From left to right: Louise Basilien, Anoushka Vandevyvere, Katty Besnard, and Marine Neuilly
As a general rule, when an all girl-band is in hearing distance. SS’s Gemma Dempster goes into frantic autopilot, trying to sooth the anxious hyperventilating fear with cotton wool pummelled into her ear cavities until the female-cawing stops. Sometimes oestrogen-ridden “rock” bands can really be too much (ahem, The Donnas, The Bangles). However, gulping any down pre-conceptive issues, SUPERSWEET couldn’t help draw our interest to the chic-catty four-piece the Plasticines, with a name screaming “we’re are moulded for your pleasure” and envious French accents; we stole away vocalist Katty Besnard and fringed guitarist Marine Neuilly to put to rest any manufactured suspicions.
So in French film-noir style (this is where you use your imagination!), we decided to romanticise this interview with an elaborative interchangeable (amateur) script for fleeting entertainment. Now don’t go judging...
(REQUEST: YOU MUST, WE SAY MUST HAVE A FRENCH GIRL READ THE PARTS... OR JUST MIMIC ONE!)
Act One: Post 11pm, 16th November 2009: The Camden Barfly. The crowd are booming and old...?
Katty Besnard (vocals/guitar): We had some guitar problems but we didn’t care, we enjoyed it. It was punk!
Marine Neuilly (guitar): We played ‘Bitch’ again, it was really funny. This guy was like fifty and he was screaming “I’m A Bitch!”
Act Two: Paris, France 2009: The audience arch eyebrows scathing at the all-female act...
Marine: Nooo!!
Katty: We love France. We’ve played a lot of bars in Paris. But because we are four girls, people think there’s something wrong about it. That we know someone to get where we are today. When we get back to London or the US, everyone is like; “yeah they are just rock girls”.
Marine: It’s normal to them...we are just more excited to play abroad because people just think we are girls who play rock music.
Katty: They are not judgemental as they can be in France.
Marine: France is hard for that, when you find your audience in there, they’ll love you forever.
Act Three: Scene 1: Gossip Girl set, NYC, 2009: The backstage scandals whisper in the shadows...
Katty: Everyone was really professional; all these people together, I think they are just like a family. We gave our album to the girl who plays Blair, and she asked to us to sign it.
Act Three: Scene 2: Gossip Girl set, NYC, 2009: The boys sit waiting to be seduced...
Katty: I think the one called Chace Crawford, who plays Nate.
Marine: He’s hot. I was singing and he was reading a newspaper, and thinking should I do something, because my housemate is a big fan of him, “should I get him to sign something?” Then I thought. “Don’t be groupie, you are a guest on the TV show!”, and you can do anything. I’m too cool for you anyways. Go with your newspaper, I don’t like you anyways....
Katty: The guy who plays Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick), when he arrived he came on stage and took Marine’s guitar and began playing. He just started talking to us about his band in the UK and how he had to stop it because of the show.
Act Four, Scene One: Circa 2005: The band receives a treasured gift...
Katty: We’ve got a fan who gives us presents every time he sees us. Four years ago, he gave us a box of CDs of girl groups like The Ronettes, the Marvelettes , the Shangri-Las.
Marine: We’ve been listening to it a lot and have been inspired by it.
Act Four: Scene Two: November 2009: Marine gains a stalker...
Marine: Yeah...I got a really weird one on Facebook. We did this showcase in Paris and this guy was like “Hi, I just totally fell in love with you, would you be my friend on Facebook. Finger-buddies. I really want you to be my friend. I’m called Roger, I’m 40 years old and I like crisps.” Maybe he thought I would be like, wow I love crisps omg yeah!! What a weirdo...
Act Five: September 2010: Fans grasp the new Plasticines album in shock of a grimier sound....
Katty: We don’t know for the moment. You never really think about when you are going to write a song, or how it’s going to sound like. It’s more of a natural evolution from our sound, we know what we liked and we are better musicians. You never really know.
Marine: I don’t think we are going to change that much, I think we have a good mix for the new album. We’ve already recorded another song and it’s quite similar to the new album.
Katty: It’s better! It’s always the song you write that you think is the best.
Act Six: 2008, in a Hotel Room, ‘Runaway’ is created....
Katty: We recorded the vocals in a ‘hotel room. The vocals are very quiet and very calm, not the same as the other songs on the album, as I couldn’t be very loud. At first, it was more poppy, and a lot of guitarists, but added a tremor on the guitar to make it a little darker.
Marine: I think it was even faster when we played it at band practice, so we decided to make it slower, it’s frustrating because it never goes faster but it’s good.
Act Seven: November 2009: The Band are on tour, Anais starts nervously twitching...
Katty: Anais hates when people are eating next to her, she can’t take it. She hates it. Even if you are eating normally, she can’t take it. It’s a great experience for us because we learn to live with each other, which can be hard, if you don’t have a similar personality.
Marine: Because you are in a band and like touring, you feel like are in a reality TV show, you forget you need to do real stuff, like make the bed and clean the shower. It’s so weird because it’s so different from the band.
The Final Act: Act Eight: Circa 2008, The band blackout and wake up to meeting Iggy Pop and Mick Jagger...
Marine: When we played with Iggy Pop, we got to talk to him. He was wearing a towel and holding a glass of wine. It was just after the gig, he was like “Hi girls, you rocked, I love your music”
Katty: Iggy Pop is an icon of Rock n’ Roll and the fact he liked our music was like “O.M.G”
Marine: You could die after that.
Act Eight: Scene Two: Circa 2008, Mick Jagger plays piano to The Plasticines...
Marine: We met Mick Jagger in NY. We were going to do our video the next day. We hung out with Eurythmics David A. Stewart ... we kind of know him and he let us use his guitar. So we went to get it from him and Mick Jagger was there playing piano really sweet and was like “Hi Girls how you are doing”. He’s so different.
Katty: David was like “They’re in a rock band, they’re amazing on stage and they are wild!”
{FIN}
Words: Gemma Dempster
Photography: Eleanor Harvey