The Band Explains: Saint Agnes - 'Vampire'
Saint Agnes summon gothic spirits to prepare us for the release of their mini album ‘Vampire’ - due out later this month on the 26th March. They took a moment to talk to us about the negative impact of social media and how they are empowering themselves with their music.
Hey Saint Agnes - how are you? So your track ‘Vampire’ is out now - which deal with the voyeuristic side of social media. Can you tell us a bit more about it?
Kitty: The negative psychological impact of social media is very real and with so much of our lives, especially this last year being online it is just about unavoidable. With so little real world interaction, especially for a band that is so much about being out there on the road we just felt trapped and gazing through the window of social media at the world we felt terrible about ourselves. The ugliness of cheapening every action as to how well it is received on social media is so destructive and you see it constantly in friends, peers and strangers, with their behaviour treading along a razor;s edge between authentic, fun or interest sharing and narcissism, self loathing and desperation to matter in what has come to be modern culture. It is a smiling, plasticy face covering such hurt and sadness. It makes life sucking vampires of us all.
Jon: We wanted to wrap our message in a song that was delivered with sugary production and some of the reference points of pop culture. It felt more subversive to superficially seem part of the culture and then talk about its ugliness than to just be plain ugly.
It is the title track from your mini album - how is that coming along? When can we get to hear it?
Jon: The mini album is out on the 26th March. There’s 2 different versions, the streaming version which is the main 6 songs, and then an extended version for the CD and vinyl. We wanted an enhanced offline listening experience for our hardcore fans. As music fans ourselves we know there’s a difference in how you listen to music depending on the format. Sitting down and putting a vinyl on is more like watching a film, you pull the curtains closed, open a beer and immerse yourself. We wanted to take that opportunity to add depth to the record and created 5 Psalms, short musical interludes that flesh out the world Vampire exists in. Listened from start to finish, its as close to existing in our heads over the last 12 months as you can get.
There is a huge feeling of rage in your music at the moment - was that your intention? Does that rage extend further than the music?
Jon: Everyone creates music for different reasons, but for us it is about empowering ourselves, feeling stronger. Kitty and I share a feeling of struggling to express ourselves and be bold in our day to day lives. This leads to a lot of insecurity, anxiety and frustration. These internal struggles coupled with the nightmarish reality of a lot of the external world results in a lot of intense rage.
Kitty: We create music to empower us, to allow ourselves to feel and express what we struggle to usually. We are first and foremost a live band and that is because for us gigs are a cathartic experience that we have discovered, through being starved on them, are something we need.
During lockdown, your Quarantine Diaries have been quite the hit, how did you decide which songs to pick?
Kitty: That whole process was intentionally quick and as thought-free as possible. Our failing can be we over think things and we knew that with the outlet of live music being off the cards we needed to do something that scratched that same itch, but writing our own music didn’t feel like it did the job. Making covers was as close to live playing as we could get, you know, the music is written, you just have to perform it there and then and be spontaneous. So we chose songs we listen to in the van on tour, things that inspire us or have a creative element we are intrigued by. We then set ourselves the goal of re-arranging it, recording it and making a video for it in one day.
Did curating this collection of covers lay down the path for ‘Vampire’? If so - how?
Kitty: When you cover a song you get to know its secrets, how it is put together, what harmonic tricks are being played on your brain as a listener. So some of these ideas seeped into what we created and inspired us to try new ideas as well as solidify the fact so much of what we sound like is just down to the fact it is us doing it. If we play someone else’s song it still sounds like us. We’d make a terrible covers band because we can’t help but do our own thing!
Jon: Recording covers in this way meant we had a little less self imposed pressure to be “Saint Agnes” and try some different arrangements. We also recorded live in the past and this wasn’t an option. Rather than see it as a limiting factor we wanted to embrace it and see what creative solutions it threw up. When you record live you’re one entity, a team moving as a unit. When recording in a more separate way you are forced to focus on your own contribution to the sound which has its own unique result. So this mini album felt more like one of Kitty’s collages (Kitty creates a lot of the band’s artwork using collage) rather than the capturing of a live set.