Sacred Paws performs this Wednesday, July 17, at ONCE Somerville.
— Photos by Katherine Rose

By Blake Maddux

In 2013, Rauri Maclean, Lorna Gilfedder, Eilidh Rodgers, and Rachel Aggs released the eponymous debut album by their band Golden Grrrls. As gratifying as its 28 minutes of breezy, upbeat pop were, it would prove to be the Scottish quartet’s only record.

Fortunately, guitarist Aggs and drummer Rodgers had already started working together as Sacred Paws. Aggs lived in London and Rodgers in Glasgow, but the long-distance working relationship paid considerable dividends when their first album, Strike A Match, won the 2017 Scottish Album of the Year award.

Sacred Paws returned this year when the esteemed indie label Merge issued Run Around the Sun in May. Like Strike A Match, this 10-track offering mixes brass, woodwinds, and synthesizers into a West Africa-inspired guitar and drum foundation. Rather than serving as a radical departure, Run Around the Sun maintains the substantial momentum garnered by its predecessor’s success.

Aggs and Rodgers spoke to The Somerville Times via Skype in advance of their new band’s first U.S. tour, which stops at ONCE on Wednesday.

The Somerville Times: How did your former band get a name that referenced an American sitcom from the 1980s?

Eilidh Rodgers: I guess it was just a joke. I think people are aware of the show over here, so…

Rachel Aggs: I must say I was not! I’ve still never seen the show and have no idea what it is.

Eilidh: Rachel wasn’t in the band initially, and I really didn’t name it either. I guess our friends Rauri and Lorna kinda came up with it. It was also kind of a play on the riot grrrl thing, with the “r”s.

TST: Why did Golden Grrrls record only one album?

ER: I think we got a bit bored. Rachel and I had already started Sacred Paws, and I think we were both enjoying that a bit more.

RA: I wasn’t an original songwriter in that band, so me and Eilidh wanted to write our own songs together. I was definitely excited to do that. We started doing that even while Golden Grrrls was still a thing, and then it just sort of fizzled out.

ER: I think we found Sacred Paws a bit more exciting. It was more the kind of music that we wanted to make.

TST: What distinguishes Sacred Paws music from that of Golden Grrrls?

ER: It’s probably more about the interplay between just the drums and guitar and finding a way to kind of structure a song with just that.

RA: I was really into the way that Eilidh plays drums and I wanted to do something in which she could go wild a bit more. There were certain Golden Grrrls songs, not ones that I wrote, where the drumming was a bit more offbeat, and I was kinda like, “I just want to do that!”

TST: Who are some of your favorite Scottish bands that Americans have probably never heard of?

ER: Our favorites are probably all ones that America hasn’t heard of yet! We kind of find, weirdly, that a lot of our friends are making the most exciting kind of music. A band called Free Love, our friends Lewis [Cook] and Suzi [Rodden], are kind of a synth, more electronic thing. Lewis also played on both of our records. They’re really great.

RA: Our guitarist, Jack [Mellin], plays in a band called Spinning Coin. They’re a really good guitar band.

ER: Elo Orleans is another one. She’s really great.

TST: Did you fully expect Strike A Match to win Scottish Album of the Year?

ER: Definitely not! (laughs) We were both pretty surprised by that, but it was obviously a good surprise.

TST: What was your reaction when you heard that it had been nominated?

ER: I think we were both pretty confused. (laughs)

RA: That album was great to do, but I don’t think we had this huge plan for putting out our first album. It just sort of happened. It was a culmination of everything we’d done up to that point.

TST: What about when they called your name and it sank in that you had won?

ER: It felt very surreal. And then we had to give a speech. I didn’t say anything, I just froze. Rachel gave the speech. (laughs)

TST: But you did prepare a speech, right?

ER: No, we definitely did not prepare a speech! (laughs)

TST: What, if anything, did you do differently on Run Around the Sun in order to differentiate it from Strike A Match?

RA: I think it was all much more self-contained because we knew that we needed to write another album rather than it just being, like I said, a collection of our songs up to that date. It was definitely a much more self-contained process of writing songs and really thinking about how they would go together on an album. So because of that, it probably sounds a bit different. But we weren’t really consciously trying to make it sound different, because I think we were really pleased that people liked Strike A Match. So, we were like, let’s do that again! (laughs)

TST: Did the attention that the first album received put any pressure on you?

RA: Maybe a little bit, but not really. It wasn’t a huge thing.

ER: I think, if anything, it kind of made us feel more comforted by the thought that people liked the other one and kind of tried to just do the same thing within our capabilities again.

Sacred Paws with Prior Panic, Banana, Wednesday, July 17, 8:00 p.m., at ONCE Somerville, 156 Highland Ave.