DRAGONETTE
Interview by Cameron Cook
Images by Dana Goldstein
I recently saw Dragonette play the one and only American date of their recent tour to a mid-sized yet fanatic crowd at NYC’s Canal Room. I took a friend who had never seen the band perform live before with me to the event, and we ended up drunkenly dancing and fist pumping to every chorus. When the show was over, my friend turned to me and said, “It’s so weird to hear music like that played in a club. It sounds like we should be in a huge arena or something.” He was totally right, for a minute there it felt like Dragonette’s furious pop hooks were emanating from the gigantic PA at Madison Square Garden, not the tiny speakers at the Canal Room.
2007 was the year pop broke, with artists like Kate Nash topping the charts and triumphing over tired indie and mainstream rock. However, this movement of accessibility is pioneered by more underground acts that aren’t afraid to show that their roots lie in Madonna, Culture Club and Duran Duran. For the purpose of this article (far from us to try to coin some sort of new genre or phrase or something) let’s call the bands that are at the forefront of this new appropriation of pop music “true pop”. The Clik Clik, the Ting Tings and New Young Pony Club are all True Pop, but Dragonette are the most influential to me because 1) They’ve managed to sign to a major label everywhere but the US, 2) They have a strong and well thought out image and personality and 3) All the members have spent time in different bands in the past, thus making their distinct turn to a more pop sound deliberate and not the by-product of marketing or label influence (Lead singer Martina Sorbara actually released solo material as a singer-songwriter and sang on Basement Jaxx’s 2006 single “Take Me Back to Your House” before creating Dragonette).
Dragonette’s debut album, Galore, hops from one style to the next, featuring dance floor electro stompers like the anthemic “I Get Around” to straight up ballads like “Another Day”. It’s an album that Gwen Stefani wishes she had written, and if true pop really breaks away from it’s indie ethos and makes the mainstream, Galore will be its London Calling.
I sat down in a noisy little bar with Martina, her husband, songwriting partner and bassist Dan Kurtz, guitarist Will Stapleton and drummer Joel Stouffer and discussed the fate of True Pop and the band’s current ascent to stardom.

Do you consider yourself a pop band, and if so, to what extent?
Martina: The answer is yes.
Will: Pop as in popular?
Daniel: I hope we’re popular!
Martina: Popular with us. We’re really big fans of pop.
Daniel: I think we’re a pop band like how when Duran Duran came out in 1979, they were a pop band. We’re not pop band like Hilary Duff is a pop band.
Martina: She’s not a band.
Daniel: Pop act, whatever.
Martina: But not like the Spice Girls or something.
I think there’s a new era of pop with less fluff associated with the word.
Daniel: I think the difference is that pop acts, in the kind of bullshit sense of the word, are bands that sing songs that other people have written to help them define who they are. Like they’re the figureheads of a product. We write our own songs because we like music, and just happen to write songs that have, hopefully, choruses that you’ll never forget. I think the subject matter of our songs is really far from fluffy. We could be an indie band if we wanted to be an indie band. We just decided to be a pop version of what we do.
Martina, it’s interesting that you said that there’s a ‘new era’ of pop music. I think recently, a lot of ‘80s-inspred, more ‘pure’ pop bands are emerging from the underground, which is kind of weird, because they play a very accessible kind of music. That’s why it’s called ‘pop’, you know?
Martina: Exactly. By definition, it’s not underground.
Daniel: It’s also that indie bands, now, are getting the same treatment that pop bands used to get. They rocket very quickly into mass popularity, like the Arctic Monkeys and bands like that. They seem to come out of nowhere and take the places of –
Martina: Of traditional pop acts.

That’s my point, it’s like some weird role reversal.
Daniel: I was thinking about this the other day. We have a sense of humor about ourselves that I think maybe is another element of pop. Not that Duran Duran weren’t serious about what they were doing, but at the same time, they’re exaggerated and outrageous. It’s like taking the piss out of yourself a little bit. We’re dressing like porn stars half the time and writing songs about sex. It’s not rocket science, but at the same time it’s not something you come up with in an afternoon. But maybe that’s another pop element. It’s music that we wrote for now, and we’ll write something else later, and it may not sound like this. But we like it right now!

I think the delineation between good pop music and bad pop music is humor.
Will: Yeah, you can get that sort of cringey music.
Martina: Or some sort of irony.

You guys are from Canada but moved to London. Why?
Martina: It was a bit of everything. We all wanted to have an adventure somewhere else. And we had all –
except for Will – toured Canada and been in the Canadian music scene for a long time, and we felt like this music had a place somewhere else, and that we’d maybe write better songs somewhere else, being out of our natural element. It was time to pick up and go somewhere else and see what happens.

