‘A lot of women are constrained by certain stereotypes’: Xylaroo on Wild Woman

A lot can change in a year. At the start of 2020, tal­ent­ed indie duo Xyla­roo were wrestling with turn­ing old ideas into new music. A fresh start beck­oned. And then the pan­dem­ic hit.

Like so many, their plans were heav­i­ly dis­rupt­ed. But the Xyla­roo sis­ters – Hol­ly and Coco Chant – fought through the chal­lenges to record songs for a five-track EP, titled Wild Woman. Released last Decem­ber, the EP is a fine intro­duc­tion to the group and their abil­i­ty to make beau­ti­ful songs. Songs with social mes­sages, songs that make you want to dance, songs that make you feel something.

When we caught up with song­writer and vocal­ist Hol­ly Chant (pic­tured above left) to dis­cuss Wild Woman last Decem­ber, she was in good spir­its. She had been jug­gling a demand­ing new job dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, while con­tin­u­ing to stay cre­ative. Her calm speak­ing voice con­trasts to the ener­getic songstress she trans­forms into when she sings.

Chant told us about how their Wild Woman EP came to be and its con­nec­tion to her Papua New Guinea her­itage, why she feels that many women are still con­strained in mod­ern soci­ety, the ben­e­fits of mak­ing music remote­ly, and how she hopes to evolve her own music mak­ing in future.

Fringe Fre­quen­cy: Ear­li­er in 2020, we under­stand you and your sis­ter, Coco, had planned to work towards a new album, which you’d ten­ta­tive­ly called Turis. Can you tell us some more about that? And how did it morph into the EP you have now?
Hol­ly Chant: So, we were going to do the Turis thing. And we record­ed quite a few songs. But then, me and Coco both start­ed new jobs, and we kind of put every­thing on the back­burn­er for a bit. And then this lock­down stuff hap­pened. And we were just decid­ed we should just get those songs, which had got­ten kind of old now, out there, so we can start work­ing on new stuff. [We were] doing a lot of remote stuff with Joe [Sin­gle­ton], our gui­tarist. So, real­ly the EP is get­ting those record­ed songs out there, so peo­ple can lis­ten to them.

There’s five songs on your Wild Woman EP. Can you name them for us?
So, there’s ‘Swee­t­ooth’, ‘Wild Woman’, ‘Tomb’, ‘Like Planes’, and ‘Yes­ter­day’. These are kind of the old­er songs we record­ed with a full band. And we record­ed it quite a long time ago. They’re kind of like a mish­mash: songs that we’ve record­ed and liked the sound of, and stuff like that. But, yeah, we have them, so we might as well put them out – espe­cial­ly dur­ing the lock­down, when, you know, a lot of oth­er peo­ple couldn’t record stuff.

OK. So, you want to let these songs live on their own, sep­a­rate­ly from any new stuff. Is that right?
Yes. And also, because Turis means “tourist” in Pid­gin. My mum’s from Papua New Guinea, so it’s their Pid­gin lan­guage – it’s a bit like patois. They have, like, 800 lan­guages. But yes, it was gonna be called Turis, but then I thought that I want to keep that album name and make some songs that are a bit more [fit­ting]… It was kind of because we’ve moved to so many dif­fer­ent coun­tries, you always feel like a tourist in oth­er places. You know, they’re kind of home, but they’re nev­er quite home. And then, also, in music, you’re kind of a tourist in some­one else’s thoughts and emo­tions and stuff. So, I want to keep that [title] for some songs that I think will be more with that theme. So, I’m going to write some songs lat­er and hope­ful­ly make that an album at some point.

