Interview: Romily Alice of Japanese Voyeurs

“I'm not a big fan of the babydoll look, and riot grrrl's overt sexuality thing looks-wise. I have mixed feelings towards it. I think, as a women in music, it can be a bit of a cheap trick.” She's a fan of Babes In Toyland's Kat Bjelland, who, incidentally, never specifically allied herself to the riot grrrl movement. “The way Bjelland mixed her image and her music was brilliant. She snarled, and sweated and screamed”. But Alice feels using sex in rock as any kind of feminist message would be futile in the pervading climate of raunch pop, “where all these pop star women are sex on a plate with a soundtrack. If you want to be taken seriously you have to not let the pressure to be like that effect you.” 


My interview with Romily Alice of Japanese Voyeurs. I really, really dig JV, who put out a promising debut, Yolk, earlier this year. They're a young London outfit who make dirty, petchulant rock full of psychology and graphic novel references. Romily is a whip smart front woman, and the UK rock scene needs more of her ilk. We talked about steering away from the "grunge revivalist" label, sexist rock criticism (sigh), the guitar pedals she puts together between JV tours, yearning for a pre-internet era and using comic strips as an alternative to social media marketing. Salute.



http://www.tourdates.co.uk/londontourdates/issue-077/2011/10/01/2623-japanese-voyeurs-the-comic-strip-presents

I want yr double cheeeeeese

 http://www.wearsthetrousers.com/2011/07/japanese-voyeurs-yolk/

"Alice poses an empowering figure against the sludgy punk noise and fertility themes of Yolk. As the principal songwriter, she’s both brutal and poetic, a little-girl voice projecting a grown-up sensuality from the centre of the distortion-fuelled maelstrom. On ‘Get Hole’, where she cries, “The nights are long, and I am lonely / I want your love but I want it slowly,” she voices an assertive desire, and even ‘Double Cheese’, with its lascivious slacker innuendo and wild-out solo, feels kinky and unabashed, a sweaty, teen hormone fest done grrrl style"