Wargirl Wargirl

Whilst nearby Los Angeles is where dreams are shattered, in Long Beach people are getting on with their lives. It’s got a strong working class community and is known for its ethnic diversity – even delights in it. Add to that the sunshine and the almost nice beach. Matt Wignall produces bands, such as Cold War Kids. With them, he has recorded tracks such as “Hang Me Out to Dry” and “Hospital Beds” with a sound that is to die for. Also there’s Mando Diao, whose album “GiveMeFire!” he co-produced, engineered and even created the artwork for. So the interesting question is: Why does a musician who has such an understanding of sound and such awesome equipment not have his own band? And now he has got one: WARGIRL. After brilliant first gigs, including an appearance at Germany's Clouds Hill Festival, and the release of debut their fantastic debut EP “Arbolita”, Clouds Hill out of Hamburg (Omar Rodriguez, Pete Doherty) is now releasing the band's first album in North America, eponymously named WARGIRL. “The idea of being in some band where there’s four guys playing and one of them singing lead just seemed incredibly boring to me,” Wignall says. What he wanted was an awesome collective that would do justice to the sound of his hometown. The singer is Samantha Park. She is the daughter of James Lafayette Parks, the leader of the 70s funk band Bull & The Matadors, but above all she is a gifted vocalist who manages both to sing sensually and to drive the sound forwards. Tamara Raye plays bass in a way that is unusually demanding and that grooves like Tina Weymouth’s (of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club). Enya Preston plays the keyboards. There are also, very importantly, two percussionists: Erick Diego Nieto and Jeff Suri blend disco with funk, latin with afro, pop with rock – but always to the point, never just to show off. Matt Wignall plays guitar, “not at all as a lead instrument but as an additional driver.” “No matter whether you see us or hear us, we always come across as a diverse bunch: ethnically as well as in terms of gender and preferences. However, whilst this may be considered colourful elsewhere, in Long Beach it is totally normal,” Matt Wignall points out. “Nobody else sounds like us, and yet we sound like the environment we come from.” WARGIRL is thus also an appeal for diversity and openness, for identity within heterogeneity. It is therefore an album the world today sorely needs. Because diverse doesn’t just look better – it also sounds better.