Music > Interviews

Interview with Friends

17/07/13

It’s interesting, sometimes, to note the way people describe themselves on their tiny Twitter bio. A minute caption to encapsulate a whole being, it shows – however hastily it was committed to the three double-u’s – how a person perceives themselves. On Samantha Urbani’s Twitter, bewitching lead singer of NY band, Friends, you see all at once a great spectrum of her character in her ‘2 smart 4 art’ declaration; challenging but playful, creative and reactionary. Samantha imparts this colourfulness into her music, and in turn, we receive it in full stereo and technicolour. Urbani’s voice is light, risible and relatable, as we find out on the phone, ahead of her dates in the region…

Thanks for your time today Samantha – we’re an independent magazine, so we really do appreciate your time. No, that’s cool. I’m down. Thank you for wanting to talk. 

To put our magazine in context for you, last month our cover star was Jessie Ware – - Oh cool; I actually just met Jessie Ware a couple of weeks ago. 

I know, I saw on Twitter! And we interviewed the incredible Savages a couple of months back, who are our favourite band at the moment. I love them too, yeah; you’re interviewing all my friends! That’s who we are, but do you feel like you’re good company? That it’s good context for Friends? Yeah, yeah, totally – you guys have good taste!

Now we’re doing this interview ahead of your two July dates in our region; the first is in a stunning converted church, Norwich Arts Centre – - Really? I didn’t even know that. And the other is a field in one of the most rural parts of England, for Latitude Festival. So kinda two different vibes… Yeah, this tour, I didn’t even check out the venues or the festival! I’d heard of a couple of them, but yeah, I’m just kinda looking forward to seeing what they’re all about rather than bring any expectations. But that’s cool to know. Those two don’t seem obvious settings for your music – do you feed off the wide variety of backdrops though that touring gives you? Definitely, like, I’ve never felt like we play one kind of music, I feel like it’s really versatile, like song to song can be really different, but then each song in itself kinda has this fluidity to it to, like, we’ll play at different speeds depending on the energy and conceptualise it differently depending on the context, you know? I’m always glad for diversity though, which is why I moved to New York, you know, there’s different kinds of people everywhere, different neighbourhoods you can go to… I hate going on tour and just playing bars, you know? That’s my nightmare. So it’s exciting to know there’s gonna be a church and a field, it’s like, who knows what there’ll be in between? 

Yeah, that’s just tip of the iceberg. It’s funny that we mention the church though – have you seen how your band is listed on Spotify? Under Friends as a band, there’s ‘Manifest!’, your album, then there’s a collection of Christian Classics. Really?! 

Yeah, yeah, because ‘Manifest!’ finishes playing and then this Christian compilation starts and I was like, “woah, that’s diverse!” That’s actually really cool! 

Yeah, but I wondered, if Friends was indeed a religion, what would be your commandments? Oh, well, it’s really funny that you said that because, like, a month ago my friend was like, “Friends should be a religion”, blah, blah, blah… That’s really funny – Spotify – religious music! It’s just inherently spiritual to me, music is; I think it’s silly for different religions to sort of co-op certain concepts or names for things, because in the heart of it, everyone that feels a sense of spirituality wants the same thing, you know, like freedom and empowerment. Looking up to a greater love, or something like that. But if Friends was a religion, man, it’d be all about deconstructing expectations that you have of yourself based on what you’ve been taught at any time of your life. And constantly expressing yourself, like, whether that means to dance, or be silent, or say what’s on your mind. Yeah, so being expressive, being of independent judgement of yourself and thou shalt… be all about trying to lose ego and identity. Don’t be a man, or a woman or an American, or a British person or a black person or a white person. In essence, just be like a future ghost, like a force rather than an identity. 

