We love our ex-guitarist, but it is easier when it’s all done in Danish. You can grunt and people understand. The grunts in Danish sound different than the sounds in English!
“The song is not about Poison, but about them chicks today that sit there, and they’re all old school and they have the whole fuckin’ ugly ‘80s outfit,” she says. “I mean, it has to be the ugly shit from the ‘80s and not the cool stuff. And they’re sitting there going like, ‘yeah, this is the coolest band,’ with Poison or the Scorpions or whatever. I’m sitting there, tapping my fingers, going like, ‘yeah, you were two.’ It’s like, OK, if you were into metal in the ‘80s, Poison weren’t cool. If you were into New Wave, Depeche Mode were kind of not cool. It’s more about these youngsters that think they’re the shit than it is about Poison.”
The new album also marks the band’s return to its initial trio format, which Day says has made for an easier album-making experience in terms of communicating amongst each other. “We all speak English pretty OK, but being able to be in the practice room and speaking our main language, that alone frees up the creative process a lot,” she says. “Now, ‘relief’ sounds like a bad word because of course we love our ex-guitarist, but it is easier when it’s all done in Danish. You can grunt and people understand. The grunts in Danish sound different than the sounds in English!”
It’s also now put the entire band under one roof, as Day shares her Atwater Village house with both Nekroman and Niedermeier. “It’s our own little Danish community,” she says. “It’s like here’s the Viking Castle. There’s a lot of things going on in that house. We’ve been here four years now, and I don’t think any of us ever want to go back. OK, the weather like it is right now [Editor’s note: it was cloudy with light rain in L.A. during the interview], well, that’s how it is ten months of the year. It’s like, you can’t do your hair in this kind of weather! There are a lot of opportunities here. We’ve been around for 12 years, but nothing happened before we moved out here in 2003 or 2004 or whatever.”
Something else that didn’t happen before she moved to the States — all the attention she’s received being a rare female frontwoman in the largely male-dominated rockabilly scene. “I’ve never been asked that question before moving to the U.S., that my gender should be important in any way for what I do, or for how I see things,” she says. “It never has been. When I pick up instrument, I’m a person, I’m not a female. I cannot see why having tits should make a difference for playing.”
“As for singing, I never chose to be a vocalist in none of my bands, but I was the only one that ended up being able to do two things at once,” she adds with a laugh. “But that’s a female thing, I guess, ‘cause most men can’t do that!”
-Waleed Rashidi