Coining the term ‘gloom-pop,’ She Makes War is, however, much more than a comparison; a multi-instrumentalist and visual artist, her execution is one that jolts you from the every day, leaving any initial judgements at the door.
“The reason I do the whole ‘slightly theatrical makeup and interesting clothes’ thing is because I want to jolt people out of the every day when they come,” she begins. “I don’t want it to be like ‘Oh just someone from next door playing some tunes. just sitting down and strumming a guitar.’ I personally think that sort of thing is really boring unless you’ve got exceptional songs… Some people do have exceptional songs and are brilliant at that, but most people are not. So everything I do, I do it for a reason.”
“There are people who go to gigs all the time relentlessly and don’t care if the person’s been on a billboard or not,” she says. “They will support you and spend their money and time on you, and they are the most precious people to me because I didn’t know they existed before I put my own music out.”
“There’s a whole lot going on in people’s lives and I think people find my music to be full of melancholy but also uplifting,” she continues. “I think happy music is just showing off; happy music is going, ‘Look at all the things I’ve got. You don’t have them’ so I prefer sad music, always. If I’m feeling really sad I’ll listen to someone who’ll hopefully tell me the right thing to do – even if they won’t really – and I see that people use my music for that… And that’s amazing. I think if you’ve got a voice that’s authentic and you’re not doing it to be famous, and you’re not doing it to make money, then people respond to that.”
~ Sammy Maine, Bristol Live Magazine.