Divorce vs Comanechi

It's pretty sickening: my band Divorce and London's Comanechi are in the middle of a musical love-in. The romance started by sharing stages in London and Scotland just under a year ago and it has now been consummated with the imminent release this month of our split 10" single on Merok Records. Not only have we got a song each on the A-side, but we both come together and play as one on a rather noisy cover of Sonic Youth's Death Valley 69 on the flipside. Now we're eloping together on a tour of the UK this month, spreading our sickly love around the country like an ear-splitting STD.

To celebrate this exciting/disgusting marriage of filth, The Skinny want me to interrogate Akiko Matsuura, Comanechi's vocalist and drummer. But before even a single question has been asked there are already problems.

“Please try and talk less in a Glasgow accent, so I can understand!! [laughs] It's so hard talking to you and Vic [Divorce bassist]. It's so funny sometimes when we hang out, I totally don't understand!”

After two weeks of being in a van with us you'll be talking in a Scottish accent, I totally believe it! At the last gig in London all your friends will be totally confused!

“That would be so cool!! I love the Scottish accent, I just don't get it!”

It wouldn't be wrong to presume that Akiko might be wavering a little at the prospect of the tour. She's spent practically the whole of 2010 travelling the globe drumming for The Big Pink. She has documented her experiences on her blog, giving specific attention to the catering at various festivals and on their numerous tours (it's an undeniable fact that Muse give good catering).

But this tour will be a world away from the relative comfort of The Big Pink's touring organisation. This tour will consist of two weeks in a small van, sleeping on floors and eating pizza every night. Is she ready to go back to roughing it?

“Yeah I'm really excited. I did a lot longer tour in America with PRE [her fantastic, old noise-punk band that also included future members of Male Bonding] and that was all with guys, so it was really smelly. We toured the west coast for four weeks, but that was cool. But there's lots of girls on this tour... like you! [laughs] I can't wait!”

Having a new record to promote is only going to be beneficial too. People who are familiar with Comanechi's previous releases might be quite surprised by their track on the 10”; Let Me Bloom is a five-plus minute sludge-rock bulldozer, quite a few degrees away from the faster, trashier punk that dominated their 2009 debut album Crime Of Love. It's a lot darker and more complex.

“Yeah yeah yeah, it's like a step-up. Everything, like musically and lyrically, it's got more to it in the composition.”

Is that the end of Comanechi doing shorter, simpler songs then?

“Yeah, kind of, we don't want to be just loud, straightforward punk, I mean I don't think we were ever just like that and nothing else, but I don't want to just play short songs all the time, that period is over.”

On the recording there's more instruments too.

“Yeah there's more guitars, more layers yeah.”

Does this mean that Comanechi might be expanding its line-up?

“I'm not sure, it's hard to decide because Comanechi kind of are me and Simon and it would be weird to break that, but at the same time having experiences in my other bands have shown me that sometimes it's easier to get ideas together and write songs with more people, I don't know really. I think for the recording we wanted to have more stuff going on, but it's different from playing live, you know. Me and Simon by ourselves, me playing drums and doing vocals live is a really important part of Comanechi, I don't think we want to stop that.”

Since Comanechi released their debut album in December 2009 they've had precious few chances to promote it, outside some one-off shows in London and a quick trip to Scotland in January this year. In fact if anything this tour will give them the first chance to play the songs on their album outside of the capital in years. Is it not frustrating that you'll feel obliged to play these songs rather than try out new material?

“I think it would be stupid not to play songs from the album and just play new songs! I think if somebody comes to the show and they have heard the album and not seen us play, they will want to hear the songs they know and might be bored if they hear things they don't. Like in The Big Pink, there are people who just wait for Dominoes and are quiet for the rest of the time.”

But these gigs aren't quite as big as Big Pink shows, the people who come along might just want to hear noisy music whether they've heard it or not –

“Yeah, we don't have the hits to start with!”