Issue 113 / April-May 2021

Following the release of her new album, Flock, Cath Holland speaks to the singer-songwriter
about stepping out of the “drone zone” and into some shimmering pop.
On the cover of Flock, her 11th album, JANE
WEAVER is very much a woman in charge of
all she surveys: bird boxes in shades of mild
but insistent pink, blue and green. The colour
palette corresponds with a piece of Pisces artwork she
has propped up on her fireplace at home. She’s unsure
what the image relates to, maybe trippy 70s star sign
paraphernalia you see in charity shops. That would be
apt; Flock leads out of Jane’s ever-present interests in
the other worldly. It’s the album she’s always wanted to
make, we’re told, which sees her take a different trip from
previous space rock adventures, embracing pop and the
rainbow of styles within.
Jane is in good spirits when we talk,
despite the inevitable circumstancedriven
delay sharing the record
with us. “It’s like giving birth,
just get it out there and
I can have a bit of a sit
down,” she jokes of the
waiting period. Birthing
a child is no easy task
and, as it turns out,
nor was making Flock.
But you’d not suspect
by listening to it that
the gestation until its
arrival late spring, so
perfectly in tune with the
lengthening days and a
slowly emerging sense of
guarded optimism, proved
“uncomfortable” for her.
We’re accustomed to
appreciating the conceptual aspect of
Weaver’s work, revolving around a topic or
person or film. 2017’s Modern Kosmology claimed Hilma
af Klint as a nourishing muse, the Swedish artist and
mystic’s creative process feeding into the record. We did
get the sense there was some soul searching going on in
the lyrics on Flock even before it came out, the single The
Revolution of Super Visions finds Weaver wondering “do
you look at yourself and find nothing?”
“It’s much easier to write about somebody else’s
world and go into that bubble and daydream about the
possibilities of what they did,” she says. “It’s nice and
comfy and the possibilities are endless. But when it comes
to doing something more personal it’s a bit horrible, really.
I don’t enjoy indulging in things about myself.”
Jane headed off to Anglesey before recording Modern
Kosmology, to reflect and write. For Flock she handpicked
the more glamorous surroundings of Brittany in France.
As she drove up the coast she had visions of browsing in
arty shops, buying ice cream, sipping wine in nice bars.
“But the whole town was dead, like a ghost town!”
she admits. “It’s a coastal town where I was staying. I
forgot, it was out of season ’cause it was December. One
restaurant open, on a Wednesday night. No bars open.
Aldi was open, or Lidl, and there were just loads of old
ladies walking around.”
Ultimately, the empty surroundings, deserted
holiday homes of the rich and famous with closed locked
shutters, proved to be a positive.
“I was pretty fed up anyway and miserable, but
I was trying to write these pop songs, so it was a bit
happy-sad, a bittersweet kind of thing. But the isolation,
the fact I wasn’t distracted, was perhaps the best thing
that happened.”
Flock might well be a diversion from her norm – if
there is such a thing for an experimentalist such as
Weaver – but we’ve experienced her pop side before.
Don’t Take My Soul and I Need A Connection from 2014’s
The Silver Globe are essentially pop songs after all.
“There’s still experimental stuff [on Flock] for sure, I
can’t help myself with that, but I just tried to make it fun.
Neater pop songs. So, they weren’t meandering for 10
minutes, the experimental bits in them are shorter and
contained,” she explains. “I love space jam, 10-minute
songs and being onstage and being in a big drone zone
– it’s like a gong bath or something. But I do
appreciate the power of when you’re
doing a pop song live. When I do
them live it’s a kind of arms-intheair
“I don’t enjoy
indulging in
things about
myself”
reaction from the crowd and I
do love that.”
She reflects on the irony of Flock
being designed for live performance. “I was
thinking, ‘This is gonna’ be good onstage, I’m gonna’
be doing this that and the other, wearing this’, and
then there’s no gigs and it’s, like, really upsetting,” she
laughs, making light out of the situation. “I had all these
grand plans and outfits and whatnot, which we’ll get to
eventually. We will get to do it.”
