Photo: Chad Kamenshine
"I don't do well sitting still." Even though Vérité and I aren't speaking face to face, this admission doesn't come as a surprise. She talks fast - sometimes too fast to transcribe - and with the exuberance of someone who can't quite fathom how they've ended up making a living this way. It's easy to imagine her pacing up and down as we talk, rifling through postcards to send to fans.
Her music, though, is concise and measured. "Take me to the fucking roof," she demands on recent release, 'Underdressed', whose languid melody simmers conspiratorially, before erupting into something vast and anthemic. It's intriguing, both musically and lyrically - so it's no wonder she's losing patience with the constant lazy assumptions that it's about her ex.
Speaking on the phone from the US, Verite talks new music, writing postcards to fans, and the horrible awkwardness of creative collaborations.
You decided use a moniker as your stage name. Laura Marling once said she regretted using her name because it doesn't feel like it belongs to her anymore - was that part of the reasoning behind your decision?
"That's actually really interesting. I think for me, it was more that I wanted a clean slate, and I wanted to start the project with this kind of persona that I could encapsulate, and kind of grow into, versus myself, which is, you know, just a constant shifting mess." [Laughs]
I suppose it helps to separate your personal self from your public one.
"Definitely, and I think that having it under a moniker just kind of allows for more creativity and growth and separation, which I think is good."
The name itself derives from cinéma vérité - are you into films?
"I'm not super into films. For me, the definition of where it came from was what really drew me to the name, and then I wound up doing a bunch of research on it, because I wanted to be sure that I was taking on a name that was accurate to what I was trying to portray. I read that cinéma vérité's goal is to represent a candid reality, and I really liked that sentiment, and tried to embrace that sentiment in my writing and performance."
So would you say that you're lyrically candid then?
"It's kind of funny because I feel like I'm being very candid, and then it's very interesting to watch people interpret the lyrics, and realise that people interpret everything so differently. My writing, and the meaning behind the writing, is very honest and candid, but there's definitely a lot of ambiguity and room for interpretation at the same time, which I find fascinating. I think people just hear what they need to hear, and take the meaning that they need to take at any given moment, and I think that's been a really beautiful thing to watch."
When you're in your own head, you assume that it's really obvious what you're talking about...
"It's so obvious! And then people just do not understand it at all which I think is funny."
What's the strangest interpretation you've heard?
"People think I'm talking about my ex a lot, or some kind of tumultuous relationship where I'm the indignant, hurt party, and that's not what any of it is about, so it's interesting that that's how it's pretty consistently interpreted. Every once in a while, I just want to yell, 'IT'S NOT ABOUT MY EX'. I'm not giving him that much credit."
Is that what prompted your tweet the other day when you said, 'I do not write songs about fuckboys'?
"Yes! Exactly. I was just reading these interpretations and being like, 'No, I swear, there's a more intellectual, deep meaning to this'."
In terms of the writing process, a few years ago you said you wrote your songs with people over email, and that you found that easier than being in the same room. Do you still do that?
"Not as much anymore. It's not a very common way of writing. My writing process is very similar, but now it's just in person... which was very awkward in the beginning, and still can be very awkward, but I think as I found people who I'm comfortable being in the same room as, it's become an easier process."
It's interesting that you describe the collaborative process as awkward.
"It is horribly awkward! I've definitely grown in confidence to the point where it's much less awkward when I go in with a very solid vision, and am not afraid of, you know, dictating what I want, and laying out what direction I want and being vocal about various aspects of composition and production. So the less hesitant I am, the less awkward the situation winds up being, because people are really open to collaboration for the most part.
"I think within five minutes of the session you know whether or not that session is going to yield something that can be personal and something that can be a release, and then if not, within that first however long, I just start writing a song for someone else, and then it's much less of an intimate collaboration, and it becomes more, 'Oh I'm gonna write a song for Katy Perry'.
Do you say to the people, when you've made up your mind about that, 'This isn't for me anymore?' or do you keep that to yourself?
[Laughs] "For the most part I keep it to myself because you never want to hurt someone's feelings, but you definitely email management afterwards and be like, 'This song is for Katy Perry'."
You've talked about how, in the pop world, there's a lot of pressure to write a radio single, but recently people like Rihanna and Kanye West have released albums that actually have very few songs that are exactly radio friendly. Do you think the importance of hit singles might be diminishing a bit?
"I'm in a lucky position, because currently there's zero pressure for me to write radio singles just because I'm not signed, and I feel like that's a very major label method of doing things, and for me right not it's not a focus, nor do I think it'll ever really be a main concern for me. I've always been focussed on building from the ground up and building a really loyal fanbase and having people come out to shows and having people love the music, so that my career isn't contingent on a radio single.
"I mean I'm really in love with the Rihanna album, and besides 'Work' - which is barely a radio single, I mean it's catchy but it's not structured in that typical way, like 'Diamonds' was - but I think that once you hit a point of respect as an artist, you have all this freedom to really just be an artist, and make good, interesting, quality music, and then people will gravitate towards that."
And in this day and age, there isn't this idea that pop and credibility are mutually exclusive, so really interesting artists are coming out of the mainstream pop world.
"Yeah, it's a very exciting time. I think consumers and people who listen to music are just so much smarter now that they have so much access to so much different music, that they know when they're being fed things that aren't authentic, and aren't real, they know when an artist is manufactured, they know when a song is manufactured - that doesn't mean they won't listen to it, but they know. So treating listeners with respect, like they're intelligent individuals who know what they want, is my goal, and hoping that they like what you do, authentically."
You just mentioned your fanbase, and I know that you've been writing postcards to your fans. How did that come about?
"The postcards were so random honestly. I was on a little hiatus, and so I was really stir crazy, and kind of going out of my mind - actually legitimately going out of my mind, I don't do well sitting still - and I tweeted something about going to the post office and somebody tweeted like, 'Mail me something', and it kind of started from that, and I just created an email address, and invited people to send their address... and then I got a little overwhelmed, because I got over 300 of them. I think the goal is just to be nice. This is my full time job and if I can be nice and kind to the people that allow me to do this, then I absolutely want to do that."
So did you manage to send one to everyone who asked you?
"Yeah, I did. It's funny to see people - there's one girl in Vietnam who got her postcard and I was so thrilled. It's just amazing to see how they go all over the world and how I can now trust the US postal system, because I had very little faith in the mail delivery system."
Finally, you've got an EP - Living - coming out. What do you think will surprise people the most about it?
"What I've heard from somebody, which I think is a compliment, is they were surprised that it wasn't more mainstream pop. I think a lot of times you have success in this left of pop world, and then there's a gravitation towards - kind of what we were talking about before, get a radio single, have a more pristine product - and I think for me, I just wanted to make a really good body of work that was impactful and honest, and so I hope that people resonate with it and like it."
- The Living EP is released on 6 May
