Full of vivid, vital, flicking-the-V vigour, this all-Finnish, all-female Nineties beats and 10/10 fashion scores.
Their name, which means ‘The skinny body of Francoise’, was only picked by lead singer Emma Kemppianen because “it sounded cool”. This was back in 2006 when she was throwing some demos up on MySpace. When the demos gained Emma some Helsinki hometown gigs she recruited the help of her sister (Mia) and her best mate (Malin Nyqvist).
Their first UK single, the insanely catchy shout-pop kicks of ‘Bitch Of The Bitches’ (Stimulus) attacked our senses back in April. It had hipster underground tongues slavering in adoration, comparing the trio’s noisemaking with CSS, but now that LCMdF can namedrop Kaiku Studios Berlin and MIA-collaborator Switch as on “twisted pop” production duty, they’re set firmly ahead of the pack.
For the forthcoming album ‘Love & Nature’ the fun Fin lasses have ripped the shoulder pads and ra-ra out of their Eighties-electro-meets-grrl-garage-punk in favour of a slicker, more Nineties feel. LCMdF are really excited about the change: “We’ve been working on the album for maybe one year and now it’s recorded and ready for mixing. Switch is test-mixing a song at the minute, and he really loves the record, so big things are happening for a small Finnish band.”
“All the stuff currently on MySpace is really electro-clashy,” says Emma. “We’re slowing things down and trying to move away from being lumped together under the feminist band tag just because we are a band of musicians who all happen to be female. The new tracks will be much more epic and progressive and more focused on pop music rather than electronic and hipster music. It is going to be crazy, it is going to something that no one has heard in ten years.”
The new single ‘Something Golden’ is set for release on November 2nd on Kitsune. It features remixes from Crystal Fighters, Anglo-Argentinean future disco dancers Heartbreak, and Renaissance Man. The girls may only just be hitting their twenties but the refrain of the track – “The mistakes that I made will create something golden” – suggests that they are already tired of late nights. Emma agrees: “It is so different from everything people thought we are but it still has the same sort of attitude of our previous stuff. It’s saying that we are kind of tired of partying and we kind of got too drunk and said too much stuff and regretted it.”
The trio have spent more money on their video for ‘Something Golden’ than on the production: “We shot the video in LA, it sees us just biking around, and is also a little bit against global warming and for peace and love, that kind of thing.” Quite different from ‘Bitch Of The Bitches’, but in my eyes different is all good.
Words by Susie Wild
