AS WELL AS singing live on stage with the Steve Ignorant Band on the current tour, and playing her own solo shows, Carol Hodge has just released her new and distinctive single Manoeuvres and is working on her next album EffortLess InSecurity due this Autumn. Carol spoke with The Hippies Now Wear Black about the making of Manoeuvres, the lure of ‘stoner rock’, and what’s coming up next.
Manoeuvres is a very different sounding single to anything you’ve released before. I was not expecting you to come out with something quite as full-on as that, and I’m pretty sure I was not alone. So what led you to arrive at Manoeuvres?
A lot of people weren’t expecting it! They weren’t expecting me to come out with something quite so heavy and guitar led, and angry and in your face, lyrically and in terms of the vocal performance. But that’s good. I like to wrong-foot people!
I’ve always maintained that one of the most fun things about being a solo artist is that I can do whatever I want. And I’ve just found myself listening to, and revisiting a lot of the “stoner rock” music that I really liked from the nineties.
I also wanted to work with Rob Heilig. I’ve known Rob for just over a year now, and we’re always saying we should do something creative together. Rob is also the videographer on this, but I knew that I wanted to work with him musically as well. I mentioned to him ‘look, I’m going into the studio in a couple of weeks – have you got anything for me?’ And he sent me a riff, and I knew straight away I could definitely do something with it, and it became the opening riff for what became Manoeuvres. I wrote the rest of the song around that. I just thought ‘yeah, like, why not open the new album with just the heaviest track that I’ve ever recorded – and then make a really disturbing video to go with it – because I can!’
Did you know from the start that this was going to become a heavy, dark song?
Yeah. But I wanted to bring a bit of levity to it too. Which is why the choruses are a bit more laid back, and more melodic. They’re a bit of a breather from the onslaught of the heavy guitars. I do believe that within any song, relying on a single idea can get old very quickly. So I like to mix things up – and do things like making a heavy riff sound even heavier by contrasting it with much lighter, more delicate, passages.
What was the inspiration behind a song with that sort of tenor?
In terms of specifics, it’s about two people that I used to be friends with that I’m no longer friends with. It tells the story of how they revealed themselves to be not quite who I thought they were. More generally, it’s a response to being concerned about how much duplicity there is online, in the personas that people present. There’s so much artifice out there, and so many people manoeuvring around the truth. There can be a real lack of authenticity, with people pivoting away from who they really are as a person. It reveals that chasm between what the real world is actually like and what we experience and present when we’re constantly plugged into our devices. For too many people, it’s all a game and it’s all about transactions instead of just being authentic. So there’s a lot to be angry about.
Ahead of its release, you revealed on social media a little bit of nervousness about the release of Manoeuvres, precisely because it was so different from what you’d done before and not something that people would automatically associate with your songwriting style.
Yeah. It is definitely a departure, for sure. I think that people who discovered me through my first album, which is basically a load of piano ballads, might hear Manoeuvres and think ‘Oh, that’s not what I was expecting.’ And they might not like it. But that’s fine, you know, because it could work the other way. Somebody who wasn’t really into my Elton John style piano ballads might think ‘Oh, what’s this? This sounds rockin’!’
That’s a striking, atmospheric video you’ve made for Manoeuvres – and on a tiny budget, I’m guessing?
That was the other aspect of the collaboration between me and Rob Heilig. Rob’s done a fair bit of professional photography and videography in the past. And so he’s got the experience, he knows what he’s doing, and he’s got a great camera! I’m good at having creative ideas. I used to work in Art Department for TV and Film, so I’ve got a good idea of how I want a shot to look in terms of the set and the props and lighting. So it was a good fit for us to collaborate in that way, using our respective skill sets to put something together – as you rightly say – for very little budget, because that’s how we have to work.
We went to Haweswater in the Lake District, and were just struck by how beautiful the landscape is. We immediately said ‘oh, let’s just film some stuff.’ We had this loose idea of what we wanted to film. It started off as something really abstract. I had these weird child resuscitation medical masks. Eight of them. So the initial concept was ‘Let’s do something in black and white, that doesn’t make any sense at all.’ And then, as we got into it, it became more and more apparent that it would work better if it had some sort of narrative arc to it.
Did you manage to capture everything in a one-day shoot?
It ended up being three days in total. We did a lot of the exterior shots at Haweswater, and then we wanted to do some interior shots, and we wanted to do those in what looked like a derelict building. I was familiar with this place in Huddersfield, just just down the road from where I live, called Nathans Cottages. I’d never been there, but I went and did a ‘recce’, and got a few shots while I was there. Pretty quickly we knew ‘yeah, this is the place’. We went back twice. One time it was raining heavily, which actually worked quite well. It made it more atmospheric.
And then there’s that thing that always happens when you’re shooting on-the-fly. When you start editing, you realise ‘oh, we could do with this shot or that shot.’ So being able to go back, and be able to pick up extra shots, because it was just down the road and – and was free to get into – was great. It’s a good partnership, and it works.
The last time that we spoke, the Vertiginous Drops album had just come out. You’ve already confirmed that Manoeuvres will be the opening track for your next album, due in the autumn. Were you immediately thinking about songs for the next album as soon as the previous one was released?
Pretty much, yeah! That’s how the cycle of these things works. I’m not looking at releasing the album until September or October. And that’s so I can give myself more time to release singles and music videos in the run-up, to generate interest in advance. That was not something I did much for the last album. I released just one single, without a video. Making music videos for single songs, it’s a key part of building an album’s identity up front. Now that I’m working with Rob, we’ve just shot a second music video which is being edited at the moment.
