Emmy The Great – Pixies JD Set Interview – March 2011
Joining Tim on his show are Northern Irish post-rockers And So I Watch You From Afar, Ma Mentor, The Crookes and Emmy The Great. As the rehearsals went on we got tasters of Tim and Emmy’s acoustic versions of ‘Gigantic’, ‘Where is My Mind’ and ‘Velouria’, with the latter sounding particularly impressive. We grabbed Emmy (not literally) for a quick word afterwards:
How did you get involved in the JD Set?
I did a Pixies cover a while ago, and Tim (Wheeler, curator) knew that, so he thought it would be cool to get me involved. I sang on one of Ash’s bonus singles.
Have you been a Pixies fan for a long time?
I think I was aware quite early on that I should be one, as a teenager, and then when I was maturing I realised that it was just so damn good. It’s smart, and I got it. It’s like he winks at you with his music, and you’re like “Yes, I get it!”
Why do you think it took so long for The Pixies to become really popular?
It took a long time didn’t it. It’s just that kind of music, it’s complicated, it needs marinating enough for people to understand it. It’s not instant ‘pumped out of the radio’ stuff, I think the general public as a whole needs a bit of time when they’re not being told that something is good to realise that it actually is. Also, I don’t think that Fight Club hurt them. That’s the thing with a lot of indie bands, like The Shins were everyone’s favourite indie band for ages, then Zach Braff got involved, and all of a sudden, BOOM. They’ve influenced so many bands too, so the music has been dispersed that way.
Have you got any favourite Pixies songs?
‘Nimrod’s Son‘, definitely. I like ‘Isla de Encanta’ too. Now I’ve got some new ones from this experience, so ‘Velouria’, which I’m doing with Tim, is one of my new favourites.
When you cover songs do you prefer staying close to the originals or ‘making it your own’, X Factor style
I started out putting my own spin on things, but now I think staying faithful is more of an education. It always ends up sounding like you no matter what, so just for personal fun I’d much rather do it exactly how they do it. I like seeing what other bands do when they cover songs though.
How do you feel when people cover your songs?
I love it. Micah P Hinson did a cover of one of my songs which is explicitly about being a woman, but he did it from a man’s point of view, and I love it. It’s like our own “I don’t want no scrubs”/”I don’t want no pigeons” thing.
What are your current activities?
Hopefully we’ll know a release date for our second record in the next month, then summer festivals and then touring. The new stuff’s pretty different, it’s still us and still my songs, but lyrically my situation changed so much between the first and second albums that even if we’d kept the same instrumentation it would have been a very different album. We’ve toned ourselves down, it’s just me and (guitarist) Euan making the decisions now, and that’s made the decisions more bold, I think. It’s not a democracy, it’s a double-headed….eagle. Or something.
Tim Wheeler and his gang of collaborators will be performing their covers at a special gig at London’s XOYO on March 24th. Head to thejdset.co.uk for more info.
Artists in this article: Emmy The Great