Thursday 25 September 2014

PINS - Interview


PINS release a three-track cassette of covers of 1960's girl-band garage classics on Saturday as part of Cassette Store Day.   We spoke to Faith and Lois from the band about friendship, recording their second album, running their own label and their upcoming trip to the US.

For the uninitiated, please can you introduce the band and how you got together.

Faith - I put the band together, not having a band literally made me feel depressed, I always knew it was something I had to do, anyway it took about a year to get the initial lineup together.

I befriended Anna in a bar and then we heard about this girl called Lois so we asked her to come and jam with us then I contacted Lara as I thought she might know a drummer because she did some work with Ladyfest but it turned out that she was herself a drummer so I snapped her up.

To cut a long story short Lara left to be a writer and Sophie stepped in. The current line up is me singing and playing the guitar, Lois on guitar, Anna on bass and Sophie on drums.

You're seen around town together a lot as a band.  Do you think that friendship is important to the success of a band?

Lois - Being in a band is one of the most fun things in the world, especially if you're doing it with the right people.  I don't know how I'd be in a band with people I wasn't friends with.  It's definitely important, and working so closely with people in a situation where you're doing something different everyday, your friendships really have to be able to go through a lot - it's really rewarding.

Faith - We see each other and talk to each other that I kind of take their presence for granted,  I just expect them to be in the same place as me all the time.

It's almost a year to the day since you released Girls Like Us.  What have you been up to in the interim?

Lois -  We don't stop. Writing, practicing, playing shows, recording. We've got a cover tape coming out for Cassette Store Day really soon, and we're off to record our next album just after that.

Faith - Being in PINS makes my head spin, there is always a million new things that we want to do, new ideas everyday. I'm looking forward to making the next record so that I can focus my brain on just one thing for a while. 

At the live shows, you've played a number of new songs.  Have you been in the studio and recorded these?

Lois - We're going to do it in a few weeks, we're going to Rancho de la Luna to record with Dave Catching. I can't wait, we've tried about half of them live it's good to let a song develop that way and then try and capture that when you record it.

And if so, when can we expect to hear them and on what format?

Lois - It'll be next year sometime but not sure exactly when at the moment, they'll be on the usual digi, CD and vinyl.  Hopefully coloured vinyl, why not.



You didn't include Luvu4lyf and Shoot You on the first album, are you believers in the old fashioned non-album single approach?

Lois - It's not that, we'd just already released them and were happy with them - and had a load of new songs that we wanted to do as a complete album.  Shoot you was the second song we ever released, and then we decided to do the Luvu4lyf EP - they sound really different, and it's been a progression through those into Girls Like Us and now moving on to this next album.

Faith - We're a bit of a 'out with the old' type of band.

For Cassette Day you've recorded three covers for a limited edition release.  What made you choose those songs?

Faith - It was something that I wanted to do for a while and this tape was the perfect opportunity to try it

Lois - They're off a series of old records called 'Girls in the Garage' which is full of amazing girl garage bands from the 60's.

Faith - Some of the bands only did like one song and that was it, I went on Youtube and a lot of the songs off the records have been uploaded, some of them have messages from the bands or friends of the bands in the comments section, they're like 'this was my band, I can't believe you have heard of this song' it's weird and cute, the 'music industry' or perception of bands must have been really different at that time.

Will there be a digital download version of them at some point?

Lois - Yes.

You're also releasing other items through your Haus Of Pins label.  What inspired you to set that up and how do you choose artists to work with?

Lois - We set it up to release our first singles, Eleventh Hour and Shoot You. We were just figuring everything out and wanted to release it ourselves. After we started working with Bella Union, we still wanted to continue the label and we started to release bands that we like. That's how we choose them really.

You're off to America in a couple of weeks.   Are you excited to play to new audiences who won't have seen you before?

Lois - Of course.  I can't wait to go, I wanna see as much of it as possible and check out as many bands as possible too.

Faith - I can't wait to drive through the desert listening to 'A Horse With No Name'

What are PINS plans for the rest of 2014 and into 2015?

Lois - Record. play. party.

Come Back is released on Saturday as part of Cassette Store Day and is limited to 100 cassettes.

PINS official website can be found here.  They are on Facebook and Twitter.
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