4 To Watch: Noisettes

Hometown: London, England
Members [L-R]: Jamie Morrison (drums), Shingai Shoniwa (bass, vocals), Dan Smith (guitar)
Fun fact: Bassist/vocalist Shingai Shoniwa—whose first name means ‘perseverance’ in the East African Shona language—was first inspired to rock by an equally exotic source: Thomas Mapfumo’s guitar transcriptions of the mbira, a traditional thumb piano dubbed “telephone to the spirits,” Shoniwa explains, “because it puts you into a trance so you can reach a state beyond physical mortality.”
Why they’re worth watching: They bridge the gap between late ‘60s acid rock and modern alternative.
For fans of: Wolfmother, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Jimi Hendrix

Sure, Shingai Shoniwa currently feels right at home in urbane Britain. After all, it’s where she studied theater, co-scored a Harlem-themed musical with fellow classmate Dan Smith and formed her brainy blues-rawk trio, Noisettes, with Smith on guitar and Jamie Morrison on drums. But in Malawi—where she spent a good deal of her childhood, roughing it in the danger-fraught bush—she was quite the tigress. A la The Jungle Book, she giggles, “I had to fetch water, balanced on your head, first thing in the morning, at least enough to get you through to the midday meal. The other kids laughed, because I was this kid from London who couldn’t hold a jug up for longer than a couple of minutes. But I learned quickly, and today I can balance pretty much anything on my head, even a suitcase.”

Shoniwa had a tough time of it in Africa. She had to hunt her own food (pigeons), was chased by rogue elephants, and she shocked her grandmother by dragging home a feral Cape Hunting puppy, which infested the house with fleas. So, naturally, Noisettes’ debut, What’s The Time Mr. Wolf, feels relatively untamed, with snarlers like “Iwe,” “Hierarchy” and “Don’t Give Up,” penned for an artist friend who literally lost her mind in the big city.

Shoniwa can’t help it. Her music, she concludes, reflects her culture. “Which is very spiritual,” she says, “because we have totems—animal spirits that guide my tribe, the Sokha. And you might have some of the mannerisms of that animal, its strengths, but you’ll also have its weaknesses. We believe a lot in the power of the animal.”