“People have been trashing on pop for a long time,” announces the stylish lynchpin of Orange County’s new wave electro pop outfit STEFY. “This band’s here to bring some respect back.”
STEFY’s debut single ‘Chelsea’ was produced by Jimmy Harry (Kylie Minogue and Fisherspooner) and co-written with Greg Kurstin (Lily Allen, All Saints), fizzes with electropop brilliance, telling the tale of Stefy Rae’s boyfriend baiting nemesis. Released in the States last year, it set blogs buzzing and put the TRL kids on a path to redial meltdown.
“It’s not so much about one specific girl called Chelsea,” Stefy Rae explains, “but the ‘type’ of girl called Chelsea. This beautiful girl who’ll steal your boyfriend just for the hell of it. It’s just fun for her. So that’s what Chelsea is. You’ve loved someone, you’ve seen Chelsea come along, she’s gone off with your man and you saw it happening right from the start.”
But the band's debut LP has a lot more to offer than one chartbound single. ‘The Orange Album’ is a striking collection packed with songs where titles including ‘Pretty Little Nightmare’, ‘Love You To Death’ and ‘Where Are The Boys’, strike dashing poses all on their own. Like the first Gwen Stefani solo album it is the sound of music obsessives prising open their iPods with a screwdriver and empting the contents across a 21st Century mixing desk. The reference points include Blondie, Eurythmics, new wave – but there’s a refreshingly modern take on all this and, again, like Stefani, the music’s spiritual home is rooted deep in English soil. Ironic, given that nobody in the UK is currently making music with the class and dexterity of ‘The Orange Album’. In a way the band’s arrival on British soil – after RCA’s UK wing picked them up from US indie Wind-Up - is bringing the sound of classic British pop music home.
“I’ve always wanted to be in a band with a load of guys,” Stefy says. “Looking at Blondie or No Doubt the idea of these dudes surrounding me just seemed perfect.” She was also inspired by her “cooler older sister”, who was always in bands. “I just wanted to be her. She’s still cooler than me, so I’m still chasing…”
Stefy’s experience of the real Orange County is a far cry from the glossy sheen on our TV screens and informs this album’s realistic, emotion-packed tales of real-life dramas in humdrum suburbia. When she was 13 she lied about her age, went to the mall and got a job in a clothing shop. “And they paid me $150 a week!” she howls. “I was like, ‘What the hell is this crap?’” Another part time job involved dressing as Barbie at a Toys ‘R’ Us event. “I’d have kids coming up whining ‘isn’t Barbie supposed to be blonde?’, and I’d be like, ‘dude, shut up or I’m going to stab you in the eye with a stick’.
Joining Stefy Rae in the group are keyboardist Jason Gaviati, guitarist Sean Meyer and drummer Jordan Plosky, new to the line up having just stepped in over the last couple of months. “They’re the perfect band!” Stefy Rae grins. “Jason’s like the father of the band – he wakes people up on time, keeps us safe and pulls the whole thing together. Sean’s just the sweetest guy you’ll ever meet – he’s not rude in the slightest but when he’s on stage he looks like he should be in a mental institution. He’s hit me on the head with his guitar on more than one occasion. Then Jordan’s just a really awesome New York kid who loves Green Day and is completely cooking.”
‘Chelsea’ is a brilliant, exciting first taste of what’s to come: a tale of double crossing alpha females steamrollering anyone in their path to get to somebody’s else’s guy. In the sleevenotes to last autumn’s Popjustice compilation, which featured ‘Chelsea’, popcultural commentator Jon Savage praised the song for having “something to say about courtship, sex and pop itself … carving up a man-stealing ice-queen with her ‘nails as sharp as knives’”. It’s a track which grabs the attention of a generation left wondering where, when and why all the excitement and glamour fell out of pop music, just as the band themselves are a wake-up call for the OC kids forced to make do with sloppy posturing and substandard pop icons.
For a record that took three years to make – it was only when the band played their final, hopeful label showcase that US indie Wind-Up saw the potential and jumped on board – ‘The Orange Album’ is a fresh, now-sounding (and sometimes a little bit tomorrow-sounding) collection. “Even while I was making the record I had a day job at a warehouse packaging DVDs for airline companies,” Stefy says. “I’ve had the worst jobs. It’s hard going after your dream – my family didn’t have money at all so it’s always been, ‘If you want something, go out and do it’. It’s hard work, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Setting the album apart from most mainstream pop is a keen knack for addressing The Big Issues Of Teendom – like the album’s title track, a tale of teenage pregnancy, misinterpreted priorities and a sober rethink of the American Dream. “A lot of kids screw up early and just because we don’t see it every day doesn’t mean it’s not happening,” Stefy reasons. “I like those realistic songs. People tend to be singing about fairy tales and no one is singing about the truth. I feel that writing songs that draw from what I have seen and experience in my life makes our music easy to relate to.”
Elsewhere on the album Stefy has a particular fondness for ‘Love You To Death’ – the first song she ever wrote. “I watched it grow from the pages of my diary onto a recorded track and then to being played live,” she says. “It’s kind of embarrassing because it’s a true story – the first guy I fell in love with broke my heart to pieces and it’s kind of retarded because he’s famous over in the States so I see him in magazines all the time. His name is… Well, he’s an actor in the States. We’ll leave it there.”
Together, the quartet are an onstage powerhouse, cutting it loose and rising to any occasion. “It can be rough on stage,” Stefy admits, “and a lot of times we’re opening up for bands who are just pure rock bands. The first gig was in an Irish pub in Santa Monica. Full of guys with their sensitive singer songwriter stuff. Of course I get on stage and start banging out ‘Chelsea’ with a room full of people looking at me, like, ‘What the Hell are you doing?’.” But we do our thing, we convert a few people – and one by one and we’ll get them all. When I'm on stage I’m inspired by artists like David Bowie and Prince - when they perform, they get into character - you wouldn't want to look anywhere else than right at the stage.”
Of course, Stefy herself revels in the chaos. “I think there’s a tendency with bands to go out and prove they can be a ‘real band’,” she adds, “but we love electronic music, and we love new wave music, and we get up there with our laptop full of sound effects and also real instruments. You’ve got to punch it up a little bit…” STEFY’s is a no-compromise assault on defining the acceptable face of pop music, needed now in 2007 more than ever.
"Don't tell me I can’t do something," Stefy says. "I'll do it just to prove you wrong."
