12. Hope SandovalBavarian Fruit Bread
This record is from 2001, and Sandoval and Colm O’Ciosoig from My Bloody Valentine produced it, and Bert Jansch is also on a couple of tracks, so that’s kind of linked to the tenets of my musical education. I suppose it has some similarities to the Bridget St John record in the way it maintains the same atmosphere – there are no jarring moments that break that feeling – it all kind of exists in the same realm but it never becomes boring. It’s also kind of sexy in a restrained way, but there’s also a sense of melancholy to the whole thing; just the texture of the way it’s produced.
I didn’t really know anything about her, because I know loads of teenage girls are meant to be obsessed with Mazzy Star. I found this one a little more unreachable, and I really like that compared with her stuff with Mazzy Star, which is a little more, I dunno, not poppy, maybe self-indulgent? I can’t really explain. It made me really think about how to get the best out of a song. A lot of them are built on just one idea over and over again; it’s not trying too hard. It exists in its own space, and she makes the listener come to her.
And I think the production is just really beautiful. I’ve listened to it a huge amount. She’s also the kind of singer I always want to be – a kind of detached, cool woman – that I just can’t be [laughs]. I try to write songs like that and I just realise that’s not my gig.
I bought it in Rough Trade – I had a spare afternoon and I really liked its description, and I knew Mazzy Star a little bit, but I was actually more intrigued by the fact that someone from My Bloody Valentine had produced it, as they’d made such a big impression on me at a certain point. And then I saw Bert Jansch’s name and thought, "I’ll have to find out what’s going on here".
It’s one of those records that’s so confident in its sparsity. It creates a lovely vibe. That’s a horrible thing to say [laughs]. She’s definitely not pitching herself as an untouchable, ethereal, angelic, virginal woman. There’s something else going on and you don’t know. The whole thing sounds kind of drunk.
