Since 2019, Children of the Pope have been whipping crowds into a part angst, part orgiastic frenzy with their melodious rhythms and dystopian lyrics – a fitting soundtrack to a post-Brexit London. In fact, it was England closing its residency status to European passport-holders that pushed the then eighteen-year-old frontman, founder and frontman of the band, Juno Valentine, to leave his native Brazil and stake his guitar within the pulsing heart of South London’s music scene. After four months spending nights sloshing back beers at The Windmill and convincing his childhood friend – drummer Guilherme Fells – to move there too, the band (named in ode to Valentine’s love for gospel music and ex-bandmember Karolina’s former training as a nun) was ready to convert crowds to its noir rock. Following the release of their debut album Moonface Supreme late last year, we chat to Valentine about recording the album solely on tape in the depth of winter, and the beauties and evils of living in the Ol’ Smoke.

“That’s how I feel sometimes about London, it’s an incredible city to live in but it will knock you out.”

Shana Chandra: At eighteen years old you left Brazil to come to London and start a band. What were the bands, stories and songs that drew you to laying roots in South London?
Juno Valentine: My girlfriend at the time was really obsessed with South London bands, such as The Fat White Family, Warmduscher, Meat Raffle and Country Teasers. I started watching videos of those acts and it all looked very welcoming… Well, it looked scary, but in a welcoming way. In a way that appealed to me.

SC: I read that in Brazil your cousin played with Os Mutantes.
JV: It’s actually my grandpa’s cousin, I think she’s my cousin twice removed. Os Mutantes is a very old band, they’re my favourite band though.

SC: They’re so huge, not only in Brazil.
JV: Everywhere.

SC: How has their music informed yours, if it has?
JV: It has completely. For the kind of music that was going on in Brazil at the time, they revolutionised all of it. They basically made psychedelic punk ten years before punk. They threw the rules out the window and made this very loud, obnoxious, provocative music. Some of it even had to be censored by the dictatorship. It was the most punk rock thing that came out of Brazil and it influenced my music completely. I try to come up with something that’s truly myself and don’t try to please the audience too much.

SC: Tell me how the band began. How long after you arrived in London did it start to form?
JV: I arrived in London because I knew Brexit was going to happen. I found out that I had a few months to enter the country and stay, so I basically just gave everything up, stashed my bag with my guitar and went. Obviously, I knew where to go, I knew The Windmill, I knew the Moth Club, I knew the Shacklewell Arms, I went where I knew there would be like-minded people, artists and musicians. We formed the band by drinking beer at The Windmill. Over the space of four months, every now and then you would meet someone who had similar music taste, and everyone at that place plays an instrument, so it was quite easy forming the band, honestly. Our drummer, [Guilherme Fells] was my childhood friend who’s also from Brazil. I had to convince him to move from Portugal. He’s an incredible drummer, and as soon as he landed, that was the start of the band.

“It was all recorded on tape, no computer was used.”

SC: Your band has a a different line-up now from its first iteration, how has it changed musically?
JV: It’s changed quite a lot. When we started we were very naïve and young. It was only the second band I’ve ever had, so we didn’t really have a clue what we were doing. That was almost a good thing because a lot of the old songs were very peculiar in a way. We came up with ideas that we wouldn’t have come up with if we’d known more about music. Now, everyone in the band is an extremely technically talented musician. Except for me, I’m the only one who’s still kind of childish on the guitar. We’ve got an incredible guitar player [Andrew Saunders], bass player [Jasper Eade], keys player [Matilda Harding], and our drummer is the best in the business. Sometimes I feel a lot of pressure to keep up with those guys. That’s allowed us to play to bigger audiences and at more professional shows.

SC: What’s the most memorable gig you’ve played?
JV: They’ve been countless Windmill gigs, but I’d say the highlight of our live shows so far is opening for The Black Lips. It happened so quickly – they had a cancellation and I had to arrange the whole show. We basically played in a club that was right across the street from where I live. I knew the owner and he opened it up on a Monday for us to put the show on. The show sold out; it was attended by a lot of musicians that I looked up to. It was basically sardines in a tin can, there were so many people there. It was sweaty, it was loud – it was perfect. Those memories will stay with me forever. It was definitely the most fun show I’ve ever played, but also seen.

SC: I really like that with your latest album Moonface Supreme you had a blurb or manifesto about the album, which was really beautiful and poetic. But it almost seemed like a parody as well, so I couldn’t tell if it was sincere…
JV: I think that’s how we like to operate a lot of the time. There’s a lot of sincerity in our lyrics. The songs are really about fundamental yet not very complex ideas. They’re about living, death, love, hate and everything that’s so simple yet so profound in life. It’s that duality. 

SC: What was the recording process for the album like?
JV: To my surprise – at least for us – [it was] extremely swift. Basically, I saved up money for three years. Studio spaces are incredibly expensive, and you know that with every passing minute your money’s going, so you better do a good job. Once we got in there we got into the zone. We had five days to record the whole thing; twelve songs, and we were banging out two a day. It was all recorded on tape, no computer was used. The texture of music recorded on tape is something that’s important to us. We’re kind of vintage in that way. The recording itself was really cool, it was the depths of winter, which definitely added to the mood of the record. It was so cold, so dark and miserable – it added to the eeriness that the record has.

SC: Tell me about the record cover.
JV: I didn’t want to be too specific about the cover. I wanted to portray life in London, life in the big city, because I come from an incredibly small city in Brazil, in the middle of nowhere. Coming from a small town to London, it can really beat you down. Being in a big city in general comes with a lot of problems. It’s such a hectic lifestyle. My idea for the cover was to portray that. That’s how I feel sometimes about London, it’s an incredible city to live in but it will knock you out. It’s a very abstract record. The songs are full of emotion, they’re basically confessions. It’s bittersweet, surrealist, melancholic and honest. The music that we managed to achieve on it is sad but with just a little hope at the end.

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Children of the Pope will be playing live at 100 Club, Oxford St on July 10th.