Brenda – Band Interview

2023 is Brenda’s year for the taking. With a debut album coming later this year and before that singles in the shape of Cease and Desist and Microscopic Babe with its LA recorded video. I had a chance to shoot the breeze with Flore, Apsi and Litty, and with an attitude as refreshing as their music, there is nothing in the way that can stop this unique trio.

It was a dreich Saturday afternoon when I met the band, but the atmosphere in The Bell Jar was warm and inviting as was the welcome from the three members of Brenda, and the now famous Pat (Flore’s dog, who is also the subject of a song by her other band Water Machine). A short discussion about what should fuel the chat resulted in the decision of tea, coffee and soft drinks over alcohol or edibles…not that the choice of refreshment impacted in any way how open Brenda were… some editing was definitely required.

For the unacquainted Brenda is Litty on guitar and “weird noises on the synth”, Flore (“I don’t play anything properly”) on double synth “more my natural habitat than playing bass” and Apsi on drums.

The Ginger Quiff: How did Brenda first come about?

Litty: Those two were playing an a band called Wet Look with the drummer guy Michael from 1990s. Me and Flore actually met a decade before that in London when we were both in competition for the same guy, and I won…

Flore: Litty took him home but said he was a knob in the end, so I dodged a bullet

Litty: He wasn’t a knob, he was perfectly nice…

(I’ll skip forward through the conversation about body parts and functionality and why the relationship ended…)

Litty: So to make things up, I was like Flore, do you want to be in a band, and she was like sure, and she brough Apsi along. Wet Look weren’t doing any media promotion…

Apsi: We were a bit stagnant..

Flore: In Wet Look we were very much playing in Michael’s band, I think, but Brenda is all us…

Apsi: Our own creative outlet.

Flore: This is it, its a pile of shite…

(GQ: If you’ve ever seen Brenda live, you’ll know that self-deprecating humour runs through their whole set)

GQ: picking up on that creative outlet, the first time I saw you I think I wrote something along the lines of “like nothing I’d ever seen before”. What are your musical influences/reference points?

Litty: We kind of call ourselves butch synth pop, clumsy synth pop, heavy handed synth pop – rough around the edges.

Flore: We’re three very angry women generally

Apsi: We’ve all got issues

Flore: None of us, sorry to say this, can really play our instruments all that well, so that creates the unique sound of Brenda, but there’s a lot of enthusiasm and love that goes into it

Litty: I think we’re a bit bored of hearing people who can play their instruments so well, there’s something quite artistic about getting an instrument and trying to work around the fact you cant play it, it comes out pretty unique

Flore: over the years we learnt to play our instruments, so it kinda like evolved a bit

Apsi: We’ve honed, but we don’t want to hone too much

Litty: There’s something special about women getting together to play music. I know I was not encouraged to do that when I was younger, I wanted to be in a band and made myself a cardboard guitar

Flore: Thats really sad…

Litty: It was Primary 7, we called ourselves The Bugs cos I was really into The Beatles, but we were really discouraged from playing because we were girls. It was really misogynistic back then. I think things are changing now…

Flore: I think we’ve all been in situations where men have discouraged us from making music in some way. Its amazing to be able to make music and have a good laugh, because we’ve been told so often it can’t be done. We’ve played gigs where genre wise, the only thing that ties us together is that we are women playing music, literally the most disjointed mix of styles. It was like, is this really how it works? There’s a woman with a ukulele, stick her on with some pop punk or whatever. It seems to be getting better now.

GQ: Where does the band name come from?

Litty: We’re just named after this person that works in a DIY shop. I think she just represents all women, all different parts of women, and versions of women, the good, the bad and the ugly. Everything.

Flore: Let me tell you something funny, I was out walking the dog the other day and I thought I saw Lewis Capaldi from behind and it turned out to be Brenda from the hardware shop! Its amazing she looks exactly from the back like Lewis Capaldi. Anyway, she’s an icon. A local icon. I think some of her views we’ve discovered since are really not that sound.

Apsi: Its almost like we’re doing PR for her, we can change her image

Litty: Maybe I was just thinking what is grimy and I thought… Brenda, even her views are grimy.

Flore: She says what she thinks and we appreciate that, but there’s just some things you shouldn’t even think…

GQ: Where is your favourite venue to play?

