Often those rough nuggets of music buried in the mass of the internet turn out to be most precious jewels. It can require sifting through huge mines of music yet when you discover that diamond in the rough it’s truly appreciated. Over the last couple of years and without much fanfare, a few bedroom demos from Silvi Wersing (under her band name Chorusgirl) appeared on soundcloud.
Two of songs Alone and Oh, To Be A Defector sparkled immediately and eventually this has led to her band being signed to Fortuna Pop (home to Allo Darlin' and September Girls). Their outstanding debut album 'Chorusgirl' is due for release in November and it’s going to make people sit and take notice. We're delighted to be able to premiere Dream On, Baby Blue ahead of its release. We also took time to catch up with Silvi Wersing to talk about making the album and forming Chorusgirl.
Wersing isn’t just another aspiring rock star trying to make a name for themselves in London. For a start, she isn’t even English. So how does a German end up making music in London? “While I was still living in Germany, I met someone from London who was looking for a bassist and my old German band wasn’t doing much, so I just made the jump and moved," says Wersing. "A lot of my musical heroes are from the UK and I had already spent some time there; it just seemed like the natural thing to do.”
It’s a real leap of faith to make such a decision that can have far-reaching consequences. It’s more than just about music; it’s leaving family and friends behind too. However, Wersing was adamant it was the right thing to do. “In hindsight, I’d still say that it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever taken; London is a brilliant place to be a musician. So many venues to play and so many great bands. The DIY scene in the UK is so strong at the moment; it is great to be a part of that.”
Like youthful relationships destined to fizzle out quickly, Wersing spent her time in bands that were destined to never breakthrough. Those experiences helped to fuel expectation of how she wanted a band to be and what kind of music she wanted to create and play.
“The confident musicians must have some secret knowledge in addition to superior skills." Wersing reflects on those formative experiences "I was always looking to others for that knowledge and confidence. I learned over the years that, while there are some useful things to know about making music, it is fine to make things up as you go along.” One other lesson that has stuck with Wersing is that you don’t have to be a "virtuoso guitarist" to make "interesting music.”
Her older brother’s record collection shaped her taste in music providing an avenue into Neu!, Kraftwerk, Fleetwood Mac, Kate Bush, David Bowie, The Who, the Pixies, The Cure, and PJ Harvey. With such a varied set of influences, it comes as little surprise to find that Chorusgirl’s music has more than a hint of '80s new wave touching on The Cure, and straddling Lush, The Breeders and Echo & The Bunnymen.
When the decision came to create her own music Wersing was clear from the outset what sound she was aiming for.“I decided early on that this would be a guitar band and I have a pretty specific way of writing around my guitar melodies, layering guitar lines over one another. One of my friends called it 'Silvi’s guitar riff dissections'.”
This description of Wersing's writing style prompted her to make it the focal point from there on in. "One of the first things I wrote with that in mind was the riff for Oh, To Be A Defector, which people seem to be quite fond of.”
That aforementioned riff on Oh, To Be A Defector bounces and jumps in different directions, slows and speeds up keeping you guessing where it’s going. It grasps you on the first listen and doesn’t let go. It’s a song where a special riff dominates and firmly lodges itself in your mind for weeks. For Wersing the riffs came first and then the lyrics and the words were something she had to work on.“It seems much more mysterious to me than creating the music, which I always do first,” she says.
When in other bands, she hadn’t the self-confidence to write lyrics. “Lyrics were almost always written by someone else," she notes. "I didn’t think I had it in me, and I only found out when I sat down and started doing it.” But it didn’t come easy to her far from it. For Wersing, writing lyrics means “Staring at the wall for several hours listening to the song over and over, trying to get my mind to go sideways.”
Committing your innermost thoughts onto paper (or laptop these days) can be quite a private thing to do. Going one-step further and sharing these thoughts as song lyrics to complete strangers can be a total contradiction. Some find it liberating or cathartic seeing it all written down in song. Wersing still feels unease about this deciding to cypher them as much as possible. “No one would be able to fully decode them unless they managed to get into my mind,” she says.
Wersing is clearly at odds with herself about the process though. “Occasionally, I have been somewhat cross with myself for writing about something that is really close to the heart," she says. "You think in the moment that it feels good to write about something to get it off your chest, but then you don’t think about having to sing that over and over again for more than a year, revisiting that emotional space time and time again.”
Despite nervousness about how to create her lyrics, Wersing oddly doesn’t worry about how they are perceived. “Listeners make the lyrics their own anyway," she says. "They’ll hear whatever’s important to them at that time.” She cities one example of this. “One of my favourite songs is Ex-Con by Smog and for years and years, I heard the last line of the song as ‘I’m a robot by the river waiting for a dream’, which sounded so romantic to me. I only recently found out that he sings ‘…waiting for a drink’. I don’t know why, but I was really disappointed.”
It is all building up to a point where Chorusgirl look set to take flight. The band is united and working towards the same goals. Wersing finds being in a band, “A weird and intense construct where you spend a lot of time together working on something that is really important to you. Often against the odds, day jobs, limited holidays, full diaries, lack of funds, etc. It is more intense than a friendship because the work can be hard but the joy is often much more intense, too. I feel blessed because the others in the band are very talented musicians and will try and help make the songs sound as great as possible.”
Chorsgirl’s debut album is a thing of aural pleasure and there shouldn’t be any barriers to see it soar and be successful. For an artist like Wersing defining success isn’t just a matter of albums sold or tickets shifted for a gig. Sure, she would love, “to be able to play the songs to as many people as possible,” but for her; “the best thing that could happen would be for it to inspire someone to form their own band. That would be truly amazing.”