If December represented a rather frivolous month filled with excess, intrigue and ATP then January, by (excessively, almost unfairly stark) contrast feels all the more enthusiasm-exhausting, ultimately, utterly dismal. How fitting then that come the first of February, the time by which we'll all presumably be waving white socks in surrender to the relentless sombreness of the worst month of the Gregorian calendar, Wild Flag return to cajole us back into a mirthful sense of worth. Are we in need? To paraphrase the self-professed "veterans", Oh Yeah. Ahead of the quartet's debut UK show at a wet-through Lexington we caught up with a jet-lagged, if typically jovial Janet Weiss in a Premier Inn neighbouring the bursting bin liners of the Islington Academy. Neil Young's Heart Of Gold splutters through tinny speakers in a tawdry café reception, and as it transpires that's the precise flaxen hue of vital organ which palpitates within Weiss' ribcage over 20-odd minutes...
"This'll be interesting" she groans, unenthusiastically inaugurating an entire afternoon's worth of promo. Having barely shaken bleary-eye syndrome (frontwomen Mary Timony and Carrie Brownstein are yet to awake from long-overdue slumber) and with a thought or two perhaps still lingering in an aeroplane somewhere over the sea, she concedes that "it can get a bit much, yeah. Especially when a day merely becomes an idea. When you're told: "OK, this is what you've got to do today", from the wrong side of a 20-hour journey, it initially feels a little overwhelming. But once you sit down with whoever, you know, it's alright."
Something of a fantastical line of work it may seem, industriously pitter-pattering around the globe with the primary aim of dishing out supremely dynamic post-punk although it's not without its snags and stumbling blocks: "It's a great job so I shouldn't have a thing to complain about although you are tired quite literally all the time", Weiss' words intermittently blending into sweet amalgam between every squelch of nonchalantly masticated gum. "You don't really get a ton of sleep as a musician but other than that it's not so bad."
A centripetal element of Wild Flag's existence is of course the self-titled debut full-length, a bewilderingly cohesive lesson in crunch control that's quite the antithesis of "bad". With four compulsively creative bods on board (Weiss at least defiantly affirms: "There's no way I can sit around and not play music for a whole season while Carrie works on Portlandia so I've got my own other bands I'm in and wanna start, ideas I have about music"), you'd maybe contend that the songwriting process could potentially represent a rather knotty predicament. Contrarily, it appears to be anything but: "I think it's an extremely collaborative work. The ideas for the songs started in various and numerous places, often with Mary or Carrie coming out with a melody or riff. That's then the skeleton of some songs, which we all go on to flesh out together, mutating it as we go. Others came from a keyboard line that came when we were just goofing around in practice and we'd then tell Rebecca [Cole, keyboards] to keep playing the same fragment over and over again if it sounded all that great. So I guess some is constructed ahead of time, while other bits are made up in our practice space. We're still learning how to write together."
That the record could teach a plethora of malingering slackers a thing or two is evident testament to the collaborative thrust of a debut that's been widely and indeed wildly heralded, although Weiss perceives the live show to be the quintessential component to the essence of the band. "We did a few little tours when we decided to actually become a fully-fledged band, booking these small, sweaty, crowded venues in which we could sort of figure out our personality as a band, to see what we really were both in a live context and in general too. Above all we had to be an engaging prospect live as if there's no chemistry then there's no point in going forward. It was then on the second of those tours when we went to SXSW that we really got our footing and only then did we feel that there could be something exciting there for us." To say that they've piqued excitement at every turn here in the UK is to understate the impact the band have had on end-of-year lists and umpteen individuals across – judging from crowds thus far – diversified generations. Impactive and impressionistic, rarely have opinions been more united of late.
"I guess as a concept it's about chemistry and energy, very much about letting go and feeling alive. Sharing experiences with other humans, and ultimately playing music that's accessible to people and makes you wanna move, to become immediately involved", Weiss expresses with similar vivaciousness to the sentiment of such declaration. And while she may be innately and moreover irreplaceably involved with what she brands the band, a "project", she too waxes lyrical about the end product: "I would say this is one of the best records I've ever worked on, for sure. It really accomplished what I felt it should and that's very rare, that you have an idea as to how an album should be and you actually follow through and obtain that. I think that just came with the experience of us all having contributed to so many records."
Turning a little more philosophical, the comparison between Wild Flag and the records of the numerous bands Weiss has previously had a hand in self-explanatorily accentuates just how exceptional an effort it truly is: "There have been other times when I've not really known what the focus was, nor what we were looking to get out of the recording process. For instance with the last Sleater-Kinney record, I wasn't entirely sure what the hell that was gonna sound like - we'd never worked with Dave [Fridmann, producer/ Flaming Lip] before and therefore we spent a really long period of time not only getting to know him, but also getting to grips with the material in the studio. This time though, to me, I could see, hear, and feel what it was supposed to be like and we just had to make that happen. That said I think all records, in so many ways, can prove to be equally relevant and I guess time will tell more than anything. I think it's a great record; we'll just have to wait and see how it holds up over the next ten years!"
To remain not only in a general public consciousness but also in the memory of whatever Apple-manufactured product we're fiddling with to reproduce our preferred musical tastes in a decade's time is an audacious aim, yet there are suggestions of the truly timeless within Wild Flag material thus far: the doo-wop bridge that joins one uproarious chorus of Romance to another; the unsettlingly human, sweated-brow schizophrenia of Something Came Over Me; the ramshackle riot grrrl shudder of Racehorse. While we'll have to wait and see whether the proof was ever hurled into the pudding, the correct musical ingredients have been whisked with an inspiriting eagerness on Weiss' behalf: "My expectations are always high; I put the same pressure on myself that others do so I feel it as much internally as anything else. With every record I try – whether I in fact do or not – to mine some different territory and with a new band I think it's important not to overstate things on the debut record. You wanna give people an introduction to who you are and little to nothing more."
