Band Of The Week #142 - Bitch Falcon
This week’s Band of the Week is Dublin based dream-grungers Bitch Falcon, who have just released their debut album Staring At Clocks via Small Pond Records. This collection of tracks sees the band evolving the roots of grunge and adapting it to create their own raw-fuzzy sound to provide one of those rare albums can can simply be described as unforgettable. We had a chat with Nigel and Lizzie from the band about how the release came together.
Hey Bitch Falcon, so your debut album is out now, how does it feel to be releasing music during a troubled time for the creative industry?
NK: It’s definitely not what we had planned when we recorded it last year. The traditional release plan with touring to support it was in place, but we have a great team of people around us at Small Pond, CWB, Hold Tight, Michelle Whitehead, RoM, RTG, BFE and Fuga. They’ve put us in the best position possible to adapt and get the record out there in the best possible way. Apart from the mechanics of it all, we’re thankful to be able to still release the album and that there are people out there looking forward to listening to it. 2020 has been especially weird for us all in the music industry and we’re kind of a part of a club that has to release their albums in the middle of a global pandemic, which is hopefully a once in a lifetime thing. We’re really hopeful that ‘Staring At Clocks’ gives people at least over 40 minutes of an escape from what’s going on and that Lizzie’s words can resonate with people and give them hope for 2021.
It is titled ‘Staring At Clocks’, does that have a certain meaning?
LF: During writing this album I was going through a bit of a rough patch. When you feel so numb all you can do is sit there, wait for time to pass and stare at clocks.
You have been categorized as ‘dream grunge’, what do you feel that label means? Who are your key influences as a band to make this blend of a genre?
NK: A lot of early reviews of this are saying it is sounding like a blend of shoe-gaze, grunge, rock etc and ‘dream-grunge’ is probably a succinct way to describe that. There’s a lot of influences in there from Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine through to Deftones and Bjork. The album writing process started in early 2018 and we were all listening to a variety of electronica, jazz, pop, black metal and hardcore bands that weave their way in and out of these songs, that maybe unconsciously affected how we were writing. We’re lucky that we have three people who all consume a broad range of music, but each person brings their own leaning or style when it comes to the writing process that melted everything together. If I look back through stuff I was listening to on Spotify that was making me tick during that time it’s Sampha, Young Fathers, Everything Everything, Three Trapped Tigers, James Bay, Idles, Cid Rim, Childish Gambino, Richard Spaven, Oneohtrix Point Never, Ho99o9, Metz, Bonobo, The Bad Plus, Shubh Saran, The Armed, Tom Misch, Jordan Rakei, Com Truise… It goes on and on. Lizzie and Barry would have a completely different list obviously, but there’s a lot of stuff pulling for attention from us all in those songs.
LF: I would probably lie in the more art-pop, alternative and sad genres. I was really giving with Beach House, Cocteau Twins, DIIV, Protomartyr, Björk, Fever Ray, Angel Olsen and Kate Bush. I love a good strong female voice and I love to be swept by the melancholia.
Where was the album recorded? Any behind the scenes stories from the recording process?
NK: The album was recorded over 10 days at The Meadow in Delgany, Co.Wicklow. It is a beautiful place that is literally home to Deaf Brothers, Rian Trench and Robert Watston (AKA Afghaniscan). They’ve been involved in a lot of the best releases that have come out of Ireland over the last several years. The idea the lads had was to record it live, track a song a day and begin a mix each day over the 10 days. Once we got in there and got cracking, it felt really good and we ended up just ploughing through and having all the main instrumentation for the album recorded I think within the first four or five days. Once that was done it was about applying all the extra bits and making it sound nice and weird. Rian added a lot of dark textures and he plays some synths and sequencers on the record. Considering everything moved quickly at the start, there were a fair few mini-parties during the recording over those 10 days. Lizzie ended up doing much of the vocals at home in her kitchen with some gear Rian lent her and I’d say her neighbours still can’t figure out what was going in that apartment in late 2019. After recording, it went out to sunny Los Angeles to get mixed by Alex Newport before being sent over to Magnus Lindberg in Stockholm for the final bit of mastering sauce.
What are the key themes and influences on this album?
LF: The album was written during a bit of a dark period for myself (Lizzie), most of the themes are different ways in which I expressed feelings of low self-worth, depression and anxiety. Some songs may be a personal reflection, or an introspective look at people around me, putting myself in their heads and trying to figure out what the world means to them. I guess I was feeling pretty heavy!
Is there much of a grunge scene in Ireland? If so, which other bands should we be listening to?
NK: I wouldn’t say there’s especially a “grunge scene” but there is a very, very healthy music scene that is producing incredible music. Your readers will probably be famliar with Hozier, Dermot Kennedy, Fontaines D.C., Lankum, Fang Club, Girl Band, Villagers and The Murder Capital but there are bands like Silverbacks, Just Mustard, Pillow Queens and Pretty Happy all creating amazing music here at the moment that we love. Then outside of the rock thing you have Souleé, Nealo, Denise Chaila, MuRli, Alex Gough, Ailbhe Reddy, Grave Goods, Junior Brother, God Knows and so much more. The scene in Ireland is very inter-connected. We often play the same festivals here and often end up on the circuit outside together, at events like Reeperbahn, TGE and all those types of festivals. When we talk about the scene here, it’s so small and everyone knows each other, that it kind of feels we’re all a part of the same thing even though we play total different styles of music.
It is being released by Small Pond, how does it feel to be part of that family? And how did that partnership come about?
NK: We had ended up on tour in support of Black Peaks with a band called InTechnicolour from Brighton. We got a great laugh out of those lads and got on really well with them. It turned out that members of InTechnicolour also ran a label and studio called Small Pond and we had a lot of respect and admiration for them, because they were making things happen in Brighton for bands that they liked in their home town and then expanded. It’s not an easy thing to do so we were in awe of what they were doing, and then they put out a release of an incredible band from Ireland called Alarmist. In 2018, we went to The Great Escape and because that’s in Brighton, we were really looking forward to seeing the Small Pond HQ and having a few pints with the lads. We ended up recording some songs off the album for a Small Pond studio session with their amazing in-house crew. That weekend, we may have had a few drunken conversations about maybe putting out a single and working together ‘cause the vibes were so good. It all kind of happened by accident I think but because we kept crossing paths and enjoying our time together, it was probably more inevitable than both parties realised at the time.
Do you have a favorite lyric on the album? If so, which one and why?
NK: From Harvester :
“I just heard, a rumour(s) about your face -
High design, with a changing trepid grace,
All the gold, couldn’t pay for what you sold
I decline, to take this as you”
How Lizzie managed to tell that story while making it so melodic, powerful and perfect in rhyme and rhythmic structure, amazes me even still. I know how hard it was for her to write the lyrics/melodies and only after we finished the record, what she was going through when she wrote them and I’m very proud of her. I think we can all explore things about ourselves and parts of our personalities that are difficult to confront with some of the themes in this album.
LF: I'm usually very critical of my lyrics so this is hard for me to pick!
From Sold Youth:
"What stood as your protagonist bears a fleeting trend"
I wrote this kind of taking the piss out of myself. Me as this intense persona can be so penetrable by what people think of me and trying too hard to be relevant.