da873623c98928185f5fee6ee4eb4d49

Tune-Yards: politics, pop and Pee-wee's Playhouse | Musique Non Stop

da873623c98928185f5fee6ee4eb4d49

Friday, May 2, 2014

Tune-Yards: politics, pop and Pee-wee's Playhouse

How kids' art, Haitian economic issues, and a big book on writing a pop hit inspired Merrill Garbus's third album, Nikki Nack



Click here to listen to a stream of Nikki Nack

Click here for more Tune-Yard pics

It's hard to imagine Merrill Garbus getting bored with herself. As Tune-Yards, she piles ideas into her songs like they're colourful ribbons stuffed into a car, streaming out of the windows as it careers along the causeway. She smears warpaint across her face when she performs, looping her voice, ukulele and drums as she sings or yells about issues such as racial profiling and gender stereotyping. Her vision for our photoshoot, meanwhile, is "Pee-wee's Playhouse". She doesn't strike you as an artist who suffers from creative block.


However, that's exactly what happened when Garbus returned home from touring her breakthrough record, 2011's Whokill. "I was getting bored with myself," she says, scrubbing off the last of the fuchsia lipstick she wore for the camera. "Sure, a lot of people are telling you you're great, but I wasn't feeling great physically, and I was tiring of the set-up that I had. So I tucked away the things that I relied on to write with before. I was ready to do something new."


Continue reading...

by Kate Hutchinson via Electronic music | The Guardian

No comments:

Post a Comment

jQuery(document).ready() {