The thrill of a night with a new love interest may be a distant memory for some of us, but VISSIA’s latest single “On My Mind” will allow you to re-experience that feeling. The flirty track opens with ’80s-inspired synth, electric guitar, perky percussion, and sassy singing reminiscent of an old Madonna hit as Alberta, Canada-based alt-pop artist Alex Vissia sings about the kind of encounter that lets you completely surrender to the moment.
“‘On My Mind’ is a song about having a nice time with another person as intimately as you want, and it’s about really being in the moment and embracing that,” says Vissia. “You don’t have to worry about what’s happened before or what’s going to happen. You don’t have to hold back, and you don’t have to worry about crazy attachments happening with it.”
VISSIA worked with producer Nich Davies on the song, with the goal of making it light and fun to dance to. After demo-ing it on her phone’s Garage Band app, she built lyrics off a simple beat, then added breathy layered vocals to give the song a sexy feel, with Robyn in mind as an inspiration. “The way your body moves, I just want to feel it too/we don’t got a thing to lose/just take your time/you keep me coming back/I can hardly handle that/thought you would never ask what’s on my mind,” she sings in the energetic chorus.
The single comes from her forthcoming sophomore album With Pleasure, whose tracks run the gamut from motivational songs to breakup songs — as Vissia puts it, “there are some songs to cry to, songs to dance to, and songs to forward to a friend who might need to hear them.”
The genres of the songs, like the topics, cover such a wide span, you wouldn’t guess they were on the same album, beginning with “Doorway,” which melds country and rock. The next track, “My Wom,” is a bluesy ode to the strong women in VISSIA’s life, followed by the soul-inspired “The Cliffs,” the R&B ballad “Walk Me Home,” the electropop “Take It Apart,” and more.
The sonic diversity is largely due to the fact that VISSIA’s influences are quite varied, ranging from Motown to hip-hop. “I’m listening to a lot of different things these days because I’m just so inspired by the things being created,” she says. “I think With Pleasure definitely touches on a lot of my influences because the production does kind of vary. It sounds like a full album for sure, but I think if folks were to ask me specifically about each track, I could probably dig up an influence I was going for.”
With Pleasure marks a departure from VISSIA’s last album, 2017’s Place Holder, which mainly drew from roots influences and felt more solemn. In fact, the most recent album started off along these same lines, but evolved into something different. “When I started writing this record, I had a completely different idea for it that was maybe more introspective and serious,” she says. “As I started to write it, I kind of decided, no, this doesn’t make sense for me right now. This is a time to experiment and have fun with it. So [the title] With Pleasure is cheeky and it’s just about enjoying yourself.”
Vissia had already written a few of the songs by late 2019, when she began writing the bulk of the album in earnest. She continued writing some of them right in the studio in January and February 2020. This was the first record where she didn’t play the guitar, instead enlisting guest musicians while she focused on the vocals. Thanks to arts funding that allowed her to devote time to the project, she had the master tracks in her hands by August. “It was a process that was a lot quicker than what I’d done in the past,” she says.
VISSIA performed in a band with her two sisters when she was little, then went off to college and recorded her first album, 2011’s A Lot Less Gold, as soon as she got out. Last year, she began an Instagram series called Tuesdays Together, where she interviewed other musicians on Tuesday evenings. It was a way for her to facilitate interactions between artists that fans could watch during a time when such opportunities were limited. At the moment, she’s developing a podcast with a similar concept.
“It was just a really nice way to keep connecting with other people and kind of see how they were coping, see how they were making out, especially with 2020 being so difficult for creatives,” she says. “I was fortunate enough to spend time working on a lot of projects related to my career and work, but people struggle finding motivation, which is understandable. It was good to open up to these people and get to know them better and have artists open up.”
Quarantine has inspired her to take more walks and read more books, but mostly, she’s “living and breathing the work thing,” she says. “The place I live in, it’s like my bedroom is basically my studio and my office and where I sleep and rest. Maybe one day that’ll change, but right now, it’s an all right scenario.”
With ten albums under her belt, (including original material, live recordings, and a collection of duets), prolific Scandinavian artist Ane Brun has been compared to a haunting Dolly Parton (sans drawl). Her sophomore record A Temporary Dive earned her the Norwegian Grammy for Best Female Artist. She’s also had the honor of being a featured performer at the Nobel Prize Dinner and Ceremony. Since 2001, she has lived in Stockholm Sweden, writing, recording, and running her own independent label Balloon Ranger Records. That creative freedom allowed her to release not one, but two phenomenal records in 2020: After the Great Storm in October, and How Beauty Holds the Hand of Sorrow in November, originally intended as a double album.
Ane Brun’s music lives in a cinematic world of intimate, immediate, raw sonic moments. Brun crafts songs to sit alone with in your bedroom, while you cocoon and wrap the weight of life’s big questions around yourself like a blanket. Themes span frustration over the state of the world, the nuances in the battlefield of love and heartache, isolation and loneliness, battling inner demons, and sleepless nights. Taken together, the albums score the full spectrum of human emotion through both sparse minimalist arrangements, and a ’90s-indebted trip-hop sound.
We spoke with Ane Brun about the heightened connection to fans via the digital realm, her previous struggle and recovery from lupus, coping with the death of her father, and how certain songs metamorphosed into a more intimate creation.
AF: How have you been coping with this unpredictable time?
AB: My year started off okay. I’ve been living in Stockholm, Sweden for 20 years, but a couple years ago, I met a guy from Norway and started commuting a little bit. The week before the lockdown in mid March, I was in Oslo to celebrate my birthday. Two days later, they closed the borders in Norway. If I left, it was uncertain if I’d be able to return so I decided to stay at my boyfriend’s. Weeks passed, everything just turned it upside down. Eventually I found a student on Facebook to drive my car with my studio to Norway. Now I’ve got my studio, and we had just recorded all the big music sessions in the fall. They were done, but I still had to record some harmonies, backing vocals, adlibs, and mix them. We were literally in the middle of the production of the album. I sat down in my new “studio” and just started listening through everything.
AF: How did the record evolve from the circumstances of the pandemic?
AB: Everything was finished remotely – the mixing in London and Stockholm. What happened was that I got the chance to really listen through the material. Everything had gone really fast in the recording process, and it was really stressful. All of a sudden, I could hear it in a different way, and some of the songs I wasn’t happy with I managed to rearrange and actually be happy with. I thought I was making one album, After The Great Storm, with lots of production and drums and beats. But through this process of digesting the songs, I actually rearranged quite a few of them to be more intimate. All of a sudden, I was sitting there with two albums, because the songs were in two different modes. The pandemic actually indirectly created the double album. Through those months to come, I was working from my boyfriend’s house, and I decided, “Okay, I need to just make the best of this.”
AF: How did you connect with fans to promote the music during lockdown?
AB: I started focusing on making content, and producing videos remotely. We did 12 single releases this year. Every release was a new song trying to tell a story, connecting with my fans in different ways, by being more real, more authentic on Instagram. I took Instagram really seriously. I just felt really intuitively that there’s no place for bullshit right now. People were vulnerable, and they just needed to feel. In live chats, I felt really connected. I think I changed my tone from being a bit more distant on social media, to being more authentic and direct. It has been quite nice, to just be yourself more. You don’t have to think so much about what you say. I did some fan meetings online. I invited people into digital rooms, to listen to new songs and talk about them. It was really special, because it was in that period in April when everyone was on lockdown. We recorded the screen of these sessions where people met online, and it’s really actually very heartwarming to watch, because people are sitting at home alone. And you can see them, and they’re all over the world. That was a pretty special moment. I made my own press photos with a plant lamp. I tried to do as much as I could from home. When I look back at this year, the silver lining has been that I have had these two albums to work with, because that became my positive driving focus.
AF: Growing up with music in your home, was it second nature to merge your domestic life and your musical world?
AB: I grew up in this town where I am now, and my mom was a piano and vocal teacher. She had students at home a lot. And I learned a little bit of piano from her, and played some classical pieces when I was a teenager. But I was a rhythmic gymnast, and a sports person. I was really focused on my team, not being a musician at all. My sister became a musician pretty early, but I didn’t start playing music until I was 21. And that’s when I picked up a guitar and started writing songs. When I did actually pick up the guitar and start singing, I realized I’ve been singing all my life, just because we were always singing at home. It was very natural to me. And I’ve been watching my mom on stage performing, and singing. I feel my mother’s influence all over my music. I take from the standard kind of jazz, and Norwegian folk, a crossover kind of thing that she was doing. During the pandemic, it felt very natural to me. A natural environment for me is hearing my mother playing the piano and singing in the house.
AF: Where did you find private spaces and time frames to record remotely while co-habitating with someone?
AB: Well, as I said, most of the album was already recorded. There were not many lead takes I had to do. I recorded a lot of backing vocals, which doesn’t really demand the same kind of focus and privacy. My boyfriend had his own room to work, and I was in the living room. The challenge was that there’s a subway pass away every 10 minutes. One of the songs on the album, “Meet You At The Delta,” which is an acoustic guitar and vocals, I recorded that as a live take. [Some] of the songs I rearranged to be more intimate [are] actually cut and glued together, because in the middle of the first take, there was a big train coming. I had to comp the takes. That was a challenge, because 10 minutes is not a long time when you’re working. When I did the vocals for “Closer,” I think I just opened up the wardrobe in the hallway and just kind of stuck my head in, held the microphone, stuffed through the winter jackets and sang in there – it was an isolated chamber. I just found my way. I played a sketch piano, and sent it to my pianist in Stockholm. He recorded a real piano take, sent it back, and I put on vocals. So we did a lot of those remote sessions.
AF: What musical influences inspire these bodies of work?
AB: When I’m making an album, I listen a lot to production. I have a playlist where I just put in a lot of songs. I listen to new albums, to get inspired about the world I want to connect to. The best music from the ’90s – Massive Attack, Portishead, UNKLE. I just wanted to create this kind of digital, electronic world, with analog influences, because a lot of the trip-hop from the ’90s is very cool, it’s very warm, and it has a presence in it that that makes it still so good and relative. I wanted to create that kind of world with my voice and my sound. I had done a lot of work with a Symphonic orchestra in Stockholm; we released the album a couple years ago. I wanted to bring in those big strings as well. I had this vision of a big space with lots of warmth, and raw drums. We wanted to have drums that sounded like they were programmed but were actually played. We had two drummers in the studio, one acoustic and one digital. We kind of mixed it up and made a hybrid sound. That was the idea – I had no plan to make an acoustic singer-songwriter album. I thought I had a break from that in a way. But so many of the songs kind of wanted to be that. I almost always feel that the song has to decide. It’s the message of the song, it has to decide how they’re going to end up. If I feel that they have to be whispered, they have to be whispered, so that’s what I did for those songs.
AF: Where did you come up with the title How Beauty Holds The Hand of Sorrow for the album? What does the title for After the Great Storm reference?
AB: How Beauty Holds The Hand of Sorrow is actually the original title idea that we had for the album. It sums up a lot of songs. It’s kind of like the contrast of being human in a way, if you’re open and feel both sorrow and happiness. If you close down, you’ll just be in the middle. It came from the experience of losing my father and the grief that I went through. In experiencing that there were a lot of things that came to me during that period that also were positive. I experienced beauty in this – this was an insight that I had – I didn’t really expect it to happen. And After The Great Storm was a second alternative for the album. Since that song is so big, it kind of fits the title. It’s quite funny now, when I am actually on tour, we’re going to be on the other side of this storm I hope. I have lupus, the [auto-immune] disease – it’s been sleeping for seven years now. But in 2012, I had it like a big flare up, I was in the hospital, and it was very bad. And when I got out of that, and felt better, I just got this rush. It was like I was just walking around feeling so happy. And then the world was just a beautiful place. It’s almost like I was in love with the world because it was like a new energy. I felt connected to everyone. I just went around feeling love. It’s really quite strange.
AF: Can you talk a bit about running your own label, Balloon Ranger Records?
AB: Since my first album I’ve been independent. I was lucky because I met my manager, the year of the first album, and I had already decided to be independent because Ani DiFranco was my big inspiration. When my manager came in, he just wanted to help me, and we started the label. He got me distribution, and took care of a lot of the business. Since then he’s been my right hand. I have one more employee now. They take care of administration. We just kind of pretend we’re a big label, we just do whatever a big label would do and have fun with it. And I’m so grateful that I am established as a musician, and can afford it. I can use my own resources. If I want to, I can release 12 singles in a year. I can just play around with things and do things whenever. It’s very inspiring. A lot of people ask me about this as musicians themselves, like what do you think I should do? Should I be indie? And it’s not for everyone. Because I’m an entrepreneurial kind of person as well, I have that in me, I have the drive and [I am] open and talking to people and all that. If you’re going to run your own label, you have to be a bit of a self-starter. If you feel that you want to do those things I recommend it. But the best thing is to find someone to help you do it.
AF: How did you come up with the title?
AB: It’s from a song from my 2005 album, which was [inspired by] a dream. In the dream there was a male ranger, a man on a horse, and I was a balloon of helium, and he was pulling me down, collecting balloons. I have some very strange dreams!
AF: What would you like fans to take away from the music?
