All photographs of The Courettes courtesy of Christopher Hogge Photography Chris Hogge (@chrishoggephotography) • Instagram photos and videos
The new album by The Courettes came out on my birthday, what a gift to receive. Fortunately I’d had access to the album in advance so by the time I received the vinyl, I was well versed in the songs contained within the grooves. After all these years, and there have been more than a few now, there is still nothing like playing a record for the first time, and a band like The Courettes really should be listened to on vinyl…
I had been looking forward in anticipation to a huge list of gigs in September, but unfortunately I never made the majority of them, and the one’s I did make it to, while the gigs were great, I wasn’t as locked in as I normally would be, my head and thoughts were often elsewhere and try as I might, I couldn’t lose myself in the music the way I usually do. Thankfully, tonight (despite a wobble where I almost didn’t go) things were a bit different…
A special shout out to The Lotts, who were up against it to get set up for their stage time, any setbacks were soon forgotten though when the quartet launched into their rambunctious set of loud and raffish but melodiously boisterous garage punk. The ceaseless dual guitar assault was delivered in callumpthiam style with the thunderous rhythm section creating a solid base on which to create their rollicking rock n roll maelstrom. Definitely one’s to watch for the future. Explore the band’s music via their Bandcamp page or the usual streaming services, their new single, a cover of Stop and Think It Over is fresh off the presses.
And to the main event. The Courettes new album, The Soul of The Courettes is, in my opinion, their best yet, definitely the album the duo were destined to make. The record takes their familiar fuzzed up guitar garage punk sound as the baseline, and builds on the blueprint of previous album Back in Mono and in doing so they have created a genuinely soulful album with a modern retro feel and a faithful textured wall of sound. One thing I was curious about though was, with the layered instruments of the album, how would the duo pull it off live.
The answer was soon to be revealed, and of course the answer was, the new songs slipped into the weel-kent set with ease and aplomb. The addition of the use of some modern technology and a sound man/stage manager (Frederik) to their armoury allowed Martin and Flavia to add the additional instruments to the mix without having to add new members to the band and ultimately keeping the dynamic of the duo as we all love, but making the sound fuller and more textured than ever before.
The new songs are already classics in waiting, sitting shoulder to shoulder with existing Courettes jewels in the crown like early set highlights The Boy I Love, I Want You Like a Cigarette, Night Time and of course the in demand Hop the Twig. The songs from The Soul of… have breathed a new vitality into the bands already animated live set. New songs bookended their set, the band were on a charm offensive with the gig kicking off with the album’s opener, You Woo Me, and leaving us on a high with an encore of my personal favourites of their new songs, the pounding Northern Soul beat of Keep Dancing and the raucous Shake! it was gratifying to hear the new songs being received as enthusiastically as their familiar standards. The other new songs in the set came with the double whammy of California and the drummer-love anthem extolling the virtues of Charlie Watts, Boom, Boom, Boom both coming early in the set and the vociferously energetic Better Without You sandwiched between Tough Like That and the now mandatory audience slaying performance of Boom! Dynamite.
The charismatic Danish/Brazilian duo created a frenetically charged atmosphere in the venue from the off. They thrilled with their tirelessly spirited musicianship, layering the compelling charge of their fuzz laden guitar riffs and crashing drums with their addition of all the other instruments, and adding just the right level of their well-honed rock ‘n’ roll posing and posturing to the mix. Their supersonic set was over all too soon, playing the old adage of always keep them wanting more to perfection.
After the band had a bit of a meet and greet with gig goers gathering at the merch stand manned by other new member of The Couretttes “team”, Claudia, we assisted with the load out before reconvening in the The Amsterdam in Brunswick Street for a quick chat about the tour and new album…
GQ: Thanks for taking the time for a chat, I know it’s late. How was tonight for you?
Martin: Tonight was good…
Flavia: …it was really good. We really like playing in Glasgow. Actually, we really like playing Scotland.
Martin: It was in a nice place as well. (Room 2)
Flavia: It seems like people are more relaxed here, they like to enjoy themselves.
GQ: How’s the rest of the tour been going so far, now that the album has been released?
Martin: It’s been really good. We can see more and more people are coming to the shows, and we can definitely see the new album, The Soul of the Fabulous Courettes, is really taking off. We think it’s our best record and I think it’s great that we’ve been playing the new songs live.
