Seventh Heaven

It’s been a turbulent couple of years, but School Of Seven Bells (henceforth known as SVIIB) have at last realised two can be perfect company, and often three’s an uncomfortable crowd.

Formed as a trio when former Secret Machines man Benjamin Curtis and identical twins Alejandra and Claudia Deheza met whilst touring with Interpol, Claudia quit abruptly in autumn 2010. Vague ‘personal’ reasons were given and the split didn’t seem entirely amicable. According to Curtis, it came out of the blue.
“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t difficult,” he admits from his abode in New York. “It happened all of a sudden and took us by surprise. It was a really intense moment in the middle of a tour, so it was definitely something for Alley and I to push through personally.”
Thankfully, and quite remarkably given the blood ties, the impact wasn’t too detrimental. Indeed, listening to third album Ghostory, which might just be their stand-out work to date and certainly their most immediate, it would seem to have had a cathartic, freeing effect.
“Yeah, well Alley and I have always come up with what the records are about. So it wasn’t like we lost a component that meant we couldn’t do SVIIB again,” explains Benjamin. “It was definitely a shake-up of the energy of things. The positive outcome was that when we stepped back we realised that we love doing this and there’s no way we’re going to stop doing it. We’re not going to let anybody take it away from us. No disrespect to Claudia but the energy is great right now, the communication is great. Music should be fun. When it’s fun it sounds better!”
Naturally, the experience has brought Benjamin and Alley closer. The chief creative forces throughout, Ghostory was the first time the pair got in a room and wrote in full collaboration.
“There’s a lot of pressure doing that. When you’re face-to-face with someone and ideas are coming so immediately you’re definitely exposing yourself to doing something horrible. It’s a really naked feeling. I think we wanted the ideas to be a little less digested. Do it [snaps fingers], right there on the spur of the moment and react to somebody else. It’s funny because I think that’s the typical way bands write but for whatever reason we never did it that way.”
Not that it’s a simple story of ‘two against the world’. They’re a proper four-piece live gang now, marking their past year of touring out as possibly Benjamin’s favourite period of the band.
“A friend of ours since day one, Allie Alvarado, joined and is singing. She has a beautiful voice. And Chris [Colley] has been playing drums for the last year. The way we sound live right now? I can’t help but wish we’d sounded like this from day one. It’s really cool, it sounds great and I’ve had a lot of fun with this line-up.”
Part of that fun was the chance to go back to the start – in 2011, they toured with Interpol once more, this time in SVIIB-form. To add to the nostalgia, Benjamin’s brother and former Secret Machines bandmate Brandon now plays Interpol’s keys.
“We definitely came full circle to exactly where we’d started. It sounds cheesy but it was… cosmic in a way. We were on tour with the same people we were on tour with when SVIIB began and picking up the same relationships.”
That led to Brandon getting involved in the production of Ghostory.
“The dynamics are definitely different,” says Benjamin of working with his brother again. “Better. The last time I worked with him we were very much pushing and pulling over this music. We were both trying to coax out of nothing. This time it was great. He’s seen us playing hundreds of times by now and his approach was loving in a way. Also that outsider perspective is worth a million bucks. We’ll never be able to see us play, y’know?”
A pity. On the evidence of the misty, swirling, shoegaze-does-dark-pop of Ghostory and their reinvigorated live show, they’re missing out.

Ghostory is out now.