Interview - Help She Can't Swim

I enjoyed this interview, Leesey seemed really sweet.

Words - Suzy Sims
First published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd


LEESEY FRANCES - HELP SHE CAN'T SWIM

HELP SHE CAN'T SWIM
Tom Denney - vocals, guitar
Leesey Frances - vocals, keys
Tim Palmer - bass
Lewis Baker - drums

Warning – Tedious Link Ahead.

We have a member of staff in our London office called Mr Hughes. Hello, Mr Hughes. Mr Hughes has a brother, also called Mr Hughes. This second Mr Hughes was the engineer/knob twiddler/tea maker during the recording of Help She Can’t Swim’s new album ‘The Death Of Nightlife’. Mr Hughes (the first one) phoned me up and told me about it literally one minute before I phoned Leesey Frances. Small world, innit.

And with that near-fascinating revelation out the way, here’s the interview. Leesey sings and plays keys in Help She Can’t Swim, alongside Tom Denney (vocals and guitar), Tim Palmer (bass) and Lewis Baker (drums). She’s lounging about in her pyjamas when we call her at lunchtime. I apologise because I don’t usually do phone interviews and there’s a strong possibility I’ll forget my questions, but Leesey says that’s fine because she’s probably ‘going to be quite useless at answering them.’

“I’m having a nice relaxing day. My girlfriend’s coming down later.” It's a warm day, and I say don't tell me you have a sunny garden as well. "Yeah I have. But I haven’t even been out in it because I’m not dressed yet and that would be wrong!” We’ve got a car park, I don’t really want to sunbathe in that. “Yeah I can see things against it. People possibly running you over, you know, things like that.”

Help She Can’t Swim’s last single was ‘Hospital Drama’, which was out at the end of March. Leesey starts telling me about it, then decides to put me through to Tom Denney because he wrote the lyrics.

“That’s probably I think the most personal song that I’ve done. My dad and my grandmother both had cancer, they were both sort of in and out of hospital, on lots of medication. It’s all about the feelings of that,” says Tom.

“I just find it kind of really annoying when people think it’s actually about going to a party and getting drunk. I was reading that and it was like ‘oh my God you’ve completely missed the second verse’. If the song was about anything else I probably wouldn’t mind,” he says with an embarrassed giggle. “It’s like oh my God, you’ve completely misread that.”

Now Tom sounds slightly surprised – Leesey’s vanished. I briefly thought she’d given up on the interview and had unkindly passed me off onto her bandmate, but she was just making a quick toilet stop. “Tag team interviewing!” says Tom as he hands the phone back.

I thought you’d legged it up the road or something. “Oh no. I was also looking for tobacco. I was looking through my dad’s room because I’ve run out. And so I was going to steal some, because I’m a bad daughter. I have no moral fibre.” Did you find some? “Yeah I did so it’s fine, I don’t have to panic.” That’s all right. You’re a bad daughter, but you’re going to be slightly less stressed.

I ask about the promo video for ‘Hospital Drama’, which you can view here should you not have seen it already. “Oh God yeah,” says Leesey. I can almost hear her rolling her eyes down the phone. Whose idea was that?

“Not ours! We basically got sent through a load of treatments, most of them were beyond hideous. Basically we were like ‘We don’t want any dress up doctors and nurses.’ We didn’t want to kind of trivialise it in that kind of way. And this is why Tommy’s a bit pissed off about how it was.

"We got there and they were like ‘Yeah Tom you’ve got to do some acting’ and he was just like ‘What…’ This was probably made worse by the fact that Tommy’s dad’s an actor and therefore we knew that when they saw it they would probably be pissing themselves. Us three, because we just had to be dressed up stupid, we were like ‘Ha ha ha!’ but then ‘Oh God poor Tommy!’ So yeah, it’s fine, but it was a bit like, I dunno. I don’t know if it was the best move for us! But it’s all right. Dressing up like the Horrors.”

