I was recently reminded of the “go to” club in Blackburn when I was at school in the mid-80’s.
I say “go to”…..
What I really mean is it was the only place I had an occasionally more than 50/50 chance of getting in. On the decks, Frankie were telling me to Relax, Chaka Khan’s I Feel For You felt very much about her mourning my fashion choices and Tears For Fears were exasperating everyone (well, me) by wanting to rule the world at seemingly every radio station. Oh, and Russ Abbott. It was eclectic (but sadly not eclectic enough to play Swans, the ultimate in 1980’s New York City sonic nihilism).
I digress.
I could say with a fair degree of conviction that 80’s clubland in Blackburn was a very different vibe to that of New York City, home to possibly the most written about, the most fabled and the most pulsating, subversive club scene.
But the first tender forays into meeting someone’s eyes across the discotheque’s dancefloor, the euphoria of falling in love, the helplessness of being rejected, and the despair of feeling alone and worthless can happen anywhere.
And they did.
In reality and in our imagination.
Imagination is a wonderful thing. We need more of it.
‘What if there were a club in 1980’s New York City called…..?’ imagined Poppy Hankin of Girl Ray…..
Waiting for a spark of inspiration for where they might take the Girl Ray sound next, Poppy found it in Pose, the television drama about New York City’s queer ballroom scene in the 80s. Squashed into the back of a tour bus driving around Europe at the beginning of 2020, looking out of the window at the rain outside, missing her girlfriend back home and looking for an escape, she started recording demos inspired by its soundtrack on her laptop in the back of the bus and opened up that make-believe club in her imagination. A club that was a big-hearted celebration of inclusivity and individuality and glamour; everything she felt was missing from the rain-soaked post-Brexit landscape they were driving through.
The club was called……. Prestige.
And now this fantasy world is all ours to dance about in with them. Prestige is Girl Ray’s third album and it’s the sound of them reclaiming disco music as the celebration of sexuality and outsider culture it started out as. It’s a beautiful place where love happens on the dancefloor. It’s where it might disintegrate as fast as it happens. It’s where the outsiders are the cool kids, the ones with the imagination, the daring, living for the moment, their moment. It pulls from their own influences and styles but they are expertly fused together with their own take on the 1980’s disco vibe.
It’s fabulous, it’s fearless and it makes you smile. And imagine.
Check your coat and grab a Cosmopolitan. The party’s only just getting started.
I hope that 50/50 chance of me getting in is in my favour this time….
Giles Sibbald
What’s one word that comes into your mind about the release?
Poppy Hankin
Overwhelmed! It’s been like a mad couple of weeks. It’s always a crazy thing to have an album come out and then, just for a few days, everyone is talking about it. It’s going well. We’re happy!
Sophie Moss
Oh gosh, obviously there’s so much work that goes into getting the album out and so much admin, emails, whatever. And on the day, it was just kind of like, oh, right….what now?!
Poppy Hankin
Yeah, ‘What now?’ was the feeling!
Sophie Moss
When we all met up, it was like we had Barbie’s irrepressible fear of death! We were all just like, ‘Oh my God!”, having a quarter life crisis! {Laughs}
Poppy Hankin
We were trying to get the mimosas in and then we were like “do you guys feel like weirdly blue?”. But as soon as we did that show on the release night at Rough Trade East, we were party Barbies!
I mean, we threw everything at this record. We’ve spoken about this a lot, but we’ve super leaned into the disco element, and that was really fun for us. It’s such a cool aesthetic and learning how to pull it off was a lot of fun. But there are a few songs on there that we were writing before the disco thing kicked in and they ended up being on the record, but maybe we added a four to the floor on it. So, it’s kind of got all these different influences. Whereas some like True Love, are more like straight disco. But, you know, I think it’s kind of nice to bring our own touch to it. I guess we wouldn’t just want it to be a rip off or whatever.
Sophie Moss
Yeah, and at the time, I feel like we chucked a whole lot of cheesy stuff at it like crazy solos and stuff. We had a guy called Mark Bencuya come in who’s in Yacht Rock Revue to do some keyboards and then we were sense checking everything out afterwards.
Poppy Hankin
I guess that’s kind of how recording works, as I’m sure you know. You literally chuck everything at it and then the producer and the band as well should be able to tastefully carve out what should actually stay. So yeah, often when we’re recording our songs, we’ll have like 100 plus tracks going in the recording session. Less is obviously more so you kind of want to be able to objectively decide if any particular part is actually adding anything to the overall.
Giles Sibbald
I think the industry still clings on to boxing bands into specific genres, but speaking for myself, I’m much less tied to genres now than I used to be and into bands who bring all their different influences into play.
Poppy Hankin
100%. Yeah, I think that’s what’s cool about being in a group as well – we all bring different influences. Like, we’re all listening to a ton of different stuff. So, when we actually get together and play, you know, we’ll be taking influence for Sophie’s bass parts from someplace, I’ll be taking influence for my guitar parts from another. You kind of get a melting pot. And, obviously, we’re different people with different tastes. But the thing is that we really respect each other’s tastes and what we bring to the group. So, it all gets thrown in!
