Interview
Interview
Cloth: “We’re lucky to be operating in our own little world”
Ahead of their UK tour the guitar pop duo open up about their latest album, their beginnings, and soundtracking Normal People
Glasgow’s gorgeous guitar pop duo Cloth sound so intimate at times, it’s like you’re the solitary soul outside of the band that’s been invited in to listen. Bandmates Paul and Rachael Swinton share a creative kinship more exclusive and symbiotic as most groups however – they’re twins.
Over Cloth’s previous two albums, the pair have crafted a trademark sound based on sparse, delicate soundscapes and Rachael’s hushed vocal that feels as though she’s whispering her innermost fears and secrets directly into your ear.
But for their third full-length Pink Silence – released on Rock Action Records, the label of post-rock stalwarts Mogwai who happen to be fellow Glasweigans – the Swinton’s have made their world more expansive than ever. Swirling brushstrokes of orchestration uplift the melodic minimalism of their songwriting, steered gently by contributions from Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite, Portishead’s Adrian Utley, and composer Owen Pallett. Poignant and warm, Pink Silence glows like the autumn sun at dusk.
With Cloth set to embark on a tour of the UK throughout November, Paul and Rachael opened up about “letting go” on Pink Silence, their (unlikely as it may seem) heavy metal beginnings, how minimalism in all its iterations informs their sound, and an awkward encounter related to acclaimed romantic drama Normal People.
You wanted to define making this album by “letting go”. What did letting go mean to you in terms of the writing and recording process?
Rachel: It was a different approach from the get-go. When it came to demo-ing, in the past we’ve been very meticulous and detailed, trying to cover every basis. This time we left a lot of space deliberately for experimentation and collaboration down the line. When we write, we write our core guitar parts and the melodies in place. But we wanted more room to bring in other people to add different instruments and to shape the arrangements of the songs.
The album features contributions from Stuart [Braithwaite], Adrian [Utley] and Owen [Pallett]. Was it difficult opening up your intimate set up and being more collaborative?
Paul: When we did the second record, Secret Measure, it was the first time we’d worked with a producer – Ali Chant in Bristol – and it was really strange opening up. At that point, me and Rachel were very insular. We produced everything. It was jarring at first. But when we came to Pink Silence, we knew more about the nature of collaboration – it’s only going to work if you trust that good things will happen when you open up. So, we were less intimidated by the prospect this time around. We’ve introduced strings for the first time, working with Adrian who’s on such a wavelength that their ideas are strong enough to shape how a song sounds. Seeing that happen, you think ‘maybe this isn’t what we thought it was, but it could be something cooler’. It took some getting used to, but when we embraced it we unanimously decided that it was for the best. Great things were happening when we were in the studio together. So we just thought, ‘yeah, let’s run with it.’ Even though it flies in the face of how we used to work.
Pink Silence is characteristically ruminative, but more spacious and cinematic than anything you’ve released. Did you factor in how the album would translate live when you were recording?
Rachel: We’re always thinking about that. Our live set-up has always been a three-piece, which will continue for a while. The core of guitar, drums and me singing. My worry in the past was ‘how do we present this live if we go huge?’ With an orchestra or whatever. Letting go ties into that. If you go big, there’s scope for you to go big live. There’s nothing stopping you. Any inhibitions we had about going big, that it wasn’t us, we let them go. I just trusted that it would turn out ok, and that we’d do it justice live.
There’s a beautifully liminal quality to Cloth. Do you have any kind of imagery or themes in mind when you write?
Paul: Minimalism in all its shapes and forms. I love music or art and visual arts that communicate big feelings with not much going on. I write most of the lyrics, and we write the music together. When Rachel and I go on these inspiration trips (not that we actually put time aside to do, but when we find ourselves in a city or something) and we’re checking out a gallery, you pick up bits you think are cool when you’re trying to create something. We’re drawn to art that’s spacious and minimalist. There’s a great painting called ‘The Monk By The Sea’ [by Caspar David Friedrich] which we saw in Berlin. It’s this seascape with this monk enveloped by this chaotic scene. I like to think when we’re writing, with a reduced number of instruments or a simple melody, that’s a source of inspiration for me.
Going right back to the start, what was the catalyst for forming Cloth?
Rachel: We’d always made music together from an early age. But we were coming out of uni realising we didn’t want to the big bad world of work and offices, yet. We enjoy making music and had been throughout uni. So we thought we’d give it a proper go. Spend a lot of time writing, honing our sound. Our process was that we wouldn’t play any gigs until we sounded good. When we started playing live, people were excited as it felt like a fully formed band dropped out of nowhere. We had almost an album’s worth of songs we were really excited about when we started playing live around Glasgow. The catalyst for Cloth was that we both had in our guts that this is the most fun thing we spend time doing, so let’s keep at it.
