Earlier this month, Dubstar scored their third appearance on the U.K. Official Albums Chart with their new album Two—the English pop act’s first chart placement since their second set Goodbye (1997) twenty-five years prior. Back then, Dubstar were still a trio and had the muscle of a major label behind them. But in spite of any changes that have occurred since (becoming a twosome, going independent, et cetera), Sarah Blackwood and Chris Wilkie have kept evolving.
Against the backdrop of mounting critical acclaim for their fifth studio album, I caught up with the dynamic duo themselves. I’ve been extremely fortunate to speak with them in 2018 and 2020, and each chat we’ve had has been substantive, insightful and big fun.
But this most recent conversation felt even more intimate. During the span of our discussion, topics pinballed from Two, the COVID-19 pandemic, their writer-producer/friend Stephen Hague returning to the fold, their idiosyncratic love of numerical symmetry, Giorgio Moroder, brutalist architecture and more.
Here’s hoping that you all enjoy reading the interview as much as I did conducting it.
First of all, happy belated birthday Sarah!
Sarah Blackwood: Awww! Thank you darling!
And congratulations to you both—what an absolutely fantastic album. You guys really come out swinging on “I Can See You Outside!”
Chris Wilkie: Well, I'm glad you think so! It's funny because, the first track on the album, of course, was the last one to be written and recorded. “I Can See You Outside” kind of starts at the end of the process for us. And maybe it comes out swinging because, I think, once you've been recording for awhile, you get to about two-thirds of the way through and you realize what's missing. You realize what it would take to really make it a great one, you know?
So, it doesn't matter how good the material you had is up to that point. You can look at it as a whole and think, ‘what would it take to make this really great album now?’ Do you know what I mean? And I think for us, that was the last three (songs) we did, which was, well, “Token”...
SB: “I Can See You Outside.”
CW: “I Can See You Outside” and “Hygiene Strip” before that. All of the other tracks were ones that we had going into the production sessions.
Okay, interesting! I have to ask both of you, how are you feeling right now? I just saw the news about Two’s chart placement! Dubstar are really having a moment, it seems.
SB: I mean, that for us was a real David and Goliath moment. Because, by the very nature of the fact, we are truly indie. We are our own record label. We are unpublished and we’re just run out of this little distribution place in Brighton. So we are the absolute definition of indie. To get in there (the charts), it was just like, what? And I wasn't really expecting it ‘cause I'd been in a band called Client for ten years after Dubstar and we did stuff in Europe, but in the U.K. it wasn't even a blip.
CW: About the charts, I must admit, I didn't think about it at all until we found out that it had gone in—it was like, ‘Oh!’ You know because all the other—I don't have the list in front of me—but I think the majority of the Top 20 right now is…
SB: People with big, big finances behind them.
CW: Yeah! So it feels good, for the time being we're just enjoying this moment.
SB: This will do, thank you! [laughs]
It definitely seems like everyone, specifically the broader public, are coming around to what you all have been trying to do musically—both with this project and One (2018)?
CW: It (Two) was already overdue in my mind and I think yours as well, Sarah. When we got together in London at the end of 2019 for our little sort of summit, to really get the ball rolling, that was already later starting than I’d anticipated. I thought that we would have bounced straight out of One into the next album.
For instance, there's a song called “Lighthouse” on Two. I had a demo of that, which I was recording while we were still making One with Youth (Martin Glover). And I remember playing it to Youth’s engineer at the end of the day, so he could check it out. So, that’s how quick we wanted to get on with the next one.
I think it just took a while for the picture to form in a salient way. Then, of course, the pandemic happened and things slowed way down, but at least at that point we were (creatively) functioning and moving forward, albeit very slowly.
Interesting! So, do you think that the pandemic made the creative direction and writing-recording process for Two different from your previous albums?
CW: It definitely made it different, but not as much as you would think. Sarah and I already had a kind of a process between the two of us where we would send each other things on the internet because we lived so far apart from each other. It meant that we were kind of up and running in that respect. It wasn't a huge change in terms of the way we work. Except now, we suddenly had Stephen Hague doing the exact same thing in a different location.
But this pervasive threat, which was the pandemic itself, conditioned a lot of the feeling (of the record). Certainly for me. And I'm pretty sure it was for you too, Sarah.
SB: Oh yeah.
CW: That’s kind of infused in it, like a shadow throughout.
SB: It sort of seeped in, didn’t it?