Got some good outfits out of it. “Good times, eh. I think I probably look the worst out of everyone. Because I’ve got red hair it kind of accentuated the disgusting face paint I had on, do you know what I mean. Most people had brown hair and it made them look a bit ghostly and that’s fine. They also backcombed my hair to absolute fuck and I was like ‘Oh my God, what have you done to me?’ I was just like, I want to wash my hair and make it feel less disgusting. But it’s fine. The stealing of the soul wasn’t really our idea.”

This year Help She Can’t Swim are playing The Great Escape in Brighton and Dot To Dot in Nottingham. “We’re doing one called Emmaboda in Sweden which we’re really excited about but I think that’s the one we’re playing where we’re quite annoyed because Xiu Xiu’s playing but on another day so it’s a bit like [v high pitched noise like when you stand on a cat’s tail]. But we’re really excited about that, ‘cause we’ve never been to Sweden.”

Are there any bands you’re looking forward to at Dot To Dot and Great Escape? “Erm… I’m completely useless because I never know who’s playing.” She shouts over to Tom and asks him. “Dot To Dot: The Thermals, Bearsuit, Architecture in Helsinki, that’ll be nice. At the Great Escape we’ll be able to see My Device. That’ll be really funny because Tommy’s known them for years.” You going to heckle? “Yeah it’ll be funny. Oh, Damn Arms might be playing apparently. We like them.”

It’s a good line up this year. “Yeah I don’t remember there being anyone very exciting last year. It’s really annoying because we don’t know who we’re playing with still.” I tell Leesey the schedule went up online the other day, in fact I was looking at it earlier. She relays the information to Tom, who goes to have a look. (They’re playing the same stage as Rubik, Radar and Johnossi). All I can remember offhand is that Art Brut are playing on the Thursday. Or maybe it’s the Friday…

“I saw Jasper [Future, in charge of Art Brut’s ‘Stage Craft’ according to TheirSpace] a few weeks ago because I went to see Bis. I hadn’t seen him for ages but he was really hungover so I don’t think he even went to the gig in the end, he just went to the pub bless him. But I haven’t seen them play for aaaages.”

She’s known Art Brut for years. Rock star mingling, you see. “I used to go out with them when I was 17, to The Villa in Bournemouth. I’m from Holbury which is like this tiny village nearish Southampton. Jasper went to college with me and Eddie [Argos] used to come in all the time. We used to go the The Villa and have wild nights! Good times!”

The band met at Southampton while they were all studying. Leesey’s still there. “Because I’m completely brassic!” I ask where her favourite place in the city is. “My house. My bed. I used to go out in Southampton, I don’t really anymore. I used to go to Goblets and Nexus about 5, 10 years ago, I used to go to Rhino’s when Hammy was DJing…” Good old Hammy. “Yeah, Hammy’s amazing.”

What was the last CD you bought? There’s a very long ‘ummm…’ “I haven’t actually got any records for ages. I’m gonna go in my room and have a look because I’m sure there will be something.” She apologises for being “really shit” at remembering anything. I tell her that’s fine and she’s welcome to make it up.

“I buy books more to be honest. The last book I got was called ‘Cass and the Stone Butch’ and I also got this really funny teen novel called ‘Guitar Girl’. I write a 'zine called ‘Vaginas In Turmoil’ and it’s basically like a pisstake on annuals like old ‘Judy’ and ‘My Guy'. It’s all about kind of queer culture and youth and just pisstaking ‘How much in turmoil are you - you need to get this man out of your life!’ kind of thing.

"I write it with my friend Paffy and basically we both review a different teen fiction novel in each copy. Last time he did a Point Horror book (“Brilliant!” I say, and she agrees with “Awesome!”). I did ‘Forever’ by Judy Blume and talked about how it was the most amazing book ever because it made me feel fine when I was like 10 about masturbating.” She starts laughing.

