Setting the scene of Modern Woman

Rarely do the bands that have come through this space sound the same, though many share a common bent towards both the experimental and theatrical. Lead songwriter and frontperson Sophie Harris readily admits the role the venue’s scene played in her early artistic development, even outside of music.

“It was very much for me a teething venue, trying stuff out and learning things,” Harris says. “Tim [Perry], who books the venue, has always been incredibly supportive of Modern Woman. Even before Modern Woman, I used to run a poetry night. But I think you couldn’t help but be influenced in some capacity by those bands that were coming out of there, just because they felt so new at the time.”

But Harris has been trying to break free of the limitations of being a ‘Windmill band.’ She notes that she hasn’t been to The Windmill in about a year - partially due to circumstance, but also partially in recognition that being too attached to the space for too long could potentially become artistically stifling.

“I think it was very important to me not to get too constrained and too boxed in by what was happening,” she says. “I think when you’re working within a scene, you’re - without realising - sort of putting blinkers on, and I think it was important to me to take those off. So with this record that’s coming out, there are some songs in there [where] you can definitely hear that influence. But I would say there are other songs where I’ve tried to sort of move away from it. I think the record is quite varied."

Admittedly, the band’s long-awaited debut album Johnny’s Dreamworld spiritually feels like a record that Black Country, New Road might’ve released in-between For the First Time and Ants From Up There, which is largely to say it nicely balances the rawness and grit of that band’s early material with the art kid swell that followed. And very much in the spirit of that first BC, NR record, Johnny’s Dreamworld often feels like a hits compilation, more than your typical debut album. The evolution is trackable within the record in ways, though it’s not linear through the songlist. Harris tells me the title track is the most recent and was initially added because they just needed another song.

While Harris somewhat strangely describes it as something tacked on, its discordance is what introduces the record and then manages to define it. There’s no track quite like it on the record, with Harris shifting from hushed sprechgesang over a slinking groove, string-backed belting, and sudden guttural screams. But the way in which this song ebbs freely is something of a microcosm of the record. “Neptune Girl” is closest perhaps, spiraling with chaotic guitar lines and another acrobatic vocal performance from Harris.

For all the flexibility within Modern Woman’s sound, it’s probably Harris’s vocals that are the most striking. She notes Kate Bush as a vocal influence, and this is less apparent in tone than it is in phrase construction. There’s a crafted sense of spontaneity that is perhaps more aligned with the legend than many of the opera-leaning art pop artists that often receive the comparison, but the swagger reminds me more of Chrissie Hynde, or on “Offerings,” - originally from the Dogs Fighting in My Dream EP along with “Daniel” - Lydia Lunch.

“I was so into Lydia Lunch. I went to see her when I was like 20, and she was playing in this tiny room under these arches, these train things in London, and there was hardly anybody there. But yeah, I always really loved her. And we get Siouxsie and the Banshees a lot. But I think it’s a combination factor.”

If you’d like to make a slightly more modern comparison, you could do worse than Hop Along’s Francis Quinlan. Harris possesses a similar untamed urgency in her best moments, and she hints at some frustration with how women vocalists can either be dismissed or pigeonholed into a very specific version of femininity.

“I’ve met people who said to me ‘I don’t really like female voices,’ says Harris. “I’ve heard people say ‘I don’t really like too much expression,’ and ‘I like it to be quite muted and pulled back.’ And I think you can hear that in a lot of current music sometimes as well. And that’s amazing, and that’s great because it’s beautiful in a different way. But I feel sometimes like there’s this rawness that can be sometimes lost, whether that’s through production or whatever, and sometimes it lends itself to the song. Sometimes the song isn’t asking for this real expression, but I think there’s just this thing that is so hard to capture, true expression through vocals.”

“So that was kind of what I meant when I was [talking about] femininity. But I do definitely explore that in the lyrics as well. That edge of femininity you don’t necessarily talk about, and you don’t necessarily present to people. And that’s not making a statement of any kind. It's just the fact. I’ve personally experienced things that aren’t always pretty and aren’t always nice.”

The title track and “Neptune Girl” seem to indicate, if not tell the entire story, of where Modern Woman is right now. But the earliest cuts, which are conversely placed deeper into the tracklist, are less aligned with that dark-tinged energy, and are more closely tied to atmospheric folk. Harris namedrops UK-born New Weird America transplant Scout Nibblet when referring to “Daniel.”

“She’s great. She was recording in the early 2000s and I remember at the time [with] ‘Daniel,’ I wanted to create a sort of atmosphere that she created. And I think similar to Grouper. I wanted to create that sort of really weird atmosphere. I was playing ‘Daniel,’ I think it’s like, 7 years ago. It’s been around. This record has collected a lot of dust over time.”

As we speak, we talk more about artists Harris believes have - in some small way or another - bled into the sound of Modern Woman, listing off Vashti Bunyan, Etta James, and Sinead O’Connor. None of them sound ridiculous. As such, Harris acknowledges that Johnny’s Dreamworld can - on some level - feel a bit all over the place, at least stylistically. Closer “The Garden,” another very early song, feels as though it occupies the same sort of quietude as “Daniel.” Proper lead single “Dashboard Mary,” more recent, doesn’t have quite the edge to it that “Johnny’s Dreamworld” and “Neptune Girl” do, but it’s still a rocker. It’s just a slow burn, big crescendo glam rocker, not too far off from something you might hear from The Last Dinner Party: just a little more muscular and less sanitized. “Fork / Heart” is arguably the most exciting track, almost entirely coming out of leftfield as a striking interpretation of Balkan folk with breakdowns reminiscent of groove metal (she attributes the metal influence to violinist David Denyer). Not that its maximalism is in any way a replication of what black midi had been doing, but its stylistic ambition is a strong match.

What really manages to tie what sounds like a bit of a mess on paper together is the theme. “I think I’ve personally always been really drawn to sort of like songs that have a sense of a story within them, whether it’s directly written as a ‘story’ or whether it's got a very heavy atmospheric narrative that runs through it,” says Harris. “That’s always been really important to me, and I think that’s where the overlap with film comes [in].”

While this was something of a universal guiding principle over the years with her songwriting, it was the newest song that served as the bow that tied everything together. “‘Johnny’s Dreamworld,’ that was more of a clipping up of film influences. I love this idea of - and that’s why the record is called this - having these stories within the songs, or within the record as a whole. Snippets in the same way as when you have a dream. The reason [the album] is called Johnny’s Dreamworld is because that opening track is trying to do that within a song as well. The song itself is built off film references. So we’ve got the Harry Dean Stanton in there, and then there’s a Dr. Strangelove reference in there. And they’re not very on the nose. They’re not that clear. But I think for me, I always tend to picture people in these really extreme ways, and if [I] were that character in that film, and how I would feel. That’s kind of what I wanted to do, is to be like, ‘imagine me in this role and all these different films.’”

Harris notes how long it took for this record to come together, placing some of the reason on the financial realities of being an unsigned band, and some of it on her own overthinking. She assures that the next album won’t take so long. She thinks this next one will be more “concise” in sound and probably guitar-driven, but there’s still an attitude of ‘anything could happen.’

For now, she’s just pleased this first record is finally coming out and she’s happy to work on the live show. Modern Woman just came off their first major European tour supporting Ezra Furman, citing playing Paris - the band has an especially strong following in France - and watching the Flaming Lips doc Fearless Freaks with Furman on the bus as highlights. They’ve got their first headline tour later in the year, so it’s all about that right now. On standing out, she notes, “[I want to] keep it interesting… Because there are so many amazing bands. But there are also so many bands, you know.”