AB: I’ve been making music for 17 years. After all these years, I’ve become more conscious about what my music can give to people, and what’s the message. In the first few years I really did just write out of my own drama. But there came a time when I started thinking about what the listener would think. I always think about the person who is going to listen, and ask if this is a message that I want people to have. A friend of mine told me that she thought these albums are a bit like I am my own daughter somehow. It’s the two albums written after a very difficult time with my dad and everything that happened, and the music helped me through these things. Through that, I can hopefully help other people. That’s how I feel about it now. And I hope the music can be company in this really weird year and months to come. Because I feel that music can be balanced, it feels like it has a presence. If I’m in a room and I put on music, it’s almost like there’s someone there. It has a presence that gives me company, and it makes me connect to myself. And I think that if the music resonates, it can help you get in touch with what you’re feeling and thinking, and maybe give you a new perspective and bring you forward. Now that the albums are out, I get more personal messages; I’ve got a lot of messages this year from all the songs that I’ve released; they tell me stories about how the music has helped them. I think that people really need music now, you know. I just hope it can be company and support – or offer a good time! Some of the songs are quite bouncy as well.
Swedish world-beat artist Sandra Zackrisson adopted the stage name Gaeya as an homage to the Greek goddess Gaia, who acts as a voice for mother Earth. And that’s the role she aims to play with her music — speaking out about issues affecting the Earth, as well as celebrating it.
Zackrisson is partly descended from the Sami, a Scandinavian indigenous tribe, and her sonic style and lyrical content stem in part from their music and philosophy. “Nature and the relationship to nature always were present during my childhood and during my younger years when I worked with music,” she says. “But it wasn’t until I was a bit older that I realized I could combine those two, and that resulted in Gaeya in the end.”
Gaeya’s debut EP, Awakening, spans five enchanting songs that sound almost like the soundtrack to a fantasy video game, with her Disney-princess-like voice against ambient piano, steady percussion, and dreamy synths. The lyrics interweave to narrate a deep personal journey that’s synchronous with the larger journey of the Earth and humanity.
The mystical opening track, “Contact,” sounds almost like a cry to extraterrestrial or otherworldly beings, though Zackrisson wrote it about the search for human connection. The video plays into the fairy-tale-like vibe of the music, with Gaeya wandering through a magical forest, then moving through hypnotizing choreography with a dancer.
Next is “Truth,” an upbeat, powerfully sung track about “finding your own truth and what you stand for and sharing what you believe in a loving way and respectful way so you respect others’ differences,” she explains. Between forceful drums and high-pitched yells, it sounds almost like a battlecry for truth-seeking in a world full of lies. Its video gives off an even more empyrean vibe than “Contact,” with an animated green paradise and a glowing light in the woods, representing the path toward one’s own inner light.
“Aureola” gives off a poppier, more electronic vibe, beginning with vivid verbal portraits of “brightness while moonshine/touches my skin/counting the planets/circling through my head” then describing the process of bringing a dying planet back to life — “wise will we try/to bring life to a drought” — and the atmospheric “Micro Orbits” is about finding peace and being one with the Earth.
The last song, “Tide for the Change,” is the one Zackrisson considers the anthem of the EP, declaring in almost whispered vocals, “with nature still breathing, I know we can still turn around,” then escalating into a soaring, hopeful chorus about the resilience of nature.
“‘Tide for the Change’ is the song that I would say is putting down the mark of what Gaeya is and what we try to communicate about a future that is positive, it’s beautiful, and that we’re a place where the Earth can thrive and we can thrive together with it,” she says. “We only have to start to realize and reconnect to that relationship and see ourselves as part of the Earth.”
Working with producer Anders Rane on the EP, she aimed to blend electronic effects with natural, organic-sounding instrumentals. “We mainly started off with a beat or a piano, maybe some synth pattern that we use, and from there we build the song up,” she says. They altered the vocals very little, aside from layering some harmonies. Gaeya has released acoustic versions of her singles “Truth” and “Contact,” and her next move will be to release an entire acoustic EP.
When people listen to Awakening, she wants them to feel inspired to improve the world and hopeful that they can make a difference. “If they have an idea of wanting to do something, make some changes, go for some goals, I hope they feel they have the support inside themselves and the music can give that sort of reminder,” she says.
Gaeya used to hold concerts in big tents, followed by talks with the audience about sustainability and how to help the environment. “Then I got the inspiration — it would be quite fun to have a space where I can invite guests, where we can talk about these kinds of things that are not hitting the radar on the big news channels,” she says. “We tend to focus a lot on the climate, but there are very important things when it comes to ecosystems, when it comes to the local economy, there are things connected to water systems and energy systems that need to be brought more into the light.” This led her to start her podcast tellUs, where she speaks with experts about topics ranging from biodiversity to buying locally.
She hopes that both her music and her podcast send the message that “the world is not going backwards,” she says. “We still have a choice to make a difference, even though a lot of things are happening and they can be challenging. There’s always a possibility that we can work with our mindset and do something productive and positive, and it doesn’t have to be much. It’s just about our way of thinking and what we send out to others.”
It feels almost like a cruel fate for anyone who cares deeply about music: we tend to build entire relationships with like-minded individuals around the songs we bond over. From attending concerts with loved ones to sharing mixtapes that say what we can’t, or even just putting on a record while making dinner (or making out), music helps us build stronger connections. It’s not until those relationships deteriorate, souring memories and ruining those songs in the process, that we see just how disastrous this can be. When a song brings back the memory of love lost, sometimes it’s too painful to ever listen to that song again.
Emily Goldstein, who releases her solo work under the moniker Mountainess, has experienced this all-too-common scenario firsthand. Her latest single, “Soundtrack,” premiering today via Audiofemme, unearths the artist’s long-buried aversions to Sam Cooke and Mount Eerie, artists she couldn’t listen to for years following a bad break-up with a former bandmate. “‘You Send Me’ had been our song. It wasn’t even just that song – I couldn’t listen to Sam Cooke, who has one of my favorite voices ever. It just brought me back immediately,” Goldstein remembers. She started writing “Soundtrack” years later, when she was finally able to revisit that music, and could reflect on its effect over her without the residual pain of the break-up. “I recognize that some of that power – well, all of that power – is kind of given in a way, but it can feel like [an ex can] take the things you love,” she says. “You don’t just lose them and the relationship, you lose anything that you associated with the relationship.”
She felt immediate validation when she shared “Soundtrack” in a songwriting workshop at Brown University, and the other attendees said they’d been through it, too. “That was a very lovely feeling to have. It’s really easy to write stuff and feel like other people are gonna connect to it because they share your experiences, but then they don’t all the time,” Goldstein confides. “I feel like when you have that moment with a song that becomes such an important form of connection.”
Over warbly synth, with crystal-clear delivery, Mountainess expresses relatable nuggets of wisdom: “I let you build the soundtrack/I wish I hadn’t done that/You claimed and gave those tunes with a reckless abandon/Now even when they’re droning low in some department store/You’re there insisting the songs are yours.” A visualizer by longtime Mountainess co-conspirator Hope Anderson scrawls Goldstein’s poignant lyrics across the label of a cassette tape, the perfect hit of heartfelt nostalgia for those pre-streaming days, when personalized mixes stood in for love letters.
“Soundtrack” is the third single from Goldstein’s second Mountainess EP, out February 12. Its five tracks center on the empowerment she felt after moving from Boston to Rhode Island and completing her first EP as a solo performer, which she released in 2017. The ambitious self-titled debut saw her exploring a lost family history over a backdrop of swooning string arrangements, a decision she pursued in an effort to differentiate her musical output from the “dramatic, sort of theatrical rock” she played with her previous band.
Striking out alone was exciting, but scary at first, she says. “I’d always had collaborators – and they’d always been male collaborators. And I just didn’t feel very confident in my ability to produce anything without their feedback,” she admits. “Ultimately, [Mountainess] has grown to have collaborators in it, but it started out just as me playing keyboard in the various folky venues around Providence.”
Though proud of her debut and what she’d learned from the process, the emotional weight of the material and the belabored process of adding strings prompted a shift in direction. “After doing it, it was like, oh wow, I wanna write things that feel a little more pop,” Goldstein says. “I wanted to move toward [themes of] empowerment, cause I think I was a feeling more empowered after writing that [first EP]. I had to get that out of my system, but it was very heavy and emotionally raw.”
Goldstein’s hard-won confidence is apparent from the first track on the new EP, which kicks off with “Attention,” a single she released in September. Her straightforward, triumphant vocal emphasizes her background in musical theater, while she sings clever turns of phrase about the travails of performing for a living: “For every guy who thought I’d die without his bland suggestion/To be less or more or something for his dubious affection/Well, I won’t apologize/for chewing the scenery/Your attention, please!”
“I had this experience a lot, but playing alone kind of amplified it: every time I played, I would get unsolicited feedback, always from white dudes. I actually started keeping a little journal of it. Sometimes it was even positive, but none of it felt good to receive,” Goldstein says. “Being a performer, being also a bit of an introvert in my private life, I am asking for attention – that song is about exploring what I want out of that attention and setting my boundaries within that.”
Another single from the EP, the doo-wop infused “Vacation,” was written during a residency in Martha’s Vineyard, which Goldstein spent creating an as-yet unproduced musical based on Lady Chatterley’s Lover. “It was such a surreal experience. It was February [2019], I was completely alone for that whole week, and being around that kind of wealth created this character that could just vacation [on a whim],” Goldstein explains. Normally composing on keys, “Vacation” was the first song she’s written on guitar, which she says freed her up to go in a different direction with it. The kitschy, light-hearted lyric video was shot by her partner, Anthony Savino, who also plays on the EP alongside drummer John Faraone and producer Bradford Krieger.
The EP was recorded at Big Nice Studio in Lincoln, Rhode Island, right before the pandemic hit. It just so happened that around the same time, Goldstein moved again – this time to Los Angeles, to work in animation. As surreal as it was settling into a new city during lockdown, in some ways it mirrors the escapist fantasy baked into the sun-kissed verses on “Vacation”: “Do you even miss me?/Everything is new here, but it’s somehow dreary/I sent you a postcard with no return address/I haven’t heard back yet…”
What’s clear across all three singles is Goldstein’s gift with words. “It’s just the way I’m most comfortable expressing myself; I think I’m more comfortable writing my lyrics than I am talking! It feels very natural,” she says with a laugh. “I have an English teacher mom, so I do have a family that’s big on expressing yourself with your words. I have a pretty non-musical family, so music was definitely like a second language, and I think that’s why lyrics come first – that’s the first path towards expressing myself.”
However wise Mountainess sounds as she dispenses her cautionary tale on “Soundtrack,” she recognizes that certain pitfalls are hard to avoid. “I have not followed my own advice at all! I had this idea that I was just going to maybe pursue people whose lives didn’t revolve around music, but I have not been successful in keeping that,” she laughs. “If music is what you love, it’s really one of the major driving forces towards connection. I do think, just like the break-up itself, it takes time – but eventually you will be able to come back to the songs. They’ll maybe hold a little bit of an ache, but sometimes, that ache is good. Maybe it actually ends up adding some good weight to those songs.”
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Is My Mind a Machine Gun? This is the question vocalist, songwriter and producer Kesiena “Kesswa” Wanogho asks on her latest collaboration with interdisciplinary artist and musician Zach Saginaw, a.k.a Shigeto. The audio/visual experience exemplifies two artists in their rawest, most honest forms, willing to experiment. Released exclusively on January 1st via The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit’s (MOCAD) brand new media platform, Daily Rush, the film gives the viewer a look inside the minds of the artists and finds chaos, introspection and growth.
Mantra is at the center of Kesswa’s work. Highlighted by her 2019 EP, Soften, Kesswa has an inherent ability for distilling the most complicated of dreams, desires and anxieties into only a few simple words. Is My Mind a Machine Gun? starts with her chanting, “Oh my love, tell me now if you want me.” Slowly, she builds an entire world around those words, layering her voice to present a sense of urgency. It’s not immediately clear who “my love” is, which leaves space for the listener to reflect and insert themselves. Maybe it’s the voice of an artistic self left behind, coming now to reclaim its vessel. Maybe it’s our own voice, calling out in uncertainty to a love we’re afraid to lose.
Whomever Kesswa is speaking to, she responds to her own question with calming reassurance – There’s no doubt about it – all while flashing lights, street view vignettes, and Kesswa’s body language suggest forward motion. The visual echoes Kesswa’s centering message: as long as you are true to yourself, you are on the right path.
The ephemeral visual is accentuated with soothing waves of harp played by Ahya Simone; its sedative sounds contrast with the disorienting flashes of light, replicating the feelings of dissociation and anxiety that can accompany a dream. Slowly, the harp fades and is replaced by deliberate percussion. This sonic change seems to signal clarity and determination, as Kesswa transitions from repetitive chants to a string of crystal clear affirmations: “I’ve got a creeping intuition/I’m on a mission, clearly/It’s in my heartbeat and my eyes gleam/The stillness inside of me/I’m impulsive but I’m brave/Insisting on myself/I’m determined but I’m earnest/I am kind, I am worthy/Inherently.”
I caught up with Kesswa to find out more about the creative process behind this project.
AF: Can you tell me a bit about the writing/recording process? What’s the flow of collaboration between you and Shigeto?
KW: The process with Zach and I has been really experimental and grounding. In the beginning of our collaboration, I was thinking a lot about finding my voice, which I think comes out in the composition of the track. A lot of our collaboration has been us just going with the flow of our lives and bringing our influences and emotional needs to the work. Sometimes, we jam. Sometimes we create structures to work within.
AF: How did this piece in particular come to be? Is there a story behind the music and lyrics? The title?
