Pearl Harts with Live4ever @ SXSW 2019 (Paul Bachmann / Live4ever)
There’s no right way to get your music heard anymore. The old rules are gone and the playing field has been levelled. The Pearl Harts are testament to this.
The raucous two-piece have released an album, built up a healthy online following and toured the world thanks to prestigious slots with Skunk Anansie and Garbage amongst others. All without the support of record label or deal, all driven by the power of their friendship and their electrifying rock music.
How did the two of you get together to form this band?
Sara: We used to play together in another band. The singer left to go and tour around the world with another band so that band died. Me and Kirsty like heavier music, so we thought ‘let’s start our own band’. So that’s what we did.
Kirsty: ‘Just sing until we sort it out’. And then we never sorted it out.
How did it feel in that other band when the singer left?
Kirsty: When Sara joined it really felt like it became the final project, and it was super-fun. It was a really fun band; four girls in London. It was basically just going out and partying with your friends. So it was sad when it broke up because it was like, ‘how are we going to hang out anymore?’.
We instantly formed the next project. Leading up the break-up we always knew we were going to continue playing together because we enjoyed it so much. We didn’t have any songs written so we just played the songs from the other band and I sang them. As a two-piece, with two missing members, me having never sung before. We thought, ‘this feels right’.
This obviously in London. Are you both from London?
Sara: Kirsty’s from Stonehenge and I’m from Scarborough.
Kirsty: So north and south. We met in London ten years ago.
Is there an aspect of your music that’s dictated by where you’re from?
Kirsty: Yeah, definitely. There’s one track on the record called Bonfires that’s basically about coming from a small town, wanting to hang out with your mates like my friends used to.
Sara: It’s about loving your home towns but knowing that you needed to escape them to pursue what you wanted to do.
Why not form another band?
Sara: I think we just gelled with each other really well musically. We have similar rhythm and we both like the same music. The weird thing with me and Kirsty is that we really like heavy music, but quite a lot of the music we like is cheesy pop. Like random songs that we were too young to remember but both sort of know. A collection of random songs that other people wouldn’t know or even be bothered about.
One of you has said about this idea that it’s not important to be liked. You’re not afraid to just be yourselves. Why do you feel that’s important?
Sara: People have always said that our music is quite honest and authentic. It makes sense that that’s how it would be. If you’re making that type of music then you just have to be yourself. I think that’s quite important.
Kirsty: It’s so much less pressure as well. It’s terrifying being in a band, that doesn’t go away. It’s so much easier if you just be you. Instagram and everything is fun to do, but we don’t take ourselves that seriously when we do it.
Was there difficulty in recording the album?
Sara: It was just too big a thing to do too soon into the band’s career. We got some funding and we decided to make a statement and do an album. We didn’t have a label or anything, it was very stop-start. There were things going on in our own lives that made that happen. We didn’t really get into a good flow with it. Then we stopped working with our previous manager and we had to figure out how to release an album ourselves.
We set up our own label and did it all; got the vinyls made, got the CDs made, did all the artwork. The thing is when you release an album you can’t just have it made and then it’s out. It seems to need three months or more to do anything; the vinyl takes eight weeks to make, the PR people want three months. Obviously we’ve also got our own lives, part-time jobs and stuff, so it took two years to do.
Kirsty: Yeah, I love it. It was a labour of love, but it was worth it.
When you come to Austin do you come with a business mind, like trying to find a label?
Sara: It would be good to meet someone who understands what we want to do; because we’ve done all of this ourselves we know in our minds how we want to be, what sort of songs we want to write and how we want to be perceived.
Kirsty: We have a really great manager who we’ve started working with. He’s the best. That relationship is blooming, so it’s nice to have our little team. We’ve got a great booking agent as well. As nice as it would be to bring a label in, and it’s definitely something we’re thinking about, it feels nice to have our little team around us.
On that theme of smaller towns, like where you’re from, do you look forward to getting your music out to smaller towns? Does that mean that you do something different and unique to play them?
Sara: Scarborough’s in Yorkshire on the east coast. It had quite a good music scene but bigger bands rarely came through there. They did in the seventies, they used to get all the big acts of the day like David Bowie. But we always had to travel to a gig, or going to a gig that wasn’t on our doorstep, so we understand what it’s like to not have that music coming to your town. So if we can go to some smaller towns then it’s cool for people who live there.
Kirsty: We have this one guy who lives in Derbyshire who travels all around the UK to see us. That’s really cool. When we do play in and around that part of the UK he’ll come to all the gigs. That’s great and why we want to go back there. That’s why it’s good to talk to the booking agency. It feels authentic to go to places like Bristol or Brighton.
Sara: Normally those venues are run by people who really love music, so they’re so proud of the events they put on and promoting it. They just really love it so it’s nice to go somewhere where someone’s put the effort in.
