Sukie Smith - Interview

by John Clarkson

published: 19 / 12 / 2024

Former Madam frontwoman Sukie Smith talks to John Clarkson about her debut solo album, 'The Glass Dress and a Ringing Bell'.

Article

“The idea of this record is that you are stronger if whatever has been threatening you doesn’t break you,” says Sukie Smith. “There is a real sense of triumph to it.” Smith is the former frontwoman with the London-based collective Madam, who recorded three albums of haunting and broodingly beautiful alternative and experimental rock, ‘In Case of Energency’ (2008), ‘Gone Before Morning’ (2011) and ‘Back to the Sea’ (2016). The Southend-on-Sea raised Smith now writes and performs music under her own name, and is talking to long-term fans Pennyblackmusic about her debut solo album, ‘The Glass Dress and a Ringing Bell’, which came out on the 8th March on International Women’s Day. It is available digitally and also on pink-coloured vinyl. Sukie Smith leads a versatile life. She is a successful actress who has worked with Mike Leigh and Nic Roeg, and starred in the multi-award winning indie film ‘Lawless Heart’ (2001). She has also been a radio host on Radio Soho, recording over twenty interviews with artists, writers and musicians in her ‘Soundvision’ series about the music that feeds their crestive prowess. Smith has also been involved behind the cameras, working with a different filmmaker for each song on a set of videos for every track on the ‘Back to the Sea’ album. She has since going solo found herself increasingly in demand. She has collaborated with Tricky and The Loft’s Pete Astor, and toured providing backing vocals to Piroshka, the now sp;it-up band of Lush’s Mike Berenyi. The overall tone of ‘Back to Sea’, Madam’s masterwork, was melancholic, reflecting upon her father’s death and the cold, lingering comfort of the sea beside which she had spent her childhood. Smith has had a difficult few years since that album, and the themes of ‘The Glass Dress and a Ringing Bell’, as with all her work, are inspired by personal events – a near death experience which hospitalised her; an emotionally abusive boyfriend who she made the mistake of going into lockdown with, and the ravaging effect of COVID on artists and musicians’ creativity. ‘The Glass Dress and a Ringing Bell’ however, takes a very different approach to 'Back to the Sea' , and, a louder record than any of Madam’s trio other albums, it is jubilant and celebratory at not just having survived this series of events but got beyond them. ‘The Glass Dress and a Ringing Bell’ is a record of many highlights, The opening track ‘End of Expectation’ is set against the backdrop of an immense monolith of ebbing, washing sound, and when Smith towards the end sings the chorus of “I can breathe again” it captures her relief and feeling of triumph at having escaped and survived everything that been thrown against her . ‘We Try Not To Think About It Now’ is a jangling, echoing number which celebrates in diary form two trips made to Los Angeles, while ‘Honey’, a mass of slowly gyrating, hazy soundscapes and tingling undercurrents, nails Smith’s odd sense of wonder at the magic of a new world as dosed up on morphine she comes to terms with her hospitalisation. On the B side there is the shimmering electronic pop of ‘Fixed Star’, a track written and recorded with Romanian musician Silent Strike. The euphoric ‘Ride the Light’ was written and sung by former Madam bassist Gareth Moss, and has a crooning, comforting cameo vocal from Smith, who appears for the first time halfway through it as a goddess figure. We spoke to Sukie Smith in what is our sixth interview with her about ‘The Glass Dress and a Ringing Bell’, and began by asking her why after almost fifteen years with Madam she went solo. PB: Why have you decided to release this album under your own name rather than as Madam? SUKIE SMITH: It felt very important to me to do so. It is a very personal record. All my music is personal, but this album and the songs on it felt particularly so. I adopted the Madam persona because I had quite a big profile as an actress. That is how I made my name, and I didn’t want to be seen as another of those actresses who had turned to music as a sideline, so I hid myself with the name of Madam. Madam was also a collective in some ways. It involved other people, musicians in creating that sound, and so it was important that it had a band name. I was in Los Angeles, and something took place while I was there. I went in support of my friend John Lee Bird, who is a visual artist. He had a show in the Laboratory Arts Collective, which is a design centre. I was meant to be there as part of the entertainment of the evening, and to play my songs and music and to be the soundtrack to it. We found that the gallery was made out of concrete, and nothing was sonically set up for the intimate sharing of songs. There were huge amounts of people there, some of them big musicians who I recognised such as members of Devo and Guns N’ Roses. I was there to support John because he had made art listening to my music. For me something changed there, and I thought that I had to provide a more honest and raw response to his work, and I decided to half improvise songs, half do spoken word, and throw in some chanting as well. I was some kind of weird way channeling what I was experiencing when I was looking at his work, and after that experience I felt that I had to make and record music from that point on under my own name. It was just a progression really. PB: And you have written a song about that experience for the new album, ‘We Try Not to Think