Seven years after they formed, Warpaint have released their debut album ? and the critics love it. Laura Barton on how four friends are conquering the indie scene
One by one they appear, tumbling into a cafe in Los Feliz, raising their sunglasses and blinking in the gloom. It is the day after Warpaint's homecoming gig at the Troubadour, Los Angeles, and there is a vague air of dishevelment about the band. Singer and guitarist Emily Kokal, 30, is seemingly still wearing the same clothes she wore last night. They scour the menu before beginning a postmortem of the show. "There weren't that many familiar faces in the crowd," Kokal says, sounding surprised. "It doesn't often happen like that. Not for us. And to have that in your home town is?"
Though the sentence hangs unfinished, the implication is clear: life has begun to change for Warpaint. Last autumn, after seven years together, they released their debut album, The Fool, to critical glory. On record it is arresting and textured enough to reward frequent listening, but their early performances in the UK also confirmed the four-piece as a compelling live band. Last night's audience in Hollywood was a strikingly diverse mix of ages and attire, women and men, all rapturously familiar with the band's music.
But the hype around Warpaint has not been confined to their music. Much, too, has been made of the fact that the band are all female, and of their celebrity connections. Bassist and singer Jenny Lee Lindberg, 29, is the sister of actor Shannyn Sossamon, who was herself briefly in the band and who directed the video to their first single, Undertow. Kokal, meanwhile, dated John Frusciante, formerly of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Singer-guitarist Theresa Wayman, 30, used to sing with Vincent Gallo. The late Heath Ledger was a great fan of the band.
Lindberg shrugs. "It's just a starting point for people," she says, "when people don't know the band. It's an angle. And, you know, I'd never been in a band with three other girls, and it is different. It's like if you have a guy friend and you have a girl friend. It's really different, but I can't describe how." Stella Mozgawa, 24, the band's drummer, gives a short laugh. "And it's not like it's a rumour," she deadpans. "It's not like people are saying we're all hermaphrodites. I mean, it's true, we are all female."
In truth, what's striking is not just seeing four young women on stage, but the unusual sense of warmth and connection when they play; talking, smiling, laughing.
"In the beginning, we had no expression on our faces because we were petrified," Kokal says. "We couldn't even look at each other because we'd twitch and start laughing. You look at someone dealing with their nervousness and you know what they're going through."
There is something of the love story to the way Warpaint talk about their friendship. They formed, appropriately enough, on Valentine's Day 2004, though Kokal and Wayman were childhood friends in Oregon, meeting when they were 11 and immediately becoming inseparable. "I had never had a friend like that before," Kokal says. "Most often those experiences are with the opposite sex, but it was just one of those things where you want that person, you need that person, they need to be in your life."
"It was a really young and fun relationship," Wayman adds. "We'd walk to school and sing, do harmonies for In The Jungle. And then in high school we really got into the same kind of music together ? Sarah McLachlan, Bj�rk and" ? she begins to laugh ? "early Sheryl Crow records."
Lindberg groans.
"There are some amazing songs on that one album Home For Christmas," Wayman says indignantly. "I'll bet you've never heard it!"
Lindberg rolls her eyes. "I think it's her voice," she replies. "'All I wanna do...'" She sings the Sheryl Crow hit, mimicking her pop-drawl.
"I mean, I couldn't stand her music when she got all super-glossed and sunshiney-pop-y, but the early songs were really good," Wayman says defensively.
Wayman and Kokal travelled around Europe together in their late teens, then moved to New York before settling in Los Angeles, for reasons, they concede sheepishly, that concerned a boy. There they met Lindberg, a recent transplant from Reno, Nevada, and a couple of years later the three formed a band, with Sossamon on drums.
If seven years sounds a long time for a band to travel from formation to hot new act, they have no regrets about taking the leisurely route. "Even that," Kokal says, "feels like it happened the right way." It took them a good year and a half before they even played live, and the intervening years have not been spent idly ? songs were written, an EP recorded, Wayman had a son (a fact that requires some logistical consideration now they are touring so widely) and, post-Sossamon, there were several changes of drummer.
Mozgawa was the last to join the band, but on stage she appears in her element, flailing ecstatically behind her drumkit. "Usually I don't like to look at people in the audience when we're playing because I feel it's a little bit creepy," she says. "It's a very intimate state, like doing a wee or having sex, so the less you're conscious of the fact there are people there, the better."
Raised in New Zealand by parents who were also professional musicians, she first learned to play guitar before begging them to let her take up drums. "The only time I could rehearse was the two hours between getting home from school and my mum getting home from work," she says. "I'd have to take my drumkit down from the top of my wardrobe, put it up, rehearse and then pack it all up again by the time she got back."
Unlike the other members of the band, Mozgawa rarely sings, which she attributes to the fact that her mother is a professional singer. "When I was 13, I would be writing songs in my bedroom, and singing them, and she would walk past saying, 'What are you doing? You're flat.' And I would think, 'I am never singing again!'"
By the time Mozgawa moved to Los Angeles in 2008, she was a professional drummer, stepping in to tour with whomever might need her, but secretly wishing for a band of her own. She met Wayman at a party and soon after got a call from Lindberg, asking her to help out. By that stage, Lindberg notes, Warpaint had been through five drummers and frequently played as a three-piece.
They had all played in bands before: "But not as seriously," Wayman admits. She compares playing regularly to exercise: "You know, if you run every day for a month, after a while you're going to feel really good," she says. "People have to unlearn certain positions, and that's like a performance ? it's the letting go of outside perceptions ? and I personally feel like I'm just learning how to let go and have my own experience. Losing yourself in it takes work. Sometimes I feel as if you can almost be more like yourself on stage than off."
It should be pointed out here, perhaps, that the band are occasionally given to making such statements: listening back to the recording of our conversation later, it seems almost comically littered with LA-isms, talk of "energies" and "consciousness". But in person Warpaint are charmingly earnest, their intelligence and humour and chemistry quite evident.
Do they feel this band, this music, could have been made anywhere else, or if LA is in some way responsible for their sound? "I think it could have been made anywhere," Kokal insists. "I think it had to do with the people we are, how we think, and I don't think moving to LA really changed who we are. I think we have a pretty good idea of self, and maybe that's what drew us together in the first place."
Lindberg is less convinced. "I feel like LA had a lot to do with this record," she says. "Where I grew up, there's a lot of rich people, and casinos, and a huge lower class. It was a really confusing place to grow up. I felt confined by the city. I felt like a creative person, but I didn't feel I had an outlet. And when I moved to LA, I felt really free."
"We've had a lot of great opportunities," Kokal concedes. "And there are so many artists, and not every small town has that?" She thinks for a moment. "I was in a band in Oregon, but we were way more casual about it; the lifestyle is really comfortable, you can make a garden and have good food and make a family and enjoy all that. And here, it's not as enjoyable to just live. There's a push here, to do something. And in a sense I think maybe we all needed that push."
Perhaps it was fate that led them all here to Los Angeles. "I've always felt this about this band, that it felt blessed," Kokal says. "It felt that the right paths were crossing at the right times and the stars were aligned. It worked out. All the moves have been right."
? Warpaint play the Shepherd's Bush Empire on 21 Feb. Their UK tour begins on 11 May.
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