Caterpillar Girl
She’s best known as Damien Rice’s cello player. Now Vyvienne Long is staking her claim as a solo star. She talks about caterpillars, success with Damo and baring her soul in public.
Peter Murphy, 23 Mar 2010
First things first: Vyvienne Long’s debut album Caterpillar Sarabande is an accomplished and sure-footed collection of chamber pop songs, and a serious statement of intent from an artist hitherto best known for her role as cellist in Damien Rice’s and Lisa Hannigan’s live and studio ensembles. The album’s title, in case you were wondering, pertains to the slo-mo dance performed by a Spanish species of caterpillar.
“I knew that humans would find it difficult to dance to these songs,” says the elfin, soft-spoken songwriter on a rainy February midday in Dublin’s Brook’s Hotel. “By nature caterpillars are slower and very graceful, and they’ve a few moves that I’ve never seen a human do. The Spanish caterpillars were the first ones to champion the sarabande, and it spread throughout Europe. I had seen this dance at one of their festivals, and it’s really a great dance.”
Hold on a minute – is she seriously telling us there’s a caterpillar dance festival?
“Well, there’s a season, it’s kind of like Carnivale. And it has to end before human festivals start, because they’d get crushed.”
Right, and there’s also an annual meeting of the lesser-spotted banana slug in North Carolina. They all get together and drop acid and listen to Tuareg flavoured acid house remixes.
“Well, there is a group of caterpillars who go to that religiously every year too.”
They must be very tired when they get there.
“There are great deals if they catch the right leaf.”
Enough of this gnomic frivolity – does Ms Long dance to her own music?
“At the gigs. We do actually attempt an example of the caterpillar sarabande live.”
Okay. Why?
“Well the album is called Caterpillar Sarabande, and I didn’t want people to be in the dark about what the dance actually was.”
And do they play music while they dance?
“No, we down the instruments for this dance.”
So let’s get this straight: only caterpillars can dance to this music, but they, the originators of the music, can’t actually play it while attempting to mimic the caterpillars?
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