Puppet Wipes: "We Wanted To Do a Performance Art Thing Like a Couple Troubadours With Pages of Notes and Off-Kilter Singing"

Calgary's Puppet Wipes is the latest sensation of the underground airwaves. The group began as the bedroom pet of Arielle McCuaig and Kayla MacNeill. Their synergy as friends and artists is palpable on their outstanding 2022 debut, The Stones Are Watching And They Can Be A Handful, a cutting pastiche of Dadaist post-punk, deconstructed rock 'n' roll, and heady pop art miracles. Lately, they play live as a trio with Jay Wong behind the kit. Last year's 8" lathe-cut Live at Pompeii best displays their transition towards a live band, an extraordinary document that fires on all cylinders, representing the group at its finest moment. The heads dig 'em, enlightened online chat rooms dig 'em, now it's your turn...

For our readers unfamiliar, tell me about the origins of Puppet Wipes. How did you all meet and decide to start making music together?

Arielle McCuaig: We just met through going to shows in town and both making music independently and spending a lot of time together! We went on many trips to Horrible Fest in Cleveland together and then a thought to make a project together called Puppet Wipes partially inspired by seeing a car stuffed to the brim with sports helmets driving down the highway on a bus ride to Cleveland.

Kayla MacNeill: I believe we met at a daytime house show over ten years ago. I was giggling on acid in an odd dip of grass, she was into it. Fast forward a bit and it's a couple evenings and a couple snacks later and we've made a tape not many of our friends liked all that much, but we were bottling lightning and we knew it!

So I guess the Puppet Wipes name also came from the Tin Huey song?

KM: Ehhh dealers choice, we love Ohio

The first Puppet Wipes show was in 2020. How do you think the group has evolved since then?

KM: We wanted to do a performance art thing like a couple troubadours with pages of notes and off-kilter singing. I recollect a viewer saying we reminded them a bit of The Grateful Dead, so that's something. The three piece created a nice solid foundation, digestible ya know? It's neat to hear songs off the record that have upwards of like 12-22 tracks laid on top of each other stripped down to the basics. Jay, Arielle, and I have been playing music together for long enough so there's a certain flow that we all fall into that's really fun to jam with.

AM: The first incarnation was just us trying to recreate the recordings but with an live improvisational twist but now we have this other live incarnation as a shit talking power trio. the experimental DIY recordings are still happening and will be the focus of the next LP even though the lathe and Total Punk record have been the live rock lineup — it's a mixed bag baby! Puppet Wipes provide a little bit of everything!

Arielle, do you find your musical and illustrative practices are linked in any way?

AM: Visual art and music making are both precious outlets, sometimes speaking to other and other times not! I think in relation to Puppet Wipes, our visual art directly correlates to the music. On Stones, Kayla and I worked collaboratively on the art and tried very hard to communicate more information about the world and characters in the music through the cover art and the insert.

What are your thoughts looking back on 2022's The Stones Are Watching And They Can Be a Handful?

KM: A strange piece of art indeed! We worked pretty hard on those songs because the context of what we were creating had changed compared to the tape release which was just a fun collab. Both of us were huge stans of Siltbreeze, so we're thinking okay holy smokes there are people and they are gonna hear these songs. It's a weird album for sure, nice that people can dig. I feel like the experience recording and mixing those sounds has urged me to press on, recording just about anything really.

AM: It's a creative masterpiece! We're better than the frogging Beatles mate! But it is a bit scary to listen to in the dark...also stoners really seem to like it.

How did you get in touch with Tom Lax at Siltbreeze Records?

KM: Rumor has it he reached out to Arielle direct!

AM: One day I got an email from Tom saying he heard the cassette on YouTube and asked if we wanted to put something out. Now we're thick as thieves I think! Hopefully we'll get out to Philly one day for a home cooked meal from the man, he's a master chef to be certain.

What insight can you share about how that album came together? Supposedly it all came together within an hour?

KM: 10-20 minutes over a course of a 1000 years, bedroom recordings, attic recordings, basement recordings, 4 tracks and GarageBand, snacks and laughs. Truth be told, it took a lot longer than either of us expected so we had to mythologize about hours and what not.

AM: Sitting on the floor played a crucial role. Carpets are conductors for creativity! We're creative dawdlers I'd say.

How would you compare it to your first tape It's Called Punk Are You Stupid? from 2018?

AM: I would say it's digging deeper into the dirt and got a bit more flesh to it than the tape. but the LP is perhaps a continuation of the journey.