I’d sign up for that. I’m very impressionable though. [SAM LAUGHS] It’s interesting you talking about that though, because I read a quote from you that said you saw yourself as working on a “conceptual pop music project… changing the pop star paradigm”, including new politics versus sexuality and pop. It got me thinking about Pussy Riot – have you followed that saga? I haven’t really so much because it was cool to me that it started a dialogue on a bunch of stuff, but to me, getting very focused on one court case at a time is almost buying in to the media’s sensationalised particular stories, rather than looking at the bigger picture of why that’s going on. That’s a constant path in my life, to stay conscious of prejudice and injustice and not only people being oppressed, but people oppressing themselves. No, so like every now and again I’ll see something on Twitter about one of the girls from Pussy Riot has this going on, and with my energetic intentions, I wish them the best, but I’m not one to follow news stories, ‘cause I think it’s actually distracting. Everyone should just try and be the changes that they want to see, rather than getting obsessed with problems. Like, I don’t know, I walk around New York city with my shirt off when it’s hot out. For me, that’s the best thing that I can do to change people’s perceptions of how a woman should behave [a law was recently passed in New York allowing women to appear bare-breasted on the streets in the name of shirtless equality!] or how any human being should behave, is just by behaving the way I should and have the right to, rather than getting mad at things.

On a lighter subject, we were talking about ‘Manifest!’ and the album’s hugely danceable, in the main – I wondered what your own relationship with the dancefloor is like? Are you first on, or a corner stalker? It definitely depends, but I’ve definitely started countless dance parties; I think I’m kinda like a firestarter – if I want something to happen, I’ll usually make it happen that way. Especially with music, it kind of drives me insane to think people are holding themselves back from doing what they want to. Shyness and anxiety takes over, and I did feel that when I was younger, when I was a teenager, I didn’t want to dance in front of anybody and my Mom was the crazy, wild dancer. I was really self-conscious and embarrassed to dance in front of anyone, but something inside of me has been set free, I think. Even when I’m on the subway with headphones on, I’m dancing. I don’t understand how, when someone hears music that moves them, they can stop themselves from dancing.

It’s sad; it’s one of the saddest things to see actually. I’m a real dancer, but I understand people need to unleash it with drink and drugs, whatever works for them. Yeah, totally; it is sad, but dancing is one of the best, like dancing is probably THE best drug. It’s social, it’s expressive, it’s exercise, it’s celebration, showing your appreciation for music, it’s everything. Sometimes, if you don’t want to dance, that’s cool too; I hate people feeling pressured to dance, like, I never want someone to feel like they’re not cool for not doing it, but it’s really sad if somebody wants to and they can’t.

So, there’s definitely an aesthetic to the album, but there’s some kinda like, sub-chapters as well. Listening to ‘Ruins’ makes me feel uneasy and drunk – - That’s cool.

Were you keen to fully explore where a song was taking you, even if it deviated from what you perceived to be the main fabric of the album? Yeah, definitely; if we had written the album in a different way, just in terms of time and situations, the way it went, probably more songs would have sounded like ‘Ruins’. The album wasn’t super intention; it wasn’t like I had this vision of ‘let’s do this kind of album, now let’s try and write songs that fit into that paradigm’. It was more like, I was writing full pop songs for the first time in my life and would come to the band and be like, ‘hey, I wrote this kinda song today, let’s see how that goes’, or ‘I’ve had this idea for a new wavey, post-punk kinda song, like the bassline’s just two notes – let’s jam on that.’ So it was most important to me to let the songs have their own identity each, and not feel confined to an overarching aesthetic, and just know that it’d come together in the end because it’s the same people playing and it’s my voice singing the songs. They don’t sound like they come from the same place, but they do and you’ll notice it throughout listening to the whole record. Definitely when we did ‘Ruins’ for the first few times, it was the whole band’s favourite – I really thought, ‘this is the way to go!’ [LAUGHS] It’s funny, ‘cause it’s so trippy, the song, at the end.

It makes us really excited for any new material though because you can hear the different directions – - Yeah, we’ve been writing a lot of new stuff and I think we’re gonna record this album actually next month, because we’ve been sort of taking a break and just hanging out at home, seeing about what we wanna do next and the last album, we basically recorded at different times over the whole year, and I just wanted this time to just go into a studio for one time and just see what happens, like, just jam and turn little moments into whole songs and stuff. I’m excited to see what happens too. I don’t even really know yet!

