Sylvan Esso interview: 'We're gonna make you guys like our band'

"Help yourself to grapes!" Amelia Meath, vocalist for Sylvan Esso, curls up into one of the armchairs in their London hotel room and gestures towards a giant, extravagant bowl of fruit - so perfect that it almost doesn’t look real - as producer Nick Sanborn takes a seat on the edge of the bed.

They’re in the UK to promote their new album What Now and played a secret show last night, airing out tracks that hadn't been performed for around six months.

Both of them are warm, open and hilarious; throughout the interview the room is filled with bursts of laughter as they explain what it’s been like to return to live shows.

"It was like remembering how to ride a bike a little bit, while playing a bunch of new stuff at the same time, but we were so ready to change gears and feel a chapter change happen," Sanborn says, recalling the gig last night. "Every song in every band both of us have ever been in, the songs slowly evolve as you play them. When they stop doing that, they become… not fun to play."

Sylvan Esso’s self-titled debut was released just three years ago, but they were answering questions about its follow-up almost as soon as it came out - to the point where both of them felt compelled to pretend that they had begun working on one.

"Oh my God," Sanborn says laughing, burying his head in his hands. “It’s like they started a timer after we released that album.”

"People always liked to ask us about us, so for a while we pretended that we were working on something," Meath says sheepishly. "But even now, the first interview we did for this record, someone asked when the third one is coming out!

"It’s hard to write anything when you’re on tour all the time, you don’t live that much. And the only emotion you feel is elation. Or exhaustion. And you need emotional subtlety to make an album."

As on SE, What Now has 10 tracks, but the latter sounds steelier than its predecessor (Meath whoops delightedly: "Yeah, I've always been steely."); the band headed into it with much more intent, and more of an idea of how they wanted the entire work to sound, rather than individual songs.

'Radio', the first single off the record, is arguably the most direct the pair have ever been in their lyrics, it’s an "on the nose" song that takes aim at the music industry - the pop machine in particular - and is unapologetically brutal in its cynicism.

"Do you got the moves to make it stick, yeah?" Meath sings. "To get the clicks, yeah?/Technicolor our every move/Can you keep them coming? Like a machine yeah/The old Blue Jean, yeah/What can we do to get you on the news?"

It’s very Madonna on ‘Hollywood’, to the point where Meath seems to emulate her during the chorus - she whoops again at that observation.

"I’m so glad you used the word 'intent'," Sanborn adds. "We want people to feel that."

"There’s a funny thing that happens when you write pop music," Meath says. "It’s really funny because the genre is so formulaic and you have to really think about everything you do in order to get that pop feeling that lifts you into the stratosphere.

"But because of that, with the first record a lot of people would do this thing where they’d ask: 'I’ve noticed that this thing happens on this song… did you mean to do that?'" They both guffaw before Meath continues: "Like… what the f*** do you think?"

"We knew so much more what we wanted the band to sound like this time," Sanborn says. "On this one it was like, I’m a very different person."

Meath says that she didn’t want Sylvan Esso to do what she had seen "so many" of the bands she loves do, to follow a successful debut with a carbon copy as the second album.

"We really grappled with that at the beginning," she explains. "Sometimes it was so paralysing that I would just stop."

"The experience of putting that first record out and touring it had just made us very different people," Sanborn continues. "And the moment we figured that out everything just opened up… we were letting a sound be what it is, instead of trying to polish it. Make it clearer, instead of trying to perfect it."

It’s a rare thing to hear an artist say about pop music, but perhaps not so much about hip hop, of which both are huge fans: "A lot of that late 90s stuff, Anticon, cLOUDDEAD, those old Cannibal Ox records…"

"It’s way more symbol based but it’s really gritty and you can feel the seams in a really cool way, almost like the track is about to fall apart," Sanborn says. "Like Four Tet - his records feel more like sound diaries."

'Sound', the opening track on the record, does something similar - its opening noise is Meath’s voice controlling the pitch of an old broken Korg MS 20.

"And the minute we did that everything opening up and felt like a statement of purpose," Sanborn says. "She was controlling the machine rather than it controlling her. We never use autotune so it was nice to use what I guess was the reverse of it."

"I love recordings where the place that it was made is almost like an instrument," Meath adds, speaking about their home in Durham, North Carolina. "I can really hear the house that we made both these records in. And it feels different on this record, because we know it so much better now."

Durham for Sylvan Esso is a community full to bursting with creative talent: bands like Hiss Golden Messenger, for whom Meath wrote harmonies on their record Lateness of Dancers, others like the Mountain Goats, the Merge bands, and a blossoming electronic scene that Sanborn has immersed himself in via a monthly party called Roundhouse where younger artists can flex their muscles and get tips on the industry ("sweet dorky electronic babies,” Meath beams).

"We try to help them do stuff that we didn’t know how to do when we were their age," Sanborn says of the electronic night. "Organising, helping them figure out how to get a lawyer for their record label, that kind of thing."

