I\u2019ve always relied on my friend Katy to tell me who to listen to. When I returned from a months-long trip to India, she handed me a mix CD with a hand-collaged liner stuffed inside. \u201cThis is what you missed,\u201d she\u2019d written. And it was.<\/p>\n
So in 2010, when she sent me Warpaint\u2019s breakout single \u201cUndertow,\u201d I listened eagerly. The song was affecting and simple, with a strong bassline and ethereal vocals. I played it on repeat for months.<\/p>\n
That simplicity, that desire to distill a piece\u2019s component parts, runs like a tight current through the Los Angeles rock band\u2019s eponymous new album. I spoke with Jenny Lee Lindberg\u2013Warpaint\u2019s bassist, guitarist and vocalist\u2013on the phone from Europe, where the band was on tour. \u201cIf you keep it simple and start small, and while you\u2019re doing that be in it and be present \u2013 the way we approached this last record is how we want to be in our everyday lives. It\u2019s a little spiritual,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The women of Warpaint\u2013Emily Kokal, Theresa Wayman, Stella Mozgawa and Lindberg\u2013started recording the album over the course of a month in Joshua Tree. \u201cPrior to that, somebody would write a song and send it to Stella, Stella would send it to me \u2013 we all recorded bits. But until then, we hadn\u2019t been in a room fleshing ideas out with each other,\u201d she said. They fell into a new groove; while Warpaint had prided themselves on atypical songwriting, the songs that emerged from these sessions were more controlled and traditionally structured. Lindberg says they were also \u201csexier, fancier and darker\u201d than what had come before.<\/p>\n
One would get a bassline going, another would come in on keys, another would grabbing the mic and the last band member might \u201chang back and keep from overcrowding it.\u201d The idea of space as a performed presence rather than an absence to be filled feels countercultural in a society that chatters incessantly about the virtues of \u201cmultitasking\u201d and \u201chaving it all.\u201d She calls Warpaint a meditation.<\/p>\n
[blockquote]\u201cWe would really like to score a horror film\u201d[\/blockquote]<\/p>\n
The album is washed out at times, incisive at others. The music blog Pitchfork praised their debut album The Fool, but skewered Warpaint upon its January release. The reviewer called its songs \u201clifeless stiffs\u201d and wrote that its members comprised \u201ca most square thing: a jam band.\u201d Lindberg didn\u2019t read the review \u2013 she doesn\u2019t read any reviews \u2013 but heard about it from her bandmates. \u201cFrom what they said, it seemed like Pitchfork had a personal vendetta and didn\u2019t have their facts straight. It didn\u2019t feel constructive in any size, shape or form,\u201d she says. Rolling Stone called Warpaint \u201cthe perfect backdrop for your next midnight s\u00e9ance,\u201d Paste said it was \u201cultimately rewarding and full of promise\u201d and Consequence of Sound called it both \u201ca patient listen\u201d and \u201ca triumph.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Pitchfork review was right enough in one regard: the record has no \u201cUndertow,\u201d no standout catch. \u201cDisco\/\/very\u201d is as close as they come to getting the listener up and moving, though you\u2019d be more likely to dance in your seat. Lyrics like \u201cI\u2019ve got a friend with a melody that will kill \/ she will eat you alive\u201d pinpoint the sexy-scary thing Warpaint\u2019s got going on, ground well trodden by artists like Fiona Apple and CocoRosie. \u201cDisco\/\/very\u201d\u2019s reduced beat conjures up the image of a woman in the depths of winter, reluctantly dressing for a party. It\u2019s Miss Havisham sifting through a case of dirty rubies, that scene in Casper where Christina Ricci dons the lace number she\u2019s pulled from the attic. In concert, Warpaint\u2019s aesthetics often mirror their sound, whether the women are in sumptuously accessorized floral gowns or flowing white chiffon.<\/p>\n
When I spoke with Lindberg, Warpaint was coming off a night out in Amsterdam celebrating Mozgawa\u2019s birthday and feeling groggy. But the road grind\u2019s nothing new. They toured on The Fool for two and a half years, in a bus, sprinters, planes and vans they drove themselves. In the ten years Warpaint has been a band, they haven\u2019t only watched each other grow up, they\u2019ve watched the scene change around them. \u201cWhen we first came out, we were almost a novelty \u2013 like, \u2018Oh, an all-girl band where the girls can actually play their instruments!\u2019 Now there are a lot of girl bands that have depth. It feels pretty powerful to be a part of that. But not in a feminist way; it\u2019s more subtle. It\u2019s almost that everyone\u2019s being treated as equals.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the tour ends, \u201cwe would really like to score a horror film,\u201d Lindberg says. \u201cThe last one I saw that I loved was The Conjuring. I really like paranormal teen romance. Just anything where lots of emotions are being felt.\u201d<\/p>\n
My favorite song on Warpaint, \u201cSon,\u201d contains the lyric \u201cyou can see the reason why your story is not over.\u201d Warpaint doesn\u2019t do everything I wanted it to do: that\u2019s frankly true. But it\u2019s small and self-indulgent to judge a piece of work simply as a thing that does or doesn\u2019t perform to your imagination of it. There is an abundance of material here; flawless sound mixing by Nigel Godrich, as well as gorgeous instrumentation and layered vocals. As in their Chris Cunningham-directed \u201cLove is To Die,\u201d which flatly resembles an old Metric music video, these pieces don\u2019t always come together for maximum effect. But even when buried, Warpaint\u2019s talent and character is ever-present. You can see the reason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve always relied on my friend Katy to tell me who to listen to. When I returned from a months-long trip to India, she handed me a mix CD with a hand-collaged liner stuffed inside. \u201cThis is what you missed,\u201d she\u2019d written. And it was. So in 2010, when she sent me Warpaint\u2019s breakout single \u201cUndertow,\u201d I listened eagerly. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":3072,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[49],"tags":[60],"class_list":["post-3067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-warpaint"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saoQFa-warpaint","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notofu.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}