Interview // Skunk Anansie

It’s tense isn’t it? You hear that your favourite band ever, like, ev. er. are reforming and nestled amongst the joy is the niggling feeling that they might not be as good as you remembered. Let’s face it, Mini Milks only tasted so good because they were compounded with the taste of summer, pulled up socks and the bittersweet of handing over 10 pence of your pocket money. Skunk Anansie were greater than the sum of its parts – when their individual forces combined, there was a unique chemistry that made the world pay attention. As Wonderlustre, their fifth studio album saw the light of day last month, we look both forward and back, and are pleased to say their form is unfaltering and unbelievably exciting. The iconic Skin gave us some of her time…

Are you very tired? I saw on twitter you were having trouble sleeping.
Haha, yeah I’m feeling kind of irritated today ‘cause they lost my luggage and I’m still waiting and I’ve got a whole lot of stuff to do. But there you go y’know, I think it’s the only time they have lost my luggage over the whole summer doing forty festivals… I can’t complain that much really. It’s the only time we went through Charles de Gaulle airport – we usually avoid it like the plague and that’s the one they lose the luggage in, ‘cause Charles de Gaulle is just ridiculous.

That’s a real shitter, so have you got to borrow the boy’s clothes or something?
No, my bag is in the airport, so I’ve just gotta go and get it.

I read a brilliant quote yesterday from someone talking about Skunk Anansie – it said “They made a very strong mark on my young and impressionable mind”. You did that a lot, say, 16 years ago, what’s it like forming ideas and opinions of a generation of new music lovers?
D’you know, it’s one of those things that doesn’t really occur to you, to be quite honest, I mean the thing about being in a band is that you get to a country, you do a whole bunch of press, you do a big gig and then you move on and all of the exciting stuff and influential stuff and inspiring stuff happens in your wake and you don’t really actually experience it and see it for yourself until years later. I do recognise that having had the gap, I can see that Skunk Anansie is and was a very influential band and that pleases me greatly. I think if I inspire somebody to pick up a guitar that’s fantastic, I’m not really into role models; I think when you put people on a pedestal invariably they disappoint you. I like to be an inspiration and stuff like that but I think athletes make good role models ‘cause they really do have to behave themselves or they can’t perform, but then they go off the rails and do a bunch of crazy shit like Tiger Woods or something. I don’t take it too seriously; I don’t take it in too much ‘cause I think probably I’d turn into the biggest wanker on earth if I did.

For me there has always been a duality with your music, flitting from social commentary to personal divulgences – do you think that reflects a duality in yourself maybe?
I think so, I think there’s more than two sides to me, I think there’s quite a few sides to me and to everybody. I think the reality is that people are very complex and a lot of the interesting stuff happens in the grey area between right and wrong, or good and bad, or should I shag her or not, y’know, I think the complexities of the human character are a lot more interesting, but I think that the duality there is that that kind of impression is linked because I think I talk about politics or social awareness from a very personal stand point. I think that what I’ve gone through or what you’ve gone through is not special, but I think that it’s special to us and I think it’s how it happens to us and that’s what makes it interesting. I think it’s all about translation, y’know, I may have gone through similar things, things that millions of people have gone through, but I suppose I’m better at expressing it or the way that I express it touches people a little bit more, so, as I say I think there’s lots of different sides to Skunk Anansie and to my character and I think sometimes, depending on the situation, I’m slightly more political or slightly less political or slightly more fun or slightly more silly depending on the environment .

I read a really interesting interview recently – it was actually done by us five years ago when you were on your solo tour and so there was a little insight into where part of the Skunk Anansie sound came from. Just to talk about your background a bit, your dad owned a nightclub, did he?
Yes he did, yeah, my Grandad actually I should say, my dad was an air force man, my granddad had a night club in Brixton. This was when I was growing up, so he wasn’t that old, he was in his 50s; he had a nightclub the whole time he was in Jamaica and the whole time he was in London because in those days, the 50s and the 40s when they came to England black people weren’t let into normal nightclubs and black people didn’t particularly want to go to those nightclubs because they wanted to hear their music which was reggae and ska at the time. What they used to have was a place called Shabines and basically it was just where black people would congregate in a basement of somebody’s house and that’s what my granddad had, ‘cause he had a big house. He had a bar in there and charged people to go in and just have a Shabine and y’know, it was just lots of Jamaicans enjoying themselves so that was my earliest memories really, musical memories just sitting in the steps watching everybody groove along to ska music ‘til I got told to go to bed.

Back in the day your music was often characterised by mad, messed up intros, outros, interludes that explored different genres and then sort of annihilated them in the same breath – is it important for you to show your breadth of musical influences?
I think those early albums were really us testing our teeth and finding out what we wanted to do. I think Skunk Anansie have always had a ‘no rules’ kinda mentality to what we do, I mean, there are no rules to music, there are no rules to song writing and I think you get into a band because you want to live outside the law in some ways. You just see yourself like a band of youths, roaming around the world doing what the hell you want. That changes obviously – I call it the early years now, hehe, early Skunk was definitely us testing and trying out lots and lots of things. I think in the 90s there were lots of bands doing that, not so much the English bands – they were all kind of consumed with Britpop, doing the same boring kind of song over and over again, but I think the bands that were a bit more worldly and had a bit more world view like us just trying new ideas, meandering solos and meandering pieces of music that were quite emotional.

