FLA 11: Jenny Landreth

ANYTHING: MATHILDE SANTING: Breast and Brow (Megadisc, 1989)

Extract: ‘Torch Song’

JENNY LANDRETH

In the late 1980s, I used to work for a music promoter called Serious/Speakout in London and at various festivals. In those days, world music was a thing, and there’d be the Palmwine Singers, Sweet Honey in the Rock, lots of Richard Thompson, the Glenn Branca Symphony for 100 Guitars. So quite an interesting range of musicians and Mathilde – this gorgeous Dutch singer, big in Europe but not so huge here – was one of those people.

I also [from 1986] used to run a women-only club night, at the time the biggest in Europe, at the Brixton Fridge called Eve’s Revenge. It was really successful, so lots of women performers would come and do gigs there.

Anyway, Mathilde fitted into that kind of world, and I used to publicise her tours because I had contacts with a kind of wider audience of women… I used to write for a magazine called Everywoman [launched 1985], and I used to do occasional bits for Spare Rib and City Limits. So I used to publicise her tours, and I just absolutely love her stuff. I think some people might describe it as ‘quirky’, which makes me feel slightly ill. Maybe she’s a ‘torch singer’, I find it hard to categorise her.

JUSTIN LEWIS

I used to see her mentioned in magazines a lot, but I can’t remember hearing the music on anything on the radio at the time.

JENNY LANDRETH

She’s got a really beautiful, clear, striking voice, and a couple of albums were just absolutely my soundtrack from the 80s onwards, and I still play them all the time, try and introduce her music to people. Some of it’s a little bit cute for me now, but there’s a distinctive edge to it that I absolutely love. She just did a set of covers of Joni Mitchell songs and I think she’s one of the few people that I would say could do that, partly because she's an older performer now – I think she’s slightly older than me, perhaps. I think it needs that sense of gravitas to allow you to be free enough to make something your own, yes? Oh God, I just absolutely love her.

JUSTIN LEWIS

Breast and Brow has some interesting choices of material for her to record. It's interesting how nearly all the songs either have a North American background or a British background. But it has a European sound, it’s got some very sparse arrangements, which I really like. And not quite exclusively songs written by men – you’ve just pointed out the Joni covers album – but most of the covers she’s done are written by men. She's done a Randy Newman covers album. She's covered ‘The Word Girl’ by Scritti Politti, which I was unaware anyone had ever covered. ‘Wonderful Life’ by Black. Lots of things, aren’t there? And not just pop songs, but standards from the Great American Songbook.

JENNY LANDRETH

That’s what I love about her, that kind of eclectic dipping in and out. But my song that makes me cry, even just thinking about it, is ‘Torch Song’, a cover of a Todd Rundgren song. I’ve tried listening to his version: ‘Is his version better?’, and it’s just not. She turns the song into something so different.

JUSTIN LEWIS

Yes, I agree. I mean, I love Todd Rundgren's version, but I know what you mean entirely.

JENNY LANDRETH

I can listen to his version and go, Oh yeah, that’s nice. Perhaps it’s all that emotional connotation and connection and meaning. You know, that’s been my heartbreak song forever. I think it's a heartbreaking song and you can feel that in the way she sings. Did it make you want to cry?

JUSTIN LEWIS

It definitely moved me, I didn’t actually cry. But then, do I cry at music as often as I used to? I’m not sure. I think it does move me more nowadays.

JENNY LANDRETH

I’m the reverse, I cry so much to music now, but this is because my youngest child would say, Mum you only listen to really sad songs. This is all reminding me of how much I love women singing Fado, these sad Portuguese songs. Do you know that?

JUSTIN LEWIS

I don’t. I must make a note of this.

JENNY LANDRETH

It’s so heartfelt. Can I recommend Mariza to you? She’s a huge Portuguese star. But anyway, I listen to that Mathilde song and I know that’s about heartbreak that I’ve experienced. And this sounds really self-indulgent, but I occasionally like to wallow in that, you know: ‘Let’s refresh those really sad feelings not because they’re great feelings to have, but it’s like, That was kind of emotional.

JUSTIN LEWIS

I mean there are things that I do play, where I feel very sad listening to them, melancholic. But sometimes music hits you from different angles anyway – sometimes, you just think: that’s incredibly beautiful; other times, they sadden you. In a previous episode of this [FLA 2], Suzy Norman chose Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and we ended up talking about how ultimately some of the saddest music ever is strangely uplifting. You're alive, and you’re here to celebrate the fact that you can even hear this sad music at all.

