Woman's Hour: "What we’re trying to do is accept this tangled situation where nothing is black and white"

Conversations is brilliant; a perfectly realised sonic and artistic template showing that Woman’s Hour already find themselves in the position of appearing completely mature and without first-record nerves…yet delve into this collection of intimate, late-night tales and you’ll find uncertainty, questions and ambiguity – and the album is all the better for having this terrific depth.

It’s the subject of accent, though, that begins my conversation with singer Fiona (the band is rounded out by her brother Will on guitar, Josh Hunnisett on keys and Nicolas Graves on bass) who is only too happy to talk about anything and everything, once pleading with me to interrupt her or she’ll just keep talking…but I could listen to that voice all day long. So I have to start by asking about the honesty that’s created through singing in your own accent:

“The truth is, for a lot of musicians who end up releasing their debut record and are lucky enough to get to that point,” begins Burgess, “I feel like they’ve spent a lot more time developing their sonic identity. Maybe they’ve done other musical projects and tested stuff out, and found a way to communicate in a style….so for me it’s kind of weird to reflect on how it happened.” For someone who exudes a definite calmness on stage no matter what’s in front of her, Burgess reveals that she wasn’t always so serene: “When we first started singing together I was completely lacking in confidence and was almost either whispering the songs or screaming the songs! I was just experimenting and I was doing that due to fear, in a way. I was experimenting but also so scared to actually try and sing that I felt if I did weird stuff with it, it would be less noticeable that I couldn’t sing.”

With the point looming for Burgess to actually commit her voice to tape, her brother and the band’s guitarist Will gave her some gentle words of advice. “I had this idea that I really didn’t know if I could sing and I was nervous to really give it a go,” she explains, “because when you do that you make yourself so vulnerable and I guess that kind of experimentation is actually about holding back or covering up. And then I remember my brother say, in a really honest way during one of the rehearsals, ‘just try and sing…sing with your accent’. It was just a comment that he made, at a time when I was just beginning to try and sing in a way that wasn’t forced or wasn’t covering up…it was very exposed and a lot more delicate than what I had been doing.” Fiona has already mentioned her whisper, and it crops up again: “I said I was almost whispering the songs - and it was in an excruciatingly shy way. But it just stuck and as soon as I started to sing there was this weird confidence and I knew the only way to confront this fear was to do it honestly. Because I wasn’t a trained singer - or at least I wasn’t then, I’ve since had vocal coaching - I didn’t learn to sing through imitation so I didn’t see the point in trying to sing in a certain style or certain accent.” The subject of accent is something close to Burgess’ heart, so we continue to talk about this. “It kind of bugged me when I listened - and I think it’s more common in mainstream pop music - to hear fake accents,” she explains, with passion, “and it always irritated me when artists felt the only way people were going to listen to them was to put on this accent.”

Burgess now provides an example of a song that annoyed her in this way. I should point out that we talked about the singer in question by name, but I’ve not included the name here as the artist was only mentioned in order to make a wider point – not to criticise a particular singer. She says: “In fact, I even remember recently, just after we’d done the Bruce Springsteen cover of “Dancing in the Dark”, it was a couple of weeks later, and ironically just before we released our version, Josh had come across a version of the same song – in a live session. I remember listening to it and I immediately got my notepad out and started writing, and I just couldn’t stop! I’d started writing down why, when I listened to it, and I hadn’t really thought about it until I’d heard that version, I hadn’t thought about my own singing style in relation to other artists in this accented way. I was listening, and thinking that [the artist] was singing in such an Americanised accent!” I ask if she thinks it means there’s a lack of honesty in the singer or the song: “I think it’s a shame in a way that if you’re going to sing in a certain style,” says Fiona, “and make reference to other artists that you’ve listened to and admire, you don’t need to imitate them - take something and then actually make it your own. It made me realise that my relationship to my accent was quite important and I didn’t realise it until I’d heard the same cover done in this way. To me, it was important to try and shake off this American, almost kind of Pop Idol/X Factor generation of artists who feel the need to pull on people’s emotional vulnerability…maybe that’s not right, maybe it’s not emotional vulnerability - maybe it’s just they’ve been told this is the recommended way of singing!”

