Hope Sandoval Speaks…sort of

Well I was warned that it wouldn’t be easy! A quick phone interview with Hope Sandoval and Colm O’Ciossag had been arranged in anticipation of their tour later this month. I’d been warned that Hope was very shy and that Colm would do most of the talking, which was fine – they are after all collaborators and Colm himself is an interesting musician being a member of My Bloody Valentine.

What was more difficult was that the reception from their isolated Irish base was sadly lacking and it meant that only one of them could be on the phone at a time. After talking to Colm for a while he then passed the phone to Hope and after the briefest of conversations the operator jumped on the line and promptly cut off the conversation mid-sentence, without so much as a “last question please”.

Oh well, I’m glad I just do this for fun these days.

In our brief chat I didn’t find Hope to be shy at all. In fact when I told her that she would be performing on the same stage (The Forum) as I had watched Rickie Lee Jones the night before she was positively effusive – “Oh Rickie Lee Jones, really?”, she replied. “How was that? Oh wow, that’s really cool.”

One question I did manage to ask was about the way that the music and the vocals on the latest album Through The Devil Softly seem to work in almost perfect mutual sympathy.

Even in her celebrated previous band Mazzy Star, Sandoval and her collaborator David Roback sometimes seemed like two planets on different orbits that magically intersected. With this album Sandoval’s extraordinary vocals seem to be in perfect sync emotionally and musically with her bands contributions, making it her most fulfilling work to date.

What makes this more amazing is that the band known here as the Warm Inventions is actually another independently functioning Dublin band Dirt Blue Gene augmented by Colm O’Ciosoig. Yet somehow this fully formed group of Irishmen seem almost magically suited to the notoriously reticent Hope Sandoval.

“Most bands that work well together that’s what they do – they use telepathy”, ponders Hope. “That’s how you know what to do, what chord to go to, what rhythm to play. Most good bands, that’s what you use. You don’t have to tell or describe what you are doing to a really good partnership, you just have to think it and they know it.”

And that dear tortured readers is the most detail I was able to extract from Hope before the operator intervened.

Fortunately Colm O’Ciosoig had been able to shed a little more light on a band that prefers to play in the dark.

In discussing the long awaited album – it arrived a mere eight years after it predecessor Bavarian Fruit Bread – Colm explains that it was an evolving amalgam of songs.
“It was a collection of songs that we had done over a few years but when they come together they complement each other and make a story”, he comments.

Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions perform in virtual darkness and in a venue such as The Forum that will be a strange but probably thrilling experience. I can only imagine how amazing Hope’s vocals will be in that environment.

Their other essential rule is that which prohibits photography. That immediately makes them heroes in my book – my pet hate is people who feel the need to take photos on mobile phones in the middle of shows – especially photos of themselves as if documenting their own presence was somehow the point of coming to the show.

“We do that for the benefit of people who want to go to the gig, and see the gig and enjoy it the way that it should be enjoyed without the distraction of people in their own little world wanting to take photos of things and send them to their friends” he explains.  “We’re fairly adamant about that”.

There is a visual element to the show though and as a recent review of a Los Angeles show suggested it provides an interesting additional sensory element.

“Assumedly as a compensatory measure, the set was accompanied throughout by film projections – primarily old-timey footage of people dancing, or flowers — which were blended together with other elements by multiple projectors in the balcony, providing sort of visual mash-ups, with the gentle fluttering sound of the film running through the projectors adding an extra element of romantic nostalgia to the experience.”

So there you have it. You can expect a dark room, some spooky looking visuals and the incomparable voice of Hope Sandoval filling up the space in between. And once you hear that voice, well any need to try and talk about it probably does become redundant.