Off The Record: Nasty Little Lonely

Nasty Little Lonely’s debut album Rack and Ruin is released on April 22. Anyone who’s seen them live will know what they’re in for – bone crushing riffs, unsettling vocals and an atmosphere of gothic unease and simmering violence. 

In the first of a series of features on Bristol musicians’ non-musical influences, we spoke to the band’s bass player / singer Charlie B.

You have previously described your music as like a “soundtrack for a creepy yet cute” movie. What films have particularly influenced the band?

I’m a fan of David Lynch and Nicolas Roeg (The Man Who Fell To Earth and Performance) as well as classics like Apocalypse Now, and can’t resist a bit of earlier Tim Burton, but we don’t have enough time to keep up with all the latest good stuff. We watched a film recently called Tusk, which was funny and deeply disturbing in equal measure. I also love beautiful visuals, an old favourite is Neil Jordan’s Company of Wolves, which is a twisted fairy tale from the mind of Angela Carter. She’s an excellent writer and I love her books too. Other than that, I have a guilty pleasure thing going on with the occasional mainstream classic, Legally Blonde in particular! I think the movie that we are the soundtrack for is probably just in our heads, but it has elements of all our favourites.

Having previously collaborated with Dis Charge for videos and performances, could you describe your bands relationship with drag culture?

Having had an extremely weird home life as a child, and having had to present a fake veneer of normality to the world, I can relate to extreme people who can see through the cracks, who have had to completely renounce consensus reality in some way, and who have had to make a choice between blending in to the conventional way of living or rejecting that and living a life for which there is little precedent and which exists outside established conventions. Also there is an affinity with the idea of painting and sculpting yourself as a character who can then assume a different personality; as a woman, I think many of us do that when we put make-up on to face the world. And I do that with NLL as well, the ‘nasty little lonely’ is a character that gives me license to be larger than life and to say the things I can’t say as myself.  A lot of the music we love is traditionally about being (or made by) outcasts and weirdos, so I think our affinity isn’t just with drag culture, it’s with freaks, outsiders and misfits everywhere. We met Dis Charge when we supported Lydia Lunch, and instantly had an affinity due to similar musical taste and desire to do something different. 

Nasty Little Lonely have a striking dark image, who are your style icons? And what is your attitude towards bands having an image?

I think image should just be an expression of who you are, and we don’t wear anything on stage that we wouldn’t wear anyway. But we do appreciate drama and theatrics when done well, whether it’s Parliament and Funkadelic or Nick Cave. We admire musicians who make an effort to show you what their internal landscape looks like, as well as what it sounds like. I don’t think an image is essential, but even if you don’t have one, in this branding obsessed culture, a lack of image will be perceived as an image. We like image that has individuality so we’re anti-uniform of any kind. My style icons are probably Nancy Sinatra, Lydia Lunch and Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner. I don’t try to look like them, but would like to think I incorporate a tiny bit of their style in a subliminal way.

What TV were you watching / books were you reading when you wrote your new album?

I have a bit of a fetish for programmes about architecture, but I don’t think they influenced the album. Ben and I both went through a phase of reading loads of Haruki Murakami, which puts a bit of a distorted perspective on everything. 1Q84 is particularly good. Then we read Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami which is one of the darkest and most perverse stories I’ve ever read. Pure and Ingenious Pain both by Andrew Miller, were quite inspiring lyrically; Pure is based on a true story about a Parisian cemetery which in 1785 was full to overflowing, and had to be dug up and cleared of corpses and bones. Another favourite at the time was Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor. All the books that inspire me lyrically tend to be about strange dark characters… more nasty little lonelies! 

Do you have any other hobbies outside of the band?

Aren’t hobbies for people who don’t have bands?! Other than reading a lot, Ben writes a bit of flash fiction, and I love making videos, but it all feels like part of the same thing really. I’m currently studying to be a hairdresser, so that’s a hobby at the moment but will be my job soon, so if you need a cool haircut, you know who to ask!

Pre-­order the album now from nastylittlelonely.bandcamp.com, or pick up a copy at the launch show, which boasts a fine supporting lineup featuring Armchair Committee, Steel Trees, Iyabe, Kapil Seshasayee, Brockley Forest and At The Heart Of It All.