Photo by Cameron Wittig
Up until recently the members of POLIÇA were perhaps better-known as members of other bands, but with the group’s new album Shulamith they have carved out their own territory with haunting, dreamy music which crowds are also prone to dance to. NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION met with lead vocalist Channy Leaneagh and bass/vocalist Chris Bierden on a frigid, snowy Berlin evening before their ‘Heimathafen’ show to talk about who and what POLIÇA are.
Pretty cold out there – but I guess you guys are used to it being from Minneapolis?
Chris: Yea, still doesn’t really make it any easier.
Channy: During the Polar vortex last week in the midwest it was colder than it is on Mars.
Ouch. But I guess we are good-to-go for colonizing Mars, then? So, speaking of where you come from – and not just physically but – POLIÇA have this ethereal, fascinating sound that seems almost out of touch – in a very good way – with what people are used to hearing. Where do you guys come from? What made that what it has become?
Channy: I think where POLIÇA comes from is this Au Claire music scene in some way – a small town in Wisconsin an hour and 45 minutes from Minneapolis. That is where Ryan Olson and Drew come from. As a small town – and maybe Minneapolis included – in a sense we tend to be out of the view or influence of popular music. They’re obiously listening to it but their drive is maybe a little bit different – so there is this friend group who have been making kind of ‘weird’ music for some time – and I also think it has to do with the fact that the majority of us hadn’t really played in electronic bands before this. I’m reacting to electronic music coming from a non-electronic place. Ben is more of a hardcore drummer and Chris – I would say you came more from rock and a punk background in terms of your style? In VAMPIRE HANDS did you have electronics?
Chris: We did actually. In a strange way there are a lot of correlations between the bands I was in before this. There were two drummers one of whom just played a stand-up tom and he also sang through a chaos pad vocal pedal – so all of the weirdest parts about this band to me that is just naturally what you would do – you would want to messup your voice and add bizarre textured rhythms because that is the music bubble that I was living in – the psychedelic rock end of the spectrum – so when I joined the band it just felt really natural. I wasn’t used to electronics though – like, synthesizer sounds, Ableton and the programmed beats – that was all new to me. If people are able to develop their own musical personality without fear of repercussions from those around you – because we all encourage each other – then it is really nice.
Channy: And there’s not this: “This is what I am trying to make,” so “what would you put on here? What kind of bass lines or what kind of drums?” to instill individuality within the group that brings a less-focused sound.
What sorts of challenges do you face here and now given the fact that you have all this technology at your hands and given your set of circumstances? That is, keeping the balance with the electronic elements and also coming from a smaller scene but also thinking about perhaps what you should be making vs. just working organically?
Channy: A lot of my interactions with electronics are in the writing process. As far as how we can play off each other, but then when we get on stage if all of the sudden I have been playing this song for a year and I think “What I want you to do right here is to really swell – to get louder” or get more colurful or something then it it can’t – it is written and it exists unchangeable live. I mean, you could work it out, like Marijuana Deathsquads does live conducting – you could say to a drummer: “Really bring in the high hats right here and raise this song up” but there’s maybe not really room for a dynamic shift in the song and we have to rely on the rest of us to do that. So instead we would have a lead instument or the piano or the synth that would help the dynamics, but the dynamics are written already.
So does much improvisation happen in your live shows? Or do you guys pretty much entirely know what you are going to be doing?
Channy: Very little.
Chris: We try to tack a little bit on because we can set a loop at the beginning of a song and kind of stretch it out – you know, try something – but it will never last for probably more than 30 seconds.
The double drummer aspect is interesting. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a band with double drummers – at the beginning did you get flak for that? Or, considering that you are trying to do something complex in terms of beats then having two drummers helps to an extreme – maybe even gives you more ‘cred’ as a live band because – rather than a machine – you’ve got two humans up there?
