Being sent hundreds of press releases a week alongside copious amounts of promo cd’s makes for an arduous process in terms of determining what to cover, who to go and watch and who to talk to.  It can get fairly tedious, extremely repetitive and sometimes totally disheartening when you see the stack of music that just resembles an amalgamation of other people’s work rehashed into what a pr defines as ‘unique’.  That’s not a slight to pr’s by the way, who incidentally have one of the hardest jobs in music to get people like me to listen to their roster, particularly when you consider a pr’s job is realistically only made a whole lot easier if there is a certain amount of hype going hand in hand with a campaign.  No hype?  Well sadly many people won’t even bother to open the envelope or link in which the release is contained.  So on one of those particular days of new promo listening, I fell upon Pope Joan.  The press release assured me I would love it and roughly twenty seconds after pressing play on the soundcloud accompanying it I unreservedly agreed.   

As the initial bars of kinetic art-pop vibes began to reverberate around my pre-tinitis eardrums, Pope Joan got me very animated. A demanding chorus over heavy beats, angular guitars and a staccato rhythm makes ‘Dictator’ exactly like its title - authoritarian in that it commands your full attention and continues ruling your head space for hours after.  The B-side to this single release, out this week incidentally, ‘Mattias’ is slightly more left field although still wedged firmly into the category that houses all good pop, exercising more of this ambient wall of processed guitar noise, furious drum lines and quirky 8-bit synths that people seem to be honing in on.

2008 brought a debut mini album offering from this “post-punk hurricane” as they encountered waves of experimentalism that was loud, brash and above all unrefined.  But in the immediate aftermath a change in sound was beckoning and thus we arrive at this stripped back version of the former with blissful song crafting that takes traditional pop and gives it an avant garde milieu in which to lay it’s foundations.  The resulting live shows are explosive as the Brightonian foursome give it some of that taut post-punk vigor that originally influenced their writing, leaving crowds worked up into a frenzy and promoters and booking agents rushing with the speed of a whippet to book them.  Nice work if you can get it lads, and so far it seems they can, they do and they will.  

www.4ortherecord.com spoke to Pope Joan recently to find out more about this transformation in sound, their superb single ‘Dictator’ and working with producer of the moment Mark Williams. 

Pope Joan are: Mark Aaron (vocals), Tom Windsor (synths, guitars and vocals), Andrew Millin (drums) and Dave Coomber (bass, synths, vocal).

4TR: Pope Joan has been playing together for the last few years culminating in the release of a mini-album in 2008 with a post-punk vibe to it.  But the sound has evolved quite significantly into what it is now, what encouraged the change in style?

Mark: Well we have been together for 4 years and early on the music was eclectic taste wise because it reflected what we had been into before this.  I suppose it took a little while to find our feet as a band, so our last album was more art-rocky, a bit edgier in a way, because we were testing the waters and sounding like a band who were getting ready to do something.

Tom: Yeah so we released the mini-album and from the feedback we got from that we took it away and progressed our sound into what we are doing now which we are really happy with.  Before it was a work in progress; a kind of summation of all of our influences at that time through which we were testing out musical ideas.  I think that has essentially helped us to figure out exactly what we wanted Pope Joan to sound like.

4TR: Now on your MySpace you describe your sound as avant-pop, is that because you employ a level of experimentalism into your song writing?

Mark: I think that’s very much it; beforehand we had a bit of a new wave post punk type thing going on, but we are not scared to just totally strip a song back and experiment more with sounds now.  It’s a bit of a contradiction in terms because it’s sort of almost more experimental but the outcome is we end up with more classic pop songs in a way, so by stripping down the parts and trying to simplify things we have kind of refined things.

Dave: Yes, I think it’s just the case that we've gone the long way round to get to a simpler sound.

Mark: I guess it’s been a trial and error process really, like some bands start out with a contrived idea of what they want to do and are like right these are the bands we are into and deliberately think I want to make a band sound like this.  However Pope Joan has been an organic process through us finding our feet and putting stuff into a melting pot until eventually it’s come out as something we're really happy with.  So arriving at our current sound has been a gradual process but it is kind of more rewarding in the long run.

4TR: Now that you have progressed the band to a fresher sound has it impacted on the writing process internally?  

Tom: Yes; I think we are a lot stricter with ourselves now, I mean we still generate the same amount of stuff but every song has to be a total winner.  Like there will be songs that we’ll work on that we eventually feel aren’t kind of going anywhere whereas before we just chipped away at a song until it morphed into something we were kind of happy with.  It benefits us to be stricter I think.

Dave: I think it’s a case that we have learnt how to respond more to the song as well.

Mark: Yeah and not from an individual point of view, so we now think about the song rather than our parts and what the song needs from us rather than putting as much as we can into it because that’s what we want to do individually.  It has become a much more collective sort of process.

Dave: [Laughing] You could say we have got over the musician egos.

