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pixie punk
> Teenager of the Year <
2923 Posts |
 Posted - 07/15/2004 : 11:42:42
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Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Pop Cocktail - The Martinis
Source: Martin Jones
So here I am, interviewing one of my musical heroes, Joey Santiago. Better known as the “angular and bent” (his description) guitarist of the Pixies, Santiago has just released an album with his wife Linda Mallari under the banner of The Martinis. But Santiago is also currently on tour with the reformed Pixies, playing jaw-dropping shows all over the northern hemisphere.
Am I tempted to forget all about The Martinis and just talk Pixies with Santiago? Sure, I’ve had no warning that the topic is out of bounds. But, first, I’m actually pretty darned interested in The Martinis. Their album, Smitten, is an affecting slab of robust melody and coruscating sound that will trigger all sorts of memories/comparisons in those who cherish the early to mid-'90s power pop heyday.
Second, every time the Pixies are raised as a subject, the less than eloquent (on this occasion anyway – ain’t it always the way? Your heroes never live up to your hopes) Santiago stammers and side-steps even more, avoiding even mentioning the ‘p’ word.
“Oh, yeah, uh, yeah, I’m in, uh, Athens right now. I’m obviously with the, you know, errr, yeah,” Santiago struggles when I observe that it’s hardly surprising Smitten has taken so long to emerge with all the current Pixies activity.
Then, a little later on in the interview, I observe that Santiago doesn’t seem at all phased by how much he’s taking on right now; Pixies, babies, film scoring, The Martinis.
“Ummm, no. You know, one day at a time, one day at a time. But it’s a blast this, ummm, blessing right now,” the ‘p’ word is avoided again.
In fact, it’s pretty difficult to coax anything revealing from Santiago. Despite his assurances to the contrary, he sounds tired and sick and, though he’s always affable, tends to just agree with observations, struggling to elaborate beyond a simple confirmation.
What follows is a highlights package of the interview. If you like, you can insert your own ‘um’s, ‘you know’s, ‘so’s and ‘yeah’s every six words or so for authenticity.
- Congratulations on The Martinis record, I can’t believe you’ve kept it from us for this long. -
“Well…it had to be right.”
-But you been itching to get it out knowing how good it is -
“Oh yeah. You know, we’ve been wanting to put this out for a while, so yeah.”
- Smitten is bursting with robust melodies, you even get to play some big power chords - it sounds like it was enjoyable to play, like you’re both smiling through the whole album. -
“Yes, definitely. I mean everything’s pretty poppy, pretty happy. But you know, the lyric content isn’t maybe so much in that direction, that happiness.”
- I’ve read you describing your guitar style as “angular and bent”, do you think that Smitten is a bit of a departure from the angular and bent Joey? -
“Ummm, when I can get away with it I do it, I throw it around in Smitten but for the most part I guess yeah we were trying to make a - well we weren’t trying - but the direction the songs were going wasn’t going the angular way, it wouldn’t fit with the melodies going around, it would have just been too weird.”
- Is it Linda’s sense of melody that drives that direction? -
“Oh yes, definitely, definitely. She can just… you know, humming along and there you go, you know. Record that damn thing! Yeah she’s definitely, yeah she’s a very good musician. Trained. Actually her first instrument is the piano.”
- But for a trained musician, she has a great sense of simplicity – nothing is too convoluted or complicated. -
“Right, yeah. Yeah she knows, she knows. Yeah you’re right, she’s definitely not convoluted in any way.”
- I don’t know whether you’re just fortunate or whether these are the people you’ve sought out but you’ve played with some very talented and original singers. -
“Right. Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah.”
- Do you find that your guitar playing is inspired by the singer? Do you converse with or bounce off their style, their phrasing, their melodies? -
“Ummmm, yeah just the general attitude of what the song is going to be like. Yeah. I definitely bounce off the lyrics. Yeah I guess it just seeps in, even though I don’t know it, it subconsciously hits me ‘oh yeah, yeah that’s why I did that’. Sometimes it’s just by accident, you know, it just takes you there, theory-wise and what you’re capable of doing. Sometimes it’s a happy accident.”
