ROISIN MURPHY at Mod Club (722 College), November 2, 8 pm. $25. ticketweb.ca.
A lot of musicians who become gay icons achieve that status because of their air of outsized glamour in the face of adversity.
Irish pop star Roisin Murphy slipped into the role of drag icon thanks to her flamboyance, but also her sense of mise-en-scene.
In the video for 2007 single Overpowered, she exits a concert hall looking like a couture bouncy castle, in an inflatable Gareth Pugh get-up, and makes a lonely commute home through the streets of London. She grabs a bite to eat, boards the night bus and uses the toilet. The dress never comes off. The only adversity she faces is the crushing blandness of everyday life.
Theres some kind of mad affinity between me and drag culture, Murphy tells NOW over the phone from London. My music is about trying to hold on to a lot of emotional threads in one moment. And I think the best drag acts do that: they have myriad things going on across the spectrum of emotion. Its such a pure kind of performance. And vital.
Culturally, its pretty hard to be dangerous in our world. Mainstream just swallows everything up, she adds. If youre honest, you get energy from being a part of something outside the mainstream, and that creative energy is priceless.
In her videos for this years Take Her Up To Monto album, she reversed the tension from Overpowered, highlighting beauty in the urban landscape. She dons neon construction worker garb, wanders and dances about the UK capitals concrete architecture to blend in. Its a kind of realness drag, she explains.
Whereas a lot of pop stars dress up to appear otherworldly, Murphys style remains in conversation with the everyday. Its an idea that flows from her music.
The main part of being creative is accepting the reality of a situation, she explains. I have to go with exactly the truth of a situation when I make a record. This whole album is about being honest. Its about making everything clean again so I can start completely fresh.
Murphy has been on pop fans radar since the mid-1990s, when she was the singer for Sheffield duo Moloko, which she formed with her ex, Mark Brydon. Their success was mostly confined to the UK and Europe, but in 1998 a remix of single Sing It Back became a worldwide club hit and topped the U.S. dance chart.
When they broke up, so did Moloko, and she went solo, recording her leftfield debut, Ruby Blue, in 2005 with producer Matthew Herbert. The commercially oriented Overpowered for EMI followed in 2008. Influenced by the disco and house of the Paradise Garage era, the record was a hit with critics and fans, but not a commercial smash.
When EMI went bust, Murphy was dropped and pushed more deeply into the world of dance music, releasing a string of one-off singles independently and on respected European dance labels such as Permanent Vacation and Crosstown Rebels. In 2014, she released an EP of Italian pop standards, and a year later the album Hairless Toys her first release to get proper North American distribution.
In November, she kicks off her first North American solo tour at the Mod Club a rare local appearance. The trek is in support of Monto, a companion album to Hairless Toys and composed of complex, structure-averse, headphone-ready love songs. Is it gratifying that her first major trip across the pond is on the back of her weirdest album?
Well, yeah, she says, dryly. But also I have been doing this for over 20 years. Maybe that has some kind of cumulative effect?
When NOW caught up with Murphy, shed just stepped out of a London studio. In contrast to the fraught and vexing Monto, the song she was recording that day is a very passionate, direct song.
This is your first North American solo tour. Whats been the hold-up?
Its been really hard to pull it off because I always have a big band. Its not like me and two other people onstage its a big thing. And I dont really know how to make things small enough to be really dainty and easy to get around with. I overdo it a bit. I wanted to bring the best possible thing that I can do to [North America], and its just now that its become possible.
All your albums are fixated on love and its various forms. How has your approach to writing about love changed over the years?
The way you write about love all depends on where your hormones are in that moment obviously. And, yeah, it changes all the time because love changes all the time. There was a certain grown-up, arch, ironic way of songwriting about love on the last two records. Ive grown into that role. I dont write puerile love songs. I think love songs should be sexy. They should not be really needy and desperate. Its about layers. Lifes about layers, isnt it? There are all these layers, layers, -layers of meaning on top of meaning on top of meaning. And you never really figure it out.
Even though youve moved away from dance music on the last two albums, you still turn out slamming house remixes. Why is it important to maintain that connection to club culture?
Its a vital connection. Right now Im making more club-oriented music than I have for a while. Honestly, I dont want to sound like a snob about music I hate snobs and all that but I wont be doing EDM. Ill never be doing it. Whatever you want to classify that as, that wont be happening.
I heard somebody else explain it once in an interview, and its a cliche, but dance music has this ability to convey all sorts of emotions at once. The cliche is happy-sad or uplifting-desperately-
When you were growing up in Sheffield, was there a club you went to that was formative?
There were many years when a couple of DJs were the focal point of my musical life in Sheffield. We were always doing parties, but not so much in clubs. Winston Hazel and Parrot and all these people were my major forces of musical understanding. I refer to them and defer to them at all times.
I like how your song Gone Fishing paid homage to the film Paris Is Burning without being an obvious retro-house track. How conscious are you of the line between homage and appropriation when writing a song like that?
Im conscious not to step on anyones toes. I dont want to be like, Oh yes, I invented drag culture! That would simply be insane. I saw Paris Is Burning and went into the studio the next day and wrote that song. I was madly in love with the film. The song is an ode to the acceptance I find in that culture, especially in cities like Paris, New York and London. There are certain places where my audience is absolutely full-on, so its an ode to them. I hope it doesnt come off as a cynical move. Its about creating family outside of your own family, creating it out of culture, being your own alchemist and making your own life. Its quite an anthemic song for me personally.
So whats the game plan for the North American tour?
Everything is live and anything can happen. Its constant madness. Its costume changes. Its 155 personalities in one. Its a drama, darling!
kevinr@nowtoronto.com | @kevinritchie
