once more with feeling

I’ve known Dear Reader mainly because of their hit “Dearheart”, to which I listened excessively when their debut album “Replace Why With Funny” was released in 2009. Since then, many things changed. Cherilyn MacNeil moved from Johannesburg to Berlin and continued her musical work there without her former colleague Darryl Torr.
The new record, “Idealistic Animals”, is the result of hard work and the help of friends. With profound, intimate and highly emotional lyrics the singer/songwriter deals with her fundamentalist Christian past and her fresh start far away from home.
This is the protocol of the most honest, most open and yet incredibly funny and entertaining interview.

You’ve moved to Berlin a while ago. Can you tell us about why you moved? Was it more professionally or personally motivated?

Lots of levels. It made a lot more sense workwise, I think I travelled to Germany 5 times in 2009. And then – I really wanted to just get out of Johannesburg. I was ready to leave. Then I had the opportunity to get a visa. Johannesburg is not the kind of place that suited me, it’s a frenetic, fast and stressful place. Johannesburg is called “Egoli”, the place of gold. It’s a city built on money, a place that is about making and spending money. And that’s just not the right place for me.
And Berlin is the opposite – very slow, very sleepy. Well – daytime sleepy, nighttime a vibrant place. People are very simple; it’s not about getting a big car or a big house. It’s about having a good quality of life. I love riding my bike here and walking around, I love walking home at 4 in the morning and being safe.

How is it for you to live in Berlin now? Do you still feel as a stranger, or do you already see Germany as „home”?

Well, I think I fit in really quickly. Maybe because here, there are so many other aliens. You don’t feel like you stick out. I never felt like Johannesburg was really “home” either – I feel this sense of alienness in general. I always had the feeling that I was born here, but my ancestors came to South Africa and colonized it, they suppressed the people and took from them. So I had the feeling I shouldn’t be there, but there was nowhere I belonged either.
It’s a good thing as a musician to make home wherever you are, because I have to do that a lot. So yes – Berlin is home now.

When you moved to Berlin, this meant the end of you working together with Darryl Torr. When you look back, how do you feel about it? How has it affected or even changed you personally?

This was something that I wanted and that was necessary. It’s already been a real experience to make the record without him. Before, he was always taking care of the technical part, and I paid little attention to it because I didn’t need to. And for this record it was totally different – it was so much more lo-fi, we weren’t using that good equipment in the studio. And I did a lot of it – I did a lot of recording, I did a lot of editing. I went through manuals for hours to figure out how to use synths and things like that.
Darryl and me are still good friends and he’s really supportive. We speak often and he’s doing well, he’s actually getting married next year. So yeah – it’s for the best! Sometimes I think “Oh, I had a partner in crime, someone who was in this with me – and now it’s just me”. But I have so many friends who are involved – who were involved in making the record and who are now on stage with me.

Let’s talk about your latest record, “Idealistic Animal”. Even though the songs on it seem quite upbeat – when listening closer to the lyrics, they seem pretty dark, melancholic, self-reflective and maybe even society-reflective. Where does this come from?

I was pretty sad when I wrote the songs. The songs are definitely much darker. I’ve always been very serious and self-reflective, but I’ve also always been quite child-like and silly, I laugh a lot and am kind of goofy. So the music is just both things as well. This is just the way it comes out. I don’t know if I’d listen to it if I didn’t make the music, if I was an outsider listening to me. But that is just the music I make – honest, theatrical, melodramatic alternative pop.

When you released your first record we learned that you grew up in a very religious way and at one point broke up with that religion. Now in the song “Man”, we hear lines like “We like to feel like we are free, we make up something to believe. Not that it has to be the truth.”/ “There’s no such thing as paradise.” Are you still dealing with the topic religion on this record?

I think this record is the aftermath of the surgical removal of religion. I’m testing different ideas, different ways of looking at the world and humanness. I’m trying new frameworks, althoug I feel that I will never ever have this strong, solid framework again. I’m too untrusting now.

So do you still believe in anything at all?

I don’t know. I’m trying to search, looking at different ideas and discharding the ones where I feel they definitely don’t make sense. But in the end, I have this feeling of mystery. They only thing that you can really know is that you don’t know.

How is it to suddenly not have anything anymore you believe in? No higher power that tells you what’s right or wrong, not having the security that everything happens because it’s God’s plan?

