Interview with Kid Gulliver: ‘It’s amazing when people send you messages about your music, when it touches them somehow’

Boston-based upbeat power pop band Kid Gulliver will release their album, Kismet, next month, giving their take on everything from women who write to serial killers in prison to not conforming to society’s ideal beauty standards.

The band comprises guitarist/songwriter David Armillotti, lead singer Simone Berk (who also has a solo project, Sugar Snow, bassist Andy Excuse and new drummer Mark Enet. Armillotti and Berk have known each other for around 13 years and he also plays in Sugar Snow: ‘Sugar Snow is a little bit mopey, it’s the opposite of Kid Gulliver,’ Berk joked. Their band name has a fascinating provenance: ‘We were looking for a name but it’s hard to find one that doesn’t sound bland or stupid. Most people think it comes from Gulliver’s Travels but it doesn’t. David and I were watching the Batman TV series with Adam West (from the 60’s) and there’s a really weird episode with Joan Collins and she sings this high note that paralyses everyone. The story revolves around a character called Kid Gulliver, it was James Brolin’s first TV role, he played a boxer! It just felt right. People call me “kid” now!’

Armillotti is the songwriter in the group and encouraged Berk to sing when they first met: He said “You need to sing my songs”. I was terrible at the start, I felt like such a phoney,’ she said. ‘Maybe it was turning 50 – I’m 53 now – but I’m not self-conscious about it anymore, I have a really good cohort of women around me. As we get older, even if we as women remain self-critical, we’re less influenced by other people and that makes performing much easier. I’m already at the “fuck it” stage. I didn’t start playing until I was 40, actually. In seventh grade, I was in Horace and the teacher told me not to sing but to lip sync. Later on, I started taking guitar classes with my middle son and I realised that I really like to sing. My eldest son has special needs, I found a school that was right for him, so my kids don’t need me as much. I went to the Willie Mae Rock Camp in New York City for a week. You put a band together and put on a show at the end of it.’ I say that this sounds seriously awesome: ‘Oh, you gotta come and do it! It’s so empowering. After that, I met some people via Craiglist and started playing music with them.’

‘It was the ska song we always wanted to do’

Their ‘Gimme Some Go’ EP, which came out last month, comprises four tracks, each of which offers something different. The title track is a catchy, singalong ska number. ‘It was a big everything. It was the most fun for me, I got to be a pretend rockstar! For the EP, we chose songs from all over the map. I thought this song was so happy, positive and encouraging and, as a name, it seems like the perfect attention-getting fun. It was the ska song we always wanted to do.’

Another track on the EP, ‘Stupid Little Girl’, is not about what you expect from the title. It’s about women who write to serial killers in prison and form some kind of romantic attachment to them. I ask her what inspired Armillotti to write it. ‘He was probably watching Jerry Springer or something horrible,’ she laughed. ‘We’ve got another song, ‘The Girl With The Crooked Nose’ that came from a girl he saw in the Jerry Springer audience. It’s not meant meanly, he loved her nose. He, like me, is a fan of the absurd and there’s nothing more absurd than women thinking that someone on death row for killing people, or any other crime, would be a great partner. Why women would fantasise about this, I just don’t understand it.’ I say that it’s always baffled me, too, and that I find it really creepy. ‘It would be worrying if you DID understand it,’ she said. ‘This tells you the difference between the US and other places. European blogs and DJs went right for ‘Stupid Little Girl’, it’s so quintessentially absurd America. This is the kind of stupid we do here. Over here, people think it’s about something else (a naive woman), so they’re reluctant to listen to it.’

She’s a big fan of Morten Henriksen, lead singer of the Norwegian bubble gum pop-punk band The Yum Yums, whom she befriended via Facebook. ‘When we do tour, we’ll be playing with friends,’ she said. ‘We’d like to tour with them. If you’re gonna come down to breakfast with people – in your band or your family – you’d better like them. Being in a band is very intimate, it can be a make or break thing in a band.’

I had assumed that another track, ‘Beauty School Dropout’, was inspired by the song of the same name in the film and musical Grease but that turns out not to be the case: ‘It’s about a goth girl who doesn’t conform to regular standards of beauty, so she can’t go to beauty school because she she doesn’t conform to those standards,’ Berk said. ‘I can get through the whole chorus in one breath if I concentrate enough.’

‘It’s amazing when people send you messages about your music, when it touches them somehow’

Later next month, they will release an album titled Kismet, which will comprise the four tracks from their ‘Gimme Some Go!’ EP as well as eight additional tracks in reverse chronology, going back to 2015. Berk is still amazed that she’s making music at all: ‘I’m just a suburban mom, so it feels somewhat weird a lot of the time. I’m having the best time with all that. I’m super proud of the music, my standards are incredibly high but you hope other people will like it. It’s amazing when people send you messages about your music, when it touches them somehow, that’s the holy grail.’

