From folk-pop to blues-rock, from Tooting lock-ins to Malibu beach parties, it’s a been a whirlwind of change for Sandi Thom. She talks tequila, musical muscle and black catsuits with Polly Glass, taken from a recent edition of Amuse Magazine.
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my haiiiirrr!” - ah, those sentiments of sugar-coated kook you’ll no doubt recall from when they first got stuck in your head in 2006. You could have expected many things to become of Scottish overnight folk- pop sensation Sandi Thom; she might have grown ever sweeter until the syrup dripped off her, joined a
Hippy cult, or simply faded into oblivion. Less predictably, she’s honed her serious rocker prowess and
Made a fantastic blues-rock record, Flesh & Blood - with collaborators from the Led Zeppelin and Black Crowes camps among others. It’s an overwhelmingly male-dominated genre, but that doesn’t intimidate the 30-year-old one bit: “I love the fact that I play the harmonica and electric guitar and that it’s so different for a woman to do that. The only doubts might be that my hands are tiny and I can’t span across four bars!”
In the style stakes, since moving stateside (with guitar hero boyfriend Joe Bonamassa), it’s been goodbye Topshop and H&M, hello BB, Forever 21 and flea markets - where this treacle-maned, LBD and suede boots-loving girl jazzes up her look with American- Indian turquoise jewellery (a nod to album collaborator, Buffy Sainte Marie). With style icons like Suzi Quatro in mind, however, black catsuits are calling her name: “I’m going to have a whole big wardrobe that’s just going to have catsuits,” she declares.
Suitably bold choices to match that big voice she cultivated playing covers back in Scotland as a 14-year-old, sneaking out to play gigs and drink cider at weekends. After becoming the youngest student to attend LIPA (Paul McCartney’s performing arts school), she moved to London where Soho’s Floridita became a favourite haunt. But if she’s homesick for anything, it’s the retro side of British culture: “I miss pubs - that tradition of sitting round the fire and bringing out the fiddles, lock-ins and drinking whisky.”
But while her Malibu home may still be packed out with guitars, party tipple of choice has changed somewhat - tequila shots and margheritas to be precise, “then it’s good tunes, good friends, a couple of guitars and a fire going on the beach.”
Sandi plays the 02 Islington Academy on 1 November. Her new record ‘Flesh And Blood’ is out now on Guardian Angels Records, sandithom.com
