Listen Up! 5 Questions for Woman’s Hour

After a 4th of July weekend filled with sun, fun and crazy-loud fireworks, we’ve been in mellower mood lately, including our listening habits. So we were pretty thrilled to stumble upon Woman’s Hour. The stylish British quartet—fronted by gamine beauty Fiona Burgess—crafts smart, modern music that’s been aptly described as swoon-pop.

We asked Fiona a few questions about their sound, the very cool video for their single “Conversations” (also the name of the soon-to-be released record) and what it’s like to be in a band with your brother.

THE THREAD: Your sound is lovely—lush and modern, but with a distinct nod to the ’80s. Are there any artists—past or present—who you’re inspired by?

FIONA: Yes, many. We all have quite different musical tastes and tend to listen to all kinds of music rather than any specific genre. I guess we’re inspired by artists who show development throughout their career, so every album just gets better and better. The War on Drugs is a great example of an artist who’s doing this.

Tell us a little about the post-modern performance featured in the video for “Conversations.” Where did the concept come from? Who choreographed it?

Our video takes its inspiration from choreographer Trisha Brown’s dance piece Group Primary Accumulation (1973). The piece shows four people lying down, performing an accumulation of movements in sync. I came across this work while touring in America earlier this year. I visited the New Museum in Manhattan and picked up a copy of Early Works 1966-1979 on DVD. When I got home, I watched the whole thing over the course of a couple of weeks. I was transfixed. Her work was instantly familiar, incorporating gestures from everyday life and acting as a primer for post-modern dance. This was where the idea came from. We spent a day with a movement director who helped us to study the movements and rehearse it as a group. In our video, you see the four of us lying down, equidistant, arms bent in unison. We are four non-dancers engaged in a conversation with ourselves. Separately together. The video highlights this isolation. Four people silently moving in sync.

We’ve noticed you use black-and-white imagery quite a bit. What about that monochrome style appeals to you?

All the artwork and videos up until this point have been black and white. When we first released Our Love Has No Rhythm, we decided to use a photograph from an old instruction manual for the cover. Since then, we’ve continued to use found photographs from similar publications for our single artwork, which maintained a black-and-white aesthetic. This led us to want to continue this theme throughout everything we create, like our videos and band portraits.

Siblings in bands have some history—from Heart and Sparks (happy times!) to The Kinks and Oasis (not-always-happy times) and more. What’s it like being in a band with your brother, William?

It’s like your favorite boiled sweet—good company on on long journeys!

You’re touring quite a bit this summer. How do you convey your overall aesthetic with your live shows?

We’ve already begun taking large pyramid sculptures with us on tour and using them as stage props, which has been really great. We’re all interested in making our live shows as engaging as possible, which involves thinking about lighting, stage props, costumes, dance, etc. We like to experiment and make our live shows a bit of a spectacle!

Conversations comes out July 14 on Secretly Canadian Records.

—Jenny Yule

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