Japanese Voyeurs are lounging about on the wide steps of The Masque theatre, idly strumming guitars and anti-sunning themselves beneath the dank, matt black ceiling - throw in a dying palm tree and a burst beach ball and the image could set the perfect precedent for the first ‘wish you were here...’ rock star postcard.
If JV do look as if they’re vacationing, then I feel like the git at the bloody airport rushing them through check-in and hurrying them back to their responsibilities back home.
Having disturbed them from their comfort-time, we walk around the endless backstage labyrinth in search for a spare room to talk in - the route is so laborious and confusing that I half expect to find Spinal Tap, cobwebbed over and exhausted, still hopelessly looking for the stage.
We find the spare room - a hot little backstage band chamber that reeks of the carlsberg pre-gig boy-fests of NME tours past. The seating choices are as thus: plastic chair, pleather couch, table or floor. The band beam excitedly, supposedly at the power struggle over who’s going to get the couch - but also at the equilibrium of the extreme loveliness-potential of the couch and the potential grime of everything else.
The sheer scowling and thunderous nature of JV’s sound combined with the spasmodic-demonic, naive vocal talents of charismatic vocalist Romily Alice have prepared me for a meeting with a ferocious brooding bunch, which thankfully is far from the case.
JV have caused quite a bit of a buzz about themselves recently - their spectacularly heavy live shows and latest EP ‘Sicking And Creaming’ have both been met with extremes of complete and utter adoration and thunderous applause but also the occasionally disturbed intense dislike.
“I won’t say that I’m okay with the bad reviews,” Romily squirms self-concsiously “I’d rather be in a band that people loved or hated than a middle ground one.” she pauses for a moment and furrows her brow, uncomfortably “I won’t say it doesn’t hurt my feelings because it does - ideally I’d like everyone to like us, but they wont.”
Any ill-received criticism they do recieve is in part due to Romilys’ persona led, dynamics heavy vocal style - at times disturbed and naive little-girl, at others powerful, scowling and raucous, a style that has seen her lazily and repeatedly compared to Katy-Jane-Garside in the music press. I suggest that she sounds more like a female version of Pixies’ Frank Black, something she scoffs humbly at, “I would never compare myself to Frank Black, though that’s very nice of you-” she smiles, “but I am a bit sick of being compared to only female singers. The singers I’m inspired by are male and there’s only so many female rock vocalists they can compare me to, you know?”
Does she think the criticism in part might come from the music press being predominantly male? That perhaps some men find it difficult to listen to a strong, challenging female voice?
“I don’t know-I wouldn’t say that. I mean I’m not on a campaign or anything to change peoples views on that sort of thing-”
Along with bands like Dinosaur Pile Up and Pulled Apart By Horses, JV are in the midst of what over-excitable music-journos are currently lauding as part of a wider grunge resurgence that has seen the 90’s sound, style and attitude creep back into the public consciousness.
Something bassist Thomas Lamb is blissfully oblivious to, “I’ve not actually heard that phrase (grunge resurgence) used - if it is happening then bring it on! Right now we only know of a couple of bands playing similar stuff. We’re pretty much playing with the same bands all the time”.
“But, I mean (grunge) isn’t a terrible thing to be classified as,” he continues, smiling broadly whilst the rest of the band interjects with just about audible mumblings about ‘some of the best music’ coming out of grunge.
Much of JV’s music has an indelibly regressive nature to it - a form which works perfectly within itself to juxtapose chugging riffs with pleas to ‘mummy’ (‘Dumb’) and naively expressed declarations of love (‘You’re So Cool’) - do they think the current Grunge Resurgence has stemmed from our generations desire to escape back into our childhoods?
“...maybe, but, I don’t know, we were only kids when grunge out-” interjects guitarist Johnny Seymour.
“yeah-” Romily elaborates “I think we kind of missed the whole grunge thing, I mean we were all probably only about 7 when Kurt Cobain died”.
So you weren’t the cool kids in primary school skulking around listening to Nirvana then?
Thomas laughs, “What? Walking around in like, Offspring t-shirts and stuff? No, definitely not!”
I end the review by reading the band a review I stumbled across in the dark, masked critiques of the internets public forums (“that’s the thing with the internet, anyone can say anything, totally free of conscience - they don’t have to look no-one in the eye and say it” Romily later suggests). Taken from a website for ‘scottish youth aged between 11 and 26’, the less than favourable review suggests that they sound as if the ‘vocalist has been borrowed from a mental hospital’ and that the EP in general is ‘a major disaster’. I laugh as I read it, confident that actually, everything this snot-nosed kid (I’m guessing) criticized JV for are the qualities that make them so great (except for ‘the major disaster’ part, which is a joke in itself, because the EP is so. fucking. good. it. hurts.).
The joke is lost on them.
“Whoah...” Johnny murmurs, gawping in horror at me.
“The thing is, like - there was a review a while ago on us that said I sounded like the child of Satan, but she really dug us! Someone else might have hated the fact that I sound like the child of Satan” Romily smiles, proudly, “that reviewers entitled to her opinion. Everyone is”.
Cue awkward silence.
“You just lock us in a room and read us a bad review?” Thomas laughs, nervously.
I’m a monster.
“I’ll just get my coat...” I say, and leave.
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