Interview: Pumarosa defend and release
Fresh from a recent tour of Australia, a turn at The Great Escape and the release of their debut album, The Witch, Pumarosa are having a great 2017. We talk to Nick from the band:
Hi and thanks for taking the time to speak with us at Something You Said. Firstly congratulations on the new single Dragonfly. It is an amazingly rich and visceral clip. Who did you work with on this project and was it a case of executing a vision you already had storyboarded or more of a loose and organic approach?
Isabel collaborated with the filmmaker Holly Hunter. They had worked together previously on the Priestess video. They started with loose aesthetic hunches and let it build from there – they were trying to find something insect and visceral.
Can you elaborate a little on the subject matter you are addressing in Dragonfly?
It describes a process of emotional defence and release.
Turning concepts into a practical reality are often a challenge but you manage this in more ways than one. Case in point your stage design, what is your process in conceptualising, fabricating and touring custom stage designs?
Right now there isn’t really a budget for stage design! But this is something we think about and hopefully, one day get to do.
You tackle a great many socio-political and socio-sexual constructs and music is one of the best mediums to bring these thoughts to life, but musically do you shape the tunes around the idea or the idea guides the style of track for you?
It is hard to say what is going on at the point where lyrics and music meet. The two simultaneously influence one another.
You have been in good company of late, playing alongside Glass Animals, Kate Tempest, The Pixies and The Kills. Having shared the stage with some amazing artists, have you had any encounters and words of wisdom spoken to you that have altered the way you approach your craft?
Glass Animals shared with us a trade secret, which is to drink two pints of hot milk immediately before going onstage.
Your new album The Witch is out now. Can you provide a little insight for our readers on what to expect on the album?
Oh Lordy. There’s quite a few different sonic adventures on The Witch. There’s some ballads and some long twisting psychedelic passages… there’s ten songs we’ve spent ages working on and we hope you like them!
What does the rest of 2017 have in store for Pumarosa?
Some festival gigs, our own tour later in the year, maybe a trip to Mexico (that would be grand)… and we’ll keep writing more songs, making demos… hopefully doing the things we always do!
Keep up to date with Pumarosa on Facebook.
Interview by Courtney Dabb.
