News Wardell: ‘We Need Each Other To Finish Our Songs’

Roughly two years ago, a band called ‘Brother/Sister’ posted their debut track ‘Opossum’ on Soundcloud. It was a wonderful piece of melodic guitar pop; reminiscent of a well-rested, caffeine-d up Beach House. Little was known about the sibling duo at the time, but it was soon discovered that these guys had a somewhat well known father by the name of – hold on to your butts – Stephen Spielberg. You may have heard of him. But don’t let that fact skew your judgement of their wonderfully crafted music; it’s well and truly deserving of your attention regardless of kin.

Now going under the name Wardell, partly due to the “poor Google-ability of Brother/Sister”, we caught up with Theo and Sasha Spielberg just before their second London show for a quick chat about how it all started, where it’s all going, and why it’s taken two years to re-emerge since that stunning debut track was posted…



How and when did you guys first start writing music together?
Theo: It was sort of a matter of happen-stance. I know that there were a lot of times where we tried but nothing really took hold. Like one time we wanted to cover this Brenton Wood song and it just never happened, and a couple times we kinda started writing songs and it took us kinda forever to get something real going. And then the week after I graduated college Sasha wandered into my room and just was like ‘We should write a song together’. And I happened to be playing with this chord progression that I didn’t really know where to go with, and then Sasha started singing over it and it became Opossum. Without her it really wouldn’t have been anything. She was like ‘No, don’t use that chord, maybe you should do this instead’…
Sasha: And I had a little keyboard that we’d borrowed from a friend at the time and we just sort of wrote the chords together for that song. It’s all really simple, basic chords!

‘Opossum’ does have a very natural sound to it that I really like, a little bit rough around the edges, but in a good way…
Theo: We really wanted it to be like that. We finished writing the song and I went and demoed it on this like old MBox, and there was like a lot of human error on it, but good human error, and it sounded like I’d just recorded it at home, and we definitely wanted to keep that element in it. That DIY vibe.

Will the newer tracks on the EP continue in that vein?
Sasha: Actually the newer stuff is a lot darker, and sort of thinner sounding. A lot more danceable.
Theo: It’s sort of darker but also not darker.
Sasha: When I say dark, I mean dark in the way that Kate Bush and Fleetwood Mac did dark.
Theo: I mean it’s still pretty lively. We still play guitars and stuff. And I think to us it probably seems really really different, but to most people it wouldn’t be like ‘this is a major departure’ or anything like that. It’s just that we’ve been making songs for so long and to be doing stuff like this now seems really different, just to us.

It seems reasonable that your sound may have changed a bit in the two years since you first posted ‘Opossum’!
Theo: Yeah definitely. Like, I was kind of thinking that we should write in the same vein because the EP hadn’t been released, but it was pretty clear that in the time since the song had been released that we were just in a completely different place as musicians and so it was kind of inevitable that this new batch of songs ended up being what they are.

So why was there that two-year gap? What’s been happening since then?
Sasha: I was still in college, and had been studying abroad in Paris for a year, while Theo was going between LA and New York, and we were just never really in the same place at the same time.
Theo: The band has sorta been in a two-phase thing, corresponding to when each of us has graduated from college. We started writing together when I graduated from college and started playing live when she graduated from college. And the phase two transformation into Wardell happened when she graduated. Now that we’re both finished with school we’re able to work on everything and get so much more done.

Do you think that’s why there’s been this sudden burst of attention this year?
Theo: I’m not entirely sure why there’s been this sudden burst of attention. I think it maybe from going to SXSW back in March, and a lot of people saw us there.
Sasha: Yeah, we had an awesome time there and maybe that’s what’s propelled us into where we are now, doing things like this in London.

Sasha, I noticed that you did a track with Nico Jaar under the name ‘Just Friends’ earlier in the year. A pretty stunning cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Avalanche’. How did that come about?
Sasha: Well, Nico and I are best friends from college so I would always go into his room when he was making music. We actually recorded like four covers, but his computer was stolen, and ‘Avalanche’ was the only one he’d mastered. So we actually have four others that will never be heard. Unless whoever stole his computer decides to post them! It’s so frustrating, because, I think, they were all really amazing, and it’s a shame nobody will get to hear them.



How would you describe your music? Do you consider your songs pop songs?
Sasha: I’d definitely consider our music pop, and I grew up listening to solely pop. So I write melodies like trying to be like Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls and TLC and stuff like that. I was totally a 90s girl.
Theo: I grew up listening to a lot of scuzzy, garage pop. So we definitely work in a pop format, but with some edgier tendencies.
Sasha: That’s an awesome name for a band. Pop Format.

So you sort of balance each other out with your influences. Sasha brings in the pop, melodic side and Theo brings in the edgier stuff. Is it fair to say you rely quite heavily on one another to make Wardell work?
Sasha: Definitely! I’ve got so many, like, one and a half minute songs that I’ve made on Garageband just sitting on my computer. I just can’t finish them. But then I can take them to Theo as ideas, and we can make something with it. We need each other to finish our songs!
Theo: Yeah, I mean, it’s just so much easier when you can bounce ideas off another person. I’ve had so many chord progression ideas that I just get stuck with, but when we get together, we can actually combine our ideas together and get something finished.
Sasha: We are brother and sister after all.
Theo: And like I said before, without Sasha, ‘Opossum’ wouldn’t have been anything. And that’s what started it all really.
Sasha: Theo was always the one who is in a band. I just thought that was sooo cool, and always wanted to join in!



Read the full interview in the 20th May edition of DIY Weekly, available from iTunes now.