London’s self-proclaimed ‘Feminist Punk Witches’ Dream Nails are ready follow the fury of last year’s Deep Heat with brand new single Tourist, out now.
Tourist is a powerful song about emotionally predatory men who are drawn to women when they’re vulnerable. Front woman Janey Starling explains “it’s about men who present themselves as a hero but all they really want to do is fetishise sad girls, make them emotionally attached and then abuse that power. We can smell those guys a mile away and they’re creepy.”
In this interview spotlight, we chat with Dream Nails about influences, the new project, challenges, music consumption preferences and more.
Full Q&A along with links and a stream of Tourist below.
Let’s dive a little deeper into You, the artist and your music. What attracted you to this genre(s) or style(s)?
Janey: Punk is so direct and powerful. As a woman in punk, you can be ugly, you can be imperfect and you can be screaming with rage. It’s a phenomenally liberating genre – both for us onstage and for our audiences.
Anya: Punk is a genre of music that still works so well when there’s a message in the lyrics, and all of our songs exist for a reason, they all have a strong message.
Lucy: As a self taught player, relatively recent to drums, punk was a natural choice when you consider its emphasis on DIY culture and energy. It’s forgiving and supportive and, like Janey said, incredibly liberating.
Mimi: Punk is the sort of ‘DIY’ genre and its style is angry and loud, perfect for when you have something to say and you want people to pay attention!
How long have you been creating and sharing your music with the public?
Janey: Since October 2015, so two years! In fact, the two-year anniversary of our first show was on the 7th of October!
Who or what influences your playing and/or writing? Also, what motivates you to keep going?
Lucy: I like bands that sound heavy and grounded and give momentum and energy to the songs. Janet Weiss is one of my favourite drummers for this reason, she’s so centred when she plays I feel like I fall into a trance watching her. Stella Mozgawa from warpaint is another huge influence, she’s an incredibly melodic player and I aspire to play like her. My other inspiration is the bottomless jokes that we seem to conjur up as a band.
Janey: I’m really influenced by soul music, and I love dancing onstage – my performances and dance moves are really influenced by The Three Degrees and The Supremes. They had on-stage choreography NAILED.
Anya: I love bands like Spoon, Bully and Sleater Kinney in terms of guitar playing, cool chord progressions that inspire me when I write. And like Lucy said, laughter motivates me to keep going. Being in this band makes me laugh so much, it helps us get through anything and to feel good about what we’re doing!
Mimi: When we’re playing a show and Janey starts saying “girls to the front” it amazes me every time just how many women make their way up, and just how male dominated the space is. Afterwards women always come up to us and thank us. It’s hard not to realize then that this is important and we have to keep doing it.
Were you trying to accomplish anything specific on this new project? Creatively or otherwise?
Janey: Absolutely. Dare to Care is all about self-care through political action. Right now the world is so fucked, but instead of spiralling into despair we advocate building strong communities who believe in a better world like you do – the four songs on the EP are uplifting and empowering, and we lovingly crafted a handmade zine to go alongside it, which is full of self-care tips, thoughts on resilience and empowerment, plus loads of cool facts about witches. We are punk witches after all.
Lucy: at the beginning of formulating the new EP, we spoke a lot about how women often have to share knowledge with each other to get by, and how this applies in all aspects of life (I think it actually started from a conversation about bringing on periods). This kind of knowledge is not and has never been formalised. As well as being a manual on self care, I think this project is an effort to formalise and record female knowledge.
Anya: As well as that, the songwriting itself is super tight and well-honed, we went through an editing process with each song to make sure they’re as perfectly formed as possible which was a new thing for us creatively.
What was the last song you listened to?
Janey: ‘Pata pata’ by Miriam Makeba.
Anya: ‘Because of You’ by Ne-Yo.
Lucy: ‘Monday Monday’ by the Mamas and The Papas.
Mimi: ‘Your Best American Girl’ by Mitski.
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
Mimi: Well I use MP3s the most but I would love if tapes were a thing again.
Anya: Tapes! They’re so cute and dinky.
Janey: Different formats for different settings! Vinyl for playing in your room, CDs for your car and MP3s for when you’re out and about with headphones on.
Lucy: CDs remind me of being a kid and the ceremony of picking singles and albums out to play on my little stereo so I’m going for that.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
Janey: Bandcamp because it’s the only thing we really make money from, plus Bandcamp is a really cool platform that often contributes profits to brilliant organisations. When Trump got elected, Bandcamp’s response was to donate profits to the American Civil Liberties Union, which was brilliant and we felt proud to be a part of that.
Anya: I love Bandcamp so much. I feel like lots of music fans don’t realise how much other streaming platforms are ripping off the artists that they love.
Lucy: Yeah why is Bandcamp so underrated?! It’s fantastic and does so much for musicians, while remaining accessible to all. It’s also just as easy to find new bands and artists on Bandcamp as the others.
Other than the digital era overwhelming us with access to an abundance of music, what are one or two of the biggest challenges you face when trying to attract listeners to your music?
Janey: To be honest, we really want our music to reach more teenage girls. We’re writing the songs we wished we’d had growing up, but because of alcohol licensing laws in venues, there’s often an age limit of 18. We want to play more all-ages shows so girls can feel the power and energy of our live shows.
Anya: It’s been tough to afford recording our music without a label to back us, but raising £3000 from fans through PledgeMusic has been a great way round that. It’s how we paid to make ‘Dare to Care’ EP.
Do you gig, tour or perform? Do you ever live stream? Where can music lovers see you live?
Janey: We’ve been gigging almost non-stop since May this year, when we went on tour with Cherry Glazerr! We play a lot in the UK, especially London, and mainland Europe. We’ve got a strong fanbase in Germany so will be doing a short tour there in early November. The best way to keep track of our shows is to follow us on Facebook!
Anya: Come see us, it’s a riot we promise.
Lucy: We are EVERYWHERE! Also we are open to all kinds of shows and nights. We are little punk witch chameleons popping up in a town near you so please come say hi.
Where is the best place to connect with you online? Discover more of your music?
Janey: The best place for our music is our bandcamp, but the best place to discover more about us and watch our hilarious videos from tour is on Instagram!
Anya: And you can watch our music videos on our YouTube channel.
Lucy: Yeah watch our instagram stories right now before Warner Brothers buys the film rights.
Mimi: Seriously our instagram stories when we’re on tour.
Any last thoughts? Shout outs? Words of wisdom?
Janey: We really love eating fries, so much that we have our own YouTube series called ‘Chip Advisor’ where we eat the fries we discover on tour and rate them. Check it out!
Anya: We had to climb up a mountain in Austria to find the best chips!
Lucy: Fries before guys.
