Issue 55 / May 2015

Bido Lito! May 2015 7
everything means. Everyone’s different, and their reality is theirs.”
This three-way perspective is something that becomes apparent
after listening to the album a few times; you begin to hear that
there’s not just one voice speaking to us but three individual
ones. This could be construed as offering a fractured message,
but it in fact makes for a far more compelling one, dispersing the
message through the prism of three fascinating artistic minds.
The record sounds more complicated in arrangement than
Into The Diamond
Sun; the tracks on
Not Real are much
better structured in
their simplicity, most
notably the title track
Not Real and latest
an exotica train at one point, which definitely informed some
of the sounds that we’ve used. I suppose that’s based on ‘not
real’ as well. Exotica music was born in the 50s, in that postwar
period when people needed their spirits lifted. They were
thinking of these magic lands and inventing worlds and tropical
paradises. I guess we were listening to that kind of music and it
was informing Not Real.” This doesn’t sound a million miles away
from the underlying themes on Into The Diamond Sun, and Emily
explains that it was something they refined when crafting the
new songs. “You realise that maybe
that was just a bit too conceptual, and
not that accessible in some ways. You
think ‘hang on, we’re going down this
route here’, and see that you need to
get back on to actually writing songs,
single Greed. This and doing that well.”
pared-back approach Given the success of their first
gives the album album – which saw them credited
expanses of spacey
elements, in which
with instigating a “medieval pagan
pop revival” and pegged as folky
the Sheepiness hippies – I wonder if they felt pressure
can work. Lucy from anywhere to produce something
believes that this
structure
SHEEP
makes
the whole thing a
much calmer affair.
“I think it’s definitely
more direct. That’s a
conscious thing that
we wanted to do,
just to let each of
our voices actually
speak, and to be
more direct with
what we were trying
to communicate as
well.”
Where Into The
Diamond Sun was
characterised
by
an overt fantastical
approach,
the
references to the
mystical on this
record are more
oblique. On Not
Real, the band’s
inherent – and
frankly
endearing
– weirdness comes
through in the
secondary or tertiary
levels of the songs
this time, rather than
parading up front
slightly different on this second
record, or to move the whole Stealing
Sheep thing on.
“I certainly felt some pressure
from myself to be… generally better!”
admits Lucy. “I wanted to improve
my drumming technique in some
way, and my songwriting skills. I felt
challenged by the industry as well – I
wasn’t sure what it wanted from me.
And I wasn’t sure how to apply myself
to it. But now I realise that none of
that matters! [laughs] You can only
give what you’ve got. Now I feel like
we’ve done a really good record and
it’s what we wanted to do.” Again
Becky picks up the thread and offers
her own view on outside pressures to
create. “This is our artistic intention,
but it’s also a career. That industry
reflection does hit you when you’re
writing, thinking if what you’re doing
will be accepted by people. I listen to
music and I listen out for authenticity
– if that’s what I’m looking for from
music then we should stick to our
guns and be like that too.”
Stealing Sheep could never be
accused of selling out or taking the
easy road, and the fact that they’re
continuing with their outlandish
Mythopoeia nights shows that they’re
not leaving their past behind entirely.
in cloaked whimsy. In 2014 they took the Mythopoeia
They play with the weirdness in more intelligent ways, within extravaganza to End Of The Road
the inorganic sounds and metronomic patterns of percussion. In festival, and this year the band are doing it at Festival No. 6. But
bendy synth parts and guitar parts on Apparition and Sunk you its, and Stealing Sheep’s, unofficial home is The Kazimier, and
can hear them toying with both their new-found and characteristic it seems fitting that they’ll be giving it one final send-off in the
audio signatures.
club’s penultimate show in December. Becky: “It’s such a massive
This undercurrent of exotic oddness is something that Becky part of our history and our inspiration that it’s quite relevant that
believes is a cornerstone of the new album’s theme. “We got on we do something like that.”
Filmmaker Maya Deren said that the function of art is to create
an experience – that is, constructing a form of reality for people to
slip inside. Stealing Sheep are uncannily adept at doing this with
the musical tableaux they create. What Not Real shows is that
they can do so in different musical guises, while still allowing
their work to ask real questions about our perceptions of life. That
they do so with such style is just the cherry on top of a very large
and freaky cake.
Not Real is out now on Heavenly Records. Stealing Sheep play
Liverpool Sound City on 23rd May.
stealingsheep.co.uk
bidolito.co.uk