Caught in the Carousel

Ilya

By Thomas Cooney

Ilya

In June of this year, Ilya singer Joanna Swan sat down with me for an extended visit in Oakland, California. Joanna was having back problems, I was confounded by clotted cream, my latest iPhone app, which had promised to record the entire afternoon, recorded a big bowl of nothing (ever try getting your 99 cents back from Apple/iTunes?) and my dog Newman was excessively gaseous. Nothing went according to plan. Since then Ilya has released its third CD, Carving Heads on Cherry Stones, and Joanna and I have worked hard at recapturing that June afternoon.

Ilya is thrilled to offer a free download here of their latest album's standout track, "Spring."

THOMAS COONEY: First off, thanks so much for letting our readers download a song from the new album.

JOANNA SWAN: Our pleasure. You can send them to ilyasounds.com where we will be giving away some unreleased material now and then.

TC: Really? I'll have to go there. But first, some questions. How did it come about that Revlon picked up "Bellissimo" for its ad campaign?

JS: I don't remember, Chrysalis would like to say they pitched it to them, but I remember A&R at Chrysalis saying they were approached by Revlon. So Revlon must have heard it somewhere?

TC: On behalf of some Americans, I am promising to re-Colonize ourselves to Britain if you can take Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera off our hands (dropping Celine Dion off in Canada on yer way across the pond). I have made it clear, in print and to anyone who hasn't muzzled me yet, that Joanna Swan is the greatest female singer in music. So I put it to you directly: why are these women such terrible singers?

JS: Beyoncé is a great singer! Although it was over the top saccharine, I thought her singing of Etta James songs in the film Cadillac Express was fantastic. Also, as another singer I don't like to say such harsh things about these ladies, because it's not as if I think I am any better. I just have different tastes and a different approach to music. On telly I once saw Celine impersonating a double bass and she was brilliant, but when I hear those long, foghornly-ernest notes, my stomach yelps. I remember liking Barbra Streisand singing "Woman In Love," but on hearing Celine's version I had an urge to inhale a bucket of testosterone. Christina is a vocal acrobat, she should be Christina Agile-ina. And Whitney has a fabulous aunt who she decided not to take 'note' of.

TC: Sorry, but I can't agree with you on Beyoncé's version of "At Last," but thankfully (especially for those around me) I can't sing to save my life.

JS: Don't get me wrong...I am no Beyoncé fan...(I scarcely know her stuff and have had the horror of watching the "Put A Ring On It" video) I just can't quite elbow her over to that particular camp of ladies...yet!

TC: The Mariah et al camp?

JS: The best thing about Mariah is she can sing a lot of notes, all the way up, up, up and all the way down. 'Once more with feeling', would be nice, though.

TC: Feeling, yes. That often seems to be missing. "Lesser" singers seem to know that sincerity counts. That's why I would never leave Shirley Horn or Sade off any list of great female singers (both of whom, by the way, have shown in the past that they can belt). They seem to know how to work a pause. But you manage to have the operatic, scale-jumping ability as well as the artistic intelligence of how to phrase. Again, I often think of Piaf as the standard: a voice that could reduce a fortress to rubble based on its sheer power, and yet, no one has ever known the power of the pause like Piaf, the way there is sometimes more energy in the space between words. Not a question, I suppose, but can you comment on when you realized you had such an astonishing voice?

JS: Not an answer, I suppose, but I don't realize it! I have fantastic people like you and others (and Nick, but he's biased) tell me that, but it isn't something I ever think about. I don't sing because I think I have 'an astonishing' voice, I sing because I have to. It is who I am. If I had a bad voice would I still have the same impulse? Maybe that is like Dylan, he has an 'unconventional' singwhining voice. But, although not for me, I love that we have had (and still have) Dylan and he was an utterly beautiful young man! And if I had lived in a village years ago, BC (before celebrity) I would have been known as Joanna the Singer. If I was a red Indian, Little Big Bird!

TC: When first relaying to you my initial reaction to the new album, you reported that Nick called "Spring" an obvious song to stay on the album. Why?

JS: No, I said Nick didn't want "Spring" on the album! He says it is too much of a 'no-brainer'. But I love that about it. It is joyous and undemanding (just like moi).

TC: In terms of songwriting, do you and Nick share all the duties? And who takes lyric credit when you sing in your made up language?