Honesty is something that is clearly important to Burgess and it’s not just evident in her beautifully accented singing, that’s delivered without flourish or adornment, but also lyrically where being honest means that not everything is always black and white. Conversations is an album where questions are being asked by Burgess – questioning herself, questioning the relationships that she has in her life and whether being in step with someone is always a good thing. She explains that it’s not always a conscious decision to address these subject: “It’s funny because often when we write the songs, and it’s not always even a conscious thing, what happens with a lot of the songs is that a lot of them contain this ambiguity where it’s not clear whether or not a song is directly positive or negative.” I say that’s what makes Woman’s Hour so attractive to me, that it feels right to have this “unresolved” atmosphere around many of the songs. “I guess the reason there is this ambiguity is probably because on the record I feel as though what we’re trying to do is…not untangle the complexity of certain feelings and thoughts and ideas and emotions,” explains Fiona, “but almost accept this tangled situation where nothing is black and white. So, with a song like ‘Our Love Has No Rhythm’, we didn’t want to create something that was very clear as to how it was supposed to make you feel, if that makes sense?” It definitely does, I say. It’s a song that makes me feel a little imbalanced, if you know what I mean? “It’s an incredibly fluid song, whatever state you’re in,” she agrees. “It can be incredibly positive or incredibly negative in terms of whatever way you read it. This idea of rhythm; in some respects I think this idea of a relationship being ‘in a rhythm’ is seen as being this positive, healthy thing. People say you should be in tune with each other, without even speaking you should be able to understand each other and your lives should fit together in a way that it has a constant ebb and flow to it…..and that can be positive but also it can be negative! That can be incredibly monotonous! When I say ‘relationship’ I don’t mean boyfriend/girlfriend/partner relationship, this is so relevant to all sorts of relationships. On the record I wouldn’t say it’s about ‘lovers’; it’s very much a reflection on people in our lives and our own minds and strength of thought.”

The notion of rhythm is one that’s there right from the opening bars of the record, but then of course our lives are made up of a series of relationships…“If you’re in a relationship and there’s a rhythm to it which is negative…if things aren’t being talked about, and it’s creating this tension, but this rhythm is tension as well! That’s not a good rhythm and,” says Burgess, “actually, in the song “Unbroken Sequence’ I would say that song is very much about this rhythm that’s never been broken - but it’s a negative rhythm. You get into patterns with people and it’s impossible to get out of these patterns! And somehow you desperately want to change what’s happening, and we always end up in this situation where we’re unable to have a rhythm that’s not this unhealthy repetition or cyclical thing. In a way we wrote the songs to make sense of the situations, but they don’t have any answers to them - it’s a reflection and a stream of consciousness.”

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Relationships and conversations (and Conversations) of course go hand in hand, and there’s a feeling that on this record Burgess is focusing as much on what’s left unsaid as what’s being talked about: “Totally,” she affirms. “It’s that lyric in ‘Conversations’: Conversations we should have with ourselves / That we won’t have with anyone else / Awkward moments of strange affection / That could have been shared with anyone else / Not that it helps’”. We were very anxious about whether or not that song should be the title of the album because in some ways we didn’t want to dictate the importance of one song above any of the others, but when it came to deciding on the album name we went round in circles and into this tangled knot of trying to desperately make sense of what we created and kind of summarise it in this way…and we ended up with more questions than answers really and I think that’s, in a way, the theme of the record ironically!”

This again, chimes with my feelings towards Conversations. I explain that I think it’s a brilliant record with a clear sonic vision and style that’s completely consistent throughout, but I often don’t know how it makes me feel. One moment I find the whole thing a positive experience, the next I can’t deal and need some time on my own…“Is that because it takes you in different directions?” asks Fiona. Yes, exactly! I’m being pushed and pulled emotionally. “I’d say that in way that reflects how this album was made,” she reveals. “It was written over a fairly long period of time and I think it took us a while to get to the point where we could find a place where we comfortable to make it, sonically, but once we got it into our heads that this is what we were going to do it was actually a process of us all making a lot of compromises in our lives in order to completely dedicate ourselves to this.” We’re not just talking emotional complexities here, as Fiona explains the difficulties of trying to hold down a job and accommodation in London while attempting to make a record: “In a way, those compromises are quite difficult to make, actually. Just through those basic practicalities there wasn’t time for anything else, and that meant there was this bittersweet feeling towards the record as well. In one sense we all had this drive, and desire, and ambition to want to create something that was this body of work that was a focal point in our lives…but there was also a feeling that we’d left a lot and had to almost neglect a lot of other things in our lives to make this possible. In doing that you end up reflecting a lot on certain relationships; maybe they’re lost relationships or relationships you’re trying to maintain in this environment where you can’t really give a lot. And you end up, on the one hand, feeling incredibly selfish but then on the other hand in order to not be selfish you have to make those compromises really clear. Otherwise you’re making people promises you can’t keep and you end up letting them down.”

I say that the practicalities must in fact be often the most emotionally harrowing things to deal with – just look at what financial strife does to families and relationships…“I feel like that, the whole situation and the politics of making the record probably has a lot to do with the themes that are kind of running through it, actually,” admits Burgess. “And that’s the first time, just talking to you, I’ve ever really thought about that! Just talking to you and thinking about it practically – you know it definitely has much to do with the record.”