About It Now’. SS: That song is about two trips, including that one, which I made to Los Angeles. Both John and I were in a really sad space for different reasons, and we would comfort each other with phone calls and emails. I invited myself to go with another couple of friends of mine who were going to L.A., and I thought to myself, *Maybe I could do a video while I am there,” and I did make one for ‘Murder Park’, the Madam song, with Louise Salter from the Laboratory Arts Collective, this amazing magazine and performance agency, and her film-making partner Rya Khilstedt. When I was there, I spoke to Louise and her husband Nigel Daly, who she runs the Collective with, about bringing John over to L.A. to do this exhibition. ‘We Try not to Think About It Now’ is a diary about those two trips to L.A. which were amazing. That song also captures the underbelly of menace which is there in L.A. and becomes more and more apparent the longer that you are there PB: ‘End of Expectation’, ‘Pull and Twist’ and ‘The Witches Daughter’ all are about being trapped in an emotionally abusive relationship. The opening line of ‘End of Expectation’ is “out of the trap” and you also sing on that song “Betrayal is another word”. SS: I became involved with a new boyfriend shortly before COVID and we locked down together and I found myself trapped in a dangerous and malicious situation. I think of myself as being quite tough. People who are of a controlling nature might target people who seem quite independent, quite strong because maybe there is in some ways less of a support network around them To be cruel on purpose, to cause upset on fucking purpose is beyond me. I am sure that I have hurt people. I know that I have, but I have not done it on purpose, and he did. This record documents a lot of what has happened to me in the last few years, but it also is about escape and triumph. I was hospitalised shortly after I released ‘Back to the Sea’ for a long time, so that is in there too, my collapse and then recovery. This record is about survival really. I didn’t want it to be just simply this documentation of horror -controlling, shitty relationship; hospitalisation and being near death, and then COVID and all that came with it, not being able to work as an artist, not being able to make any money as an artist It was like watching everything you had ever achieved fall away during COVID. It was fucking terrifying, but it wasn’t the feeling I was left with at all. I am left with the opposite. I am left with a sense of huge strength and the feeling of having pulled yourself somewhere else. 'End of Expectation' is the mission statement of the album - or acknowledgement that I didn't shuffle off, so it's about surviving at all through everything , up until now , not just about the crappy sitchuation. PB: It is a much louder record sonically than any of the Madam records, Did you record it like that to capture this sense of triumph? SS: Yes, definitely. ‘The Glass Dress and a Ringing Bell’ feels expansive. Yes, it is introspective, but sonically and also lyrically and intention-wise there is a feeling that I have changed, It has expanded from everything that I have written about before in a very positive way. PB: All three Madam albums featured Sarah Gill on cello, yet she and it are absent on this record. Was this because the cello sounds so sad? SS: Yes , the cello is my sonic soul! I had to let her go for this record because my soul has changed .... Both the Spanish guitar, which I have also used a lot in the past, and the cello are absent on purpose. Their beautiful melancholy energy and sound just could not be in this record. The record is about flight and an over vision and the cello is so underworld and rich with mystery. I couldn't have it near this blueprint for change and escape! PB: The line “I was yours/You were never mine.” Does that sum up male dominance for you? SS: No. It is about being brought up to think that is the prize, to give your heart to somebody. It is a mistake. I am annoyed with that premise being planted in my brain through things like fairy tales. I hate that idea, that the prize is to give your heart to somebody, but I am also kind of rueful about it (Laughs). That was my ambition for a while, to connect in that way with somebody else. It is a huge responsibility to ask someone to take you on in that way (Laughs), PB: When we first began to talk to you at the time of ‘In Case of Emergency’ you would do a search on Google for Sukie Smith and it would say ‘actress’. Now you do a search on Google and it will still say ‘actress ‘ but it will also as likely say ‘musician’ or ‘composer’. SS: Yes. A really good thing that happened to me over COVID is my friend James Alexander said, “This is ridiculous. People can’t find you on the internet. They don’t understand all these things that you have done and explored,” So, he made a website for me at www.sukiesmith.com We went through all the gigs that I had done, all the radio shows that I had done because I did over twenty interviews for Soho Radio with various artists and writers about the place music has in their creative process . It also looks at all the acting I have done, and the films and television and theatre that I have been involved in. That was a surprise to me, seeing them all in one place. PB: Looking at your website, which is well done, you come across as not just an actress or a musician, but very much a multimedia artist. SS: Yes, I agree. I came to that conclusion too after looking at the website too (Laughs). There are a lot of things to be curious about and you start tp realise that they are all linked to each other. PB: How do you plan to take this out live because something like ‘Honey’ is going to be so difficult to transfer? SS: That came out of the studio. I was working with Nick Trepka. I had written the basics of that song, but there was no instrumentation around it apart from what was in my head. We spoke about the atmosphere of the song first of all rather than ‘Are the drums out there?’’ and ‘What is the tempo?’ which was a really lovelv, open-handed way of working initially. Nick and I then put it together using all sorts of studio effects and soundscapes. The live versions and the studio versions of these songs are going to be very different things. The way I approached this record was experimentally, so I am trying to approach playing live that way and be less rehearsed. I used to really drill Madam week after week and play and play, and anything which was slightly deviant would annoy me, but with this I think I am trying to be more open (Laughs). For the foreseeable shows I will play the songs as a guitar duo with James Alexander, I have been working as well with a really interesting guy who is a concert pianist but also makes experimental electronic music, and hopefully we can make a show that reflects some of the experimentation in the record . It's sort of genre less sonically, so a mix of musicians and disciplines seems right, I fucking miss having a band though , so, so much. ‘Honey’ is all about the morphine world of being in a hospital. I had no idea how close I was to being not alive until I read my medical records, and it said ‘Suspected outcome: death’. You have no idea why you are in there, and you are like in this extraordinary other world full of morphine. The first time I was out of the hospital and saw the sky it was overwhelming.: I was in the hospital for about three and a half weeks, but it took me about six months for me to go outside again properly. I was so vulnerable. I sort of shuffled from one room to another, and I slept an enormous amount, and when I was awake everything, even reading a book, seemed in technicolour. PB: Has a near death experience changed you? SS: Iit has changed me, and I am the better for it. That is another reason that I thought here was no fucking point in hiding. Does it matter what people think, if people misunderstand you? Just be as happy as you can be. It is not going to stop me spending hours looking at Tik-Tok (Laughs), but it did bring about in me a real sense of panic at how much time I was potentially wasting. It has made everything very significant. I feel the significance of a huge amount of things more. PB: There are two collaborations on this record. You recorded ‘Fixed Star’ with Silent Strike. Who is he? SS: I met him on MySpace some years ago. He is a Romanian electronic composer, and got in touch through MySpace, and he said, “I really like your music and your voice, and would you think about collaborating with me on this one track?,” And we did and it appeared on his record and I was really pleased about that, and then we did it again, maybe four years later. He has become very well known, an international superstar, but during COVID he got in touch, and said, “I am submitting a track to a label in Germany, and I am looking for a female voice on it,” and then he said, “I will need it tomorrow,” and I thought, “What the fuck!” and wrote it quickly in 24 hours, forcing this song out of my head and recording it. That song with a little tweaking became ‘Fixed Star’. PB: ‘Ride the Light’ is a collaboration as well. SS: That was a collaboration with Gareth Moss, who played bass in Madam for a few years and was on ‘Back to the Sea’. He asked me a long time ago to collaborate on a song for a project called VYVYN HOWL We barely knew each other then, but he said, “You can be the goddess in this song.” He has gone on and done other things and other projects. He has set himself up mainly as a songwriter and a producer and he shelved that song and that whole project, but I remembered how beautiful that song was. That beautiful song still existed but no one had heard it, and it fitted perfectly sonically on ‘The Glass Dress and a Ringing Bell’. PB: Gareth sings the first two verses and then you come in towards the finish… SS: I like that on other people’s records, when suddenly there is a change, like Lana Del Ray singing with Father John Misty on ‘Let the Light In’ n the middle of her record. ‘Did You Know There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd?’ I like that when there is a sonic change in range and vocals. There are super-talented people like Gareth, and they just chuck away their song and say it doesn’t work, and it is fucking amazing (Laughs). PB: Final question. What else are you involved with at the moment? SS: I am supporting The Loft when they play the Ramsgate Music Hall in March next year ... Apparently I qualify as a local band. I think they just asked me though because I am local to the Music Hall when I am in Ramsgate. I am also singing backing vocals for Pete Astor's solo project The Attendant. There is lots of side hustle stuff happening since I came out of the shadows and called my project my name. I have just done backing vocals for the new David Lance Callahan album. What a huge talent he is. I have also just come back from the ASVOFF16 Film Festival where the AI-generated film for ‘We Try Not To Think About It Now’ was in competition, which was a huge honour! It is always oratifying to be around humans who place their creativity in the centre of their lives, no matter the consequences. PB: Thank you. Photos by James Alexander.