I still do everything myself. I handle all of the press and the radio contacts. It takes a long time to contact everyone, so you need to allow for that. And then, in a lot of cases, you don’t get any response at all! I do keep a lot of plates spinning. But I don’t know what I’d do, if I wasn’t spinning those plates, you know? I like being busy and I like always having something to work towards and get stuck into.
Does Manoeuvres set the tone for the whole album, or are you wanting to have a range of diverse and distinctive sounds on the record?
Manoeuvres is definitely the heaviest song in the album. And I think overall, compared to my previous albums, this feels more cohesive in terms of musical style. I think my previous albums have been a little more of a grab-bag of musical styles. But I’ve valued that, because it’s kept things interesting and made the shape of an album a little bit more varied. This definitely feels like it’s all the same band, playing the same instruments and in the same room, on all the tracks. So, yeah, there’s different tangents in there, but generally it’s more cohesive, and it will be more of a “stoner rock” album.
There’s a big difference of scale in the work you’re doing at part of the Steve Ignorant Band and your solo gigs. How do you handle the shift between the two different live experiences?
Yeah, absolutely. It can be a bit of a challenge to shift from the one to the other. You can be on stage in front of two-and-a-half to three thousand people at Rebellion, doing Crass songs with Steve, and then turn up for a solo gig to find only twenty-five people are there. You have to remind yourself ‘oh, yeah, this is my audience, right? That Rebellion audience, that’s the Crass songs audience!’ I do forget that sometimes, and find myself thinking ‘why are there only thirty people at my gig?’ So you have to tell yourself ‘because you’re playing a really small venue and, as a solo artist, this is the level that you’re at, and that’s totally fine.’ It’s a varied experience, for sure!
As well as the Steve Ignorant Band shows here and in the US, you’ve got some interesting live solo shows coming up in the UK – a seated gig with Headsticks, and the Selenite Songs tour.
The Selenite Songs tour is with my friend Julia Othmer from Kansas City, who is also a piano playing singer songwriter. We met about five years ago, when we both were supporting The Alarm on tour, and we just became buddies. We did a few gigs together back in 2019. As she was planning to come over to the UK this summer, I suggested ‘well, why don’t we just do a tour together?’ So we’ve managed to piece together fourteen dates in total.
There’s going to be brand new songs that we wrote over the past six months as part of this project. We’re going to be doing some duets, and both doing some solo songs. We’ll also be talking about the songwriting process and creativity and telling stories behind some of the songs that we’ve written. We’re picturing it like a series of ‘songwriters’ circles’ which will be a different experience every night. We’re playing really teeny venues, all quite intimate, so a sense of closeness with the audience will be a big factor on the tour.
The way that you describe it, there couldn’t be much more of a contrast with belting out Crass numbers to thousands in an auditorium. There’s no obvious way to access the same sense of a shared ‘conversation’ in that setting.
No, exactly. But I quite like the idea that somebody who has seen me singing Crass songs will come along to this and maybe think ‘that was not at all what I was expecting’, but hopefully still get something out of it, you know? Julia is just absolutely incredible. Hearing her sing just one song, any song, is worth the entry price on its own. I can’t say it often enough how amazing she is. Even if you’re feeling ‘oh, I don’t ever want to hear Carol playing piano again’, come and see Julia!
There’s a lot of concern being expressed about the loss of small, independent venues in the UK – places an artist or a band can approach directly and get a booking. How difficult was it to put your own tour together in 2024?
Well, I was fortunate in that I had a bit of a head start. I do a lot of touring anyway, so I had a good set of contacts to approach. That said, there are quite a few new promoters that we’re working with on this tour. And I’m not gonna lie, it took me a month’s work to book it, putting in loads of hours every week. Booking those dates was a real labour of love. You’ve got to be super-organized as well, so there were spreadsheets involved!
You have to chase people up quite a lot as well, and make sure to get all the dates in the right order, and make sure you’re not double-booking yourself. It took a long time. But I’m just super grateful for the fact that there are still some supportive, independent promoters out there.
The process of negotiating can be tricky as well, because we don’t know how many people are going to come. I’m not going to lie to promoters. I’m not going to say ‘oh, we’ll definitely pull fifty people’, because I don’t know that for sure. What I can say is ‘here are all the things we’re going to do to promote it’ so ‘let’s negotiate a deal that we’re both happy to take a risk on.’ And I think that that’s really a place where a lot of smaller artists and venues are at.
There’s still this weird thing within the music industry of people selling themselves as something they’re not – and exaggerating their influence and pulling power. If you do that, if you promise a promoter something and you don’t fulfil it, they’re just not going to book you again. And, for me, it’s all about longevity. It’s about fostering those relationships and steadily building an audience that will keep coming back. It’s not about making a quick buck and getting out.
Carol Hodge. 2024. Manoeuvres. https://ffm.to/b3rdq39
The song evokes the sound of Queen Adreena fist fighting with Queens Of The Stone Age in a dingy basement, while Queen smash the life out of a dusty old Hammond in the corner.
Oscillating between stomping rage in the verses and dreamy, organ-infused disappointment in the choruses, Manoeuvres sets out the stall for Carol’s upcoming fifth studio album, due for release in September 2024.
— Press release for Manoeuvres
The Hippies Now Wear Black 