CW: On the one hand, it puts a fire in your belly and makes you really want to do good work and it was a real privilege to have something you could focus on, to sort of get you through that time. But also, it makes you work harder in a curious way. I did find myself consciously doing more of everything than ever before. It sounds really melodramatic, but you probably think it’s going to be the last thing you're ever going to do, you know?
I think that’s how we were all feeling! When I spoke to you in 2020 for the Make It Better (2000) retrospective, we were all kind of freaked out. But, as I stated in my review of the album, Two feels like a record for our times. It captures some of the fear and some of the hopelessness, but then it captures some hopefulness too. There’s a brightness to the darkness, everything with the record is perfectly balanced. Is that accurate?
CW: Yeah, and I'm glad you're feeling the hopefulness as well!
SB: You explained something, Chris, about how you felt like you wanted to break out because of the nature of home recording. But you had to be very quiet. You kind of had this “inner rebel.”
CW: Because my wife works for the NHS from home and my kids were being homeschooled during the day, I couldn't sit and strum the acoustic guitar and sing out loud like when I'm trying to think of a song normally. I was staying up late at night and, mercifully, Stephen Hague too, because he's a bit of a night owl. He was happy to do that, he would be up until about 3:00 a.m. with me working—in case I needed him for stuff—but I was working on headphones ‘cause I didn't want to wake anybody else up. Basically, I found myself doing more programming, less strumming the guitar.
Also, I found that I was feeling so thwarted by the situation and, what's the word, confined. Whereas normally my go-to thing with tunes is to do something which is quite introspective and sort of moody, instead I found myself wanting to do dancefloor numbers a bit, you know? On “I Can See You Outside,” the idea of having Giorgio Moroder kind of fizzing, flashing, sparkling chords and things like that, just felt like a way of breaking out of the darkness. I'm full of hyperbole today! [laughs]
No—it’s all good! I’ve noticed on Two that the “Dubstar sound” is there but it isn’t a retread. There are some areas where you are breaking some new ground on Two. Specifically, Sarah, you sound fantastic on this record.
SB: Oh, thank you!
Can you talk about where you were in the creative process as a vocalist?
SB: I never go into anything with preconceived ideas. I literally just open my gob and out it comes. When I sing, I just sort of immerse myself (in the song), Chris’ lyrics are very, very visual. I mean, I felt cold when I sang “Lighthouse.” I just see pictures in my head and yeah…I just go places.
What would you say was the easiest track to sing? What would you say was the most difficult?
SB: The most difficult was “Kissing To Be Unkind.” I'd gone into the studio that day (to record it) and I just wasn't feeling it. Me and Haguey (Stephen Hague), we managed to record quite a lot of the vocals together. We lived kind of next door to each other and when lockdown was finished by then, we literally formed a working bubble together. We would drop everything for two weeks and I sort of lived in his studio.
He (Hague) was like, “It’s (“Kissing To Be Unkind”) great! It’s great! It sounds amazing.” And I was like, “I'm just not happy. It’s just not flowing for me.” Anyway, he said, “Well, we’ll leave it for today then.” But on the second day, I nailed it. Stephen went, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're on a roll. Yeah. Off we go!” And that's the only time that's ever really happened! I think it's just that I got scared about the high note at first, starting on that, it's quite a big ask to start. On such a high note and then come down. But my easiest vocal was probably “Perfect Circle.”
The R.E.M. cover?
CW: Really?
SB: Yeah, I was just sitting in Stephen’s studio—it kind of looks out to sea and there’s countryside as well—it's really beautiful. We were just sitting on the studio steps listening to it (R.E.M.’s version) and it was a really warm, summer’s evening. I was just singing along and Stephen had disappeared. When I came back in the studio, he had gone and set up a mic and he went, “Do you fancy having a go?” and I was like, “Oh! Oh! All right!” So, we went ahead and just did it (“Perfect Circle”). That was just a bit of a moment. It just felt like something.
It's a great way to close the record. You guys were reverent to R.E.M. but did your own thing too. That brings me back around to the question: what was it like working with Stephen again?
CW: It was great! Bear in mind, you know, it was the Friday just gone, it was the first time that I’d actually seen him in person—hugged him—for like, years. Because we lived in each other's heads for almost two years making the record, but I’d not actually physically been in the room with him at all. Of course, I'm picturing him as he was in 1997. He's much older than he was then.
SB: He’s very calming, isn’t he? Very nice to be around—just his aura, as it were.
