Going solo
Electrelane’s Ros Murray and Verity Susman discuss their side projects
By Beth Capper
Published: June 9th, 2006 | 5:38pm
RAY RUMOURS
Ros Murray sits on a low stool, casually strumming a ukulele, in a stale basement bar reeking of last night’s cigarettes and spilled beer. It’s Ladyfest Brighton 2005 — one of the British factions of the Ladyfest empire that has been growing since its inception in Olympia, Washington, in 2000. It’s more like a reunion of old-timey friends than a congregation of strangers clamoring for some live music.
It’s about community and friendship and the DIY spirit — a setting where Murray looks perfectly at home. She started out playing in British queer-core band Lesbo Pig and joined Electrelane in 2004 as the bass player. However, she takes to the stage at Ladyfest as her alter ego, Ray Rumours.
Ray Rumours started as a character in a fanzine that Murray used to write and distribute among her friends, who Murray explains, “was a bit like me but he had a moustache and a longer nose.”
“One time I was bored and I made an album in my bedroom on a four-track,” she says. “I drew some pictures and recorded it on tape and gave it to a couple of people. One of them was Francois who wanted to release it on Stitch Stitch [an independent record label based in Bristol, England]. The other was Winston Echo who also wanted to release it on his label Under Educated [also based in Bristol]. Mia [Clarke, guitarist with Electrelane] gave me a ukulele for my birthday when we were in Chicago, which I play with.”
In Electrelane, Murray is serious, nay intimidating. As Ray Rumours, she couldn’t be more endearing. She whistles and plays an acoustic guitar and a ukulele and crafts simplistic lo-fi ditties akin to the childlike aspects of artists like Calvin Johnson’s Beat Happening. In fact, the impetus behind Ray Rumours resembles the ethos of Johnson’s K imprint — taking on the idea that making an album is simply a matter of picking up a guitar and pressing record.
"I think I do Ray Rumours because it's fun to do something immediate and lo-fi that I can play with all my friends,” Murray says. “We don't need to practice ever and we don't have any commitments, so it's fun just to get together and make noise. I can also do gigs organized by my friends really easily, which I can't do with Electrelane. It’s important for me to make something that is really homemade, like what Phil Elverum says in that Microphones documentary [Wise Old Little Boy] about making his records look like they come from a person, so I hand-print and sew all the sleeves myself."
As of summer 2006, Murray is working on a collection of songs about being in the forest for a split 7-inch called Forest Songs, with her friend Francois. You can check out Ray Rumours on myspace.
VERA NOVEMBER
Electrelane keyboardist-vocalist Verity Susman is someone you want on your side in a karaoke contest. As a B-side to the Electrelane single, “I Want to be the President,” the band covered Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” by reinterpreting The Boss’s rasping brogue into a propulsive pop song. Now, as a part of her solo project, Vera November, Susman gives avant-garde beat cellist Arthur Russell’s “Our Last Night Together” the cover treatment.
“The impetus [for Vera November] was being asked to record the Arthur Russell cover,” Susman says. "I enjoyed doing it, and after that I just kept on writing things. It's interesting playing alone after years of always being with other people in a band. I like both. At the moment I’m just gradually recording songs in my flat when I get the time, and I like being able to put them up instantly on Myspace. It's a good pressure to finish recordings, when you know people will be able to hear them straight away.”
Susman lives in Berlin, where Electrelane is writing its fourth album, which the band plans to release in 2007. The sharp and sparse piano-driven concertos she makes as Vera November sound as though they were recorded in another time, like crumpled daguerreotypes abandoned to a dusty attic and discovered years later. She combines piano, accordion, and saxophone with intense and tragic vocals, sometimes jarring and inharmonious, sometimes laden with the expertise of traditional music in the vein of 1920’s classical pianist Erik Satie.
Susman says she is interested in utilizing acoustic instruments not for purist reasons but because she likes the idea of being free to play anywhere, without the constraints of having to plug into an amp or PA.
“I know you can't find a piano easily, and I think I am being drawn more and more to the accordion — not just because of its sound but because of the potential it holds to travel and play where you want,” she says. “I get excited by music that comes from the fringes of genres and styles, where disparate ideas start joining together and something new comes out. And also traditional music that repeats and repeats old patterns, but does it well, so you can feel the energy there.”
Susman’s take on “Our Last Night Together" is due for release in late 2006 on a compilation of Arthur Russell covers. You can check out Vera November on myspace.
Issue #29
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