Interview: Alison Sudol (A Fine Frenzy)

I recently had the opportunity to interview the lovely Alison Sudol, the talented signer/songwriter/pianist behind A Fine Frenzy. After we exchanged some greetings, we got down to the nitty gritty about her new album, touring, and future plans which you can read below. Enjoy!
---------------------------------------

Chewing Gum: Let’s talk about the new record first – Bomb in a Birdcage. In listening to your first album, One Cell in the Sea, and the new record – a lot has changed. Everything from the title to the cover to the music is very different – can you explain what you were hoping to accomplish with the new album?

Alison Sudol: Yeah, it’s super different. If anyone thought of themselves two years before and then added in traveling the world and having their lives changed and meeting so many new people, seeing so many musicians on the road, experiencing so much growth, moving away from home and being on the road – it’s not even a changing really, it’s just growing. And that’s how I feel about this album – all the things that came between the making of One Cell and the making of Bomb in a Birdcage just brought me to a different place -a really exciting place - and I knew what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be different and what I wanted to stay the same and that I wanted to have fun and I wanted the album to be lighter and more positive.

CG: Were there certain songs that led into the album and helped you establish what you wanted to do with the new record?

AS: Yeah, definitely “What I Wouldn’t Do.” Even though it wasn’t the first song chronologically, it was the first song that made me go, “Ok, I’m gonna make an album now, this is where we’re starting from.” And then I was heading towards making a pretty mellow folk record – very sweet, very spare, very folky – and then I wrote “Stood Up” and I thought, “What do I do with this?” But I also really wanted to be running around the stage and interacting with the audience. I’ve seen some great live shows and it’s so powerful to watch some of these singers and I thought, “I want to do that too,” and that shaped the arc of the album. It went from being really quiet to really loud and then we filled in the gaps in between.

CG: Do you have a favorite song from the album to perform?

AS: It changes every night because every audience is different and every time we play is different. Thankfully, otherwise playing the same songs every night would be torture, but every night it’s new and I get new things out of each tune. So it would be hard to say, one night it’s definitely a certain song and the next night that one was okay but I like THIS one better.

CG: How did you decide on the title for the album, Bomb in a Birdcage has a very different feeling than the more melancholy One Cell in the Sea.

AS: It’s a line from “What I Wouldn’t Do” – “With my heart ticking like a bomb in a birdcage I left before someone got hurt.” And that’s how I felt throughout making the whole album, this sort of weird fragile state that I was in just coming off of the road and not really knowing how to just “be” on a regular basis because I was all of a sudden home for a few months after I had been gone for so long and it was weird to interact. But at the same time, there was something uncompromising and explosive happening where I just felt like taking life by the horns and I’d never really felt like that before.

CG: How has touring been? You’ve been all over the world, which is obviously exciting. Do you like touring or is it just a necessity? What do you enjoy and what’s tough about it?

AS: I love touring; I’ve had some of the best moments of my life on tour. I’ve also had some of the worst. It’s like this incredible journey that you get to go on and you get to see amazing things. I mean, I can’t think of many people that get to go to as many cities as touring musicians get to go to. You don’t just go to the obvious tourist ones, you go everywhere and you see so many gems and meet so many interesting people. And to see a roomful of people so far away from home but so connected to each other and to you through music, it’s WOW, you know?

There’s also the flipside. I have a really strange diet where I don’t eat meat, so I eat fish and tofu, etc for health reasons and because I’m a big animal lover. And there are times when I’m in the middle of nowhere and I’m thinking “I’m just gonna eat a bun with some lettuce on it and some fries or something.” Or it’s lonely and I miss my family, my dog, my friends and if something upsetting happens on the road and I don’t want to talk to the band about it – that’s hard. And it’s tough being a girl amidst a bunch of guys all the time. But the cons don’t nearly outweigh the pros – you get to make music all over the world!

CG: Do you have a favorite spot that you’ve been to?

AS: There are a few places. There’s a pop festival in Baden-Baden, Germany and we played this enormous venue there and it was marvelous – one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. And there’s a venue called the Kaufleuten in Zurich that’s also just spectacular and the audiences out there are really amazing. And then there’s a venue we played outside of Chicago with Rufus Wainright that’s amazing. So those are some of the spots but there are so many; pretty much every city has a spot whether it’s the venue or some other little gem.

CG: You’ve loved music for a long time and it’s obviously a passion for you, but when did you decided to pursue it as a career?

