Pitchfork

In April, neo-girl group the Pipettes made a somewhat startling announcement. After crafting an excellent LP together-- 2006's We Are the Pipettes-- and circling the globe on tour, it was proclaimed that members Rebecca "RiotBecki" Stephens and Rose Elinor "Rosay" Dougall had left the group to "pursue other musical pursuits," according to a statement.

Not long after that, a MySpace page under Dougall's name appeared, with some dreamy, hazy, very un-Pipettesy music attached to it.

Naturally, we wanted to know more about just what an ex-member of one of our favorite groups of the last several years was up to. So we reached out to Dougall for a very illuminating email interview about her plans to gather her new songs into an album, her designs on forming a new band, and just what happened to cause a parting of ways between herself and the Pipettes.

Pitchfork: Have you been writing songs for a while now?

Rose Elinor Dougall: Yes, I have been writing songs since I was 12 or 13, obviously with varying degrees of success! But songcraft has always been at the centre of my interest in music.

Pitchfork: Has the idea of writing your own album always been in your mind?

RED: Definitely. I always felt that it was something I would have to do at some point. How and when was uncertain. However, I now feel that it is really necessary and important for me to finally pull together all of these threads and ideas that have been floating around for so long into a cohesive whole.

Pitchfork: What kind of progress have you made in turning these songs into an album? Have you talked to producers or booked studio time yet? Do you have any sense of when it'll come together, or what it might be called?

RED: This year has been a bit of a strange one for me so far, and it took me a little while to adjust to finally not being in the Pipettes anymore. After a couple of false starts, I embarked on an illicit affair with a Casiotone 401, and have spent the last six months writing in my bedroom. Whilst this is an ongoing process, about a month ago I turned around and realized that I had a body of work that was starting to form itself, that belonged to a family. So I'm now at the point where I want to start investigating the sonic potential of my songs. I have started talking to producers, and I'm in the process of going into the studio with a couple of different people to see what happens, but really it's still at a formative stage. It's really important to me that I find the right people to work with, because I feel quite protective of my work at the moment. But I'm also really excited about the possibility of other people channeling their ideas and energies into it.

I'm on the lookout for the right combination of elements to come together, and hopefully things will be in place by the end of the summer to start properly recording. I have an idea for the title but I won't know if it's right until the record is finished, so for now it is still a secret.

Pitchfork: The song I've heard on your MySpace doesn't sound at all like a Pipettes song. Would you say it's characteristic of your current style as a songwriter? You list a myriad of influences on your MySpace, so it seems your tunes could literally sound like anything.

RED: Obviously it would be pointless for me to leave a band and then carry on writing versions of songs I used to sing. I have an opportunity to be far more personal, for starters, and I am very keen to develop and challenge myself. I suppose I have adapted some of the methods with which I'm writing-- for example, recording everything as I go along-- which I never used to do. This has allowed me to explore harmony and layering sounds and rhythmic ideas, but it has all been done mainly on one instrument-- which has been constricting but also quite a revelatory process-- so in that way there is a commonality between my songs.

I have fundamentally been very focused on melodic patterns and structures, but I really want to experiment with textures and layers and spaces, and finding the right balances. I am writing things which I have never written before, which is really exciting. I suppose I had to re-learn a lot of what it was to write for myself, having spent such a long time working within a specific structure and always thinking about other people. At first I was quite nervous about indulging or trusting my instincts, but I reckon that is the whole point of me attempting to write a record for myself.

Pitchfork: Did you leave the Pipettes, or were you asked to leave? The statement we received suggested you left voluntarily, but there was still some ambiguity there.

RED: It was a decision that I made on my own, and a very hard one at that. At no point did I feel my position was being threatened or that I was being pushed out; quite the reverse. There are a lot of different reasons why I decided to leave. For example, I was 17 when I first joined the band, and felt I was a very different person by the end than the one who was running down to Mockingbird Studio in Brighton after school.

