The Canadian band with a new British addition, Dragonette have been traveling the world on their 2010 summer tour. With already two albums out, Galore and Fixin’ to Thrill, they haven’t been wasting any time catching up on sleep. On their latest album Fixin’ to Thrill, they ditch their so-called "sex-driven" lyrics for more electro pop dance tunes. The song "Fixin’ to Thrill" is an instant club hit with its upbeat, electro-grunge sound and heavy bass. On the other hand "Pick up the Phone" is a perfect summer ‘out on the town with the girls’ song; it’s fun, pretty, and very retro ‘80s influenced. Bassist/producer Dan Kurtz and singer/songwriter Martina Sorbara took some time out to have a conversation with QRO on everything from their favorite foods, their collaboration with Kaskade, and Sorbara gives advice about how she deals with society’s pressure and feeling comfortable with herself.
QRO: So you guys are on you’re summer tour right now, how’s that been going for you?
Dan Kurtz: It’s been awesome; a lot of flying, but it’s been really great. Playing in the summertime outside is pretty great. [laughs] I mean it’s a thing I think you work for, so that’s what we’ve been doing as much as we can and by the time we come… well, we’re not making it to Miami but we’re getting close, we’re getting to like Atlanta or something like that. We’re looking forward to that whole U.S. tour in August; I love driving around in the summer time.
QRO: Do you guys enjoy playing overseas more than in The States or vice-versa?
DK:
We’ve played everywhere in the world and the shows you remember are the ones that felt really good and fun you know? We’ve had great shows in Brazil, we’ve had great shows in tiny towns in Canada; we’ve had great shows. It doesn’t really matter where, but there are a couple of cities that we really love to go to but that’s more because we like the food than the crowd.
QRO: And what places are those?
DK: Barcelona has got one of our favorite restaurants so we like going there although we also like playing there best; Barcelona is actually a really fun place to play. We’ve had a really good time every time we’ve played in Brazil; I love going to New York. Miami I would move to if I could but we’ve only played there once as Dragonette; I love it there though and you guys have Stone Crab, you know? [laughs] Then there are some places where the food isn’t so good but luckily we haven’t had to tour there yet.
QRO: What are some of your favorite songs to play live?
DK: I would say that right now [on] Fixin’ to Thrill, that song "Wire", "Pick Up the Phone", a song called "Ok Dalore" which is on that record, and we got a new song that we’re gonna start playing this month – it’s called "Volcano"; that’s probably going to be a fast favorite for us.
QRO: With your last album Galore people labeled you guys a "sex band" or that all of you’re music was about sex. Do you feel like those comments played a part as to why you’re music has slightly changed?
DK: Well, not because of the comments… but I got really irritated by those comments because if people had listened to the lyrics, whoever thought that was the case should probably have spent another couple of minutes listening to the lyrics because it’s always been about more than just sex, although sex is a really fun subject.
I think when we wrote our second record we didn’t set out to write anything in particular or make it anything in particular, we just wrote what we felt like writing so maybe there was different themes going on but we never started as a ‘sex band’ and we never stopped being anything. Most bands evolve and keep moving from record to record; otherwise you’re gonna kill yourself and kill all of your fans with boredom after a while too.
QRO: Martina, you grew up listening to folk and country music, what made you steer towards pop and electro music?
Martina Sorbara: Just slowly discovering it and I kind of started thinking about a way to bring some of the styles of folk, country and jazz. The melody and lyrics style add into other areas of music like pop and electro. I think when I discovered Björk and Talk Talk, I just started discovering the more electro side of things, so it just took me on another path, but
QRO: Tell me about the video for "Fixin’ to Thrill" – what was that all about?
DK: [laughs] That was Martina and one of her best friends Wendy, who directed it, and those guys came up with some idea, its almost like she’s a Pied Piper. It was kind of a mix between Weird Science and a Pied Piper. So the kids got to build their own kind of homegrown indie version of a superhero built out of parts of their garage. Then she becomes like a Frankenstein made by the kids. So that was pretty much the idea, those were all of our nieces and nephews in that video so it was really fun.
Dragonette’s video for "Fixin’ To Thrill":
QRO: Ok, so that makes sense now. [laughs]
DK: Yeah [laughs]
QRO: So do you guys usually come up with the video concepts for your videos?
