Interviews - Old Interviews - Denver 1997

Pimping and preening
The Sneaker Pimps' new album, Becoming X, has earned them a triple "e' status: Eccentric, eclectic and very much electric. SACHA MOLITORISZ believes this could be Postmodern.

You want confusion? Kelli Dayton will deliver. She is half-Indian, half-Irish. She fronts a band called, perplexingly, the Sneaker Pimps, sometimes a three-piece, sometimes a five-piece. And the songs she sings defy categorisation, utilising everything from traditional blues guitar hooks to industrial-strength samples.
Fortunately, cutting through all this confusion are two constants. The first is quality. The Sneaker Pimps released their first album, Becoming X, only this year, but what a debut it is. Featuring the seductive, slow-burning hit, 6 Underground, it remains far and away one of the best releases of 1997, at once innovative and beautiful.
The second constant is technology. The discernible thread which ties the album together, which makes Becoming X a coherent whole, is its pervasive electronic influence: all those blips and beeps, samples and synthesised sounds which have led critics to posit this band at the forefront of a genre they call Electronica.
Sure, the term is appropriate; but like most labels, far too narrow. Eclectica is closer. Or, better yet, Electronic Eclectica.
Electronic Eclectica: the perfect soundtrack for pre-millennium tension, music by and for the generation vexingly dubbed Xers (the album's title plays with the notion of identity crisis: not even "X", the even more slippery "Becoming X").
In the song Postmodern Sleaze, Dayton describes a character as "wet and wild, a typical '90s child". Are the Sneaker Pimps, typical '90s children?
"It's a wonderful time to be living in," Dayton says from Denver, far from her UK home. "We don't have the boundaries of our peers to blame. We can wear and listen to what we want.
"There is confusion. And there's huge confusion about what particular music we're all going to be listening to. There's no more fads, like punk; we're on the precipice of something interesting.
"I mean, it's easy for people to do what's already been done, and we are too to some extent. In music, everything is borrowed, like it is in language: new sentences are only ever made out of words that are already there. It's hard to say something new."
Indeed newness arrives courtesy of new and interesting combinations. For the soundtrack to the film Spawn, the Pimps have teamed up with US goth shock-rockers Marilyn Manson.
Even more surprising, however, is that Becoming X sounds thoroughly organic. This is strange, because high-tech music is often utterly without soul, and because the band's history is utterly artificial.
First co-founders Chris Corner and Liam Howe started experimenting in their bedrooms. Then they needed words, so Birmingham journalist Ian Pickering stepped in, penning all the lyrics for Becoming X. Finally they set about finding a talented singer to inject sensuality. Enter Dayton.
She isn't surprised the Pimps sound organic: "With what we do, the song is always the most important thing. All our songs have to work on acoustic guitar - we never add anything just for the sake of it.
"Actually, that fractured authorship makes the whole exercise quite postmodern, doesn't it?"
The days are gone of artistes claiming sole responsibility for works of great art. Though sometimes that still happens.
"With us, each of us is very good at what we do. But what makes us work is that total ideal of being part of something together rather than following one lead, which a lot of bands still do. That can make you sound dated."
So, beyond today, are these sneaky Pimps the sound of tomorrow?
"Electronic music is here to stay. The sampler is like the new electric guitar. And it's great if used well, although I got a bit scared when we had the rave thing in England and that was all we heard; all those beeps and digital sounds. But I think with anything the pendulum swings, and hopefully after this we'll reach a balance where people can do exactly what they want."
In other words, a world where labels just won't be appropriate? "Exactly," Dayton says. And with that I tell her I better go, that our 20 minutes are up. "How much do I owe you?" she deadpans.