Flavia: We’ve been playing Shake! for a while and California for a little bit, but the album is obviously very new, we’ve played Keep Dancing a couple of times now, and we’re playing 6 new songs, so it’s challenging, like walking on thin ice, but that’s exciting too.
GQ: Anytime I look at social media, you always seem to be touring somewhere or playing a gig somewhere around the world. So how do you fit in touring, recording, and actually having some time to yourselves?
Martin: This is the only thing we do for work, as you know, so, I actually think we have quite a lot of spare time. But of course, when we’re on tour it’s very focused and very intense, then we come home to be with our son and be a family. These breaks give us a lot of energy for the for the next tour.
Flavia: Absolutely. It’s a good balance we try to have. I mean, we’ve been very busy in the approach to the new album but also all the work people don’t see because it’s not just being on tour. It is a lot of work and although we have people working for us, we’re controlling everything, it’s a lot of work that people don’t usually see.
GQ: Yeah, there is a slight difference this year on tour too, there is a team of four of you (with Frederik and Claudia) so you’ve got people to share the load with.
Flavia: Yeah, that’s definitely what the future should be like. We had too much on our shoulders all the time.
Martin: But it also took us many years to find these people here, the right people to be with…
Flavia: We’re very picky in finding a team because we need people who are very competent, but also people that we want to hang out with because, you know, also it’s almost as important as being competent is to have people we actually like to be with, because that’s what touring is about.
GQ: How long did the recording process take for the new album?
Martin: It was split up into so many sessions because we had to tour, we had to be a family, you know. It was songwriting sessions we started with, going to Copenhagen. It was quite a long process, on top of playing almost 150 shows a year. And also, all the work that went into the backing tracks. It was a gigantic process.
Flavia: I think that with our albums, the next one always just starts being created when the previous one is out. Back to Mono took us a couple of years. I think this took us a couple of years too…
GQ: So, are you’re continuously writing songs when you’re on the road as well?
Flavia: Sometimes we record some ideas. Today it’s very easy. Everybody has a phone, so, ideas can be recorded. But sitting down and turning them into a real song, we don’t do that on the road. We just don’t have the time or the energy, the mental energy. We start collecting ideas and bits and pieces of text. We listen to music a lot in the van, and we get ideas and concepts.
It’s a long process but it’s a nice process.
GQ: Has the process for recording this album been any different from your previous albums?
Martin: It’s been more or less the same process. After Back in Mono, we were really concerned about being able to match the level because that was like our little masterpiece of ideas, songwriting, and sounds.
But then we started, going to Copenhagen, and concentrating on doing songwriting days with the producer Soren Christensen…
Flavia: The more albums you have, there’s more expectations about them. The first one, it was like let’s see what happens, we went into the studio and recorded the songs we had. Now the thing we need to think about is having a career. We don’t want to be a big hit for a couple of years. What we’re interested in is to have a career, a long career, so you have to put out albums that are different from each other. That’s what we want, we want to do better all the time. So, it’s like someone said tonight, I don’t know when you’re gonna have your peak, but you’re getting better and better.
GQ: I think I wrote when I reviewed the album that I’ve seen a progression in your sound from each album. Garage punk, that underlying sound is still there but you’ve added layers as you’ve progressed towards the Soul of The Fabulous Courettes, an album, I wrote, that you were destined to make. You seem to have a very clear focus, when I listen to your songs, I hear all the influences like Motown and Phil Spector and soul music. Is that an intentional aspect to your music, to put these influences in it or is it just these are things that you listen to, and they naturally seep into your music.
Martin: The whole idea of The Soul of … album is that we loved the wall of sound we did on Back in Mono but we didn’t just want to do Back in Mono again, we didn’t want to do just the same, we wanted this to be its own piece, so we thought about how we could use the wall of sound as the centre and build around it.
We had gone to USA and were really inspired by Motown, Stax…
Flavia: It was very natural actually…
Martin: The ideas just came to us, when we were in the USA, we thought let’s do the wall of sound as the base and branches out into soul, the whole album just made itself.
Flavia: We’d been listening to a lot of Ike & Tina Turner, for example, also produced by Phil Spector, so there’s a connection there, and going to the Motown Museum…. I was a big Byrds fan when I was 12 so there are influences we’ve always had that come together. It’s things we really dig. We had the chance to visit all those places, to make the rock’n’roll pilgrimage going to Sun Records, Chess Records, Chess studios and you know Motown Studio A was like an absolutely sublime experience where you get chills. It just has music energy dripping from the walls. So that made a big impression.
