By Kelley Simms

Photos by Alex Solca

Genre-defining STOLEN BABIES are in a world all its own.

Formed in 2002 in California, the female-fronted, accordion-playing avant-garde metal band has only released two albums in its existence; 2006’s There Might Be Squabbles Ahead, and their latest effort Naught, released digitally on Sept. 18 and physically available on Oct. 16 via the band’s own label, No Comment Records.

Singer/accordion player Dominique Lenore Persi has an intriguing look (born half Tai/half Italian) while the band has an equally intriguing image and sound.

Dominique became enamored with the accordion at the age of 16 after a failed piano lesson. She was inspired by her father — forced to take lessons by his Lawrence Welk-obsessed mother — who played a heavy, old fashioned model. She started out in an original 12-plus member performance troupe, the FRATELLIS (no relation to the Glasgow indie rockers), performing skits and playing untraditional music, which laid the foundation for Stolen Babies.

“(the Fratellis) was a theatrical band and a lot of stuff was instrumental,” Dominique said. “I was around 16 and didn’t really know what to do in that band during the instrumental songs. At the time, I wasn’t writing any music, I was just writing parts. So I just picked up the accordion and played it in that band just for something to play along with, and it just evolved from there.”
“But I never wanted to play accordion in Stolen Babies because I didn’t know how to incorporate accordion into a rock band and I liked having dual personalities. I wanted to be part of the writing process and my voice just wasn’t enough and I needed to bring an instrument in. The accordion was the instrument that I felt most comfortable on and I got over all these reservations and figured out how to make it work. And I think we’ve been making it work ever since.”

Completing the band is twin brothers Rani (bass) and Gil (drums) Sharone, Ben Rico (keyboards) and Davey Oberlin (touring guitarist). The out of left field music created by the band is undeniably attributed to such diverse influences as OINGO BOINGO, MR. BUNGLE, FISHBONE (whom Gil has played for) and SWANS.

“Out of huge respect, we will never deny those influences,” Dominique proudly states. “You can never deny what influences you, even if it sounds passé or trite. Bungle was a huge influence in my adolence and I still totally love them. Oingo Boingo I would have to say is my favorite band of all time. Obviously, those aren’t the only influences. The things that have influenced us since Squabbles are very different — it’s a darker album, and we all went through a lot of shit. But I will never deny the things I love and it’s obviously very important to the band.”

One can help but notice that there’s a six-year gap between their debut and their latest release. Gil and Rani collectively kept themselves busy by playing in bands such as the aforementioned Fishbone, PUSCIFER, OTEP and DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, while Dominique went into hibernation.

“A lot of shit went down,” Dominique bravely states. “For me, I don’t want to be a ‘look at me’ type of person. I’ve never really been good about handling attention. But I love performing and I love writing. I might sound like such a hypocrite, but I wasn’t comfortable with even the tiniest, miniscule of attention. I had a lot of personal things happen in my life and I actually moved away from LA to the Bay Area. The band went on hiatus and the timing worked out wonderfully. Gil and Rani got all these jobs. Everyone was doing what they needed to do as human beings to evolve, toughen up and develop themselves. In my heart, I kind of left the band. We never really announced the break from the band, and Rani was definitley tring to keep it going. But all of that really formed the album and we’re back in it and it feels really good for all of us.”

While listening to Naught, you can really sink your teeth into the songs, which include memorable melodies that embed in your brain.

“It was a conscience effort to improve, but nothing else about the album was intentional. Rani has never written a lyric for the band, but for this album during the period that I was AWOL, Rani wanted this band to be doing something. So he wrote a lot of lyrics. I have a hard time singing someone else’s lyrics — there’s a little bit of ego involved — but I get over it. ‘I Woke Up’ and the ‘Birthday Song’ were originally part of this songwriting club that I was in — The Immersion Composition Society. It’s a big movement with lodges all over the country and even internationally. It’s a song-writing club where you have to write and record as many songs as possible in a day. ‘Splatter’ and ‘Never Come Back’ was part of Rani’s ICS session. On this album, we have all matured so much and have gone through so much, that I hope there’s a lot more depth because I feel that we’re definitely different people now.”

The visual image of the band remains constant. The sinister Tim Burton images and the surreal Crab Scrambly cover artwork go hand-in-hand with the band’s music.

“We’re about creating the whole package; music and visuals,” Dominique concluded. “We want to make good videos and I think that’s why it’s taken us so long to make another video because we don’t want to half-ass it. We have a high standard and we want everything we represent visually to meet the standards of the music and now we want the music to meet the standards of the visuals. We’re creating our own world here. We’re all in our own little world.”