FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Savages - Silence Yourself
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SOME people might not have heard…
of Savages. The band formed in London in 2011 and released two albums. Consisting of Jehnny Beth, Gemma Thompson, Ayse Hassan and Fay Milton, I am going to concentrate in their remarkable debut album, Silence Yourself. It was released on 6th May, 2013 via Matador Records. I would encourage everyone to get this album on vinyl. Their second album, Adore Life (2016), is equally strong…though I have a particular soft spot for Silence Yourself. I particularly love the vocals of Jehnny Beth (who has gone on to have a successful solo career, and she has worked with the likes of Bobby Gillespie and Johnny Hostile (who co-produced Silence Yourself). It is a shame Savages only made two albums, as they are an incredible group! Maybe they burned too intensely to last that long. I hear songs from Silence Yourself played on the radio - the album is something you will want to hear from start to finish. Prior to coming to a couple of reviews for Savages’ debut album (in case you need further persuasion to get it), here is a review from Peek a Boo Magazine in 2013. They spoke with Jehnny Beth about the formation of Savages and how their debut album came together:
“Jehn, thank you very much for this interview ! First, how would you describe the music that you're playing ? There's a lot of postpunk, plus a combination of different styles of music?
I think it's a combination of the four of us. We have different backgrounds, different influences.
Did you meet the other girls in London ?
Yes. Gemma (Thompson) was playing guitar for John And Jehn, my previous band. We were on tour together for two years, that's how we got to know each other. John (Hostile) had kind of a guitar crush on her. He got interested in what she was doing and asked her to come to play with us and then after the end of the tour, she told me she wanted to do a project with Ayse Hassan, our bassist. First she asked John but he was too busy recording the Lescop album so he declined. So I proposed if she would try something with me. And we thought it would be good to have a female drummer as well, so that's how it started, really...
How did you record your first album ?
We recorded it last December for 3 weeks. It was produced by Johnny Hostile, and there was also Rodaidh McDonald in the studio.
It was recorded in London ?
Yes, at the Fish Factory studio and we recorded it mainly live. The idea was to go from one song to the other to avoid getting tired of it. We wanted to have a kind of Nirvana drum sound, and some Converge guitar sounds as well. We wanted to find something hardcore in the sound, like a punch in the face.
Do you write all the lyrics ?
Yeah, I write all the lyrics.
And the music is composed by the band...
Yes. I'm quite lucky because the girls are quite interested in the lyrics. 'Husbands', eg, is really constructed around the aggressiveness of the lyrics. It has taken so many meanings, it's really interesting. People take the song and make it their own. We did a show in LA where there was this gay couple, two guys, in the front row. They were nice. During the chorus of 'Husbands', they were sort of screaming the word to each other, while kissing and everything. I never thought that would be the meaning. I was amazed. I thought it was great. I think each of us in Savages like men and men attitudes and visions of women. We're not really into feminist things. We quite enjoy the company of men, obviously the ones we know, and we share their visions of sexuality.
You know that it can give an image of you as women who look like men and sing like men ?
It's more like having a male perspective...
Also the way you dress...
Yeah, a bit like a tomboy.. But it's a way to be comfortable most of all”.
The reaction and reception of Silence Yourself was hugely positive. Reaching the top twenty in the U.K. album chart, it still sounds so fresh and meaningful today. Such a powerful album created by such an amazing group! With critics making comparisons to Siouxsie Sioux, The Stranglers and Joy Division, there was definitely a lot of support and high expectations put on the Savages shoulders. The group lived up to that, but they created an album that was very much their voices and nobody else’s. This is what NME said in their review:
“London quartet Savages take music dead seriously, like it’s an exam. Since the release of meticulous B-side ‘Husbands’ last summer, the all-female foursome have played their cards close to their chest, choosing interviews carefully and taking their androgynous brand of post-punk with the industrial spirit of Magazine and Gang Of Four to venues nationwide. French frontwoman Jehnny Beth has moulded herself into the demonic, possessed spawn of Ian Curtis and Siouxsie Sioux. Their callous soul has sent such cold shivers up the world’s spine that the polar icecaps have likely stopped melting. Savages enter the world so fully realised and neurotically confident they’re met with a unanimous round of applause.
In theory then, debut album ‘Silence Yourself’ is flawless. Just see its monochrome sleeve – even their eyebrows look deeply important. The studied angular riffs, motorik beats and flair for tension-and-release form a confrontational soundtrack to urban friction. Every distorted note sounds under control. Savages could manipulate the screech of fingernails running down a chalkboard and make it sound melodic.
The hypnotic rhythms of tracks such as ‘I Am Here’ entrance you until you agree that this isn’t a mere album, it’s a work of art. How crafty. “I am here/No more fear/No more dark shadows”, wails Jehnny, as if comforting a lover, eventually climaxing with quivering shrieks of “I am here! I am here! I AM HERE!” like a malfunctioning C-3PO. It’s as relaxing as a Hitchcock murder scene. Jehnny’s vocal histrionics are similarly patterned throughout: ‘She Will’ (“She will! She will! SHE WILL!”), ‘Husbands’ (“Husbands! Husbands! HUSBANDS!”) etc. The former’s guitar line is the most colossal of 2013 so far.