KW: This piece has been evolving and still kind of is. The version in the video was made specifically for this particular commission. When we were working on the track, Zach felt it would be really awesome to incorporate a narrative, and I’m always writing. The title is an excerpt from Assata Shakur’s “What is left?” poem. This line really stood out to me, because I often feel like thoughts are things we can weaponize against ourselves without close attention. As a person who exists at the center of many intersections of identity, I find myself internalizing and reacting to the projections of the outside world on my body, my creative potential and my values. If my mind is in fact a machine gun, I want to point it towards the projections.
AF: The visual feels just as important to the story as the music does in this piece – did you have a visual in mind when writing the music? Which came first?
KW: The process of creating the visual component of the work was as free flowing as the soundscape. Zach was the director and camera operator, and Vinnie and Robert did assemblage and animation. Zach and I knew that we wanted to give some insight into the world we’ve been building. We wanted to create a visual language, and things kind of unfolded organically.
AF: Do the two of you have more projects like this one up your sleeve/in process?
KW: It’s a surprise! But things are in process.
AF: I know a lot of your music focuses on mantra – is there a certain mantra you repeat everyday, or one you’re feeling specifically lately?
KW: Great question! I’ve been sitting with the fact that my body is finite and paying attention to what feels draining and what feels invigorating. Using that awareness to free up some extra energy and let stale things [and] conversations go. Times are too heavy to be stressed about things within my control!
Car ran out of gas. Bicycle got a flat tire. We’ve heard all the excuses – and some of us have even made them. In her first-ever music video, Kaiti Jones investigates the reasons we keep putting things off: “I’m always searching for seeds that I can sow/Am I a gardener if I can’t make things grow?/And these weeds keep coming for all I own/And I should pull ’em but I know I ain’t gettin’ around to it,” she sings, as she goes through her morning routine in the clip. The camera follows her beleaguered journey to the diving board of a swimming pool – she imagines jumping in, but doesn’t, shuffling away with a poignant metaphor for her inability to follow through.
Of course, for the scene where Jones imagines herself making the jump, she had to actually do it – on a crisp New England October day, no less. “I called my friend’s dad, and I was like, ‘Can you just keep your pool open a couple extra weeks?’ He was so sweet; he cranked the heat for a few days before,” Jones says. “But it was stressful – you can only do one shot of the cannonball. We probably have twenty minutes of takes of me almost jumping in and then being like aaah!” Her Blundstone boots came out of the water a few shades lighter, but frame-for-frame, the video was exactly what she and her director, Jones’ close friend Paula Champagne, had imagined – right down to timing the splash to the song’s final, full-band reprise.
“Gettin Around To It” is Jones’ upbeat tongue-in-cheek ode to being a lifelong, chronic procrastinator, examining the ways a lack of urgency can erode personal relationships without adding so much as a hint of heaviness to the song’s buoyant indie rock sound. “I was reflecting on the consequences of that inability to even do the things that we want to do, and that are important to us… in some circumstances, that can be fine, but when there’s another person on the end of it, they’re not necessarily on that time table,” Jones says.
She often writes songs over time, coming up with a few lines and letting it marinate until the rest of the story comes to her. She wrote the chorus about a failed relationship – one that she almost rekindled, but ultimately didn’t pursue until she’d missed the opportunity to do so. “By the time I put the rest of the song together, I had moved past that and didn’t really feel like that story deserved the whole song,” she says. “And this area of procrastination and shame around failing to follow through, it shows up in all these other ways, so I was more interested in fleshing out the song in a more holistic manifestation of this thing rather than doubling down on this one particular instance.”
Jones says her procrastination is usually born out of indecision, of always wanting to do the right thing and getting in her own way in situations where she feels uncertain. “This year, particularly being stuck at home, having a lack of consistent rhythm and structure, kind of exacerbated it and made me have a little bit more urgency about figuring [it] out,” Jones says. “It’s often rooted in fear of rejection, fear of making the wrong choice, fear of letting people down. I’m trying to understand myself more, and understand that making the wrong choice is okay.”
Luckily, fear didn’t stop her from putting the finishing touches on her forthcoming album, Tossed, out March 5th. She excavates relationship insecurities in “Light On” and “Desert Rose,” laments missing loved ones on “I Was Wondering” and “Big Yellow Moon,” and investigates her spirituality on piano-driven ballad “Mystic.” On the album’s title track, she brings rich, heart-rending detail to finding catharsis in the ocean waves on the day her mom began chemo treatments across the country; though intensely personal, her candidness is so piercing it’s as though these events might’ve happened to you. Though seven minutes long, “Tossed” goes by in a flash, a lone fiddle flitting above the sonic sea. “Daydreaming” and the album’s first single, “Weak Days,” meanwhile, reinforce some of the same themes in “Gettin Around to It” (“I’ll never say the wrong thing twice/But I’ll never say the right thing right,” she promises on “Weak Days,” while “Daydreaming” catalogues the scattered thoughts she’s gotten lost in). It’s hard to imagine a more honest body of work – and though it comes mainly from Jones’ perspective, it’s a beautiful reminder of the complexity within every person.
Part of the ease with which she was able to complete the record came down to working so fluently with her producer Daniel Radin of Boston “bummer pop” band Future Teens. Jones was a fan of his previous band, the Novel Ideas, and she was impressed with projects he’d produced for some of their mutual friends in the scene, like Hayley Sabella. “I haven’t always brought the most agency [to other projects] and some of that is just being a woman in recording spaces. Usually you’re with all dudes who probably know more about types of microphones and effects and all those things,” Jones admits. When she was recording her first EP some 13 years ago, she said it was hard for her to speak up, and sometimes that was because she didn’t really know what she wanted out the recording process. But, she says, “My experience with Daniel has been the best experience of real partnership, of feeling like the producer knows what I want and isn’t afraid to push me into new spaces, but is always going to respect [my choices]. Because I trusted him so much and because I just really love his vision, I was also more willing to try [his suggestions].”
That openness resulted in some of her favorite moments on the album – including the suggestion of adding the first stanza to the chorus of “Gettin Around to It.” She also had the opportunity to work with Austin musician David Ramirez, who helped with some of the writing and production on the single.
While her country-inflected 2017 debut full-length Vows was recorded in one week-long session in Iowa, Jones was able to meet up with Radin, who lives about ten minutes from her home in Cambridge, to work on songs for Tossed sporadically. “We recorded all the drums in December of 2019 in one day, in a studio out in Western Mass called Sonelab, because he was like, ‘This is the best room to record drums,'” Jones says. “Everything after that we just chipped away at Daniel’s house. And then the world shut down, so all of the vocals and fiddle on the record were recorded in my apartment – he just gave me the equipment I needed and I recorded it all, and my roommate is my fiddle player, so it was very convenient.”
Though it retains Jones’ folksy, confessional vibe, there’s a noticeable shift toward grittier guitar and a toning down of the pedal steel and banjo than the gave Vows a particular rustic twang, her rich vocals and genuine, tender delivery reminiscent of Phoebe Bridgers or Julia Jacklin. “I’ve really been wanting to get out of defined genres,” she admits. Though she’s found “a lot of support and development” in Boston’s folk scene, she listens to all types of music. “This record in particular [is] a little bit more indie-leaning, even though it’s like, what does ‘indie’ mean?” she jokes. “Sometimes labels around genre can be helpful to put words to things, and sometimes they can be kind of like limiting and put people in boxes that don’t need to be there.”
What’s been consistent throughout Jones’ career is her natural talent as a songwriter – she’s been writing short stories since childhood, growing up near Portland, Maine. She approached the instruments she learned as a kid (violin, viola, piano French horn, cello, and drums) from a classical, technical standpoint, but when she picked up a guitar in middle school after joining her church’s youth group band, everything changed. “With guitar, it was, how do I figure out a way to have this be a vehicle to tell my stories, and to start writing in more musical form,” Jones remembers. “It was an extreme privilege to be able to study all of those instruments and it’s laid this groundwork that then allowed me to be more creative.”
Jones attended college at Nashville’s esteemed Belmont University; though her focus was writing and philosophy, she relished the proximity to its music business program and state-of-the-art recording studios. When she moved to Cambridge, it was as an AmeriCorps volunteer, and for a while, her career in community development and youth outreach took precedence over music. “After a few years of just focusing on my community work, I was like, I wanna start exploring the music scene, and it was kind of slow going at first,” she explains. “There’s a great community of folk and indie singer-songwriters in Boston – I got really plugged in at Club Passim, an institution right down the street in Cambridge that has a historic folk scene. A little bit before my last album release [they] really embraced me and have supported me a lot. Really, it’s been the last three or four years that I’ve become more rooted and connected to the music scene and have tried to always keep expanding and growing, just saying yes to opportunities and building relationships and walking through doors that are open.”
A tumultuous 2020 – and the recent loss of her day job – have realigned some of Jones’ priorities, and she says listening back to “Gettin Around To It” reminds her of the things she’s no longer okay with putting off, like working toward social justice. She says there are some interesting parallels between procrastination and society’s collective failure to reckon with racism. “I also have been doing more work around racial identity and understanding the characteristics of white supremacy culture, and one of those is perfectionism – this [idea that] I have to get it right, or else – what if someone is upset with me if I get it wrong?” she says. “I think that gets in the way of action toward justice and toward progress. We see that all the time, whether you call it white fragility or just silence. I’ve been trying to interrogate that in myself in all these areas, whether it’s just like, me getting up and cleaning my room, or calling someone back, or if it’s having hard conversations around race and politics and justice.”
“I really can’t say, ‘Oh well, I’ll speak out on that later,'” she adds. “There’s a part of the song, the bridge, where I say, ‘Show me a single town, where my eyelids close when the sun goes down’ – that part is riffing on the adage of wherever you go, there you are. You can go to a new place, but you’re still gonna be dealing with yourself – until you deal with yourself.”
Like so many of the songs on Tossed, “Gettin Around To It,” has taken on new meaning to Jones in light of the chaos 2020 wrought on humanity. She addresses her insecurities and anxieties with gorgeous, sometimes gut-wrenching stories, but her approach to songwriting hasn’t changed. “The music that I have found freedom and delight in creating isn’t super musically complicated. It’s more about the story I’m trying to tell and how can I build something around that,” she says. “With every album, I want to expand who I’m able to share my stories with. My hope is always that, in writing about my own life, I can say things that are true and will mean something to other people, and help them.”
Along with the rest of world, Kaiti Jones is uncertain about what the future holds, but there’s one thing about which she has no doubt. “I’m definitely a believer in vocation, and feeling called to certain types of work,” she says. “And I feel very called both to community work and also to storytelling and songwriting, so I know I will continue to do both of them. I think they compliment each other – they are both true parts of me.”
Forgiveness is one of those concepts that sounds great in theory but is difficult to practice, especially when someone wrongs us in a way that feels unforgivable. But whatever grudges you’re hanging on to, Jillette Johnson makes a compelling case for letting them go with her latest single, “Forgive Her” — not just through its sage lyrics but also through Johnson’s soothing voice and a sweet melody that spreads a message of love.
The Nashville-based singer-songwriter penned the song after reflecting on times she had trouble forgiving other people, as well as herself. “I feel myself put up walls and hold on to little shards of glass all the time and find myself having to remember that someone else is probably in pain, that there’s probably some insecurity happening or story that I don’t know,” she says. “Or, opposite to that, I’m certainly not immune to being hurtful to the ones that I love. And instead of doing what I usually do — get mad at myself, which then makes me do it again — it’s a process of trying to be compassionate to myself and understand what, maybe, is driving that.”
The song opens with gentle chanting and piano chords that pull at your heartstrings, then escalates into angelic singing reminiscent of a parent teaching a child: “Forgive her, she becomes a little kid/you never should have been treated that way.” The refrain, “It’s not okay but you’ll forgive her anyway,” speaks to the difference between excusing a behavior and forgiving it: forgiveness is a choice we make to free ourselves from the consequences of another’s actions, regardless of how inexcusable those actions are.
“‘Forgive Her’ is about compassion,” Johnson explains. “It’s about being able to see in yourself — or in this case myself, and in other people — that there are wounded children in all of us, and those wounded children usually need nurturing and can come out in ways that are hurtful to others. The song is about being able to find compassion in those moments where you realize you’ve hurt someone or someone else has hurt you, as a means to be liberated from the cycle of perpetuating that hurt and of putting up walls.”
A visualizer for “Forgive Her” repeats soft-focus shots of Johnson’s recording process, adding to the track’s soothing vibe. The song will appear on her third album, It’s a Beautiful Day and I Love You (out February 12), which was recorded live in the studio, aside from background vocals she layered over herself. Working with producer Joe Pisapia, she played piano and had other musicians come in for the guitar, bass, and drums. “It was very natural,” she says. “I made a record with some incredibly talented musicians who I really trust, and I just started playing, and everybody else started playing along, and it all kind of fit together pretty seamlessly without much intellectualizing of it.”
The rest of the album covers other poignant lessons Johnson has learned, like finding gratitude and joy in the little things and not comparing oneself to others. Four of the songs — “Graveyard Boyfriend,” “Annie,” “I Shouldn’t Go Anywhere,” and “What Would Jesus Do” — are available on Spotify already.
Johnson has been busy with one-off singles as well: “Cancel Christmas,” a somber holiday song that makes no effort to sugarcoat the sadness implicated by the pandemic; and a laid-back, minimalistic cover of 1995 Oasis classic “Champagne Supernova,” a song she listened to growing up that also seemed appropriate for these times. “To, me that song has always been about a loss of control and a reflection on mortality – how what we think we understand, we don’t really understand,” she says. “I know that the band has said in interviews that they don’t really know what the song’s about, but that’s been my interpretation of it.”
