Would you care to introduce yourself?
My name is Ruari, I play guitar and sing in Golden Grrrls with Eilidh (drums and vocals) and Rachel (guitar and vocals)
How would you describe the music you make?
We play pop music, guitar pop basically I guess. I think we used to be kind of power pop but we've just record our LP and I'd say it sounds a little different, maybe a bit more subtle and a little less distorted. We're pretty happy with it.
How did you start out making music?
I started off playing drums and played in various bands in Glasgow when I moved there to study. After a while I wanted to do something a bit different so I got a guitar and started recording some songs on my own as Golden Grrrls. I put them on the internet and got asked to play some gigs, Eilidh and I worked in the same place and we'd talked about making music together so we decided to do it together. Our friend Kate played keyboards with us for a while, then another friend Lorna took over and she wanted to play guitar. Now Rachel is the third member of the band, Lorna was moving to the US and I was moving to London and we'd met Rachel through playing with one of her other bands so we asked her to join, she said yes and it's worked out really well.
What process goes into the way you write songs?
Well, because we live in different cities (Rachel and I are in London, Eilidh is in Glasgow) we have to persevere a bit, usually I'll work out the basic structure and melody for a few songs and then Rachel will come round to mine and we'll work out her parts. Then we usually try and set aside some time when either Eilidh is in London, or Rachel and I go up to Glasgow for a few days and we just work on stuff quite intensely. Like for recording our album we just spent about four days practicing non-stop, I think we worked out most of the vocal melodies the day before we recorded and in the mornings before we went into the studio.
What can people expect from your live shows?
We just try and have fun when we play really, we're not exactly the tightest band in the world... We usually play pretty fast, try and remember how the songs go and hope people enjoy themselves. We don't really get to play live as often as we'd like, mainly due to the geography thing, but when we do we just try and make the most of it and have a good time. Playing shows is definitely my favourite thing about being in a band.
What are you all listening to at the moment?
We listen to a pretty wide range of stuff. I really love the Feelies and their associated bands, I think the Yung Wu record is amazing and I just got the Trypes reissue which I love as well. Those bands and a lot of kiwi pop, specifically the Bats, early REM and the Necessaries, a band that Arthur Russell and Ernie Brooks had in the early 80s were a really big influence when it came to writing our record. We've just been on tour with a band called Sea Lions, in the van we listened to Molly Nilsson, Arthur Russell, Velvet Underground and a lot of west and north African guitar and disco music, most of which came off Rachel's ipod so I'm not really sure of names or bands. We all really love this Nigerian musician called William Onyeabor though, he started off making afrobeat stuff in the 70s but ended up making loads of amazing synth stuff in the 80s. People should check him out. And I recently got a Mo Tucker solo record called Life in Exile After Abdication that is really good, I've been listening to that a lot.
What can we expect to see/hear from you in the future?
We did a split 7" with Sea Lions for our tour that is getting a proper release later this month. Album comes out on Night School at the beginning of October, hopefully we'll be playing some shows around then and then doing some touring in the months after that.
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