This edition of our magazine is a special one coming up, because we have a guest editor, our friend and contributor, who’s a photographer. I’ve found it really interesting to me someone coming to me from a visual point of view, whereas usually I start with words. I know you come from a mixed media background – do you think your sympathy for photography and all art forms makes you a treat of a band to photograph? I’ve seen some great images of you guys… Oh really? I haven’t really thought about that, but I guess it goes both ways really, ‘cause since I have quite a strong visual angle, or like ideal for myself, as a visual artist I have a kind of aesthetic that I prefer, so maybe it’s hard for people to work with me sometimes, ‘cause I always want to be involved in everything, but I don’t know, maybe even just the way I represent myself in the way I dress or emote, it shows that I’m a very visually aware person as well as musically aware. So I don’t know, I don’t know what it’s like to photograph the band. I know that photographers always had a hard time before because there were five of us and everybody was kinda feeling differently on different days, so it was hard to get a good picture of all of us at the same time.

I think it’s a good thing that you offer your input though, because I can’t stand creative apathy and I don’t understand how a creative person can take control of their music and not other aspects of their output. I think it’s crazy too, but the thing that is kinda crazy to think about is that the singers of the music, the people who are releasing the music don’t often even want that much musical control these days, like, there’s a lot of singers who are being marketed as being writers and creative forces, but actually other people are writing their songs for them, so they’re being sorta like curators for their creative forces; they’re saying, ‘Oh yeah, I like that one, I’ll do it. I don’t really like that one, I don’t wanna do that one.’ But rather than being, like, intuitive and have their creativity come from their own place, they’re just picking out ‘yes’s and ‘no’s, d’you know what I mean? To me, that’s crazy because everyone has the potential to be holistically creative and have their music come from a real place, and have a visual aesthetic come from a genuine place. But I think a lot of people have their fear of vulnerability or failure that takes over, so they just comply with whatever they think is the right choice, rather than the right choice for them.

Yeah, I think you’re very right. Now, I usually think that it’s lazy to ask about a band’s influences, but having seen a few of yours, I can’t let it slip! Eminem, Hanson, Adam Ant… [LAUGHS] Have you been reading my Twitter?! [LAUGHS A LOT]

Oh yeah! To ask you about just one of them, Adam Ant – - Totally; it was actually a dream come true that we played at the same festival with him and people don’t even understand really, because especially nowadays, people don’t obsess about particular albums like I do, but playing a festival with him was a total dream, really exciting for me.

But don’t you think that he looks like a 70-year old woman now? He’s gone a bit jowly. [LAUGHS] Yeah, haha! I thought he looked pretty cool, I don’t know. He didn’t look like his 24-year old, hot-as-fuck self, but he was super energetic and very impassioned. For me, like as I was saying, if someone deconstructs their identity and just becomes their identity, that’s the truest thing you can do. That’s why I’m in awe of him on stage; yeah he’s like, dressed in his costume and portraying his classic self, in a way, but at the same time he was so in the moment and performance-orientated and I was so happy to see that. You think he looks like a 70-year old woman?! Even that’s kinda cool.

What do you think of artists growing old in the music industry though? Do you want to be of Grace Jones calibre, or will you move on to another adventure? Oh, I see different adventures within the music world, even like the adventure I’m having right now, dealing with labels and thinking about music in a professional way is so much different from when I started the band and I was like booking my own shows and just playing in Brooklyn two times a week, just doing everything myself, everything word of mouth, everything DIY. For me, there are many different adventures to have within a career in music, so I don’t think you need to choose one thing, or do everything at once. I’ll definitely have a lot of other adventures; I just consider myself as a musician - music is just the way I express who I am, which is kind of unwavering.

