photo by Victoria Stevens

On Sherlock’s Daughter’s Facebook page their music is described as “indie/electronic/psychefaeriedelica”, and I think that sums it up quite nicely. The last word was the first thing to pique my interest about the trio-turned-quartet, and only one of the many things that lead singer Tanya Horo and I discussed last Monday during our phone conversation. She waxed enthusiastic about the band’s inner workings, their past tour mates, and how they discovered their sound together in the studio, her soft New Zealander accent added a certain polished charm to every word. She laughed often, and seemed just as surprised as she was pleased with the band’s success over the last few years. Be sure to check out their music video below for “In the End”.

Laurel Kathleen: So you guys are up in New York right now?

Tanya Horo: Yeah, we live here now. We moved here from Sydney. I’m from New Zealand, the guys are from Australia. I met them, moved there, then we all moved here in…2010? We came here for a year, then we just decided to stay here. Hard to believe it’s only been that long. We’ve got visas for another three years.

LK: I’ve heard several artists mention how tough it is to get visas.

TH: You can apply for specific visas, which is quite a lot of work, and you have to prove that you’re worthy, I guess, of the visa. You can get it for a year or for five years? I think it’s pretty good how they do that. The one we are on is an ‘extroardinarily talented’ visa. It’s actually quite nice to say out loud, “Oh yeah, I’m extrodinarily talented and I have the visa to prove it!” (laughs)

LK: Do you all live together?

TH: Yeah. There’s four of us in the band, and three of us live togehther with out manager. Our drummer lives with his girlfriend. It’s annoying for him, because he’s the one who has to come to us because it doesn’t make sense for us all to go there.

LK: You live with your manager? That’s unusual!

TH: It works out really well, actually. Then we can keep an eye on him. (laughs)

LK: What keeps you guys going strong as a band?

TH: I have no idea what keeps us together as a band! (laughs) I think our sense of humor, and we’re all friends of course. We’re all a little bit crazy: I mean just moving your life randomly to another country with a group you’ve played with for only a year? When you do that, you have this compounded faith you can condense into one little pocket, and that becomes your own special pocket as a unit, believing in one another I guess. We definitely have our moments where we need to get away from one another but we don’t. It makes for interesting music and our dynamics as people are good enough so that we can still be fine about it. It’s like a dysfunctional family sometimes. You can get angry at someone, then they go and write a beautiful song and then you don’t care as much. “Oh don’t worry about the toilet, I’ll clean it. That was an amazing lyric!” It’s humorous.

LK: Who came up with the term “psychefaeriedelica” on your Facebook page?

TH: (laughs) I’ve never heard that term! I don’t know who did that, maybe one of the guys? But that explains the music perfectly. I’m the one that does the Facebook, I’ll have to have a look. Whoever wrote that is a genius!

LK: Tell me about your EP that came out in April (cover pictured above).

TH: The EP we recorded in Sydney…that was the first. It teaches you heaps when you go and record; it’s that old thing about being an actor and going to drama school, but then you go and get in front of the camera and it’s different. You can be in rehearsal and playing these songs, but when you listen back on the tape you can be objective and say “that doesn’t work, that vocal isn’t right.” You can rearrange your art and it’s necessary  to record the way you sound. With that, we definitely found our sound. Up until then, we were just kind of playing around with rhythms and tones. We found it together as a unit, it’s definitely a big thing for us. We just finished our full album as well, and we hope it’ll come out this year…at the moment we have no confirmed date. But if everything goes to plan, which it often doesn’t (laughs) we’ll have it out this year.

“The End” Sherlock’s Daughter

LK: Where’s your next show?

TH: At Glasslands in Brooklyn on the… 17^th? That’ll be really fun actually. I don’t know who else is on the bill…There’s that massive festival happening that’s part of it, so I’m not sure exactly who’s on it. But I’m sure they’ll be amazing.

LK: You guys have toured with some pretty awesome bands in the past, including Metric, School of Seven Bells, and The Temper Trap.

TH: That was two years ago, that was when School of Seven Bells toured in Australia. We toured with The Charlatans last year. Then we played with The Antlers, do you know them?

LK: Of course!

TH: I love The Antlers! We played just recently with them in Australia. We’ve been pretty lucky with our support so far.

LK: Is there anyone you’d like to tour with in the future?

TH: Dirty Projectors and Arcade Fire would be amazing! There are so many bands…TV on the Radio. We played with Warpaint, they’re amazing. There’s no shortage of great bands out there.

LK: Any bands from back home that we should be aware of?

TH: There’s actually Kyu. It’s just two girls, and it’s kind of Björk-style music. They’re amazing, and they’re really beautiful. They’ve just done their album and I think they’re coming home. There’s a band called WIM from  Sydney I think they were just signed and moved to New York. I’m sure there are a lot of other bands..I haven’t been back to New Zealand in like ten years. But in saying that, I come over here and hear about a lot of bands from there. I think if you have that faith in yourself to take a giant leap, generally you do okay. It’s just about determination and believeing in yourself.

LK: Is there anything you miss about living in the southern hemisphere?

TH: I was living in Sydney for seven, eight years. I didn’t really like Sydney so I’m happy here. I miss having access to a beach, really easily like right next to the road. But as far as being a musician, New York is one of the best places to live. The pros outweight the cons, and there’s not that many cons here so it’s pretty good. If you really want to get out, you can hire a car and go out to Woodstock or Catskills or out in nature. If you knew how to drive…I don’t know how to drive. It would be nice to be able to just say “I’m going to go somewhere right now”. I can’t really do that; I have to phone friends.

Sherlock’s Daughter performs next at The Glasslands Gallery in Williamsburg, New York this Friday June 17th. For more information on their upcoming tour dates, please visit their Facebook and Twitter pages. Their self-titled EP is now available on iTunes.