Diving into some of the toons on The Stones, what can you tell me about track six, "A Web for Every Garden"?

KM: Musically it's just a Yamaha MR-10 ran through the external input of my MS-10, rather simple set up but I'm very proud of that riff! We collab on the lyrics more often than not, I often write more sleight of consciousness style and speak sentences that sound nice, also seem to always have gardens on the brain and spiders are often said to be conduits of creativity if they come and visit. Arielle can speak more to the story within the song I think.

AM: I had a drawing I did years ago that had spiders crawling out of a woman's pregnant belly — just a nice story really. It was floating around as a body horror neurosis for years, maybe a combination of the film Arachnophobia (1990) and office politics. Sometimes you just want some attention at the work you know? But these things can turn sideways.

How did the opening cut "Her Small Caperlioni" come about?

KM: I recall playing a floor tom and a snare up in a lofty attic, epiphyllum nearby, left Arielle up there to work some riff magic while I smoked ten cigs at once.

AM: I wrote the riff for my unconsummated freak folk project Anonymous Cabbage and stole it back for Puppet Wipes. it's what happens when you want to be Richard Thompson but you got sausages for fingers. The information session was a real thing I had to go to. It was quite boring I recall.

What can you tell me about your other recording project Anonymous Carpetting (Cabbage)?

AM: Anonymous Carpetting was recorded on a Yamaha MT8X eight track which we've also used for most of the second Puppet Wipes LP. It's a great little machine that I've recorded almost all my bands on. The Anonymous Carpetting is a fun little song-poem project that will maybe one day perform live I hope! Sometimes it's just fun to make a little song by yourself y'know?

On Stones, I also really like "Jenny's Crurphiliac Fantasy."

KM: Once upon a time I would listen to CBC talk radio (now defunct), they tell stories, one in particular about piano legs was amusing, like they had to cover these piano legs in the times of yore for fear that people would be so distracted by them, (too sexy) and you mustn't be ejaculating during the piano recital apparently that was a problem back then. I believe Arielle coined the name for it. Listening back, we're probably just a bit nuts, we had a ball with those vocals though.

AM: There's a little Folded Shirt easter egg in there for the real heads. Are you a Foldie?

What's the story behind the Live at Pompeii II 8"?

AM: We decided to go to Italy following in the footsteps of troubadours before us and Jay fell into the volcano.

KM: We always wanted to be in Pink Floyd!! together

AM: But wait he got better (Jay did).

What's the origin of the song "Fire Pit"?

KM: I used the riff from forming and thought that was clever — not my poetry though.

AM: We were dancing manically in the living room with a synthesizer on the floor and a dream in our hearts for a song! Kayla said fire pit and I thought she said fire pick and off we flew! I'm not really sure what it's about.

What are your plans with the track "Stepping Through The Marsh"?

KM: Ari's really good at the dubby riffs, the lyrics are an ode to the band because sometimes it's easy to go unplugged and lose precious marbles. Either way, we're moisturized and we're staying dry. We have unfortunately lost a lot of marshland in Alberta we call them wetlands now.

AM: I got a used Space Echo from somewhere in rural Alberta and that really levelled up the guitar on that track.

You made it into the exclusive Dirty Plates singles club on Total Punk last year with I'm Talking About The Puppet Wipes Generation Baby b/w Mr. Dry Cleaner. Where did those two songs originate from?

AM: Both those songs originally appeared on the first cassette but we redid them with the live rock three piece. Mainly an excuse to swear. The B-side "Mr. Dry Cleaner" is a real perfect song that was total collaborative bliss between Kayla and I! Very inspired by The Instant Automatons' "John's Vacuum Cleaner." We love a little story.

What else do you have planned for Puppet Wipes for the year?

AM: We're wrapping up the second LP, which is on the priority list and then whatever takes our fancy we shall follow into the future. Hoping for a second Anonymous Carpetting tape, and have recorded some songs for a project called The Rotting Lobes, but we'll see what happens with that. Instantaneous music is OUT ! Is surely what I heard from the trade papers!

KM: I've been releasing some of my own music under a mossy moniker, trying to sing like the birds, and put some positivity out into the ether. It's fun to collab but it's nice to just sit with my own words and sounds as well. It's called Mossy Day at the moment and you can find it on looksreal.bandcamp.com.

Are there any plans for Puppet Wipes to hit the USA?

AM: No plans at the moment but we'd love to come down.

Any advice or last words you'd like to share with our readers?

AM: Onward and upward!

KM: Peace and love, don't let the bots bite.

Live at Pompeii II is out now on No Label.