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Lail Arad’s Influences

Lail takes us through the musicians, TV programmes and films that have influenced her.

Posted 5th March 2010, 4:07pm in Features, by Lail Arad
Lail Arad It's always funny reading reviews and seeing who other people take as your influences. And I wonder how much of what I've chosen will actually make sense to people when hearing my music. But take or leave it, I'm giving credit where credit's due...

The Muppets
It began with Sesame Street. Every Weekday 1.30pm Channel 4. It was my first long-term relationship and I was very faithful. Then I had this video of The Muppet Show - I had no idea that songs like 'Woman' 'I won't Dance' 'Take a Chance on Me' were covers - to this day I recognise hit songs on the radio as 'that song from The Muppets'. I owe the art of cover versions to Kermit and Miss Piggy. And they are amazing music videos! Completely anarchic! I don't like scary things - horror films, ghost stories - so these educational and sexy monsters were just perfect for me. I love Avenue Q as well - it deals with a lot of the same love-in-the-city issues as me. 'Everyone's A Little Bit Racist' is an amazing song, seriously! Go see it.



Alanis Morisette
'Jagged Little Pill' was a big deal when it came out! I think every girl born in the first half of the 80s knows that album off by heart. I must have been just 13 and it was the first new release CD that I owned. 'Hand in my Pocket' was my way in and slowly I soaked up song after song. I remember being shocked by the 'would she go down on you in a theatre?' line. She was a brave artist - lyrically candid, vocally experimental, very individual performer. I sang 'All I Want' in a concert and it was very exciting cause people told me I looked like her with my long dark hair. Listening back now it's all far too angsty for me! But at the time she was a great female singer role model.



The Wainwrights
I was brought up on Loudon Wainwright III. We had his tapes in the car on the way to school, his vinyls on the record player. 'The Swimming Song', 'The Doctor'. That man sure knows how to write a good song. And when I was older we started going to see him live - I'll never forget the show at Union Chapel where he began in the pulpit! That man sure knows how to give a good show. And then I grew up, and so did his children. Martha came to play at my university and it remains in my top gigs ever list. It was a real show of force - over two hours, solo with her guitar, plus a surprise visit from her mother. Her voice is so loaded, her performance was so raw. I think of it often. And back to Loudon, now that I'm old enough to understand 'Motel Blues' and 'Number One', I'm discovering him all over again!



Joni Mitchell
I was on a school camp. I heard one of the teachers playing 'Big Yellow Taxi' and one of my classmates trying to sing it. I listened for a while and offered them some lyrics when they got stuck. I knew all her songs by heart. They asked me to sing it, then they asked me to sing it again that evening around the bonfire, then they asked me to sing it again in the end of the year concert - it was the first time I sang in front of a big audience, I was 11! And that's was how it started. I sang in every school concert after that throughout high school. There's a fantastic documentary where Joni Mitchell talks about the honesty she demanded of herself in writing Blue: "Its very hard peeling off layers of your own onion. When you get to the truth - do you really want to say that in public? So you're really doing a tightrope walk to keep your heart alive, to keep you art alive, to keep it vital and useful to others - this is now useful because we have hit upon a human truth." She is my heroine! Her lyrics are beyond, and we haven't even talked about her voice. It all works together.



The Incredible String Band
I'm always amazed they're not better known. The songwriting is so brilliant. The cheeky free-spirited songs of Mike Heron and the beautiful bitter-sweet laments of Robin Williamson are a winning combination. The stories they tell range from the heart-warmingly sincere 'First Girl I Loved' to that absolutely insane 'A Very Cellular Song'; and they're fantastic musicians to boot. They capture the attitudes and freedom of hippy days so well, but every time I hear a song of theirs on shuffle it still sounds like the newest most inventive thing on the playlist. Me and my friend want to start The Incredible Incredible String Band Cover Band to give them the revival they deserve!