Giles Sibbald
I think that’s the really important point, isn’t it? That mutual respect for each other and what you each bring to the group. Having an open mind to what the outcome might be.
Poppy Hankin
Yeah. 100%. I mean, I think it’s the only way that bands can really work. We’re lucky that we all get on in that way.
Giles Sibbald
What music has influenced you or stuck in your memory from childhood, through teens to now?
Poppy Hankin
Well, I guess different stuff. For me, when I got to about 12 or 13, I was starting to kind of discover my own tastes beyond what my parents might like or what my friends liked. The bands for me were like, Best Coast, Vampire Weekend, that kind of early teen indie vibe. And they were really getting me going and getting me interested in playing guitar. And I mean we’ve all been friends since we’ve been teenagers. We were all watching a lot of KEXP sessions on YouTube.
Sophie Moss
This is the most obvious response ever, but The Beatles. Sometimes as a framework for playing a show or whatever we’ll ask ourselves who we’re going to embody! They’re very relevant for me.
Poppy Hankin
To be honest, we did that on one of our first gigs, and we did it actually on Friday as well. We said to each other ‘let’s just pretend we’re a member of The Beatles’. Because really, we are introverted extroverts. We’re not natural performers, but there’s something inside us that wants to perform. We have to kind of pretend we’re someone else! {laughs}
I remember when I was 13 or 14, I was playing guitar and writing songs that were a bit rubbish. But sometimes I would feel brave enough to show them to my mum. And she’d be like, ‘You need to be in a band’ and I was just like ‘No, Mum, I can’t.’ She’d keep saying it and I’d be shouting at her to stop, but I knew – you know, the fact that she had faith in me – that there was something there. So, when I met Sophie and Iris, we kind of made it happen.
Giles Sibbald
Was that belief in you from your mum subconsciously inspiring you?
Poppy Hankin
I think it was, yes, because I was obviously writing the songs, but I had these insecurities, I guess, where I thought nobody would ever want to actually hear them. And, you know, when I started playing them to Iris and Sophie, they were so supportive. I mean, we all suffer from this to an extent. I mean, the more you play, the more habitual it becomes, but we definitely do get nervous, and we’re very critical of ourselves. So doing an album cycle is good because you get lots of positive affirmation, but it’s also bad because you get some grump saying that a guitar lick is clearly copied from whatever. But you’ve just got to kind of get in the zone and get past it and remember that actually, we do really enjoy performing. It’s just that it takes a lot to actually get up on a stage and, you know, perform to lots of people. It’s a kind of an unnatural thing to do.
Giles Sibbald
Just going back to Prestige a little bit again, and the vibe that I get from it. It’s really interesting how we recreate things in our mind, you know, where we whisk ourselves off to a certain time and place. I’m a sucker for how music can do that either through the music itself, the lyrics and also the imagery – artwork, videos, you know I think are more important than they’ve ever been. You’ve 100% pulled this off.
Poppy Hankin
Yeah. 100%. There’s no denying, I guess, that music was always closely linked to art and to the whole packaging of an artist or an album. But I think more so now than ever. We’re all on social media all the time and although it is a new pressure for artists, it’s also exciting to be able to tie two creative passions together and present them. For example, Iris, is an artist selling art and she has a really amazing eye for it and how to tie it all in. I think it can make you enjoy an album in a different way if the artwork and packaging is on point, you know.
Sophie Moss
When we were recording, we were also kind of channeling this fake club called Prestige that we obviously ended up making the name of the album. And so, we themed it all around being at the club, leaving it as the day was dawning, this kind of thing.
Poppy Hankin
For me, it’s another way of honing that confidence: thinking about this club and what kind of people we could be inside that club…
Giles Sibbald
Is it right to say that it’s, there’s an element of fantasy? You know, recreating a zeitgeist?
Poppy Hankin
Yeah, 100% I think it was just like a coming together of fashion, music, underground culture, this really interesting melting pot in New York, specifically in the 80s. And it’s just so interesting and fascinating to kind of play into that. It’s kind of cool.
Sophie Moss
It feels like it’s a little bit lacking from London at the moment. We wanted that fantasy element from a time that we definitely weren’t in, and things are feeling a lot less radical and interesting here than it was there at that time.
Poppy Hankin
We don’t like to think of it as a lockdown album, but that’s definitely when it was written and recorded. So that element of fantasy was hyper attractive for us given that we’d been cooped up.
Giles Sibbald
What’s your take on the current clubbing scene?
Poppy Hankin
I mean, it’s incredibly important, especially for marginalised communities. It always has been, it probably always will be. But to be honest, there’s definitely an element of irony for us in particular with this whole club fantasy. When we’re on tour, we want to be in bed by about 11pm with a cup of tea. It’s kind of an in-joke as well – this ironic idea that we’re like, going out like partying in 80’s New York, you know. But also – I do hasten to add! – we do like to have fun. The other day, we did, like a Club Prestige. Again, it’s quite tongue in cheek because it’s so ridiculous. But yeah, it was like a DJ night with disco themed DJs. It was really, really fun. I think we’ll do it again.