The sequencing alone screams instant cult classic. Opener ‘Shut Up’, for example, begins with an excerpt from John Cassavetes’ film Opening Night. The middle is marked by ‘Dead Nature’, a dystopian two-minute instrumental that knocks and echoes like the inside of a grandfather clock. Final track ‘Marshal Dear’ ends proceedings with piano balladry and – zut alors! – a jazz brass solo! It ticks every box. And yet something doesn’t connect.
Savages are so hysterically overprotective of their image that music is their only message. Problem is, if you break its spell ‘Silence Yourself’ often doesn’t say much. Scratch its surface and you’ll find ‘No Face’, for example. “You have no face/You have no face/You! Have! No! Face!” Who has no face? A man? A potato? Who knows? Savages isolate themselves with their clever-clever humourless intensity. As with some modern art, you may find ‘Silence Yourself’ leaves you whispering, “I appreciated it, but I didn’t love it”.
With eleven flawless tracks that each have their own strengths and skin, Silence Yourself sounds magnificent on vinyl. An album to keep and play over and over. I will end with Pitchfork’s take on Silence Yourself:
“Savages' music feels out of step with current trends-- which I'm sure they'd take as a compliment. With its tumbling, tom-heavy percussion, singer Jehnny Beth's Siouxsie-summoning battle cries, and the compositional emphasis placed on Ayse Hassan’s bass (in the moments when Beth is silent, the bass feels like Savages’ lead singer), post-punk is Silence Yourself’s most obvious sonic reference point. And it doesn’t matter that they missed the post-punk revival by about a decade. While the bands that dominated indie rock in the early aughts looked to Joy Division and Gang of Four for reasons that had mostly to do with rhythm, Savages’ music finds kinship with post-punk’s oppositional politics, thematic darkness, and anxiety about the dehumanizing effects of technology-- the spirit is the same, but it’s been adjusted to reflect the times. Savages’ distaste for experiencing life through a screen comes from the same place as, say, Wire’s sardonic take on viewers whose idea of adventure was living vicariously through “the Lone Ranger”; after all, if “Ex Lion Tamer” were written today, it’d probably go, “Stay glued to your iPhone.”
Which is not to say that Savages are writing scathing songs about shitty service providers; their lyrics are boldly stark, elemental, and timeless. (The titles alone hit with a blunt force: “She Will”, “Hit Me”, “No Face”, “Shut Up.”) Beth has said that the band’s writing process is less about addition than subtraction, paring each song down to its most essential shape. All of the best songs on Silence Yourself derive their power from this kind of focused intensity, from the driving, dissonant “City’s Full” to the creeping, percussive lurch of “I Am Here”. The chorus of “Husbands”, a phenomenal single first released last year, sharpens that focus down to a single word. “I woke up and saw the face of a guy/ I don’t know who he is,” Beth sings in the song’s paranoia-inducing opening moments. A Savages song is about challenging the ideas, words and desires we consider “normal”, and they’ve found that repetition is an effective way to get that point across. “Husbands, husbands, husbands, husbands, husbands, husbands,” Beth chants in a manic whisper; with each intonation, the meaning erodes from a word that’s ostensibly meant to evoke comfort, protection and familiarity until it feels faceless.
Savages really show promise and range on the slow-burners. The moody dirge "Waiting for a Sign" and goth-cabaret closer "Marshall Dear" aren't the most immediate songs on the record, but over repeated listens, they bloom. If Hassan and Faye Milton's punishing rhythm section takes the helm on the more frantic numbers, Savages' downtempo moments allow Gemma Thompson and her scuzzy Fender to shine. On the excellent "Strife," she holds back as often as she strikes, underscoring Beth's most brutal lines with perfectly timed jolts and filling the song's winding corriders with thick plumes of distortion.
The mix allows each band member’s contribution to smolder with equal intensity and lends a palpable physicality to Savages’ sound. Milton handles her toms and bass drum like a boxer going at a punching bag; Hassan’s bass strings pulsate like a throbbing tendons; Thompson’s guitar cuts with a goosebump-inducing tone that recalls a chainsaw, and Beth shrieks like she’s resetting her own bones. Combining in a constant pendulum swing between tension and release, it all provides the perfect atmosphere for the darkly sensual themes that Silence Yourself explores.
As a lyricist, Beth says she’s inspired by the “awkward places” from which “twisted, original desires” spring. “Hit Me”, a sub-two-minute tornado of squalling noise, isn’t about domestic abuse, as some people assume, but is instead about a consensual encounter described by the porn star Belladonna. (Beth: “I hate it when women are turned into victims.”) Savages might make political pronouncements in interviews and on album covers, but their songs come from a lived-in perspective as Beth inhabits her different characters’ states of mind-- and forces the listener to do the same”.
A remarkably compelling and strong album from a tremendous group. One of the vert best L.P.s of the 2010s, Silence Yourself is a remarkable listen. Go and check out the album and immerse yourself in its genius. Although the group had a relatively short time together, the mighty Savages definitely…
LEFT their mark!