THURSDAY, MAY 24, 2018 The Northern Echo 33 Stage what’son Best known for her work in LA four-piece Warpaint, Theresa Wayman’s debut record has been brewing since she was a teenager. She talks to Joe Nerssessian about love, heartbreak and motherhood It’s in the blood F you listen back to Theresa Wayman’s performance on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour last month, you might hear the Warpaint guitarist play a wrong note at the start of Iher track, I’ve Been Fine. She quickly regained her composure and the slip-up wasn’t noticeable. That is until she admitted to it later that morning when we meet in a central London hotel to discuss her first solo project, LoveLaws. Wearing a long dark overcoat over a white jumper, Wayman’s dark hazel eyes look tired. Not just owing to the early radio start, she reveals, but also due to jet lag after a journey from her base in Los Angeles via New York. It’s 14 years since she started Warpaint, an art-rock quartet who have always embraced electronic and experimental sounds. The 37-year-old isn’t the first of the group to release solo work (bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg already has one album out), and Wayman is clear this isn’t the sign of a split, but more about being able to explore their individual emotions in full through their art. “Because Warpaint is a collaboration, everyone’s putting in a piece of themselves but it’s not the whole thing,” she says. “If someone had branched off really early days, it would have been freaky but it feels OK now.” LoveLaws has been a long time coming. Some of the songs were first written in 2011 but the entire journey has been brewing since Wayman was a teenager. Recorded during breaks between Warpaint’s touring schedule, the single mother (she had a son in 2005), co-produced the record with her brother, Ivan, with support work from Dan Carey (Kate Tempest, Bat For Lashes) and Beastie Boys collaborator Money Mark. A blend of guitar, bass, synth and drum beats, the delicate album’s sound is drawn from Wayman’s early interest in using Theresa Wayman Picture: IAN WEST/PA emerging technology and shows off her talent as a multi-instrumentalist. romantic connotations, though sidesteps hasn’t it? “Yeah, totally,” she replies. “That’s a album is,” she adds. “I don’t see us as that “I really click with that way of making whether it was focused on her split from the really good point. For me it really has.” type of band yet.” music,” she explains. “It doesn’t make it British musician. Swirling her coffee around in her mug, she Describing LoveLaws as “just the tip of the easier to write a good song but it’s easy to get “It’s the excitement of a new chapter rather pauses. “It’s like a hologram of me. It’s still iceberg”, Wayman is confident this is not a your ideas out now. It works for a lot of people than the sadness of what you were, or what connected and I really want to push it in a one-time journey, in the sense that just because it’s more simple but I don’t know you just left. And also kind of just sticking it direction that remains true to me. I’d like to because she has mined some of her emotions what it was that made me wait until now.” to him a little bit ... ‘Hey I’ve been fine, don’t try and keep it as true as possible.” she can now return fully satisfied to the Still, she’s quick to defend herself against worry about me’.” The release of the album comes as part of a collaborations of Warpaint. criticisms of adopting anything just because The album also goes further, examining the busy year, with Warpaint preparing to start “I want to keep developing and not just have it may be in vogue and cites Bjork and ups and downs of love as Wayman struggles work on their fourth studio album. The band, it as secondary as much as possible,” she says. OutKast as artists who inspired her into to find time for other people in a demanding who dazzled in a headline performance on “There’s a lot more. I feel like I’ve opened a music. “The desire to do electronic music is industry. “If I were to get time off from Glastonbury’s Park stage in 2017, are also door that hopefully I don’t have to close or put not something that comes from how popular Warpaint, I can’t just fly and hangout with supporting Harry Styles on tour in Asia, on hold on for too long because of Warpaint. I it is now. It’s been in my blood since I was a someone,” she says. “I have to go home and be playing London’s All Points East festival, and want to be able to continue do both.” teenager which was late 1990,” she says, with my kid and I want to be. So how does have been offered some more dates in South n Theresa Wayman’s LoveLaws is out on adding a self-satisfied “So there”, with a someone fit into that scenario? I’m not free.” America this autumn. May 18 on Caroline International. smile. Pouring those emotions into music has Reflecting on last year’s Glastonbury show, Released under the TT moniker (a nickname helped her find a lot more balance and Wayman, who is no boastful rock star, admits given by friends), I’ve Been Fine explores her patience, and she now finds value in spending it would be cool to see the band headline the return to happiness in the period after time alone. festival, particularly because it has only had heartbreak. Wayman, who has dated James So in a sense the album has already five all-female acts top the bill in its 48-year Blake, is happy to reflect on the album’s achieved everything Wayman set out to do, history. “I guess It’ll depend on what our next It’s the excitement of a “new chapter rather than the sadness of what you were, or what you just left. And also kind of just sticking it to him a little bit ... ‘Hey I’ve been fine, don’t worry about me’ Theresa Wayman Picture: CAROLINE INTERNATIONAL