it’s in the room, it becomes all of ours.’
Arguably what makes MWC’s distinct sound is their expansion on the classic indie quartet with keys and vocalist Emmie-Mae Avery, and violinist Clio Starwood. Credit where credit is due, Starwood’s strings are second to none. Both on the record and live on stage, her performance piles on the emotions in every song, whether that’s the twisting defiance of ‘Something Else To Give’, or the frantic, powerful, and aptly named ‘Ode to Clio’.
But coupling these additional instruments with the amount of texturing lots of MWC’s tracks have, it creates some logistical challenges for the stage, though the pair take this complication as a good thing.
V: ‘Well, before we made the album, we had always played everything live before we recorded it. It was weird, because half of the album we didn’t have time to play live in front of an audience before we recorded it. There’s one song, ‘Canyons’, where there’s a key change in the middle and a modulation to accommodate the live version because it’s high as f*ck. And then there’s another one –’
B: ‘I think ‘Still Angry’ and ‘Lighter’, they’re some of the ones where there’s wider vocals or wider strings that we can’t do live. In the studio you can create textures by layering things and making things sound crazy, but obviously because there’s only six of us, sometimes we get the same impact by making things heavier live because we don’t have four violins.’
V: ‘‘Still Angry’ is a very different version I’d say, and the end of ‘Lighter’ is a switch up as well – its fun! Also, I think it’s nice, like if I’m watching a gig and the band plays something different, I enjoy that. Like if I wanted to see the same thing, I’d just listen to the music at home.’
In terms of prioritising the live or recorded parts of band-life, it seems that parts of ‘Cannonball’ pushed recording as a priority, which was a different approach than usual. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a profound decision, as the pair dissected.
B: ‘I mean we just write songs and then perform them, you know? Not to sound stupid, but sometimes it’s one way, sometimes it’s the other. Like the album was the first time when some of the recording has come before the writing, but I think –’
V: ‘We’ve never really prioritised recording that way before.’
B: ‘Yeah, but if we write stuff we can’t play live, then we’ll just learn to play it a different way.’
V: ‘I do think that is one of the most important aspects of being in a band and playing and the importance of gigs. You learn what your limitations are as a group and learn to play into what you can actually do. For me, the joy is playing live.’
B: ‘They’re just very different things: a project of performing an hour of music versus recording forty minutes of it, you just have to separate it in your mind.’
In any case, if you haven’t listened to ‘Cannonball’ then you probably should – as Chloe elegantly put it, “it’s like if Alice in Chains had a baby with HAIM and it wrote ‘Into the Woods’ with Andrew Bird.” Sounds pretty gnarly – get on it!
Footnotes
Thanks again to This Is Tmrw for having us
For more from Man/Woman/Chainsaw click here.
To catch Man/Woman/Chainsaw on their nexr visit to Birmingham get your tickets here.