The guitarist Hope Sandoval called “mindblowing”
Hope Sandoval is the ultimate indie girl. Fronting Mazzy Star in the 1990s, she forged a new, effortlessly cool and dreamy alternative sound that still stands up today. Guitar-driven but soft and subdued, their 1993 album So Tonight That I Might See spawned dream pop hit ‘Fade Into You’, which is just as adored by indie audiences now as it was upon its first release.
Sandoval’s contribution to the alternative scene extends far beyond ‘Fade Into You’. Since the early 2000s, she has forged more ethereal soundscapes with Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions, a collaboration with My Bloody Valentine’s Colm Ó Cíosóig. Though they’ve never achieved the mammoth success of their previous success, soothing tracks like ‘Let Me Get There’ (featuring the one and only Kurt Vile) are equally deserving of admiration.
Sandoval has also worked with trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack, contributing vocals to one of their biggest tracks, the haunting ‘Paradise Circus’. Across her many music endeavours since the late 1980s, it’s safe to say that Sandoval has secured a place as one of the most important and well-loved figures in the alternative scene.
When it comes to artists Sandoval herself lauds, Scottish folk musician Bert Jansch tops the list. Speaking with Dazed, the Mazzy Star frontwoman took the time to speak about her love for Jansch and his masterful guitar playing.
Long before Sandoval pioneered dream-pop, Jansch was pioneering folk music in the UK in the 1960s. He played as a soloist for years before he took on the role of vocalist and guitarist in Pentangle in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Jansch influenced some huge names, including Jimmy Page, Nick Drake, and Neil Young. The influence of his work also persisted into the shoegaze of the 1990s, as Sandoval explains her love for the folk musician.
“He was an amazing guitarist and an amazing person,” she stated, “I worked with him on the first record I did with Colm and it was sort of a fantasy of ours. We flew him out to Norway, we record in David (Roback)’s studio, and Bert had never done anything like that. He was never a guest on somebody else’s record. He always did his own thing.”
Sandoval recalls that when Jansch came into the studio to work with them on Bavarian Fruit Bread, “everybody was nervous. The engineer, everybody, we were all huge fans.” From the moment he started tuning his instrument, she states, “It was just mindblowing.”
Completely in awe of the Scot, Sandoval recalls that “when Bert would excuse himself to go to the bathroom or go get water we’d all just sort of laugh with each other, like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening!’, and then put our straight faces back on when he came into the room. We were very lucky. Grateful that we had some good songs that he liked.”
There certainly were some good songs – Bavarian Fruit Bread, the record Jansch helped them to record, was a folky dream-pop haven. Despite receiving a fairly underwhelming reception compared to the bandmates’ previous projects, it remains a beautifully innovative record.