Hormone The Range
Attempting a marriage of subtle subversion and the classic pop hook, Shakespear's Sister are single- handedly trying to haul chart pop out of the mire.
Assuredly, Shakespear's Sister proved to be one of the unexpected treats of the summer of 1989; a brace of chart singles ("You're History" and "Run Silent") packed with tiny epiphanies, {and} an album ("Sacred Heart") that managed to worry its way through the daily quicksand and emerge more than faintly gleaming. After a two year hiatus, largely due to double- barrelled pregnancy, Siobhan Fahey and Marcy Detroit return this week with a single, "Goodbye Cruel World". An album "Hormonally Yours" is due to be wheeled out of the delivery room next month. "By the time we came to do this album we were revelling in who we were," says Siobhan, "and there was a great confidence about our musical identity and direction. The first record was more experimental. It was a process of finding out who we were and what kind of direction was most suited to what we wanted to say and how we wanted to perform." "With the first record, we were inspired to write more from pain, guilt, and hurt than from love and happiness. With these new songs, we didn't feel burdened with so much of that luggage. We'd worked ost of that angst out of our systems. Having said all that, these new songs seem to continue the guilt theme. I recognize that I'm Catholic and Marcy is Jewish. There's a lot of guilt there. But you don't stop by realizing that you feel guilty about everything. You have to take it a step further and take the piss out of it. Laughing at it is what helps you deal with it." With a musical vocabulary informed by equal measures of Bolan, Sly Stone and The Shirelles, and a philosophy owing as much to Spector as Mclaren, as much to Germaine Greer as Janis Joplin, Shakespear's Sister aim modestly to single- handedly drag chart pop out of the dirty ditch and back up on the road again. "Our aim has always been to make something that is the antithesis of standard, routine pop," says Siobhan. "Everything is so contrived these days. Everything is completely geared towards the marketplace. Everything fits so neatly into pigeonholes. We revel in the fact that you can't put us in any one category. Our interests and influences are so diverse. We don't limit ourselves to any recognizable motifs." "Maybe it's going to be to our detriment in commercial terms, but it seems like an insult to our audience to think any other way. People aren't so one- dimensional. They're more open- minded than that. But this kind of thinking has given popular music a bad name again. Pop is no longer regarded as an art form. Most people don't approach it as an art and they don't begin to explore the wider possibilities." "What angers me most about the overmarketed, unintelligent music that's around is the entire lack of personality behind it. People generally aren't willing to maximize the possibilities of an underrated art form. The other side of the coin is these people who take themselves incredibly seriously. When you write and record, you do take it seriously in the sense that you're trying to rip the best out of yourself. But you also have to have the humility to realize that you're not a missionary out on some world- saving crusade. A lot of Celtic bands fall into this chest- beating thing and it nullifies what they do. As soon as anyone comes on like a world- leader, they immediately look suspect." While attempting the marriage of gentle subversion with the classic pop hook, Shakespear's Sister might be natural heirs to the 1982 school (ABC, Associates, Dexys) of caprice. The latest single is a case in point, using acerbic melody as a vehicle for a droll commentary on the expectations and manipulations of the star system. "There's always got to be a certain amount of subversion," says Siobhan. "With the first album, we managed to sneak through the doors without having to pay lip service to the usual record company expectations. There was nobody looking over our shoulders or down our necks. We had his blank canvas to play with which was really exciting. Still, you have to play these dirty tricks on record companies. With the first album, we told them that there was nothing to worry about as Dave Stewart was going to be playing on it. They only realized when it was too late that Dave was hardly ever around. He was off doing Spiritual Cowboys." "I don't really give a s**t anyway," Marcy adds. "Everyone's trying to be so hip and they're all going up their own bums. All I care about is what's in my head. I'm from Detroit. I like anything that's got a bit of soul to it. It's either funky or it's not. If people don't mean it, then I'm not interested. The same goes for the music I make. If I'm not totally committed, forget it." Having served her apprenticeship with top-drawer pop ironists Bananarama, Siobhan remains discreetly removed from her star persona. "I see Shakespear's Sister as the direct descendent of Bananarama, where there was always a great deal of irony. We would knock the whole pop idiom while at the same time being completely in love with it. There was always that tongue-in-cheek thing about