Don’t let the name fool you — Slow Club will hit you quickly.
The U.K. duo, made up of Rebecca Taylor and Charles Watson, just released Paradise, its sophomore album. With traces of dance, doo-wop, rock, soul, and even some Swell Season-type duets, Paradise is just what it advertises.
Slow Club is currently wrapping up its most extensive U.S. tour to date, and it’ll play the Casbah on March 12. In anticipation of the show, Ms. Taylor sent us a list of her top five influences. It’s an earnest and hilarious list, and a super-fun read. Do yourself a couple of favors and check out Rebecca’s Poetic Memory (below), and then go see Slow Club tonight. Signals and San Diego’s Dark Thirty will open.
Poetic Memory: Rebecca Taylor
1. Destiny’s Child: The album The Writings On The Wall was a big one for me in the summer of an early 2000. I was always into singing and showing off, but I wasn’t quite sure about if it would ever become my “thing” until I heard this album and got utterly obsessed with harmony and beats. Everything I have done since then, whether I knew it or not, was influenced in some way by that album; layering harmonies, there is NOTHING gets my dick hard more than that. Thank you Beyonce!
2. A woman who I think was called Paula: When I was a little girl, my dad used to play me a VHS of a Peter Gabriel tour. I was utterly obsessed with it, especially the theatrics and and even moreso with the female singer he had with him. This might have been the first time I saw a woman who wasn’t Karen Carpenter be in a “band.” I thought she was the coolest thing I had ever seen — not only because she was up there, singing powerfully, but because of the way she looked! Long black tight goth maxi dress with black Doc Martens, her long black hair tied in a low pony tail behind her pale neck. She was the dream; I curse that I then developed a bar maid’s figure and no matter how hard I try to be goth and demure, I just don’t have the bod for it. Paula, if you’re out there, I’m in a band now trying to be you!!!
3. The Mae Shi: My all time favourite band, the most amazing bunch of humans (and humans I met therein) taught me not to give a shit about anything, to love playing music and believe in anything that comes out of my brain. Oh and also to party, party, party until I am dead or better.
4. My mattress: I am the laziest person I know. Everything I do, I do with a view to it being completed so I can just go back to my bed. My bed is unlike any bed; it is the most beautiful white cloud of heaven. Being in a band, touring as much as we do, I am separated from my sweet love all too often. But I do have to remember that being in this band gives me more time to be with it when we are back. No 6am alarm gets me up and out every day (it does sometimes, however, so I’m not too lucky), and when I am home I get to be with it, write on it, from it, about it. I am influenced by the desire to be successful enough to spend as much time as possible with it (as I’m writing this I realise I could just give everything up and live off the state and spend a lot more time with it, but you get what I mean).
5. Charles: Light and bane of my life: I don’t know how he thinks about it, but most things I write (apart from stuff for my side project Self Esteem, which I know he won’t like) are written with a view to hoping he will like it, want to work on it, play on it, etc. We have become each other’s taste makers, and while sometimes it can be frustrating (when we don’t get our own way), it is always ultimately very rewarding. When we reach a conclusion on something, it is important and real, and “going to happen” every night, every record, for the rest of our professional lives. So I am influenced by that massively right now. I want to please him and get him excited about the music as much as I want anything. Which is annoying when I’m trying to pitch a calypso booty-shaker, but hey, I’m working on it.