As so often happens with debut albums, the sessions for Smoosh's She Like Electric were fraught. The band was inexperienced, and became overexcited. There were disagreements with their "mentor," Jason McGerr of US college-rock stalwarts Death Cab for Cutie. Eventually, things got so out of control that McGerr was forced to lock Smoosh's drummer, Chloe, out of the studio.
"The next thing I know, there's a tap on the window of the studio control room and Chloe's standing there with a little piece of paper, on which she's written, `Do you want to fight?'"
He laughs a slightly baffled-sounding laugh. It's a sound you swiftly get used to when discussing Smoosh. Everyone seems slightly baffled by the band -- from McGerr, who discovered the duo while teaching at a Seattle drum school, to their manager and father, Mike, who recently spotted them hanging out backstage when they supported Pearl Jam.
He found himself "scratching my head in awe. They were playing with Eddie Vedder -- not playing instruments, just playing, throwing oranges around and stuff. I peeked in, saw that, and thought, `This is crazy.'"
And then there's the audiences, who, McGerr says, tend to react to Smoosh's live performances with "a funny look of amazement."
The only people who aren't slightly baffled are Smoosh themselves, who seem to think a critically acclaimed rock band consisting of two sisters, one 13 years old and one 11, is the very height of normality.
"We didn't really decide to be in a band," says Asya, 13, who writes the songs, plays keyboard and sings. "It just happened." Her younger sister was taking drum lessons from McGerr, inspired by the sight of "this really cool sparkly red drum set."
One day, Asya told McGerr that she wrote songs on a keyboard at home. He was, he says, "just startled."
"I think that for a lot of musicians who've been doing this for a long time, when we see youth having so much effortless fun creating songs, it rekindles our initial feelings and love for music. That's what's happening with a lot of these artists who want to perform with them. To see an 11-year-old bang her head while playing the drums ..." he sighs. "It's awesome."
Teenage kicks
Their celebrity fans include Sufjan Stevens, Sleater-Kinney, the Go! Team and Bloc Party. For their part, the sisters are unruffled by their success. Nerves certainly don't seem to be an issue. Chloe prefers playing big shows to their early performances two years ago at open-mic events in Seattle.
Then, she feared, "people were just clapping because they thought it was so cute that we were singing." And no, says Asya, she doesn't get nervous on stage, or meeting rock stars. "We're all just doing the same thing."
Even the actor Tobey Maguire was greeted with a degree of coolness when he ventured backstage after a show in Los Angeles.
"He'd heard us and wanted to see us," Asya says with a shrug.
Despite their insouciance, there is something very impressive about She Like Electric, whose title was conceived when the pair were playing on the trampoline in their back garden. For a start, there's the fact that sisters aged 13 and 11 could work together without a terrible eruption of sibling violence.
There is the occasional spat, though. "We fight when Asya's being annoying," confides Chloe. "She's like, `You're not doing that right! I'm doing it right and I have to sing and play the piano and you just have to play the drums and you're not doing it right!' Then I get really mad, and I say, `Why are you acting like my mother?'"
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