Such was the position that Warpaint found themselves in after the release of their critically and commercially acclaimed self-titled record. The release came with its own set of challenges, and its distinctly more radio-ready sound turned the band into indie rock stars they were perhaps not yet ready to be.
So how do you fight the implications of your own success? According to bassist and vocalist Jenny Lee Lindberg, you hit reset. “When making this new record, I think everyone came back to the table with more of an open mind and the ability to let things flow freely and to give things time,” Lindberg says. “You’re trying not to intercept it. You’re just happy to sit on it for a bit, and hear what everyone else is hearing. Also, I think we all decided that we had to pick our battles. It was about deciding on the things that you wanted to fight for.”
The result is Heads Up, a distinctly more upbeat record than Warpaint. A track like New Song is the closest the band’s ever come to disco halls, a choice that Lindberg stresses was very deliberate. “I think the main thing we wanted to do was just make an upbeat album and bring some of the energy that we have in our live show to it,” she says.
The record was produced by Jacob Bercovici, a name that’ll be familiar to any diehard Warpaint fans. After all, the industry veteran worked on the group’s very first EP, Exquisite Corpse, and getting Bercovici onboard was a deliberate – though not exactly straightforward – way of making the record-making process as smooth as possible.
“We’ve worked with him over the years on various things,” Lindberg says. “But in the beginning we wanted to produce the record ourselves. We were torn. I was in favour of producing the record by ourselves, and so were the girls, but we thought about it and eventually we said, ‘You know what? Let’s just see if Jake’s available. He’s been there since the beginning, he knows us. It’d be really nice to work with him again.’ And he was super down, so that’s the way it happened. It was organic.”
‘Ourselves’ being the operative word. Warpaint aren’t a one-person band, and they have no strict frontperson. They’re a collective, an assemblage of musicians and songwriters who each have something different to bring to the table. Lindberg, for example, released her debut studio record Right On! late last year, and to hear her tell it, it sounds like the experience of going at it alone taught her what makes Warpaint’s collaborative writing process so unique.
“I’m the only person writing the music on Right On!,” she says. “There was only one perspective on that record. And I think that’s what’s a bit different about Warpaint. That’s what makes us unique, and what makes our sound pretty unusual. It’s hard to pinpoint what we sound like, because we’re four different people. Whereas Right On! sounds very much like me. If we were to make a Warpaint album with the Right On! songs they would probably sound totally different”
The record is one that brims with plain, old-fashioned goodness, and produces the kind of pleasure that you get when you hear an exceptionally tight band having fun. Whatever the ultimate response may be, at this stage, Lindberg understands that it’s out of her hands. “I am excited,” Lindberg says. “I’m excited for it to come out, and then once it’s out, it’s none of my business what happens to it.”
BY JOSEPH EARP
