CHEW LIPS

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There is nothing quite usual about Chew Lips. Not their way of making music, or their live shows, or indeed, their inception. After doing the Indie Band Shuffle in previous bands, in the spring of this year vocalist Tigs and multi-instrumentalists James Watkins and Will Sanderson eventually decided to start making music together, with only one edict: not to sound like Just Another Guitar Band.

With only that in mind, the trio subsequently decamped to a friend’s studio to test the waters of the Chew Lips sound. “We had no idea what we wanted to sound like, only what we didn’t want to sound like”, says Tigs. “And I think that helped us. We didn’t know what we wanted to do, so we just did everything”. The result was the organic and purely accidental evolution of their current, electronically enhanced sound. Experimenting and improvising, they wrote 10 songs that first day.

Before long, the newly hatched Chew Lips had booked themselves their first gig: they took over a friend’s heaving house party in New Cross, with Tigs standing on a washing machine improvising the forgotten lyrics while punters hung from the rafters and sweat dripping off the ceilings. But even through the chaos, a blueprint for the band was formed, with Will and James facing each other, swapping between keyboards, guitars and bass, while Tigs had the run of the stage. Since then, they have racked up coverage in everything from Dazed and Confused to Jalouse, been the subject of A & R brawls and even had a champion in the legendary form of Steve Lamacq, who unequivocally declared them his favourite band of 2008 (and the best unsigned band in the country) after hearing their demos, landing them a coveted slot at the BBC Electric Proms in the process.

A lot of this, of course, has to do with Tigs. As front woman and therefore, default focal point of the band, she has a considerable burden to shoulder. And she does not disappoint: live, she is a force of nature, prowling the stage, crawling on the floor, drawing the audience in with every word, and challenging them not to enjoy themselves. “If I’m having fun, the audience will have fun”, she reasons. “I’m not going to stand there pretending I’m too cool to look at the audience, I don’t know what the f*ck that’s about”.

Even more unusually for a female front woman in this day and age of laconic, ironic detachment – Tigs sings. Her voice soars, swoops, and haunts, it dips precipitously and smoulders beautifully. Think before you mention Karen O – to whom she bears a very fleeting resemblance in stage presence – as other journalists have been prone to do. “Yes, she’s amazing”, she says, “but what it comes down to ultimately is that if you’re a female singer, you’re either going to be compared to Blondie, Chrissie Hynde, or Karen O…. – the pool of possible comparisons is considerably smaller than for front men”. Instead, she says it was Stevie Nicks, Pat Benatar, and Jonathan Richman who inspired her, and Patti Smith who influenced her decision to be a musician. And then there’s Karen Carpenter, her favourite front woman. A cursory listen to their songs bears this out. Whether she’s crying for salvation like a young Aretha Franklin in the gospel-tinged slow-burner “Gold Key”, or crooning,“(I) don’t want nothing but the carelessness I had” in “Salt Air”, it’s clear she’s that rare breed indeed – a modern singer unafraid to explore the full range of her voice.

Of course, none of this would be of any consequence without fantastic songs to back it up, and this is something Chew Lips have in spades. Every song sounds like it could be a planet-bestriding, galaxy swallowing pop smash, with Will and James’ gorgeously whirling and mutating Casiotone/guitar/bass/drum machine attack providing the perfect backdrop. So “Twin Galaxies” hums and throbs along on waves of barely contained frustration and burbling, almost LCD-esque blips and bleeps, while the harder edged “CLVR1” comes packed with enough simmering attitude to knock you out with the flick of a wrist. And on the imminent first single “Solo” – due for release in March on revered Parisian label Kitsune – Chew Lips alternately capture the yearning, impatience, beauty, confusion and impermanence of youth, with Tigs summing up the hopes and dreams of a whole generation with the fist-pumping battle cry of “we don’t want to wait, there’s no time, no time”. This is pop music alright, but pop with a gloriously vivid, almost cinematic sweep; as well as a human heart, filled with a very real sense of longing and desire, in amidst the shiny, clattering electronica.

But then again, this has always been a band with their sights firmly set on infiltrating the public consciousness at large.
“Our music should resonate with the listener. We want it to sneak in and become the soundtrack to your life”.