JENNY LANDRETH

Just that kind of expression, the kind of vocalisation and physicalisation of that music leaves you feeling really satisfied, so you might start in one position, you might have a really good cry all the way through, but having experienced it and expressed it and physicalised it in some way…

JUSTIN LEWIS

It’s cathartic, you’ve been somewhere with it.

JENNY LANDRETH

Sometimes it’s about reflecting on sad things that have happened, not that are happening, you know. I don't think it's bad to sometimes get in touch with those feelings, however painful they were at the time. And now you’re dealing with a homeopathic version of them: memories of feelings, rather than the feelings themselves. When I heard ‘Torch Song’ this time last year, I would have had to stay in for a week with the curtains shut, and now I’m remembering that from a completely different place – and I think that’s really valuable. It’s fine to say, I’ve cried so much to that song, and I’m still crying to it. From a homoeopathic place – I do hate homoeopathy, but you know what I mean.

JUSTIN LEWIS

Let’s reclaim the word.

JENNY LANDRETH

It’s a useful word. The memory of things, rather than the things themselves.

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JUSTIN LEWIS

When I initially asked you to come on this, and you were one of the first people I approached, you were a little hesitant. And I wondered how much of this is about having one’s opinions or preferences judged when it comes to music.

JENNY LANDRETH

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, with a sense of personal shame. I’m sure, if I was to explain this situation, this feeling of being judged, I’d get, ‘Oh, you’re really over-dramatising, that never happened, that’s on you, that’s nothing to do with me’ – and I have to take some of that on board; I do have a tendency to nail myself up on the cross and go, Don’t mind me. But all through this conversation, I’ve been saying, ‘Is this cool? Is this not cool? Is this terrible? Is it not alright?’

It’s quite upsetting to not have the confidence to say, ‘I really like James Taylor’, without thinking, ‘Oh my god, that’s horribly naff’ because through lots of my life, that’s [been judged]. When you put stuff you like on in the car, you hear a sigh [from the family], and they say, ‘Oh just let her have that for half an hour, and then we can have what we want.’ Which would be something aggressive… might be Sleaford Mods, who would be my absolute most hated band. That wall of male aggression coming at me. You know me, Justin. I’m a political person. I’m not a softy. I don’t require being treated like a delicate lady. But there are just some things that I find super-aggressive, and they would be one. So it would be, ‘Let her have this, and then we can have Sleaford Mods, the proper music.’

JUSTIN LEWIS

Ah yes, ‘the proper music’.

JENNY LANDRETH

And I’m sure that’s not done deliberately, consciously, manipulatively. But there was definitely a sense of ‘my taste being naff’, and I would indeed say, ‘My taste is naff’, maybe as a way of defending myself. When George Michael died, it was Christmas Day [2016], and we were with my neighbour Nina – both of our families had got together – and we were having a Wham! session because, fucking hell, George Michael and Wham! were tremendous. [Agreement] And the guys at the table and our sons were all, like, ‘How long do we have to tolerate this for?’ Now, maybe I'd have done the same if it had been something that was not to my musical taste. Maybe if one of the Sleaford Mods had died and they wanted to have a half-hour session of their greatest hits, I’d have done the same thing.

JUSTIN LEWIS

There’s no Sleaford Mods Christmas classic, I don’t think.

JENNY LANDRETH

I feel like my musical taste has had to be under a rock, and so I’m often at a loss to know what to play: what I like, what I don’t like, and judge myself with it being cool or not cool, as I have done many times during this conversation. Being able to say ‘I don't like Sleaford Mods’ feels like quite a radical thing to say, ridiculously.

But what’s really hit me – and I’ve been contemplating this only this week – is that I do exactly the same thing to my mother. The stuff that she likes, I’m like ‘Oh let her have it’ – she’s a huge Cliff Richard fan. I did a compilation for her 90th birthday last year, so I made a playlist for her party, and it’s fucked up all my algorithms. Lots of Cliff Richard, but some Dolly, lots of ABBA, you know. Her favourite song is ‘Yes Sir I Can Boogie’ and that’s the song she wants at her funeral.

JUSTIN LEWIS

It’s a great tune.

JENNY LANDRETH

Oh it’s a terrible tune, Justin, come on!

