After our recent doozy of a news week, you are most likely asking yourself: hey Autostraddle, it’s been 72 hours, where’s my Uh Huh Her status update? Well, have we got a good one for you! A one-on-one with Camila Grey, who gives us the Behind the Music treatment on UHH’s brand new record, Nocturnes, finally out October 11th.
For the uninitiated, here’s the quick and dirty on UHH: they are an electropop duo consisting of Camila (lead vocals, keyboards, guitar, producer) and our very own Alice Pieszecki, Miss Leisha Hailey (backup vocals, bass, keyboards). They released one really awesome full length album, Common Reaction, back in 2008 and a follow-up EP, Black and Blue, this Spring.
Prior to UHH, Cam was a member of the lo-fi rock band Mellowdrone and also played bass and keyboards for Dr. Dre, Busta Rhymes and Kelly Osbourne. Oh, and she most recently did this little thing globetrotting with Adam Lambert as his keyboard player during the worldwide Glam Nation Tour. No big deal.
The girls are about to embark on the Keep A Breast Tour (aiming to educate women on breast cancer awareness and prevention) hitting all major cities in the US starting October 8th. They’ll probs make out on stage, so you should definitely go.

- What’s been the biggest evolution from Common Reaction to Black and Blue to Nocturnes?
This record has an anthemic rock sound, cause I was listening to a lot of Pink Floyd… I’m obsessed with The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon. I’m really into 70s rock, like [the psychedelic, experimental band] Can, Bowie, etc. I would say that Black and Blue was very electronic based, it was electronic influenced and made within a week and a half, two weeks. It was very like stream of consciousness while Nocturnes is very thought out, planned, and done in a studio with live musicians. It’s fancy but also done very organically while Black and Blue was just very electronic. Nocturnes is extremely layered, lush, just a deep rock record. When we made Common Reaction in 2007 we were really just getting to know one another. We met, decided to form the band, three months later had a record deal and three months after that we had Common Reaction out and thrown out on tour. It was just happening so fast! This time around we really took our time and thought everything out carefully.

- You said Nocturnes was inspired by darkness… how did this manifest in the lyrics/music?
Yea, it was inspired by literal darkness… I would work until all hours of the night, just because that’s kind of when I wake up, when most people are sleeping. And, darkness also in the sense of… I had been going through personal turmoil with my relationship, and we left our label and fired our manager and we just left alone and dark and sad… There were a lot of break-ups, in that sense, happening between the two of us and the company we were dealing with. And, then I went on the road with Adam [Lambert] and spent a month in the dark in Sweden and northern Europe cause it was during the winter. I literally spent like 26 days with no sunlight in northern Europe… I’d never done that before and I was writing lyrics during that time and thinking about what that all meant… So, it was a mixture of a lot of things. It was kind of a dark year. I also want to say that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, so, while it’s lyrically dark, the music is super hopeful. Which I think we do all the time: dark meets light; light meets dark. You can’t have one without the other.

- Why did you leave your record label?
Well, without giving away all the details it had to do with the politics and bureaucracy of our record company and we wound up being dropped and then we decided to leave everything – our managers and go off on our own as independent artists.

- Did it have to do with being in out band, or the direction of the music?
…I’ll just say it had to do with the record company [laughs].

- And you were left with the responsibility of financing the record production on your own…
Yeah, which was really scary because we came from Nettwerk where we had like a $200,000 budget which was amazing since we didn’t even know if we’d ever be signed when we first started and all of a sudden 5 months later we had this huge budget. So, when we left we had some money left over but not a lot so we wound up holding an auction on E-Bay and sold all kinds of stuff so our fans could help us raise the money we needed to finish mixing the record. We sold guitars, we made art, redesigned vinyl covers and stuff. All kinds of things to raise the money for the final mix of the record. I actually love that we’re self-releasing because now we get to have a hand in everything we do which is exciting but it takes a long time. We felt so bad that it was taking forever to come out that we made the EP (Black & Blue) to sell at shows until this record was ready to finally come out.

- How much did the record end up costing?
You know what, in the end it cost $20,000 which is basically unheard of, especially coming from that $200,000 budget on Common Reaction. And, I can honestly tell you that the record sounds just as good, if not better. Seriously, you guys can judge for yourselves when you finally get to listen to the record.

- I know it was inspired from the PJ Harvey album title, “Uh Huh Her,” but what’s the deal there? Were you guys really high one night, joking around and it stuck?
[laughs] I’ll never say… It was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time in the middle of the night. Like, you drink a 6 pack and everything see***ike a good idea at the time and then you’re like, “wait, what?! That’s an awful idea.” But it’s too late now.

- Who else do you like to listen to?
I like a lot of old stuff, like Zeppelin, Bowie, The Fall, Bj*rk, The Eurythmics, Depeche Mode… and then newer stuff like… Ladyhawke is brilliant, Cut Copy…

- Does it frustrate you that a lot of people come to the shows to see Alice Pieszecki?
Yes! It’s so annoying, seriously! A lot of girls in the audience will actually scream “Alice!” and I’m just like “Come on, really. Come on.” It’s a little frustrating because I want all the L Word fans to really get into our music and hopefully they eventually do throughout the show or if they listen to our records. But yeah, that absolutely happens and I gotta win them over.