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Feb 28, 2003 Spring 2003 - Elliott Smith By Mark Redfern Photography by Wendy Lynch Redfern

Actually, most of our interview with Sing-Sing’s Emma Anderson and Lisa O’Neill made it into our article on them on page 78 of Issue 4 of Under the Radar, including pretty much all of Emma’s quotes about her days in Lush. Still here are a few little quotes that didn’t make it into the article, along with some full color photos from our shoot with the girls in a park next to LA’s famous Troubadour club. Also, a couple of corrections are in order: we left the second ‘l’ off of Lisa O’Neill’s last name in the mag, and we mistakenly said that their producer, Mark Van Hoen, was German, when he’s really just English. Thanks to Emma Anderson herself for those important corrections. So read on and no doubt when their second album is ready for release we’ll be speaking with Ms. Anderson and Ms. O’Neill on your behalf again.


More Quotes from Sing-Sing’s Lisa O’Neill:

On playing shows

“We just tend to play in London when we’re in England, no we haven’t really ventured much out of London, which is a bit naughty really. Because it would be so much easier to tour England, you can get to most places in a couple of hours.” 

US Fans vs. UK Fans

“I think they’re a lot more pleased to see us. I think it’s because we’re English and they’re American, so they know we’ve made much more of an effort to come and play. And they tend to be a lot more enthusiastic. With English people, it is true, they are more reserved and that does show when you play live. We get a good reception in England as well, but I don’t know, I do like playing to American audiences. It depends on where you are in America as well. The LA crowd was always the best of the last tour, the most rowdy. Denver is quite good as well, where as Seattle is quite quiet. No they’re good, they’re much louder than the English crowds.”

Inching out from under Lush’s shadow

“We want more press. We want to try and get our music to a younger audience as well, not just old Lush fans. We have told (the label) that and (they’re) aware of that. But record companies want to use any method they can to promote you and the Lush connection’s the most obvious. I don’t think we’re gonna carry on with that after this record because I think all the old Lush fans will have bought the record by now, so we really need to move on.”


More Quotes from Lush and Sing-Sing’s Emma Anderson

On how Emma and Lisa first met

“We were both going out with these guys who lived in this flat in Camden, a horrible flat actually. That’s the first place we physically met, was in like their kitchen or living room, I can’t remember. But we didn’t really know anything about each other, but didn’t really speak actually, just sort of ‘hello.’ But then it was a friend of mine who I’ve known since school, she worked with Lisa at an animation company and she phoned me up one day, she’s going, ‘there’s a girl who works here and she’s looking for work to sing with somebody. And I think you might have met her in Pete’s flat.’ And I was like, ‘oh yeah Lisa, I didn’t know she sang.’ ‘And she sang on this record called Locust or something.’ And I’m like, ‘well I’ve got that.’ So I put the phone down and put the CD on and it’s the hidden track and I thought, ‘this is great without the guy.’”

My father, the explorer

Your father was an explorer; did he go on lots of crazy trips when you were a kid, what was that like?

“ No, it was before I was even born. He went to the Antarctic and he went to Argentina, but it was even years before he met my mother actually. No no, I think the Argentina thing was just after he’d met my mother. And we’re talking about the ‘50’s, early ‘60’s. But he wrote a book about Antarctica and he wrote a book about the Korean War as well actually, because he was in that.” 

www.sing-sing.co.uk