JUSTIN LEWIS

I was seven when that came out; that is always going to be a part of my life.

JENNY LANDRETH

My mum, who is a tiny person, if ever that comes on, she’ll start jogging, doing her little dance, and all of us – her four daughters – kind of do that ‘eyerolling thing’ too. And so, when I’ve had that done to me, I’m just a generation away, really.

JUSTIN LEWIS

It’s funny how when people talk about their formative experiences with music, if they have the two parents, it’s nearly always through their dads: what their dads liked, what their dads played. You don’t hear about their mums quite so much, and what the mums liked. I remember my mother being given the Barbra Streisand album Guilty for Mother’s Day one year, when I was a kid. The album the Bee Gees wrote for Streisand. And, for shame, we just took the piss relentlessly. And even though I was a child, at the time, I still feel terribly guilty we did this. Especially as we didn’t do this with music my dad liked.  

JENNY LANDRETH

Yeah, the dads like the ‘difficult’ – as in ‘interesting’ – stuff, whereas the mums liked the fluff? That’s been my experience, in my adult life. I used to try and initiate this rule that the driver chose the music. So there were times [when if I put something on] that it wasn’t to everybody’s taste, but there was a kind of general eye-rolling, but if I eye-rolled about anything else…  There’s one rule for them, another rule for me. But now I can play terribly naff things if I want and it’s completely fine. And maybe a small part of that is because my beau now is much more open about what constitutes ‘taste’, so I feel much freer.

I’m not a fan, you see. I really have a scattergun approach to what I like. If someone said, ‘What’s your favourite band?’, I don’t have an answer, and I’ve never really done deep dives into one thing.

I just like what I like, it’s like the approach to art: I don’t know much but I know what I like. Whereas people who are fans, who can state with confidence, ‘Actually, I think you’ll find, the third album was their best album’, and you think, ‘I don’t fucking know. I don’t really give a shit.’ And they think that you're placing yourself beneath them, but really you’re looking at things in different ways. I don’t have a top ten list of my favourite films or books, because I like a whole swathe of things. My brain doesn’t make lists.

JUSTIN LEWIS

Once you have a favourite top ten, or a favourite anything, maybe by putting a lid on that, you’re stopping yourself from discovering something new? Because tomorrow, you might hear something else new that’s amazing.

JENNY LANDRETH

How can you have the same list every day? You’d get bored. My top ten list today would be totally different from my top ten tomorrow. Because I haven’t filed it all away in a filing cabinet, I’ve experienced it in a more visceral kind of way. I haven’t catalogued my likes and dislikes.

JUSTIN LEWIS

That’s honest! You’re not really supposed to say, ‘I like a little bit of everything’, that’s seen as a bit of a cop-out.

JENNY LANDRETH

I’m not presenting myself as the expert on X, Y or Z. I love listening to music. Sometimes I prefer silence. I love songs for reasons that will be different from your reasons because they will have resonated in a different part of my body to the way they've resonated in yours. Because we were different from the minute we took our first breath.

JUSTIN LEWIS

One of my bugbears was that ‘guilty pleasures’ scene about 20 years ago where the tastemakers suddenly bigged up mainstream but not very fashionable pop hits that a lot of us had liked for years.

JENNY LANDRETH

It's quite entertaining to watch people who have been quite disparaging about your choices suddenly discovering artists that you've quietly loved for a very long time. Like when Gilbert O’Sullivan was on Tim Burgess’s Listening Party, and everyone was like, ‘It’s safe, I can come out now.’

JUSTIN LEWIS

Better late than never. Obviously you could go the other way and say, Nobody’s opinion counts for anything, you could take that too far. But another reason I wanted to start these conversations was to put myself in a slightly vulnerable position by putting myself at risk with not always knowing about something, and being faced with the unfamiliar by guests.

JENNY LANDRETH

And potentially not liking things. I mean, if you hated one or more of my choices, I wouldn’t have gone, ‘You’re wrong’, but ‘We feel differently’, and I think there's a lot of people ready to go, ‘You’re wrong’. I know that people will read this and go, ‘You don’t like Sleaford Mods, you’re wrong’. But I like knowing what critics think, it helps me to work out what I think, and I like to know where things fit. Throughout this whole conversation I have shed all vestiges.

JUSTIN LEWIS

Let there be no shame about any of this ever again!

JENNY LANDRETH

Let’s never be ashamed of things that move us or stir us. Even if somebody else might judge them.

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