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Polica Discuss Their Evolution

11/25/2013
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(Radio.com) With their latest album Shulamith, Polica continues to grow into their own singular sound, something like Portishead plus Cocteau Twins, or Sade plus Beach House. Radio.com spoke with Leaneagh while she was in New York, touring with a band called, wait for it, Marijuana Deathsquads.

Radio.com: You're on tour right now and have a radically different band, Marijuana Deathsquads opening for you. What's the energy like in the crowd after they perform?

Channy Leaneagh: We like playing shows with Marijuana Deathsquads because they come from the same person, the same place. To us as much as we have differences, we have a lot of similarities. And we share drummers, too. We come from the same producers, and from a lot of similar places � we come from a similar darkness. I don't know how it works for the crowd. I guess it's important to bring a show that you would want to see, that's why we're doing it.

The whole community of musicians that dovetail into other bands between Gayngs, and Marijuana Death Squads, and Bon Iver and The Rosebuds � does it seem to be better as opposed to curating a sound that comes from a community or as opposed to creating a specific genre?

Yeah, that's more exciting for us, for sure. We're very community based. In a lot of ways we have like each others music, so it seems to us that our music all sounds similar. But yeah, I guess.

When you started Poli�a, did you have a specific image in mind that you wanted to accomplish with the band? Not really. I can barely remember that time. Really there was not a lot of thought to it. I wanted to do something without much thought, just make something. There wasn't a plan of how I wanted to make it.

So was it just an impulse? I didn't know what I want � it just started to make sense as we went a long. I just wanted to make music with somebody. Once we found what the basis of the sound was then knew what I wanted to sound like. You don't want to know what to sound like, you want to be open to what it can sound like and just play.

With your new album, Shulamith, did you write it specifically about the author Shulamith Firestone? Nope, I did not write it about her. The name comes from her, but the record is not written about her. I read her book, and inspired her, but it's not based on her. I just named the record after her.

So it's not about feminism? I mean, I consider myself a feminist because I'm a woman, but I couldn't tell you five feminist writers. I'm very ignorant about feminism except for the plain fact that I'm a women, I guess. I just read her book after I finished the record, and I thought, "This is the best women in the world" and named my record after her because it's about women because I wrote it.

What inspired you about her book and made you think she was the "best women in the world"? She's an incredible thinker. She has amazing things to say about relationships, men and women, not even sexually but just the way men and women interact with each other. There are things that everybody knows that become more and more refined into doing the opposite of what is true and what is real. I don't believe in everything she said, but a lot of things about childbirth, a lot of things about being a mother, a lot of things about mental illness�. talk about building a community, that's the kind of woman that was a forward thinker and had a huge influence on the feminist movement and women in the '60s and just ended up kind of dying alone without fame or fortune. I guess those are the types of communities that I want to build, with people who are thinking and being and acting, but aren't seeking fame.

Is the idea that you want to build this community in the way of making music or what you want people to take away from your music. It's kind of how we make music, how we do business, how we work with people. Also, it makes more sense because a lot of the lyrical content, when I read her book, it filled in the blanks for all the questions I have. When you're writing a record, it's good to remember that I don't want to talk about it that much. Because at the end of the day, if someone named their painting, like, "Friedrich," all people would want to talk about is the name. "Why the f*** did you name your painting 'Friedrich'" and it's like 'It's just a f***ing name, lets' talk about the music.' I made this record more than anyone else for myself, then after that the band. But it's a selfish process, and it's a selfish name. And there's a lot of significance, for me, for all the things that it could possibly mean. But at the end of the day, this is the name of the woman that is this record.

But all the things that I wrote, the lyrics for the record, and then reading this book and being like, 'Wow this woman said it better than I did.' But I tried to get at some things, [some of] her points, and then she just f***ing nailed it in one paragraph. She should have made a record, that would have been great. more on this story

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