Miranda Sex Garden? A new novel by Jeanette Winterson? A cult rock band from LA?
Miranda Sex Garden? A new novel by Jeanette Winterson? A cult rock band from LA?
In fact, Miranda Sex Garden are three 20-year-old girls from London who sing stunningly powerful madrigals, mostly a cappella but sometimes controversially with a club-mix rhythm track. Will the Madrigal Society ever forgive such heady sexploitation?
Actually, they are far from being convenient giggly Bananarama replacements. Kelly McCuster is curled up on the sofa reeling under stress from her music degree exams, Katherine Blake is recovering from tonsilitis and Jocelyn West is trying to come to terms with being interviewed in her old attic bedroom at her parent's home in Belsize Park.
Kelly, Jocelyn, and Katherine are still feeling a bit shaky about the group's name. Miranda and Garden are OK, but Sex, well it is a bit crude. 'Someone suggested it before we went on stage at a pub in South London,' explains Kelly. 'We did think about changing it.' They nearly became Isis. Then again, it just didn't have the same appeal.
'We are very wary about being treated as sex objects,' adds Katherine with a shudder. Journalists will insist, they moan, on referring to their micro-skirts and thigh-length boots instead of sticking to their charming vocal abilities.
Without warning, they suddenly sit up straight and burst into song. Gushing crescendos, shrill soprano frills, heavenly harmonies - they are impossibly enormous sounds from such nervous frames.
Madrigals - 16th-century amatory poems with a lot of lusty innuendo - do seem an odd choice for three 20-year-olds in the 90s. Especially for three girls who, in keeping with the current 60s nostalgia, profess a passion for the Velvet Underground and Jimi Hendrix.
Katherine, the nouvelle hippy of the group clad in flower-child suede flares, Jocelyn, who is very thin and quivers a lot, and sensible Kelly, all met at the Purcell school in Harrow on the Hill, a classical establishment for gifted children.
All sorts of memories flood back about Purcell. At first it was idyllic - being sent to learn violin and piano in the secluded surroundings of this small school amid seven acres of land. Later it seemed cosseting and repressive. 'It was very snobbish', says Katherine. 'No one was ever allowed to bring pop music in. It was ingrained in us from an early age that classical music is superior and it's something we still all suffer from.'
Their saving grace was a certain teacher called Mr Vinden. 'He inspired us to sing madrigals,' they say passionately.
Post-Purcell found them busking in summer, often down Portobello Road, and earning £100 an hour. 'But it was exhausting work', says Kelly, 'and sometimes we'd get out there, one of us would open our mouth and nothing would come out. It taught us to look after our voices because we've never been professionally trained to sing.'
'Our voices are raw, fresh and innocent,' says Katherine who's obviously been listening to her father, a jazz trumpeter and former anarchist. 'That's our charm, we'd hate to be trained operatically. That would be wrong for us,' Staying in tune, she reveals, is the most difficult task for the incipient a cappella singer. 'Kelly has perfect pitch,' she says, 'but Jocelyn and I had to develop our ears by singing a lot.'
Reactions in the street to their madrigals were uniformly confused. 'People didn't know what to make of the contrast between what we looked like and what we were singing,' says Kelly, 'but they did like it.'
Quickly signed by successful independant record label Mute -Depeche Mode are label mates - Miranda Sex Garden are more than happy with their lot. 'Mute is a creative label,' says Katherine, 'They won't package us in a way we don't like. They believe in us. Who knows what would have happened to us on a major label?'
Miranda Sex Garden have recorded - in two days with a classical producer - an album called Madra. 'Madra means dog in Irish, according to our number one fan,' says Katherine. The album is contains 25 madrigals with distinctly untrendy names like 'The Silver Swans' and 'Those Sweet Delightful Lilies'. It is simply produced and very sffective. No instruments, no dance tracks, just their voices swooping and trilling impressively.
Appropriately, these madrigals are not only rural ditties with metaphors for sex. 'Every time they mention "and a hey nonny no", they mean they are having sex,' says Jocelyn. None of them could sing 'Where the bee sucks, there suck I' without bursting into raucous laughter. Katherine's father pointed out to them that every time dying is mentioned, it means they are having an orgasm.
Essentially live performers, they are desperate to demonstrate vocally the difference between florid madrigals which are a bit silly' and the slow, sensuous ones. Their eyes sparkle when they describe their singing. 'We get on the stage and give it to them,' says Kelly adamantly. 'We live to perform. It's a power thing. Our voices give us incredible power.'
In the future they plan to be more musically adventurous. Kelly recalls the day they were sitting in a cafe at Victoria. 'I said, "I've got it. Madrigals with a beat",' she says. 'And that was it.' Their single 'Gush Forth My Tears', mixed by a hip club DJ, fulfilled that fantasy for them. Next they intend to write contemporary songs and include their instruments as well. 'We're all about paradoxes and breaking down barriers,' says Katherine. 'What we're doing is totally new.'
At first, Miranda Sex Garden appear to be sensitive flowers but they do appear to have a tough side.
Recently, they were performing sandwiched between two obscure rock bands when the audience started to get vicious. Cans spewed forth as well as insults. 'Get yer tits out,' was a typical refrain. Undeterred, Kelly, Jocelyn and Katherine refused to be intimidated. 'We wouldn't stop. It was great. They had to put up with us,' says Kelly. 'The tension was incredible. We enjoyed it.' Atta-girls...