Sixpence None The Richer |
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Wed. November 20.2002 4:19 PM EST |
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Sixpence None the Richer: Pleasantly Discontent-edNashville group waits almost five years to follow up "Kiss Me." by Gil Kaufman |
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Sixpence None the Richer (VH1.com) |
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After you’ve enjoyed a huge hit single, you shouldn’t disappear for three years. Of course, Nashville-based Sixpence None the Richer never intended to fall off the map for a pop lifetime after their 1999 smash "Kiss Me." But, well, biz happens.
Caught in a frustrating contractual bugaboo, the lilting pop group - singer Leigh Nash, guitarists Matt Slocum and Sean Kelly, keyboardist Jerry Dale McFadden, bassist Justin Cary and drummer Rob Mitchell - had to cool their heels for two years after completing the just-released Divine Discontent, which hits stores almost five years to the day after its self-titled predecessor. In that time, they feared fans would forget the once ubiquitous "Kiss Me"(the track has been used on "She's All That," "Dawson's Creek," "Providence," "The Young and The Restless" and "Days of Our Lives"), as well as a second hit, a cover of the La’s "There She Goes," which helped rescue Sixpence from a trip to one-hit wonderland. In some ways, though, Nash -- who spent her time fishing, making new friends and recording with masked surf rockers Los Straitjackets - says she’s glad half a decade elapsed since the release of their last album. With nu-metal and teen pop on the wane, Nash believes "it’s a much healthier time for a record like ours to come out." Discontent finds Nash in fine, ethereal voice, while the band backs her with dreamy arrangements ("Breathe Your Name," "Down and Out of Time" ). The disc also features a few rocked-up tracks ("Tonight," "Paralyzed") that better represent Sixpence’s chunkier live sound, as well as a spin on Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over.” Rested and ready to give it another go, Nash phoned in from the green room of "The Tonight Show." She talked about why every day feels like Sunday(s), how she spent her summer vacations, and why she’d give it all up to join Ratt. VH1: Do you think people still remember "Kiss Me?" Leigh Nash: If people are going to remember us at all it's because of "Kiss Me," which is not a bad thing. I'm glad our name is still somewhat recognizable. VH1: Does it ever get annoying having your voice compared to Harriet Wheeler from the Sundays? Nash: Not at all. We're such big fans of the Sundays and I adore her voice - [the comparison] is a very kind thing. Although I remember we did shows with Better than Ezra, and on the last night of the tour they said something about us sounding like the Sundays and they imitated me singing "Here's Where the Story Ends." We got them back. VH1: How? Nash: I remember some cursing and the threat of violence ... all in good fun, of course. VH1: Is it weird to be known for having a hit song that someone else wrote [the La's "There She Goes"]? And why'd you choose to do another one on this album? Nash: Definitely. We thought we shouldn’t do it again, but here we are doing another cover! It is a bit weird, but we’re just really fans of other people’s music, which makes us better musicians. VH1: You’re not worried about being pegged as "that cover band?" Nash: People are going to say what they're going to say. We just want to have fun and we won’t worry about that because there’s nothing we can do. At least we're semi-good at it. VH1: What's your favorite other hit song by someone other than the artist who wrote it? Nash: It’s not really a hit, but my favorite cover ever is Jennifer Warnes doing Leonard Cohen’s "Famous Blue Raincoat." That song is what got me into Leonard Cohen’s music. VH1: What did you do during that time off - fish, knit? Nash: I did fish a little bit, not as much as I would have liked to. I spent a lot of time at home and made some new friends and got some puppies. At first I tried to relax and rest up because we thought we were going to be busy. Before you know it, two years had passed and we’d done a lot of resting. I was really, really down for some of the time and I let myself get depressed about the situation and losing all that time. We’ve been together for 12 years and I was feeling like, "Why does this keep happening to us?" VH1: Did you ever worry that it was over? Nash: That’s what fueled the bad thoughts, "Will this record ever come out?" You worry that, ‘Nobody likes us anyway and we’re easily forgotten. We’re going to fall into the vortex of one-hit wonders!’ I love it when people say we’re a one-hit wonder, we’re actually a two-hit wonder! VH1: Because of delays you had two years to live with this album. Was there any temptation to keep going in and tweaking it? Nash: We were proud of what we’d done. We left it as is and it became this sad little part of our lives. We originally thought we were done with it in the summer of 2000. The last thing we added was the cover of "Don't Dream It's Over." That was a suggestion from the chairman of Warner Bros. Records, Tom Whalley. He thought it would be good for us and we’re big Crowded House fans, so we were instantly intrigued. VH1: Why no songs about how it sucks to be in the music business? Nash: No. In a year or so, hopefully we'll be able to look back on it and see that it was a good thing. As far as our peers and what is popular right now, it’s a much more appropriate, healthier time for a record like ours to come out. VH1: You typically write one song per record, does the time factor explain why you have two on this album? Nash: I guess since this took so long to make I doubled up. They had to fight me to put "Eyes Wide Open" on the record because I was not that big a fan of it. I think it’s really creepy and the words are very abstract and strange. VH1: What inspired you to write it? Nash: I'm really scared to fly and I was on a plane and nervous and the melody for this song came into my head, probably from the anxiety of the flight. So, I wrote a song about a hooker! VH1: "Paralyzed" is kind of a departure for you on this album, a heavy rock song with a heavy message: a pregnant wife whose journalist husband is killed at war. Nash: That’s what our record before the last one, This Beautiful Mess, was like, more rock. It comes up every once in a while for us, and if you saw us live you’d see that we’re a little more rock than you’d expect. That’s a true story. A German journalist came in to interview us and he’d just found out his friend had been killed in Kosovo on his last trip over as the war was ending. Matt wrote the song after the interview because it made us feel so miserable. VH1: You co-founded this band in 1989 when you were 13, which means you've been doing this for almost half your life. Did you ever imagine you'd be a veteran at 26? Nash: No, I really didn't. I wanted to be a country singer for a year and before that I hadn’t really thought about ... VH1: You mean when you were 11? Nash: Yeah, I started thinking about my career at 12. I had no serious designs on stardom. I just wanted to be like Tanya Tucker and Loretta Lynn. I loved George Jones and Patsy Cline. Those are the singers that inspired me to become a singer, then I met Matt in high school and he broadened my musical horizons and introduced me to different kinds of music. VH1: What kind of music do you listen to that might surprise people? Nash: I love listening to the London cast of "Les Miserables." I listen to it for three months straight every winter. I’m obsessed with the music and I think it’s so beautiful. One day I would like to be in it. I also love the new Tonic record for driving, it’s very dramatic. There's this guy, Steve Coogan, who was in "24 Hour Party People" and he plays a guy named Alan Partridge in this British chat show. We have the audio from the show on CDs and it’s all we listen to. You can laugh forever at it. VH1: What’s your guilty pleasure? Nash: This Barry Manilow album called 2:00 A.M. Paradise Café. I love that and I always have. VH1: If you could be in any hair band from the'80s, who would it be and why? Nash: Ratt. Just because of the name. |
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