Following the release of her debut EP, Lapse Of Time earlier in the year, singer/songwriter and Liverpool loving Jennifer Davies caught up with Matt Tarr to discuss how it felt being played on Xfm for the first time, what her favourite track from the EP is and how living in Merseyside influenced her sound…
MT: Tell us a bit about your background; how did you get into music?
Jennifer: I got into music from a young age; my parents aren’t musical or anything but we always had music on. When I was nine my mum and dad realised it wasn’t just a phase and so I started to do piano lessons but I didn’t start singing until I was fourteen. When I moved to Liverpool I worked in the box office at Liverpool Academy and that’s where I got completely obsessed with live music. From there I was in a band [Soft Toy Emergency] and we never really achieved mainstream success, but we did the whole touring circuit; that’s how I know Tord [Øverland Knudsen] from The Wombats cos we supported them quite a bit. We did Glastonbury, Reading & Leeds and things like that too so I’ve done my fair share of gigs, but that didn’t really work out so I’ve just spent a few years figuring out where I wanted to be and what I wanted do. Me and Tord started writing together cos he had some time between the Wombats stuff and then we started writing the EP, so that’s a very condensed musical history!
MT: So with Lapse Of Time EP being your first release as a solo artist, is it something you’ve had in your mind for a while or was it something that just happened when you guys got together?
Jennifer: Yeah we got together when I’d had a bit of a moment with the label and felt that they were pushing me in a route that was too commercial. It’s not like the stuff that I’m doing now isn’t commercial but it was commercial in a different sense and it didn’t sit quite right with me. So when Tord and I started writing together I set out with the aim of writing an albums worth of stuff and we just kept writing and writing and we got loads of material. So I just thought it was a good idea to put something out straight away as I feel that the way people consume music is so different from how it was even five years ago. People want stuff now, so I thought “wouldn’t it be cool to have this body of work that people can discover in the next six to twelve months at different stages, but once they do discover it there’s this EP where they can get a proper taste for who I am as a person and as an artist”. So I think that was the idea behind it. It’s quite a non pressured way in terms of having to achieve certain things as in the past it’s been all about trying to get on Radio 1, so it’s nice to just step away from that and make some really cool art with my friends.
MT: Often when artists are in the mindset of focusing purely on getting radio success, their music doesn’t necessarily reflect what they set out to make, so if artists make something they’re happy with it feels much more natural, don’t you agree?
Jennifer: Definitely. In the whole pop songwriting circuit that I was in for a little while with the label, before I put my foot down, it was all about hits, hits hits. That pressure is just not a very nice environment to create in and as soon as you take that off it’s actually really fun just to be in the studio. We were doing a song a day, sometimes I was doing two writing sessions a day and it was very nice to be in the studio with Tord where it was not pressured and if you didn’t write anything that day it didn’t matter; I felt like a musician again and felt that I could express myself.
MT: ‘Lapse Of Time’ was the first track that you released from the EP and obviously it’s the title track, but what made you release that track first?
Jennifer: For me the EP falls into two separate categories; the slower tempo, more eighties inspired stuff and then the more driving, nineties stuff that references The Cardigans and Garbage and has grittier bass lines and distortion on the vocals. I felt like ‘Lapse Of Time’ was somewhere between the two because of the slower sections and I find it quite an exciting track just cos it’s not very conventional in terms of structure or anything like that. Also I really liked the video and with it being the title track I thought it would be a good introduction to who I am as an artist.
MT: In terms of the video for the single, it is hugely creative and must’ve taken hours and hours to put together.
Jennifer: Well we filmed a huge proportion of it in London and on the first night we filmed from 6pm until 3am. When we got back we realised that we only had four seconds of footage and we were like “oh my god, this is gonna a long, long process”. But I’m really pleased with how it turned out. We filmed in February so it was really cold and I just remember after one of the takes we were in Piccadilly Circus and the only place that was open was KFC at like 2am and I sat with two coats on and thermal gloves.
MT: ‘Lapse Of Time’ is the first single that you’ve released from the EP but what is your favourite track on there?
Jennifer: I really like ‘Choke which is the song we’re gonna put out next, although it’s between that and ‘Can’t Get Used To Losing You’ but Tord is always laughing at me because every time we record a new song I’m always like “I think this is my favourite!”.
MT: You’re going to release a video for each of the tracks on the EP; what was your thinking behind that?
Jennifer: Well it’s kind of a weird way we’ve done it in a sense cos it’s almost like the videos become the singles but I think it works. It was funny because we discussed doing this last year and then at Christmas, Beyonce came out with her ridiculously high budget visual album and obviously it’s annoying when you have an idea and someone does it so you look like your copying them, but I think it showed we were on the right lines with our thinking. Our initial idea was to do simple videos and do them well but they’ve actually been really complicated ideas. But I had a lot of time to think about that during the filming of ‘Lapse Of Time’; I became a philosopher during the making of that video!
MT: Recently you had your first play on XFM; how was it hearing yourself on there?
Jennifer: It was crazy. I didn’t expect to get any radio play at all initially and I was really chuffed when we found out that was happening. It was really exciting to listen to it and we all got together in Liverpool and heard it on the radio. It was really nice because sometimes you just feel that some people at radio stations wait to see if something’s cool or not, but it was nice that within a week and a half of it being up online someone went “yeah I like this record, I’m gonna play some stuff from it on my show”. Off the back of that we’re doing a show for BBC Introducing in September.
MT: Were there any specific artists that you drew inspiration from when you were writing the tracks on the EP?
Jennifer: I love all sorts of stuff but I deliberately didn’t listen to current stuff whilst I was writing cos I feel it’s very easy to fall into a trap of writing something in a specific sound, which by the time you put stuff out is gone, so I actually looked back to artists and songs that first inspired me, like The Cardigans – ‘My Favourite Game’ which I was obsessed with cos it’s just a great song and also things like Garbage and No Doubt and then loads of eighties stuff like The Cure and Depeche Mode. We listened to so much stuff in the studio; it’s funny how different parts of each song remind me of different things.
MT: Being a resident of Liverpool, do you feel that your sound is representative of the city?
Jennifer: Yeah I think it is. It was funny because I had a feeling that BBC Introducing Liverpool were going to play ‘Can’t Get Used To Losing You’, which is the more guitar based track on the EP and that that would be the one that appealed and it was. I guess it shows that I know the city that I live in! There’s a lot of energy, passion and almost slight aggression in that song and that’s certainly stuff that’s very prominent in Liverpool, that very raw passion in music and I think I’ve definitely channeled that a bit along the way. But yeah there’s so much great stuff in Liverpool, locally there are a lot of great artists that are a bit under the radar that are hugely inspiring, so it’s definitely been a big influence. I love that city, that’s why I live there!
To hear more from this talented artist on the rise, follow @JenniferDavies and download your free copy of the Lapse Of Time EP here
Matt Tarr
@MattTarrJourno
Matt Tarr
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