Lilly Wood & the Prick enthral

Shock pop duet

La Rochelle 

29/07/2010 - 

They are inventive, zealous and lavish. Lilly Wood & the Prick, the new French discoveries of the independent label, Cinq7, are currently on tour. Their fine first album (Invincible Friends) sent 24-year-old Nili Hadida and Ben Cotto straight to the forefront of the hybrid scene (pop, folk, electro, etc.), which they are already occupying with ease. We met them at the recent Francofolies festival in La Rochelle.

Before they starting composing together, the two of them had never even spoken. Half-French, half-Israeli Nili was lost in love and doing odd jobs; all-Parisian Ben worked in the audio-visual industry and strummed guitar to sooth his soul. They met through a friend four years ago, in a Parisian bar, barely talked to each other, but made a date to meet two days later to see if a musical match was on the cards.

In the space of a few hours they had come up with three songs. Ben knits the music together, Nili stitches in the texts, suggests tunes and sings. “In English, because in French we’d be comparing ourselves to Delpch, Brel and Gainsbourg, and they’ve set the bar too high,” Ben stipulated. Nili went on: “We got close very quickly; when you make music you immediately lay yourself bare.”

Then followed the usual rounds of local bars, couscous cafes and dodgy basement joints. “Thankfully, it didn’t go on for years, but it was good, we played then like we play now; we wanted to share something with the people coming to see us,” insisted Ben. They quickly got noticed by several record labels and chose Cinq7 because of their honest reputation: “In a set-up like this, every name has a face. We work on a human level without being drowned in a huge machine,” observed Ben.

Naïve but trash

The name the couple chose for their band, Lilly Wood & the Prick, goes well with the contrasted atmosphere of their first album, which manages to be naïve and trash, joyous and sombre, thrown together and polished at the same time. It’s a fairy tale gone off the rails, set against a motley soundtrack (pop, blues, rock, electro, etc.), and in which neither the prince nor the princess is under any illusions. “We sing about the everyday lives of people between 18 and 25, love stories, sex stories…” said Ben. “We write things simply and always with sincerity”, added Nili, who’s as off the wall and loquacious on stage as he is quiet and unassuming. “We have complementary personalities, we reassure and bring something to each other.”

On that day of 15 July, Nili gave her all to the crowd at the Francos in la Rochelle: her rage, her mischievous bursts of laughter, her disillusions and desires. Her sublime diva soul voice cuts a contrast with her childlike manner. She minces insolently in front of her audience, jokes and jumps, grabs hold of her keyboard guitar like Jean-Michel Jarre, invites the spectators to get up on stage with her and then bursts into song with Little Johnny, a hippy-sounding folk ballad. Ben watches her with tender amusement. She has the grace to disappear from time to time and give him his fifteen moments of glory and guitar. Their tacit complicity, originality and the obvious pleasure they derive from teasing and openly smiling at their audience have the effect of a delightful elixir.

Lilly Wood & the Prick Invincible Friends (Cinq 7) 2010

On tour throughout France, at the Fnac Indétendances festival in Paris on 31 July, and at la Maroquinerie, also in Paris, on 24 September.  

Fleur  de la Haye

Translation : Anne-Marie  Harper