To a certain extent however introductions had already been made prior to the full release of the eponymous foundation. Wichita's daffodil sticker on the UK release of the record reads: 'featuring members of Sleater-Kinney, Helium, Quasi, and the Minders'. Hardly unknown outfits nor are Wild Flag, it may be perceived, a "new band". However these individuals come together to cultivate a sum exponentially greater than its already-great parts, and Weiss concurs: "A vital element of this band is the chemistry between the four of us and of course we wanted to utilise that, to have a writing situation in which we were all not only participating but also contributing." Lyrically however, it's Timony and Brownstein manning the ship: "I don't really think that any of the lyrics are so much deliberate as they are personal and Mary and Carrie write lyrics in very different ways which gives the record great diversity, as well as a decent sense of binary perspective. There have been so many great bands with two writers and this is just another one of those situations", this grandiose statement somewhat casually brushed off. "I feel that Mary's lyrics are much more impressionistic while Carrie's can be read or listened to and you get what she's on about. Mary's come across a little like a painting from which you can then derive a sense of feeling. They may be more emotionally-rooted."
"Beyond that though, musically, we had no idea as to what was going to happen; that remained a mystery to us, as well as to the listener." As a result of previous endeavours however it'd be unwarranted, if understandable were Wild Flag to be branded a side-project, an oft-awkward tagline that Weiss, rather refreshingly, has few qualms with. "It doesn't really fit although I don't really mind the concept nor us being branded as such. That said, I don't think Wild Flag really feels like a side-project at all. I've been in numerous bands throughout the duration of my whole musical career but few have been quite so concentratedly focussed as when the four of us are together. Obviously everyone can and does go off to commit to other projects and be in other bands though, we don't have any stern rules in place dictating against alternative activities or anything..."
With artistic license to roam and work on whatever more or less whenever comes great freedom, if a complete lack of normality: "As a musician you have no stability whatsoever. None, zero. And it's getting progressively harder to make a living off it. Touring really does feel like the final hope of making any money from within, and that of course can be really gruelling, you know? It also takes up a load of time you might otherwise wanna spend recording too although the memories collected on the road offer pretty much the best bit of what we do."
And what they do is irrevocably Portland, the musically fertile land in which Weiss, Brownstein and Cole are rooted: "It's so significant for music to have a context and to have come out of a definitive place. I'm so thrilled to live in a place that effectively imprints itself on you and I think bands from Britain, to us, have a really distinctive quality as Portland bands may to you." Given such a city-centric sound, the ineluctable truth is revealed: "There really are just a lot of musicians there - you're endlessly bumping into comrades on the streets We've got our very own Crib over there who we're very proud of, our Gary Jarman who we love, but I think it's a particularly easy place to be in a band. It's a hugely satisfying place to be in that context - it's a real community there."
Attentions inadvertently, if inevitably turn to TV, even if Weiss doesn't even have one to call her own: "I can't say I've seen all of them..! There are things to make fun of there, just like anywhere but the show [Portlandia] centres around making fun of the things you love the most, you know? A rib-poking in your own torso as it were. There are some silly things out there, but it's ultimately out of love for the place." And the love for the place 75% of the band call home, transmitted through Weiss, is palpable. "Whether it was where we went to college or in moving to Portland we always found ourselves in this sort of community, growing up around our peers. It helps keep you focussed and distracts you from other things that essentially don't matter. All I wanted to do when I became a musician was to impress the other musicians around me. I didn't care about the press, nor the record companies; I just wanted to be good enough at my instrument that some other drummer may come up to me and say: "Good job!" That, or just to merely have my ability in any way recognised."
Of the debut however, Weiss accredits its scruffy impeccability, its controlled dissonance to their relentless touring of the aforementioned perspiration-doused shoeboxes of the United States, to avoid the direct transition from practice space to studio but also to ensure the songs maintain a ragged rawness. "We don't have the leisure of over-rehearsing, what with Mary being based over in Washington but I think there's a fine line between practising enough and practising too much. You don't wanna be sick of the songs before you even get to play the show, you know? And sometimes if you're out on tour that's just what can happen so you've got to make sure that you take enough time off to listen to and play other music. To rejuvenate and refresh the drive to do what we do well and not merely get by and in turn get away with it."
While your Christmas wish list may have now been fulfilled (or if not the disillusioning contents of said list at least bundled callously onto eBay), with our colloquy taking place prior to the festive period Weiss was reservedly buoyant with her hopes and dreams: "As with every other band I've ever played with I'm just praying we get to make it another day! It's not the easiest thing to perpetuate and we're still figuring it and ourselves out. I hope we can write some challenging new music together, go to some different realm and push what we've already done, making it more exciting all the while. And I hope we get to travel the world and have a really great time together. Although I do like the familiarity of going back somewhere and driving through different neighbourhoods here and there and remembering places – and I do have some really great memories of London – there's definitely an attraction to the unknown, to going places we've not had the chance to make it to previously, whether that be figuratively, musically, or quite literally."
Islington's Premier Inn may now be added to the figurative geographical pin board of traced steps, and Janet pledges: "Next time I'm sat at this very table, in this very hotel round the back of wherever we are, I'll remember this." Saviours with nothing left to save? On your Racehorse...
