Entertainment: Sugarplum Fairies Interview

by Katrina Martin

Silvia Ryder likes quiet music. She's not impressed with screaming, heavy drum beats or loud guitars--instead she prefers to communicate her feelings through reflective, soft music and delicate, understated imagery. Perhaps that's why the Sugarplum Fairies' latest release is called Introspective Raincoat Student Music, a gorgeously languid and minimalist album about relationships.

Silvia teamed up with her husband, Ben Bohm, to form the Sugarplum Fairies. She wasn't always a singer/songwriter, however. She moved to the United States 12 years ago from Vienna, her homeland, where she'd worked as a fashion stylist and a music journalist. An agent offered her a job opportunity in Los Angeles and she took it, bringing her husband with her. They've lived in L.A. ever since.

Silvia never had grand ambitions for being in a band. In fact, the Sugarplum Fairies came about as a result of a "weird coincidence." She'd signed up to take a class on producing through the University of California Los Angeles. When she arrived for the first day of class, she realized it wasn't a class on production.

"It was a singing workshop!" she said, laughing. "I thought, 'Why not?' The teacher seemed to have an interesting personality."

This was serendipitous for Silvia who was introduced to the teacher's boyfriend who'd been working with Tori Amos. He heard a recording she made for class, complimented her vocal style and told her she should pursue a career in music.

Her husband, however, had a strong music background and has been a professional musician since he was 17. His band in Vienna had a major record deal and had grown popular over the years. Silvia said he was actually glad to move to Los Angeles because it meant he could walk down the street without being noticed. Now he is the manager of a local restaurant, something he loves. He writes the music for the Sugarplum Fairies on the side.

The couple's songwriting system is usually harmonious and Silvia said she enjoys the process.

"I find it fascinating to start with an acoustic guitar, add some mumblings, and build it up to a song," she said.

She's not the one who plays the guitar and does the mumbling--that's her husband's role. Benny often gets an idea for a melody in his head and will play it and record it for Silvia. Then she sings lyrics to it, and they listen to it together and talk about it. For the most part the songs are completely finished before they record them and there isn't much tinkering to do. In fact, the last record only took four hours to record.

"It's perfect because each of us can work on our own time schedule," she said. Often, it takes Silvia two or three days to write one song, which "first involves six or seven hours of sitting and staring at the wall."

She hasn't written for eight or nine months now, but is ready to start working on the band's next album. Even though it is frustrating for her to begin the writing process again after such a long time away, Silvia said it is actually better.

"I can't write in between records because it really eats me up. It is really intense when I start again," she said.

Silvia's lyrics are often laden with abstract and intriguing imagery and they get right to feelings' razor-sharp edges. For example, the latest album includes lines like "memories like dead bouquets wrapped around with stale clichés," and "the silence between words always hurt the worst" and "you're the one who calls it quits and I never thought we'd end like this." As a result, critics compliment her on her songwriting. However, she humbly says that people think her lyrics are deep because of the language barrier.

"I don't have a writing background," she said. "English is not my first language and I often make mistakes. So I put together words that normal people wouldn't use in daily life. But also, when I write, I take a personal experience and write about it in an abstract way so people can imagine their own story to it."

Her songwriting idols are the members of R.E.M. and Wilco. She admits to being a huge Wilco fan--she bought the I'm Trying to Break Your Heart DVD the day it came out and her husband told her she was crazy.

"My favorite record of [Wilco's] is Summerteeth. It just has brilliant lyrics. [Jeff Tweedy] is my idol for lyric writing," she said.

Silvia said she would rather produce and create music in the dining room of her Los Angeles home than perform live. She works with a computer and an external hard drive to put together her records and prefers more subtle routes for marketing her creations. Therefore, she accepts the side effect of relative obscurity because she just doesn't see herself as a live entertainer. Besides, she reminds me, L.A. doesn't really encourage soft music at its live venues.

"In the L.A. scene there's only a handful of clubs that play mellow music," she said. "And after a while you get tired of playing the same places."

And it's not only the places she gets tired of playing--she also tires of her own songs. She finds it interesting that music is the only artistic medium in which people expect the artist to create the same thing over and over again.

"When you paint a picture, that's it, you don't paint it again. In this business people expect you to do the same material," she said.

In order not to get bored, Silvia produces other bands on her Starfish Records label and once a Sugarplum Fairies record is out and getting press, she starts another. She also owns a publishing company and tries to get music onto television shows and in movies. Producing, writing and publishing are where her heart lies.

"I love being in the studio," she said.