Noisettes interview: Shingai surprise

Published on Friday 17 April 2009 17:48

SECOND chances are rare in pop, but there's been no stopping the Noisettes since they got behind their prog-rock-mad singer, writes Aidan Smith

AT FIRST glance, as they enter the pub on the sunniest afternoon of the year, the Noisettes resemble the classic line-up of two male musos and a stunning female singer which used to dominate Top Of The Pops when dance music took a stranglehold of the charts. The impression given was that the insanely gyrating girl had only been introduced to the guys being all furtive behind her mere minutes before showtime.

Purely on account of his big bushy beard, Jamie Morrison looks like he must possess the biggest and most exotic record collection in the band, who have scored a No2 hit with 'Don't Upset The Rhythm' and release their second album tomorrow. But appearances in this case are deceptive. "With us it's two really lucky geeky idiots and a muso," says the hirsute drummer, plonking himself next to guitarist Dan Smith. "Me and him are the idiots and she's the muso."

"She" is Shingai Shoniwa, a 26-year-old Londoner with roots in Zimbabwe and the circus world, and the look of a warrior-princess. She is, by some distance, the most beautiful prog rock fan I've encountered in the three-and-a-bit decades since guitar solos were at their longest and oceans their most topographic.

"I really love crazy old English prog," she says, sipping her pint of real ale. Give me some names, I say, anticipating the usual suspects. "King Crimson, Camel and Greenslade." (Impressive). "Genesis – the early stuff like Nursery Cryme – Egg and Brainticket." (Hang on: I thought I was Egg's only fan. And who the hell were Brainticket?)

"When I left home at 16, my mum gave me a box containing all those wonderful old records," she continues. "They belonged to my dad, who'd come over here from old Rhodesia. He and my mum split up when I was a baby and he died when I was 11, and I think she wanted to show me another side to this man who was very academic and strict and, when I visited him at weekends, only had books on his shelves. So, of course, I love all these bands now."

The Noisettes' back story was colourful enough before these proggy revelations. Shoniwa and Smith met at the Brit School, the pop academy that's produced Amy Winehouse and Adele. Shoniwa performs barefoot and so, bizarrely, does Morrison, the sticks-man, who tells me he owns an entire house in Edinburgh's Queen Street due to his grandparents being "very, very rich". Smith is also Scottish, but Morrison claims he was unaware of this until just now. The latter was recruited to the band after an appearance on Later… with Jools Holland and the night before our chat they were all back on the show, Shoniwa contorting herself backwards over the kick-drum to the amazement of the guys who thought they were familiar with her entire acrobatic repertoire.

Two years ago, the Noisettes sounded more indie than they do now. Today, they're more pop than on the debut album What's The Time Mr Wolf? 'Don't Upset The Rhythm' is a classic disco stomp, with Shoniwa completely unabashed about singing: "Let me show you something super-beautiful."

The change seems to have done the trick. We've met up after their third TV appearance in rapid succession, Later… being followed by spots on GMTV and T4. I was warned they might be tired, but they're on great form, with Shoniwa treating the old timers in the Prince Albert in London's Queensway to some karaoke soul – until Oleta Adams' 'Get Here' and the line "Cross the desert like an Arab man" has the guys questioning its political correctness. Buzzing about the new album, they're thrilled with Wild Young Hearts and reckon this time they've got it right.

"We don't think we've changed style so much as evolved and grown up," says Smith. "Well, I got fed up with the songs on the first album," adds Morrison. Shoniwa admits: "It didn't sell very well, so when you're lucky to get a second chance, you're going to do the next one bigger and lusher with strings and everything." Then Morrison crystallises things: "On the first album the attitude was: let's all get in a room and play. For the new one, me and Dan took a big decision to stand back and create more space for Shingai and maximise our principal asset, which is one of the most incredible voices in the world."

In thrall to Josephine Baker and Whitney Houston to an equal degree, singing for the young Shoniwa was just like speaking. "And when you come from a big South London family, you enter talent competitions to get yourself noticed. I auditioned for Michael Barrymore's My Kind Of People but didn't get anywhere." Her little brother had more luck on I'll Do Anything, reaching the semi-finals.

"Everyone in my family sings all the time," she adds. "When a baby is born, when someone dies and before someone goes on a long journey." The Noisettes were whisked off to Los Angeles for the album that never did it for them, a surreal experience which still prompts much wry amusement.

"The label that signed us had never heard our music; they'd seen a photograph of us," continues Shoniwa. "And on the day we arrived in LA, all excited and running down to Venice Beach with our guitars, the producer informed us he wasn't making our record anymore."

Morrison again: "Three weeks away from home turned into three months and we went a bit crazy. We were put in the penthouse of the Hyatt Hotel and given a Hummer. When we got hungry, a courier would show up with 100 dollars. When we got bored, we'd be bundled off to theme parks, health spas, Al Capone's house. The music industry doesn't throw money around like that any more and we got a taste before it ran out."

The Noisettes tell a good story – sometimes too good. For instance, Shoniwa's circus past has over-excited journalists. "If you do handstands and love balancing then it gets written up that you're a fire-eater," she says. "We love to exaggerate in this country. Raisins are prunes and girls who like a night out are nymphos. Blame it on the recession, I suppose. When things are dull, we look for excitement." v

• Wild Young Hearts (Vertigo) is out tomorrow. The band play O2 Academy, Glasgow, May 15

www.thenoisettes.com