Johnson grew up in New York City and played her first live show at age 12, then moved to Nashville after releasing her first two albums Water in a Whale(2013) and All I Ever See in You is Me(2017). “I think I wrote my first song at eight, and that has kind of been my main coping mechanism/passion ever since,” Johnson explains. “In Nashville, it’s a different vibe than making music in New York, in a beautiful way – there’s a lot of community.”
At the moment, Johnson is focused on making DIY music videos – in her own backyard. The video for the defiant, country-influenced “What Would Jesus Do” features her singing on top of a friend’s car, and the candid, heartfelt “Annie” video shows her playfully strumming on guitar, playing a tiny piano, and hitting drums against a bright backdrop.
“I had the constraints of the pandemic work in my favor,” she says. “It was super DIY, but that was really liberating for me. I’ve come from being at a record label for ten years and doing things in a particular way, and being indie and scrappy about it was really exciting. It’s fun to release them into the world because people are connecting with that spirit of just trying to make art out of whatever you have.”
Follow Jillette Johnson on Facebook for ongoing updates.
“Who am I without touring?” That was the question most on Raye Zaragoza’s mind last year. Pre-pandemic, the folk musician had been on the road for three years, nonstop ─ and like many, coping with suffocating isolation in lockdown was a challenge. Forced to reckon with her identity off the road, and finding more time than ever to be creative, she looked inward to reassess her place in the world and what she had to say.
As jarring as it was to stay home, Zaragoza first learned the truth about how constant touring was wearing down her body and morale, Going forward, she says, “I definitely want to have more balance and more time for solitude, writing, and travel.”
This realization brought deeper understanding that her worth and value as an artist “isn’t just in the shows you play. It’s in everything you do,” she adds. “So often, as artists, we feel like we’re only working when we’re touring, releasing, or actively promoting something. We’re artists at all times.”
She then soon learned the beauty in songwriting and the liberation she felt when she wrote without purpose. “[It] became freer for me. Over the spring and summer, I was writing every day because I wanted to. I wrote so many quarantaine songs,” she says with a laugh. “I made writing a practice again. I fell back in love with writing and remembered why I started doing this.”
In October 2020, Zaragoza released her second record, Woman in Color, a provocative depiction of what it means to be a Japanese-American, Mexican, Indigenous woman living in America. She combs an anxiety-riddled childhood, during which she always felt isolated and alone because of her mixed heritage, racism that’s contaminated the folk music scene, and definitions of femininity. 10 songs encompass her entire life’s journey, and she’s finally taking up space.
“[This album] was so much a reckoning with my racial insecurities,” she shares with Audiofemme. “I felt disassociated from all my racial backgrounds and always very alienated. I didn’t feel welcome in any of the communities, and I wasn’t welcomed in mainstream American society because I was not white. I always felt really alone as a kid and like there was something wrong with me. I would wake up and wish I could be just one race ─ or white. It was tough.”
Along her journey, she soon “realized I was not the only young girl who felt that way,” she says. Woman in Color (produced by Tucker Martine) brims with all her blood, sweat, and tears and reads like a collection of “love letters to my 12-year-old self,” she surmises. She also calls to her mother’s story as an immigrant from Japan, who came to this country with a faceless passport ─ because she was also Taiwanese and “no country claimed her for their own.”
Such an inherited identity crisis is the lifeblood of Zaragoza’s intensely probing new record. “There is a part of [my family] that wants to be proud of who we are, but there’s a part that’s been pressured to fit in and assimilate,” she remarks.
She casts her family’s collective misery right into the flames etched out of her songwriting. Songs like “Warrior,” “Fight Like a Girl,” “Change Your Name,” “The It Girl,” and “Ghosts of Houston Street” ignite from the inside out, with Zaragoza’s imposing vocal presence glowing red-hot like iron.
Woman in Color also excels with its sweeping instrumentation and hooks that seem to crawl under the skin. Zaragoza admits she can’t take all the credit; although, the choruses are so wholly her own, they would never work in someone else’s hands. “I would have these little melodic ideas or snapshots, and the co-writer [would] help me bridge them to the full song. I collaborated with some really incredible songwriters [namely, John Lardieri, Joseph Pisapia, and Ben Wylen] who took my melody writing to the next level, while also letting me take the reins on lyrics. It was amazing to get pushed in both directions.”
Zaragoza’s journey has been a fascinating one. She first confronted her pain with 2017’s debut, Fight for You, and “In the River” was the catalyst for the introspective voyage. It was the self-inflicted shove she needed, and the floodgates burst open. “I’d written songs out of need before,” she says, “but in terms of this specific place of healing, it’s the first time I’d ever written a song where there was something big happening in the world and I was feeling very distressed about it.”
She knew that in “order to heal others, I have to first heal myself. I can’t write a song with the intention of ‘I’m going to write a song to make someone feel better.’ It doesn’t work that way for me.”
As she’s reached greater levels of healing, either through songwriting or meditation, she has gained confidence in not only her work but her willingness to have difficult conversations. In a TalkHouse piece with fellow folk musician Lizzie No, the two openly discuss what it’s like being women of color in folk music, and the harmful effects of tokenization.
Three months later, Zaragoza is floored by how “powerful and cutting” that moment was and is for her. “What makes it [that way] is the fact that me and Lizzie were so comfortable talking. We felt we had such a safe space,” she says. “To see it all in writing was like whoa. I’d never experienced this. We do experience these things, and we never talk about them. It was almost out of my comfort zone in the best way possible. I feel like I need to be talking candidly about this more and more.”
2020 also saw the performer writing music for a documentary called Gather, an intersection of indigenous wisdom and food. Director Sanjay Rawal (who previously helmed 2014 agricultural labor doc Food Chains) approached Zaragoza early 2018, and she quickly started studying transcripts to get a complete understanding of the project. “It was really powerful,” she reflects. “A lot of times in American culture, we have a lack of respect for the food we eat. We process it like crazy and are [always] looking for the cheapest way. This film is so much about this slow, meaningful way of harvesting, making, and consuming food. It’s really beautiful.”
For her part, she co-wrote a song called “Mother, We’ll Meet Again” with Ben Wylen and performs the moving number for the film’s credits. “[The song] is about food and my own experience of being a member of modern day society and learning how to return home,” she explains. “That’s how I feel as someone with indigenous ancestry ─ learning about what it means and returning home, whether that’s physically, mentally, or emotionally. Food is one of those ways of reminding ourselves what home is. We’re human beings. It’s us and Mother Earth.”
Zaragoza absolutely beams when talking about her work. Now, as she closes a chapter, she looks forward to a year full of promise, personally and professionally. She eyes a possible children’s book, honing her producing skills for her own music, and continuing her role as a composer for Netflix’s forthcoming Spirit Rangers, an all-Native fantasy/adventure animated series.
“I write songs for the characters. There’s a song in every single episode. There are so many characters, so I’m writing songs for so many voices and circumstances. It’s spectacular,” she says.
The show is greatly inspired by Indigenous stories with a “modern day twist,” she teases. “I’ve never composed for television before. I haven’t had a boss in music ever, really. I’ve always done things independently, so I have someone to answer to and I have deadlines. I have notes. It’s definitely a different pace for an indie artist.”
Follow Raye Zaragoza on Twitter and Instagram for ongoing updates.
If you’re sick of the winter weather and want to be transported to a summery beach, look no further than LA-based pop artist Anie Delgado’s “Daydream” video, which is as ethereal as the song’s title promises. In the spirit of the New Year, Delgado sings about “new love, new life/no pain, no life/new you and I” in an infectious, uplifting melody with Studio 54 vibes as she dances and poses beside the ocean.
The song is, paradoxically, about “staying grounded and rooted in your daydreams,” says Delgado. It was inspired by an experience where she wanted a relationship to work out but also knew she’d be fine if it didn’t. “Got everything I needed/whether you take it or leave it/honey, I’ll be on my way,” she sings with sassy, R&B-inspired attitude. “I’m always dreaming/my open heart is beaming/when the skies are turning gray.” Delgado aimed to show vulnerability in her voice in the song, while the production made it sparkly and twinkly.
For the video, she took on the persona of Venus, the Roman goddess of love, whom she felt fit the spirit of the song. “I feel like she’s underrated in that people think she’s just the pretty goddess, but I think there’s a lot of power to being poised, being graceful, and that beauty she possesses,” she says. “Venus energy is being really confident in what you have going on.”
The video opens with Delgado emerging from beneath churning waves and stepping out onto the sand, the same way Venus was born out of sea foam. In a reference to the famous Botticelli painting “The Birth of Venus,” she stands in a giant pink shell in several shots. In others, she looks into a mirror and combs her hair, plays with pearl jewelry, and lies besides artfully arranged grapes, another reference to Roman mythology.
Aside from the goddess imagery, the image of the sea itself is an ode to the divine feminine. “I think the ocean is powerful and mysterious and similar to women,” she says. “It has that kind of silent power; it’s there, it’s beautiful, it’s sparkling, it’s powerful, and it doesn’t immediately scream its power to you.”
Because it was shot during the pandemic, the video was intentionally simple, with no additional actors. With just Delgado, the director, the director of photography, and her manager on set, she picked out her outfits and did her own hair and makeup. “We had to go on the highest tide and make sure it would be okay to shoot,” she remembers. “It was one of the more fun shoots I’d done because I was playing in the ocean most of the day.”
“Daydream” is the first single from a four-song EP coming out in April. The next track on the EP, “Dancing When the World is on Fire” — which she describes as a commercial pop song with world vibes — comes out in February, followed by an EDM-inspired song called “Cloud Nine” in March and then “Something Beautiful,” which she wrote by herself on her guitar in her room. “Each song is so different,” she says. “We wanted to give them their own life and give them each a vibe.”
Raised in Florida, Delgado went to a performing arts conservatory in New York City, then got into acting before deciding to dedicate herself to music and moving to LA. In 2019, she released her first single, “Galaxy,” which is based on a talk her friend gave her after a breakup about how a whole galaxy of everything you need is right within you. The song’s heavy production provides an otherworldly, almost trippy sound, and her friend Bass Savage created a remix that gives it a dark edge.
“It was kind of fun to just let him be creative,” she says. “I gave him the stems and said ‘do what you want with them,’ and when he stent back the song, I loved it and thought it could give ‘Galaxy’ a life in a club.”
In 2020, she released “Kaleidoscope,” a poppy song that compares falling in love to looking into a kaleidoscope: “The more you look at it, you get details and imperfections and good qualities; you find more and more things you love about the person,” she explains.
Her voice is sweet and angelic but also confident and self-assured in the vein of pop princesses like Ariana Grande, whose production has inspired her, along with Taylor Swift’s lyrics and Tame Impala’s floaty soundscapes. Her earliest idol, though, was Gloria Estefan, who used to buy dresses from her great aunt. “Being Cuban-American and seeing another Cuban-American take mainstream pop by storm has always been really inspiring to me,” she says.
Though she can’t go on tour now, she’s currently working with a company called ColorTV to create a virtual tour, which will feature her singing against the backdrop of different locations, where residents will get discounted tickets. “It’s all from my home — basically, I’ll be turning my living room into a stage — but the company has technology they developed to create these virtual locations,” she says. “As much as it can’t be a large, fully produced show like I could do if I were to go on a physical tour, I’m going to make it as visually exciting as I can.”
Follow Anie Delgado on Instagram for ongoing updates.
Born and raised in Melbourne’s Eastern suburbs, Taylah Carroll recalls entertaining her family and friends with musical performances from an early age, often until her audience relented and sought escape. It was never Carroll who ended a performance. Now, larger audiences have started to take notice – Australia’s Triple J radio station, responsible for discovering and championing many new and upcoming artists, has likened her sound to Sharon Van Etten, Jeff Buckley, and Mazzy Star no less.
Carroll’s music is intimate, genuine and confessional. “I drink too much coffee, I don’t sleep enough,” she sings on latest single “I’m Not Sold,” revealing that she buys things just to have things to hold, but that it isn’t satisfying a deeper need. Without the rampant post-production polish that can remove all human fingerprints from music, there’s an old-fashioned vibe to Carroll’s songs. Not Victorian, mind you – but her gothic-edged romanticism is redolent of Nico’s Velvet Underground days, with the pared-back storytelling skill of folkie Joan Baez.
“I think I would describe my music as alternative folk meets rock. I think especially the stuff I’m writing lately leans more into rock. [It’s] a bit darker and I’d say there’s a focus on lyrics,” Carroll says. In 2019, she released two songs – “Sometimes Good People Do Bad Things” and “Vermont” – but there’s a lot more to come from this rising star.
Before Melbourne’s first lockdown, Carroll had been preparing to start pre-production for an album with producer Tim Harvey. It was essential to Carroll that she work with people who could honour her vision and enhance her sound rather than try to impose their style on her. Carroll reached out to Harvey (who has also worked with Jade Imagine and Gena Rose Bruce) through a mutual acquaintance. “We worked on the three singles I’ve so far released and we regularly catch up and talk ideas. He’s a very gentle soul. I can say very little about where I want a song to go, and he just knows.” The two worked together in Harvey’s home studio, in addition to Soundpark Studios in Northcote (in Melbourne’s inner northern suburbs). “It’s a really lovely space – really close to home, which is nice,” she says. Unfortunately, the ongoing pandemic has changed her plans for releasing the album.