“So I got this book the other day and it was really, really funny, it’s quite heartfelt and stuff. At the end the woman who wrote it is like ‘I was inspired to write this book by all these bands’ and then she listed all these bands that I really like so it was like ‘Aww!’ So that was quite good. But records, records…”

She starts singing ‘Everywhere in my room is a complete shithole…’ “Oh I’ve been listening to The Primitives a lot recently, that’s been exciting.”

I confess that we were sent the Eurovision CD just the day before. “Oh my God. That’s no good at all!” she says. “What were they thinking?!” Leesey gives up looking through her records and shouts to Tom asking what she’s bought recently. “I’m fucking useless aren’t I, I’m really sorry. I can give you a list of things I’ve been listening to recently? My Favourite, who are amazing, I’ve been listening to a lot of Carter again, like reliving my youth. Oh, actually the Mika Miko record, which is fucking awesome. I’ve been listening to Camera Obscura, fuelling my twee-pop sensibilities.

“It’s quite good because lots of my friends make me mixtapes for going on tour.” That’s really nice of them. “Yes, they’re nice presents aren’t they so I always make them for my friends and then they always make them back. It’s really nice and it means I can take my Walkman on tour and listen to lots of stuff that you can only get on vinyl.” That’s the problem I find with vinyl, you always end up having to buy the song three times or you can’t play it anywhere else.

“It’s really annoying. My sister got me an MP3 player for Christmas which is amazing apart from the fact I am completely stuck in the 90s and I was like (sad voice) ‘All my favourite things are on record and I’m not going to be able to put them on it.’ And that’s you know, quite upsetting! My computer’s quite old, like I can’t even connect on it so I have to use my girlfriend’s.”

Does she like the same kind of music as you? “Kind of, but I end up having lots of hardcore stuff on there, like I have Floorpunch. I’m more obsessed with playing Solitaire on it!” she says and laughs very loudly. She prefers the normal version, unlike me who sets it to Vegas and loses a lot of money in a short space of time.

“Also she lent me her GameBoy so I’ve become really obsessed with PacMan Columns!” It gives Leesey something to do while waiting around for soundchecks. “I’m such a loser! I can’t believe I’m telling you all this…”You need something to do though, you can’t just sit there. “That’s true, it’s so boring. That’s why I take so many books on tour, because I don’t just want to sit there and stare into space and go ‘Wow. That’s an amazing drum sound, well done…’ It’s like mehhhh yaaaaawn…”

Help She Can’t Swim have a lengthy tour planned throughout May to promote ‘The Death Of Nightlife’, which was actually recorded last January and is only just about to see the light of day. “We had to get new people to work with us, so it’s getting them kind of all their stuff together, us having to relearn the songs with one less person in the band, shit like that, and yeah it’s kind of been a long process but I’m just looking forward to playing shows when people actually know what the songs are. Because I always find it a bit depressing when you go and see bands and you don’t know any of their new songs. So yeah, I’m quite excited about that.”

You’ll be doing Southampton as well, a bit of a nice homecoming show. “Yeah, it’s always nice to play in Southampton because mummy comes and she dances. It’s really funny. I see her out the corner of my eye and just start pissing myself!”

She can drive you there and back and buy you a drink as well. “Exactly. It’s a few days before one of my best friends is getting married. It’s a bit shit really because we’re on tour when she’s having her hen night, but she’s gonna come and have another on the day of my gig, then two days later she’s getting married and I’ll be a bridesmaid. I’ve somehow got to get myself from Brighton back home for the wedding the next day so I’m currently in kind of qualms over what to do... I might have to get a lift from someone.”

She gets a nice dress though. “It sounds a bit gross out - it’s kind of pale gold, but it’s really pretty, it’s like a long skirt and a basque so it’s really nice.” It won’t clash with your hair or anything. “No. I’ll have to dye my hair again, someone told me my hair had faded from ginger to canary yellow yesterday which I was quite upset about. It’s really annoying because my hair is actually ginger but because I had it black for so many years I had to like bleach it out, and now it’s kind of growing out so it’s just like meeeeehh, waiting, waiting! But I might get some dye this weekend, that’ll be exciting.”