Kid Gulliver are also part of the WhistleStop Rock team, a group of 12 New England, female-led bands who organised a festival and then all collaborated together on the brilliantly infectious single, ‘Queen of the Drive-In’ last year. As the track kicks off: ‘Come to the drive-in movie with me. It doesn’t matter what we see. We’ll find a darker spot to park and rub together ’til we see a spark.’

Unfortunately, COVID only allowed them to do two nights of the 10 night festival: ‘We call it “The Little Festival That Could”,’ she said. ‘After COVID hit, I wrote the lyrics to ‘Queen of the Drive-In’ and we all played and sung on it. We’re part of the Red on Red record label run by my friend Justine, WhistleStop is on there, too. We’re a community, we’ve got to the point where we don’t care about boys anymore, world domination is my goal! Middle aged women are taking over music and we’re not afraid to use technology, so I think a door was open for us during COVID. People were home all the time, you could introduce yourself to them a lot more because you have a captive audience. It’s funny, we’re at the point where instead of saying ‘Why can’t we…”, we say “We can”. It’s that sort of attitude, we’re done with apologising and all that stuff, in life and in music.’

She gives a sweet shout out to her niece’s band, The Fluorescents, based in San Diego. Tuesday, her niece, does lead vocals and plays guitar. ‘They’re still in high school, it’s great fun, really upbeat,’ she said. She’s also a massive fan of 80’s music: ‘I love Heaven 17 (an English new wave and synth-pop band that formed in Sheffield in 1980), I’m in a rut now, aargh!,’ she laughed. ‘As Sugar Snow, I did a complete reimagining of Crowded House’s album, Woodface. I really love them and Neil Finn is such a great songwriter. We were very careful to be respectful, you don’t want to fuck it up! I didn’t want to do straight covers, so it took a year to make the whole record. (It came out in 2019.) ABC’s The Lexicon of Love (1982) is one of my desert island discs. Martin Fry’s voice is amazing, the songs are funny. It’s one of those albums you can listen to from start to finish, that record just flows so beautifully from one song to the other. You’re dead inside if that doesn’t put you in a good mood!’

Her favourite Crowded House song turns out to be ‘Private Universe’ and I tell her that I really love it, too. ‘It gives me the chills,’ she said. ‘The live version from ‘7 Worlds Collide’ is so amazing, so brilliant. I listen to a lot of Neil Finn in general. One time, I took one of our CDs to Neil Finn’s hotel, I pretended to be a PR person to try to reach him! I gave it to the woman at the hotel, I wonder what happened to it?!’

‘Music is so much a part of my life, it’s always around’

She also has a brilliant tip for parents struggling with the saccharine kids’ music on offer: ‘I got sick of kids’ music, so I gave my kids a choice! I said they could listen to The Beach Boys or The Beatles in the car – they chose The Beatles and they love them. Sometimes, my daughter will have something on a playlist that surprises me and she’ll say “Oh, you made me listen to that” but I don’t remember! Music is so much a part of my life, it’s always around, it has associations. When I was a teenager, I was in Israel with my relatives and my cousin was obsessed with Pink Floyd. It was the first time I understood you could listen to something all the way through and I wanted that the first time we made a record. The sound takes you some place. People get a feel for the atmosphere of a song and what you’re presenting. If you can do that well, it’s an accomplishment.’

When it comes to dream musical collaborations, she has a long list: ‘There are sooooo many people! I’d love to work with Howard Jones, I love him. Neil Finn is a level up from anyone else in my book. Or to sing with Johnny Marr. I’d love to do a song with Natalie Sweet (the former lead singer of the Shanghais), she’s super nice. The people I most want to work with, I think I haven’t met them yet! It’s all an adventure.’

She’s also open to fun collaborations, penning the song ‘I Want An Irishman For Christmas’ with Jerry Lehane from Boston rock band, The Dogmatics. ‘I’m Jewish, so I never thought I’d write a Christmas song!’ I ask if it was actually inspired by an Irishman. ‘Yes, although it’s about Irishmen in general. Boston Irish is different to Irish in Ireland. I was at a bar that used to be a super heavy hangout for Irish immigrants and I got talking to a guy from Ireland. I said would he ever go back and he said no because the accent gets him laid here…haha, well it didn’t work on me! I prefer Italian accents and Scottish accents are hilarious, they have all these great words for things!’