Braids Talk About Joining The Circus

Braids are one of those bands that have been around for a while and just keep on making beautiful, trippy music whether anyone's paying attention or not. They’re about to release their second album Flourish//Perish, which is hookier than the last with softer vocals and subtle sampling. We went to the pub with them on their guitarist's birthday for a quiet chat about bad dreams and why hippies are always welcome at their shows.

HIYA. How are you guys finding London?

Austin: Good! It's better playing support shows here. There’s a different kind of respect for opening acts in the UK. There's money offered and the crowd gives you attention.

Is that not the normal reaction?

Raphaelle: When we played in Oxford, there was this woman and I guess she’s kinda infamous, apparently she’s related to the Royal family and she’s banned from all these bars that she’s run up a tab at. So when I was up on stage playing “Plath Heart”, she came up right beside me and started saying, “you’re not loud enough”. I was thinking this woman seems so off her rocker and that she’d probably punch me in the face. So I was jokingly like “did you want to sing with me for the next song?”

Austin: So, she just started singing like random lyrics. The bouncers took her away, there’s a picture of her in the venue with a sign saying, “don’t let this person in”.

Raphaelle: Someone asked me to sign their breasts, that was pretty great. Weird but great.

How do people dance to your music?

Austin: People don’t really dance to our music.

Raphaelle: There’s hippie dancers.

Austin: Oh yeah, on the side.

Raphaelle: Yeah, they smell of weed. People think we’re like stoners; we’ve been grouped into being drug music because our effects are so trippy. Our new record is less stoner jammy.

Oh right. I thought you wrote songs by smoking loads of doobs and just letting the music wash over you?

Austin: We start from the essence of the idea right from the head. the last couple of years, Taylor’s worked on his production skills. I’m pretty good at communicating my ideas to Taylor. It’s not overly cerebral but it’s at times very emotionally pure. There’s an essence from the song and you let it unfold naturally. Not feeling the need to fill space unnecessarily.

Apart from the obvious influences, who would you say inspires you?

Raphaelle: I guess Morgan Greenwood from Azeada Booth, definitely.

Austin: They’re from the Calgary scene, where we’re from, and they were the first band to experience success. Their music was insanely influential for us. We’d watch them play and afterwards we’d just talk about the music.

Raphaelle: Morgan got me into Bjork. We were driving back from a show and it was really hot and he didn’t have any air conditioning. We’re really comfortable with each other so both of us got into our underwear, we’d roll down all the windows, get cold and then roll them back up and get really sweaty. He was playing Bjork’s Vespertine all throughout that journey.

Austin: We don’t cite it as a direct influence but the way James Blake writes his music is really interesting, his dedication to his choices. They’re unwavering, super ballsy, very selfish but very interesting that I’m like “really? I’d never of thought of it like that”. It makes you re-think how you compose music. Max Cooper as well.

Raphaelle: And The Synth-tones.

People have described your music as dream-like, what happens in your own dreams?

Austin: When I was younger, I used to have pretty serious reccurring dreams. Unfortunately they were always nightmares. I don’t know where they came from, I have a crazy imagination I guess. I had a reoccurring dream involving this rabid dog from my neighbourhood, I’d be like a kilometre away and It’d be chasing me the entire way to my house, it’d end with me getting eaten by the dog. I had that one for three years, every night. A cool one was that I’d float down by steps. I have pretty serious real life déjà vu. My friend Corin from Purity Ring, he practices lucid dreaming a lot and then he got very serious sleep apnea from it. He was seventeen and practiced everyday for a year.

Do you guys have any secret teenage hobbies?

Austin: Yeah, I used to be in the circus, I used to stilt-walk and juggle for them. I used to love walking on stilts; I walked to school on stilts.

Do you think that magazines are always looking for a headline?

Austin: We’re not wild people.

Raphaelle: I think you just want me to say that I’m a lesbian or that I love girls. Well I’m not, that’s a complete lie!

Well there goes my headline.

Raphaelle: We’re just going to give you the most boring story possible.

Austin: To be honest, we get to do a lot of great things on tour but we’re not very wild people. It became super evident that we’re not wild when we went on tour with the band DOM. We played with them here and they are wild people, they party so hard. It’s crazy. I can’t even imagine that one night a month, let alone every day. Every time we saw them they were partying so hard, they got though so much beer. Playing great shows, I don’t know how they pulled it off.

Raphaelle: Oh there’s your headline “singer doesn’t enjoy DOM’s live show”. I’m currently figuring out how much of my personal life that I want to give away. I want people to write reviews the record, their feelings towards it and the live shows that we play. That’s something I’m working on, I hate feeling pressure on my lifestyle, to be more wild cause that will impact on people around me. Maybe, I’m like a music purist or something, I really like my art to speak for itself. I don’t want people to listen to our music because there’s a headline like “I’ve taken acid and fallen off a mountain” or “ I went to a party and puked on a guy”. I’ve kinda done all those things and that for me shouldn’t sell my music. I wouldn’t want it to, that’s not what I’ve slaved over for.

How do you feel about media training?

Raphaelle: It’s so stupid because the whole thing becomes a fabrication.

Austin: That’s why I don’t read tabloids. That’s what exasperates me about the music industry. I wish that they would just leave that person alone, so they can make music, I mean that’s why we’re here. Grimes had to write a public “leave me the fuck alone” message cause people were so interfaced by everything. When it gets to that point, it’s just stardom is one thing but personal invasion is another. The music should speak for itself.

Do you any jobs beside music?

Austin: Neither of us do, we’re so fortunate. It’s a dream come true. Taylor, our bassist has a job but that’s not out of necessity, he’s label manager of Arbitus records.

Raphaelle: I babysit sometimes, that’s really nice.

Austin: It takes so much pressure off the music, so you can write purer music.

Raphaelle: We could pop out a single; get it on like a Toyota commercial. I wonder if people think like that, I don’t know if they do. People shouldn’t think things like that because you should get a shitty job to save your art, it’s really sacred.

Where do you see yourself in your ideal future?

Raphaelle: I want to be really happy. If things don’t work out I just hope I’m not one of those bitter people. Living in an apartment with a baby and a boyfriend that I love, making music and like two hundred people are coming to my shows. I’d like to play theatres with an orchestra but if that doesn’t happen I can just have my apartment.

I'm sure that owning an apartment is the dream of all millennials. Thanks guys!