A substantial value of pop music is capturing the time
it’s in, like a time capsule. Does she think she succeeded?
“You’re right, it’s a fashion thing as well. But,
artistically, for me, because I’ve not done that for a long
time, just playing pop stuff is more interesting to do, I
guess. The main thing for me was to just try and push
the boundaries creatively and that meant do as many
kinds of pop as I could find.”
Jane allowed the songs to be themselves, she
reveals, to let them take the lead. Not lending themselves
to any particular genre, but if one went glam (like Stages
of Phases), she went with it. If it got its funk on, as on
Pyramid Schemes, she danced along the same path too.
Heartlow set its heart on wonderful guitar pop, so that’s
what it became.
“Just letting a song be, letting them sort themselves
out, really,” she illustrates.
The songs sprang from unexpected sources, ideas
nurtured from lost albums far away from 21st-century
northern England. Jane dove into Lebanese and Arabic
music, orchestral music from 1960 and 1970s. She fell
down a wormhole of Eastern European 80s pop on
YouTube, entranced by Russian aerobics music.
“And it sounds exactly as you would think it does
– it’s Russian language aerobics music!” she says
excitedly. She cites the power-pop elements of legendary
Australian band The Saints over their more dominant
punk side, leading her to investigate subcultures in 1970s
Australia, and the work of photographer Rennie Ellis.
She enjoyed the films in French director Éric Rohmer’s
Comedies and Proverbs series, the six films seeing the
characters driven by misunderstandings, dissatisfaction
and loneliness.
“I’ve probably watched all of them,” she admits.
“They do a disco scene in the 80s – a very simple party
scene – and it was, ‘What’s that music, that music’s
amazing!’ so I tracked down music from that. Things like
that led me on a journey to styles of pop music and what
I wanted to do.”
Her vocals are gorgeous on Flock. Louder in the
mix and she sings higher, too. She doesn’t seem overly
comfortable accepting compliments
on them, though.
“I don’t consider myself a singer,
I consider myself an artist, a writer. I
concentrate on the song as a whole
and the vocal being a part of that,”
she explains. “Not my singing or
whatever. I concentrate a lot on the
production and instrumentation and
how the mix is, and the song as a
whole.”
“It’s funny, when you’re not
confident as a new artist you’re
‘Turn my voice down’,” she
continues. “It’s hideous hearing your
own voice. It’s hideous now – ‘Oh
god, it’s me’ – but as you get older you think, ‘Sod it, I’ll
just do it’.”
Conversation tails off to chat about the other Weaver
– no relation – who was in the news recently. How it’s
inspirational to see a woman not in her first flush of youth
right up there and, yes, in charge.
“And up against that toxic masculinity as well,
which is hideous, and the way she just keeps her cool,”
Jane says of Jackie Weaver of Handforth Parish Council
meeting fame (Jane herself jokingly received multiple
‘You have no authority here, Jane Weaver’ tweets in the
aftermath). “The determination to take that woman down
was hideous and she just sailed through it all. We’ve all
probably had similar treatment somewhere in our lives.”
It’s interesting that, even now, Jane still gets asked
who produces her albums, with people often assuming
it’s her husband, Andy Votel. “And it’s like, why wouldn’t
you think that was me? It does say my name on it,” she
notes. “There’s just a generalisation. Some people think
there’s a man behind everything, I guess.”
The album reaches number 24 in the Official UK
Albums Chart the week after we talk. Its cover image
seems to be everywhere, Weaver poised on the 1970s
peacock chair on the cover and coolly regarding the
ground below. “Me waiting for my flock to return. Or
sat there like a mother hen,” she joked of her queenly
posture, but it firms up more than ever that, like her
partial namesake, Jane has all the authority here. !
Words: Cath Holland / @Cathholland01
Illustration: Rosa Brown
Flock is available now via Fire Records.
@JanelWeaver
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