Enjoy!
How did the band end up forming?
Alice: Our last band slowly dissolved during the pandemic. The guitarist left the band, the drummer followed. We were just like ‘’ok fuck it, let’s do something new now.’’ We wanted to move on from that chapter. I found Zena through Facebook, we have a Facebook cover song group with other Montreal musicians. I realized she plays drums, which is a rare thing. It’s always hard to find drummers, especially those who aren’t part of a bunch of other projects, so we were really stoked for that.
Why the name Scarlet Wives and what does that name represent?
Alice: We were going through different names. None of them have any particular meaning but they went along with the imagery we wanted to invoke. Kind of like a bloody, vampiric, even gothic aesthetic we wanted to fuck around with. The idea of a bloody bride, that’s the imagery I was going for.
It’ll be exciting for you guys to play around with that during your shows! So creatively speaking, this is something new you’re doing. So in that same vein, are you guys also taking a new musical direction withthis band and exploring other influences and sounds?
Alice: We still have a lot of the same influences. Of course with a new member, it’s always going to be changing. We’re trying to go for something a bit more modern. Pussy Stench was really grunge and riot grrrl. Of course, we’re still using that influence, I can’t help it. It’s always going to be in my songwriting for sure. But we're trying to go for something more rock-influenced.
Mike: I think it steps away from a local, hardcore kind of band that Pussy Stench felt like to a band that’s able to go a little beyond those borders. What’s been an inspiration for the sound as far as I’m picking is a band we played with called Starcrawler. It’s grungy and punk but with a bit more rock ‘n roll.
Alice: Even like a more psych-rock sound.
Zena: I think it’s the kind of thing that’s going to reach a wider audience as well.
Alice: Yeah and I can picture it as like, you get into that zone in the car during a road trip or something you could even dance to. It could work for different audiences. Like you could bring your mom your this show but it’s still got some kick to it. It still has that energy but in a less explicit kind of way.
Tell more about your first single that you just released.
Alice: It’s called Dream Funeral. I just wrote it out of nowhere. We already had some others lined up and ready to record, but I wrote it and it just felt like we had to record this now. It’s about reinventing yourself, and we’re also reinventing ourselves through this new project. Especially being in a band before, you just feel like you’ve hit this dead end, but then it’s this liberating feeling to be able to restart. It felt good to write like I could do this in any style. It also relates to this past year with the pandemic and dreaming about being back on the road and on stage. So we’re also embodying that through our style, our music and our creativity. Just trying to keep that spirit alive because we know it’s going to happen. We want to have something to show when that time comes around.
So with this liberating feeling and having less pressure to write in a certain way, can we say you were feeling limited and a little boxed in near the end of Pussy Stench?
Mike: I think we just had to ask ourselves if we were going to continue with this project that’d been blooming for the past 5-6 years, with a lot of new members, a lot of reteaching old songs. When you have to revamp a band like that based on the quality of membership and with people coming and going, deciding to start fresh was very liberating. I don’t think the project was limiting in any way musically. I think if it was limiting, it was just before the pandemic where we wanted to get booked on bigger shows and the name was giving us some issues.
Devan: And yeah I mean, we just released our first single today and we already had part of it play on CHOM, so that’s exciting for us. That’s not something we were able to do with Pussy Stench. As much as we had the contacts and sometimes we played some bigger gigs, it was always having to pull an arm and a leg to get the band up there. We could be told like ‘’ oh well, we might have to change your name for the night.’’ Even bigger festivals like, I’m surprised 77 were promoting that on the billboards and stuff. It was cool but, not everyone is open to it. It was cool too because, I mean, it did trigger some curiosity in people sometimes. It’s just harder in the actual industry. ‘’Oh we’re a band please take us super seriously, we’re called Pussy Stench.’’
We did broach a bit on the pandemic. It’s hard to project ourselves into the future, but aside from the single, do you guys have anything lined up or are you still figuring out the next step?
Zena: We do know what we’re about to do, we’re composing, planning on recording more songs, more singles and content. So we’re working towards all that, we’re not only learning and discovering what we are.
Devan: The music is pretty much written. I guess we’re been pretty lucky to have our own studio to be able to get the stuff out there as we’re writing it. We want to release a single pretty much once a month, so we have one coming out in April, one in May and hopefully by mid-June the EP will be ready. We also have a pretty cool video clip we’re filming next Friday with this photographer I really love, and we’re planning to film some stuff ourselves as well. We’re trying to work towards something outdoors this summer as well, whether it’s drive-in or social distance and hopefully, there are going to be more shows. I’m feeling more hopeful.
Alice: It’s called Dream Funeral. I just wrote it out of nowhere. We already had some others lined up and ready to record, but I wrote it and it just felt like we had to record this now. It’s about reinventing yourself, and we’re also reinventing ourselves through this new project. Especially being in a band before, you just feel like you’ve hit this dead end, but then it’s this liberating feeling to be able to restart. It felt good to write like I could do this in any style. It also relates to this past year with the pandemic and dreaming about being back on the road and on stage. So we’re also embodying that through our style, our music and our creativity. Just trying to keep that spirit alive because we know it’s going to happen. We want to have something to show when that time comes around.
So with this liberating feeling and having less pressure to write in a certain way, can we say you were feeling limited and a little boxed in near the end of Pussy Stench?
Mike: I think we just had to ask ourselves if we were going to continue with this project that’d been blooming for the past 5-6 years, with a lot of new members, a lot of reteaching old songs. When you have to revamp a band like that based on the quality of membership and with people coming and going, deciding to start fresh was very liberating. I don’t think the project was limiting in any way musically. I think if it was limiting, it was just before the pandemic where we wanted to get booked on bigger shows and the name was giving us some issues.
Devan: And yeah I mean, we just released our first single today and we already had part of it play on CHOM, so that’s exciting for us. That’s not something we were able to do with Pussy Stench. As much as we had the contacts and sometimes we played some bigger gigs, it was always having to pull an arm and a leg to get the band up there. We could be told like ‘’ oh well, we might have to change your name for the night.’’ Even bigger festivals like, I’m surprised 77 were promoting that on the billboards and stuff. It was cool but, not everyone is open to it. It was cool too because, I mean, it did trigger some curiosity in people sometimes. It’s just harder in the actual industry. ‘’Oh we’re a band please take us super seriously, we’re called Pussy Stench.’’
We did broach a bit on the pandemic. It’s hard to project ourselves into the future, but aside from the single, do you guys have anything lined up or are you still figuring out the next step?
Zena: We do know what we’re about to do, we’re composing, planning on recording more songs, more singles and content. So we’re working towards all that, we’re not only learning and discovering what we are.
Devan: The music is pretty much written. I guess we’re been pretty lucky to have our own studio to be able to get the stuff out there as we’re writing it. We want to release a single pretty much once a month, so we have one coming out in April, one in May and hopefully by mid-June the EP will be ready. We also have a pretty cool video clip we’re filming next Friday with this photographer I really love, and we’re planning to film some stuff ourselves as well. We’re trying to work towards something outdoors this summer as well, whether it’s drive-in or social distance and hopefully, there are going to be more shows. I’m feeling more hopeful.
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