The band became a very different entity over those four years, too. I had a really amazing experience and am proud to have been part of it and of what we achieved, but I felt that I didn't have any more to offer to the group. After being very much a part of the creative process for the first record, I couldn't bear the idea of being a dysfunctional cog in the wheel for album two. The rest of the band [has] been extremely supportive, and we are still in regular contact, so there are no hard feelings whatsoever.

Pitchfork: What role did you have in creating the songs for the first album? How about crafting the band's finely-tuned image? My understanding of the Pipettes was that it is largely Monster Bobby writing the songs, with a trio of females in mind to perform them.

RED: Unfortunately, that is a common misconception about the band. It was a far more democratic process than that. Bobby and [original Pipette] Julia [Clark-Lowes] conceived the idea together initially, and we all wrote the songs. One of the things that drew me to the concept in the first place was that I would have the chance to write within and against a framework, and I think those tensions made it what it was. I learned a huge amount, and found it very liberating to be part of a group working towards the same goal, and I feel I was a key player in developing our direction, alongside the others.

That also goes for the image, which we knew would be an integral part of the project from the outset. I was a consenting party in all of it. It wasn't as if anyone put a gun to my head and forced me into anything. It was the three girls that did all of the photo shoots and interviews, and although we were spokespeople for the band, fundamentally it was our voices and aesthetic decisions that came through. I decided how I wanted to look, how I wanted to perform and carry myself, alongside my musical contributions. No one else.

Pitchfork: Were you ever bothered by aspects the band's image, or fans' reactions to you? Did you ever feel secondary to Monster Bobby's vision for the band? Did you ever feel uncomfortable with dressing just like your two female band mates and dancing and mugging throughout the show?

RED: I have to admit that towards the end I did find aspects of our image suffocating, and found the emphasis on that side of things quite tedious, especially towards the end when we were only touring and promoting and not writing. However, I was also really interested in the opportunity to explore the power of a visual identity and I learned a lot about myself and how I related to performing.

At no point did I ever feel secondary to Bobby. He is my friend and was my bandmate, and we respect each other, but he was not the only person driving the project forward. I really enjoyed being part of something like that, but I got to the point where I wanted to step away from all of that stuff and focus on the things that mattered to me. Unfortunately, though, I don't think women can completely escape that aspect of the music industry the way things currently stand. It's just a case of how one deals with it.

Pitchfork: Had you been working on anything new for the Pipettes when the relationship was severed? Have you heard any of their new material?

RED: There were a few new songs about at the time, but really most of last year was spent touring, so I left before any real work was done. I wanted a clean break in that way. I know the band went into the studio a couple of weeks ago to record some demos. I think they've got about 23 new songs or something! I saw a few YouTube clips of a show they did in Spain a couple of weeks ago, but I really want to hear some proper recordings. I don't think I'll ever be able to be completely objective about their new material, but I know the band [is] really excited about the next record and will have full support from me.

Pitchfork: Are you still in contact with Monster Bobby? How about Gwenno? Do you know the new members Ani and Anna, or anything about them?

RED: I knew Ani-- who is lovely-- from before, and she made some dresses for us last year. But I didn't know Anna. I bumped into everyone in a pub in Brighton the other week and met Anna briefly, and she seems great. I know the new girls will give everything they have to the band, and everyone seems pretty invigorated. At the very least, I'm sure they'll be a far sight more professional than I ever was!!!!!!!

Pitchfork: What goals do you have for yourself as a musician in the future? Do you plan to tour once the album is out?

RED: Well, obviously the immediate thing is to get the bloody thing recorded, and I hope for that to be done by the year's end. All I want is to get a record out on my own, and I can't really see beyond that at this stage. I sincerely hope this won't be the only record I ever make, the romantic ideal being that I do this for the rest of my life, but we'll just have to see. To be honest I don't really know what else I could do at this point!

I have to admit I am really starting to miss playing live, and am looking to get some people to play with me in the not too distant future. I'm really not interested in being a solo artist in that way, and want to have people sharing the project with me. The thought of playing again and it all being my own material is so exciting, if not completely terrifying. I can't really sleep thinking about it all.