The Skinny On... Lovefoxxx

What’s your favourite place to visit? 
Tokyo, I feel connected with the culture, being half Japanese. Love the food, their spin on things, the height of furniture and how everything there is so specific and anything and everything is visually appealing. 

What’s your favourite food?
Bread and butter. But I don’t eat it often, it's a special meal for me. I eat it on special occasions or when I’m sick and need a pick me up.

What’s your favourite colour?
Ochre because it makes me feel comfortable and it varies in shades… It can be yellowy, greeny, browny – it's always quite unique.

Who was your hero growing up?
The designer Betsey Johnson because she did cartwheels at the end of her shows. 

Whose work inspires you now?
German-Brazilian painter Eleonore Koch, seems like she had a lot of confidence in her compositions that can be landscapes with a lot of empty space in them. I love her cropping and colours, the internal scale of her works with stable rhythmic brush strokes. And also how she does her edges. 

What three people would you invite to your dinner party and what are you cooking?
Hilma af Klint, Leonard Cohen and my boyfriend Chuck Hipolitho. In this case he is cooking spaghetti with ragu. 

What’s your all-time favourite album?
This is a very unfair question and y’all know it. Well, it changes from time to time, so RIGHT NOW I’d say it’s Cocteau Twins' Heaven or Las Vegas, because I like how their music makes me feel. I like that I don’t need to bother to try to understand the lyrics, as no one does, so I can just stick with the feelings it gives me. Their music elevates life, makes everything feel nicer, as in fancier. It’s like any situation is instantly upgraded. Also it gives me a synaesthetic feeling of a nice palette of colour, quite suggested by the cover artwork: pinks, magentas, greens AND ROUUUUGE.

Who’s your all-time favourite pop act?
As a band we all love Madonna! The first song we’ve ever played was a Hollywood cover and I love her declarations over the years about the double standards for female artists. 

What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?
Mediterraneo. This Italian movie won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1992. It’s set during WW2, a group of Italian soldiers go to a Greek island to hide or something and then they start mingling with the locals and it’s supposed to be all, “ahh, we are all humans after all, let’s all get together and be friends”, but there are no decent female parts in it. The second female actress that appears the most has no lines but you see her naked having sex with two soldiers, and at some point the Italians go back to Italy and it shows this actress cheerfully waving goodbye amongst the other villagers, she has a pregnant belly and, yup, she’s gonna be a single mum, but whatever right? She is super chill and happy that the men are going back to their motherland. The two soldiers that had sex with her look at each other as the boat is leaving with this expression ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and go to each other “whooooops, LOL”. I believe the issue that the men deal with is jealousy and possession over the other female in it – the one who has lines – who is a prostitute and is a flat character. I cannot believe this shit film won something.

What book would you take to a desert island?
How many times did people say IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME? Well… I’d take In Search of Lost Time by Proust. I started reading it and I confess my reading time is before going to sleep which is to say that I’m going really slow at it. He does a lot of describing, I’m at the first volume and it would be good to read about rich details of other surroundings that would differ a lot from “sand” and “sea”. 

Who’s the worst?
The Bolsonaros, that fucking dude with his loser sons, because they are dumb and full of conviction. Also, everything they make is ugly, and his current wife, that evangelical preacher wannabe can also fuck off.

When did you last cry?
I’m very, very big on crying, did you know? My art show last year was called If it’s not for crying, I don’t even leave the house. I cried today at my analysis (therapy). I was talking about painting, which is what I am now, I’m a painter… I was discussing how I want to be certain that my work is good, but I will never be certain, I can only be certain of the process and be certain that I’m serious about my work conduct and that not being certain is beautiful because I will always aim for it and it never ends. I’d like the comfort of being certain, but certainty in art itself is a killer and it makes for boring art. 

What are you most scared of?
War and to not have a democracy. 

When did you last vomit?
Hahahahahhhaha. I don’t remember! It’s been a long time… but I can tell you that when I was living in a 12m² wooden shack I woke up barfing one day and I believe it was because I was intoxicated with mosquito repellent. I lived at the beach for five years at some point around 2017 and I would be covered in that repellent 24 hours a day, every day. 

Tell us a secret?
I have never wanted to, so I never tried cocaine and the secret is that I’m proud of it. I feel like I'm a rare unicorn snowflake for it, LOL. 

Which celebrity could you take in a fight?
Let’s reframe this because I don’t like fighting and even the thought of it makes me feel icky… so let’s say: who would you like to fuck off? And that would be JK Rowling.

If you could be reincarnated as an animal, which animal would it be?
A rescued stray cat! Because they are the most important animals that exist. Vital for the existence of some humans, did you know?

With CSS you’re just about to embark on your It’s Been a Number of Years Tour – what are you most excited about getting back on the road in 2024?
To hang out with my bandmates! To get into a van all jetlagged and talk nonsense on the van ride. Being in a van while jetlagged and maybe a bit hungry is a recipe for a lot of creativity! We come up with horrible “would you rather” challenges, and since the old days of our tours we are slowly imagining the worst restaurant in the world. We’ve created the concept, the design and, of course, the menu. It’s a fusion Italian x Chinese, they have special plates for like ONE big old RAVIOLI flavoured dumpling, and everything is very user UNFRIENDLY. The stools are super high, the portions are made of ONE thing. It’s horrible. 

The tour kicks off in Glasgow on 22 June; do you have a favourite memory of playing Scotland in the past?
So many! The gnocchi in front of ABC – for years that was my favourite food. Our first show in the UK or Europe was Indian Summer and I couldn’t believe how into us people were! Right after this show I gave an interview and I’m super hyper, full of adrenaline, talking about Italo disco or something and I remember people commenting saying that I was on drugs, but I was just happy! Also, is it true that the floor at Barrowlands is engineered to bounce?!

Do you have any surprises up your sleeve for the tour, can we expect any new music?
This is a reunion tour, probably our last tour ever! We will play the songs you know and love. Our lives changed and outgrew the band, so this reunion is something special, a celebration of all those years and our friendship. We won’t play new songs, I wish though… we have an unreleased song that we made with Dave Sitek one day when we were joking around called Why (Don’t You Suck UR Own Dick Tonight)? It’s so silly and I can’t really sing it because I can't hold my laughter.

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CSS play Drygate, Glasgow, 22 Jun