4TR: So now it’s a collective way of working towards the best interests of each track does that mean it’s wholly collaborative in terms of song-writing: lyrics and music?

Tom: Mark writes the songs and then we all contribute to it, so how each one sounds ultimately is kind of a 2-tier process. Mark comes up with the raw components like how the vocals will go and the bare bones of the track and we will fill in the gaps collectively and steer it in a direction.  

4TR: Where do your lyrics stem from Mark? Are they based around autobiographical themes?

Mark: Recently it’s been very different in that I have moved away from writing in my own perspective and taken that to perhaps a narrative that moves alongside me instead.  There is some story telling in there, but at the same time there's definitely an autobiographical kind of vibe about it in an alternate reality.  By that I mean that themes can be explored away from yourself.  The starting point is obviously me as I am writing it and I think it’s important that someone is very honest, but taking that past you as the writer is just as important.  Through practice and writing lots of songs I've probably got to a point where it’s becoming a lot easier.  

4TR: You have been working with the in-demand Mark Williams (White Lies, Biffy Clyro, The Cribs) on production of your most recent tracks, how did he come to be involved with Pope Joan?

Mark: Well we met him through our manager who we met at the end of last year.  Actually the end of last year was a very important turning point for us; it was an exciting time because we had lots of things going on and we knew we were kind of sitting on something exciting that we weren’t before so we were keen to get out and do something with it.  So we talked with Mark about what we wanted to do on our recordings and he came to see us play a few times and the relationship started from there.  We are extremely excited about working with him in the future on our next couple of singles later this year.

4TR: What, if anything yet, has he brought to the recording process for you guys?

Mark: It’s still very early days, but we very much all get the feeling that he is going to be a great guy to bounce ideas off and work with.  He is similar to us in age and seems very open to all ideas which is ideal.  I think there are 2 kinds of producers out there - there’s the one that is really dictatorial and tells you how you should sound and pretty much doesn’t let you have much input into production and there’s the other, like Mark who works very collaboratively.  For us that is the most important thing because we have spent a long time doing things on our own recording ourselves on a shoe string budget.

4TR: In that case after employing the DIY ethic in the past, do you foresee it being hard to let go and have someone else take over the reigns?

Tom: No, I think the collaborative approach is right for us; I mean we spent a while getting to where we are so we have a clear idea of what we want to achieve, so it will be the perfect opportunity to work with someone get the whole package together and really tart it up if you like. 

4TR: Are you working with or looking to work with anyone in particular on a label basis?

Mark: We are not working with anyone at the moment.  The single ‘Dictator’ is being released through Furious Recordings and is coming out digitally with Ingrooves, but I am not entirely sure who we will be releasing the album with yet.  We have songs that need to be recorded so we are just going to do it and see what happens in terms of label support after that.

Tom: Yeah the process we are working with right now works well for us. So I guess it all on whether or not someone might throw a bit of money at it so we can record everything from scratch with Mark or alternatively we might go back and tweak some of the songs we‘ve already done and re-record some of the others.  There is a kind of flexibility there at the moment.

4TR: So for you with all the changes that have occurred with your sound, management and production in the past 12 months you could describe Pope Joan as still very much a work in progress but with a big year to come.  You mentioned the desire to record an album, have you begun writing towards that?

Mark: Yes, we are hoping to release it at the end of this year because we are pretty much 9 or 10 songs into it already.  I think beforehand with the mini-album we were slightly rushed to get something out so it was effectively a collection of songs, but this time we would really like our official album to be an album that flows like an album should.

Dave: Yeah we want a body of work, where every track included goes together perfectly so you can sit down and listen to it from beginning to end and understand why each track was included.

Mark: The aim is for us to write like 15 absolutely great songs and then to sit down and chuck out 5 tracks ruthlessly so that's what we are currently working hard towards.

4TR: Finally, I have to mention your recent support show with New Young Pony Club at White Heat which was an incredible show (You can see some coverage up on You Tube)  How was that for you?

Mark: Yeah I think that might be my best gig ever; energy wise the crowd were fantastic because you can give it quite a lot and if nothing is coming back to you from the audience it’s quite draining, but at that show it effortless in that all the energy was coming from the crowd and so we were feeding off that which was hugely exciting

Tom: We have been very lucky in terms of getting support slots so far and that was like Mark said one of the best for us.  Now what we really want is a proper with a band we really like and go well in terms of sound so that we can keep up the live momentum as that’s what we enjoy the most.  

Pope Joan’s single ‘Dictator’ is out on the 29th March 2010.  And it’s brilliant.

www.myspace.com/popejoan

Words: Francesca Strange

Anonymous
Posts: 1

Re: Pope Joan : Interview
Reply #1 on : Tue April 27, 2010, 15:56:39

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Really loving this band, saw them at the ICA recently and it sounded massive.

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