While we loved Back in Mono, we didn’t want to just do it again, it was almost like a concept album at the time. The wall of sound, it took us many years to find that sound, so we’re going to keep It, but this time we wondered, how could it be broader and how could we make it more personal to go one step further in making it ours. So, I think this album is less a concept album and it’s more us.
GQ: How did you get La La Brooks involved with California and Run Run Runaway?
Martin: We wanted a Phil Spector girl group heroine on the album, and you know, there’s not many left. It’s like La La Brooks and Darlene Love left and that’s almost about it. We wrote to Mary Weiss, for example, from The Shangri-Las, we didn’t get a reply, but then sadly she died.
We wrote to La La though her management, record label, every way we could, but didn’t get anywhere and then by chance, we played in New York, and we met Matt Verta-Ray and his wife Rocio. They had just made an album with La La in New York, where she also lives, so with had the contact and they helped us out to set up the recording in their great studio in New York, La La went in there, put some vocals on a couple of tracks, and they sent it back to us.
Flavia: It just happened all very naturally. They came to our show, we were having a chat with them after and then Martin mentioned a load of groups, and they said oh, we just produced La La’s last album and we’re gonna see her next week. It was very random, but it was great.
Martin: Unfortunately, we never met her but just having her on our album was wonderful, we would love to have been in the studio though. When you think about it…It’s like there’s Be My Baby by The Ronettes, there’s The Crystals with Da Doo Ron Ron and The Shangri-Las with Leader of the Pack, these huge iconic super hits and the lead voice on Da Doo Ron Ron is on our album! Unbelievable.
GQ: I enjoyed the mix of songs on the album as well, there are some powerful revenge/post break-up songs like Keep Dancing then both sides of the album end with really emotional songs Wall of Pain, and the last song on the album that you both sing on, For Your Love. Was that intentional to end the sides with songs like that?
Martin: We knew For Your Love was going to be our finishing song
Flavia: Since We are the Courettes, if you look, the last song is always a slow one. We had Fool, Fool, Fool then we had Cry, Cry, Cry on Back in Mono… Oh my God, that was a mistake, we should have had Love, Love, Love (laughs) but, yeah, For Your Love was the same concept.
GQ: Do you have favourite songs on the new album?
Martin: Yes. Keep Dancing, absolutely.
GQ: That’s my favourite song. I’m a fan of Northern Soul so when that drumbeat comes in…
Flavia: I remember when we wrote this song, with Soren, and he came up with the verse, I was thinking this verse is amazing, how are we gonna do a chorus that’s better than this. Is it gonna be possible? I sat down, I wrote the chorus and thought actually “this chorus is better than the verse!” It’s a great start to have a good verse, but you know, the chorus has to be better.
Martin: When we were recording this in the studio, we looked at each other, when you (to Flavia) were putting the bass on especially, obviously we always want to make good songs, but we knew this one was very special.
Flavia: I’m actually a bass player, not many people maybe nowadays know that, but I had a long career in Brazil playing bass. With The Courettes, Martin was the one who didn’t want me to play bass on the records because he said it was going to be so dominant.
But on this album, we decided I was gonna play some bass and on Keep Dancing the bass is a real killer, I’m so proud of it. It’s funny because actually it was the demo but we thought it was so good. It was like one-take, boom! that’s it.
GQ: I’ve got a load of Northern Soul compilation albums, and I think that song could seamlessly fit in with any of the classics on those albums.
Flavia: Thank you! I really like Shake! too. These are probably my two favourite tracks.
GQ: You answered the next question I had in my head when you played earlier, I’d wondered when I first heard the new album how you would translate that into the live environment because there’s all these layers of sound and there are only two of you! I noticed on this tour you’ve used a bit more technology than you’ve used in the past. Talk to me about that.
Martin: We’ve been playing as a duo for almost 10 years and we’ve made so many good songs that we can’t play as a duo, so, the main reason we’ve done this is because we wanted to be able to play more of the songs from the albums. We wanted to play these songs but without the big backing it sounds weird.
So, we decided to bring a little technology magic into it.
Flavia: We’ve made a conscious decision to evolve in the studio musically a lot over the years. On the first album we were super worried about having no bass, but we had to play it exactly how we can play it live. Then on the second album, I play all the piano, the organs, all the harmonies and we were always conscious that we would miss the piano live, you (to Martin) can sing backing vocals live but we were still concerned about it.
