Here Comes Trouble: Clash Catches Up With PINS

Lois McDonald on fresh ideas, the Scottish countryside, and Iggy Pop...

PINS are back in town.

The Mancunian grrrl band released their riotous new EP 'Bad Thing' last week, and it's a feral, biting return.

Clash writer Laura Copley caught up with guitarist Lois McDonald to discuss all things Iggy Pop, rural Scotland and the discovery of their new sound, two years after their last album 'Wild Nights'.

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It’s been two year since we’ve heard new music from you. How are you feeling about the release?
Really, really excited, and really feeling good about it – without trying to sound smug at all! We’ve done a whole five videos that go with the EP, and its the first time we've done anything of that scale. We got to see the finished thing last week, we're really proud of it.

Are these videos linked together, or for separate songs?
They stand alone as independent videos for different tracks, but they're part of the same sequence. All in all it’s about 20 minutes long. Your new tracks are very different from what you were doing with your last album 'Wild Nights'.

What influenced your new direction and change?
Er, I think probably time. We've just been writing loads and loads, and just keeping the stuff we're really happy with. We've been bringing in more instruments as well, like electronic sounds. When we're recording we also have loads more time to record than usual.

We actually recorded in a rental cottage in Scotland and we were there for two weeks in the middle of farm land! We started out with demo stuff, and we liked how it sounded so started to introduce pedals, keyboards, synth, er, drum machine… we just had more time to experiment and take it a little bit further. I think most musicians want to do that anyway, rather than doing it the same way every time.

Speaking of new sounds, how did you manage to get Iggy Pop involved?
Ha, we just asked him! We wanted long vocals on that song ('Aggrophobe') and we thought it would be a nice idea to work with someone else. We all thought, "If it could be anyone, who would we pick?" And we all chose Iggy Pop because he's got a really cool voice, and the song is really dark and broody.

So we were like, "right, how can we get hold of him?" We just started finding ways of bothering his people until we got in touch with his manager. He told us if we could put a proposal letter together he'd get it in front of him and then he would decide whether he wanted to be involved or not. And then he said yes! It was a happy day.

So have you met him?
We’ve not met him yet, no. he recorded his bit in Miami. We sent him a version of (bassist) Anna doing the vocals, and he liked that. There's a version somewhere where we have both Anna and Iggy on the track… they’re a bit out of time with each other but it sounds really good.

So has he given you the thumbs up with how it's turned out?
Yeah he gave us a few notes on how to change it, making it shorter. It was nice to work with him in that sense as well, getting a bit of feedback. We just went with some ideas and by the end of it he was singing on the song!

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Who would you next want to collaborate with?
Oh I don’t know, there are loads of people.. everyone really likes Patti Smith. She's great. Or Kathleen Hanna would be good.. erm, there's loads! But we should definitely work on Patti Smith!

What's your personal favourite song on 'Bad Things'?
Let me think… I like 'Aggrophobe' because it's probably the weirdest one and obviously it's got Iggy Pop on it… I kinda like playing 'All Hail', ‘cuz we wrote that when we were in Las Vegas. We decided to book out a studio and just kind of jam for a few hours and it turned into this really long psych song, and there was this one drop out which is the riff of 'All Hai', and in the end when we played it all back and thought it was shit. So we just kept that one little dirty riff and it turned into this whole song. Sometimes it's best to just keep it simple.

You’ve got a tour coming up, which shows do you prefer playing? Home or away?
We're going on tour in a few weeks. It’s really, really fun playing in Manchester, but I’ve started to really enjoy playing London a lot, which isn’t an experience I've had before. Just this year it started, there's so much happening in London. I like the challenge of trying to win over a London audience as well.

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PINS new EP 'Bad Thing' is out now.

Words: Laura Copley

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