Zoid kickstarts her 10th anniversary nationwide tour this weekend, and the Dirty Skirts return with a new album.
‘I’d never go so far as to say ‘zeitgeist’, but it reflects a feeling of now. There’s an increasing desperation as we watch ourselves annihilate a jewel of a planet,” says Jeremy De Tolley. The Dirty Skirts’ front man is musing on the ‘ecological’ undercurrent circuiting beneath their new album, Lost in the Fall. ‘The rate of devastation is so fast, so immediate that for anyone who is switched on and conscious of that – which is a lot of people – it’s a pretty radical thing.” Indeed. But aren’t the band a bit concerned about alienating a fan base nurtured on their stellar skinny jean-ed rock benders and crafty indie disco deconstructions?
‘It’s rampantly ecological and I don’t give a f**k whether that’s cool or not, or whether that’s Bono or not,” he retorts. ‘The trick for us was not to turn it into a flag waving, finger wagging exercise. It wasn’t that I had to consciously go out with a message. This is the stuff I think about. It’s those kind of times. It’s pouring out of me and it’s pouring out of us. It’s f**king radical what’s happening out there on our planet, in our seas, in our trees. It’s so important now.” Granted, but going green is also a great marketing move for a rock band eager to expand their audience. ‘I don’t give a shit if 50 000 other artists are writing about it,” replies Jeremy. ‘We’ve been going at this hammer and tongs for seven years, we’ve got absolutely nothing to prove. This might be our last album so we’ve really just made it for ourselves.”
Zula Sound Bar & Restaurant, 98 Long Street, Cape Town, July 23, 8pm. Entrance is R50.
‘Ek het nie pms nie, ek’s net ‘n natural bitch! (I don’t have PMS, I’m a natural bitch!)” wailed Karen Zoid on her hard rocking smash hit ‘Afrikaners is Plesierig” back in 2001. It was a definitive moment in Afrikaans rock, a middle-fingered salute to the stereotype that all Afrikaners listened to were MOR balladeers like Core Marie or prefab poppies like Amor Vittone. Before Zoid there were no real Afrikaans rock chicks. But that was a decade ago. How the hell has she kept captivating her audience in an age where Amor’s relationship implosions or Lianie May’s latest bad hair day get more tweets than their actual music? Well, being fluent in English and Afrikaans rock, folk, country and alternative flavours doesn’t hurt. Expect a rollercoaster ride through bilingual rock jams about falling in and out of love and radio ready anthems about finding your feminist flow including Beautiful, Ons soek rock & roll, Verandering, Small Room and Aeroplane Jane when Zoid kickstarts her 10th anniversary nationwide tour this weekend.
The Fugard, c/o Caledon and Harrington Street, District 6, Cape Town, July 23, 8.30pm. Entrance is R100 to R130. Book at Computicket or the Fugard Theatre Box Office. Tel: 021 461 4554.