The Nervo No Brainer

12 April 2010

by Nicole Fossati

Get the idea of dumb luck out of your head. Identical twin sisters Olivia and Miriam Nervo don’t just happen to be hot, talented, accomplished and relevant. At 28 years of age, this little A&R wet-dream-team is well respected in the business of writing and producing hit songs in the UK and US and they’ve been grooming themselves for nearly a decade to reach this tipping point. Their steady enterprise has made them a bankable brand and on the dawn of their freshly inked artist signing with Virgin Records NY they are as rightfully (albeit charmingly) ambitious about nailing their star-status as they should be.

It would be easy to dismiss Nervo if they were dumb cows, but Liv and Mim are genuine, effusive and 100% naturally inclined musicians who know first hand what it takes to make it as a recording artist on a global scale. They’re all smiles and neon lights now, but they’ve done some hard yards during what Liv describes as ‘the many dark years’ when deals fell over, management fell through and labels fell down. Knowing they had a god-given lot to work with, they’ve taken each setback as an opportunity to get their ducks in a row, all the while remaining goal oriented and creatively engaged.

“It’s been a challenge I guess to stay optimistic with the business because a lot of the time projects that we’ve been working on over the last couple of years have all fallen through. A lot has gone wrong. Like a lot!” insists Liv. “It’s just really lucky that like now finally some are taking off. I don’t know what it is? Whether the stars have aligned, whether we’ve just got better; but there were many dark years there, y’know? Dark years trying to prove yourself. And the business is really tough. There’s kind of like a… I don’t want to say ‘Mafia’… but there definitely is a top, select few that kind of run the shop.”

Undeterred, the quirky Nervo twins from Ivanhoe, Melbourne may not have achieved the artist status they sought but they kept practicing their songwriting and developing their technical abilities, opening doors for themselves and scoring writing with industry legends such as Cathy Dennis and Karen Poole. “Cathy’s one of our all time idols! I love all her artistry stuff from back in the day, and all her top hits like Toxic, oh my god, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, I Kissed A Girl! It’s just immaculate her sound. But it’s interesting; Cathy’s quite mysterious in the studio, there’s not really much you can learn from her, you’ve just got to let her be and do her thing and the brilliance comes out. Which, in a way, is annoying because you wanna learn the tricks on how to get that brilliance, but with her it’s so instinctual there’s no tricks; it just comes from within her.

“But then we’ve also worked with top-liners like Karen Poole who’s a very big writer in the UK especially, Lilly Allen and stuff, and I don’t want to give away all her tricks but she definitely has a few up her sleeve that we learnt a lot from… she looks at a song more analytically.” Having fun is practically unavoidable when you’re identically gorgeous twenty somethings, but it’s their focus on the big picture that belies their age.

As much fun as DJ culture can be, there is a sense that it’s a recent and none-too-flippant decision to master this skill and extend their reach. It has certainly solidified the pop-tastic duo’s access to the underground – the source of all tomorrow’s trends. At March’s Miami Winter Music Conference, legendary Radio One DJ Pete Tong took to the mic after their set, declaring to the millions of live and simulcast audiences members, “Watch out for these very talented ladies, you’ll be hearing a lot from them very soon.” Cue the Miami crowd going mental. “Right now, sonically, radio is going a little bit ‘doof doof’ which is great because Mim and I love clubbing. We’re DJing now too and we’ve been going to Ibiza for like eight years now, and it’s exciting that the two (radio and club sounds) are coming together.”

It’s this access to cutting edge culture and sounds that really started shaping team-Nervo. Their act is not exactly pioneering and it’s certainly not happenstance, but today’s path to stardom takes a different route to that followed by the old pop vanguard. Mim and Liv are authentic but they are also acutely aware of what they have put into play. At this point, meeting Aussie ex-pat Georgie McAvenna, Senior A&R Manager, Virgin Records NY, sort of had to happen. “We love Georgie!” Enthuses Liv with a laugh that honks like Kendra’s from the Playboy Mansion

“The label is so exciting and the label is because of Georgie! Basically we’ve always been really active writing and producing for other artists. Georgie worked with Ke$ha, she was her manager, and that’s how we got our foot in the door with G and her (former) management company. Georgie recognised what we did so when she got the job at Virgin she was like, ‘girls what are you working on? ‘ She offered us this imprint deal and said ‘I want you to bring the artists you’re working with to Virgin and we’ll get you this label started up’. It’s so bloody exciting I can’t tell you. It’s like a relief.”

“‘Coz part of the beauty of our struggle over these eight-nine years of writing by ourselves is that we’ve worked with every Tom, Dick ‘n Harry there is in the business. So we’re taking our new artists and chucking them in the studio with Tom, Dick ‘n’ Harry and seeing what comes out. It’s really interesting now being on the other side, well both sides: On the artist side with Georgie and on the A&R side with our artists.”

They do admit they can come across as ditsy, so underestimating the intelligence of these identical twin-sister pop-hotties could be an easy enough mistake to make, once. Upon considering their accomplishments as songwriters, musicians, producers, DJs, fashionistas, and now as artists in their own right and label bosses, you’d be a fool to underestimate them twice. The package they’ve developed and delivered is a big fat fame-magnet that will take on a life its own.

“To be honest the fame game is a bit weird. Obviously we work with a lot of famous people and I don’t know if being famous is that great a thing. I’ve just seen people copping a lot of shit for it. I know if we’re going to be releasing singles and albums that might fly, that there’s a chance we’ll become famous, but I don’t know… it’s a weird thing. “But for now we’re not famous so I don’t know how it will play out... Maybe get back to me in a bit if it does happen; maybe in a couple of years I’ll have turned into a total prat!” The Kendra laugh honks down the line again.