Stealing Sheep | Broadcast

PCL Presents
STEALING SHEEP
+ GUESTS
Thursday, 25 April
Broadcast, Glasgow
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18+ Only
7pm Doors
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Tickets Available via See Tickets and Tickets Scotland
https://www.seetickets.com/event/stealing-sheep/broadcast/1291873
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Big
Wows is heavier, harder and weirder than Stealing Sheep’s previous
work. Bold neon pop songs with rave percussion, steelpans, dreamy segues
and breathy experiments. The *fsszzt*
sound of lemonade opens the
album with a hyper-real sense of optimism that progressively reveals the
cracks of dystopian irony amidst sugar–coated pop; held together by
Emily Lansley’s
bass guitar, Luciana Mercer’s drum kit, Rebecca Hawley’s synths, and the trio’s swooning steely vocal harmonies.

Stealing
Sheep describe Big Wows as “a slow rush”; taking shape over a period of
nearly three years spent working out exactly what they wanted it to be
and creating an album that levitated their identities as individuals as
well as merging them into one unit “We’re each finding our own creative
intuition,” says Bex “…and then we come together...and we back each
other" adds Lucy.

Just as the title suggests, Big Wows is both
cynical and optimistic: dreaminess and pop dance rhythms are cut with
eye rolling vocal styles inflected by heartfelt lyrical messages “We hit
upon
this conversational-style between the vocals and have
alternating lead melodies. There's a sarcastic tone to some of the music
but there is always a strong willfulness to incorporate honest
integrity, which is hard to do but refreshing when it finally comes
out.”
Side one opens with a burst of shimmery synths as ‘Show Love’
and ‘Back in Time’ lead you heart first into the headier feels of lead
track ‘Jokin’ Me’ and upbeat bounce of "Why haven't I"
following into the more progressive grooves for ‘Girl’ then fading out with the narcoleptic comforts of ‘Just Dreaming’.
Side
two digs deeper into a dreamworld, with the manias and hallucinations
of ‘Breathe’ andb‘True Colours’ as well as the gorgeous disillusionment
of the title track and ending with an
unexpected tropical club banger
‘Choose Like You’. Running through the whole record is a response to
living in a tech era: “We wanted sounds to represent TVs, computers and
everyday glitches” says Bex “We started to have this feeling that life
is like a game and how you can malfunction when you're blasted with too
much
information…”

As well as composing with traditional
instrumentation they also started songs solely on the computer;
sequencing, building sounds, drum machines and responding to that
non-emotional binary world. “The big challenge,” continues Bex “is
making machines sound organic, emotional, finding their flaws. That’s
why Delia Derbyshire is so important to us. All the effects that she
uses serve to humanise the machines.”

Since the release of their
last album, 2015’s surreal and fantastical ‘Not Real’, they’ve been in
demand as multidisciplinary public artists as well as musicians – on
projects including Wow Machine, which brings to life another more
conceptual strand of ‘Big Wows’; in a mechanical light up stage with
dancers and live music.
This summer they also performed at UK
festivals with a 15 strong all-female procession to celebrate the
centenary of Suffrage. “Being female has become more of a theme in our
work” the band say. “It's obviously always been there but now we're
playing with it more conceptually and thinking about empowerment”.
This
greater confidence and rock-solid aesthetic mean that Stealing Sheep
can take greater risks and reap more wonderful rewards. They have a
broad range of influences – St Vincent, Michael
Jackson, The Knife,
Kraftwerk, Drake, Little Dragon - but they remain so resolutely and
richly themselves. “We try new things out and we get more confident
about what we like.” says Bex.
“There’s a really good thing Grayson
Perry says about developing your creative intuition. You get to a level
as an artist where you know on a gut level what you like and what you
don’t like. It takes a long time to feel comfortable in that place, to
know your palette, to know you like these drum sounds or whatever it
is.” 

Lucy is working with a full drum kit now instead of just toms,
Emily is playing bass guitar, Bex is making her own synth patches and
they’re all using new equipment: they are developing and experimenting
and moving forward together. “We wanted the machine sounds to be
juxtaposed
against a full kit and bass guitar, which we tracked live
to feel intentionally loose in places. We like the idea of placing
robotic tech next to real life energy.”

The songs began at home
or in their studio at Liverpool’s Invisible Wind Factory, laying down
the main body of the tracks, then the band worked with various producers
– including Marta Salogni (Bjork, MIA, Factory Floor), Andy Smith
(Years & Years), Ash Workman (Christine & The Queens,
Metronomy) and Joe Wills (video artist for Little Dragon) – as they’ve
tried out different mixes and ideas to convey their messages.
They also teamed up with 8–bit video artist PSTL CSTL (Emily Garner) from
Leeds, who created a Karaoke video series for the album; exploring
Stealing Sheep's digital dimension and their
shifting identities amidst changing cultural moods and millennial paraphernalia. “It's a
crazy time and it's challenging navigating through it, but it's like
‘whatever’, bring on the BIG WOWS.”