- It sounds like you still play very instinctually then. -
“Yes, yeah. Yeah, I don’t know what it is, I think I just draw from a certain resource and that’s what I got, you know. You know what I mean? It’s like you know. You go into a cookie shop and it’s like ‘okay, they’re not going to have pizzas’. They just won’t. They don’t know how to make it. I suppose one day I should go get some training on pizza making. You know what I mean? Broaden the horizons.”
- Well I don’t think people have got bored of your cookie recipes yet. -
“Ha, ha, thanks.”
- So you don’t sing at all yourself? -
“I can sing now that I have a kid. I’ve just had a baby so you know, it forces me to sing to her to comfort her… if my voice is comforting. In a sense it is; it doesn’t matter, you know, as long as they know you’re giving it your best shot. But no, I’m pretty microphone shy actually.”
- You’ve managed to keep Smitten a close-knit project, was y our original objective to try and do as much you could yourselves? -
“Yeah, it’s just between the two of us, ‘cause…I guess it’s just like maybe living in LA it’s pretty hard, actually it’s one of the hardest cities, I think, I don’t know, I don’t hang out with a lot of musicians, well I do, but you feel like you have to pay them to practice (laughs), you know to get in the room, it’s like ‘oh man,’ it’s not like forming a gang, you know what I mean? It’s harder over there to do that I guess…. And then writing the stuff for this with just the two of us really forces you to flesh it out a little rather than go into a room and just like ‘hey…. Let’s just jam this thing out’ you know.”
- Well it was a real surprise to see Blag Dahlia [The Dwarves] named in the production credits; I never imagined he would contribute to something so attractive. -
“Oh. Yeah (laughs). Yeah he fell in love with it that’s for sure. It was weird, he knew every lyric, he was definitely into it. He, uh, yeah, he’s got good pop sensibilities. You know The Dwarves were a good pop band (laughs).”
Smitten is rich with sonic signposts, there’s even a sticker on the album cover that raises comparisons with Veruca Salt, Siouxsie and, of course, the Pixies. Are you finding that everyone brings their own comparison to the table? -
“Yeah, yeah. Uh, what does it remind you of?”
- Did you ever hear of an Australian band called The Clouds? –
“No.”
- They were around in the nineties, had two female singers and were very influenced by the Pixies. -
“Okay, yeah I get a lot of weird, stuff - comparisons. Umm, yeah like ‘you don’t hear it?’ like ‘no I don’t hear that comparison to…’ what was that one song, that hit that Jefferson Airplane had?”
- Jefferson Airplane! -
“That’s what I mean, you know, ‘what the f**k are you talking about?’ and then when we were recording it, Brad Cook, one of the producers/engineers, said ‘oh yeah, that song reminds me of… ‘ it’s like ‘you’re shitting me’, you know, ‘I don’t hear that’. What was it? ‘Go Ask Alice’! ‘Cmon, you guys are playing with me’.
- With the Pixies ball rolling, has it messed with your plans to tour and promote The Martinis? -
“Well you know, when we find time; we’re pretty much booked through Christmas right now. Linda and I have done an instore, just acoustically and with her being pregnant right now, she can’t really practice with loud music, with a band. But yeah we definitely want to play out sometime.”
- Maybe you could treat us to a Pixies / Martinis double bill in Australia. That would be nice. -
“Oh yeah thanks. That would be nice. Well we’ll see, we’ll see, we’ll see what happens there.”
- Well thanks for your time -.
Yeah. Oh by the way, did you know that Linda was in the…. She was in the uhhhh, ummm, oh forget it. She’ll tell you herself.”
And the phone line goes dead…
Smitten is available on Distracted Records through BMG
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Australian Interview With Joey-The Martinis