Channy: I know there are bands – Chris brought up his – but it isn’t super common. BON IVER actually had two drummers on their last tour. We don’t get it so much anymore but sometimes when you show up to a venue and they’re like: “TWO drums?! Whaaa?” We don’t really catch that much flak for it, though.
Chris: When I talk to people after shows they love to mention the drums. Live especially it is pretty spectacular.
Channy: They play off of each other well and they’re not playing the same parts, so it is entertaining to watch.
A lot of bands have their album on iTunes as a prominent link across their websites and social media – a very public face of what people encounter when they might look you up – and your album’s page has THE KNIFE listed as your influence – Is that accurate or are there other bands you might mention? Any of those listed as contemporaries?
Channy: That is a band that I don’t even listen to because we are so heavily influenced by them. I don’t want to be any more influenced by them. The vocal processor that I use came into our scene because we heard Karin Andersson, the singer from THE KNIFE, talking about what she uses. Everybody has tickets to go see THE KNIFE in Chicago or New York in May. So, yeah, big influence. Sharon van Etten is loosely a friend of ours and I don’t think our music sounds the same but she is a string female songwriter and performer. EXIT MUSIC did a remix for us. Some of these others I don’t quite know.
That happens more and more these days – you think “Aren’t I supposed to know who these people are?” But the is near-infinite amount of stuff out there…
Chris: Exactly I gave up on the “supposed to know” – it is easier that way.
Channy: It is funny that they say “Auto tune modification makes it sound like I am singing behind a whirring fan” because the first record was recorded with fans blowing in because it was Summer.
Chris: There is an actual fan noise at the beginning of one of the tracks you can hear.
It sounded like maybe there was more voice modification on the first album?
Channy: It was definitely like my first time using make up.
Wait, like make up for your voice?
Channy: Hah – no, I mean like when when you say a girl starts using make up for the first time then it is way too much, so there is more on the first album. I hope that I will always be experimenting and that was experimenting and I listen to it and I still like it. You can still discern human qualities and voices but the first album wasn’t recorded in a studio and the second one was so that will always change the vocal quality, too. The first one is kind of mono, the second is stereo vocals.
Photo by Cameron Wittig
You guys have a sort of induced dream-like quality to your songs that suck your audience in. What sort of tinkering goes into that – of do you just find yourself inclined to write these songs that have such a weight to them? Do you try to impose a mood onto your work?
Channy: I think it is the natural inclination. Songs like I Need $ and Chain my Name that seem very jolly to me are light in comparison to most of our other songs. I think I am always writing and making music to feel something and I want other people to feel it, too. Whether it is to feel empowered or uplifted by a song. You want other people to feel things but it all starts with wanting to feel something myself and I think that mood is similar to a kind of release or a heaviness and so it so there is also a hopeful feeling to most songs but also the waste from what I am releasing – like the afterbirth of the songwriting process – it still has some of the blood and the tears in it a bit. People dance to them, so there’s a contradiction.
I haven’t seen you live so I am curious how the audience will react. I’ve hear several times people say that German audiences are particularly still but they really take it all in. You might experience some of that.
Channy: We have played Germany many times and I don’t mind that. I appreciate it when people are listening and paying attention and you see them really stare at Chris’ hands and that people are really thinking about the music and they’re not just like “YEAAAH! I’m having a great time!”
On your blog you write: “I’m not going to take myself too seriously, I’m just gonna sing my heart out” and that sort of relates to the last question: what does hope and passion mean to you?
Chris: I’d really say that passion is obsession to me, really. To me those words are kind of interchangeable. The thing that I am passionate about – the reason I do music – is because I can’t stop. Especially once I start an album. Hope is an every day thing. You have to build it up inside yourself.
Channy: Passion. Obsession. The thing that brings me life. The thing that wakes me up. The things that – when I am doing them – I am more awake and more alive than when I started them – the things that keep me going. Hope is the light at the end of the tunnel. The things to look forward to.
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