Turn Up The Mermaid Tail: Introducing BDY_PRTS

Escaping from a remote country house in a beaten-up car before seeking refuge in a roadside cafe due to a blizzard sounds like the climactic scene in a low-budget horror film. But that’s exactly the circumstances that led to Jenny Reeve and Jill O’Sullivan sitting down to map out the musical project that would become BDY_PRTS.

The alt-pop duo from Glasgow first met in rural Perthshire during the depths of a brutal winter in 2010 when they took part in a songwriters' workshop organised by The Fruit Tree Foundation (the results of which can be heard on the album First Edition).

“It was the kind of place that, when it gets snowed in, it gets snowed in for days,” Reeve recalls. “And there was a real danger of that happening, so we had to leave quickly. It was terrifying – we got caught in a blizzard, my car was ancient, and the rear suspension had collapsed. So we stopped at a Little Chef down the road, where we had a coffee and a proper chat.”

“We discovered that we both genuinely enjoy writing songs and playing,” agrees O’Sullivan. “So when we got back we decided to hang out in the house with a bottle of wine and our guitars, as it had been really fun when we were in that room in Perthshire. And at some point it clicked and started working really well.”

There’s no sign of snow, and – in a rarity for 2014 – no sign of rain when The Skinny meets the pair in Thornwood to talk about their excellent debut single IDLU, which was produced by man-of-many-talents Julian Corrie, aka Miaoux Miaoux.

While BDY_PRTS can be legitimately tagged as a new band, in the sense that their first proper headlining show is on 5 March, its constituent members are no strangers to either the stage or the studio, or indeed this very magazine.

O’Sullivan, raised in Chicago by Irish parents, is known to many as one-third of gothic rockers Sparrow and the Workshop, who have released a series of well-received albums (most recently with 2013’s Murderopolis) and played shows with the likes of The Brian Jonestown Massacre and British Sea Power. She’s also contributed to songs by James Yorkston and Broken Records.

Reeve, born in Glasgow to an Australian father and New Zealander mother, has been writing and recording her own music for more than a decade, first as a member of Eva, then Strike The Colours. Her unique voice and adept fiddle playing has also lit up shows and records by such Scottish mahatmas as The Reindeer Section, Idlewild and Malcolm Middleton – leading to one critic awarding her the prefix “serial Glaswegian guester.”

BDY_PRTS are thus in the fairly unique situation of having two songwriters who have already proved capable of standing on their own two feet. So what makes them more than the sum of their parts?

"When you're put in a room full of songwriters, you don't want to be shite, you know what I mean?" – Jenny Reeve

For Reeve, it was the fact they first defined their friendship by making music. “If we’d been friends before we started writing it might have been more of a daunting prospect, as it could have ruined a perfectly good friendship if we realised that there was no chemistry,” she explains. “But for us, it’s the opposite. When we first met we were put in this artificial, fairly pressured environment – not that there was pressure put on us – but when you’re put in a room full of songwriters, you don’t want to be shite, you know what I mean? So there was that sense of being chucked in at the deep end, and through that process, we realised we had similar things in common. I guess on paper it maybe shouldn’t work, because we have exactly the same skill base..."

O’Sullivan quickly interjects. “Jenny has been saying this, but I’d like to put on the record that she is a much better guitarist than me. You’re like BB King, and I’m baby King.” “I’m really not,” Reeve responds, diplomatically. “We both play guitar, violin and sing, so that’s the basis of our songwriting. Those aspects all collide and it seems to work. The kind of song we come up with – I don’t think either of us would come up with on our own. It’s a real collaborative effort. It gets to the point that Jill will call me up to record an idea on my answerphone. It feels weird recording when she’s not here.” O’Sullivan warms to the theme. “When I go home to Chicago my dad will always ask me what we sound like, so I try and play him the songs – and I always say ‘but this isn’t what it sounds like, this is only half, my half. I try my best to play him the skeleton of the song, but I can’t. We don’t make sense without each other in a musical setting.”

Of course, this positive working relationship would be of little interest to the wider public if it does not result in a collection of songs worthy of releasing. But, with IDLU, they have already made a strong start, achieving playlist status on BBC radio shows north and south of the border. The duo, meanwhile, are in no mood to rush. “The single is definitely a reflection,” continues O’Sullivan. “But when we have the time and the funding to do the album, it will be in a similar vein, but it will have gone further. I feel like every month that goes by, we develop more sophisticated ideas."

“We’ve been going for a while, but we’ve been careful to map out all of the material before putting anything online,” maintains Reeve. “There’s a danger if you just record the first thing you write. We have an overview of how the album will sound. We chose IDLU because that’s the most complete tune that we have just now. Every time we record, we’ve gone through the evolution of making beats, starting with me just hitting my guitar with a delay on it to create a pulse and then recording it on a loop pedal, which is how we played IDLU for a long time. But we needed a more a rhythmic element, so we got an MPC1000 and learned that. I’m not particularly technically minded, so learning that new skill opened up a whole world to us. We could sample anything.”

It’s mastering that handy device that has given BDY_PRTS a much more textured sound than anything Reeve or O’Sullivan have previously been involved in. But it’s not their style to begin a dry conversation about technical specifics, not when samples can be given more interesting names like ‘The Mermaid Tail’ or ‘The Dancing Elf.’ Then there’s the helping hand of the aforementioned Miaoux Miaoux. “What that guy doesn’t know about technology isn’t worth knowing,” enthuses Reeve. “He’s a genius at that stuff, and an amazing songwriter in his own right. The recording of the single was an experiment. We wanted to get one of our tunes complete, to see ourselves in the mirror for the first time. It could have gone either way, but he’s become a really good friend. He was round the other day actually, borrowing some speakers for a surround-sound show he was doing. But that’s kind of just how it is with Glasgow.”

“We first asked to meet him to discuss using an MPC and that led to chat about other sounds,” adds O’Sullivan. “We sent him a demo of the track and he said he loved it and wanted to record it. He was really tuned in to what we were doing. He was already mapping out that we could use a certain beat instead of the cheap-ass one we had been using.”

So what about an album?

“All we need now is to just freeze time, freeze everything,” ponders O’Sullivan. “And if someone just put about 12 grand in our bank account, and some Maltesers, and some red wine.
“And some mystical beasts that don’t exist,” adds Reeve.
“And maybe a crystal clear Arctic lake. That’s not too much to ask for, is it?” agrees O’Sullivan.

Reeve thinks for a second. “Although I’d settle for a bowl and a goldish, and a five pound bottle of Tesco Select."