it. As a listener, I'm completely in love with pop music. As a participant, I can see what's absurd and ridiculous about it. The whole notion of being a pop star is farcical." "I come from the punk era which was supposed to have completely destroyed that star syndrome. Come to think of it, I'm still a punk rocker, but that doesn't mean I walk around with safety pins and a bum-flap. You learn to apply those experiences in different ways. I think there's a lot of mischief and rebellion in our music, a natural playfulness. We're definately ironic but it's a different kind of irony to say, the Pet Shop Boys. Perhaps they set out to be ironic in their lyrics. I just set out to be naked and honest; the irony comes naturally into the performance of that. Pet Shop Boys are naturally detached. As women, Marcy and myself are much more intuitive. We're more likely to be taken over by the moment. There's much more heart to our music." The forthcoming album might be seen as a collection of songs that concern themselves as much with the heart as the hormones. "During the making of this record, hormones were very much on our minds," says Siobhan. "And our bodies. The album title 'Hormonally Yours' is a way of spotlighting the differences between the sexes. No matter how much you talk about it to your partner, there's this enormous gulf of experience and you can't get over that. That's what makes it fascinating and aggravating at the same time. When you mention hormones, you get these strangely different reactions. When we tell a man what the album is going to be called, he's likely to go, 'Uggggh; let's not talk about hormones, shall we?' A woman will go, 'F***ing great!' You ask a man about hormones and he'll go on about biology for half an hour." "What's happened with society as it's evolved is that men have become displaced and they have accepted that their function is to forage -- to hunt, to kill, to be violent. With women, the hormonal urge is still rooted in nature. We still give birth. Every month, we get that thing and we can't escape it. It reminds you that you are an animal. I'm dramatically affected by hormonal changes, not just during and after pregnancy. At a certain point every month, I feel as though I have to get something out of me, either creatively or physically. God help whoever I'm with. In that sense, these songs were torn out. God, it's such a passionate record." Like Tennant and Lowe, Siobhan and Marcy inevitably bear the consequences of a teenage stance. "I really admire someone like Patti Smith who has never tried to dsiguse her age," says Siobhan. "Her songs are written from the viewpoint of who and what she is at a certain point in her life. There's a dignity in that. There's a tremendous relief when you pass through pubescence, adolesence and your angst-ridden early twenties. I'm totally revelling in having passed all that. You spend your earlier years trying to suss people and trying to find your place. Then you get to 30 and you can look in the mirror and say f*** it, I am who I am." "What flummoxed me in Bananarama was not being able to put all that in the songs. Then I realized that I had a terrible urge to communicate those things but I didn't have the right musical partners to do it. If you're doing four-on- the-floor Italian disco melodies, it doesn't matter what you say over the top because nobody's going to listen. There's no place for self- expression in that context. That's what is so amazing about working with Marcy -- she allows me to bring those emotions in so that Shakespear's Sister songs can deal with the nuances of relationships. She creates music that has some depth to it so that there's no way I can come along and write a trite lyric on top." "Still, I'm constantly wondering whether we are going far enough out towards the edge. I keep thinking of someone like Patti Smith and what she brought to rock n' roll. It's dangerous though to use her as a measuring stick because she's a human being who has had very different experiences to us. It would be a mistake if I tried to be Patti Smith. What we have to do, as Shakespear's Sister, is constantly battle between the marketplace and any idea we have of artistic extremes. We manage to satisfy ourselves by writing songs that can be appreciated on many different levels." Finally, Siobhan considers the immense possibilities. "I'm only now beginning to ask myself what I want from this record. Well, world dominiation has never been on my agenda. It's a terrifying prospect. In order to get that, you have to work your balls off. In order to achieve that, you have to be a marketing person, a consummate interviewee and a first-rate salesperson. In effect, you have to become a cynic and you have to play the game. That's not something that I'm willing to do. I'm not prepared to give up my naivete in order for people to hear this record. But there's been times when I've listened back to these songs and thought, 'Carl, is that me? That's brilliant!' Now that's more important to me than Number One records. It would be great if other people got that thrill from it. Basically, I'd just like this record to make that kind of difference." Reprinted w/o permission.