It was terrifying. I miss a lot of things. I do miss that feeling that no matter what happens, it happens for a reason, that God is in control. I miss the feeling of working towards a greater good, of being part of something big. Or the feeling that somebody is bigger than it all. But the more I tried to find the essence of all of that, the more I realized that it just doesn’t exist. I wanted to believe, but I didn’t get any kind of sign after really trying and waiting and asking. I was just tired of trying.

Always again we see that people can fall for a political leader the same way they can fall for a religious leader. How do you feel about politics – especially since you come from a continent where we see democratic countries next to dictatorships and regimes?

After all my experiences, I can’t really commit to anything. Some things are more right to me than others, but none of them are great. I’m not gonna be in the front with a flag. There are things that I think about and which are important to me, but I don’t want to be a poster girl. It’s not because I couldn’t – I probably could get really behind something. It’s a sense of jadedness – the part of me that really wants to believe in something is gone.
I’m mistrustful. And I think that’s true for our whole generation. We find it naïve and stupid to believe in something. Because we are mistrustful.

Back to the album: the songtitles on “Idealistic Animals” are all kinds of animals – and there’s the Man. So are you saying humans are also just animals?

This is one of the ideas I was putting my toe into. When I was brought up Christian, you have this whole set of ideas that people are made in God’s image and that they have souls, and animals don’t. People are the center of everything, we are special. Animals and all that are just temporary and valueless in a way.
Then I was thinking how people have needs and desires, and we spend our time to still them. If that’s to eat or drink, to shelter ourselves from the cold or even way more evolved needs, more abstract and intangible needs. So basically we’re just the same as animals, we’re part of it all and now above or below it.
It’s interesting – what is consciousness even? If you don’t believe in a spirit or even in God then it’s all just chemicals.

And what does “idealistic” mean to you?

This is referring to all the evolved ones. This higher thinking that we have. We are different, but not that different. That’s what it means.

Is the song “Camel” about a past love of yours?

It’s about bumping into an ex. It starts with the truth and then exaggerates a bit. But it’s about that feeling that you have when you meet the person that you were so close and intimate with, and somehow after you broke up you see the person and it feels like you meet a complete stranger.

You have a choir on some of the tracks and there are other voices on several songs – can you tell us something about who you’ve been working with on this record?

There were so many people involved in this record. Brent Knopf (Menomena) was producing it again, and we had people playing clarinet, horn, harp and accordion. Friends from Sweden, who will also be with me live, played drums and guitar. And then there was the Shape Note Chorus which is something I’m totally in love with. I did some shape note singing in Portland – it’s this really old American music. It’s actually Christian church music. It’s a strange music, they sing really loud and nasal. (sings some notes to show us the kind of sound)
I’ve even been learning it with a woman now in Berlin. So you can hear them on “Camel” and “Whale” and “Kite”. Jacob, the drummer, actually said “What are those weird people in ‘Camel’? I don’t like that!” It’s like Marmite – either you like it, or you don’t.

I heard that you’ve been taking German classes. How’s that going?

Gut! Viele Leute reden natürlich auf Englisch mit mir und meine Freunde sind auch alle Englisch, aber mein Freund ist Deutscher und ich versuche auch Deutsch zu reden. Ich kann mich nicht immer so gut ausdrücken – bei einem Interview geht das gar nicht. Aber ich verstehe fast alles. Aber die meisten Menschen sind beeindruckt weil in Berlin braucht man es eigentlich nicht. Viele wohnen seit sieben Jahren hier und können nicht mehr als „Danke“ und „Bitte“ und „Tschüss“, aber mir macht es Spaß. Ich habe vorher auch ein bisschen Afrikaans gelernt, das kommt aus dem Niederländischen und hilft wahrscheinlich auch viel. Ich liebe Deutsch, und für mich ist das auch Kultur. Ich verstehe so die Leute besser.

Well, thank you for the interview and your time!

Gerne, danke! Thank you and see you soon back in Austria!

“Idealistic Animals” was released on September 2nd (City Slang). Dear Reader will be back live in Austria for the Blue Bird Festival at Porgy & Bess (Vienna) on November 25, 2011.
Check FM5 for the German version of this interview. Pictures by Christoph Liebentritt, all rights reserved.