“I was think­ing about how a lot of women are con­strained by cer­tain stereo­types and ways that they should act and be. And, so, the song is about want­i­ng to escape from that and be, you know, this sort of nat­ur­al, wild thing.” – Hol­ly Chant

That’s inter­est­ing. Some­thing we’ve always loved about your music is how world­ly it sounds. You can analyse some songs end­less­ly, over and over, and nev­er dis­cov­er all their secrets. But then, one day, you’ll just be sit­ting some­where, maybe on the train or some­thing, and a lyric or a moment will just click with you, and you’ll think: “Wow. I nev­er caught this moment until just now”. It’s won­der­ful to be able to enjoy music with these dif­fer­ent kinds of lev­els. Your music def­i­nite­ly has that.
That’s cool. Yeah, that’s good to know. I real­ly like song­writ­ing. And, I guess, I’m not as inter­est­ed in the “music” parts. I’ll write some quite sim­ply with my gui­tar and stuff like that. And then, I’ll give it to my sis­ter and Joe and peo­ple to, you know, make it more musi­cal and nice, I guess. But I always like focus­ing on what I’m try­ing to say with a song and express­ing some kind of feel­ing or emo­tion. Yeah. So, it’s impor­tant that the songs express something.

OK. How about ‘Wild Woman’, for instance? We were just lis­ten­ing to that ear­li­er, and in the lyrics for that song, you sing: “I want to grow into some­thing wild / Wild woman, you give me life”. What’s the song about?
Yeah, well… See, I don’t know whether this is with hind­sight. Well, I can’t remem­ber exact­ly when I wrote the song. But, I guess it’s about wom­an­hood. And feel­ing kind of con­strained in cer­tain ways as a woman. It’s also sort of an ode to Moth­er Nature, and moth­ers as well. You know, we used our mum as the art­work [for the Wild Woman EP cov­er]. It’s an old pic­ture of her.

It’s obvi­ous­ly about women, but any­one can feel kind of penned in or caged in – I guess we’re quite caged in at the moment with locked down. [Laughs] But, I can’t remem­ber whether the [#MeToo move­ment] was hap­pen­ing at the time when I wrote it, or whether I linked that lat­er. But it has those kinds of themes in it. And I feel like maybe that stuff was going on when I wrote it. I was think­ing about how a lot of women are con­strained by cer­tain stereo­types and ways that they should act and be. And, so, the song is about want­i­ng to escape from that and be, you know, this sort of nat­ur­al, wild thing. Yeah.

Right. That’s great to know.
Yeah. And I was also think­ing about that song that goes: “born free, free as the riv­er” [‘Born Free’ by Matt Mon­ro], so it was a bit influ­enced by that. But, yeah, it’s about being free. It’s crazy how many [firsts are still to come for] women. I mean, it was­n’t that long ago when women couldn’t vote and women were get­ting paid a lot less than men. Now I think it’s a bit bet­ter, but these things are quite recent. I think we’re mov­ing in the right direc­tion with things. I feel pret­ty uncon­strained as a woman, I think. But I know a lot of women around the world don’t feel that.

“I think it’s very easy for us to just switch the chan­nel, or not think about it, and not think about the deci­sions that our lead­ers are mak­ing and how they are actu­al­ly ruin­ing oth­er people’s lives.” – Hol­ly Chant

Total­ly. How about your song ‘Tomb’? Do you have any­thing to say about that? To us, this is the oth­er side to your music, haunt­ing and chill­ing songs. It kind of felt to us like it was almost like an ode to youth dying or maybe the brief­ness of life?
Yeah. Well, it’s sort of about war, I guess. I was think­ing about the Mid­dle East, sort of imag­in­ing what it’d be like for a per­son liv­ing in some war torn coun­try, or before the war hap­pened. And then the song goes through as they lose peo­ple and get angry, and stuff like that. So, the Mid­dle East, but also the oth­er half of the island where my mum’s from, West Papua, which is still expe­ri­enc­ing genocide.

But, yeah, the song is sort of about war but it is about that youth­ful­ness as well. The begin­ning is like when [the char­ac­ter in the song is] young and care­free. The cho­rus is sort of sup­posed to be like a lul­la­by that par­ents sing to their child. And it’s about life car­ry­ing on despite the destruc­tion. But then, the vers­es are sort of about the destruc­tion of war, or even just some­thing bad that hap­pens, you know? Yeah. And some parts are like a funer­al march, and then the cho­rus is more like a lul­la­by. I guess that was what was behind it. I think I’ve always been quite angry at the way that coun­tries, like Eng­land and Amer­i­ca, just go off and bomb oth­er coun­tries and stuff like that. Yeah, that song was sort of about the human cost of war.

