Quite recently we found out bunch of bands that are giving quite a sense to rock & pop music in the UK, whereas the indie scene we used to know the last 6 or 7 years is crashing totally... bands splitting up, label going mainstream or flirting with awful mainstream synth-pop.
Most of these people are surely more in common with the great lo-fi american scene, think label like In The Red, Woodist, Captured Tracks, HoZac and much more and bands like Jay Reatard (RIP), Wavves, Dum Dum Girls or Smith Westerns.
Here is one of our new favorite uk band, and it's quite funily named FRENCH KISSING. Their single Oh Suzanne (watch after this interview) is an absolute sixties influenced sing-a-long summer anthem, even if it was already released in February. Go to get it now, because it's huge and make us shake our bodies during hours and hours, playing again and again. We love it so we have to interview this band !
Show them some love, as we are : http://www.myspace.com/frenchkissingband
Can you introduce yourself ?
French Kissing are :
Guitar : Jonny Stafford
Drums : Dominic Haley
Bass : Chris Fenner
Guitar : Sam Pillay
We all sing-thats our special power!
We started in early 2009, it was shortly after I was at a shitty limits gig. People were dancing and having a good time, and realised you don't have to do something intellectual or be an amazing musician to play music. Hopefully one day people will start dancing at our gigs..... Me Dom and Chris were in a Krautrock band called Super Geil. Check it out: http://www.myspace.com/supergeil . I [Jonny] used to be in a band called 'The Wizard', which was like Yes and Sabbath jamming on King Crimson tunes.
You're also DJing, do you consider yourself as musicians or music lovers ?
We're not great musicians, so I would have to say the latter. The band came out from just wanting to play music and obviously it ended up sounding like the stuff we listen to. We're not really DJ's either, but when I have DJ'd I play old 7"s my mum used to have in a drawer at home, which I stole. Everley brothers, girl groups like the Crystals and the Shangri Las, stuff like that. I don't know much contemporary music, at the moment I'm listening to a lot of The Carter family, the Fugs and Creedence. We all like Lovvers, who we've played with a couple of times, my favourite bands to see live are Please and You're Smiling Now but we'll All Turn Into Demons's .
What are you influenced by ?
As far as influences go, musically we're pretty basic, like a bunch of teenage kids trying to sound like the stones and the beatles. Lyrically, most of the songs are about existentialism, psychoanalysis and girls. We've been pidgeonholed as a surf band, I grew up by the sea, but sucked at surfing, so maybe playing surf music is making up for that inadequacy.
When you contact our blog, you said, we should be interested by your band (and we ARE) and nammed Male Bonding we talked about few months ago. Do you think that finally england gots his lo-fi scene as is it in the US ?
I think England has had a great music scene for years! Most of the people in the bands you named [Fair Ohs, Cold Pumas, Male Bonding, Girls Names...] have probably been playing in DIY bands for about a decade, so I think if its being perceived as a new scene its probably because there's more music industry attention on it, which I think can only be a bad thing. As far as scenes go, we've played a load of gigs with Sexbeet, who are a really cool band and super nice guys too. Can two bands be a scene? Hopefully we'll be touring Europe with them at some point.
What's comming next for you ? any plans for a new single ?
At the moment we're at a serious impasse. On one hand we could hone our skills and write a really slick concept album or we were thinking of going psychadelic. Everyone's writing songs now, Dom wrote one called 'I've got a knife'. I'm not sure what to make of that. If we get any better at playing our instruments I think theres a real danger of us becoming a wedding band.
Can you tell us, what are your secret French Kissing skills ?
I don't know much about french kissing personally. I'm hoping one day that Dom will explain it to me so that I can try it on a girl. You're French, maybe you could help. Generally after playing a gig I'll feel quite stressed and go outside for a cigarette, at which point an old man will invariably engage me in a conversation about books.
And because we love you, you can listen this song here >
And because we love you, you can listen this song here >
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