CW: He's very gentle, very soft spoken, but he's also very articulate and he's very good at keeping me in the zone. I can't imagine how we would have gotten away with any of this without him, if it had been a different producer, to be honest, just at that point in history, especially, you know?
Wow. That must’ve been very emotional for you both?
CW: Yeah!
SB: It hadn't even occurred to me, then I realized and went, “Do you have any idea, you haven't seen each other (in years).” And it was just like, wow! Wow.
Sarah, you were a lot closer to Stephen, in regard to distance, and got to see him first before Chris. You’ve touched on it a bit, but what was it like having him back on board again for you?
SB: It was good. Stephen is very good at calming me down. I get very stressed about singing sometimes. He makes sure I take lots of breaks because he knows my voice is fragile. He’s really considerate and knows what a vocalist needs. And every morning he went into the local village and got me chocolate brownies. He’d eke it out too—when it was about three o’clock—he’d say, “Do you fancy half a brownie?” and I’m all like, “Yes, yes please!” And at five, “Do you fancy the other half?,” “Yes please!” [laughs]
That is great that you both have such a warm rapport with him. Pivoting for a moment—regarding the length of Two—did you all go into this album with the intention of it being lean? Or are there any extra songs you are holding back to be rolled out at a later date?
CW: That's a good question because there were definitely a lot more songs lying around than are on the album. But because there are ten tracks on One, I thought it would be good to have ten tracks on Two, like in sort of a binary, numerological terms. It's just one of those really irritating things I do. If there's a Three, for instance, we should probably do ten on Three as well! [laughs]
I do prefer records where there's not so many tracks that when you look at the back of the sleeve, you feel kind of alienated by it before you've even put it on.
SB: Oh yeah, yeah.
CW: You feel sort of intimidated, like you think ‘I’m never going to get to know this record,’ because it’s going to be difficult to get through twenty tracks. All of the most dynamic albums, I think, are ‘round ten to eleven tracks.
There might be something to that, I think. Can we talk about how Dubstar touches the socio-political edge with Two? Especially with something like “Hygiene Strip.”
CW: We’ve always worked really hard to avoid being party political. I was very resentful of the fact that the pandemic managed to be politicized in the way that it was. It almost felt like Brexit had been a warm-up for that, people seemed to be missing the point. When it actually happened, especially after Brexit, I remember thinking, ‘Well, this is good. Surely now they can stop driving a wedge between us, because now we will finally realize that we have so much more in common than separates us. We'll come together and we'll deal with this together like one big human family.’
I was so sure that, even though it (the pandemic) was terrifying, I thought, finally, this is going to cut through the bullshit…and they still fucking managed to do that! In fact, it’s worse than ever. People are more polarized than ever.
And so when we did “Hygiene Strip,” we were being mindful to avoid it (the song) being politicized now or in five years or ten years’ time. We just wanted to make it about the human experience incidentally unfolding despite the pandemic.
I got so upset recently when I saw a journalist, in this country, suggest that the line “must be illegal to kiss” was kind of an oblique, sneering remark critical of restrictions. That’s not where we were with that. Sarah and I did everything we could do to protect other people and respect the nature of the situation. It (“Hygiene Strip”) was just about having sympathy with a human being, the individual in the context of the situation.
When you guys were doing Two, were both of you conscious of how the other would respond to what the other was doing—stepping into each other’s shoes, so to speak?
SB: You do, don't you, Chris? You find it easier to write because you know you’ve got a voice to write for. The song doesn't really take shape (for me) until I‘ve my mouth around it, as it were.
Oh God, that’s a horrible phrase! [laughs]
CW: But I understand what you're saying, because it's a physical process, isn't it? The words affect the way you’re going to handle it (as a singer). I almost always, if not every time, picture Sarah when I'm starting a song, because I know that, hopefully, she's gonna want to sing it. I tend to have in mind the kind of thing she usually likes, but also because I know what Sarah can do. She has this incredible ability to embody a song, to almost become it. And that gives me courage as a writer.
I love the dynamic you both share creatively. That brings me to another question: what was it like working with Bright Light Bright Light on the remixes of the deluxe iteration of Two? I really love his work.
CW: It was a joy to work with him because, first of all, he's just such an extremely nice person. He was very gracious and kind and kept asking, “What do you think of this? Do you think I should do this?” And I was like, “just go for it.” Everything he was doing was so cool that I thought, ‘I'm not going to undermine your flow here.’
