Warpaint: We Can Be Just As Gross And Gnarley As Men

26 January 2014 | 10:37 am | Andy Hazel

"When people ask questions about what it’s like to be a female musician, I just ignore it”

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"It usually takes a few listens for people to really get it,” says a chipper Jenny Lee Lindberg, bassist with LA quartet Warpaint about her band's new, eponymous album. “It's got a lot going on,” she adds. Since bursting into the consciousness of anyone who pays attention to online music sites or radio with their 2010 debut The Fool, or its predecessor EP Exquisite Corpse in 2008, Warpaint have been getting love from far and wide. Comprising childhood besties Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman, Lindberg and Sydney drummer Stella Mozgawa, the bassist points out that their closeness as friends is almost like a marriage.

“We fell in love,” she says plainly. “We'd lived in LA for the same amount of time when we met and, even though our upbringing was different – they grew up in a small, hippy town and I grew up in a small, white, trashy town – we had a lot in common.” While Lindberg doesn't think that growing up in Nevada bestowed her with any tangible benefits, she says moving to LA from a small town sets you apart from the locals. “Even though I grew up in Reno I have a free-spirited nature, so we weren't too far off the grid from each other. We're all intuitive and instinctive when it comes to, say, sizing someone up. We're pretty savvy!” she laughs.

Warpaint is an album infused with collective savvy-ness that's redolent in heavy dub atmospheres, drifting vocal melodies and acute attention to detail. While being wholly the band's creation, the album was coaxed into existence by a dream team of collaborators: superstar producers Flood and Nigel Godrich; and Chris Cunningham handling the art and photography.

“It was an all-star team,” she admits. “Fuck, I don't know how we managed to pull any of that off. I guess I'd just say we're lucky. Nigel Godrich didn't approach us and say, 'Can I please mix your songs?' We were having trouble mixing the last two songs so, to get a mix that we thought was representative of how the songs should sound, we just asked him. We were stoked! It's not like we had a plan A and plan B, but we did definitely think about it and said, 'Let's see what our options are'.

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“I guess to put it simply: if we plan to do something it never comes out that way. Our writing process is full of happy accidents. The creative process is never planned with us; we didn't make a conscious decision when we were writing songs to do anything. We wanted to make it more minimal and a little darker and more sexy – those were the three things we were aiming for.'

One song oozing with all of the aforementioned qualities is the overtly danceable Disco//Very, a song you can expect to hear a lot this summer. “I love all of the songs, but I guess I love Disco//Very because it's so different from other things we've done, and another track called Biggy. After we finished recording that song, we felt so proud of ourselves.”

When Warpaint first began to appear in press, the focus was very much on the people around them. Kokal's boyfriend John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers) produced their first EP, Heath Ledger was an early fan and Lindberg's sister (the band's previous drummer) is actress Shannyn Sossamon (A Knight's Tale, The Rules Of Attraction). So what does Lindberg think about the media's focus shifting away from the famous names to the band's music? “There's a lot more female bands happening and that's not the emphasis anymore,” she says calmly, ignoring the question. “There were a lot of people writing about how we're good for being girls, when we can be grosser and gnarlier than a lot of dudes can. There are definitely feminine aspects to our music, but there are masculine aspects. When people ask questions about what it's like to be a female musician, I just ignore it.”