When it came to recording their second album, Warpaint had a simple, effective strategy. "We leant towards things we thought were sexier," says guitarist and vocalist Theresa Wayman. "It was an actual adjective we would use, like, 'Oh, that's sexy' or 'I think it would be sexier if we did this…' That actually happened quite a bit."It's the sort of mantra that would bring a smile to any slick-haired Belstaff-sporting record exec, yet the sound of Warpaint, the eponymous follow-up to the band's widely acclaimed debut The Fool, is not your standard kind of sexy. Woozy, dreamy and rich, it's an album that drags you in until you're enraptured, but there's not much in the way of guttural grunts or cock-waggling guitar solos. As a sidenote, there are no cocks in this particular band neither.
At the beginning of the recording process, the band decamped to the Joshua Tree National Park and worked on ideas. While everything on the Exquisite Corpse EP and The Fool had essentially derived from the partnership of Kokal and Wayman, for Warpaint everyone got a say. "If you're in a band you have to go through a lot of growing pains, trying to find the way that you fit together," says the platinum blonde Kokal, the most emotive member of the band and the heart to Wayman's head. "You want your needs met as an individual while considering the group. You have to be able to express things or you feel stuck. I think that's a primary function of the band, putting everything in the pot and then sculpting it together."
This sculpting took a specific form, with everyone bringing ideas, but one member of the band adopting the role of provocateur, challenging the ideas and elements of a song. "Sometimes being the provocateur meant actually trying to get people to be a little more straightforward or 'formulaic'," says Wayman. "I think that was actually new territory for us, to not be so unpredictable. To find a part that actually works and go 'OK, let's repeat this'. Let's take the best point of the song and let it happen more than once."
Thus the "sexy" principle was born. And by the time the record was finished, sexy was everywhere. The experience of listening to Warpaint the album is a distinctly sensual one, like being lost in someone's dopamine rush. "Absolutely," says Kokal at the suggestion. "I think that's something we have an unspoken ability to communicate, perhaps because we are four women. If you listen to the lyrics, a beat or a bassline it will reflect that sensuality."