Mmm. You’re mak­ing impor­tant com­ments. As we’ve seen this year, some peo­ple in the world lack empa­thy, which is very sad.
Yeah, it real­ly is. Espe­cial­ly now. I mean, when you think of World War II: where the war came to people’s doorsteps, peo­ple could see it, and it was there. And they knew the grave­ness of it. And then the wars we have now are so far away. I think it’s very easy for us to just switch the chan­nel, or not think about it, and not think about the deci­sions that our lead­ers are mak­ing and how they are actu­al­ly ruin­ing oth­er people’s lives. And then mak­ing them angry so that [lat­er] new con­flicts arise and, you know, we take out gov­ern­ments, and then, worse ones come in! Yeah, I just think it’s a bit crazy. So, I guess that song was about that. And even though it’s not overt, it’s sub­tly about that.

Tell us a bit about the song ‘Swee­t­ooth’. That’s one we’ve been play­ing over and over and over. You played that at your con­cert at The Jago, too. The record­ed ver­sion is real­ly some­thing spe­cial.
Yes, ‘Swee­t­ooth’ is just a bit of fun. That was the name of our [debut] album. [When I start­ed,] I was just play­ing around with our key­board and then sang the first bit. It’s sort of about lik­ing things that you shouldn’t like.

On our first album, [the title] “Swee­t­ooth” was was about much dark­er and deep­er things. But this one’s like a light-heart­ed dis­per­sion. It’s sort of like tox­ic love, but in a fun way, you know? It’s kind of like: you haven’t real­ly learned your les­son with a bad rela­tion­ship or some­thing like that. But, yeah, that one’s most­ly just a bit of fun, really.

And it is fun to play as well. I want­ed it to be sort of like an old rhythm and blues sort of song. And the guys just went with that and did a quite clas­sic rhythm gui­tar and bass [arrange­ment]. But I like it. I love the bass.

What are you hop­ing lis­ten­ers take away from your Wild Woman EP?
Mmm. I mean, most­ly, I just want them to lis­ten to it and enjoy it. And it depends. I mean, the sounds are quite dif­fer­ent. It’s a bit of a mish­mash of dif­fer­ent songs. There’s not a par­tic­u­lar theme. But I’d like them to lis­ten to the lyrics and enjoy the eclec­tic nature of the EP.

Cool. Final­ly, what’s next for you two?
It’s kind of up in the air. I think it’s weird, because my sis­ter is plan­ning to move [aboard] at some point. So I’m not sure. I mean, we were gonna keep mak­ing music, because I have been doing a lot of remote stuff with our gui­tarist. I think we have to see exact­ly what’s going to happen.

I mean, the Psalms one [‘Psalms 23’] I did actu­al­ly by myself. What I was hop­ing to do is be a lit­tle bit more flex­i­ble and quick­er with releas­ing stuff, and get my sis­ter involved when she can be involved, get dif­fer­ent musi­cians involved, and just do some­thing a lit­tle bit more free and exper­i­men­tal. For a lit­tle bit, I guess, just to sort of have a stretch. And just try out a few things and stuff like that. Because we’re not with the label any­more. So, it’s nice, we can just do what­ev­er we want. And, yeah, I don’t want to be tied down with think­ing: “I have to do it this way, or get this out at this time”. I just want to do it how­ev­er I feel like, and how­ev­er my sis­ter feels like.

Wild Woman by Xyla­roo is avail­able to stream now. Since releas­ing their EP, Xyla­roo has released the sin­gles ‘Iso­la­tion’ and ‘Wild of Desire’.

Images: Hai­ley Atkinson

Tags: Coronavirus, Equality, Featured, Interviews, Lockdown 2020, London musicians, Papua New Guinea, UK music, Women's rights, Xylaroo