“That was incredibly frustrating. I’ve had everything ready for a while now,” she shares. “We’re still fine-tuning what will end up on the album because I’ve been writing. I need to work out what fits with the theme of the album, to ensure it’s cohesive – the rest will be for the second album! There’s three [more] tracks ready to be mastered and released.” This includes her next offering, “To Please You,” a song about the challenge of making choices versus letting life happen, and sacrificing authenticity for the sake of not rocking the boat. Carroll has felt the struggle to maintain her own perception of the world whilst also loving and honouring the perspective of people around her.
“I’m Not Sold” was inspired by Carroll’s fear of failure, a quarter-life crisis of sorts. “I was in a long-term relationship that I’d been in since I was 17, so there was pressure building in that. I felt like 25 was looming. I feel like I should have done all these things by 25 and felt this pressure to have gotten all my ducks in a row by that age,” Carroll explains. “I’d also internalised this pressure that I felt from the music industry to be young, and I’d given myself a finite period of a year after my degree in psychology to do my music in before returning to do my Masters.” Though she hasn’t gone back to school yet, her music career is certainly picking up. Just as her childhood performances would continue until her audience finally left, Carroll is built for endurance. She believes work, faith and dedication will ultimately prevail.
“The way I deal with periods where I focus on something stressing me out or affecting me adversely, I focus and feel it, feel it, feel it and let go. Then it doesn’t evoke the same response in me anymore when I think about it again,” she says.
“I’m Not Sold” features Jade McInally on drums, Damian Meoli on bass, and Harvey on lead guitar, but her live band, which played the Corner Hotel in Richmond this past weekend, is shaping up to look a little different. Carroll met Ruby Whiting, who plays synths and keyboards in the live band, via bass player Sean Gage (also with Foreign National) whilst Gage and Whiting were dating. Cassie Kumashov plays drums – she had been in Hot Springs when Carroll first saw her and felt that her “emotive, feeling-based” drumming was the perfect fit for the band. Carroll and company will support Olympia at the Gasometer on the 20th of January, and are slated to play Federation Square towards the end of January, in Melbourne’s central city district.
Carroll’s intentions for the next video clip may challenge those close friendships, if the athletic requirements prove necessary to make art. She’s working on a video clip for the next single with Nick Mckk, who’s collaborated with Julia Jacklin, Estella Donnelly and John Butler Trio. “The ideas are still in the works,” says Carroll. “I really wanted to have the band in this one, but it’s a really fast song; I wanted to record in double-time then put it into slow motion, but that would mean everyone playing an already fast song twice as fast. So we’re nutting that out at the moment.”
Later this year, the album will be finalised, and in the meantime, her next three singles are scheduled for release in February, April, then July approximately. “Provided all goes to plan, which normally it doesn’t!” admits Carroll with a laugh. Whatever happens, we’re sold on the soulful folk singer, and can’t wait to hear what comes next.
Follow Taylah Carroll on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.
“Listen to your heart (no)/keep on keeping on (no)/just say no to drugs (no)/eat a healthy lunch (no),” goes the chorus of “‘Listen To Your Heart.’ ‘No.'” It’s the first song on Emphatically No., the sophomore LP from LA-based indie rock trio Cheekface, out today via New Professor. Guitarist/singer Greg Katz half-sings, half-speaks in an almost monotone voice, his deadpan delivery amplifying the humor of the lyrics, which encapsulate the spirit of the album: quirky comedy, rejection of conventional wisdom, and defiance, sometimes for its own sake.
The fun, upbeat song, like much of the album, was written partly in earnest and partly as a joke. The earnest aspect was borne from bassist/singer Amanda Tannen’s difficulties saying “no” and drawing boundaries. “‘Listen to Your Heart.’ ‘No.’ came about from feeling this rise in self-care and all these people just telling you what to do, what’s best for you, and it’s actually okay to say ‘no’ to those things if you’re not feeling that,” she says.
The title of the song, however, first came from Katz. It had been lingering in his notebook for a while, then he blurted it out while working on guitar chords with Tannen, and she immediately identified it as the foundation of a song. “That response of ‘no’ just to this generic good advice that you would give anyone, and then the automatic impulse of disgust and refusal even though you know the advice is pretty good — it just has that spark of truth and humor that we try to find to build a song around,” he says.
It’s a silly yet oddly empowering message: no matter how reasonable, even irrefutable someone’s advice is, you still don’t have to take it. This is also the attitude behind the album title and much of the music on it. “We’re all always trying to be better about boundaries,” says drummer Mark “Echo” Edwards. “I have a hard time telling people no, and so it’s a reminder, it’s like a little mantra to repeat to yourself that it’s okay to say no, and a lot of times, it’s better to say no.”
The next song on the album, “Best Life,” has a similar theme of rejecting self-care culture, taking the listener through various scenes as the narrator laughs through therapy, declines to smile because it may be contagious (but “so is yawning”), and gets a Gucci logo stick-and-poke because “it’s cheaper than therapy,” melodically concluding, “it’s your best life if it’s the life that you’re living right now.”
“The concept of living your best life is something that I have always thought was sort of funny because there is no other life than the one you are now living — there’s no better or worse version of it; it just is,” says Katz. “The whole memeification of mental health and self-help by our generation, which distilled it down to meaningless drivel like ‘best life’ that has literally no meaning when you think about it, was sort of the jumping-off point for the concept of the song.”
Other songs on the LP examine heavier cultural and political issues, but still with the same absurdist humor: “Original Composition” addresses humans’ indifference to environmental collapse, “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Calabasas” calls attention to the hypocrisy of political discourse, and “Big Big Friend” mocks male privilege with lines like “I earned a dude’s degree/by buying a notebook and sneezing on my things/I come from a long line of people/a long line of people who procreated.”
Most of Emphatically No. was recorded and mixed by Greg Cortez at LA’s New Monkey Studio (which was formerly owned by Elliott Smith) between 2019 and 2020. The album incorporates electronic instruments like the Mellotron and eccentric sound bites like a dog barking, aggressive banging on a keyboard, and repetitive, chanted words like “everything is normal.”
“My goal musically is to make things feel good and make people want to move in a way that lines up with the larger philosophical approach,” says Edwards. “Despite the sometimes bleak subject matter, there’s still humor, there’s still joy.”
Katz considers Cheekface a mix of punk rock, power pop, and proto punk, citing the “great American talk-singers,” like Lou Reed and Jonathan Richman, as influences – you can hear it the way Katz sings the lines “we are writers! creatives! we work remotely!/I am furiously Juuling™ on the coffee shop patio!” in “Best Life.” The Talking Heads are also a band favorite; “Emotional Rent Control” incorporates the bass line and drum parts from “Psycho Killer,” an idea the members got after hearing these familiar sounds sampled in Selena Gomez’s “Bad Liar.”
Cheekface originated in 2017, drawing its early inspiration from Trump’s inauguration. After attending the Women’s March together, Katz and Tannen wrote their second single and most streamed song on Spotify, “Dry Heat/Nice Town,” about coming to grips with rising authoritarianism and violence in society. The band released its first album, Therapy Island, in 2019, and released an Audiotree live session in 2020. They’ve already written the bulk of their next album, though Katz warns his fans: “Just like everyone’s favorite band, we’re gonna get worse.”
Pretty much the whole world can relate to the words of NYC-based singer-songwriter Cindy Latin when the chorus of “I Am Looking” hits: “I am looking for something to help me forget/looking for a way to make the pain less/looking for a way to pass the time/looking for a way to make life bright.” And sadly, just like her, many of us have found candy, Disney movies, baths, and other remedies she tries in the song to be inadequate distractions against the state of the world and our own minds right now.
Latin actually wrote “I Am Looking” about a year ago, before the pandemic, as a general account of those times when you don’t want to sit with your emotions but realize there’s no way around them. “There maybe are ways you can distract yourself from it, especially socializing with other people,” Latin says. Now, though, the song has taken on a different meaning in the necessary solitude brought on by current events. “Having more time to yourself exacerbates that – when you don’t have other people around and you can’t think about anything else, those feelings are more dominant.”
Latin enlisted an 18-person band to help her tell this story – including a horn section along with guitar and piano players – which gives “I Am Looking” a decidedly jazzy feel, while the drum beat and vocals also draw from R&B influences. And despite the somewhat traditional nature of the band, the song also incorporates produced elements; when Latin sings “I get stuck with my thoughts/my least favorite sound,” you hear a deep voice echo her words, illustrating how loud our thoughts can be.
The duo Brasstracks, which uses brass and horns along with R&B and hip-hop production, was an inspiration for her, along with several funk tunes. “I just love when people combine genres in fresh ways,” she says.
“I Am Looking” is the third in a series of four songs recorded with a big band. The first two, the soulful “Running Out of Love” and the theatrical “We Don’t Get Along,” were released in 2020, and the another, “I Don’t Know What’s Worse,” is coming out within the next few months. So far, Latin has released a video spotlighting the band for each song in the series.
“It’s cool when you write something down, black ink on a piece of paper, and it becomes this huge sound,” she says. “The first time, I was nervous — it was a lot to lead — but the musicians are so wonderful and talented, and they all made me feel comfortable and were all patient with me. They were very quick to read what I wrote, and if something wasn’t clear, they let me know. We had a good relationship.”
Latin graduated from the Berklee College of Music just a year ago, but released her first album, With You, back in 2017, followed by more than a dozen additional singles since. Like her latest single, most of her music incorporates jazz as well as more modern R&B and pop influences, along with her signature singing, which gives off the impression of someone reflecting and daydreaming out loud. Though she plays guitar and keys and is beginning to learn saxophone, she often calls on a talented community of musicians she knows and went to school with – not only for recording dense instrumental arrangements (like in “I Am Looking”), but also for live performances.
In order to acquire and entertain fans, Latin makes use of social media. Her Instagram is full of little clips of her singing works in progress, with candid lyrics about things like being touch-deprived during quarantine, feeling stuck in her career, and dealing with the ending of a non-relationship. She posts the same clips on TikTok, along with clips of songs she’s already released, which she says has helped her get followers and Spotify streams.
“What I do is write in the morning, and whatever song I write that’s decent, I record it the next day and then I post that one, so it becomes a cycle of write, record, and post,” she says. “The more you do it, the more they help you out to get people to view your stuff.” She’s written many other songs that she hasn’t put out yet, so she plans to spend this year recording and producing her favorites.
It’s evident from Latin’s videos as well as her social media clips that she has a background in musical theater. The personality she infuses into her performances through her facial expressions, body language, and outfits makes them engaging and gives viewers an intimate glimpse into her life and thought process. Even if she can’t find “a way to make the pain less” right now, she can share it with her audience and help them feel less alone, and in the age of social distancing, that’s worth just as much.
Follow Cindy Latin on Instagram for ongoing updates.
Jacob Bryant, Trevor Davis and John Davidson owe a debt of gratitude to their high school history teacher, Mr. Johnson. Growing up as childhood friends in the small town of Pinson, Alabama (just outside of Birmingham), they often ditched history class to play music in the band room, fibbing to Mr. Johnson that they had “photography class.” When Johnson found out about their ploy, he took the three students aside at the end of the school year and was ultimately gracious, not taking any disciplinary action outside of scolding them for lying. Perhaps, if Mr. Johnson had been more punitive, the trio might never have formed The Brummies. “We gave him enough hell that we probably should give him a big old thank you,” Davidson shares in a phone interview with Audiofemme. “At the time, it felt like we were doing something cool – we just fed off each other’s energy. It just naturally happened.”
In November, with the release of their sophomore LP Automatic World, The Brummies showed how far they’ve come since those days skipping class – or even the ensuing years they spent playing in Davidson’s parent’s garage using his father’s hand-me-down equipment, becoming so invested in the music that they skipped prom for band practice. “We loved music and loved playing it, and wanted to keep doing it and get better at it, and try our hand at writing original songs and found out that we had a natural ability to be able to do that,” Davidson recalls.
Their passion and hard work translated into gigs at 21+ clubs in Birmingham when they were still underage. Yet it was these gigs that instilled them with the buzz for live performances. “That was our way in,” Davidson recalls. “As soon as you play in front of somebody for the first time, we were hooked. It’s just that initial feeling, that adrenaline rush that you get that makes you want to do it some more.”
In spite of their talent and live show appeal, Davidson admits they didn’t envision themselves playing music professionally until a songwriter cousin in Nashville set them up with a meeting at the publishing company where he worked, Major Bob Music. “I don’t think we ever knew we could do it professionally,” Davidson says of music. “It just morphed basically out of wanting to do it.”
Walking “blindly” into the meeting, the group decided that if they didn’t get a deal, they’d return to Birmingham and continue to be the band they were at the time, which admittedly didn’t have “big aspirations.” But as fate would have it, all they needed was two acoustic guitars, Bryant on trumpet and a batch of original songs to be offered a publishing deal on the spot, making Music City their permanent residence five months later. “It’s evolved into what it is today, which is somehow a career,” Davidson reflects.
Thus began the journey of truly honing their sound, pulling influences from The Beatles to Bill Withers to indie gems including Mac DeMarco and dream pop duo Beach House. But the haunting sounds of Bryant and Davidson’s harmonies began to take shape long before their days under Music City lights. Born into a porch-picking bluegrass music family, Bryant continues to lean into the bluegrass harmonies he was raised on. Meanwhile, Davidson received his own voice lessons through the Church of Christ that was strictly vocal a cappella, Davidson maintaining heightened awareness for ear-catching counter melodies. Eventually, the two would blend their distinct vocal styles to create the ethereal harmonies The Brummies are known for. “We just love singing together, and some kind of natural desire that I think we both have to sing harmonies and to figure out what kind of cool counter melodies or harmonies you can put on a main melody and make it a little bit more special. Or if it doesn’t belong, there’s also beauty in the silence too,” Davidson explains.
