Some People Have All The Muck

The Hot Press critics’ ‘Gig of the Year’ is one that very nearly didn’t happen with all of Grimes’ gear being nicked in Manchester – United fans, I’ll be bound – 12 hours before she had to be in Holyhead to catch the ferry over to Dublin.

Not one to throw in the towel without a fight, the 24-year-old Canadian singer also known as Claire Boucher managed to beg and borrow – she left the stealing to those Manure supporters – enough replacement equipment to warrant getting on the Seacat.
“We rented a bunch of stuff. It was basically a karaoke set,” she reveals down the trans-Atlantic blower from the remote cabin she’s been renting in British Columbia. “I was playing this shitty keyboard; my friend had these random electronic drums. Everyone knocked back five shots before we started, the plan being to put on the loudest, most insane show possible. Rather than ‘Gig of the Year’ it could have been ‘Drunken Mess of the Year’. It turned out fine and actually changed the course of the live set for the rest of the tour. I’d always been a really shy performer but amping it up like that was liberating. So, whoever stole our gear,
thank you!”
Between playing another fine show in May at Forbidden Fruit and hitting Stradbally, Grimes managed to acquire several very buff male dancers. Where did she find these gentlemen?
“I have a ton of friends who are musicians and dancers, and can get government grants to come on tour with me,” she explains. “That’ll probably change. The Conservatives are slashing arts funding and re-routing it into commemorating the Queen and other really irrelevant stuff. They’re anti-art, anti-welfare, anti-abortion, anti-pot – anti-anything that’s relevant to young people.”
Grimes’ new found streak of insanity came in handy when she flitted round Canada with Skrillex and Diplo.
“I’m from an indie/Pitchfork sort of background and they’re huge stadium-filling EDM acts, so it was a very different sort of experience. My friends were saying, ‘Oh, it’s going to be dumb’. I liked the lack of pretension. The 10,000 people who turned up every night had just one thing in mind – partying. There was no standing there, arms folded, waiting to be impressed.”
Did she speed her tunes up to suit the audience?
“No, but me and my friend re-did a bunch of samples so that they had way more sub-bass and also put in a bunch of dubstep breakdowns. We were pretty bangin’!”
Also in the “bangin’!” category was ‘Don’t Smoke My Blunt Bitch’, the Azealia-esque tune Grimes recorded under the Lesbian Satanic Druglords banner with girl pals Kreayshawn, Blood Diamonds and Tragik.
“Oh my god, that song,” she sighs. “That was kind of a joke, which accidentally blew up. I thought it was funny but no-one’s record label
was happy.”
Why ever not?
“Whenever I collaborate I’m supposed to tell my label – especially if it’s as part of a fake band called L$D whose one song contains explicit drug references! The tune took, like, 15 minutes and the video two hours. It’s a throwaway that’s ended up getting over 300,000 YouTube hits.”
Is Ms. Boucher aware that one of the songs that enraptured Picnic-goers, ‘Oblivion’, is currently soundtracking an Eircom advert?
“No… er, they don’t murder babies, do they?”
They take an inordinately long time to answer their helpline but, no, as far as I’m aware Eircom don’t go in for infanticide. At least not yet…
“That’s good,” she says, sounding relieved. “When I first started getting those offers I was, ‘Oh my God, yes!’ because I was really broke. Now I’m more careful about where my music ends up.”
The only blight on Grimes’ 2012 was the ongoing tinnitus problem which forced her to cancel a string of European dates. Apparently drugs and a certain psychedelic Baltimore outfit are to blame.
“I was wasted at an Animal Collective gig in 2007 and spent the entire show with my head against the speaker,” she confides. “I was completely deaf in my left ear for a while. Then there’s the damage I did in high-school having headphones on for hours at full-blast. I have ringing. It’s on and off. It’s usually once a day for two minutes.”
On the odd occasions she’s been able to kick back, what has Grimes has been watching/reading/listening to this year?
“I’m reading Confessions Of A Mask, this dark homoerotic novel by a Japanese writer, Yukio Mishima, who committed ritual suicide in the ‘70s. Cinema-wise, there’s a Japanese film, Survive Style Five Plus, that I thought was hilarious and musically I’m super into the Julia Holter, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber records. Everyone hates it when I bring that up but I think they’re great.”
“Arse”, “ballsack” and “gee” are dirty words, but “pop” most definitely isn’t!
“Yeah,” she concludes. “It’s important in life to like what you like and fuck everybody else!”
Amen to that!