Olivia Hally and Pepita Emmerichs formed Oh Pep! while at music secondary school in Melbourne, Australia. Through a series of fortunate events, they found themselves recording a debut album last year in Nova Scotia with Canadian producer Daniel Ledwell.
Since the release of their debut LP, Stadium Cake, the duo have been taking there folksy, whimsical pop across Europe and America, earning enthusiastic reviews and winning new fans. They played at The Hug and Pint in May and they are back again this Sunday.
We called Pepita in Brighton after the second date of their debut UK and Ireland tour to find out what Oh Pep! is all about.
Glasgowist: It seems like things have taken off very quickly for you with the debut album and now international tours, does it feel like a bit of a whirlwind?
Pepite: It does feel like everything has happened really fast but it’s always been our aim to be touring as a band. I think Liv and I, it’s been our dream. We like to make lists and I remember one of our lists was about what we wanted to do with the band and top of the list was tour internationally, so it feels great to be doing it.
How did the link between Australia and Canada happen that led to you working with a Canadian producer on the album?
It first started when we came to be in Kansas City, Missouri. That was the first time we had been overseas with the band. We’d come to play a festival called Folklands International. We met some people there and they said we should go and work with this producer Dan Ledwell who was actually also at the festival. We had a week off after that and we kind of just went for it, we had nothing to lose. The opportunity came up to record with Dan and we all said yes and flew back to the east coast and recorded in Nova Scotia. That turned out to be such a good experience that we decided to go back to record the album with Dan over the summer.
The songs that are on the album – were they written over a short space of time to put an album together or is this a collection of songs that have been around for a longer amount of time?
We certainly put pressure on ourselves to write specifically for the album before we went into the studio. A lot of the ideas are older ideas. One of the songs, Seven Babies, might be the oldest song that we have on there. That was written maybe two and a half years ago.
It’s funny, because we had played most of these songs live for at least six months, then some of them we played for two years and the arrangements kept changing. There was always a reason we hadn’t recorded them. Then when we got with Dan, we found that these songs fit into the sound we were building. So the songs flourished in the studio.
I think bands often find they learn a lot about songs by playing them live in front of an audience before recording them. Was it a case of deciding what versions you actually wanted to record for the album?
Yeah, absolutely. Even now, playing the songs since we recorded them, there’s different arrangements going on, different parts that people are playing. I think that’s the beauty of seeing a live version as opposed to listening to the studio version. Sometimes playing it a lot influences the way you record it and sometimes the way you record it influences the way you play it.
Talking to local Glasgow bands, the ability to record music in a basement somewhere, put it online and then end up being picked up on a playlist in Korea or somewhere has made a big difference in terms of building an audience. You’ve managed to receive reviews from all over the world. Part of this is obviously driven by touring but have you found that you’ve made connections other ways?
It’s a huge part of our story. Coming from Australia, it can feel far away from what’s going on in Europe and America where we’ve been touring at the moment. We got asked to do an NPR Tiny Desk concert. The way that Bob Boylan, who runs that show, would have first heard us is via a playlist that was for a festival called Americana. He would have gone through that playlist and selected his favourites and it was only because of that he came to our show.
It’s all those little things. You just never know who is out there listening to it. We did a live session for [KEXP radio in Seattle, Washington] and there were people at our show in Brighton last night who knew us from that session.
That’s pretty cool, but I suppose it must be a bit strange at this stage of your career that you are on your first tour in the UK and Ireland and there will be people very familiar with your music.
It does feel strange some times. We were playing in Boston last year and this lady was singing along to the songs and at the time the album wasn’t out yet. Our singer Liv went to talk to her and it turns out she had been watching the show we did on the Tiny Desk – which only came out the day before – and she knew all the songs from that.
You are in Glasgow on Sunday. For the uninitiated who have not been watching you on YouTube or bought the album yet, what can we expect?
I like to think it’s quirky, eccentric pop music that has a twist. People have often said to us that it’s like happy beats but the lyrics are quite deep and sad. Not that we’re thinking that when we’re writing. [Laughs]
Well if you can hit a range of emotions while writing a bouncy pop song, then you’re doing something right.
There’s been reviews where they say “new bouncy pop track” and I don’t think they listened to the lyrics. [Laughs]
You are on the road until the 10th November. When you tour do you ever get the chance to see things in the cities you visit or is it hotel, then soundcheck, gig then back on the road?
We get to see a lot of the countryside, which is beautiful. There’s always places we’ll spot and we’ll want to go back to and check out. Even if it’s just sitting on the beach in Brighton for two minutes. We’ve been to Glasgow before and we can’t wait to play there again and see some more of the city.
Remaining Oh Pep! Tour Dates
Fri 28th Oct The Lexington, London, UK
Sun 30th Oct The Hug and Pint, Glasgow, UK
Mon 31st Oct The Cluny 2, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
Tues 1st Nov Gulliver’s, Manchester, UK
Wed 2nd Nov The Old Bookshop, Bristol, UK
Fri 4th Nov Coughlan’s, Cork, Ireland
Sat 5th Nov Kasbah Social Club, Limerick, Ireland
Sun 6th Nov The Roisin Dubh, Galway, Ireland
Mon 7th Nov Whelan’s, Dublin, Ireland
Wed 9th Nov De Barra’s, Clonakilty, Ireland
Thurs 10th Nov Levis, Ballydehob, Ireland