Au Revoir Simone with their electronic dreampop debut album ‘The Bird of Music’ managed to make a come back for the scene of Brooklyn in 2007. Annie, Erika, Heater and their keyboards returned last year with the excellent ‘Still Night, Still Light’. An ideal example of teamwork and collaboration for a band whose sad songs make you feel happy. OZON talks to Annie some time before their live concert at Athens.
The way you perform in your live shows connotes to a kind of creative equality and harmony. Do you work in the studio in the same way? How is your appearance and performance on stage indicative of your artistic identity?
We definitely work in the studio and the rehearsal space completely collaboratively. We’re definitely a true ‘band’ in the sense that we have no leader or principal songwriter. We just work together to make the best songs possible. It’s really fun, though that method can be tedious when you’re playing a song you know can be good, but isn’t sounding right about four months straight of trying different things. But when you hit the jackpot of the right sounds and parts, it’s an incredible feeling of everything being right in the world. On stage, we act much as we do off, so you can see our artistic identity for yourself live.
As a band you are impressively homogenous. Has this similarity in your physical appearance and in the way you sing together been intentional since the beginning of the band or did it simply come along in the course of time?
We gravitated towards each other because we had a lot in common, it’s not an intentional activity. And, for anyone who knows us personally, you’ll find that we each possess completely unique personalities, though we do share a common love for Korean food and spas.
You manage in an imaginative way to skilfully make sad songs sound happy. Is this your point of view in life as well? Do you suggest to find optimism in a sad situation? Even the title of your latest album could be said that it reflects something like that.
What an astute observation! When working on ‘Sad Song’, I definitely thought of Belle & Sebastian, especially ‘Tigermilk’, with all of its songs about sadness and destruction sung in the catchiest of pop twee loveliness. We feel, when writing songs, if you have something so sad and mopey with sad lyrics, it can seem really overdramatic and banal, so you really need that twist in order to be able to take yourself seriously and know that life moves on.
What are your plans after the summer tour is over? Are you thinking of recording another album soon? What should we expect from a third album?
We’re all working on songs for the next record. We haven’t been working on them together yet, so I have no idea what they are going to sound like. Adding the drums always changes the mood of the song and brings it in directions you’d never expect. Ideally for me, this album will be driven by more acoustical instruments. I want lots of dynamics, and
something that is really fun to watch being played live.
Link: aurevoirsimone
Interview: Andreas Dimopoulos/ Photography: Dafni Anesti