Paul: Thinking back to that time, we were listening to loads of music that was really exciting to us. What we wanted Cloth to be changed on a weekly basis back then, because we hadn’t found our feet with the sound we wanted to create. We were just getting really hyped on Sleater-Kinney and The xx, that minimal approach. All these influences were swirling around. The first bits of music we wrote probably sounds vastly different to what we sound like now. It was a journey of discovery for about two years before we found our formula, of what was more representative of the way we feel and the way we think. It was a fun time, developing what we were doing around then. We’ve never wanted to make the same record twice, hence why we’ve gone more cinematic on Pink Silence. What we’ve been writing recently is different again. It’s more reflective of the stuff we’re buzzing off listening to now.
Your relationship is more symbiotic than most, being twins of course. Have you always shared a creative chemistry? Did you write music together growing up?
Rachel: We’ve more or less always been on the same page. We’ve diverged a bit – Paul got into The Beatles which took me a while to appreciate. It was over heavy metal where we really started to bond. Paul would be like ‘come and hear this’ then air-drum the drums out. His enthusiasm for the heavy sections, the intricate, polyrhythmic sections just made me really enthusiastic as well. Those were definitely formative bonding moments. A lot of them happened through Paul’s love of metal.
Paul: It’s a strange origin story.
Rachel: All I did in high school was spend money on iTunes vouchers. I was obsessed with pop music, so would spend 59p on a song and be like ‘Paul, listen to this’. I was really into those emotional pop moments that tug on the heartstrings. Not in a cloying way, but in a euphoric way. The culmination of amazing vocals and really great production. I won him over with pop, and he won me over with metal. We met in the middle, somewhere.
Paul: That’s the Cloth sound…
I can hear the convergence – you use obscure tunings, but you’ve maintained this emotional pull from the pop element. Rachel, your hushed vocal is integral to Cloth’s sound. When would you say you discovered your voice?
Rachel: Whilst making the first Cloth recordings. I was literally in front of an expensive microphone for the first time, and was being encouraged to sing louder, with more body. We tried it, but it didn’t feel right. Or sound right. I stuck with what felt good, what felt natural. Which was singing in my natural voice. Working within my own limits. I just like to deliver songs in that style.
Paul: I remember that session so well. We were working with an engineer who was pretty integral to that first record. But he didn’t know us very well at that point and was encouraging Rachel to belt it a bit. We’d made a demo the night before and got it sounding – even on our little shitty mic at home – pretty cool and quite layered, in the style that Rachel sings. When Derek was asking for bigger, we were like ‘no…..’. Thankfully, we’d discovered My Bloody Valentine around that time. It’s a well worn path knowing you can have soft vocals and a massive sound. The two can co-exist.
Pink Silence is your second album on Rock Action Records. How important have Mogwai been to the band, in terms of your personal and professional progression?
Paul: Stu’s the guy we’ve worked closest with from Mogwai. He was the guy who first heard us – Malcolm from Arab Strap sent us stuff on to him. He’s our label’s boss. But he’s hands off.
Rachel: Most artists would prefer not to be moulded or shaped in a certain way.
Paul: We don’t have any of that with Rock Action. They’d never say ‘this isn’t commercial enough’. It’s a huge confidence boost. We do what we want to do, and they put it out. They trust us, and we trust them. Just having someone like Stu, who’s been in the industry for decades, he’s a great pal but also an invaluable resource for learning. We’ll often get a pint and I’ll quiz him about certain scenarios. He’s also got great advice. He’s proper funny as well. The world that Mogwai exists in isn’t too dissimilar to ours, so there’s been plenty of fan conversion from supporting them. It’s so nice working for a record label that’s helmed by a band that’s basically done everything we want to do with Cloth. I don’t think we’ve ever had a situation where someone’s told us to do something different, which would feel really alien to us. Maybe, it’d produce good results. But we’re lucky to be operating in our own little world.
You’ve received your second Scottish Album Of The Year Award nomination for Pink Silence. In a landscape where it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get noticed, is it rewarding to know that your music is resonating?
Rachel: There’s a lot of great music coming out of Scotland. When it gets whittled down to an arbitrary 20 or 10, it’s like, ‘wow, we made the cut’.
Paul: You hit the nail on the head there Tom. It’s so hard to get noticed now, that it probably would’ve been easier to have an anti-awards sentiment back in the day. Now, every little helps. If you get a light shone on you by that, we’re not going to poo-poo it.
I saw you at Green Man Festival and you talked about ‘Old Bear’ featuring on Normal People. Can you recall the story behind that?
Paul: Do you want the clean version? It was our first ever sync. We were well excited. That show went bananas. We got all our family round to witness the big moment, in episode nine or something. When it eventually got to it, nobody even noticed we were even on because it was so quiet. Then the next scene there was tons of banging. It was such a smutty show and none of us knew. We hadn’t read the book by that point. We had to awkwardly change the channel pretty quickly.
Rachel: It’s a scene when they’re having a pretty dark conversation.
Paul: Yeah, it seemed like they were about to embark on a proper toxic relationship. It didn’t leave anyone feeling good!
Cloth head out on tour of the UK in November. Find tickets here.
