{"id":60910,"date":"2015-11-24T13:00:09","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T13:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wonderlandmagazine.com\/?p=60910"},"modified":"2016-09-22T14:27:26","modified_gmt":"2016-09-22T14:27:26","slug":"profile-savages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wonderlandmagazine.com\/2015\/11\/24\/profile-savages\/","title":{"rendered":"Profile: Savages"},"content":{"rendered":"

We met Savages at Wahaca’s Day of the Dead Festival, adrenaline-buzzed and exhausted after airing some of\u00a0Adore Life<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"SAVAGES-photo_credit_Colin_Lane\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“Are we gonna have a fucking good time, or is it too early?” Jehnny Beth of Savages croons in her French drawl to the crowd at Wahaca’s Day of the Dead festival.\u00a0“Thank you darling,” she gushes to some clamouring young fans at the front. There’s a lot of teenagers but there’s a lot of dads too, that’s the appeal of Savages, I guess. They’re bringing their riff-heavy, howling sound into the mainstream, a distant and fond memory for the last generation, an entirely new experience for the next.<\/p>\n

On stage,\u00a0Gemma Thompson (guitar),\u00a0Ayse Hassan (bass) and\u00a0Fay Milton (drums) all play in perfect knit, airing some of their second album’s songs in the UK. The foursome slunk on stage, dressed all in black, naturally and with that achingly cool atmosphere they seem to spread everywhere they go. Crowd favourites, “Fuckers”, “Husbands” and “The Answer” (from their forthcoming sophomore album,\u00a0Adore Life<\/em>) get more riotous and impassioned with every minute until Beth’s jacket is flung open wide, her hair shaken out of it’s slicked back style and she’s leaping into the crowd. It’s a strange setting for Savages, a mid-sized stage at an indoor day festival, but they’ve done it all in the two years since\u00a0Silence Yourself<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Their first album won over critics and gained them a cult following in fans and there’s not doubt the second will do the same. “The Answer”, their first single from the record is a relentless, rip-roaring, sing-along, scream-along mash of drums and guitars, with Beth’s almost threatening snarl, “If you don’t love me \/\u00a0You don’t love anybody.”<\/p>\n

After a bone-shaking set, amidst flower-crowned fans and festivities at east London’s Tobacco Docks, I piled in a dressing room with an exhausted Hassan and Milton, an accordion player and a mariachi band (completely unrelated) to discuss the creation of album two, Adventure Time <\/em>aspirations and being “semi-famous”.<\/p>\n

\"Savages<\/a><\/p>\n

Since the first album how do you think you\u2019ve changed?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Fay: <\/b>As a band we\u2019ve been playing together for 3 or 4 years so we\u2019ve got a lot more trust in each other\u2019s things. We all do our parts kind of separately for this album. I\u2019m speaking so slowly I\u2019m sorry I\u2019m so tired!<\/span><\/p>\n

Ayse<\/b>: Don\u2019t worry I\u2019ll do it! Naturally we\u2019ve changed a lot because we\u2019ve been on the road constantly for over two years. The most important thing we\u2019ve learnt I think, to trust each other and be patient in all aspects of the word, on stage and when we\u2019re touring. On stage when we\u2019re experimenting with sound and ideas we just trust each other to know what we\u2019re doing. But there\u2019s loads of things! That\u2019s just off the top of my head after immediately coming off stage.<\/span><\/p>\n

How was that show for you?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Ayse: <\/b>It\u2019s really hard to answer that because every show is unique and we try not to think of it in that way. People have paid to come and see us and we try whatever obstacles we may face on stage or sound wise people have paid so we always try and give 100 percent regardless of what\u2019s going wrong on stage. The audience were awesome, it was a fun show it could have been a lot better for us but it\u2019s just the nature of these things.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since you formed\u00a0Savages it doesn\u2019t seem like you\u2019ve had a break?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Fay: <\/b>Between finishing touring and starting to write again for the new album we took a month off and at the time it seemed like a huge amount of time because we had had no more than five days off for two years really, it was just constant. So taking a month off seemed so luxurious (a month! What can I do with a month\u2026 write an opera) you have all these grand ideas and a month was really short in the end. In hindsight I would have taken a bit longer just because resting is important. <\/span><\/p>\n

Lots of bands get bored of what made them successful, do you look at Silence Yourself<\/em>\u00a0like that, are you eager to play new songs?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Fay: <\/b>Not massively, I don\u2019t think we wanted to go too far away from the first album we\u2019ve got a new album and I guess we wanted to make a progression, not throw that away. And we\u2019ve got some interim songs like \u201cFuckers\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ayse: <\/b>For the first record it was weird because that was a snapshot of what we were at that moment so we were trying to capture what we had been doing live for a year or so. With the second record we had space to experiment and do something a little bit different, sonically and lyrically. It felt like the second record was a progression of what we had learned over the past two years. We always try to challenge ourselves with different projects just to keep ourselves interested and always learning new things so we don\u2019t get bored, because playing the same songs can get tiresome but that\u2019s the nature of the beast.<\/span><\/p>\n

Did you expect with the first record to have commercial success as well as cult following?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Fay:<\/b> Did we?! Success is different now because people don\u2019t really buy records anymore. You don\u2019t just get successful and buy a house. It\u2019s not a life changing thing, mainly we\u2019re really lucky that we\u2019ve never played to an empty room and we\u2019ve never done a show that\u2019s not been busy and had a great atmosphere, And for that I\u2019m really grateful. To me that\u2019s the successful thing and we\u2019re lucky but life hasn\u2019t changed that much.<\/span><\/p>\n

Are things like charting important to you? Is that a measure of success to you or is that just a nice little addition?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Ayse:<\/b> A nice addition I think. For each of us we all have our different ideas about what is success and if we\u2019re able to keep making music over the next five or ten years that will feel like more of a successful thing to us.<\/span><\/p>\n