SB: And it was exciting, wasn't it? He kind of just reimagined “I Can See You Outside.” It was really interesting to hear.
CW: He changed the chords. I really dug the Dead or Alive vibes and these cool, Eighties overtones.
That’s so great to hear. Not only is he an awesome artist, he's a pretty cool person to boot.
SB: I DJ’d for him once and it was one of those unforgettable nights in this really vibey little club downstairs in the East End (of London). As I walked down the stairs, he’d printed (Dubstar) lyrics all over the walls and stuff. When I got down there, his mates were cheering me on, he made me feel like such a superstar.
Can you guys fill me in regarding the cover art for Two? It’s a very striking image—like a sort of a dark apartment flat. Who designed it?
SB: We're both massive fans of brutalist architecture and that’s actually a building that was in Chris' hometown of Gateshead. It also featured heavily in the film Get Carter.
Really? That’s kind of cool.
SB: It (the artwork) ties into our obsession with British Sixties films and brutalist architecture, but over to you Chris, because you've got a beautiful story.
CW: That building has actually been destroyed now—just a few years ago. I was there when they brought it down. I always liked it because I used to work in a big supermarket, as a Saturday job when I was sixteen years old, which was just at the foot of it—kind of in its shadow—a bit to the left of how it looks on the sleeve. Every time I went through the center of Gateshead, where it was, I used to look up at the very top (of it)—it’s a high-rise car park—and the reason you think it looks like an apartment building is because on the very top is a small sort of capsule. That little box shape was always intended, when it was built in the late Sixties, to have a restaurant or some kind of a drinking club in it. But for the duration of its lifespan as a building it never worked out.
Nobody ever put a restaurant in there. It was an empty shell for many decades, it just sat there. And so, I would look at it from the bus I used to ride to get home from the center of Gateshead and see it. It felt like an unrealized dream, an unfulfilled fantasy just hanging in the sky over Gateshead. It seemed really poetic because, you know, in the north of England, there are so many unfulfilled dreams—it was really moving.
Anyway, the guy who helped us to do it (the cover) was a guy named Dominic Foster. He's a brilliant guy who does all of our visuals at the moment. He actually obtained the blueprints of the building, so he was able to physically render it in a three-dimensional way. Which is why you can see it spinning around on some of our adverts on social media.
SB: You can see the whole thing. When he got the blueprints, he did these wireframes first before he rendered it all. They're quite beautiful as well. And, some more trivia, you (Chris) stood next to Owen Luder, the builder, and he also died on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Disgraceful (1995).
He died on that day? Whoa.
CW: Yeah, and not long before our album (Two) came out, so we had to add him to the credits inside. It was sad because he was a guy in the twilight of his own days and had watched his flagship achievement being razed to the ground. I found that so moving. We kind of resurrected the building, in a manner of speaking, for Two and because of the way that it has been rendered by Dominic, it kind of has a ghostly palette to it. Almost looks like it exists in a parallel universe where buildings go when they die or something?
That’s really interesting! The album cover feels sort of symbolic of the contrast within the music on the album itself?
CW: Yeah, that's it. That's kind of it. I'm glad you feel that because it just seems to say something.
SB: I love the shades of gray (in the cover) as well. And even though we live in such a polarized society, nothing is ever black and white. It's all nuanced. It’s all shades of gray. If you want to get political.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I'm really hoping you guys are going to want to take this record out on the road, live. Would you like to tour Two? Your recent live show at Rough Trade (in London) was so well received!
CW: Yeah. I mean, we would like to, as long as it’s practically possible, isn’t it?
SB: I mean, we’ve spent two years in our houses and it's only in the last couple of weeks I feel like we're all coming out into the sunlight and blinking, you know?
CW: I would only feel up for doing it as long as I felt like we could do as strong a job live as we've done on the record. Otherwise, I think it would take something away from Two. But we’re not ruling out.
SB: It would be lovely.
To wrap up, how do you feel Two hangs in your discography?
CW: Well, you know, it's almost like a cliché whenever artists are asked about their current release, they always say that “this is our best thing.” But…this is our best record! [laughs]
SB: It really is! [laughs]
CW: I really think it's the best thing we've ever done, but I suppose if we thought there was a better way we could have done it, then we would have done it that way. You always have to do the best you can do in your current era or whatever, but I feel very happy with it.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited from the original transcript for length and clarity.
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