ZUZANNA CZEMIER: You’ve said that “Evil” was inspired by Philip Larkin’s poem “Days.” What does this poem mean to you?
NADINE SHAH: It’s a really short poem, it’s great. Within just two stanzas he sums up all the problems with people’s attitudes towards mental health or anybody who lives outside the norm. He says, “Brings the priest and the doctor / In their long coats / Running over the fields,” which means that religion and medicine and society are going to judge you. It’s where [“Evil”] came from, but also my own and my friends’ experiences with mental illness.
CZEMIER: There is a verse in the poem that goes, “Where can we live but days?” which can be interpreted as a comment on the mundane but necessary cycle of life. I was wondering if you’re the type of person who tries to escape the quotidian or conversely, do you find a sort of peace in routine?
SHAH: It’s a mixture of both. The industry I work in isn’t necessarily the norm. It’s a very different routine to a lot of other people and a lot of my time is spent in isolation. I will be in a studio or in my bedroom by myself, working. My friends and my boyfriend all have “proper” jobs, if that’s what you want to call them. I hate being called lazy, so when everybody gets up at half seven in the morning, I’m up at the same time. Everyone goes to work and I’ll do a few hours of writing, then I’ll mess about for a bit and come back to it. By the time I go home I’m done. I think it’s really good to keep that kind of a routine with writing. I find that when I don’t do that, it’s really hard to get back into that headspace of writing.
CZEMIER: Where there any specific musical influences behind Holiday Destination, or do you prefer to draw inspiration from other mediums, like poetry?
SHAH: What happens when I’m making a new album is I try not to listen to music that’s coming out at the time. I turn off the radio and don’t read any music blogs, because I tend to get really distracted by new music. When I hear it, I think, “Should I be doing that?” But I listened to Talking Heads a lot; they influenced the sound of this album. Because [in Holiday Destination] the topic is quite heavy, politically, I wanted the music to be energetic and upbeat. Even though it’s a political message, I wanted it not to be dour; I wanted it to inspire hope.
CZEMIER: The album cover photo is pretty clear reference to photos from Iraq and Syria that we see on the news a lot, which ties into the theme of Holiday Destination. Can you say where it’s from?
SHAH: It was taken in Gaza by a guy named Christian Stephen, who is a war correspondent. He’s been in war since he was 17 and he’s 22 now. He’s such a brilliant mind. I met him at a party and we were talking about his work and the new album. We met later and I asked if I could use one of his images for the album cover. He showed me a whole bunch of them and most, I’d say 98 percent of them, were too painful. I couldn’t use them. They were the saddest, most harrowing images I’ve ever seen. What this particular image had is that it instills hope. There’s this young boy, who’s 11 years old at maximum, and he’s standing in this building, which has been destroyed by war. The front facade of the building is missing and you see him standing on the top floor, kind of triumphant, and flipping a peace sign. Despite all the travesty that’s going on around him, every disgusting thing that this boy must have seen, he’s still standing there flipping a peace sign.
I think that’s what I wanted to do this this album: despite all of this happening you want to instill hope. We’ve been talking about the Syrian refugee crisis a lot, in the news in the U.K. and possibly the U.S., but it isn’t the only refugee crisis that is happening at this minute. There’s something like 22 million refugees in the world. There are people from Eritrea, Afghanistan, Syria, and so many other places where people are living in complete turmoil. It was important to me that we showed a place other than Syria, which is why we chose that image.
CZEMIER: In Fast Food, [Shah’s 2015 album,] you sung about mental illness, whereas in Holiday Destination you focus on the current global refugee crisis. Does immersing yourself in heavy subjects like these take any sort of emotional toll on you?
SHAH: It was something that one of my older brothers pointed out years ago when my first album came out. He was saying that watching me perform—I’d get really emotional on stage—was really uncomfortable for an older brother. He almost wanted to step in and tell the audience, “Go home, there’s nothing to see here, I’m taking her home and we’re having a cup of tea. People shouldn’t be watching this.” But I think I have an on-stage persona that is very different from how I am now on the phone or even between songs. Sometimes I’ll finish performing and tell a joke, because you have this moment of realization when you’re like, “Oh shit, I just hung out my dirty laundry for everyone to see.” You’ve exposed yourself and it’s a moment of embarrassment almost, because you’ve revealed so much. But it’s been six or seven years of me doing this and I’ve started to find techniques of how to live a healthier life within this crazy industry. I think I’ve got a pretty good balance now.
From: https://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/nadine-shah
