The Noisettes: Shingai Shoniwa

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Noisettes (occasionally written as NOISEttes to mark the difference in pronunciation fromnoisette - a cooking term meaning hazelnut-flavoured or hazel in French) are an indie rock band from London comprising singer and bassist Shingai Shoniwa, guitarist Dan Smith, and drummer Jamie Morrison. The band first achieved commercial success and nationwide recognition with the second single of their second album, "Don't Upset the Rhythm (Go Baby Go)" which reached number two on the UK Singles Chart in Spring 2009.MORE

Noisettes - Acoustic

Noisettes interview: Shingai surprise

SECOND chances are rare in pop, but there's been no stopping the Noisettes since they got behind their prog-rock-mad singer, writes Aidan Smith

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But appearances in this case are deceptive. "With us it's two really lucky geeky idiots and a muso," says the hirsute drummer, plonking himself next to guitarist Dan Smith. "Me and him are the idiots and she's the muso."

"She" is Shingai Shoniwa, a 26-year-old Londoner with roots in Zimbabwe and the circus world, and the look of a warrior-princess. She is, by some distance, the most beautiful prog rock fan I've encountered in the three-and-a-bit decades since guitar solos were at their longest and oceans their most topographic.

"I really love crazy old English prog," she says, sipping her pint of real ale. Give me some names, I say, anticipating the usual suspects. "King Crimson, Camel and Greenslade." (Impressive). "Genesis – the early stuff like Nursery Cryme – Egg and Brainticket." (Hang on: I thought I was Egg's only fan. And who the hell were Brainticket?)

"When I left home at 16, my mum gave me a box containing all those wonderful old records," she continues. "They belonged to my dad, who'd come over here from old Rhodesia. He and my mum split up when I was a baby and he died when I was 11, and I think she wanted to show me another side to this man who was very academic and strict and, when I visited him at weekends, only had books on his shelves. So, of course, I love all these bands now."

The Noisettes' back story was colourful enough before these proggy revelations. Shoniwa and Smith met at the Brit School, the pop academy that's produced Amy Winehouse and Adele. Shoniwa performs barefoot and so, bizarrely, does Morrison, the sticks-man, who tells me he owns an entire house in Edinburgh's Queen Street due to his grandparents being "very, very rich". Smith is also Scottish, but Morrison claims he was unaware of this until just now. The latter was recruited to the band after an appearance on Later… with Jools Holland and the night before our chat they were all back on the show, Shoniwa contorting herself backwards over the kick-drum to the amazement of the guys who thought they were familiar with her entire acrobatic repertoire.MORE

Noisettes - HD Never Forget You Live - 2009

Interview with the Noisettes

What’s the process of making a record? I understand that some of you play instruments. How does it work when you get in the studio together?

There’s no particular way of doing something, I think sometimes you’ve just got to start playing until you all hear something that makes you kind of excited. As a vocalist and lyricist, sometimes it helps to maybe take stuff home or sometimes it helps to just put your instrument down for a minute and then concentrate on whatever crazy poetry comes from your heart and your head. Then after a few minutes or a few hours or a few days, it turns into something you can’t stop singing yourself. It’s nice to have a producer who really shared our vision of making a sound in pop music that no one has heard for a while. I mean, there’s a lot of pop musicians that manage to get their own sound that doesn’t really sound like one style. I mean, there are people like Queen, who never made the same album twice and people like Radiohead, people like Grace Jones, people like Prince, people like Portishead, Massive Attack…they allow their personality to come through. I guess a lot of female singers feel like they’ve got to sound like their favorite singers or they’ve got to sound like Mariah Carey, maybe their idea of perfection. I think nowadays, there’s so much music out there, that you’ve got to be really a bit more sensitive and you don’t just go in there copying a starlet that’s already done before and copying all the hard work that another vocalist has put down before you- to just take their framework, I think is a bit unfair. You shouldn’t be afraid to let the texture of your own voice come through.

When I think of The Noisettes, I think of you as being a very creative band, very visual, as well as having a great sound. Where does your inspiration for that come from?

My inspiration personally comes from a childhood that was very, very colorful and very flamboyant. I was born in London and in South London it’s a very, very beautiful crash of cultures. You’ve got in Brockley or Brixton or Peckham, which is near where I grew up, one minute you’ve got Little Lagos where you just hear people speaking Youruba and then you’ve got Little Shanghai and Little Kingston. Then you’ve got your next door neighbors is a huge 12-piece Irish family and then next door might be a single parent family. I grew up in a very, very colorful community and also went back and forth to Africa quite a lot as a child. My mother’s family is very creative, very flamboyant and it’s just normal for people to get up and put on very colorful head wraps and colorful clothes. The language is very poetic and where I’m from, it’s like Zimbabwe and Malawi, so the way that my mom would speak English to us is very colorful and very poetic and also very humorous. I kind of can’t help but be quite flamboyant and interested in the world. I’m interested in people’s stories. I’m very much in love with life, because I suffered quite a few losses as a child, so it’s just normal for me to want to get up and make the most out of everyday.
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Noisettes - Every Now and Then

My current favourite song:


Noisettes - Malice in Wonderland

We're with the Band: The Noisettes

What’s on your summer playlist?
There’s definitely more old stuff than contemporary music. But we can go from Bad Brains to Luther Vandross in a heartbeat, and from Cameo or Alexander O’Neal to Empire of the Sun, and then from Scout Niblett or Cat Power to Toni Braxton.

How would you describe your style?
I’m really into the high-fashion couture approach to design, where it’s very much about the imagination, but I like to put my own Afrocentric spin on it. I don’t think that clothes should be so neck-breaking that you can’t perform in them. I really think it’s fantastic to go to town in editorial situations and photo shoots, but when you go onstage, it’s nice when an outfit doesn’t get between your performing and communicating with the audience. I like to make a huge statement when I walk onstage, but afterward, you have to be able to move your body, otherwise people are just going to see someone with a great voice standing in really painful heelsMORE

The sound gets a bit distorted sometimes but worth hearing.
Noisettes Live - Beg Steal Borrow