"There’s a club called the Pinhook, in downtown Durham, it’s like the arbiter of every scene," Meath says. "It houses everybody, so the beat battles are there, the queer nights are there, Hiss [Golden Messenger] play, our first release show was there… it’s the dreamiest, queerest bar you’ve ever seen. There’s a huge owl on the wall!"

In a live show, Sylvan Esso are something special: the crowd will start dancing from the first track and likely not stop until the very last note of the set. And Meath's voice as clear and controlled as it is on the record - even as she dances herself, Kate Bush-style, across the stage.

"If you dance like a loon, most people will also dance like a loon," she grins.

"I get made fun for it a lot, which is reasonable," Sanborn says humbly.

"I do too!" Meath says. "People say mean things on the internet."

She’s only ever read two comments about herself - one about their first performance on Jimmy Fallon, and another in the comments section below a feature interview they did in the US.

"It still f***ing haunts me." She bursts into a huge peal of laughter as she recalls the Jimmy Fallon comment. "I’m so sensitive! I might cry when I say it. It wasn’t like: ’F*** this s**** fat bitch’… It was-" she lowers her voice to impersonate the troll: "'When she starts dancing, don’t you feel kind of embarrassed for her?'" She bursts out laughing again.

The second was one of their first major feature interviews. "There was a huge photo of me and Nick, the interview, and then the very the first comment which was: ‘I wonder what her asshole looks like," Meath says giggling. “Isn’t it f***ing genius?! It cuts through everything! Troll genius. King troll." She pauses. "I forgot what we were talking about."

For her, ‘Song’ is the one she feels most proud of on the record - "largely because it was so simple" - but 'Kick Jump Twist' is her favourite to play.

Fans will have seen it performed live for some time, but it "didn't make sense recorded", so the band worked out a different arc at the end, creating a build, and more movement.

"We added these stacks of backing singers, and there’s this crazy thing that happens where we play live where I sometimes get… emotional, during that song," Meath says. "I’m just so excited by it that I shed a tiny tear."

Recorded a few days after the US election result, the video for 'Kick Jump Twist' sees a dancer - who also has a cameo in 'Die Young' - leap in a frenzy across a dusty concrete floor, as though he’s trying to shake something out of himself.

"We just said ‘thumbs up’ to the director [Mimi Cave]'s idea, which was to have our friend Gary dancing," Sanborn says. "He’s such a beautiful dancer, and you really feel that he’s trying to exorcise something."

They agree that artists have been spurred onto be more critical of what’s been going on in the US: "I think the election of Donald Trump has made everyone get off their asses and try to start figuring out where their personal responsibility lies," Sanborn suggests.

"It's caused a lot of people on the left to examine how they can help in a meaningful way. To be clear, it is the thinnest of silver linings to a storm cloud, but if everyone can start talking, that will maybe be something that can help us move in the right direction."

What Now manages to address certain concerns about the goings-on in the world whilst still sounding like wonderful, uplifting pop music - this is how Sylvan Esso think the best of the genre should sound: personal, complex songs that don’t just try and pack emotions into a neat little bundle.

And in much of the album and their earlier music you can simultaneously find a sensuality but also a frankness; certain songs like ‘Hey Mami’ off their debut or ‘Rewind’, the closing track on What Now - the former is a song about catcalling and the impulse behind the action, and is one of the best indicators for just how eloquent the pair are on sexual politics, both in and out of the studio.

"I’m pro-objectification of everybody," Meath grins. "It's something that happens. People are beautiful, they’re wonderful to look at."

"It’s always consent and intent, those two things that change whether or not it’s OK," Sanborn says. "Let everyone be who they’re gonna be… because whether you’re punishing someone for dressing a way you don’t like them to dress, or making them dress a way you want them to - both are equally bad."

Meath, who has spoken previously about her experience as a woman in the music industry, says she’s been "working on [her] personal hate a lot".

"The things we’re taught to do, like the competition s***," she explains. "When there’s another woman, sometimes my first impulse is to be like ‘I’m so much better than her’.

"And then I’m like… it’s my own misogyny that I’m constantly dealing with. It’s a really embarrassing and vulnerable thing to admit, to recognise in yourself: 'You’re so f***ing backwards, you just feel intimidated by this woman… because she’s a woman.' It’s so counterproductive, we should be lifting each other up."

"One of the main things that I’m working on is to not be sexist, in general," she continues. "I think it would solve a problem. Because the patriarchy’s f***ing real, you know? It’s f***ed up. But also we oppress men in so many other ways, by imagining what their gender should be. It causes a lot of anger. We all need to chill out and stop telling people how they should be."

Sylvan Esso are coming back to the UK in July for Citadel festival, then again in autumn for the album tour "and many more times after that", Sanborn says smiling. "We played London eight times on our last record."

"We’re fully committed," Amelia says with another grin. "We’re gonna make you guys like our band."

What Now - the new record from Sylvan Esso - is out on 28 April, pre-order here.