The Brummies introduced their eclectic sound to the world with their 2018 debut album Eternal Reach, which includes the dreamy duet with multi-Grammy winner and former tour mate, Kacey Musgraves. The project also taught them about the intricacies of producing, tying in their love of sonics while catering to what the song requires.
These lessons led into their latest album, Automatic World. The title acknowledges how we operate in a fast-paced world with constant access to resources at the touch of a button, the beauty of simplicity and human connection fading in the process. “Everything’s so quick and responsive now and it’s all tech driven… that I think working hard for something is becoming a lost art,” Davidson explains. “[The title says,] slow down and value the human relationships that we have and taking the time that we have here together.”
The album’s cover is a visual representation of this concept, as Bryant sits poised at a restaurant table draped in a yellow cloth, the camera focusing on his hands, holding a triangular folded napkin. “It represents us waiting at a table and having something served to us, so it goes along with the thought of Automatic World,” Davison notes. The project boasts several themes, but one of prominence is the concept of déjà vu that manifests as a lyrical thread across 13 songs, from the falsetto-sung “I’ve got the feeling that I’ve been here before” on opening number “Cherry Blossom,” a theme that’s echoed in the cinematic-meets-psychedelic “Been Here Before,” which comes after questioning “is déjà vu only a familiar feeling?” on the trippy “Fever Dream.”
Davidson says the exploration of déjà vu arose subconsciously after the group had an “experience” in Joshua Tree that led them “somewhere out in the universe.”
“It’s an interesting concept and there’s a lot of different theories, and you can believe whatever you want to believe and make your own assumptions or interpretations of what that is,” Davidson says. “We’ve had our experiences in different places and it’s fun to question things, but also ponder on what all is out there: have we been here before and will we be here again? It’s going to look at things from 10,000 feet every now and then.”
Automatic World was a direct result of that Joshua Tree trip, sparking the creativity that inspired the music. “It’s one of those coming-of-age stories where we’re all there together and we all learned something from it and took something from that experience together and we’ll never forget it. One of the most memorable and joyous experiences that I think we’ve all had – we were able to have that together,” Davidson professes. “Really, at the core of it was love. You prioritize and see things for what they are, and the overarching theme for me, and I think for everybody, was love.”
That love pours through in songs like “Sunshine,” which radiates positivity. Album closer “Island” harbors a transcendental vibe that Davidson says brings him to a “different place,” while “Call Me” ties back into the meaning of Automatic World through human connection and the desire to slow down. “I feel like the beauty of an album is that you gotta listen to the whole thing to take it all in,” Davidson observes. “Otherwise, you’re missing out on something.”
Many of us have spent pandemic isolation diving into books, movies and music; for Denton, Texas musician Dominik Kozacek, a survey of anime and manga classics inspired their latest batch of songs, while stir-craziness led to the formation of Famish, a loose group of tight-knit friends who left lockdown to help bring their vision to life.
“I had just been stuck in quarantine for so long that I was like, desperate for an excuse to hang out,” Kozacek says. They scheduled some recording dates at their friend Nathan Clark’s home studio, and brought along their roommate, Carter Lacy, who plays guitar. “Any time anyone had like a sniffle, cough, or anything, we’d be like, hold up – nobody come to the studio today. Normally when I go to the studio it’s with a whole band, so there’d be like five or six people. That isn’t really feasible right now – I don’t think that’s really a good idea – so we ended up just recording with me and Carter.”
Kozacek made sure Lacy didn’t hear the songs before they went in to record, so that his parts would have an improvisational feel, mirroring the off-the-cuff way Kozacek usually writes. “When I write songs it’s kind of just the first thing that comes to my head in terms of the melody and some of the lyrics and stuff. I kind of wanted that same thing with him, so he recorded pretty much the first ideas that he came up with,” they say. “That was the whole writing process for the keys and guitar, and I think that made it seem more raw, less overdone. Everything else, like all the percussion and everything, Nathan wanted to put stuff on top, so he recorded that in post.”
The songs they ended up recording had been largely written during the fall, each one a subtle ode to a different anime or manga series, though the dreamy acoustic vibe belies their subject matter. “I would finish a series, and I would have a riff already in mind, pick up my guitar and just start playing. Then I would come up with melodies and on the spot, improvise lyrics, and alter parts of the lines,” Kozacek says, in the interest of keeping things vague. The six tracks comprise Famished, the band’s debut EP, which is slated for release January 7th via Lonely Ghost Records and premiering today on Audiofemme.
The first single and EP opener, “Beck,” references manga (later adapted into a 26-episode anime series) in which a young boy meets a guitarist after rescuing his dog; the two form a band and name it after his canine companion (Beck, of course) and the story focuses on the relationships of the band members as they struggle toward recognition. You’d be hard-pressed to find these plot points in Famish’s song, but there’s an interesting parallel there; Kozacek has a long history playing in various bands in and around Denton, spanning genres from reggae to pop punk to shoegaze, who would play house shows for local crowds of fellow high-schoolers.
That’s where Miette Esteb comes in. Friends with Kozacek since middle school, she joined Famish as bassist after the EP was recorded, even though she’s still familiarizing herself with the instrument. “I played piano from a young age, but I didn’t get into the guitar and making music with my friends until pretty recently,” Esteb says. “I can’t just improvise on the bass, so [Dominik] pulled out their keyboard; I would play something on that and then they’d help me figure out where it was on the bass.”
“Miette lowkey inspired all the beginning stuff. The first-ever Denton house show that I went to, Miette was the one that knew about it and she was the one that got me involved in the scene,” Kozacek recalls.
Back then, Esteb says, “I don’t think we understood what a house show was yet.” She assumed the show would be at a pizza place, since the cover photo for the Facebook event page was a picture of pizza. “We show up and it’s someone’s house, and everyone was really mad at me ’cause they were hungry.”
“No pizza at all,” confirms Kozacek. Esteb adds, “I don’t think they even had frozen pizza.”
Though slices were sparse, Kozacek was encouraged to bring that DIY ethos to their hometown, nearby Flower Mound. “We would throw house shows in our parents’ garages and a ton of people would show up. In high school it’s so much easier to bring a crowd cause all the kids don’t have anything to do.”
Now finding themselves a little more grown up, but unfortunately with little to do thanks to COVID-19, Famish arrives without the “melodrama” of the high school emo scene that nurtured Kozacek’s previous work. “My whole musical career, basically, has been me writing stuff about being emotional or melodramatic,” they admit. “So one of the things about Famish is that I wanted to write something that was less situational and less serious – just write music for the stories, and not having to bare your soul.”
To them, the songs were written instead as a way to process that what-do-I-do-now feeling you have when you finish a book or binge-watch a series, but Esteb points out that Kozacek’s emotions are still there, just filtered through a convenient lens. “Hearing these songs, I definitely can tell they use not only the emotions from the show, but their own emotions, what they’re feeling, and their art as well, through the anime,” she says. But both agree that the inherent vagueness in the lyrics allows listeners to project their own meaning onto the songs.
As Famish evolves, Kozacek hopes that it will feature a rotating cast of musicians open to collaboration, bringing them one step closer to removing ego from the project entirely. “Another thing that I’m exploring with this kind of music is the concept of death of the author,” they say. “I wanted to try creating something that was less about me. Once someone hears it, it’s theirs.”
A few years ago, actress, songwriter and vocalist Aja Salakastar Dier was going to quit singing. After a slew of studio sessions where she was undermined, gaslit, and, as she puts it, “artistically abused,” she decided it wasn’t worth the grief. The problem was, she had an audition with the esteemed Detroit Opera Theatre lined up. “I was like, okay, I’m gonna go to the audition, but I’m not an opera singer,” Salakastar says. She ended up landing the role. And the next day, sitting in a room with four other professional, classically trained opera singers, she decided that maybe this was a sign that she should keep singing after all. That was one of the many steps along Salakastar’s journey to finding the strong, soulful and ephemeral voice heard on her first solo release, “December 22 (for Jean-Michel).”
The song was written after a particularly grueling experience in the studio. “I wrote this song after being in a really horrible studio session where I was being criticized in a way that made me shut down,” Salakastar remembers. “I couldn’t stand up for myself in that moment – I kind of just froze… so I wrote the first part of this song as a mantra to remind myself that I’m worthy… It was like me standing up for myself after the fact.”
Her lyrics serve not only as a mantra, but an armor and a warning to anyone – including her inner voice – that dares to criticize her. The mantra is introduced in fragments, alongside lush layers of Salakastar’s voice that sound almost Gregorian. For two minutes, the artist chants softly, indiscriminately to her higher power – herself – easing out the core message. Finally, Salakastar’s voice breaks through the hymnal ocean, delivering the mantra as sharp and clear as a diamond: “Watch your tone/When you call on God/Watch the throne/When I step on earth/Calling out her name!”
In a way, the song’s gradual progression mirrors Salakastar’s journey to finding her voice. Though she always loved singing, inner and outer criticism forced her to bury that part of herself deep within. “I felt shame around my voice and I’m not sure why,” she explains. “Maybe it was someone telling me when I was younger, ‘you can’t sing’ or being a Black girl from Detroit – there are a lot of girls like me who can really sing in a particular way, and I’ve always felt outside of that.” So, although singing and songwriting was a deep desire that Salakastar always held close, her younger years were more focused on her talent in acting. She went to SUNY Purchase in New York for acting and returned to Detroit with an index of Shakespearian language and an even deeper desire for self expression. That’s when she began writing songs.
“I moved back to Detroit and I started meeting musicians and writing more and it just happened from there,” explains Salakastar. “With my music… I’m not playing a person, I’m writing my own story. I’m used to telling other peoples’ stories. The process of telling my own has been incredibly scary but freeing.” Part of the story she tells in “December 22 (for Jean-Michel)” is of two of her greatest loves – the color blue, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Salakastar was re-introduced to the color blue very suddenly and all-consumingly. “I was hanging out with a friend psychedelically and I just all of a sudden I looked around and I just kept seeing the color blue so vibrantly.” says Salakastar. “It connected with me physically, like deep down within, in my heart and in my gut.” After that experience, Salakastar started studying how the color blue corresponds with the chakra system and found it represented speaking your truth, purification, using your voice, and transformation. All of this resonated deeply with Salakastar, who was dealing with depression at the time; she says that once she embraced blue, it was like a switch flipped. “Blue symbolizes the possibility of healing and coming out of that,” she says. “Not even being on the other side of it, but the possibility of being able to heal. And that’s really all you need.”
From then on, Salakastar only wrote or created from a space of blue. She painted her walls and doors blue, got a blue light, adorned her space with blue totems. The color became her creative safe space and eventually birthed an entire project: All Blue Part One: Majorelle. “December 22 (for Jean-Michel)” is the first single from this project, an introduction to her healing world of blue, and an ode to one of her other core muses, Jean-Michel Basquiat.
She remembers a distinct moment about three years ago at the Detroit Institute of Arts when she was deeply moved by one of Basquiat’s works. “I was taken in by this painting and I just felt so free and I was just thinking, if I could get to this place artistically, I could be okay,” says Salakastar. She explains how his paintings in particular have the power to draw her in, make her feel that she’s with him, or in the space he was in when he made the painting. The connection is not only artistic but cosmic. The two share a birthday – December 22nd. The song serves not only as a pledge to her own artistic freedom and worth, but an incantation for a kindred artist gone too soon. Bold strokes of piano, complex vocal melodies and distant percussion echo the complex makings of a Basquiat painting, where angelic harp, comforting horns and Salakastar’s sacral vocals aim to reach him where he is now. “I just think about how he never got the chance to fully heal because he lost his life so early and tragically,” she says. “I wonder what he would create today if he had the opportunity to heal.”
This song in itself presents an opportunity for healing, for sitting with emotions or words left unsaid, for reclaiming self-worth and warding off self-doubt. And it’s only the first chapter in the story of Salakastar.
Follow Salakastar on Instagram for ongoing updates.
January is not necessarily going to be the big refreshing escape from the year we’ve had, going by the news and the pandemic numbers. It won’t be the celebratory holidays we may have anticipated months ago. But what hasn’t changed, and what may bring some comfort, is that January is always prime reading time. That brief window – for most of us – between work ending in 2020 and starting up again in 2021 is just enough to get through at least one or two juicy reads that give you the energy and inspiration to return to work without losing your mojo.
Confession: I learnt piano for many years and I was pretty good, but I gave up – mostly to spend all my time smoking and drinking with a ragtag collection of fellow 15-year-olds at whoever’s house was devoid of parents. That’s about as close as I got to the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. I never was a girl in a band, but when I think to my life’s inspirations in regards to attitude, fashion, dedication to a creative existence, bravery and originality, they are women in music.
Chances are, if you’re an Audiofemme reader, you too are inspired and influenced by pioneering, persevering women in music. If there’s ever been a time we need to feel inspired by women to overcome the odds, deal with shit and continue to do what they love for the sake of it, it’s now. Consider this a belated Christmas present, then. This is a guide to the best books on modern women in music, in my experience.
