Interview with Sarah and the Safe Word: ‘We wanted an intro track that would remove you from where you are and let you enter a storybook’

Atlanta-based haunted caberet rock ‘n’ roll band, Sarah and the Safe Word, who say of themselves, ‘Jay Gatsby died, we played his funeral’, will give us a new single next month, ‘Lost Rings on Riverside’, a musical tale of murky relationships and sinister goings on in New York at night.

Sarah and the Safe Word describe themselves as ‘a six-piece queer cabaret rock band’, comprised of Sarah Rose (vocals), Kienan Dietrich (guitar, vocals), Susy Reyes (violin, vocals), Beth Ballinger (keys, vocals), Maddox Reksten (bass, vocals), and Carlos Gonzalez (percussion, vocals).

Rose and Dietrich know each other through the Atlanta music scene, playing in different bands and often sharing bills with one another over the greater part of a decade. When their former bands broke up, they decided to try playing music together, culminating in the recording and release of an EP titled Afterlife in early 2016. The band expanded into an eventual seven-piece when they recorded the band’s independent first LP, Strange Doings in the Night, in early 2017, incorporating strings, keys and bass – courtesy of Reyes, Ballinger and Reksten – that are now part of the band’s foundation. Rose came up with their name one day when she was driving because she liked the alliteration in it.

They plan to release two or three singles this year, with a view to bringing out their fourth album next year. First up, is ‘Lost Rings on Riverside’, a song inspired by a poster Rose saw about a lost wedding ring, which will be released next month: ‘It’s one of our favourites so far,’ she said. ‘It’s another story inspired by New York, it’s a dark story about couples falling apart and somebody might get murdered at the end!’

‘I remember that it started with the harpsichord riff, it was trying to tell me that it was about a fantastical place’

Last year, they brought out their third album, Good Gracious! Bad People. One of the fascinating things about this particular album is how different a lot of the tracks are musically yet they manage to sit together so harmoniously. The opening track, ‘Welcome to Winterwood’, showcases this, with the spiky opening harpsichord giving it a dramatic, theatrical air, coupled with a choir, strings and some serious drumming, which makes the song feel like a sonic cabinet of curiosities. ‘I remember that it started with the harpsichord riff, it was trying to tell me that it was about a fantastical place,’ Rose said. ‘The reverb strings feel dreamscapey. We wanted an intro track that would remove you from where you are and let you enter a storybook.’

The lyrics draw you into a dark world: ‘Shadows danced across the walls, trouble travels on the breeze, secrets tangled in the trees, a story seldom understood. Welcome to Winterwood.’

I tell her that I love the second track on it, ‘You’re All Scotch, No Soda’, and ask her what the story behind it is: ‘It’s one of the first ones we wrote for that record, it gave us a direction,’ she said. ‘We didn’t have the luxury of time on this record, we had to turn it around, writing-wise, in a month and a half. This song was inspired by being at a bar with my partner and someone ordered a scotch and someone said it was “all scotch, no soda” and that kinda stuck. It’s about men who are into their own bravado without any substance behind it, about those people who talk a big game but can’t back it up.’ I tell her I love the line that someone smells of “gin and failure” and she agrees that it’s the kind of line that gets stuck in your head.

As the chorus goes: ‘Well you’re all scotch, no soda. Your fingertips could torture, drag my body back to New Orleans and dream a little dream of me.’

‘I was thinking about rodeo sweethearts and robot cowboys riding horses’

One of their biggest tracks on the album is ‘The Last Great Sweetheart of the Grand Electric Rodeo’, which kicks off with gorgeous strings and some serious drums that pull you along until the honky tonk piano takes over. It blends bluesy, rocky and folky roots and somehow makes me think of a macabre ringmaster at the circus: ‘I was thinking about rodeo sweethearts and robot cowboys riding horses,’ she laughed. ‘I wrote it in the shower, it was wild. Actually, I write a lot of songs in the shower, all my choruses come to me in the shower! This song is my favourite to play live.’

As the chorus goes: ‘Ain’t got a human heart but I feel that when we part. She’s the last great sweetheart of the Grand Electric Rodeo. Open up your veins and here we go. She’s the last great sweetheart of the Grand Electric Rodeo. Open up your veins and here we go.’

Other tracks were inspired by touring, such as ‘Sick on Seventh Street’: ‘We were on tour in New York City, one of my favourite places to play, and it was inspired by the idea that when we’re there, we all have our own adventures, it has so much personality as a city. It’s a love letter to my experiences there,’ she said.

It turns out that the track ‘Bottom of a Bender’ is not actually inspired by a bender: ‘The theremin gives it that (spacey) vibe but we wrote the lyrics a million times, Kienan wrote the chorus. We say we’re Chumbawamba’s sister band ‘cos it sounds very get knocked down and get up again.’

Sarah and the Safe Word take a lot of influences from the cabaret movement of the early 20th century, as well as traditional elements of rock ‘n’ roll. In many ways, the cabaret-burlesque community of that time carried a lot of the same values as the punk rock movement that followed it – women’s liberation, freedom of sexual expression and anti-establishment narratives, according to the band.

There’s something about their exuberance, melodies that take you to unexpected places and sweetly dark lyrics that reminds me of English rock band, Creeper, so I ask her if she knows them: ‘We were on the Warped Tour with them, they were so nice to us. We were nervous and they took time to talk to us and show us things, they were so great.’ If she could go to any gig tonight, she picks them: ‘I’d love to see any concert at this point but I’d love to see Creeper or I Don’t Know How But They Found Me (an American duo in Salt Lake City, Utah.) They’re more showtooney. I’m really into Willow Smith’s song ‘Transparentsoul’, it’s really good. And Jhariah from Brooklyn, he’ll open our show in a couple of months, he’s similar to us, burlesque cabaret, it’s so good.’

‘I love vintage aesthetics and putting yourself in a time period you’re not used to’

Growing up, Rose listened to bands such as Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Spice Girls and NSYNC. She was a theatre major for a year in college, which helps explain their brilliant theatricality: ‘I love vintage aesthetics and putting yourself in a time period you’re not used to,’ she said. ‘You’ll find things occasionally, musical structures that you’re not used to but which were common then and you can borrow from them.’

Beyond that, they all come from vastly different musical backgrounds with hugely different influences – including mariachi, jazz, blues, metal, post-hardcore, hip-hop – which clearly feeds into their music, which is often a glorious mash-up of these elements. Typically, Rose and Dietrich start the ‘root’ of the song together, she might send him a melody or he might come up with a riff. Rose’s most treasured musical possession is her Taylor 110 acoustic guitar, which she bought with her first paycheck when she was 17.

She credits Atlanta, where she also grew up, for allowing her to flourish musically: ‘As a city, it’s got something for everyone. I moved away for a while but I don’t think I’d be a musician the way I am had I not grown up here. Atlanta’s got a big, energising queer scene. Most people know the city for its hip hop, it stole the crown from New York for the hip hop city in the US. You know, I was a rapper and a DJ in my first band but luckily there’s no footage of us left…and we’re not on Spotify so you won’t find us!,’ she laughed.

If she could hear one of their songs on a TV show, she picks The X Files: ‘I really love that show, it was just sooo good. Or we could be the Cantina band on Star Wars, that’d be pretty cool!’

(Photo from left to right: Beth, Kienan, Sarah, Carlos, Maddox and Susy.)