What’s tickling your fandangle at the moment, music wise, or genre wise?
Haha, fandangle… I like that. Gosh, I DJ a lot and I’m listening to lots of electronic music at the moment. I have just got this Magnetic Man album so I’ve been listening to that. I’m a big Dubstep person so I like them all, I like Chase & Status and all of those Skream type guys. They’ve done mixes for us in audio, so I’m listening to lots of that. I’m listening to Corrine Bailey Rae’s album, I really like that and I’m listening to a few albums that I bought that I really don’t like actually. You know when you go online and you buy a bunch of albums, listen to a few songs and go ‘oh that’s interesting’ and then buy the album, I’m like that; I don’t get songs, I get albums and I’m bitterly regretting a couple of them.

Can you name any of them?
Erm… I was listening to the Villagers and the guy started howling like a wolf and I’m not quite into that, but I am gonna listen to the whole album again and listen to it in context, ‘cause I kind of had it on in the background and I was a bit like ‘what the hell is going on her?’ I just didn’t think it worked, y’know. I don’t know if it was something to do with Villagers and watching too much American werewolf in London, anyway I am gonna give it another listen, but it’s one where I was a bit like ‘wow, that’s weird, I’m not sure if I like that.’

Albums are big commitments for people, especially nowadays when they are used to just picking up songs here and there. Obviously ‘Wonderlustre’ has come out now and it’s incredible. I’ve waited just forever for a new studio album to come out in the hope that it would and now it’s here, some of the songs I feel like I’ve known for years.
I think we are just bigger, better, shinier. I think we are just a lot better at everything we do at the moment it seems. It’s testament to the boys in the band; everybody got better at what they do and learnt a lot more skills, y’know, we’ve got a lot more qualifications under our belt and as a consequence I think that we are just better songwriters now. We understand music a lot more; all of us worked in studios and wrote albums and recorded albums and I think that that is really evident in the way that this album was put together, especially because for the first time we basically sat in a room for six weeks writing it. We’ve never done that before, we’ve done a week here, two weeks there, but we’ve never just done a whole album just all four of us equally putting all of our ideas into a pot and making great songs out of it. I think that the songs do sound familiar, because I did try to get melodies that would be very sing-able for everybody. I think we’ve all managed to hone in on what’s good about Skunk Anansie and write songs in that way and what we really wanted to do was to just write a huge amount of high quality songs that had great choruses where the lyrics summed up everything everybody was feeling and thinking. When Paul McCartney wrote ‘Yesterday’ – I’m not comparing ourselves to that in any shape or form by the way, but he ran around saying to everybody ‘Have you heard this before? I feel like I’ve ripped it off from somewhere’, and everyone was like ‘Nope, never heard it before’ and it was because it was just such a simple, beautiful melody that it just fitted into your psyche like it has always been there. I have always liked Paul McCartney for that and his sense of simplicity in some of those great songs. Our influences are quite traditional in terms of the actual songwriting – in terms of the music it’s bang up to date modern.

You did say just then that they’re melodies that everyone can sing to – now, I do sing along in the car but let’s talk about that voice of yours, you hit the notes that none of us can – nobody – and we try but it sounds awful. Where did that voice come from?
Erm, I don’t agree with you…

Really? You haven’t been in my kitchen.
Haha, I’m much more into my songwriting than my voice; I think my voice is quite limiting most of the time. I’m actually singing an octave lower deliberately. One of the things I learnt is that when you sing songs with very high notes in them, you have to sing them every night of your life on tour and I think that’s just a lesson learnt. I think your voice, as you get older, sits better in its lower ranges. I think it’s more to do with getting the right empathy out; singing is a spiritual thing, it’s a very soulful thing. It’s about connecting your spirit with tone and voice and melody. It’s really all about the lyrics and the melodies that I’m singing. I think that really makes my voice sound better than it really is.

I think that may be some of the connection, but there’s also a mixture between power and grace that seems to bring the best out in your voice. However, I’ve been doing it in the car, power grabs… it makes me feel so good, even though it sounds bad.
Power grabs, I like it. And the seagull. Everybody should sing; it’s not about whether it sounds good or not, it’s just good for your soul and it’s good for your inner happiness. I think also because we’re a very European band – we’re not a very British-centred band, so there’s a lot of people in different countries who’re singing our melodies, so we like them to be soaring and sing-able and fun because it means that everywhere we go, people can sing them back to us.