Shall we talk a bit about your album, The Death Of Nightlife? Finally out in a couple of weeks, as we said. Hurray for that. “Yeah, totally.” What track do you like best on there? “Oh Jesus… ermmm… I like ‘I Think The Record’s Stopped’, and I like ‘Just Be Social’ and I like ‘Pass The Hat Around’. I don’t know, it’s strange, you know there’s always the worry when things are put back like that you’ll go off it. But I listened to it for the first time in months and months the other day, and I was like ‘wow I really like all the songs still’. So that’s really cool. We’re all really happy with it from start to end.

“I think the difference between this album and the first album is that we’ve been writing with each other longer and we actually knew this one was going to come out so we made it the best we could. Whereas the first one was ‘bang, bang, done’ kind of thing. You just do what feels right, you write songs and if they feel good, they feel like they’re working well we keep them.”
It sounds good, I was listening to it earlier. “Oh, I’m glad that you like it.” You could jump around a lot to it. “That’s good, my thing is always if you like a record you dance around your room in your knickers to it.” I would do that in the office, but it’s open plan. I might embarrass myself. “Yeah, not so good!” She laughs loudly.

The artwork was done by Leesey’s friend Kate Moross. The track numbers on the back are displayed as dominoes, which is a good touch. “Yeah, I really like that as well. She’s one of my friends. I’ve known her for a while. We were going to do the artwork ourselves but we changed all the artwork because it was put back so long and we wanted to get someone new. I didn’t really want to work with someone that we didn’t know. I’ve known Kate for ages and she was really up for doing it and I think it looks amazing.

"I’m really excited about the vinyl, it’s got a drawing of a deer’s head but the head comes up twice on either side like a mirror image. It looks really amazing." It’ll be good to see it on the shelves. “I’m excited about the copies coming through the post. Yaaaaa! I just like holding them, not like CDs where you’re like ‘whatever’. Vinyl, you can hold it and it feels nice and looks better.” And it’s so much bigger as well. “All my favourite records are on vinyl. Apart from the ones I haven’t been able to find..."

It’s very warm in the room where I'm phoning from, nice and summery. I ask Leesey when she last went on holiday. Sadly not for a very long time. “Upsetting really. I might have to get on that. I’d quite like to go somewhere nice. I’d like to go to Berlin and actually have some time to do nice stuff.”

You don’t get much time for sightseeing and stuff when you’re on tour, do you. “Oh not at all, it’s like here’s a venue, that’s it. Here’s a hotel, and that’s it. It’s like we always want to have a look round. It was nice in Paris the other day and we had a bit of time to walk around and it was bloody boiling. But yeah it was mental, it was proper hot and there wasn’t really any air circulating, and because I’m ginger it doesn’t really bode well with my skin, it just starts hurting and then –“ Red. Lots of red. “Yeah. Nice! Good times. But yeah, I have all that shit to come in the next couple of months. Something to look forward to!”

Leesey decides with all this travel talk she wants to book a holiday. “That’s my new thing. I might go somewhere fancy. Have you been away?” I went to Newquay last summer with a few friends to the crummiest caravan park ever. There were drunk people falling over everywhere and I got scared.

“That’s amazing. I’d love to go on a caravan holiday. I think I’m going with some friends to Thorpe Park soon, which’ll be really funny. And then maybe we’ll go and stay in a caravan somewhere. That’ll be fun.

"And also because I live in the (New) Forest I think some of my friends are coming down from London in the summer, they’re all like city people so I’m going to make them come and stay at my house.” And camp in your garden. “Totally! I’ll make them go walking and they’ll be really scared about the horses walking in the road. It’ll be really funny. I live opposite a cow field and a farm track, so we are pretty desolate. I’m sure they’ll cope."

And with that I leave pyjama-clad Leesey to laze around a bit longer in the sun...

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Help She Can't Swim's album The Death Of Nightlife is released through Fantastic Plastic Records on May 7th. The band will tour extensively in May - check their MySpace for dates and locations

Help She Can't Swim
MySpace