Most pop bands celebrate their decade anniversary by re-forming, releasing a greatest hits and going on a tour. Not so for Shy Child, who never split up in the first place and then completely forgot it was even their anniversary (much like our parents).Shy Child have released 3 albums together across various indie labels and international territories, yet it's their forthcoming fourth, 'Liquid Love', that looks set to propel them into the public conscience.
We recently spoke to Nate (who does drums) and Pete (who does vocals). They told us all about steering wheelchairs with their tongues, what the hidden message in 'Avatar' really was, how to save a dying goldfish, oh, and some stuff about music as well...
Hello Pete and Nate. Welcome back to London. What do you look forward to most about coming here?
Nate: Every time we come here I make sure to go to Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum.
Pete: It’s fucked up. I went there and looked really close up, like up their noses. They didn’t sculpt the hole. I hate to destroy the illusion.
Perhaps they are trying to stop the wax celebrities from getting a cocaine habit. Is there anything you don’t like about London?
Pete: I can’t find fruit easily. I ate breakfast yesterday and I said can I have some fruit please and she said "We have prunes and stewed apricot". I have never had a prune.
They serve them in Hospitals. Very good for digestion.
Nate: We weren’t in hospital.
Pete: We’re staying in a weird old hotel.
Nate: It’s like grandma’s house. If grandma ran a mental asylum.
So Shy Child have been together as a band for 10 years…
Pete: That’s so fucking weird!
Is that a surprise?
Pete: Hell yeah!
Nate: Happy anniversary!
Pete: Let’s be clear. We didn’t start as a band, quote unquote. Like we were just fucking around for many years.
Nate: Well, we were playing some shows, it’s now just a lot more shows.
Do you have any plans to celebrate this momentous occasion?
Nate: Well we only just found out about it.
We want to know about your new album. It's called 'Liquid Love' is that something rude or is it poppers?
Pete: Poppers, yeah I realized that, it’s not poppers. Take the classical metaphorical approach: the nature of love is amorphous, it’s not a firm concept in one’s life.
Nate: It’s fluid.
Pete: You can love your partner but also hate them at times. Much like my love for music. (PAUSE) But it also means cum.
You ruined the magic there. So what have you done to ensure 'Liquid Love' is your best yet?
Pete: Oh shit. (PAUSE) Well first of all we actually wrote songs as opposed to elaborate jams. They’re actual songs referencing more traditional pop structures. There’s more of an appreciation of pop history that we might not have appreciated before. I never realised it’s important in life to recognise the canon. I like that. People like that.
Do you think you’ll be embraced by the pop world now?
Pete: It’s the only genre. It’s the only relevant music.
At the moment all the big pop singers are number one on a charity record for Haiti. Would you like to have featured on it?
Pete: It’s really late 90’s misery. I dunno, it’s a troubling thing. That sells though. White people feel guilty about their lives. That’s why Avatar was so huge, because it was like, let’s save this weird race. The point of the movie is alleviation of white guilt. We’re here, we’re saving the people, their big tree died and I’m a white man and I’m helping them live.
Nate: We watched T2 on TV last night and it’s way better.
Why do you think so many white men are currently making electro pop dance music when dancing has never been something, stereotypically, white men can do?
Nate: Maybe this is the way that they can, we can, get our dance on. We can’t do it on the dancefloor so we get behind the music .
Pete: All music is ripping off black people isn’t it? Am I going out on a limb here? Let’s be realistic the only white person in music is fucking Randy Newman.
Nate: He’s kind of ripping off…something.
Pete: Whatever, the whole music business is based on that, from Elvis to whoever.
Tell us about this keytar (a keyboard on a string) we have seen you playing.
Pete: I found it on ebay. I thought it was cool to play, and then it became more a utilitarian thing because you can do more with it and move around with it and use pedals with it. Then the more I played it the more it broke and I realised it was a plastic piece of shit.
So if you’re back on keyboards will you be stuck in one spot?
Pete: I’m still gonna move around, I’ll do my best.
You could sit in a wheelchair with the keyboard on your lap.
Nate: Yes, there are wheelchairs you control with your tongue. You can play and you can drive it with your tongue.
Pete: They’re blowing dude, that’s not their tongue, they’re blowing. You think they steer with their tongue?!
Finally, our Goldfish is floating upside down. Do you have any tips to save him?
Nate: Fish do that, standing on their head.
Pete: He’s just chilling. They’re just hanging out.
Nate: How many poor innocent fish have been flushed away because they’re just hanging out?
Pete: Maybe they had a better life after that.
Thank you Pete & Nate Shy Child.
The music sounds a lot like this, which is the wonderful 'Disconnected' as remixed by Ocelot (download it by clicking the 'down' arrow if you like music you haven't paid the artist any money for creating).
'Liquid Love' is out on 15th March and you can pre-order it here.
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