Litty: I actually like The Rum Shack

Apsi: I like a nice big stage, we need room to manoeuvre!

Litty: I enjoyed doing Mono. I like to play anywhere with Rachel Aggs, I think they bring a good vibe

Apsi: Yeah, they fit in with our general attitude

Flore: Yeah, I like playing Mono, for some reason we end up playing the Old Hairdressers a lot, which is a nice venue, but the better gigs we’ve played are like Stereo, if its busy…

Litty: I really liked playing with Pictish Trail at Humbug…that was really good

Flore: We’re playing some interesting gigs actually, we’re playing Platform in Easterhouse, I’m really looking forward to that (conversation turned to talking about kids dancing shows at that venue with Apsi suggesting they need a “Bez” and could enlist the help of a random child at the venue..)

Litty: I still play the first guitar I got when I was 15. Flore has 2 synths she doesnt know how to use yet….

Flore: I’ve got 2 new ones cos I had to give the old ones back to Michael from Wet Look. Imagine wanting his own synths back!

Litty (to Apsi): And you don’t have drum set…

Flore: We generally practice in my flat, and I do have a drum kit in my flat. I’m trying to get rid of it. You think its a good idea to get a drum kit, then you just trip over it. Drum kits are lethal.

Brenda have recently returned from LA where they were recording a video…

GQ: How did LA come about?

Apsi: It was Flore’s doing!

Flore: I feel like I’m talking to much, but it was me for sure. I was in a music video a few years ago for Tracyanne and Danny, this guy flew over from LA with a small crew to do this video. He’s a horror film person. We were stuck in a crazy castle thing in Dumbarton for three days making this music video and he’s always said to come a do a video. I’ve been to visit him once before, but this time he was like, if you do walls for me (Flore’s “day job”) then I’ll do you a music video.

Litty: When we went (to LA to record the video), we got the actual mask from Troll 2 (Apsi – its one of the worst films ever made) … and we’re one of the worst bands ever made so…

Flore: Yeah, it really goes hand in hand doesn’t it… but Ed (the guy I know) he’s a film fanatic, he works in film as a director, he’s a film guy, really into that sort of thing and he’s like “I’ve got the actual Troll 2 mask”

Litty: we had whole different idea for the video, and then it sort of became about the troll. We had a plastic surgery, sort of horror/slasher type vibe and wanted to get our DIY tools in there being named after someone who works in a DIY store. He brought out this mask and it kinda became about the troll. But we still cut Flore up. It became more about patients operating on surgeons, removing guitars from abdomens. It was like a parallel universe…

GQ: And the bizarreness wasn’t just limited to the actual video shoot itself…

Apsi: we were also shooting guns…

Litty: He had a machine gun! And weirdly, he only showed me, we actually brought that into the video, semi automatics, not the machine gun…

Flore: the funny thing is that he has this outbuilding, its gonna be his office, where we were filming. One day he was like, I need to tell you, I’ve rented it out for 2 days, someone else is going to shoot a porno, so we were surrounded by porn stars, and it was really awkward.

Aspi: it was cosplay too, so it was very out there…we talked about the idea of a crossover universe and getting some of them in our video, but ….

Flore: it was funny, because one day we had to escape while they were shooting the porno, so he was like, I know where to take you guys, I’ll take you to the shooting range. So we were shooting to escape the porn, it was a very LA experience.

Litty: It was all shot on Super 8 over a few days so we did a road trip while we were there… Palm Springs, Joshua Tree, we saw Emily Blunt

Apsi: And Stanley Tucci

Flore: His (Ed’s) house is just really brilliant…

Apsi: With Japanese toilets..

Litty: Overfriendly Japanese toilets! Anytime you walk past they’re like “shit in me”. The neediest toilets in the world

Flore: It was like a form of mindfulness though. Its not just getting it done, its a whole, like, experience.

Litty: If I ever felt overwhelmed or needed to ground myself, I’d just go to the toilet

Flore: It was a very Brenda experience

Apsi: We stayed in motels on our road trip, the whole American experience

Flore: Last time I was there we went to see Ariel Pink, before he was cancelled, before he stormed the Capitol. (I’ll gloss over the description of him during his performance for fear of legal action….)

GQ: When will the video be coming out?

