Garage-rockers The Courettes on working 'with' Johnny Thunder and Sam & Dave, visiting Japan and returning to The Wedgewood Rooms | interview

Since 2015, the husband and wife duo have been perfecting their mix of garage-rock, surf guitar, ’60s girl group and Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound.

Their last album Back in Mono summed up their aesthetic perfectly – and the pair walk it like they talk it – they are almost exclusively clad in uber-cool black and white.

When The Guide cheekily asks if they are ever ‘off duty’ and feel like dressing down in a nice floral print or tie-dye, they laugh.

​Drummer Martin says: ‘I only have black and white clothes. This is it. I have band T-shirts, but that's about it.’

‘We're like this 24/7!’ adds guitarist/vocalist Flavia. ‘I do have a red dress, but I don’t wear it very often...’

‘I've never seen Martin in shorts in 10 years. Even when we met in Brazil and we went to the beach. He was in his Beatle boots, black jeans and leather jacket.’

Flavia is Brazilian and Martin Danish and the pair have settled in Denmark. But since pandemic restrictions on travel were lifted, the pair have seemingly toured non-stop.

When we speak over Zoom they are back home – but only briefly. They’ve just returned from a run of shows in Italy and are off to France two days later. Since then they have also made their American debut at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, and are currently in Germany before heading straight to the UK.

And last year they also got to tour in Japan for the first time. A long-held ambition for them, they also got to meet up with Seiki Sato, who engineered Back In Mono without ever being in the same country. Seiki had become almost a mythical figure in The Courettes’ story after Martin tracked him down via a music blog after falling in love with his production work on an obscure J-pop single that captured the Spectoresque sound they were after.

‘He exists!’ says Martin.

Flavia adds with a laugh: ‘He's not a 16-year-old boy living in his mum's basement, and he's not this Buddha-looking Shaolin master, he's a totally normal guy in his 40s.

‘He came to our show in Tokyo so it was a big pleasure to meet him, but he doesn't speak any English so there wasn't much conversation going on. But he has Yono, his assistant who speaks English, so we hung out with him. It was one of the many good things that happened in Japan.’

They also played an instore at the vast 10-storey Tower Records in Shibuya, Tokyo.

‘When we arrived there was like this huge Courettes shrine with huge pictures of us and all of our records, and things written in Japanese all over it,’ recalls Flavia. ‘We asked what they said and we were told it's things like “Best garage band in the world”. There was one of these shrine things for the Foo Fighters, and one for J-Lo, and then one for us… It was a great instore show – loads of people came, and they bought so much merch!

‘There's such a great rock'n'roll culture there, and all of the bands we shared a stage with were amazing. It was out of this world cool. The shows finish early – but there were parties every night, and they drink a lot of beer! Our tour manager was a young woman in her 20s and she could drink more beer than both of us.’

The pair have recently rerecorded some of their tracks in other languages, including Italian and French, but they are particularly proud of the Japanese version of their track Daydream.

‘We had a couple of friends from London, an Englishman married with a Japanese woman, and they helped us with the lyrics, but it wasn't sounding good. The most important thing for me is that it sounds good. But it was just translated and it wasn't so musical in the ears, then she said: “I have a very good friend in Japan called Hiro and he's a musician...”

They used Hiro’s version and he and his wife made guest appearances with them at their Tokyo show. The release on a Japanese label sold out in just three days, but got picked up by their US/UK label Damaged Goods.

‘We got to do all the Japanese-style artwork and it looks so cool!’ says Flavia.

More recently they have been involved in a project with alternative music label Cleopatra Records, where they have been using artists’ original vocal tracks with new arrangements from a variety of acts, including The Courettes.

The first one was by cult garage-rocker The Grassroots, which impressed the label enough to let them loose on You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory by punk icon Johnny Thunders, and all-time classic Hold On, I’m Coming by soul legends Sam and Dave.

‘We don't do covers – we never did,’ explains Martin, ‘but this was interesting because we used the original voices and we could do whatever we wanted, so we were like the backing band for Sam and Dave – this makes it very interesting for us. We could do our own arrangements, and it was really fun, there was so much freedom.’

‘I think when it's not your song, you have more freedom,’ continues Flavia. ‘We're very careful when it's our own stuff – this was very relaxing though. And they loved the result on The Grassroots so they contacted us again, which was for Sam and Dave, which was an amazing experience. We had their vocals thundering on the speakers. It's us with loads of fuzz and their vocals.’

The Johnny Thunders track has also had a video released to go with it.

‘Some people loved it, some people hated it, but we love it!’ says Flavia. ‘We have so much respect for the songs, we're both huge Johnny Thunders fans. He was a big girl group fan, so we said let's go totally down that route. I think he would have enjoyed what we've done. I think it's an amazing project.

‘Hearing Johnny Thunders’ voice coming out of the speakers, it was very emotional, I almost cried.’

And Martin adds with a smile: ‘We can say we've played with Sam and Dave and Johnny Thunders and The Grassroots... It's super-cool.’

There is of course the small matter of their own new material. They have started sketching out new songs and have studio time booked for June with an album pencilled in for early next year.

For their show at The Wedgewood Rooms, they have invited Paul Groovy and The Pop Art Experience to open for them while ‘rumble-bop’ loons Oh! Gunquit are also on the bill.

Of the latter Martin adds: ‘We play with lots of bands and we're not so easily impressed, but they're great. And they're hard workers – we like hard workers.’

‘They're definitely one of my favourite bands,’ says Flavia.

They return to Southsea on Thursday, April 6, doors 7.30pm. Tickets £15. Go to wedgewood-rooms.co.uk.