DK: Yeah, and also the directors, with the exception of one video that we made, all of them have been made by two of our closest friends, so it’s always a discussion between Tina [Martina] and the director or us and the director. The one video that we made that the director came up with the video idea himself was the video for "Take It Like a Man" which was such a better idea than any of the other ideas that were being proposed. We just loved the idea because it was like a spin off of Boogie Nights, which is definitely one of our favorite movies and we like the fact that it was making fun of porn, especially when we were being called a ‘sex band’ all of the time. It was like the lightest no exude of porn I’ve ever seen but it still got flagged on YouTube as an above eighteen video.
QRO: Martina, as a women in the music industry do you ever feel pressured to have the typical ‘pop princess’ look, and do you have any advice for girls out there that ever feel pressured to look like what society calls ‘beautiful’?
MS: I try not to let other people’s opinions of what a girl should look like interfere with me being comfortable with myself. I think its important to just know that there’s a huge spectrum of what beautiful and sexy is. You look at a magazine and you see one kind of sexy but I try and always show another side. I think what’s conventional now is pretty boring and I think people are intrigued by other versions of whatever that is so if you can access it within yourself and be comfortable with it then people will be happy to see what you have to offer in that way.
QRO: What do you guys want your fans to get out of from listening to your music?
DK: I think I’ve met enough people that have so many different reasons for liking our songs, they either like one song or one particular song that speaks to them or they just like to dance or they like what Martina looks like, you know? There’s not one specific thing, whatever you like about Dragonette then great, fucking-a, hopefully you’ll keep liking what we do. I think its something to enjoy, its something to enjoy listening to on record, it’s something to enjoy coming to see us play live, its something lyrically.
Martina is really playful and smart with her lyrics, they’re lyrics that I can actually remember and enjoy since I don’t usually remember lyrics from any other songs, so yeah I guess you take whatever you want out of it and we’ll just keep doing that.
QRO: Your song "Pick Up the Phone" has a lot of remixes up on YouTube, have you heard any of them?
DK: Yeah there’s a lot of remixes out there I’d say there’s probably ten or more I don’t know, I haven’t heard all of them. There’s a couple of them that I really like. There’s a "Richard X" mix, there’s a "Daisy O’Dell" mix, there’s a "Francis Preve" mix; I mean unless they’re really shit I generally like them. I just love that somebody spends that amount of time on one of our songs.
Richard X’s remix of Dragonette’s "Pick Up the Phone":
QRO: Are you guys working on any new projects right now?
DK: Yeah, we’ve been writing another record, we’ve been writing some songs with some other people, um… Martina’s been knitting a lot of things, she knit a hamburger the other week, she knit a shoe… that’s basically where she’s had her head for the last little while. I think that what we’re aiming to do is writing our next record.
QRO: How did you guys get together to collaborate with Kaskade on "Fire In Your New Shoes?"
MS: He sent a track over, it was really like anonymous and I spent a few days working on it and we sent stuff. I sent stuff to him and he sent stuff so it was kind of like the new format of collaborating miles away from each other sending stuff from my home studio to his studio. It just turned out to be… I don’t know I’m really proud of that song; it started off as such a heavy track that at first I was stuck. It was just so heavy by itself that at first I just wanted to listen to it on it’s own [laughs] and then I wrote what I got on top of it and it just went from there.
Yeah, but I hadn’t met him ever before but see, people always think that its like "Oh you guys must be friends," but sometimes you just get those kind of offers. Sometimes I try and I don’t come up with anything, and sometimes I don’t try because I’m not a fan of the track… but that was definitely a track I’m glad I persevered [laughs] because when I heard it I was like, "No! I just like this song as it is!"
QRO: Who would you guys like to work with in the future?
DK: Oh man, there’s so many obvious answers: wouldn’t it be fun to make a song with Prince or all of the greats but there’s so many good people out there. I don’t really care about the names it’s just a matter of working with people with whom you can make really cool music with and that can happen with anyone, anytime, anywhere. So Martina and I are actually gonna go to Brazil for a couple of months and see what happens, we might just find somebody there we’d like to work with.
QRO: What can your fans look forward to in the future?
DK: Oh uh…
