POPPY AND THE JEZEBELS
The new darlings of indie grrl teenage pop-rock infuse saccharine sweet cockey-type vocals doused in marching piano riffs.
Generation X may have grown up with the onslaught of T.V. but Generation Y has undeniably grown up with the Internet and Poppy and the Jezebels are living proof of that.
No they aren’t wicked abominators, but a four-piece, pre-GCSE, all instrument playing indie grrl band from Birmingham. Dom Vine, (keyboards, bass and guitar) had been learning guitar for around 5 years when she met Poppy Twist (drummer) on msn messenger. It was only a year ago that the band finally formed after various re-arrangements and the kicking out of a schoolboy guitarist in the band. Poppy and the Jezebels were completed by lead singer Molly Kingsley and guitarist Amber Bradbury.
Think teenage vintage pop and music lesson skirmishes mixed with even vocals and you might begin to envisage them. ‘Nazi girl’ – their debut single, perhaps inspired by Iggy Pop’s Nazi Girlfriend, who the band allude to on their myspace, is a taster of things to come.
In between school and collecting fans via the myspace revolution, the band have been busy gigging and proving that they meet the grade by opening for bands like The Horrors and Look Look (Dancing Boys).
Poppy Twist assures me “they are not like anyone else out there at the moment” and is keen to be removed from any riot grrl comparisons of the 90’s. Instead the decade in which they were born – the 1980’s – seems to have had much more of an impact. Rather than just define themselves as any kind of genre, Dom Vine insists that they are “a band that just happen to be girls, rather than just a girl band.”
Eager to avoid any usual rockstar-esque drawbacks, the band are carefully managed by Poppy’s parents Dave and Nicki, who explain that the girls age does change normal pitfalls and includes fending off cringe worthy old-enough-to-know-better males who have a habit of posting sometimes inappropriate messages on the girl’s myspace site.
Being in a band certainly has its plusses including permissible days off school and allowing them to meet the rich, famous, talented and Kelly Osborne. And like any teenage girls, they admit to having diva moments and smatterings of arguing with the old ‘toilet cubicle locking away’ scenario.
Having played the ‘Underage Club’, famously opened by Sam Smith son of a former member of arty electro-indie band Add N To (X), Poppy and the Jezebels agree that playing to an audience of the same age is a lot harder than playing to older audiences. But in their “wildest dreams” and “if it all went alright” the girls envisage playing ‘Glastonbury Mainstage’ someday. Give them a few more years and they just might do it.
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