Having mentioned girls in bands, let’s start with Kim Gordon’s Girl In A Band, which was released in 2015 and made it to the New York Times Bestseller list. Gordon was the co-founder (and sole female member) of Sonic Youth, a ’90s post-grunge act that fused dreamy fuzz with anthems to teenage lust and frustration. With her slash of red lipstick, tangle of blonde hair and too-cool-for-you attitude, Kim Gordon was the ultimate ’90s alt-rock icon. Girl In A Band covers her childhood, her first creative love – drawing, painting and sculpture – and her days in Sonic Youth, too often stymied by the men around her. She bravely confesses truths about her marriage to the revered Thurston Moore, frontman of Sonic Youth, and the disintegration of their relationship.
In October 2020 she released No Icon, a curated collection of images and scrapbook-style memoirs of Gordon’s Californian youth in the 1960s and ’70s, Sonic Youth in the 1980s and 1990s. In addition to previously unseen photos, there are also hand-written lyrics, newspaper cuttings and all sorts of Sonic Youth/Kim Gordon paraphernalia that make this a keepsake for fans and a treasure chest of discovery for fans-to-be.
The foreword to No Icon was written by none other than Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein (also of Portlandia, bless). Brownstein’s 2016 memoir Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl was so compelling, I admit I lay in bed reading it all day and had to force myself to leave the last chapter until the next day so that I didn’t miss it too much when it was over. Brownstein is candid in talking about the politics and sometimes fractious nature of working with a group of impassioned women, sharing rooms and weeks on the road in close proximity. Brownstein’s ability to tell a story, with a measured dose of hilarity and awkward truth, was evident in Portlandia, so it was unsurprising that her memoir had the raw, vulnerable truthfulness of a personal diary but the strong narrative of someone who is skilled in telling a story from start to finish without losing the momentum of fascination.
If Sleater-Kinney were the 1990s underground punk-rock phenomenon for so many U.S. girls, then Viv Albertine’s The Slits were the original she-punks. Emerging in the 1970s in the midst of a wave of angry boys on stage, Albertine’s no-holds-barred memoir doesn’t paint a pretty picture of being a girl in a band, nor a woman in the world. Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys is the ultimate inspirational read. It made me laugh out loud, take deep, reassuring breaths and reach for the tissues, grip my fingernails so hard into my fist I thought I’d broken skin… it made me react.
For Albertine, growing up in a council home with her single mother and sister, the only reality for her seemed to be watching boys in bands and – at best – dating them. She developed a love affair with the electric guitar, though, and taught herself how to play with the support of her boyfriend at the time. From those early days of hanging out in Vivienne Westwood’s SEX shop, getting raucous with Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious in abandoned squats, and being belittled and degraded by roadies and engineers as inferior to male musicians while on the road with The Slits, the book traverses Albertine’s abortion, her struggles to have a much-wanted child via IVF later in life, her marriage and subsequent divorce, and her return to writing, recording and performing as a solo artist in her 60s. It’s no surprise this brilliant book is being translated into TV.
Memoirs are my favourite way to climb into a musician’s mind and poke about in their memories, finding the nuggets of gold that will sustain my creative soul for life. A good set of essays, or insightful analysis, when written with people and genuine experiences at its core, can also be food for thought. I’m currently reading Revenge of the She-Punks by Vivien Goldman, which was released in 2019. Goldman, now in her 80s, is on the cusp of releasing her first punk album in 2021. Known as “The Punk Professor” due to her transition from a music journalist/band manager/musician/broadcaster/biographer (and more) to adjunct at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, this is a woman who lives, breathes and creates punk rock music. She-Punks looks at the feminist history of punk rock, encompassing The Slits, Bikini Kill, and L7 all the way through to Pussy Riot in the 2000s. Consider her the expert.
Whether you’re actually a musician or an aspiring one, or women who make brave choices are your spiritual sisters, these books are likely to move you. They’ve certainly moved me, and fundamentally assured me that in my strangeness, my deep need to create, my ability to survive while making mere pennies for a living, are all perfectly valid ways to live in this chaotic, strange world that is not so friendly to women. I hope they’re nourishment for you, too.
Share your favorite punk rock reads with Cat Woods on Twitter or Instagram.
FeM Synth Lab’s Art of Synthesis Workshop, a collaboration with Femme House and Moog, in January 2020. Photo: Lex Ryan
Have you ever wanted to borrow a synthesizer for a few weeks, just to see if it’s the right one for you? In Los Angeles, FeM Synth Lab offers just that, with a focus on making otherwise prohibitively expensive synths available to people of marginalized genders.
Three years ago, Natalie Robehmed founded FeM Synth Lab with two people she met through Women’s Center for Creative Work. The new group held their first workshop in 2017. From there, the project expanded to monthly meet-ups where people of various skill levels could learn new techniques and familiarize themselves with various gear.
Sabrina Ketel, who had been teaching herself Ableton, saw a notice of that first event on Facebook. “Everybody’s just really willing to help each other learn or help each other experiment and just share what they know,” she says of her first impressions of the group. A little over a year ago, Ketel came on board to help Robehmed run the group.
A synthesizer lending library is something that had been on their minds for a while. While the COVID-19 pandemic forced many to put ideas on hold, it actually pushed FeM Synth Lab to make theirs a reality. After a few years of in-person workshops, FeM Synth Lab wanted to provide a useful, hands-on experience for people at a time when they couldn’t get together in person. They also had some gear available to make that happen.
“We had access to some instruments that were just sitting there,” says Robehmed. The project came together in collaboration with Felisha Ledesma, who founded the program Resource Residency and helped launch Portland’s Synth Library.
Though people may have had more time on their hands to work on creative projects this year, the multitude of financial blows that Americans have endured also makes music equipment potentially more inaccessible. “Our aim is 100% to make it affordable and accessible to learn how to produce electronic music by giving access to all these instruments,” says Robehmed. They ask for a deposit when you check out a piece of equipment – anything from $1 to $20 – but you get it back when you return your piece (there’s an option to donate the deposit, but that’s completely up to the user).
Robehmed and Ketel are the only two people running the library, so it’s open one week out of the month. They typically open for orders on a Monday and the first two days are the BIPOC Priority Restock. Everyone else places reservations beginning on Wednesday of that week. “Our aim is to bring more people into electronic music, and into music production, who aren’t white, cis, and male,” says Robehmed. The BIPOC priority window for orders is part of the mission and Robehmed says that it has worked well. The following Sunday, everyone can check out the gear that they’ve reserved at Women’s Center for Creative Work’s office in Highland Park in a pandemic-safe way. All of the equipment is sanitized as well. “I spend most of the drop off days sanitizing gear,” says Ketel.
In the few months since it opened, FeM Synth Lab’s lending library has already gained a following. Farre Nixon has checked out multiple synths from the library. She’s a longtime fan of electronic music had been wanting to experiment with synths and production for a while. “I had no idea where to start,” she says. Then she started pricing synths. “It’s just so insanely prohibitive,” says Nixon, an architect who finished school last year.
Nixon moved to Los Angeles in early March and found out about FeM Synth Lab through a friend. When the library opened, she checked out the Moog DFAM (Drummer from Another Mother). A couple other Moogs, a Make Noise piece and a Korg followed. “It’s amazing because you can actually really feel the difference between each of these machines,” she says.
Now that she has tried out a few different synths, Nixon has an idea of what she will want to buy for herself in the future. “That’s given me a ton of direction,” she says. “I feel like now I’m able to turn a dream into a small, growing reality.” Plus, through the FeM Synth Lab, she’s gotten to know other people in her new city. “I’m building community,” she says, “and I feel like that’s the most important thing.”
A lot of the synths FeM Synth Lab has on hand were donated by musicians, mostly people in the Los Angeles area. Resource Residency donated a few Moogs. They’ve also worked with a couple different companies, notably Make Noise and 4MS, who have donated to FeM Synth Lab. You can even check out modular synths as well. “They’re the final frontier of inaccessibility,” says Robehmed. Through the partnership with 4MS, they have two rows of modules for users to play with. “That’s an amazing, beginner way to learn, or a great place to start because you can just experiment and it’s not too daunting,” says Robehmed. “It’s not an entire wall.”
They have effects pedals, mixers and interfaces too, but Ketel notes that they want to beef up the inventory of accessories. “We’d love to get monitors up there,” she says, “Stuff that will help you set up your studio, because that’s also something that can be really expensive to do.” FeM Synth Lab does accept both monetary and gear donations. They’re also looking to building up enough of a stockpile in the library so that people can check out more than one item at a time.
Robehmed mentions that Women’s Center for Creative Work has a motto: We’re a process, not a product. “I think about that all the time,” she says, “especially with regards to this project. It’s not perfect. It’s going to be iterative. We’re going to learn and grow and add.” For now, FeM Synth Lab remains open during that process, allowing future synth whizzes to grow alongside its expanding Lending Library.
Follow FeM Synth Lab on Instagram for ongoing updates.
Remi Wolf is impulsive – not that it’s a bad thing. At the beginning of quarantine, she adopted a French Bulldog named Juno four months before dropping her appropriately-titled I’m Allergic To Dogs! EP. The 24-year-old Californian musician’s strong intuition follows throughout her music, from her stream of consciousness songwriting to the multiple career pivots that eventually led to a critically acclaimed EP, a coveted Island Records deal, and an iPhone commercial spot.
None of this is surprising, as Wolf has always been a natural entertainer. She discovered her love of performing early on, and by high school had formed a full band and met her current collaborator Jared Solomon, who goes by solomonophonic. The nearly decade-long friendship with Solomon shows in the music, and the two share a camaraderie that breathes with Wolf’s rollercoaster delivery.
To some extent, Wolf’s excitement is woven into the very fabric of her existence, both literally and figuratively. “Woo!” features sparkly interjections, like a childhood cartoon, that swell into an electrifying R&B pop fusion with punchy drums and tip-toeing piano keys. If that sounds chaotic, it is – in the best way. Much like the trippy visuals created by her trusted collaborator Agusta Yr, or the almost painfully colorful clothing she wears, Wolf’s music is an ever-changing kaleidoscope of pop music at its brightest. She exists right in the middle of current musical trends, featuring elements of PC music, dance, and sultry R&B-tinged pop to create something just as eclectic as she is.
Wolf possesses an intense confidence with a dash of self-deprecation bred from the early days of millennial Internet humor and a short lifetime honing her style and persona. She went from being an accomplished skier to a successful musician while growing up in Palo Alto, an incubator for some of tech’s biggest names, and is more than used to high pressure environments, but that does not mean she isn’t open about the stress either.
On I’m Allergic to Dogs!, her self-described “stream of consciousness” “ADHD explosion” style of writing bubbles to the surface. She explores risky unrequited love in the same breath as being prescribed painkillers by her dentist. Her songs tell stories of hippie frat boys at disco nights and her inability to commit. The magic of Remi Wolf lies in the merry-go-round of her mind that brings childlike wonder with an edge.
In a chat with Audiofemme, Remi Wolf opens up about mental health, childhood television shows, and creating culture on her own terms.
AF: When did you realize you enjoyed performing? Was it something you grew into over time?
RW: I started singing when I was in fourth grade. That was the first time I ever performed for people. I feel like I immediately loved it. When I was in sixth grade, I ended up being in a girl singing group, like a barbershop trio thing. That’s kind of where I ended up learning how to harmonize and the basics of how to sing and perform. We would perform at preschools and we did these little benefit concerts. I really love doing that.
Then, I picked up a guitar when I was probably a freshman in high school and ended up starting a little band with one of the girls from that trio, her name is Chloe. The trio kind of dissolved. We started writing songs and performing covers. We started busking on the street and doing open mics all over the place in my hometown, which eventually led to us starting a full band. That guitar player is now my main collaborator: solomonophonic. We’ve known each other for eight years at this point now.
Then I ended up going to music school for music and songwriting and singing, and now I’m here. So that’s been a lifelong journey.
AF: With the amount of people breaking out at younger and younger ages due to social media, do you ever feel weird about it?
RW: I mean, no. I’m twenty four years old. I’m young. There’s hella kids popping off now at 18. I’ve never had any insecurities about that, though. I don’t think I ever really felt pressure like that. During most of my childhood, I was either in school or I was ski racing. I think a lot of my mental capacity was taken up by that. I was a very active kid. I always say that I feel like I’ve been working since I was eight years old.
I would say I feel a little bit more insecure about that now, because, like I was saying before, there are a lot of people who are popping off at 18. I don’t think it really mattered when I learned how to play guitar. Like, I think it just matters that I learned it. And I’m here, you know?
AF: It’s interesting to see you’ve still internalized those feelings, whether inevitable or not.
RW: Yeah, I don’t know if it’s jealousy. It’s just crazy how the Internet works. People are just able to create their own careers from their bedrooms, you know? I think that that’s crazy. I didn’t really realize when I was young that that was an opportunity. I mean, it’s more of an opportunity now than it was then, but I think it’s cool that people are able to forge a career for themselves, no matter what age.
AF: Who were some of your biggest influences growing up, or your most unexpected influence?
RW: When I was younger and I was performing, I was listening to a lot of the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Gwen Stefani, and Chaka Khan. This is always a hard question for me because I feel like I have a really big well of influences. They span all over decades and genres. I never talk about this one; I don’t know why, but I used to love Jason Mraz. Nobody ever talks about him as an influence. He has a lot of really good songs, and he’s a solid songwriter and seems like a nice dude. I’m team Jason.
AF: You said once that growing up in a city like Palo Alto, you had to get culture from other places since it was so tech-focused. Where did you look?
RW: Yeah! I grew up in Palo Alto, which is a very tech-focused city. Obviously, it’s like the birthplace of Facebook and Instagram and fucking Apple. It’s a small suburb. It’s very intense. There’s high pressure academics and stuff like that, which was never really my focus. I mean, I did well in school because you had to, but I was always way more focused on skiing and music and stuff like that.
