Interview with The Sugars
Championed by Phill Jupitus and Marc Riley, Leeds based 3-piece The Sugars describe themselves as a blues band with elements of soul and garage. I spoke to bassist Anna Greenaway as she took a break from mixing the band’s debut album ‘The Curse of The Sugars’.
We’ll start with the basics, how did the band come about?Well I came up to Leeds for uni and met Matt, this was about 3 years ago, and we were at this club night in Leeds called Pigs, which was set up by the Kaiser Chiefs quite a long time ago. Matt saw this girl who looked amazing in this white dress and he just said “Wow, she looks so cool”. It sounds ridiculous but it’s true. He said “I need to go and take some pictures of her”. So he took some photos of her in Manchester wearing the white dress, and on the coach she mentioned that she played the drums. He was like: “Oh...well me and Anna wanted to start a band so maybe we should”. So it all started in a club night with a white dress. Then we’d just knock around in Jodie’s garage making this rawkish garage music. And now... you’re at the Arts Centre on the 15th, do you enjoy playing live? Yeah, love it, but we’ve just come off tour with The Von Bondies after 2 weeks on the road, and after that long your body just starts to hurt a bit. It’s really nice playing live but eventually, our drummer was just like “I can’t move!”. But yeah, it’s good to be in the studio but we’re definitely a live band.
So are you one of those bands who’ve tried to capture the live sound while recording the album, or do you see it as an entirely different process?I think we’ve allowed ourselves to be a bit more experimental on this album. We’ve layered up some guitar parts and put some other instruments on it that you wouldn’t expect live like some string arrangements and pianos and stuff, but we record it all live in the some room, we just overdub the vocals. We have tried to capture the vibe of playing live on record. Our producer kept pushing us until we got it, and you could feel the energy that’s gone into it.
Right. Also, I see that you’ve supported Richard Hawley, who comes across to me as almost a Gandalf-like figure in the music industry, did his aura rub off on you at all?I don’t know, I think I was too in awe of him half the time to actually really speak to him (she’s been giggling and aww-ing since the mention of his name). We played with him on my birthday and it was just like, “this is the best birthday ever”. Definitely, even way back to The Longpigs, me and Matt are massive fans, I’ve been following him for years, he’s amazing. So for him to say “Will you come and play with me” was always quite an exciting prospect. We were playing in these ridiculously beautiful halls that we’d never normally be in and, because it was sort of a sat down crowd, we could play all of our more mellow stuff that we wouldn’t normally be able to at the club nights because everyone just keeps talking over them. They were a lot more receptive.
You’ve played to quite a variety of audiences though... you&
