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Sixpence, much the richerAfter layoff, band returns with 'Divine Discontent'
By Todd Leopold
(CNN) -- So, what has Sixpence None the Richer been doing since bursting onto the music scene with its ubiquitous 1999 hit, "Kiss Me"? Well, it has had some ups and downs. Mostly ups: Lead singer Leigh Nash and her husband bought their first home, and Nash recorded some side projects. Writer and guitarist Matt Slocum wrote a bunch of songs and lent a hand to a Nashville, Tennessee, community arts school. The group recorded a popular cover version of the La's "There She Goes" for the movie "Snow Day." However, tensions prompted its founding drummer, Dale Baker, to leave the band in 2001. Then there is the fact the band has not been able to promote a new album in all that time. It's not that Sixpence didn't want to. But the new record it mostly recorded two years ago was held up due to "record label stuff," says Nash. The CD, "Divine Discontent" (Reprise/Squint/Curb, like CNN a division of AOL Time Warner) was finally released last week, with a single, "Breathe Your Name," enjoying some success. Nash is philosophical about the delay. "Maybe it's better in the long run," she says in a phone interview just before the album's release. She pauses. "It could be better this way." It's a risk, she knows. Usually the last thing an artist wants to do after a breakthrough is wait three years for the follow-up. In today's music business, three years may as well be a lifetime; heck, nobody even wants to guess how Britney Spears will do after a six-month layoff. But Nash, 26, says Sixpence appears to have regained its momentum. "Breathe Your Name" earned a rave in Billboard, and the band is making the rounds of television shows and hitting the road to support the single and album. (In fact, Sixpence will appear on both "The Wayne Brady Show" and "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" Thursday.) "We can breathe a big sigh of relief," she says. 'We're very east Texas'It's not like Sixpence was an overnight success anyway. The band, named for a line from C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity," formed in Austin, Texas, in the early '90s. Slocum was enamored of the early '90s band the Sundays, known for its trilling female lead singer and upbeat songs, and wanted to form a band with a similar sound.
Nash was 16 when Sixpence formed, still in high school. She didn't even tell her friends, she says. "I was so unassuming in high school," she says. "My high school friends probably didn't even know it was me." The group had some early success on the Christian rock circuit, but it wasn't until "Kiss Me" popped up on "Dawson's Creek" and the movie "She's All That" that they enjoyed mainstream success. Nash herself -- a native of New Braunfels, Texas -- was more into country, she says. "We're very east Texas people," she says. "I loved Patsy Cline, George Jones, Tammy Wynette's voice, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard ... I like older country music." Country music celebrates storytelling, she says, and even today she would like to make a country album. One of her side projects was a recording of Skeeter Davis' classic, "The End of the World," with Los Straitjackets. The twang of steel guitar is not part of Sixpence's sound, she continues, but it doesn't have to be. "Singers have a way of getting their songs across," she says. 'Music is music'Indeed, on "Divine Discontent," Nash and the band light into several numbers with strength and emotion, evoking the darker sounds of bands such as the Cranberries and the Katydids, and adding a broader range of instrumentation to its palette. The lyrics speak of uncertainty and groping, perhaps not surprising for a band suddenly thrust into the Top 10 spotlight. "I'm going nowhere/And I'm going to take my time," Nash sings in "Waiting on the Sun." The edgier touches arose organically, says Nash. "We didn't do that purposefully," she says. "It's just the evolution of ... our sound."
"There's spiritual content in a lot of my songs," Slocum says in press notes. "It comes from trying to be honest about the issues of life. But it also comes more in the form of asking questions than giving answers." One throwback on the album is a cover of Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over," which the band performs in a version faithful to the original, though Nash's ethereal vocals are inevitably brighter than Neil Finn's yearning, tender delivery. The band recorded it at the behest of the label, Nash says, but didn't mind. "We love Neil Finn," she says. "We love to play other people's songs." At least the band isn't pigeonholed as a Christian group anymore, not that it ever thought of itself in those terms, says Nash. "If some people hear that you're a Christian band, they'll turn away. But we have to learn to expect it," she says. But, she adds, "Music is music. We don't see the point -- we don't believe music should be characterized."
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Singers have a way of getting their songs across.
