“Women’s hats contain so many possibilities for subtle sensual expression. When I wear one, it entices the opposite sex with erotic suggestions which they interpret without confusion and which I have never figured out. My wife is always able to predict when I’ll forget our anniversary, how thin she’ll look on my birthday, and who ate her box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day. Without my hat as her radar, I would have absolutely no insight into her total inexplicability.”
This little passage from internet author and playwright Bauvard’s The Prince of Plungers manages to do two things very well. For one, it draws on the same themes that makes Verity Susman’s public image enchanting. Much as Bauvard’s protagonist Jackson, Susman is a woman keen to blur the lines of gender specifics. Like Jackson, Susman understands the power of erotic suggestion and revels in the inexplicable. Beyond these parallels, parallels that illuminate part of the artistic attractiveness of one of Britain’s most overlooked performers, it also offers a suitably glowing endorsement of hats.
The musical career that precedes our phone call and my increased insight into the creative process of this enigmatic woman is rich with variance. Enjoying a childhood of piano, clarinet and saxophone, Susman officially began her career with Electrelane, a Brighton based band cut from the same cloth as Sonic Youth and Stereolab. Following the band’s first split in 2007, a solo career was embarked upon. Initially this saw Susman adopt the stage name Vera November and a piano driven style, stripped back in comparison to Electrelane’s grungy roots.
Departure from a somewhat little known, yet critically regarded, band (in 2001 NME understood the quartet as “utterly focused and stripped of all extraneous flab”) to take on an inauspicious, underplayed style isn’t generally recommended. Yet Susman thrived, shrugging off November and embracing her own name in time with the re-layering up of her style.
The Verity Susman that walked onto the stage at Yoko Ono’s Meltdown Festival on the Southbank last November was one clearly moulded by this thorough musical upbringing. There were blaring saxophone solos, wailed lyrics and thumped beats. More surprisingly, there was also a huge fake moustache on Susman’s face, a robotic voice droning out filthy soundbites throughout and an accompanying video filled with ejaculating trombones and huge, green lactating breasts.
Enthused by the topic, Susman explains that “The breast thing came from a lesbian fiction story available online about Star Trek Deep Space Nine characters that start a half borg/half human relationship that can only be sustained by the lactating breasts of the borg. Whilst it’s funny, it’s also really heartfelt and beautiful. That’s how I wanted the show to be.”
In witnessing the mixture of confusion and laughter present in a firmly enrapt Southbank audience, it is clear that this desire has been fulfilled. Yet with all electro-jazz music performed over the top of loud, visual innuendo, if there’s no substance, there’s no sincere reaction. At no point does the music come second to the message which, despite being conveyed in the brightest of colours, is less than overt.
The majority of the songs are ethereal, synth driven numbers, constructed with multiple loop peddles and toe-tapping drum machines. At first listen, the obvious comparisons are bands in the ilk of Hot Chip and War Paint. But lean a little closer and the inevitable descent into echo-chambered vocal weirdness and robotic filth holds further flung influences. One particularly sordid and fantastically named track, ‘The Phillip Glass Ceiling’ is thematically and sonically reminiscent of the weirder parts of 80’s electronica – the Siri spoken refrain “open your legs, I want to put my fingers inside you” emerging as the product of some weird Kraftwerk/The Orb crossover lovechild.
As much as the music stands on its own, the visual presentation is impossible to ignore. The message behind the live show, Susman’s main focus, was understood after the event. “I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it and planning it out,” Susman suggests, “I did it instinctively and then looked back and thought what does this mean?”
This seems to be a question she is still struggling with.
“The drag thing” was done with a slight air of irony, designed to be slightly over the top and act as a disguise. For Susman, it is influenced by something her parents said in the 80s. “I asked my parents if Boy George was a man or a woman and they said he’s a man, pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man. It was really confusing but stuck in my head.” So much so that the idea was, despite no previous cross-dressing history, incorporated into the show. “I don’t think anyone has a completely stable gender identity. Sometimes you feel a bit more male or female but you’re socialised to behave in certain ways… people view you as one thing, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect how you feel.”
This last sentence is very much the point. Susman may have an understanding of herself, but it is, as with all of us, constantly changing. There is no obvious message of the stage show to be had. It is purposefully open-ended, purposefully provocative and keen to draw on a multitude of influences and styles. As with all art, the audience gets out as much as and whatever they put in.
The same adage holds true for her recent work with electro-pioneer Peaches, someone Susman describes as the “one of the most amazing women” she’s ever met. The pair were invited to play a piece by the composer Pauline Oliveros. Oliveros lays down the structure and then invites the orchestra to bring their own improvised styles and ideas to play within it. The outcome is a fluid, ebbing and flowing piece, punctuated with Peaches’ guttural vocals and balls-out attitude. In Susman’s shows she brings the structure, the audience brings the understanding.
This conceptually hands-off approach is something that permeates Susman’s art and her tone as she pleasantly answers my questions. Despite being fawned over by Yoko Ono, left-field parts of the critical world and acclaimed French film director Katell Quillevéré (to the extent that she invited Susman to compose the score for her recent work Suzanne), Susman’s rise to the mainstream is not imminent. Not that this seems to concern her. Her focus is asking the questions left somewhat unasked in contemporary music; presenting a product so flagrantly outrageous as to be previously unseen beyond the warped world of 90’s acid house. Our conversation is not built on the foundations of promotion; the album is barely on the horizon and the stage show won’t be restarted until September. It is a conversation built on Susman’s love of music, outright positivity and generosity; the loss of all of her musical equipment at the hands of thieves is “a bit annoying”; she is not bent on conveying a message, but only “interested in how people react to it”; Deerhoof are rightly described as “absolutely fantastic.” Even if lactating green breasts don’t appeal, the warmth and desire to perform that radiates off Susman is worthy of our attention.