Moving away from the themes of the record, I was always struck by how fully-formed Woman’s Hour seemed to be from the start. I’d always regarded them as very much a studio band with a particular aesthetic until I saw a stirring live performance from the band at Liverpool Sound City, but they also arrived with artwork and photography that seemed to fit perfectly with the music and lyrical approach. This is partly down to the work of creative duo Broomberg and Chanarin; I want to know how Burgess and co ended up with such a perfect stylistic match: “I think in many respects we kind of owe a lot to them,” she admits. “They really helped us early on and it was a happy coincidence that we became friends and were able to work with them. What they made us think a lot about was just the importance of, and the opportunity to use, imagery in order to communicate something about music. And we hadn’t taken advantage of that before at all; we kind of fell into this - this is not in our life time! – to be honest I don’t think any of us had ever had life times! This certainly wasn’t in it when we were beginning the band; it was very much a way for us to hang out and be friends, but also not just go to the pub! It was a way for us to escape reality a little bit and be playful.”

Fiona reveals that working with Broomberg and Chanarin followed a chastening experience with creative control: “Going back to the visual side of things, when we ended up taking nine months to a year out to actually work on the record it was around that time we met Broomberg and Chanarin. We’ve always been interested in visual art and visual culture – I mean me particularly – but for some reason we’d never thought about the possibility and opportunity of taking advantage of creating visual artwork with the band. But before making the record we’d had this opportunity: Dirty Bingo Records had approached us to release a single [you can see the artwork for “Jenni/Human” and the early days of the band here] and we were just completely gobsmacked and flattered, but also just shocked that they wanted to release anything, so we were just so unprepared!” Flattery quickly turned to misery when the end product appeared, though: “When we did come round to release it, it happened so quickly and we let go of any kind of control. Suddenly someone else had made a video to our song and somebody else had done the artwork to the vinyl sleeve, and we looked at it and there was this realisation that we genuinely had to stop, check in…and it was a very difficult moment. We weren’t proud of what we’d created and we all got really sad. I think we all keep that feeling now, whenever we’re in moments of wondering if we’re going to have that feeling again – it’s like ‘no, let’s not lose control. Let’s maintain it and make sure we can actually feel involved in every part of the process.”

The experiences with their new creative partners has been a much more positive one: “When we became friends with Broomberg and Chanarin, we were really eager to take control but we just didn’t know how,” says Fiona. “None of us are trained in visual art but we’re all interested in it, so they allowed us to have this communication where they would bring their expertise as artists, and we could bring our expertise as the musicians who’d written the songs and we just kind of opened this dialogue with them, and as a result of that we released ‘Our Love Has No Rhythm’ - just digitally online. Paired with that, we used an image which was from some manuals that Adam and Olly had; they’ve been working together for over fifteen years so they’ve had a lot of time to ‘collect’ things, if you like. They’d spent years collecting these manuals! There was basically any kind of manual that had photographic illustrations in them – first aid manuals, policing manuals, how to train a dog, synchronised swimming, how to frame a picture….weird and wonderful manuals and the reason we’re attracted to them is because these illustrations, these pedagogic images, when taken out of context could create something really quite striking!” Like Woman’s Hour’s songs, there’s an ambiguity at play, isn’t there? “Whether that be beautiful, or harrowing, or kind of violent, we were interested in how when the images were placed out of context could actually have a completely different meaning.”

Continuity was the watchword for the band, following their experiences with Dirty Bingo: “We always knew as well that anything we released during that time we wanted to be related to one another, sonically,” states Fiona, “and that’s something we communicated to Adam and Olly to make sure that all of the single artwork was connected to each other. And we’ve carried on in that vein; the next release for “To The End” is the image of a falling man in a policing manual; the image for “Darkest Place” is of a man with a hand at his throat from a first aid manual…we continued this theme and what we liked, again, was the ambiguity in the images. The fact that they can have different meanings when put in different contexts.”

Given that we started our conversation on the subject of honesty, it seems appropriate that we should end on the same theme which appears to be vital to the band. Burgess is as honest about her band’s music and art as she is about everything else we’ve discussed in the past half hour: “There’s also this idea of originality in music,” she begins. “We wanted to reflect in our artwork this idea that – I guess it’s more of a philosophy or a kind of theory – I think we all share in the band…in this day and age there’s so much pressure to be kind of new and original and I just question whether anything is entirely new and original anymore. I’m very sceptical of that and I think that it’s quite dangerous to start attempting to be entirely original, and actually there’s a freedom that happens when you admit that everything is recycled nowadays in some form.” Isn’t recycling a way of creating something new, though, without the worries of “originality”? “Recycling is obviously giving new form to something,” agrees Fiona, “but it’s not saying it has come from nothing. What I’m saying is that everything has an origin and whether or not that’s a conscious or subconscious thing it’s a kind of state of being in which we’re existing now….a recycled world. We wanted to recycle images in the same way the music is kind of recycled. In everything we do it’s embedded in our subconscious that it’s related to something that we like, and it has a resonance with us.”

Conversations is out on Secretly Canadian on July 14. The band play Hertfordshire’s Farr Festival - tickets on sale here