AS: Well I had sort of decided when I was 15 that I wanted to be a singer, but I think I didn’t really full decide to be a musician until I was 19 and I had started to play piano which I hadn’t done before. I wrote “Almost Lover” and a couple other songs that were on One Cell and then I felt like I could do it – actually do the whole thing. And it still took me a few years to figure out how to achieve the kind of music I wanted to make and it was all a process, but I committed at 19.

CG: Was there a moment when you knew that you had figured out how to do what you want, to really make it?

AS: Well, through the whole first album I thought, “Whoa, what’s going on” and then making the second one was when I was like, “All of this happened and it’s great and now you can choose what you want to do with your career and where you want to take it because you can go in a lot of different ways.” It wasn’t like a ‘knock you over the head’ moment, it was kinda subtle.

CG: Do you have anything in the future that you’re hoping to do? Or are you just taking opportunities as they come and making the most of it?

AS: It’s making the most of opportunities. I wrote a book last year and I’m looking forward to editing and releasing that. The rest of it is an adventure – but I want to make as much music as I possibly can; I think that will drive everything. And also to put on the best show that we can and enjoy the process!

Review: A Fine Frenzy - Bomb in a Birdcage (* * * 1/2)

Alison Sudol, recording and performing as A Fine Frenzy, captured my attention a couple years ago with the release of her debut album, One Cell in the Sea. The piano-playing songstress has a lovely voice and a knack for writing captivating melodies that made her difficult to ignore despite the explosion of like-minded female singer/songwriters over the past few years. Sudol's new record, Bomb in a Birdcage, takes her in a different, and decidedly pop-oriented direction - showing a stronger, sexier side of A Fine Frenzy than we've heard before. Even the album covers tell the story, the first showing the red-haired twenty-something looking coyly down at her feet, the second placing her in a more aggressive pose - eyes fixed on the camera and lips seemingly ready for the kiss. The 11 tracks of her sophomore effort occasionally hold to her previously delicate piano balladry, but allow for plenty of expansion into more adventurous areas of pop and even rock 'n' roll with some exciting results.

First singles usually seem a good place to start, and "Blow Away" certainly showcases the evolution of A Fine Frenzy's sound. It's a bouncy, guitar-led piece that kicks the album into high gear, with Sudol's strong, smooth voice soaring joyfully in a chorus that's as catchy as anything I've heard this year. Her characteristic piano is here either buried by the other instrumentation or simply non-existent, but you won't miss it. Her instrument of choice DOES appear more often than not, but even then there's usually quite a bit going on in addition (all kinds of percussion, guitars, strings, woodwinds, etc.), which helps give Bomb in a Birdcage more stylistic range and emotional variation than her debut. The songs are often excellent, like the breezy, yet bittersweet "Bird of the Summer" and the heartbreaking "Swan Song," and even though some tunes don't seem as suited to her talents ("Electric Twist," for example), Sudol's more exploratory spirit makes for an enjoyable and fun experience as a whole.

Bomb in a Birdcage does sacrifice some consistency for experimentation's sake, but there's nothing here so out of place that it distracts much from the best material - which is plentiful. And by cutting nearly 20 minutes off the length of her debut (leaving behind some of the pleasant, but less interesting mid-tempo piano rock), Sudol makes her sophomore album both more interesting and manageable. It all feels like a necessary step for A Fine Frenzy and for Alison, who proves herself a versatile and ambitious young artist with the kind of restlessness that bodes well for her career down the line.

You can hear a good chunk of the album on her MySpace page if you're interested - which you should be.

A Fine Frenzy previews new single, "Blow Away," on Myspace

For those of you who heard A Fine Frenzy's debut album several years ago, One Cell in the Sea, new music from promising singer/songwriter Alison Sudol should be great news indeed. Sudol's fine voice, piano skills, and songwriting ability are all still in play here, but "Blow Away" is a louder, more rambunctious affair that can be found on most of her debut. The song is the first single from her upcoming album, A Bomb in a Birdcage, which will be release on September 18th and which Alison promises is something of a new direction for A Fine Frenzy. In her own words:

"I think some people may be surprised. They think that I’m all fragile and ethereal—and that’s lovely, it’s flattering. It's all I've really let anyone see, up to this point. But I have a wild side too. I like to bang on things and cause a ruckus every now and then. I’m a quiet person with a loud streak. I like both. This record is a testament to that.”

Sounds great to me; check it out for yourself on MySpace.

Track list for A Bomb in a Birdcage:

1. Wouldn't Do
2. New Heights
3. Electric Twist
4. Blow Away
5. Happier
6. Swan Song
7. Elements
8. World Without
9. Bird Of The Summer
10. Stood Up
11. Beacon