Savages: Post-Punk’s Chilliest Band Finds Love Amid the Noise
The whole cast of Game of Thrones came to our studio when we were recording,” Savages vocalist Jehnny Beth recalls. “They were doing a musical adaptation of the ‘Red Wedding’ with Coldplay next door to us. So we would have this vibrating, enormous, distorted bass sound coming from our studio, and then Jon Snow would walk by down the corridor.” She laughs. “It was very surreal.”
But Beth and Savages bassist Ayse Hassan had no trouble making goblet-rattling racket of their own while recording Adore Life, the post-punks’ second LP. “It was very loud and hyper-real,” the bassist says. “I was in the bathroom and I could hear the most amazing noises coming from above me.” She, herself, had attempted to make her instrument sound “ferocious,” “dirty,” “disgusting” and “harsh” – four words she uses within 10 seconds of each other to describe her contribution to new song “Surrender” – in an attempt to create something “uncomfortable,” something to contrast to Beth’s new interest in lyrics about love and love-inspired anxiety. Eventually, they arrived at détente.
Adore Life, which follows up the Anglo-Franco group’s cutting 2013 breakthrough LP Silence Yourself, finds Beth’s ruminations about love pitted against a swirl of harsh, hard-rocking rhythms and swooshing, atmospheric guitar. The album overall doesn’t come off as gritty as Hassan’s adjectives – and it’s a far cry from the Black Sabbath comparisons they made last year – but her and her bandmates’ audial bloodlust provides a thoughtful counterpoint to the singer’s vulnerability at every turn. It’s a different kind of Savages record because the band is different; they’re closer to one another and more aware of their feelings. It’s a new state of mind that led them to change the intention of the band.
When Savages formed in 2011 – with a lineup rounded out by drummer Fay Milton and guitarist Gemma Thompson, who came up with the group’s name and mission to write music worthy of it – Beth was adamant that she would not write songs about love. She had so many things she wanted to say about personal censorship, false ideas of success and finding one’s voice. But then something changed. “When we were touring for the last album, I felt things shift between me and the audience, I was receiving so much love and it made me want to react to the people,” she says of why she refocused, speaking thoughtfully and carefully choosing her words. “I wanted to break the fourth wall.”
The shift in perspective initially made things difficult for the band, which originally went in a ballad-y direction before aborting. They soon realized they needed to make a sound as big as the record’s central theme and test-drove several Adore Life songs during a 19-day stint at rotating clubs in New York City before heading to the studio. One thing they learned: “We definitely didn’t want to do a quiet record,” she says.