Pictured from left: Matt Mole, Amina Bates, Tom Hutt and Sarah Daly
by Mary Waldron
Inside the crowded ladies room of the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa, Calif., a herd of indie 20-somethings anxiously swarm around Sarah Daly, lead vocalist and bassist for the quickly rising London rock band Scanners, questioning her about her music and travels. Music violently booms from the nearby DJ booth as Daly, a haunting beauty with bangs in her face and blue eyes beaming through, answers politely in a humble and enchanting British accent.
Ten minutes ago, Daly was on stage growling, “I’ll take you to my grave;” lyrics from her band’s latest single, “Salvation,” with fury that you’d imagine would startle the meek English girl from the bathroom. On the crimson-lit stage tucked away in the bustling club, Daly’s slinky silhouette jolts and sways along with her melodic moans, which are pleasantly reminiscent of PJ Harvey and Siouxsie Sioux. Her showmanship and poise are infused with a fiery passion that’s quite refreshing.
But Daly didn’t always put her dark side on display.
Sarah Daly
“I used to sing when I was little, but I got shy when I was a teenager,” Daly says of her musical roots, which began at age 2 when she asked her mom for violin lessons. “Playing with my first band was quite good practice for getting through my stage fright,” she adds. Raised in London, Daly’s childhood was flooded with classic rock acts like David Bowie, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, as she and her friend used to steal their older brothers’ records. Naturally, she took up guitar as a teenager.
As Daly grew musically, she became a fan of the minimalist music movement, following founding composers such as Steve Reich, Michael Nyman and Arvo Pärt. Inspired by the movement, she later enrolled in the University of Salford in Manchester to study music composition. Around this time, Daly joined her first band, Delica, playing guitar with the group until she met Matt Mole in 2004. The couple began songwriting together, and pretty soon they were playing shows with only a drum machine to back them up. Throwing around many band names that just sounded “silly” to them, Daly and Mole finally decided on the name Scanners while watching the 1981 sci-fi film of the same name. “I still haven’t seen the end of the film. I should probably get around to that,” Daly jokes.
Frustrated with the band’s limited abilities with only two members, Scanners sought additional band mates. “We could just never get all the parts,” Daly said of the early Scanners duo. The group finally took shape in 2005 when mutual friend Amina Bates joined on guitar, keyboard and backup vocals and recent London implant Tom Hutt took over for the drum machine. Daly learned to play bass and assumed lead vocals. Mole remained on guitars, synths and backup vocals.
Scanners released their debut album Violence is Golden through Dim Mak Records, the label of Los Angeles DJ and record producer Steve Aoki, who signed bands like Bloc Party and The Kills. When the record dropped in 2006, Scanners toured the world with bands including The Horrors, The Wedding Present, The Charlatans, Mindless Self Indulgence and more.
The group continued writing and recording the next album Submarine during a busy touring schedule. Finally, the album was done in late 2008, but record label bureaucracy delayed the U.S. release until last February. Daly describes their sophomore release as “more coherent” than the first album, saying, “These songs were written closer together. Violence is Golden has some really early songs and represents four years of writing.” Submarine was recorded in Daly’s living room, saving the band studio time expenses. The group was also able to experiment with a variety of instruments on this record, thanks to Bates’ collection she acquired while working at a music shop in London. This, along with the support of Daly’s violin and cello playing, created an array of moods on the album.
These collages of emotions can also be heard in Scanners’ other work. The band’s ability to produce such a range of songs that sound very distinguished from one another is something Daly says she quite likes. “I don’t like all the songs to sound the same,” she says. Even in the song “In my Dreams,” from Violence is Golden, Daly gears back and forth between an ethereal Hope-Sandoval-sounding serenade and a PJ-Harvey-like power belt in seconds flat.
After wrapping up a European tour last winter with actress Juliette Lewis’ band Juliette and the Licks, Scanners recently traveled to the U.S. to shoot the music video for their single “We Never Close Our Eyes.” Besides playing Costa Mesa’s Detroit Bar, they did a mini-tour of Southern California and Texas. Scanners will play a free show with So Many Wizards at the Silverlake Lounge tonight, April 5. The final show of the tour is with Transfer this Wednesday, April 7 at Beauty Bar in San Diego.
Pictured from left: Sarah Daly, Matt Mole, Amina Bates and Tom Hutt
With a collection of songs written and ready to record, Scanners will return to London next week to start composing their third album. “We’re just going to concentrate on being together and just playing—banging things around and seeing what happens,” Daly says. Daly also revealed her plans to go to film school sometime in the future. A longtime fan of black-and-white suspense films and directors like Alfred Hitchcock and George Cukor, she says, “I love the beauty of the cinematic experience. It allows you to create an atmosphere like in music.”
In between writing and recording, the group anticipates touring more of Europe as well as Australia and Japan to promote Submarine; something that Daly says just makes her happy. “I don’t sit around thinking, ‘Is my face on a billboard? That would make me happy.’ It’s the music that makes me happy. I get to travel and play music. That’s what makes me happy.”
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Scanners with So Many Wizards, Big Whup, Voice on Tape and The Fall Trees at the Silverlake Lounge
Monday, April 5, 2010. Show starts at 8 p.m. Cover is free.
2906 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
323-666-2407
Scanners with Transfer, Lyon Crowns and DJ Al Squared at Beauty Bar in San Diego.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010. Doors are at 9 p.m. Cover is $14.
4746 El Cajon Blvd., San Diego, CA 92115
619-516-4746
For more information, visit:
http://www.foldsilverlake.com/framesschedule.html