Back in Mono was the first album we thought well, live is live, studio is studio, let’s make the songs, then we can learn how to play in live. And actually, we managed to be able to play 8 or 9 songs live so it worked out.
When we were doing the Back in Mono tour in the end, we invited a bass player which was great too. We were always first to criticise the duos who would say they were duos but end up with 15 players but as our songs were evolving, we needed something else. I wish I had 6 arms so I could play organ and bass and guitar all at the same time, so we were ready to move with the technology. At the end of the day, it’s all stuff we play ourselves, we started with the backing tracks that took a long to rehearse and produce. We started playing with them on this tour in Hull so it’s still all very new to us.
Martin: We were so nervous.
Flavia: I could see smiles and glints in the eyes, so we knew it was working. It just gives us a bigger sound, drums and guitars are still the main thing of course.
Martin: Everything is still us; we are playing all the backing tracks.
Flavia: Exactly. That’s my backing vocals, that’s my 12 string guitars, my organs, my bass. It’s just we cannot do everything live alone.
GQ: And as you said on stage tonight, it’s hard to survive in the music industry these days with streaming, you mentioned you can sell one T-shirt and it’s the same as you get for a million streams.
Flavia: It’s horrible, its hard work…
GQ: You’ve got to keep going, and if you had 5 people in your band, that’s money divided five ways.
Flavia: And not only this, first you have to find the right people. And even when you find the right people it’s hard, for example, David has been doing a great job when we have him, but he cannot play 150 shows a year.
GQ: It changes the dynamic too.
Flavia: Yeah, it changes the dynamic and its families, other bands they play with, everything is much easier if we travel just the two of us. I think right now it works for us. I was the one who said let’s try with the backing tracks and I love it. I mean, we like the way it is, we can just play ourselves. We don’t know what the future brings but on this tour this is the way we’re doing it and really enjoying it so far.
Martin: To get the sound we’d have needed like 30 members in the band.
Flavia: In the studio it was 15 guitars, pianos, the baseline… we did it already there, so why not just do it live?
GQ: Flavia, I have to ask you the loaded throwaway question. On Back in Mono, it was Ringo. Then on The Soul Of… it’s Charlie Watts and Ringo is dumped. So, who is your favourite drummer? You’ve gotta be careful here…
Flavia: Of course, it’s Martin…
Martin: My favourite drummer is Hal Blaine. He’s my inspiration. I think Hal Baline played original, fresh and iconic drums on more than 10,000 songs. 10,000 songs!
You know, there’s no one else that can match this.
GQ: And what about you Flavia, who was it that first inspired you to pick up the bass guitar?
Flavia: (without hesitation) Paul McCartney.
GQ: The Beatles had a big influence on you?
Flavia: Yeah, I love The Beatles, but it’s strange talking about Ringo and Charlie. When we just released R.I.N.G.O., Charlie Watts died shortly after, actually, and for me it was like this big shock. I mean, we know they’re all getting old. But The Stones were always there in my life, obviously not Brian Jones, but I was born after he was already dead. Our heroes pass away, so he (Charlie Watts) really deserved to be in a song. We had Boom, Boom, Boom ready but there was no lyric.
Martin: We only had Boom, boom, boom, out of my chest…
Flavia: And then our son was listening to Little Drummer Boy on Frank Sinatra’s Christmas album, and he loved it, he wanted it played again and again.
I had the Boom, Boom, Boom, rhythm in my head – doo, doo, doo, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and I just thought “this is a song about a drummer.”
Then I wrote the rest of the lyrics in about 5 minutes.
GQ: So, you have 4 dates left on the UK tour, what’s next after that?
Flavia: We have three shows in Denmark and then we go to Spain for 12 dates.
Martin: Then one day at home, pick up our son and go on a five-day French tour with him.
Flavia: Two more shows in the Czech Republic, we’re gonna play a Blues Festival. And then a few shows in Denmark, then we’re going to have a break…
GQ: And well deserved that will be…Thank you so much for taking the time to chat, I know it’s been a long day for you, and you’ve got another 4 long days to go, I really appreciate your time.
Martin: We have the team with us now (Frederick and Claudia) we’re not as exhausted as we’ve been for 10 years…
Flavia: We are actually really fresh. It’s crazy.
They might not have been exhausted but I was, so I left Flavia, Martin, Frederik and Claudia to finish their drinks, as the lights came on in The Amsterdam to signal kicking out time, and with a warm glow in my soul and a wide smile on my face I made my way home, already looking forward to the band’s annual return to these shores in 2025.