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The cover for Stranger To Love, the debut album from SENNA, is striking. The black background makes the white and red colours pop out, instantly captivating the audience’s attention. But the story behind the album is as unique as the artwork.
“The first demos for the album were written in 2021 and 2022. We already had a lot of material, and at some point, we had so much that we figured that we should put an album together and see if it makes sense. It took us a long time from that stage to finalise the album. A bunch of it was written even before we released our EP in 2022,” bassist Marcel Dürr explains. He and drummer Viktor Warzecha are with us to discuss their debut album, what it’s like to be an up-and-coming band in the age of social media, and what song they would play to someone who has never heard of the band before.
Dürr goes on to explain that the album name came about by “thinking about the common theme between the songs, and a lot of them are introspective and about love in a more abstract way. It’s a big topic, and not just in the romantic way, but also with friends. I guess most of them are from a perspective where it’s lacking, whether you’re not loving yourself or the classic sad love song.”
Whilst love might be a timeless theme, the way we consume music has changed. The days of stumbling upon a CD that could introduce you to your new favourite band whilst browsing in the shops are long gone, replaced by streaming services. Now you can look up any band on a streaming app and listen to any song on their discography, with their singles at the forefront. This is why SENNA decided to put the singles in the first half of their album, as Warzecha explains.
“We wanted to have the strong songs in the first half of the album, and we wanted to start strong to capture the audience in the moment, and the other half gets more experimental. However, we also had a meeting where we decided what to name the songs in the first place, as a lot of the songs had working titles. But we always knew that Hurricane was going to be the opening song, and Polarised made sense as an ending song.”
It is clear how passionate they are about music. However, being an up-and-coming band in the age of social media is something that has to be navigated. There is a fine line between trying to keep up with trends whilst also staying true to yourself.
“We’d love to grow, but we still see a long way ahead of us and put in a lot of work. We try to not rely so much on social media, but our manager is a big driving force of keeping things real. He gives us reality checks. You know, what’s happening on social media isn’t the real world. We’ve been on some tours now and we try to play live as much as we can, and that’s – for us – the true test,” Dürr says. “Also, if we want to gauge if we’ve made it as a band, whilst the numbers look great at the moment, which is really validating, but if we go on tour and no one shows up, that’s the important part.”
He explains that the band put a lot of effort into making sure that social media does their work and music justice, they tend to leave it at that and focus on the realer aspect. There are bands on social media that don’t look ‘big’ online, they’re filling up rooms and arenas. “All the clicks in the world don’t compare to playing a show, looking at people face-to-face, and them coming up to you after the show, shake your hand, and say: ‘Good job. We really enjoyed the concert’.”
SENNA have both an EP and an album out, so they have quite a collection of songs to choose from, but if Dürr and Warzecha had to choose a song each, then Dürr would choose Drunk Dial Anthem “because it’s a really feel-good song, with a bit of a heavy part at the end. But it’s mostly a very approachable song. I’m proud of it.” Warzecha would choose Hurricane “because it’s my all-time favourite song from the album. It was also the opening song for a few of our gigs, and just the way it starts and progresses, it has all the different aspects that stand out for me personally. I’m also a sucker for opening songs, and if an opener doesn’t catch my attention, then I’m lost for the whole album,” he laughs.
Although the album goes experimental throughout its runtime, the future of the band’s sound is open. As Dürr explains. “We’ve written some songs, but I don’t think we’d call any of them finished. I’m really open to doing more experimental stuff, but one thing that I think is for certain is that we want to stay approachable, and write. I think it’s one of our biggest strengths that the music is easy to understand and there is a low-entry barrier. I have to say that we try to provide enough musical depth so that on repeated listens, you’ll find that the song has a lot more to offer. We don’t write eleven-minute opera songs, but we’re musicians at heart and we like to push our respective instruments in cool ways, but we always have in mind that these songs should be fun to listen to, especially when played live.”
Stranger To Love is out now via SharpTone Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS122 here:
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The post Senna: No Longer Strangers To Love appeared first on Distorted Sound Magazine.
