Enter the mad world of Man/Woman/Chainsaw: 'We're like a storm'

Martin Robinson 2 minutes ago COMMENTS How would we describe our music? Really f***ing good.” So says Vera Leppänen, bassist/vocalist and one of many frontpersons in Man/Woman/Chainsaw, who don’t just possess the best band name since The Horrors, but have also backed it up with a recent debut album, Cannonball, which has been met with foaming-at-the-mouth acclaim. It is part of an exciting rush of summer releases by new British bands including Mary in the Junkyard , Really Good Time and Westside Cowboy — all suggestive of an indie revival not seen since the early 2000s. It’s led by south London’s DIY scene, from where M/W/C emerged, and it’s all about unconventional songs, odd instruments, kooky members, homemade visuals and a total rejection of the boring old trad male band set-up.

“We play rock music,” ventures guitarist/vocalist Billy Ward in an empty London Bridge pub. But they don’t. Well, they do; it’s just that they also play multiple other styles at the same time, so it’s barely recognisable. This is what happens when there’s a million of you in the band — OK, six — operating as a collective.

“Whenever I describe it to people I say, we play rock music, but we have two violins,” says keyboardist Emmie-Mae Avery. Ward considers it. “Maybe I should just say it’s quite melodic, or poppy melodic,” he reasons. “No… that sounds terrible. You can’t describe it in any way that just doesn’t sound awful. Just listen to the damn thing, it’ll be fine.”

Man/Woman/Chainsaw Charlie & Charlie The buzz around Man/Woman/Chainsaw has skyrocketed since people have been listening to “the damn thing” — meaning their debut album — to the extent that they’ve added an extra date at Kentish Town Forum after their upcoming UK tour sold out. You can see why they appeal. Besides looking great and having a live reputation to put Iggy Pop to shame, their music is like a distillation of the best alternative acts since the 1970s. Tracks on Cannonball veer from Cramps-y garage piss-taking (Goddamn, Lizard Man!) to PJ Harvey raw folk balladry (Still Angry) to a budget version of LCD Soundsystem (Nosedive). Yet it’s an album which, despite the multiple writers, traces a loose narrative around young life today, and is a carefully considered listen. Indeed, the final track, Something Else to Give, loops back to the first track, Only Girl, the kind of thing that used to happen when albums “mattered”. Leppänen has a characteristically straighter way of thinking about it: “Basically, it’s f***ing perfect.”

The three members who are here today — missing are violinist-as-frontwoman Clio Starwood, guitarist Billy Doyle and drummer Lola Cherry — talk about their ripping up of the template for bands, which included splitting up into songwriting teams for the album. Says Leppänen, “Nosedive was probably the most important song because it came together in a very special way. When we were writing it all together, we picked names out of a hat and split into two groups — when we came back into the room, the other group had written something like that was one key below what we had done and the same tempo. Bang! Mesh.