Giles Sibbald
Great idea – a creative way to engage with your fans and for you to have some fun too.
Poppy Hankin
Yeah, it’s fun to just make a whole world with it, you know, and kind of just play into it like that. It’s really fun.
Giles Sibbald
It’s 6 years now since your first album, so I wonder how you feel like you’ve evolved as individuals and as a band?
Poppy Hankin
6 years…yeah…well, not only has a lot of time passed, but it’s also been some of the most crucial years you can have. I mean, we recorded that first album when we were 18. It just felt crazy when we were promoting and touring it. Everything just felt really great. Then we just lost years through the pandemic. But we’re all more mature, we have more knowledge of music, I think we’re better players. I mean, it’s all good stuff. And also, I think we’re a little bit more grounded in terms of songwriting. The songwriting in the first album was so visceral. Although it’s still heartfelt, now I think it’s a little bit more about sculpting what a good song might look like and less like chuck everything at the page. As people, we’ve definitely grown up.
Sophie Moss
There are a lot of lines of continuity. I surprise myself by how fundamentally the same we are in a lot of ways. I look at how we play and obviously, we’ve matured a lot, but at the core of how we express playing music, it’s quite similar. But, because we’ve changed our sound every time, every album has felt new and there’s not always that familiarity.
Giles Sibbald
I think that there have been very few bands that can get away with not changing their sound and still sound fresh. I mean everyone’s different but creative comfort zones and all that…..
Poppy Hankin
Yeah, definitely. I mean, to be honest, we do it for ourselves first and foremost. It’s a bonus if people appreciate us changing our sound, but more than anything, we just want to make sure we’re getting the absolute most out of it. Going into a studio with a producer to record an album, having the luxury of that and support from a label where we can be creative for three to four weeks is an incredible thing to have and it’s just been such an amazing experience. I really feel that the songs are worthy of, you know, of all that time and headspace. We want to enjoy playing it and get that incredible feeling of listening back to a song after recording it in the day and be like, ‘Oh, my God, this is really cool’. And wanting to listen to it. I think that’s always a good litmus test if I actually want to go back and listen to whatever track that we recorded today. On repeat! And appreciate it! I think that’s when people are going to enjoy it as well.
Giles Sibbald
Whereas some musicians will not want to listen back to their own stuff. Once it’s done, it’s done, so to speak.
Poppy Hankin
There is some of that, yeah, for sure. During the mixing process, for example, you’re listening to the songs in a very non-passive way – you’re really concentrating on them. And it can kind of put you off the songs, actually. I went for maybe six months without listening to the record. I listened to it again recently with the right headspace so that I could appreciate it, like I’m a fan. So, I think it’s important, you know, to have space after you have worked so closely with the songs, especially when you need to start arranging them for live and you want to be excited every time you play live. Space is important.
Giles Sibbald
That must be quite tough to listen to it first of all as the creator and then as a fan.
Poppy Hankin
It is hard to separate yourself. It takes time but also it’s fun if it comes on the radio, if you’re out or whatever and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is a good’. You can then actually start to appreciate it. It’s part of the journey, I guess.
Giles Sibbald
Are you perfectionists?
Sophie Moss
Poppy is! {laughs}
Poppy Hankin
I think so. But I definitely get a bad rap {both laugh}
Poppy Hankin
I think you have to be, to be honest. Or at least, there has to be an element of it. If you want a song to sound how you want it to sound and you can’t carry out that vision, it’s really frustrating. There’s good and bad to it, but it’s definitely a thing I do.
Giles Sibbald
What sort of crowd is coming to your shows now?
Poppy Hankin
We definitely noticed a shift in audience from the first album when we were 18 year olds. Then, it was mainly an older male audience…. But now, we’re getting a much more diverse mix of people. And the main thing is that the people who are coming now are dancing, they’re having fun and singing along and not just standing there with cameras. And that’s really all we want, you know. We want people to engage in the show, dance and singalong. We very much appreciate it when they do.
Giles Sibbald
Very positive to hear that. OK, big question to round it all off: what does success look like for you?
Sophie Moss
Oh God, good question!
Poppy Hankin
Hmmm…. I think ultimately, it looks like us being proud of the music that we’re making. If we can affect anyone’s life in a positive way, and we can be a soundtrack to a moment that actually helps get them through in some way, then that’s success for me. It’s a cliché, but when people actually say, ‘you know what, you’ve really helped me through a really hard patch’, that’s the power of music. I’ve had those moments myself where other musicians have helped me. When our music is doing what it should be doing, that is something that I consider to be a success.
Prestige is out now on Moshi Moshi
Girl Ray are:
Poppy Hankin: guitar, vocals
Sophie Moss: bass, vocals
Iris McConnell: drums, vocals
Photo by: Eerie Rose
