Nine Songs: IDER

Nine Songs

IDER

Megan Markwick and Lily Somerville talk Sean Kerwick through the songs that inspired them to become musicians.

28 September 2018, 08:00 | Words by Sean Kerwick

(IDER) (Nine Songs)

Megan Markwick and Lily Somerville are music lovers who aren’t weighed down by second guessing what the idea of being cool means – like the songs they write together as IDER, their love of music is instinctive, rather than premeditated.

They met whilst studying at Falmouth University, where they were allocated rooms several doors down from each other. “We met each other pretty quickly,” Lily recollects, “we became friends and began making music all at the same time. Our friendship has always been based around music.”

The spark of that meeting still shimmers around them throughout our conversation in a North London pub, as they complete each other’s sentences and remind one another of anecdotes of their friendship, soundtracked by the pivotal songs in their lives. They'd initially chosen four songs each, with one shared choice - Stevie Nicks’ ‘Landslide’ - but end up chipping into each other’s choices.

Although they’d been making music throughout their time together at university, the IDER moniker formed once they had settled in London, where they continue to live and work together. “It’s quite chaotic,” Lily explains “We live together, so it’s a small world. It’s not like there’s particular times or spaces for writing, it’s sort of everywhere. There’s bits of Meg, bits of me, bits of both of us.”

Talking through the songs that have inspired them, IDER have mapped the compositions that initially guided them onto the path of songwriting and throw in a few recent gems which have kept them on their toes. “I’m sure every musician has that moment when they’re younger and they feel inspired to do this,” Meg suggests “Those memories are so strong. You feel so optimistic, wherever you are, if you’re sat up in your room with your favourite records or learning your favourite songs on guitar - you’re literally transported to another world.”

“Look at Miss Ohio” by Gillian Welch

Megan: “When I was in my teenage years Gillian Welch was my biggest musical love and ‘Look at Miss Ohio’ was the first song I’d heard of hers. I dived into all of her music after that, she had about four albums out by that point, but it was this song that started my obsession.

"Meg introduced me to this song and I hadn’t heard it before, Meg would be singing it at uni and then I’d join in. Gillian Welch is very much a part of IDER!”

“As an artist she’s so influential, I found out about her either through my Uncle or my best friend. I’d always loved Americana, Bluegrass and Gospel and I listened to a lot of that growing up, so naturally I was really drawn to her music."

Lily: “This was actually one of the first songs that we sang together. Meg introduced me to this song and I hadn’t heard it before, Meg would be singing it at uni and then I’d join in. Gillian Welch is very much a part of IDER!”

“Don't Dream It's Over” by Crowded House

Megan: “Crowded House are great!”

Lily: “I remember we had your Dad’s old cassette at uni, which had Crowded House on it!”

Meg: “This song reminds me of growing up with my sisters and my Mum and Dad. My parents were big fans of Crowded House and Neil Finn’s solo work. It really brings me back to my first house in Hackney, where we were all born. I have really early memories of hearing ‘Don't Dream It's Over’ around the house - it’s really nostalgic for me.

“Crowded House have such good songs, they really stick in your head and they do that for a reason - they’re timeless. I haven’t listened to them much recently, but when I was compiling this list, this song was one of the first things I thought of. It’s a nice activity to take time and remember all of these great songs.”

“I Wish” by Stevie Wonder

Megan: “This song is another childhood memory. My family are all pretty musical and we grew up next door to another family who we were close with, and who we’d spent Christmas with and fun evenings.

“My Dad and the Dad of the other family were musicians themselves, so they would play along and we’d just bash out Stevie Wonder covers. I didn’t appreciate how incredible and prolific he really was until I was older, what a legend he is - it’s unreal. You get a star every now and then and Stevie Wonder is ‘a star’.

"My Dad and his mate were big jazz guys, they were proper keyboard players, so ‘I Wish’ was their thing. There was a lot of soul being played around the house and Songs In The Key of Life is full of jazz and soul, it’s a classic.”

“Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen

Megan: “I fell in love with Bruce Springsteen when I was about 15. It was my secret love - I didn’t really tell anyone. I told my Dad and he was surprised, I was sort of embarrassed to be so into this ‘Dad music’, but then I realised “No, I’m in love with this person!” and I got obsessed with him. I then went on to learn his songs on the piano and I started to pick up the harmonica as well and just got madly into it.

“‘Thunder Road’ probably wouldn’t have been my first choice of his songs, but I chose it because I performed it as a cover in front of my entire school, which was a big comprehensive in London. I had a harmonica in the harmonica brace and people were like ‘What have you got around your neck?!” What I was doing was like social suicide, but I felt I had to come clean. I don’t know if people liked it, but I think they appreciated the boldness of it. It was both the best and scariest thing I’ve ever done. I felt like Bruce would have been proud of me!”

Lily: “It’s like a scene from the end of a film!”

“House of The Rising Sun” by The Animals

Lily: “This is a really early memory of music for me. My Dad used to play a lot of guitar and sing all of his favourite stuff; he smoked like a chimney, so he had a really gruff voice. He lived on a boat when I was growing up, so I have such vivid memories of being in this weird, magical world where we’d go away for weekends on this boat, lighting fires and singing songs.

