"A pelvis swinging slice of gnarly power-pop rock with vocals so saucy they make ketchup seem like mere water." NME about SSHH
A cultural revolution happened when The Beatles went global without social media. The British Invasion changed the face of the music industry and created an incalculable pop-culture renaissance without surrendering its soul to nostalgia.
One's roots is as important as the need for air in forming character. With an uncle having been Keith Moon, drummer for The Who, father Ringo Starr, drummer for The Beatles, and a hairdresser mom Maureen Cox likely having cut a few of the revolutionary styles dominating the Mod scene, one would think it was a given Zak Starkey would pick up drum sticks.
Zak says, "When I saw T. Rex at six years old I wanted to be Marc Bolan and started to play guitar, but then at nine I realized that my Uncle Keith was the drummer in The Who and checked them out. I switched to drums because of Keith and The Who (I always loved The Who). My dad gave me one drum lesson to get me going but then left me to my own devices to learn more. I used to play along to Who records mainly and learned all the songs at an early age.
"In my teens I was in a band with The Who bass player John Entwistle, and around that time also played drums on one of Roger Daltry's solo records. When The Who reformed I got the call. I'm still buzzing as they will always be 'my' band. Later I was a big Oasis fan. Liam and Noel had seen me play with The Who and with Johnny Marr. They both knew I dug Oasis so they called me too! I am still buzzing about that one too."
Sshh, the other half of SSHH grew up with the arts as a dominant factor. Sshh says, "My dad was part of an art collective called Mutoid Waste Company that was kind of at the forefront of the Rave scene, and so I went to some pretty wild parties as a kid. He's a music photographer so I went to a lot of gigs growing up. In fact, my earliest memory is being backstage at a concert so I guess it was kind of predestined that I would end up doing something along those lines. I used to write reviews and do a radio show as a teenager and then went to art school for a bit. So it was always going to be something in entertainment/arts. I was never going to be an accountant or anything like that."
Photo By: Tom Beard
Zak and Sshh met after a gig in Australia. They got to talking about music and the MC5 were playing the next night so they swapped details with the intention of going to the gig. That never happened but they kept emailing playlists and stuff to each other and talking about music until they were both in the same country and started making music together.
Zak and Sshh connected through an acute sense of how their raw talent if genuine could be marshaled. The obsession with music brought them together. The two have a wide range of taste in music. As long as it's good they like it. From punk to electronic, glam and good rock n' roll. They got into reggae and dub in a big way too. All those dudes were real musical pioneers which brings back the importance of having roots and why Zak and Sshh connected after a gig in Australia.
SSHH has their own distinctive sound and to pin down a vocal style is difficult. Sshh says," It's hard to say one specific influence; blues, rock n' roll, glam. Marc Bolan was major. Punk, even a bit of Moroder style. I think having such a wide and wild variety is what gives its own identity. I'll give anything a go."
Zak says the aim of SSHH is "to sound like a laser beam coming at you". "What we aim to achieve with SSHH is to penetrate people's minds, bodies and souls with what we are doing. Sonically, visually, viscerally. SYFY soundtracks to society where the future is now and the future is SSHH! Ha, ha, ha."
"When we started, we just locked ourselves away and didn't listen to anything except the things we like. Didn't buy the papers, didn't watch the news. After a while it started to make us ill. But that was important, to find out what we were all about." Zak
Here lay the preview of what just might shake the dull music industry and lack-luster pop-culture to its feet.
There is a misconception that the children of the famous have nothing to prove. Name alone creates opportunity. With Zak and Sshh tenacity, dedication and talent drive them. Their charisma alone make them visually friendly, and in today's world of social media, you have to catch the eye of the beholder before a note can be heard. SSHH grabs you by the balls and doesn't let go when the music starts.
The band's name is different, but the conception seemed a given. Zak says, "The singer of SSHH is called Sshh because she never shuts-up, ha! And it just seemed like a cool antithesis of what the music is. It's definitely not the kind of music that makes you sshh. It's meant to make you get wild and scream and shout so SSHH seemed pretty appropriate."
"Sshh is the sound one makes when one wants everyone around one to be quiet, because one is about to say something of great importance. What comes next had better be good. It had better be worth shutting the fuck up for."
SSHH is a distinctive "power-band" live with drums, guitar and lead vocals. "We are trying to tick all the boxes. We want to open people's musical minds to a variety of vibes but keep the integrity of the original influences," says Zak. "Sometimes it can take people a minute to wrap their heads around it, but they usually catch on to the groove pretty quick. Different elements appeal to different people, but in the end, it brings everyone together for their own reasons, and they become one. That's our ultimate goal, really, a kind of SSHH utopia."
First thing Zak and Sshh did together was "Jet Engines". The "Jet Engines" project was the birth of their musical collaboration. It started very basic raw raucus; just Zak playing drums and Sshh singing, hanging in a studio called Black Dog. It was very much like Siouxie and Budgie with "The Creatures". From there it developed into something more. Sshh says, "When we did the first demo of 'Jet Engines' we did it whilst Zak was on tour with Oasis. He was in Mexico and had come up with a loop and guitar riff." Sshh was in Australia at the time and Zak played the tune down the phone from the speakers in his computer. Sshh recorded into the camera then held against her ear, sang down the phone and Zak recorded that from his phone into the computer. International Recordings!
"It just happens wherever the lightning bolt strikes. This kind of attitude lends an immediacy, a frenetic air of urgency to everything that SSHH do." Zak
Sshh's story about how "Hatemale" was written shows inspiration is all around. One just has to recognize the signs. "When 'Hatemale' was written, Sshh had ended up somehow getting on the wrong plane and flying to London," Zak says. "It wasn't until the pilot said, 'This plane is going to Manchester' she realized her mistake and told one of the air hosts. For some reason, the pilot then had to escort her back to the terminal which was embarrassing." Sshh says, "When I finally got on the right plane I just wanted to look out the window and listen to music. Then some pompous douchbag on the opposite side of the aisle leant over and prodded me telling me to turn my music down. It wasn't even that loud! It was then that the lyrics for 'Hatemale' were purged out."
What lies ahead for SSHH with the DIY movement is no different than other band. We have all been thrown into the same bag. The epidemic of sleepy inertia within the corporate music industry make it difficult for a garage band who pulled from its roots the very thing that created rock 'n roll to get noticed. The rebel is being pushed out of our vocabulary. But all is not lost. SSHH is plagued and blessed with the shifting of times. "What is ahead is unknown. You've just got to keep going. In some ways it's good; having a direct and instant link to whoever, whatever, whenever, twitter and instagram and all that jazz. But there's always a flipside. With good there's usually bad knocking around. It's just the way it is."
SSHH wants to come to the people in all shapes and forms. They write, record, produce everything themselves, sometimes from a riff, sometimes a poem; anything original and inspiring. Tom Meighan of Kasabian guests on two tracks of the new EP as does Amy Winehouse bass player Dale Davis. But it's just Zak and Sshh doing everything else. Megalomaniaaaaaaaa!!!!!
While youth will continue to set about destroying the social and cultural conventions put in place by previous generations, there are many who instinctively recognize what came before is worth its two cents. On what it was like growing up and how did mom and dad influence Zak to pursue the arts? He says, "Fucking great! They let me do my own thing but also hipped me to some great music which I may never have discovered otherwise."
Now discover SSHH! www.sshh.co.uk
Photo By: Mick Rock