You mentioned Europe – I know you’re hugely popular in Europe and I also know from our previous Outline interview that you lived abroad for a while in the South of France… do you ever think you’d give up Britain for good?
Erm… No, I don’t think I could give up Britain for good, ‘cause I have too much connection and history in Britain, so no, I don’t think I’d give it up for good. Culturally, I need Britain like I need air and water. Culturally, I think we’re the best. We have the best bands – the best and most ingenious bands. So I think that it’s always going to be a part of me, and I’d be crazy to lose that culture. Erm, it’s just too fucking cold. I just like to be warm; I’ve got Jamaican blood and I know it’s an actual proven chemical thing that the warmer your skin, the better you feel, and I’m a testament to that.

I’d like to talk about your head. You have the sexiest head in showbiz – do you have insurance for it?
Hahaha! No I don’t… I think I should. Who was I reading about the other day? Somebody insured something of theirs somewhere, but I can’t remember, so it’s a bit of a crap story. But would I… No, no, gosh, I think the point is that if something happened to my head, I’d have a lot more to worry about that that. I think if I lost my head, I don’t think the insurance would make up for that.

I read in our previous interview, that when you shaved your head something clicked, like a superhero. Do you think we often use our appearance to externalise our personality?
Yeah, I do. I do think that fashion and clothes and make-up and hair and all that kind of stuff makes you feel better and it can seriously affect your mood. I do think that when I shaved my head I felt like myself for the first time, it was a stange thing, a strange feeling. There was a bit of a super-girl that jumped out at me when I did it.

I want to talk about your previous collaborations, which were simply inspired; you sang with Bjork on Top of the Pops, you did a duet with Pavarotti, I mean, they’re heavyweights. What was it like to work with them, and who catches your eye now?
It was really good fun. I think when it comes to collaborations, they really have to be things that just come up out of nowhere. People you meet, people you bump into, people you just kind of identify with. Funnily enough, having done quite a few of them, I’m not a massive fan of collaborations, especially with Skunk Anansie, because people are always telling us that we should be working with this band, or that band, but we don’t want to. There’s lots of bands that we like, but we don’t want to work with them, we just want them to do what they do. Especially bands working with bands; I think when U2 did a song with Green Day it was probably one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard…

Eugh, I think some bile just came up in my mouth there.
Yeah, it was kinda like, ‘oh, well that didn’t work, did it?’ I just think it’s interesting to have weird things – collaborations only work when they’re very natural and easy. If it’s because of any other reason, like you’ve got to write something or blah, blah, blah, then it just turns out not working very well. But yeah, Bjork was just a massive fan of the band and wanted us to remix her and it was really good fun. Pavarotti wanted us for his charity event, Pavarotti and Friends when he was alive; we did it for the Dalai Lama’s children’s charity so we met him too, which was very cool. I really like the song I did with Maxim from the Prodigy – that was a good fun one. I did a heavy metal one with this American band called Seven Dust, that was fun. I’m doing three very interesting things next week and they’re all kind of to do with electronic music, which I’m really excited about. That’s a slightly different thing. I think they have to be things that come up. I say no to 90% of the things I get asked to do.

I guess it becomes too contrived if you do it too often –
-  Well you’re just out there too much, and it kinda gets a little bit Nelly Furtado-esque.

Let’s talk about the five minutes before you went on stage as SCAM (the psedonym for Skunk Anansie’s first reformation gig) at Monto Water Rats – what did that feel like?
Gosh, it just felt like fun. It was completely sold out and I think it was a bit of a rush because there wasn’t much time between sound check and going on, but yeah, I think it was quite exciting and a bit like ‘Ooh, this is exciting. What’s gonna happen? It’s gonna be fun!’ It was great fun. There’s not much stage space in Water Rats, which is a good thing, but I think it was a ‘yeah, it’s good to be back’ feeling.

You’re coming to Norwich this month and we hear you’ve got a couple of little tricks up your sleeve – a mixture of new stuff and old stuff, which is really exciting – are you excited about this tour?
Yeah, we haven’t actually rehearsed for it yet, but we’re gonna start at the beginning of November! I think the last couple of years we’ve warmed ourselves up and got back to the same level of when we left, and I think now it’s gonna be like a new level of Skunk Anansie that we haven’t done before, so it’s gonna be a better tour than when we left off. We’re going into unchartered territory. Yeah, we’ve got a couple of tricks up our sleeve and a couple of things that we’re gonna try out, which hopefully we will ‘cause I’ve said it now, so we’ve got to make sure it works!

Five years ago, when we interviewed you, we asked you what you thought you’d be doing in five years time – you said you’d like to be producing younger bands, but did you ever think at that time that there’d be a reformation?
Erm, no, not really. I knew that we had to do a Skunk Anansie Greatest Hits and I thought that’d be it. I never thought we’d fall back into being a band so easily and so quickly, but I think that’s just a testament to Skunk Anansie, y’know.

So in five years, what do you think you’ll be doing? We’ll just keep interviewing you in 5-year intervals and disproving you!
Yeah, exactly. Erm, I think Skunk Anansie will still be together – I should touch wood, let me touch wood – wood is touched. There are a couple of personal things I’d like to do too, but onwards and upwards. Bigger, better, shinier.

Emma Roberts

The triumphant return of Skunk Anansie will be felt as they come to the UEA on November 25^th. For tickets, go to www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk.