DOWN. WITH. BEARDS.

"Really quite delightfully daft" is how Wendy Roby describes WhoMadeWho, and it is the most apt description we have come across yet. So we talked to drummer Tomas Barfod to find out what makes them them that way. Please imagine the following answers spoken in a thick Danish accent, which is part of the reason why this was our favourite interview in aaaages.

[Riiing. Riiing. Singing - "Three... is the magic number"]
It's Tomas!

Um, hello?
Hello?

Oh hi Tomas. It's Rebecca from The Lipster. Is now a good time for our interview?
Hello. Yes, we can do it now.

Where are you?
Where I am? Outside actually. Just outside the Danish national radio. Which is nice.

Have you been doing an interview?
Yes. It's a bit like BBC Radio 1. It was just talk. It went very well. We only talked about club music, and since we are also more than club music, we kind of regretted that we didn't talk about that more.

Did you correct them?
No, no. We forgot about it. We'll talk about it now.

But first I want to ask you about Denmark. My friend's band played in Copenhagen recently and got trapped in the venue because there was a shooting outside.
Shit! Which venue was that?

I don't know. But I know they got stuck. Is that common?
Actually there is gang wars at the moment, so we have loads of problems with people getting shot in the streets, because they are fighting about the hash markets. So I think that must be one of the gang shootings.

So is it dangerous to be in a band in Copenhagen?
[laughs] No! It's actually a very, very safe place. It's also very safe to be a band because we have a lot of support for artists from the government, so a lot of people are living off being musicians without actually having an audience. [laughs] So it's a very safe place.

How does that work?
If you are good to make applications to different places, if you are good to write a lot of things, then there are a lot of places to make applications for funding. Basically you can get a lot of money if you want to put an effort in it, from the state and from private investors.

I think I might come and live there.
You should do that.

How did you end up doing the video for This Train with Chicks On Speed?
We met them in Australia, like two years ago? And we didn't even have a party with them. We were just chilling with them on the tour bus, and at one point we played with them, just for fun. And since then every time we meet in the outside somewhere we have fun.

Who had the best costumes when you played together?
Actually they got all the costumes for us, so it was all Chicks On Speed costumes. So everybody was nice.

Will you work with them again?
Yeah I think so. We are all busy, but we just played a concert together with them in Lisbon.

You seem to have a meeting of minds.
Yeah, it's fun. Actually in Lisbon I think they were a bit disappointed in us because we were so tired, because we had a gig before, so we were leaving early and stuff.

Did they expect you stay around and party?
Yeah! Sometimes we party hardcore. Other times we are very boring old men.

I heard that Josh Homme covered Space For Rent recently.
Actually guys wrote us on MySpace saying, "Oh Josh Homme is playing your music!" And we thought, yeah, they misunderstood something. We didn't believe it. But then more and more people are starting to write it, and we found a recording on YouTube where he's playing it. We were like, oh that's great man. At one point he was doing a soundtrack for an off-Hollywood movie, a cool one, and he wanted to put it on the soundtrack. But then our publishing didn't want to clear it, so we were kind of mad about it, because he was supposed to do the cover as an official song for the film, and then EMI, the publishing, are very slow because they are a big firm, so it didn't happen.

Josh Homme does Space For Rent

You'd have made some money from that.
Yeah. And even the money's not that important. The whole story would be so good.

Has he been in touch?
Actually the guitar player Jeppe went to the concert when they played in Denmark and they had some Moscow Mules together.

I'd imagine Josh Homme knows how to party hardcore.
Yeah, I think he does.

When you're playing live, is it important for you to make it look good?
Yeah. I think all good live bands have to have everything. A good performance and some visual things as well. It's not just about doing nice songs, it's about doing them the right way.

But do you ever think, what do I look like?
Sometimes! Because we have all these costumes, you know? Usually it's a good, full party at a good venue. But sometimes if it's a very bad party, and you're coming in this strange outfit and people are not ready for it, then you feel like, ah, maybe I should just wear T-shirt and jeans or something. But 99% of all gigs, we are enjoying to have the costumes.

Thanks Tomas!
Cool. Bye!

Tomas has his own MySpace here, which has the word "tartlet" as his description.

WhoMadeWho's album The Plot is out now. It's very good. Go here to see some pictures of them looking very delightfully daft indeed.