Sally Shapiro on Pet Shop Boys, Working With Johnny Jewel, and Picking Blueberries on Holiday
This is a free post from Larry Fitzmaurice's Last Donut of the Night newsletter. Paid subscribers get one or two email-only Baker's Dozens every week featuring music I've been listening to and some critical observations around it.
And a brief update for paid subscribers—I finally got my stitches removed, which means I'm fully operational again on the typing side of things. Expect a Baker's Dozen tomorow!
OK, getting back to business, I've been a big fan of Sally Shapiro since their excellent debut album Disco Romance in 2006, this remix of "He Keeps Me Alive" also lives rent-free in my head. Sally and Johan Agebjörn put the project to bed for a bit before returning with the exquisite Sad Cities in 2022, and at the end of May they released their great new album Ready to Live a Lie—their second record for new-ish label home Italians Do It Better. We got on a call at the top of May to talk about their career and the music that's made them who they are today, it was a great conversation that I'm sure you'll enjoy reading if you've been similarly captivated by their music over the years. Check it out:
This is your second album since starting the project back up again. Talk to me about how it feels at this point.
Johan: Sad Cities felt like, "Do we really still have the ability to make music? Can we still make something interesting?" It was a big thing to restart the project and start working again with Italians Do It Better. We put it together in quite a short time, almost to the degree that it was quite stressful due to all the other responsibilities we have. This record came about more naturally. We felt welcomed back by listeners and music media, so it felt natural thing to make another album.
Conceptually, the album title is because a lot of the tracks were dealing with difficulties in long-term relationships—boredom, Triangle Dramas, and so on. We felt that Ready to Live a Lie would summarize the difficulty of being true to yourself and to others in life.
Tell me about what caused you to go on hiatus to begin with, as well as what you guys had to do to get back into the feeling.
Johan: You want to say why we took a break?
Sally: Yeah. After the third album, we felt like we diverged somehow. I'm more on the indie-pop spectrum, and Johan is more on the ambient and electronic spectrum. We had different thoughts about how we would proceed, and if it should proceed.
Johan: We felt like, "Yeah, maybe this is it. Maybe we won't be on the same inspirational level again."And then a few years passed.
Sally: Also, from the first album to the third album, we always had songs that were in progress. After the third album, we didn't have that inspiration to have more songs in progress and, since that was the way we'd worked, it felt like, "Oh no, there's not going to be any more Sally songs now." We were quite satisfied with everything, and we thought, "Well this is it. Three albums, that's good enough."
Johan: We did a final single and a compilation album just to tie it together, but then a few years passed and we both felt a bit of sadness that the project didn't exist. Slowly, inspiration began to come back, and we made two tracks with Ryan Paris, an Italo disco artist from the '80s. The reason for that was because I was asked to make some '80s tracks with '80s artists for a Swedish film, and we had these two tracks that were like duets. So it was natural to ask Sally, and her appearance on those tracks was refreshing and inspirational. Then I got some new song ideas, and I was like, "Okay, these really need to be Sally Shapiro songs." And from there it took off again.
I don't think we'll do the same thing if we get uninspired again. We've learned that maybe iwe just need some time.
That makes sense. Sometimes when people take breaks from projects it can be because of conflict, but that doesn't sound like the case here.
Johan: No, it wasn't like we were fighting or anything like that. It was just a musically divergent feeling.
When you guys talked about not performing live a very long time ago, you said that you wanted to be normal people with normal jobs, recording songs on the weekends and picking blueberries on holidays, which is a very reasonable sentiment, as well as a more unusual one to put forth back then than it is now.
Sally: We both have ordinary day jobs. You are working part-time with music.
Johan: Yeah, like 20%. I work Mondays on music, and Tuesday to Friday as a psychologist. We both feel it's very good to have a stable income from a day job. Sally, you've never really been interested in being a pop star.
Sally: [Laughs] No.
Johan: I had dreams once to make a living as musician. But now I'm really happy with having a mix of two things. I don't think I could be a full-time musician, but it's good to be a part-time musician. And, Sally you're still into picking blueberries and mushrooms.