2012 was a funny year for you guys; you’ve already had a couple of mini-adventures within Friends. People often see line-up changes as destructive to the foundation of the band, but I think saving face and staying together can marginalise output in the long run. Given your own experiences, how do you feel the changes have affected you? Oh, I think that you have to just roll… with the punches. I kinda don’t like that phrase ‘cause it makes changes sound negative, but you have to just let changes evolve. It was the right thing, for the band to change, members wise. I’ve even been talking to Oliver and Nikki, who are the members still in the band, about changing the band’s name because it feels like a different dynamic now, it feels like a different band. So we’ve been talking about like, what it means to be adding new people, or putting new energy in the mix, but nothing is destructive. Ever.  Everything is evolutionary. You just have to get out of the paradigm of change being negative. I think if you apply that to everything in life, you’ll buy it easier. It’s easy to get sentimental or nervous of unknown futures, but I always want stimulation; I hate being stagnant, I hate being bored. I miss Matt and Lesley just as you would with people I used to see all the time. It’s music, you know, it’s not actually like a marriage; it’s a band and I don’t think when you start a band, it should be a commitment to stay together forever. We just wanted to fulfil our destiny as that incarnation and we did, now me and Nikki and Oliver are doing our own thing, then separately, I’m doing my own thing and they’re doing their own things and like, it’s all fluid, it’s all cool.

You say it’s not a marriage, and we know you’ve previously said, in song, “If you love someone, let them be free…”, but are you actually getting married, or is it faux Twitter spiel? [SAM LAUGHS EXCITEDLY] Well… what is marriage?

Well, a public and lawful commitment of your relationship? Well I don’t really believe in laws as stated, like, I hate to just sound like some trite idealistic rebel, but I don’t think anybody is ever gonna tell me what to do, or give me definitions of what things mean, so to be legally married is only important if you have some, like, tax situations or citizenship situations, but me and Dev are – I mean, I’m sure that’s who you’re talking about – me and Dev are very much together, like, sure – we’re married! [LAUGHS] I mean, I love him and I’m very happy to be with him.

Well at least get a ring and a party out of it. That’s what marriage is really about! [GIGGLES] Yeah, we’ve been talking about getting shredding – not wedding rings, but shredding rings! But yeah, I like that. We can throw a party any time though, but maybe we should have a marriage party.

Yeah, you have to have a party in honour of your relationship, in the name of you as a couple – I think that, at least, is a wonderful thing to do, I think. I think so too, totally.

So finally, the best thing I saw on the internet today was your edit of Miley Cyrus – - Oh my God, you saw that??! I actually just watched that a couple of weeks ago because I was going way back into all my old YouTube shit. I’d forgotten that I did that.

Yeah, and I was so impressed – Dev has obviously initiated you into British culture, but you already clearly have a handle on it, editing over Miley Cyrus’ ‘Party in the USA’ with The Exploited is just inspired! Yeah, I’m glad you liked that! [LAUGHS] It’s like ‘hey, there’s a party in the… fuck the USA’! I don’t know, I think Miley wants to be a punk, like, she obviously wants to stir up trouble but I don’t know if she’s going about it in just the right way yet. I think she needs to go train hopping and go to Birmingham, probably.

She’s starting with her hair first – - Yeah, her hair looks cool. Yeah, I don’t know; she should probably move to a squat for like, a year and remove internet and go train hopping and dumpster diving and get a lot of stick and poke! Get arrested a few times… I think that’s actually what she wants. I believe in her that she can do it. She’s a punk but she’s just… it’s like Britney; I loved Britney when she shaved her head and was hitting cars with umbrellas. That was like, the punkest thing ever. That was so fucking cool. I watched the new Miley Cyrus video and it was just boring; she was trying to be controversial, and be empowered about her sexuality and stuff, which is cool, but it was done in a way that isn’t like, tough enough. She should go to Birmingham. Maybe she should drop a lot of acid in the desert or something, I don’t know.

Emma R. Garwood

Friends play as part of the Latitude Festival line-up (www.latitudefestival.co.uk) and also at the Norwich Arts Centre on July 14th (www.norwichartscentre.co.uk).