This Thursday, August 15th, The Courettes are bringing a night of classic rock’n’roll – of the garage rock and proto-punk variety, not the kind that your dad listens to… unless you have an exceptionally cool dad – to Kung Fu Necktie. The Danish-Brazilian duo, comprised of husband/wife Martin and Flavia Couri, are gearing up to release their fourth full-length, The Soul Of… The Fabulous Courettes, which drops September 27th on CD, cassette, white vinyl, and all digital platforms. Last month the group premiered lead single “California,” featuring La La Brooks of The Crystals, famous for ‘60s hits like “He Hit Me (and It Felt like a Kiss)” and “Da Doo Ron Ron (When He Walked Me Home),” which you’ve surely heard too many rad punk covers of to count. I recently got a chance to chat with Courettes vocalist/guitarist — and “Brazilian riot grrrl from Ipanema” — Flavia Couri via email, who tells me about LP #4, working with a girl group legend, and touring the world.
Izzy Cihak: You recently announced your upcoming fourth studio album, The Soul Of… The Fabulous Courettes, and dropped a single, “California,” which features La La Brooks of The Crystals, who is just so incredibly amazing. How did you connect with her and how was it working with her?
Flavia Couri: Yes, we are so thrilled to have La La featuring in two songs of The Soul of… The Fabulous Courettes! She’s the lead voice on “Da Doo Ron Ron,” one of our favourite songs ever recorded! We owe this to Matt and Rocio Verta-Ray. They came to our show in New York last year, and they came to say hi after, talked about music and their studio, and we kept in contact with them for a future collaboration. The idea was that they would mix one of our tracks. We mentioned nonchalantly that we dreamt of having La La featuring in our album, and as an incredible coincidence, Rocio said they were recording La La´s album at that moment and that she could ask. La La said yes, and we send the tracks over from Denmark to New York and she recorded at their studio (Nyhed Studio). We unfortunately haven’t been together with her in the studio, but hearing her voice coming out of the speakers was just amazing! We are very thankful to La La, Rocio, and Matt.
Izzy: Have you had any favourite reactions to your new music, whether from critics, fans, or live audiences? You’ve already released a handful of singles and you’re currently on a US tour.
Flavia: When we played “Shake!” in Columbus last week there was this couple in the first row dancing like crazy and singing all the lyrics. They came after the show to chat with us and they said they play a cover of the song in their own band, which is super cool! We love when we get reviews saying, “their best work so far,” as we always want to release songs and albums that are better than the previous ones. There was this girl crowdsurfing in a wheelchair once in a festival in France. She had a bottle of beer in her hand, turning it around her head, spilling beer on everybody, her face in pure bliss. This is an image I´ll never forget!
Izzy: You just played your first round of US dates. How did those shows go? Any particular highlights?
Flavia: On this first leg of the tour, we also had our debut in Canada. We played a great festival called Le Festif!, near Quebec, and it was a blast! A really wild audience of more than 1,000 people doing a round mosh pit through our whole set, the last show of the festival, which started at 1:30 am, with a full moon blessing the clear skies after a whole evening of rain. An epic night! We also packed the venue for our first concert in Toronto on a Monday night, where we had this great Canadian band supporting us called Les Deuxluxes. From the American dates, New Haven and Chicago were the highlights. Detroit was fun too, and we shared the stage with The Boreouts, a band with Detroit’s finest garage rockers like Ko Melina of The Dirtbombs. In Chicago we also visited Chess Studios, as we love to do rock’n’roll pilgrimages when we’re in the USA or in the UK.
Izzy: What can be expected of the live show on this round of dates, when you’ll be playing Kung Fu Necktie? I’ve never seen you before, but your live show has a great reputation.
Flavia: You can expect a sweaty celebration of true passion for rock ’n’ roll! The current setlist is a selection of songs of all our four albums and some of the new songs of The Soul of… The Fabulous Courettes. And for your description of Kung Fu Necktie, I can already see it will be a great night.
Izzy: You seem to play a pretty wide variety of venue types, but Kung Fu Necktie is like a classic “barroom,” which I’ve often described as looking like, “a brothel in a Rob Zombie movie,” so I’m curious how you like playing sweaty, intimate, standing room spaces, specifically? They’re definitely my favorite.
Flavia: Sweaty, tiny venues are definitely the most fun! We love the energy exchange with the audience, so it’s great to be able to literally put the guitar right into peoples faces. But we love playing festivals and bigger venues too, as long as the audience is having a blast with us. Wow, “a brothel in a Rob Zombie movie” – now I can’t wait to visit Kung Fu Necktie!
Izzy: You’ve done a ton of really cool music videos with Morten Madsen, including a couple for songs from the new album. What is it that inspires the visual elements of your work? It really seems to match the music pretty perfectly.
Flavia: Martin (drummer) is the one doing all the cover art and graphics for the band. This way we have total control of our visual identity, and besides being the loudest and grooviest drummer in the world, he’s a really talented graphic designer. We both love op art and space age design – Martin has been a collector for years, and our house is fully space age design decorated, and looks like a set coming from the Barbarella movie. We usually say we live in the future imagined in the late 60´s / early 70´s, with the Space Ace and Plastic Fantastic furniture, a future that unfortunately never came to life – apart from our living room. But back to the videos, Morten Madsen is a great director, and he has been working with us since our first video, “The Boy I Love,” from 2015. So, he understands our aesthetics and we have grown together in a very creative and fruitful collaboration.
Izzy: Most of your most significant musical influences and interests seem to be of a previous generation, but obviously you see a ton of bands with all the touring you do (especially at the festivals), so I’m curious if there are any current bands that you think are doing exceptionally cool things, whether they’re doing anything like you or not?
Flavia: As you say, we tour a lot and so we have the privilege of getting to know and share the stage with many great bands – this is one of the best parts of being a touring musician. Some of our favourites from the new generation are The Concrete Boys, King Khan & The Shrines, Oh Gunquit!, The Schizophonics, and The Jackets.
Izzy: I realize this is a huge question, but you’ve been doing this for almost a decade now: What have been some of the personal highlights of the band for you?
Flavia: Listening to our music playing at BBC Radio and supporting The Sonics in 2015 – my 15 years old me would never believe these things would happen! But the biggest highlight is to be able to travel the world, play for different audiences, produce better and better albums, and to make a living doing what we love. For a Brazilian riot grrrl from Ipanema like me, it’s just amazing.
Izzy: Finally, what’s next for you, after the new album drops? How are you hoping and planning to spend the rest of 2024? Anything you’re especially excited about?
Flavia: We have a live session at BBC Radio in September and a long UK tour starting September 26th to promote the album release. We’re very excited about the session and the tour, UK is the home of some of our favourite bands and we are really proud of our label, legendary Damaged Goods Records from London. Then we have a huge Spanish tour – Spain is such a fun country to perform, we’re really excited too! – and more dates in France and Denmark, before the year ends. And much more to be announced for 2025, stay tuned!
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