Sally: Yes, I am. I like spending my spare time that way, and I'm not really interested in touring life, which is tougher. Even 18 years ago, I wasn't interested in it. I like the ordinary life.
I've talked to a lot of musicians over the last few years who feel similar. Sally: That's good. It's not bad, wanting to tour—that's also good. But it's different, and there's not just one type of person that makes art.
Johan: It's okay to be an introvert.
Sally: Exactly. You don't have to be an extrovert to make music. So I think it's good that it works both ways nowadays.
Indie-pop was mentioned before, and that's a subgenre of music that has a very specific type of fandom. What's been your guys' experience with fandom in general over the years?
Johan: I can't say that I know them so well, so it's difficult to draw conclusions. But I think we make very melancholic music, and to really dig our music you probably have a need to process difficult feelings—sadness, anxiety maybe. I think that goes for a lot of music listeners, or people in general. But maybe we have listeners who are a bit more sensitive than the average person, and that probably goes for me and Sally as well. Do you have any ideas on this, Sally?
Sally: No, since we're not meeting them. [Laughs]
Johan: We do connect through social media—we send out records and write some small words. We like that contact. But you don't get to know them on a deeper level, which maybe is how it should be.
What were some early artists when you were younger that you felt like you were fans of?
Johan: For my part, Pet Shop Boys need to be mentioned, of course—and Italo disco. There were many producers and aliases with short-lived projects, so I can't really name one. Valerie Dore was an artist whose first three singles really inspired me. Savage, also. I really liked Sandra. Sally, you introduced me to Mylene Farmer.
Sally: Well, that was a little bit later—but that kind of music I like, and she's really inspirational musically. When I was first starting to explore music, I was more for the pop era, maybe the British era—the Cure, Blur, stuff like that. And also Swedish things, but I don't think you will know their names. [Laughs]
I'm always curious to hear about Swedish singer-songwriters that I've never heard of!
Sally: There's Stina Nordenstam.
Johan: Oh yeah, she's wonderful. She also had social anxiety and hated to perform live. I don't think she did it very many times.
Sally: That's good. [Laughs]
Johan: And if we should speak about indie-pop, then I'd like to mention Belle and Sebastian. They're really, really good.
Tell me more about deciding to cover Pet Shop Boys' "Rent" on this record. It's a great song and an interesting one in their catalog.
Johan: I'd been thinking for a long time that we should cover a Pet Shop Boys song, but I didn't know which track we should choose. "Being Boring" is probably my favorite track, but it's already perfect, so it'd just be impossible.
Sally: I was a bit skeptical because, it's always hard to make covers of good songs that are good in themselves. It's easier if you, say, take a really good rock song and then do it in a completely other genre. That's not easier, but it's easier to have a reason to do it. So I was a bit skeptical of doing a Pet Shop Boys cover first, but now I'm happy with it.
Johan: One thing that made it possible to cover "Rent" is that it has so many horns and instruments in it—they have some synths, of course. But our version is really simple, and the track itself has such wonderful harmonies.
Sally: I also like the melancholic feeling in the text—how it's both good and bad
at the same time, because most things in life are good and bad at the same time.
"This is not good, but it's still good."
It makes so much sense to me that you're putting out records on Italians Do It Better now. Talk to me about your relationship with them and what it is about the label that makes them special.
Johan: I was a quite big fan of them already from when they broke through
roughly at the same time as Sally Shapiro. I had the After Dark compilation, and I also made a remix for Glass Candy in 2008. I had some contact with Johnny Jewel, but then we lost contact, but not completely. I sent some songs sometimes, and he wrote some positive shouts. Then I emailed him when we were doing Sad Cities asked if he wanted to co-produce or collaborate on a song. His email wasn't working anymore, but the label president replied and asked if we wanted to maybe release the album on Italians Do It Better, so we mixed the album together instead, Johnny Jewel and I. We also mixed this new album together, and it's been a really good thing for the project because the music sounds more professional and well-mixed.
The whole catalog is really deep, and it has a lot of the same inspiration sources
as we do. I listen to a lot of their artists, like Jorja Chalmers and Orion Rigel Dommisse. I like a lot of the music that they put out, and it's been good for us to reach out to their listeners because we fit pretty well musically on the label.