“‘House of The Rising Sun’ was one of the first songs that he taught me to play on guitar and that’s where I first learnt to harmonise and sing in that sort of style. I was always so fascinated by the song - it’s so beautiful but it’s so dark; it hooked me in from day one.

“In later years I found out that it was actually an old folk song, The Animals made it very famous in the ‘60s but nobody knows who originally wrote it, there’s been so many versions of it over the years. That sort of makes it the people’s song, I only really know my Dad’s rendition of it - I haven’t listened to The Animals version of it, it’s totally from my Dad playing it.”

“Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinéad O'Connor

Lily: “’Nothing Compares 2 U’ is such a strong song for me, in the sense that it was the first song I fell in love with. I became completely obsessed with it as a little girl, I must have been about ten; it was the end of primary school, so it was when I was growing up in Birmingham.

“I don’t know where I got it from, but I had a CD called ‘Sad Songs’ - I loved to cry! I thought I was so grown up. It also had Eva Cassidy and lots of other classic female voices on it, but I used to play Sinead O’Connor on repeat and sing along. I would obsess over every nuance in her voice and try to copy it. It’s that exact feeling I was talking about - that feeling of ‘I want to do that!’ and ‘that’s what I want to be’ - that total obsession and fire for something. My first experience of that feeling was through this song.

“I didn’t actually know it was written by Prince until this year, but Sinead O’Connor completely kills it in the most amazing way. She actually recorded it in Nellee Hooper’s house, who was living in Camden High Street, so it was just recorded in this little flat when they weren’t that well known; she wasn’t famous at all, but when this hit, it went viral.

Meg: “When you hear it and the way it was recorded, you sort of think it has to be born in the grit. It’s one of those recordings where it’s perfect as it is; it touches a feeling you’re only going to get in that moment. That’s what we’re searching for, it’s what everybody’s searching for - that magic. In terms of writing, we’ve experienced that a little, we know when’s something special and you shouldn’t tamper with it. You know it’s got to be a certain way.”

“Parce Mihi Domine” by Jan Garbarek & The Hilliard Ensemble

Lily: “Ah! The vibration in this song, the mood and when that saxophone hits! Jan Garbarek is the most incredible saxophonist. Listening to this is a physical experience - I have goosebumps every time I hear it, because your body is reacting to that vibration and whatever got captured in the recording of this track.

“I listen to Classic FM quite often, it switches my brain off in a way where I’m not listening to and analysing lyrics too much - it engages an entirely different part of my musical brain. I listened to Classic FM a lot when I was driving back and forth from London before I lived here to come and see Meg. I vividly remember this song coming on in the dead of the night and my jaw was just on the floor. It was so beautiful, it felt totally magic in that moment. I didn’t catch the name when they announced it! I was like ‘How am I ever going to find that song again?’

"Listening to this is a physical experience - I have goosebumps every time I hear it, because your body is reacting to that vibration and whatever got captured in the recording of this track."

“I did a lot of trawling - I was on Classic FM’s website trying to find it. I really couldn’t remember what they said, so I listened to the whole programme again and then I finally found it. The rest of the album is nice, but this song is ‘the one’. It’s a really interesting combination - hearing the saxophone and the choir together. I think The Hilliard Ensemble are famous in their own right, but this collaboration has a magic to it.”

“Supermodel” by SZA

Lily: “All of these songs that we’ve talked about feed into who we are as artists, but this is a very recent one. I’ve been really obsessed with her album Ctrl in the last year, we’ve listened to it a lot.

“I think ‘Supermodel’ is great. It’s a really simple chord progression that SZA’s mate was playing, apparently her friend was just learning to play the guitar and she heard it, got her to record it and started ad-libbing over it and it became this song.

“It doesn’t hold the normal structure of a song, the chord pattern sort of repeats throughout it. I think SZA’s melody and the way that she sings it is really captivating, she’s so creative and it’s unlike anything I’ve heard before. It’s not structured in a ‘pop’ way, there’s all these nuances and you get a different thing from it every time you listen to it.

“The biggest thing with her and that whole Ctrl album is her lyrics and how bold she is, bold in terms of vulnerability. She puts herself on the line by saying things like ‘I’m fucking insecure’, whilst being proud, strong and bold with that - she’s a really incredible female voice in this time and we’re seeing a lot of it at the moment. There’s a lot of women speaking from their real perspective, rather than through a man’s perspective of them and the album completely captures that. It’s really inspiring, it’s really influenced my drive to be more honest and to be more true to myself.”

“Landslide” by Stevie Nicks

Meg: “This really reminds me of the time we met each other, when we became friends and started writing music together. We were living in Cornwall at uni and we had a record player that belonged to our other housemate. We only had about five records, a really limited shelf, and Fleetwood Mac was one of them. Stevie Nicks is an amazing artist and knowing that she wrote this song in her early twenties just makes it feel so relatable.”

Lily: “We saw her play at British Summer Time last year - it was incredible. She had these massive sunglasses on, she changed outfits between songs - it was a really cool moment.

"“The song is really relatable to our generation, it’s really simple, but very human."

“The song is really relatable to our generation, it’s really simple, but very human. For that reason, it stays with you and you can hear that truth. She had just been dropped from Polydor with Lindsey Buckingham at the time of writing this. She was out in the Rocky Mountains and she was imagining the landslide of her life. She would have written that in the ‘70s, but it feels like somebody could write that now. It’s timeless.”