CLOSEUP Artist Spotlight: Café Spice

Releasing their new single ‘She Loves and Leaves’ CLOSEUP spoke with Manchester-based girl band Café Spice for our Artist Spotlight feature. Georgia Gage and Niamh Feeney sing praise for their new drummer, their top three festival headliners and what it’s been like for them recording from different locations.

Café Spice, it’s great to have a chat! We’re such big fans of your music! Tell us about your highlights of the last 12 months?

We’ve had some cracking times in the last 12 months! We sold out our first London headline show and had a massive turn out to our headline show at Band on the Wall, an iconic Manchester venue. We released ‘Open Door’, our third single which went down a storm (if I say so myself) and we’ve had some great times driving up and down the country in Niamh’s little car playing gigs all over the shop.

However, first and foremost, the highlight of the last 12 months was finding Sophie; our sensational new drummer. She’s not only a wonderful drummer but a wonderful person and a joy to have in the band. On top of that (dare I sing her praises even more? She’s probably reading this) she is Welsh which means Café Spice is complete with an English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh woman. A fantastic achievement I think you’ll agree.

What part of the musical process do you enjoy most, and why? is it performing live, creating your tracks or..?

The joy of singing in harmony with people you love is hard to describe. It sort of makes your heart swell and your brain turn to mush. We all love performing but, I think our favourite moments are snuggled in somebody’s living room with a cup of tea, trying out a new song or singing some old ones.

The creating-the-songs bit can be very rewarding, but it is hard work and quite exhausting when there are three heads in the room full of ideas (better than no ideas I suppose!). It’s the moment when we’ve just finished a new song and we’re singing it through a couple of times and it just sounds and feels magical. That’s the golden moment.

Your tunes have been listened to tens of thousands of times across the world as Spotify informs us, Spotify is now such a big player in the industry, how important do you think it is for acts?

You know, I was just thinking about this whilst cleaning my teeth this morning! I was thinking about how many bands and artists there are out there and how, in the days before Spotify and streaming, those artists likely wouldn’t have been able to afford to press records or CDs of their music.

Millions of songs would have gone unlistened by millions of unassuming ears. Streaming has opened up an entire universe of music that we never would have been able to hear before and, in return, it offers a stage to artists of any financial means, genre, style, hair do, you name it. Anyone and everyone.

If you created a Café Spice Festival, and could pick three headliners, who would you go for?!

Three! That’s only one each! Probably we’d have HAIM so we could have a boogie. Phoebe Bridgers or The Japanese House so we could cry into each other’s shoulders at the end of the night. And then it’s a toss-up between Laura Mvula and Emily King. We’d probably have to have a guest appearance from John Mayor to sing ‘New Light’ because it’s our favourite jam. Is that allowed?

How have you been coping with this Coronavirus nonsense, tell us how it’s shifted things for you as a band and the live side of things especially?

We’ve had to adapt, not being in the same city certainly provides its obstacles. Luckily Georgia is a right techy and is quite happy whipping together a remotely recorded song with video and all the fancy split screening. Actually we’ve found the hardest part is arranging the harmonies.

Usually, we just turn up, someone sings the tune and the rest of us make it up until it sounds good, tweaking and suggesting along the way. It’s almost impossible to sing harmonies live over the internet so we’ve had to come up with other ways and means. On the plus side, we’ve plenty of time for songwriting! We’re working on some songs together remotely right now which works surprisingly well.