JS: Well Nick is one of those musicians that would be happy to write songs all day long. If he starts to play the guitar then a song just starts to happen. I don't play an instrument so I need other people to work with in order to write songs. Carving Heads on Cherry Stones was done with ideas hatched at the kitchen table with just voice and guitar, as well as backing track ideas recorded for me to work to. But They Died for Beauty and Somerset were mostly Nick's songs. His songs are more conventionally beautiful than mine, (that are written with a more unorthodox approach). Nick has a bigger job in the recording process, but I am a virtuoso at issuing production orders when I don't like the way something is going. The work all evens out as I do all the Ilya business and Internet stuff.

Ilya

TC: Liz Taylor from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or Butterfield 8?

JS: Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. It's the frisson of Burton/Taylor chemistry.

TC: The world of popular music since the 1950's is filled with stories of evil record company executives (especially in America). But with the music industry in such a state of flux, do you miss the paternal hand of a record company?

JS: I miss the money and the nice hotels but nearly everything else was not conducive to musical integrity. It was an interesting foray, but I am glad our business is in our hands!

TC: You have 14 children, correct?

JS: Almost. Sixteen and another on the way.

TC: What one well-known song do you wish could have been yours?

JS: OH MY GOD!..."The Air That I Breathe." But of course that isn't the one. It's just that it is the one of many that won that particular little race in my head! (But I am thinking of k.d. Lang's version). Vaughan William's arrangement of "Greensleeves" was heading up the rear.

TC: I do love that k.d. lang version of "The Air That I Breathe." Simply Red also has a nice version. Come to think of if, when I was eleven or so and a card-carrying member of the Olivia Newton-John fan club (don't ask) I even liked her version. Perhaps the song is unruinable. On a side note, for the longest time people would say that k.d. Lang was pitch-perfect. I would use her as a reference point in conversations until once, her friend and fellow Canadian, Jane Siberry, screwed up her eyebrows, and in the kindest, most uncruel and Buddhist way said: "Oh no, k.d. Lang is not pitch perfect." It was all said in that same kind tone my mother used once when we were watching some gala event on TV when I was young and I told her that Rock Hudson was married to Elizabeth Taylor and my mom just patted my ten-year-old hand and said, "No. Absolutely not."

JS: Rock Hudson's name is trying so hard to be macho...it should have been obvious.

TC: Not to me. I never get those things. Always flying over my head. In any event...What Ilya song do you feel most satisfied with? That is, the one song you wake up in the middle of the night with the fear that it has all been a terrible dream and you never wrote that one song. Which is it?

JS: "The Air That I Breathe." Oh shit! We didn't write that one. This is all a horrible dream. Do you know, I can't actually answer that! Not even spontaneously!

TC: Touring the States anytime soon?

JS: No.

TC: I was once in London barely two weeks into the new year when a woman barged into the Hadgett's Bookstore and said: "Has the 2006 Who's Who arrived yet?" The cashier, without missing a beat, said, "They're here at the till." What's up with you Brits and Who's Who?

JS: Did she bear any resemblance to Margaret Thatcher?

TC: How did you and Nick meet?

JS: I was living with the drummer when Nick joined our band. He walked into the pub where the band were to meet him (that's how you auditioned a new member, you had to see how many pints they could down). My mouth fell open and I went through the weirdest out of body sensation, as this voice in my head said, "So there he is, that is who you are supposed to be with." He was so familiar to me, like I had known him for hundreds of years. I turned to one of the other singers and said, "He looks nice" and she shrieked, "Eeeerrrrrr Yuk." Yes it was love at first sight, but beset with complications! Obviously I followed my heart, because next spring we will have been together for 25 years!

Ilya

TC: Your songs often have a sweeping, cinematic feel to them. What is your all-time favorite movie?

JS: Gone With The Wind, Doctor Zhivago, The Godfather...you know, little parochial, household dramas.

TC: Your all-time favorite male singer?

JS: Al Green

TC: Your all-time favorite female singer?

JS: Dusty Springfield. (I was going to say Dusty Fitzgerald, but that would be cheating!)

TC: You MUST choose from each: Ferry or Bowie? Cohen or Dylan?

JS: Bowie and Cohen.

TC: There is a thrill at understanding an artist, somewhat. I knew you'd pick Bowie over Ferry (I wouldn't in a million years), but I wasn't so sure about Cohen over Dylan.

JS: Bowie was my most rampant teenage staple, yes even over Bryan. Bowie was a serious musical addiction. I prefer Cohen's words and his voice over Dylan's. He doesn't whine; he sings like a man.

Ilya

Carving Heads On Cherry Stones is out now.