CLEWS — Exploring a New Decade
☆ interview & photos by Emily Elvish ☆
a conversation with CLEWS
about the Sydney scene, female-fronted rock, mentors,
and exploration and expansion in a new decade
The term dynamic duo is rarely given justice. Yet, it only takes a few moments of listening to Sydney-based rockers CLEWS to realise that this description definitely applies to them.
Exploding onto the Sydney scene in 2018 with their debut single Museum, Lily and Grace Richardson are giving heart to an uncharted sound in Australian music. With soulful harmonies and a lyrical fluency that transports you back to the golden age of 90’s rock, the sisters from Mollymook are quickly making their way to the forefront of Australian music.
With the upcoming release of their 5th single, Lily and Grace sat down to talk about their artistic process, female representation in band culture, creative mentors, and their plans for the new decade.
Growing up surrounded by music, CLEWS was born as a passion project which led both Lily and Grace to Sydney after finishing high-school.
Lilly: “It’s a very simple story. We’ve always known that we love singing harmonies together. We just knew that we wanted to be in a band, or do something musical. We started off playing little duo shows in bars, got into a studio, and started to get immersed in the music scene.”
Grace: “I feel like there was a point where we kind of made the decision…”
Lilly: “Oh, I think it was when you were saying ‘oh should I take a gap year? And we were like ‘you know what? We can travel the world someday when we’re in a band...fingers crossed, hopefully, touch wood...like, let’s just move to Sydney now, let’s just do it.”
Grace: “I always thought I was going to do the gap year thing but I was also like ‘you know what? We’re going to die one day (laughs), what’s the point of putting it off one year when we know for a fact that this is just what we’re going to end up doing?’ So it kind of feels like it was the obvious decision.”
The CLEWS sound is truly unique, providing listeners with a vocal symmetry and sonic ambience that makes your heart melt. However, a two-woman rock band that mixes anthemic melodies, brit-rock soul and 90’s production provides a refreshing change of pace to Sydney’s music culture. Conversation quickly turned to Lily and Grace’s experiences with a lack of female representation in band culture, especially in rock. Lily made the point that while there aren’t many female bands being promoted, it’s not for a lack of talent.
Lily: “There’s so many girl fronted bands.”
Grace: “But they’re nowhere in the leagues of Arctic Monkeys or Blur, or Oasis.”
Lily: “All these little nuances of just the gender thing with the music industry is so interesting. When we started out in Sydney 2 years ago, we were still playing festivals, like little local festivals, and we were the only girls on the lineup. Or you look at big festivals now that are dropping lineups and it’s still very gender biased, there won’t be any huge female artists. It’s just weird to think about it now and in the lense of a new decade. Things have changed a lot, but it’s not as astronomically as we thought. The music industry’s really just a microcosm of any part of society. It’s the same as business, it’s the same as film.”
Grace: “We live in a patriarchal society. You need to face facts.”
Lily: “If that’s all we contribute to in the very least just by being here and existing, and potentially having an existence that’s big enough for other girls to be like ‘wow...and also in bands too, that would be great! If you think about the different overlapping sections of feminism, we’re privileged people. So it’s literally the least we can do to try to just like punch into the rock scene, punch into the music scene where there’s not really any girls and just make space for other people who aren’t straight, white guys. I hope that we’re doing that now.”
As well as making waves on their own, Lily and Grace have founded an artistic partnership with indie-rock legends Holy Holy. CLEWS opened for the band on their ‘My Own Pool Of Light’ tour, lending their vocals to boy’s hit Faces and to their Like A Version cover of Lorde’s Green Light.
Grace: “It started because I think last year, it was like the first big tour, or the first big run of tours. It was probably like 12 dates that we did for Holy Holy’s national tour, and we just followed them around…”
Lily: “It was amazing! We get along really well with them, so if they ever need BV’s in their live shows we always say that we’ll do it. But that was really momentous because, like Grace said, we’d never been in situations where we were playing a run of shows that was four nights in a row. I was talking about this with someone, about how I’m only just realising how important it is to have mentors in your life. You know, people you can bounce ideas off of, or who have been around the block a bit more.”
Grace: “I think especially that mentor idea is so valuable in creative fields like music, where sometimes it feels like the path is so unclear. It’s not just a normal 9 to 5 regime. A lot of the time it’s just juggling a million plans, trying to keep that momentum and try all these different things that feel abstract.”
Despite it still being early days for the band, CLEWS seemed to have nailed their creative process. Lily has narratives of lyrics on hand, Grace writes up their quintessential guitar riffs, and together they craft their sound.
Lily: “I think that’s the hardest part, trying to translate a song from just us singing it at home, to getting ready to release it. Because when you get in the studio, you want to try and capture that ‘lightning in a bottle’ feeling in a song, and you really can’t force that. I find it really hard to get it right.”
Grace: “You’re just spoilt for choice these days too. You think, there’s nothing to narrow down what you could do, but at the same time, you’re always wanting something more. I don’t think we’ve ever gone in and recorded a song and had a product be exactly what we were picturing when we went in.”
Lily: “Which is good, because I feel like it takes on a life of its own, you know? And everyone just working on it contributes to their little part or whatever.”
As simple as it sounds, the end product is a testament to the sheer talent that the Richardson sisters have. Drawing inspiration from PJ Harvey and other legends of 90’s brit-rock, CLEWS create a bewitching mix of storytelling with a grunge sonic, or “poetic bangers” as Grace calls them.
Lily: “It’s still so early days, we’ve released what...four songs? But it has also given us a lot of flexibility with these singles to try and put what we want the song to sound like to life.”
Grace: “The way we write is quite wordy, more of a country ballad. All the songs just kind of start out on acoustic guitar and it’s like kind of got a country twang. I feel like our songwriting style doesn’t match the rock aesthetic that we love sonically, so we’re trying to match the storytelling and the songwriting to a 90’s rock, grungy sound.”
Lily: “But we’re still figuring it out, that’s what this year’s about, you know? Being in the studio as much as we can, recording, pushing the boat out, you know.”
Having come so far in such a short amount of time, the new decade is full of possibilities for Lily and Grace. It’ll only be a matter of time before they take the impact they’ve made in Sydney to a much larger audience.
Lily: “The new decade dawns and it’s like, okay...what are we doing? What do I actually want to sound like, you know? Because we love country music, rock music, pop music so much, how do we marry it all together? Do we try to do it all, do we just stay in one lane? I don’t even know what this year’s gonna be like.”
Grace: “We kind of feel like we’re in this period of having such a broad spectrum of music that we love listening to and then trying to figure out what elements of which we want to incorporate into our music. Whether it’s stronger to forsake some parts that we love in other people’s music, but maybe it doesn’t bring anything to the CLEWS sound? So it’s a lot of experimentation and I think that, because it’s early days, it’s so exciting. We just have so much that we want to try.”
☆ You can listen to CLEWS newest single Feel from the 5th of March ☆