The Brag

School Of Seven Bells
That Sibling Thing
By Bridie Connellan

One of these days musicians are going to run out of reasons to thank Brian Eno. On the cusp of releasing a second album with her electronic trio School of Seven Bells, Alejandra Deheza is moderately hungover, chilling at home in Brooklyn and keen on paying her dues. Thus, for the title of the experimentally-laden latest offering Disconnect From Desire, she sends Eno a heartfelt thanks.

“Those words actually came from an Oblique Strategy, this pack of cards that Eno came up with,” she says. “They’re little phrases of creative solutions to put a different perspective on your problem. To ‘disconnect from desire’ was just everything I wanted to say. ” Although she admits that girlish squeals would dominate any meeting with Eno himself, Deheza tells me that an encounter with his legendary mind would soon turn to interrogation. “I’d just try to pick his brain. Like, ‘Why? Why, Brian? Why ‘disconnect with desire’? I want to know your ideas.’ I would probably just try and talk to him for hours and be really annoying.” Well Eno old boy, the ball is in your park…

Deheza’s proud enthusiasm for punters to hear the trio’s newest sound indicates a more confident and expressive SVIIB since 2008’s debut LP Alpinisms – a record characterised by a more reclusive surrealism. “It’s funny, a lot of people have been telling me that this record is a little more spacious than Alpinisms, which was a bunch of what I would like to call ‘sound clouds’,” she says. “I’m so proud of that record, but I think this time we’re approaching things more directly. We didn’t fill it up so much.”

Named after a possibly fictitious South American pickpocket academy, School of Seven Bells stemmed from the vivid imagination of Benjamin Curtis and sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, formerly of Secret Machines and On!Air!Library! respectively.

The ten-tracks of the new album were recorded at the trio’s home studio before being produced by band-member Curtis and mixed in LA by Grammy Award-winning producer Jack Joseph Puig (Weezer, Beck, Green Day, The Rolling Stones, Klaxons…). The second record from the School not only shows a diverse cache of genre-spanning within their electronic sphere, but Deheza claims that this time,everything comes down to narrative. “We were really going for a record that you could listen to from the beginning to the end,” she says. “I really miss the idea of an ‘album’. There are stories, there’s a plot; it’s like a movie.” If the record were to spawn a film, it would be largely autobiographical – Dehaza tells me that the start-to-finish track order was a logical result of life experience. “I mean, we wrote a few things here and there but I think because the songs documented so much of what’s been going on in our lives, it just went in sequence,” she says. “[The new album] really is a film of the past year for us.”

The past year has certainly proved something worth documenting, as the building buzz and international tours have seen the trio supporting the likes of the White Lies, Blonde Redhead, Bat For Lashes and Kite. This month their battered suitcases will be piled on the sidewalk once more, in the most Kerouacian sense. The three have come to accept the reality of being artists; the road is life. “Being on tour for months on end affects your life in every way. It’s an upheaval,” she says with an exhausted laugh. “It’s not a negative thing, but that constant movement forces you to look at your life on a really close level. You’re extremely invested and involved in what you’re doing at that particular moment.”

And with a four-month touring stretch still in store for 2010, Deheza says it’s actually their lack of foresight that’s helped the band avoid an existential meltdown. “It’s such a trap,” she says. “It’s so hard to stay in the present, to fully experience where you’re at at that moment. It’s like there’s this constant development going on in your head and it’s nothing to do with what’s going on right now. We just miss so much.”

Like much of their mystical sounds and iconography, the latest spell from Deheza and her counterparts totes a cryptically placed ‘sigil’ as the focus of the album art – a magical figure supposedly used to harness momentary energy and spiritual power. But with such deeply thoughtful textures entwined with fantastical lyrical ideas, the temptation to slap a label of ‘dream-pop’ on the sound of the three musicians is often too easy for music mags and record company schpiels. And Deheza says she never really thought about it that way. “The people who say that are usually the ones who like ‘dream-pop’,” she says. “Our sounds are just ‘pop’ songs to me. My definition of pop is a singable melody – something that anyone can sing, something that can be remembered.”

And yep, the opening single ‘Windstorm’ is lightyears ahead in catchy radio playability than the trio’s previous releases – embodying the kind of memorable mainstream the vocalist seems rather fond of now. And despite a sound that finds itself labeled in the realms of avant-garde experimentalism, Deheza cites unlikely yet highly appropriate influences, from post-punkers Echo and the Bunnymen to the Cure. “I think that’s the ultimate pop music,” she says. “Those are songs, you know? I really miss that. Basic Disintegration, that record. That, from front to back, is a film. It’s beautiful, you’re just… mesmerised.”

Deheza shares vocal duties with identical sister Claudia – and every annoying twin joke has found itself thrown their way since the band’s beginnings in 2008. But with dual harmonies, and a penchant for uniquely paired choral vocals, she admits that their thoughts can indeed be as similar as their faces. “Well, all jokes aside, it’s a weird kind of mental language that twins have,” Deheza says. “I don’t think you ever really have to fully express something; [your twin] automatically knows what you’re trying to say without you saying it. I feel like a lot of that translates really well into music, because it’s really hard to describe a sound to somebody. So working with Claudia I don’t really have to try that hard. She just gets it, and she knows where I’m coming from.”

But what of the other third, guitarist Benjamin Curtis? How does he mesh with the wavelength? “Really well. Benjamin was in a band with his brother, so he’s very familiar with the whole sibling thing,” she says, referring to The Secret Machines. “I think we have a connection for that reason, but [in the beginning] it was just an immediate fit. We’re very close and respect each other enough to know that if there is a criticism, it’s just for the benefit of the song. That’s hard to get over when you’ve got brothers and sisters, because they’re always extra sensitive. But we’re not five anymore, fighting with each other over who gets to watch what on TV. Now it’s time to get our heads down.”

With the trio slated to hit up the sunny stages of Sydney and Splendour In The Grass in late July, Deheza hopes that with this little field trip, they’ll get to put the ‘tourist’ in ‘tour’ and actually have something to write home about. “The last time we went to Australia was probably during one of the most intense touring periods that we had had, so it was kind of like a bizarre dream the whole time,” she says. “This time we’re going to have fun, we’ll have more time to hang out. Last time we only had time to visit the art gallery.” And if that fails? Simply take another Eno card.

Who: School Of Seven Bells
What: Disconnect From Desire is out now
When: Saturday July 31
Where: The Gaelic Club
More: Splendour In The Grass 2010