Litty: Cease & Desist will be out first (out now on Spotify) we did a video for that up at the wind farm. The following month Microscopic Babe will be out…

GQ: Seeing as you were in LA: A Brenda biopic. Who would play you, and what genre would it be?

Apsi: A psychological thriller! Something like Requiem for a Dream…

Apsi: I’ve got a limited pool to choose from…

Litty: Scary Spice. She’s got a bit of acting experience, she acted in Spiceworld…

Apsi: She was amazing, yeah… …. Adam Driver would play me

Flore: Elijah Wood for me. He’s a lot shorter than me though. Yeah, Elijah Wood, with the hairy feet and all. It would definitely be a thriller, it’d take you to all sorts of places you wouldn’t expect. The end is just completely open ended, and you would have no idea who you are anymore.

GQ: What is a typical night out like for Brenda? Is there such a thing as a typical night out?

Apsi: They’re variable

Flore: I’m fuelled by edibles

Litty: I’m trying to wean myself off IPAs and become a normal person

Flore: I think a typical night out or Brenda is a night in.

Litty: With Lord of the Rings and edibles, and really bad reality TV shows.

Apsi: And Haggis

Flore: Yeah we had a really good haggis night recently, Apsi made some cracking whisky sauce

Apsi: And you made some delicious mash and neeps

Flore: The whisky sauce was amazing, we actually set fire to it

Litty: And I sat and spoke to our friend Chris who is a wrestler, but I’d had an edible and was just freaking out when he was talking about wrestling and having an alter ego, so I was going to bring Brenda into the wrestling ring

Flore: The thing is, dare I say, that we’re all a bit older and lockdown happened so we like staying in with the dog and having people round instead

Apsi: I’ve got an electric blanket (it appears in the video for Cease and Desist)

Litty: And I have a crush on someone in prison…we don’t have a social life. Except when we’re out gigging

Flore: Yeah, when we’re gigging its like, “this is an event”

GQ: I’ve just pre-ordered your album on Last Night From Glasgow, what can I expect from the album?

In unison: Cease & Desist, High Horse, Microscopic Babe, Pigs….

Flore: There’s just a lot of good angry songs

Litty: We’ve got two sides, one is very DIY punky, the second side is more synth pop, lots of harmonies and stuff. Beach Boys but Brendafied.

Flore: It’s still badass. You can sing in harmony and still have opinions

Apsi: We’re full of complexities!

Flore: It was recorded at Green Door studios, The label (LNFG) got us in to Green Door for a week, so we were really lucky and we got creative…

Litty: It was super fun

Apsi: We were very inspired

GQ: When is the official release?

Flore: We’ve pushed it back to July. We can’t wait.

GQ: Are you planning anything special for the album release?

Flore: We haven’t planned anything yet. Just say something like its a big secret, we cant tell you yet but its going to be big with loads of pigs, Emily Blunt might make an appearance but we’re uninviting Ariel Pink

Flore: We should tell you the story, the pig fiasco, we’ve got these massive pig balloons off Etsy. We keep having grand ideas for the shows like rooms full of helium filled balloons

Apsi: Yeah, we want to make it a multi sensory experience, not just your ears to be delighted

Flore: It never seems to happen though. Perhaps at the album launch we’ll manage to put helium in the balloons and they’ll actually fucking float

Apsi: Hopefully the room will be filled and you’ll be like, is it my friends? Is it a pig? Is it Emily Blunt? It’s going to be so confusing but it’ll add to the experience.

Litty: I’m not even going to tell you where it is, I’m not even going to tell you who is supporting us its such a big secret….

(GQ Note: Since we spoke, the band’s album launch gig has been announced in The Glad Cafe on 28th July with Casual Worker supporting (and loads of pig balloons I assume…)

GQ: You’ve got a gig comning up with Pink Pound on the 3rd of March…

Litty:: Yeah, that’s the single launch for Cease & Desist and we’ve got the Platform one too. That’s a whole day thing and its lots of art and stuff too. And of course we’ll be planning our massive LP launch…

The conversation then took a strange turn talking about Sex & the City, kissing on TV, ovulating, rebound relationships…..so it felt like a good place to halt the tape. If you need to know more, speak to Litty, Flore & Apsi…

Exciting times ahead for Brenda, just don’t expect any kissing in any of their video’s if Litty has any say in it…

Brenda – Facebook

Pre-Order the album and get tickets for the album launch party – HERE