Bringing to mind Sonic Youth, Moloko and The 13th Floor Elevators,The Slow-Motion World of Snowpony is an innovative, indie-ish debut album. Key mover in the London-based three-piece is 28-year-old Katharine Gifford, a singer/songwriter/keyboardist/ guitarist who cut her teeth in many bands, including Moonshake and the influential Stereolab.
I was the third keyboard player, says Katharine, discussing her experience with Stereolab. It s quite common to come through that band and then go and do your own thing. The songs on Slow-Motion World reflect Stereolab s influence, but eventually her deep desire to sing compelled Katharine to form her own act.
Snowpony s music is really quite bizarre. It took me about five listens before I could get into this twisting, turning, backward-looped, off-kilter combination of strong bass and guitar, disembodied vocals and unusual techno. Is Snowpony s music consciously complex?
It s not really deliberate, mentions Katharine. It s good in a way if the album s a bit of a slow-grower, because I think if things are too immediate then people get bored with them quite quickly.
Whenever people ask me what do
you do, what kind of band are you in, I always say experimental , says Katharine. Which,
she laughs, is totally meaningless, really!
What pulls you towards experimental music?
Well, it s not deliberately experimental. I want to write pop songs, but they just come out weird, because I don t really know what I m doing! The kind of music I really like myself falls into two camps. It s either, like, two-and-a-half minute songs that are focused on being a song, or it s quite unusual textured music. Sonic Youth are a good example of a band that have managed to do both. Because they have these little pop songs, but they have these textured explorations as well.
3 Can Keep A Secret (If 2 Are Dead) , possibly the quirkiest track on the album, pays tribute to one of great experimental bands of all-time by sampling elements from Sonic Youth s 100% . Would the band s Kim Gordon have been a mentor for Katharine?
Kind of, Katharine notes, though it was more Lee Renaldo and Thurston Moore, because what they do with guitars is really amazing. As with Sonic Youth, feedback is a big part of Snowpony s sound, but there s something else that makes the tracks sound particularly eerie.
Yeah, agrees Katharine. It s the backwardness. Also, I ve got a weird sense of timing, which is just a personal feel but it comes out. The new stuff I ve been working on, a lot of it s about water, and I don t know how, but well, it s like textures sliding underneath each other and moving in the way water moves. So it s not such a linear approach. There s regularity, but it s also more of an organic form.
Lyrically, what are your favourite themes?
Sex and death, really, says Katharine. Sometimes I m not very sure where it all comes from it s like dreams and stuff, bits or fragments of things that you re not really sure where you remember them from.
Do you tend to write the music first, or the lyrics?
Well, I actually tend to do them both at once. I get a few loops going, and then the lyrics kind of start to work with that, and then more music comes. It s like doing a jig-saw.
What contemporary music inspires you right now?
I really like Sparklehorse, answers
Katharine, chuckling in delight at the bands similar names. We did a gig with them in New York. It was brilliant, we d been trying to get this gig together for ages, and it was like, YES! They re kind of countryish in a very alternative way, but a bit more than that. They re quite introverted most of the time, with really interesting lyrics observation of daily life that goes off into weird tangents.
With a drummer from Moonshake and the bassist, Debbie Googe, a former ten-year member of My Bloody Valentine, Snowpony s pedigree is quite impeccable.
Yeah, agrees Katharine, but it s a double-edged sword. People expect you to be a certain way and when you re not they can be quite disappointed. It s like, How dare you have been in Stereolab and be doing something else now?
It s interesting who s into it really. It s people who I wouldn t have really expected to really like the band people that aren t necessarily that fussed about what s trendy and what isn t, who just come along to the gig and go, Ah, entertainment, great! People who just come along for whatever reason, which is really nice. n
Sample Snowpony s experimentalism when they support Afghan Wigs at the Mean Fiddler, on March 12th. The Slow-Motion World of Snowpony is out now on Radioactive.