With the band at the Sebright Arms for SON Estrella Galicia's latest gig night, we took the chance to have a quick chat with the band.
Words and Photos: Lloyd Bolton
With a precocious flair for sprawling, maximalist compositions and an electric live energy, Man/Woman/Chainsaw have rapidly become one of London's most in-demand live bands. Since forming in Sixth Form, the band have continuously evolved into a formidable six-headed beast, most recently releasing their latest single 'Adam & Steve' in May off the back of their April headline at London's Scala. As they prepared to take the stage at the relatively intimate Sebright Arms for the venue's inaugural SON Estrella Galicia takeover, we met up with bassist/vocalist Vera Leppänen, drummer Lola Cherry and guitarist Billy Doyle, to talk fashion tips, favourite condiments, and the band's rigorous new writing regime.
Ahead of the show tonight, what is your favourite thing that another band member does onstage while playing?
Lola: I play drums, Vera plays the bass, and she'll turn around at very specific moments in the set, I know exactly when she's gonna turn around. And also she does a butt shake… I can't describe it, but I like it. And I like that I know that I can predict [Vera's] movements, it's very satisfying.
Vera: You're obsessed with me!
Lola: Yeah – I only ask for bass and vocals in my monitor too.
Billy: Billy [the other guitarist called Billy in the band] runs across the stage… it's sometimes a bit annoying. I liked it the first couple of times but then I got a rogue guitar in my arm.
What's the most maverick thing any of you have done on stage?
B: I don't know if this is maverick… when we did Scala I jumped up really high in one song, I was excited, and I completely slipped over and fell on my bum. And it was filmed and there's a lot of YouTube videos of it. My girlfriend put it on a mug.
Emmie did the splits, that's kind of maverick.
V: That was maverick as fuck, that was cool.
L: I don't think I've done anything particularly interesting or original in my life.
What's your favourite venue to play and why?
V: I like a lot of venues. This is a nice venue, I like the Sebright. I think the George is my favourite in London. Yes was really cool in Manchester.
L: I love the George, it feels like home.
B: King Tut's in Glasgow is pretty lit.
What's the strangest venue you've played?
L: We played in the hallway of the Barbican…
V: It was cool but the acoustics were fucking crazy!
L: It was literally, like as you walk in, the stage is set up.
B: It was in the foyer… it was kind of background music for people having a lovely cultural day at the Barbican. Abraisive background music.
If you could erase one mode of transport, what would you get rid of?
V: Motorcycle, cos I feel like that's an accident waiting to happen. Or maybe Lime Bikes too.
L: Oh… one wheel… you know what I mean. Those one-wheel things!
B: Segway?
V: Wait that's kind of hard though, those are kind of cool.
What is the best sleeve length?
L: Controversial take, I do kind of like a 3/4.
B: [Gestures to blazer] Whatever that is, where you can see the cuff of the shirt underneath it, I like that one.
V: Probably a T-Shirt… but I like the long sleeve under the T-shirt, I pull that one a lot when it's not very warm.
What is the most threatening form of punctuation?
V: Elipses… dun dun duuun.
B: An exclamation mark?
V: It depends on the context, cos full stop in a text is kind of crazy.
L: Oh yeah, if someone sends a full stop in a text that is scary.
How has your collective songwriting evolved over time?
L: We've just been writing now…
V: I don't know how it has changed. Often it's like, one person will write a song and bring it to everyone and then we'll go from there. But just literally this week we've been writing some new stuff, and we started a lot just in the room together from kind of ground zero. We were like writing hooks together, which we've never really done before. But it was good, it was fun. Sometimes six brains is too many, but sometimes it's good to have a lot of input.
B: There was a lot of jamming… but jamming with a direction.
L: Often we'll start with, like Vera or Billy will bring a song and then we'll kind of adapt it as our own. But recently we've been doing the track first and then writing the lyrics after and writing together.
What's the most recent gamechanging influence you've come across collectively?
B: I think we're all pretty…. I don't think there's one example of something that all six of us will collectively be like "That's sick!" Some of us really rate Geese at the moment…
V: The complete opposite direction, I think we're fucking with Addison Rae's album.
Billy did see Fontaines recently and then he came to rehearsal like, "We need a sub bass now!!!"
Is there anyone you dread taking the aux in the tour van?
V: To be fair, we sit there with our headphones on, we're all listening to different shit…
B: There's a common theme where we'll start in the car for like an hour and we'll be chatty and it'll be a laugh, and then slowly everyone puts on their headphones and goes to sleep.
V: Because often we work with different TMs as well, it's nicer for them to be able to listen to whatever tunes they want to listen to.
What's next release-wise?
L: Well, we actually do know what's next….
V: Yeah – but you can't know!
B: The boring answer is we keep writing and keep recording.
L: Basically that's what we're doing, we're working on writing as much as we can. Literally, we're all so sleep-deprived at the moment. We've come back from five days of writing.
V: We've been doing like 13, 14-hour days…
L: …9am 'til midnight.
What does that look like in practice?
V: It's like, residential. We've been at this house in Kent, it's nice to go somewhere different. It feels quite homely, so it's quite relaxed sometimes. But then we'll be tracking vocals and suddenly it'll be like 2am.
L: We start becoming… not grumpy, but just a bit over it. And then the next day we're like, full of life and ready to write a new song.
And finally, which condiment is most likely to get a First at uni?
L: Not me.
V: You're not a condiment!
L: Maybe like a try hard like… maybe at art school like Salad Cream is…
B: …Salad Cream is a neek.
V: HP Sauce is getting a 2:2. Sriracha's my favourite, that's a solid 2:1 I think, it's too cool to get a First.
L: Sriracha didn't go to uni but it's still successful.
Is Ketchup just kind of doing it? Ketchup's the standard, Ketchup is the guy that all the teachers refer to, and they say "Look back at Ketchup's work, this is what you wanna be doing."
B: "You wanna get to this level, you wanna get to ketchup and mayo."
V: The way Goldsmiths talks about Blur – that's ketchup and mayo.
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