DV8 Physical Theatre
I first came across this company during my A-levels, and then again when I doing Theatre Studies at Warwick. I've seen three different shows now, and each time I prepare myself for disappointment because I think it can't possibly be as good as the last one - and each time it just gets better. If you ever get a chance to see these guys, run. The last show 'To Be Straight With You' used a inspired combination of dance, text and technology to explore sexuality in a way that will never leave me. They're a very political company, but in a beautiful, intelligent way, never didactic and always unexpected. And their use of humour really influenced my own - getting the audience relaxed through laughter and then striking with something serious - I try to play with that in my set lists too.



Unmade Beds (2009)
I really love this film directed by Alexis Dos Santos. Its intimacy and attention to emotional detail is something I hope I have in my music. With the backdrop of an east London squat, a mash up of nationalities, an entwining of love stories, its all very close to home. There are other indie films that conjure up an atmosphere which affects me in a similar way, and they're often written and directed by the same person, I don't know if that has something to do with it: Remake (Roger Gual), The Orchestra's Visit (Eran Kolirin), Y Tu Mama Tambien (Alfonso Cuarón) - films that tell stories with such honesty - you laugh, you cry - beautiful windows into life. Unmade Beds also has a fantastic soundtrack including...



Jeffrey Lewis
My mum sent me a link to Jeffrey's Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror video. I started devouring everything I could find online, and saw on his myspace that the very next day he had a sold out gig/lecture at the ICA. I went two hours early to wait for a golden ticket - the lady at the box office hated me and kept telling me to go home. At the last second I got the only return ticket, and didn't even have to pay for it, smiled to the box office lady and ran up to the small lecture room. And I'd say it was one of the turning points of my musical life to date. I was dumbstruck by his lyrics. He sang 'Don't Be Upset' and I almost exploded from joy. I went home and wrote 'Winter' that night.

(He also has some incredible articles in the New York Times on songwriting.)



Stop Making Sense (1984)
This is my favourite concert ever, and how cool that they made it into a film so we can watch it over and over again… Aside from the fact that the Talking Heads songs are so fantastic, the band is on fire, the backing singers smash it and David Byrne is just the best full stop; it's the actual show that excites me. That crazy striking opening of 'Psycho Killer' with the ghetto blaster - so different, so strong - and then how the set and the band grows in front of your eyes into this huge music machine. Its overflowing with creativity. It's performance, it's art, and it's still rock'n'roll. It makes you think and dance, and I wish I'd been there! I listen to David Byrne's radio show these days.



Camille
I have so much respect for this woman. She's everything a solo artist should be. She's created her own sound, its like nothing else, and certainly nothing like mine, but I can't get enough of it. And her live shows are a triumph. Its like going to the theatre. You can smell the hard work, the thought behind every decision... but it doesn't loose the fun, the freedom. Its as though she creates a show that's so tight, so secure, that she can then be completely wild within it. She does whatever she wants, and she does it damn well. When you see an artist like her you realise why pop stars can be called 'artists'.



Jonathan Richman
I have to give my dad full credit for this one. We were on a family holiday and he told us we're going into a record shop and we have 10 minutes to each choose one thing. I cant even remember what I picked, I think my sister took Madonna's greatest hits, but my dad came out with this funny double album which he knew nothing about by Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers. We all gave him a hard time when we first heard 'I'm a Little Airplane' and 'Ice-Cream Man'... until we got addicted. 'Dancing in a Lesbian Bar' is a family anthem now! These songs... his sincerity, his rhymes, they are treasures. They're funny, they're heartbreaking, they're precise, they're universal. And seeing him live is a life-affirming experience. I think every single person in the crowd feels like he's singing directly and only to them. I don't know how he physically does that. Pure brilliance.



No Direction Home (2005)
Its easy to choose Dylan as an influence - I'd hope he'd be at the top of most people's list. But it was really this Scorsese documentary that clinched it for me. Credit to the director, it's a fantastic film, but that's not what I mean. It was hearing Dylan talk, understanding his story in that way, seeing how he grew up... I was at university when it came out and didn't have a TV. My parents taped it for me (maybe the last ever use of VCR) and I remember watching it in one of the library viewing booths and crying. I just felt so overwhelmed, it wasn't really logical. The press conference footage is the best!

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