You’re married to Daniel, right?
Martina: Yes.
Daniel: But she’s going to get through the whole band. [laughs]. There’s actually a band from Poland called Hey. I know this because somehow I ended up promoting this band in Toronto. The woman in that band was kind of like the Annie Lennox of Poland, and she has been married to, lived with, or at least had genital relations with every member of her band over the last 20 years. I just saw a poster for them, and I just think it’s weird they’re still together [laughs].
Martina: Like Fleetwood Mac?
Daniel: Exactly. Anyway, we’re married, Joe lives with us, and Will lives up the street –
Martina: They’re a couple.
Will and Joe: [Laughs]
Martina: They’re not a couple.
So what’s it like to write songs as a married couple? Is it more intimate?
Martna: Well, my first experience of writing a song with someone was with Dan. I was doing a solo thing, and I never wrote with anybody. It made me feel icky and self-conscious. So I think in some ways it’s easier, because you can have it all out, and really lay into each other.
Dan: And not talk for days.
Martina: But that makes it difficult as well.
Is there a theme to the album, or would you say it defines a certain era in the band?
Dan: The main theme is ‘Holy shit, let’s try and finish this record.’
Martina: Also, writing an album and songs in this nature is so new to us, so we were just like ‘Let’s start a song,’ without ever having any kind of vision at the end. It’s just like, ‘Let’s make this fun. Listen to this crazy sound and synth groove I found,’ and you don’t have any idea of where the song is going to end up. The album is all over the place. We jump from one genre to the next.
Joel: It’s more like we’re trying to retroactively justify some sort of thread between us all [laughs].

Yeah like, ‘It’s very interesting, very eclectic…’
Dan: [Laughs] Exactly. One thing we definitely do not try to do is to make every song sound similar. That drives me insane on any record. The whole album is just made up of stuff we like to hear. Luckily we all like it, and as a result it is eclectic, but it’s all coming from the same place. We have this one song called “I Get Around”, and if we had made a whole record that sounded like that our record company would have been thrilled, but it would have been very boring. It’s the kind of record you could put on and be like, ‘Today
I only want to listen to track seven.’ That’s the kind of record we’ve made and fuck me, that’s great. I don’t have many records like that.

Speaking of “I Get Around”, which one of you has the best one night stand story?
Dan: OH MY GOD. Someone asked us that once, and the interviewer had the best story! He’s gay, and he converted a Jehovah’s Witness –
Martina: No, no! He slept with a Jehovah’s Witness, and they left a copy of The Watchtower on his side of the bed when he left the next morning.
Dan: I can’t confirm that he was gay, but if he wasn’t gay, I am green in color.
Martina: No, he was gay!
Dan: He was very ambiguous about the story.
Martina: Whatever.
Sleeping with a Jehovah’s Witness seems like a fairly ambiguous thing to do.
Dan: Gay or straight, sleeping with a Jehovah’s Witness and getting some pamphlet action on the bedside table in the morning is like, worse than getting cash. [To Martina] I want to hear the stories again! I bet there are some new ones…
Martina: It’s not a one night stand if I married you.

That’s kind of the opposite of a one-night stand.
Dan: Yeah, I started having one night stands and then marrying the girl I was having them with.
That’s sweet!
Dan: Will, you had said that you had a one night stand –
Joel: With like a 50-year-old woman –
Dan: When you were 12 [laughs]?
Will: Wait, what did I say?
Dan: It was like your aunt’s friend…
Will: Oh right. I went up to my aunt’s house when
I was about 15 and –
Dan: Came back a man?
Will: And I came back a man, yeah [laughs].

I think that counts more as molestation than a one night stand…
Dan: [To Will] Was it more than once, though?
Will: No, not at all.
Martina: What did she say to you afterwards?
Dan: ‘Get out of my sight!’
Joel: ‘That’s it?’ [Laughs]
Come on Joel, your turn.
Joel: A friend of mine –
Dan: That’s right Joel, play it safe [laughs].
Joel: He slept with a girl – who was of legal age – and woke up the next morning and had to leave early, walked through the kitchen and realized her mother was sitting there having her morning coffee, and said to her: ‘Thanks for
having me!’ and walked out the front door [laughs]!
Dan: I have a friend who went back to a woman’s house and was, um, getting down, and headed into the bathroom and saw three toothbrushes, and thought they were hers and her roommates’. So he goes ‘Which toothbrush can I use?’ And she goes: ‘Well the little one is my kid’s and the blue one is my husband’s so, just use the other one.’