The Evolution of Little Fish
1.
First there was Juju, who picked up a guitar for the first time at 17 and wrote a song.
She went on writing songs, and eventually she wrote a song called Little Fish and played it in a pub. No one at the pub knew her name, but they knew that song, and she saw one day as she walked past that she had been billed on the sign outside as Little Fish.
So then there was a name, though of course it was a name for something that hadn’t happened yet. There was just a silent nascence, a possibility underpinning everything.
Then there came a strange dark period in Juju’s life. She fell under spells and then fell simply ill, like her body was rejecting a poison. Saying “you’re in the wrong place, Juju, get out.”
2.
So she got out. She met Nez in a chip shop. He had trained with one of the best drummers in the world and had been a drummer himself, but was not actually, at that particular point, really a drummer: he was a carpenter. And Juju meanwhile had lost her voice, but they started a band anyway and called it Little Fish, like Nez was what had been missing from the beginning, and in a way he was. And so instead of being the end – this unlikely alliance of two unlikely people, the drummer who had not been drumming, the singer whose voice had been lost in a sea of confusion – it was the beginning, or at least, another beginning.
They played in the garage. They didn’t know any other musicians, really, so it was just the two of them, and Juju kept writing songs that she couldn’t sing and saying everything would be okay next week and it never was. Until eventually, one day, it was. After many, many hours working alone in a rehearsal room and some sessions in Alexander Technique, Juju found her voice again.
“People hear Little Fish play live and their breath is torn away from them and then restored, and things change.”
She and Nez did a demo and got some gigs. And for two years they did gig after gig after gig, making a name for themselves, gathering fans, gaining momentum.
One day Linda Perry heard their music and flew to Oxford to hear them play. And the thing about hearing Little Fish play is that it’s like the slap in the face you need to wake up, the sweet kiss at night: people hear Little Fish play live and their breath is torn away from them and then restored, and things change. So they were signed to Custard Records and recorded Baffled and Beat in Los Angeles.
3.
Then Little Fish added a layer and became a three-piece. They had put Hammond on Baffled and Beat and wanted a Hammond player in the band, and along came Ben. Juju met him at a rehearsal in Oxford; he was playing the piano and when he was done the first thing she asked him was if he played the Hammond – then, maybe, she made small talk, asked his name, but her focus had always been the songs, the band, and this focus, this myopic drive, had always been the thing that carried them forward.
Ben did, as it turns out, play the Hammond. Like Nez he was a trained musician, a perfect complement to self-taught Juju, with her irresistible irreverence for musical rules and regulations.
“The fierce sense of community, of origin, matters to the songs that Little Fish write and play.”
This marked another kind of beginning. Little Fish left Custard to pursue an independent career. They did the opposite of what every rock star narrative says you should do: they came home again. This is important; the fierce sense of community, of origin, matters to the songs that Little Fish write and play. The rock’n’roll myth was still just a myth: being signed, being discovered, had not brought Little Fish fortune, but they still knew why they made music adn they still knew they had to make music, somehow.
4.
But independence, even when you’ve chosen it, can be hard. There was still the rent to pay; there were still bills and struggles. Now Nez had a family, and a decision to make, because life is not always kind, and sometimes one thing you love needs you more than the other thing you love. Sometimes it is simply not possible to devote yourself wholly to music and also, at the same time, to support yourself, your children.
So they were a two-piece again, like they had been in the beginning. Their sound changed a little to accommodate the departure of their beloved drummer, but their spirit did not.
“They have toured with Supergrass,
Spinerette,
Juliette Lewis,
Alice in Chains,
Placebo;
Debbie Harry saw them supporting Courtney Love and asked them to join Blondie for a UK tour.”
And the truth, the heart of the matter, is this: Little Fish is a band that gets closer to the the fans, the root of the story and of the song, with every moment that passes, every thing that happens to them. They have toured with Supergrass, Spinnerette, Juliette Lewis, Alice in Chains, Placebo; Debbie Harry saw them supporting Courtney Love and asked them to join Blondie for a UK tour. But still they remain steady, devoted to their roots. The music has not had its soul polished away; it’s not electronic, vapid, perfect. It’s also not provincial; Little Fish are local on an emotional rather than a political level. Everything happens in a small space, but nothing is small. They’re as comfortable playing house parties as they are the Royal Albert Hall. Almost everyone they work with nowadays is Oxford-based – producers, photographers, artists – but this is not snobbery or small-mindedness, it’s organic, it’s part of the band’s narrative.
They do things differently, Little Fish; their sound, their ethos, is eclectic, and they aren’t afraid of collaboration or experimentation. Through it all, they’ve been close with their fans, and their fans - these rabid, beautiful fans, each of whom seems to find some unique meaning in the arc of a song or the depth of Juju’s voice - have always been close with them, too. The relationship is reciprocal, and perhaps this is the final stage of the evolution. Little Fish started as one woman and became a feeling, a momentum. They say they don’t always know where they’re going, but they’re definitely going somewhere, with a whole community in tow.
— Miranda Ward, June September 2011