I’m still learning things every day about the world. I think that for the most part, I was a pretty sheltered kid. I didn’t have the free time to really expose myself to a lot of things. In a way, I’m still growing up, and I’m learning things every day because I have the free time. I’m doing what I love to do now.
I feel like I’m still growing and still learning, even culturally. And I’m discovering new things every day. I want to create culture – I don’t think that it matters how much or how little I was exposed to at a young age.
AF: When you say that you’re creating culture, it almost feels like an unconscious response to not being exposed to many things and working from a different starting point. It’s kind of an advantage.
RW: That’s like a really interesting take. That’s cool that you’ve noticed that. I think that I’m really conscious of that for myself, but that could definitely be why I am so experimental with my music. Right now I feel the most free creatively I’ve ever felt which is cool. Maybe that is because I’ve been away from home for a while now. I don’t know. That’s interesting. I like that.
AF: Let’s talk about style! Have you always dressed the way you do now?
RW: I’ve pretty much dressed the same since I was, like, three years old. My parents would let me wear whatever I wanted to and I was a big pattern mixer like my mom. There’s this one story where my aunt wanted to take me out to eat at McDonald’s or something and I dressed myself. It was a crazy outfit. My aunt was like “I can’t take her out in this outfit!” and my mom was just like “No, she’s not gonna change. Just let her do her thing.” I’ve been pretty expressive with my style for a really long time.
I don’t think it’s anything new. I think now I’m definitely learning a lot more about fashion. I mean, we have Instagram now! You see all the trends and stuff going on. I’m a little bit more tapped into it than I used to be before, but I’ve definitely always been pretty expressive and colorful for sure. I feel like an adult baby a lot. I tell my friends I’m just a baby, like I’m a baby woman.
AF: And to clarify quickly in regards to the name of your EP, you are genuinely allergic to dogs?
RW: I’m truly allergic to dogs, and I have a dog. I love him a lot, and I’m looking into getting allergy shots. Getting a dog was a very impulsive decision for me, which maybe in retrospect, I should have thought about that a little more – I just kind of felt it and I went for it.
I grew up with two labs, so I’ve been around dogs my whole life. I think the allergy is actually a newer development. It happened probably three years ago where I was, like, wait, every time I’m around a dog, I am having sneezing fits! I also developed an allergy to avocados really late too. That was really shitty.
AF: Let’s talk about the retreat you went on a few months ago.
RW: It was a mental health thing for me. I was struggling a lot with my mental health, as I have for a while now, but in quarantine it was right there in front of my face. So, I felt like I had to get away and focus on that for a while. I’m glad I did. I’m doing a lot better now, like taking care of myself. I do therapy twice a week. It’s definitely a new journey for me and I’m just now kind of getting tapped into it.
As soon as my project started taking off and I suddenly had to start working all the time and really focusing on my career and stuff. I was like, “Okay, I can’t ignore this anymore, cause I’ve been ignoring it for a long time.” I want to be healthy and I want to be able to do the things I want to do and not be completely crippled by anxiety and depression, which I feel like I have been for a while. I’m still working through it. I definitely have a lot of anxiety and depression and stuff that I have to deal with on a daily basis, but at least I’m taking care of it now and and making active steps to better myself and be a healthier person overall.
AF: Where does some of that fear come from? Is it fear of being unable to control who is looking at you and how they feel?
RW: At first it was scary. The thing that still gets me is like, “Alright, when is this all gonna crumble down? When is it gonna be over?” I think that I have a bad case of impostor syndrome. It’s just vulnerable putting your art into the world. You don’t know how people are gonna react. I think that when my music first started getting out there, I had thinner skin than I do now. When people would say something mean or negative about me, I would internalize it and react poorly. I kind of just laugh at everything now because, like you said, I have literally no control.
I have no control over what anybody else is gonna do except for myself. Realizing that and realizing that the only thing that I can control is what I do and my actions, I think that’s liberating in a sense, because I don’t really have to fucking worry about how other people perceive me. That’s not my job. My job is to be myself and to do whatever the fuck I want.
AF: How does all this play into your songwriting process? Your songs feel so layered and haphazard and exciting.
RW: I think you’re kind of dead on with that. I start an idea and build it up until I think it’s where it’s supposed to be. We normally start out with a beat or a chord progression, and I pretty much just freestyle until I think it’s done. There’s not a lot of planning to it a lot of the time. I’m very free with my process. It’s hard to explain, but I write pretty fast. Most of the songs that I end up really liking I write in a matter of a couple hours, and I’m 80% done with the song by the end of the day. If that doesn’t happen, then normally the idea will just sit there for a long time.
AF: When you say you freestyle, is it just instrumentally, lyrically, or everything?
RW: Everything is freestyled. Everything is improvised from the melody – the lyrics, the chords, all the parts are made right there on the spot. There’s some songs that I write by myself on a guitar that I fully fleshed out and then I go back in and do production, but that hasn’t been my main process so far. That’s a newer thing that I’m trying out. But even with that, I’m still freestyling with myself and just stream of consciousness until I get something that I feel like is the right direction for the song. It’s kind of hard to explain.
AF: You’ve created such an immersive aesthetic that has become synonymous with who you are. Are there any specific things that stuck with you that helped you create this world?
RW: I think I’m really inspired by TV shows and movies from my childhood. I used to watch this Canadian series called Wee Sing in Sillyville when I was younger, and that’s always stuck with me. I’ve also always loved Teletubbies and this show called The Doodlebops and Spy Kids and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Basically all those psychedelic, crazy, weird kids shows that probably wouldn’t get made nowadays.
AF: Who is somebody that you would like to collaborate with – either musically or otherwise?
RW: I would love to collaborate with Michael McDonald. I know that’s kind of a weird one, but I’ve just always admired his songwriting and voice. He’s so talented and a genius, and I feel like I would learn a lot from him. He’s the GOAT for sure. Hopefully we can make that happen.
Over the past four years, I have grown to hate Twitter and its seemingly endless feed of bickering and bad news; since the pandemic started, that disdain has grown tenfold. However, on a Wednesday in late May, I watched and refreshed as Simon Le Bon tweeted the details behind Duran Duran’s landmark 1982 LP Rio. This was a social media moment, at least for someone who has loved Rio since the age of five. At a time where it’s starting to feel like we may never hear music in a physical space with other people again, Le Bon was guiding us through the now-classic album in a virtual space. He shared the people and places that inspired lyrics, stories from the recording studio and insight from 30-something years later.
There have been other moments that made me glad I haven’t deleted Twitter from my online habits: Miki Berenyi giving the history of Lush’s 1996 album Lovelife; Siouxsie and the Banshees drummer Budgie taking us through Kaleidoscope, which celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. All this is because of British musician Tim Burgess, known for both his work as lead singer of The Charlatans and a number of solo albums. (His most recent full-length, I Love the New Sky, came out in May and he followed it up with the EP Ascent of the Ascended in November.)
Since March, when it seemed like virtually the whole world had been grounded – no concerts, no dance clubs, no digging sessions at record stores – Burgess has been bringing together a global audience for journeys behind-the-songs of classic and contemporary albums. Tim’s Twitter Listening Party was the best thing – maybe the only good thing – about Twitter in 2020.
The roots of the project go back almost a decade. In an email interview, Burgess explains that he was inspired by seeing actor Riz Ahmed tweet about the opening scene of the film Four Lions as it aired on television. “It was a brilliant thing,” he says of reading the commentary on Twitter as he watched the film. Burgess thought he could do that with one of his records and so he did soon thereafter with The Charlatans’ 1990 debut, Some Friendly. In the years that followed, he would repeat the effort for his other albums, both with The Charlatans and his solo efforts, to coincide with release dates and anniversaries.
On March 23, when the pandemic lockdown began in the U.K., he did another Some Friendly listening party on Twitter. “Alex Kapranos tweeted that he’d got that record for his 16th birthday and was excited about the listening party,” Burgess recalls. He wondered if Kapranos wanted to host one for a Franz Ferdinand album. Turns out, he did.
Tim’s Twitter Listening Party hit its 600th installment on December 19. New Order’s Low-Life,Hercules and Love Affair‘s self-titled debut, Chvrches’ The Bones of What You Believe and Kylie Minogue’s Disco are just some of the albums that have been up for a listen. Some artists, like Róisín Murphy and Blur’s David Rowntree, have made multiple appearances. Some listening parties have come with surprises. When The Music, who broke up about a decade ago, had their listening party, they announced a reunion show that went on to sell 10,000 tickets. Burgess will be the DJ.
“I think everyone who hosts a listening party finds a similar thing – you don’t listen with a critical ear,” says Burgess. The listening parties give people a chance to hear their work when the pressure of making the album has passed. With time, too, the songs take on lives of their own.
“They can be a hugely emotional experience,” says Burgess of the listening parties. “I love the idea of seeing tweets from people saying what the songs mean to them – sometimes that helps you see a song in a different way, the stories it has acquired since it went out into the world.”
He says that the artists participating in the listening parties have often commented to him on the experience. “So many artists have DM’d me straight after saying that they were blown away,” says Burgess. The most common response from artists, he says, is that it’s like a live show. He’s also kept in touch with a number of them and says that there might be some projects next year stemming from the listening parties.
For Burgess too, it’s been an opportunity to listen to music in a different way. “It’s been an incredible experience to listen to 600 albums in a disciplined fashion. I get everything ready, headphones on,” says Burgess. “When I listen to music outside of the listening parties, it’s a bit more informal.”
Maybe, it’s been a little inspiring too. “I’ve written eight new songs in the last couple of months if that’s a measure of being inspired,” he says.
For fans, Tim’s Twitter Listening Party is a fantastic resource. It’s insight and reflection on the music coming directly from the people who made it. Even if you miss one as it happens, you can revisit the listening parties on your own time through the website that archives all of them. You have the option to either scroll through the neatly organized tweets or replay it as you listen to the album at home.
Burgess hadn’t planned to archive the listening parties, but he received a message form a “tech genius” named Andrew Brindle who had something to show him. “I nearly fell off my chair when I saw that he had built the replay feature – even then, I thought it was for one listening party,” he says. “It was for them all. It’s a labour of love.” Brindle recently added a feature where you can buy tickets to live shows.
Meanwhile, two other Twitter followers – Mat and Matt – separately contacted Burgess to help with scheduling. That led to a calendar spreadsheet, which is how they’ve been able to organize so many listening parties, and a website feature with links to indie record shops.
Certainly, Tim’s Twitter Listening Party turned out to be much bigger than its creator anticipated. “Genuinely, when we started back in March, it was a plan to do my albums and The Charlatans, maybe over a couple of weeks at most. Now it’s something we could carry on as a permanent thing,” says Burgess.
“It’s so much about the people who take part, they are what drives it,” says Burgess. “And the artists who give their time and share their stories. And, of course, they’ve helped keep me sane too.”
Follow Tim Burgess on Twitter for ongoing updates.
Whose culture is this and does anybody know?/I wait and tell myself, life ain’t chess/But no one comes in and yes, you’re alone/You don’t miss me, I know
The date was March 16, 2020. I got a text from my boss. He said he was really sorry but not to bother coming into work: “Looks like Cuomo is going to shut it down by the end of the day.” Which he did, shortly after. The lockdown order had descended upon New York City. And so began my two month period of pure isolation, before we all started cheating a little bit here and there, with clandestine coffee in the park and what not.
This year tried everyone differently, our traumas and baggage as unique to one another as the circumstances that surrounded our lives pre-COVID. Me? I’m a single 28-year-old woman, living in a small one bedroom apartment off of Fresh Pond Road in Ridgewood, Queens. I have no roommates save a twenty-pound black cat named Luca. He would remain my only companion for all those weeks except for the thirty-something union plumber who visited every two weeks to supply me with a fresh half ounce, smoke a joint with me and see how I was holding up. Besides that it was just me and the cat.
In the early days of the lockdown, I listened to no music at all. I realized that in this isolation, to feel any kind of emotion was dangerous, and what does music do but evoke emotion? So I listened to podcasts and watched the longest Martin Scorsese films I could find to pass the hours while I feverishly kept my hands busy with cross-stitch projects, this soundtrack punctuated by the sounds of sirens blaring through my neighborhood on the way to Elmhurst Hospital, which CNN kept calling “the epicenter of the epicenter.”
In those days I realized the extent to which we rely on the validation of others, be it your coworkers or the barista at the coffee shop by your house, to remind ourselves of our likeability, that we are not alone in the world. I found myself without that resource. I turned off my music and searched inward to see what was there. I went for long runs around Queens, logging miles around the numerous cemeteries that surrounded Ridgewood. I could run with my mask around my chin, because the only people there were already dead. I tried to picture myself post-lockdown, Charlize Theron in Mad Max, carved out of stone and devoid of feeling.
That’s just a phase, it’s got to pass/I was a train moving too fast
When Lindsey Rhoades, Audiofemme’s Editor-in-Chief, approached me for my list of favorite albums of the year, as she does at the end of every year, I realized I had listened to virtually no new music this year. But when Spotify released our year end data, I looked through my most-listened-to songs and found that The Strokes’ Room on Fire was one of the most represented albums on that list. Never mind that The Strokes released The New Abnormal, their sixth album (and first in seven years) in 2020 – Room on Fire was one of my favorite albums in high school, and it got me thinking of the comforts of the past, the way I could mutter the words along softly from the recesses of my memory, giving me this sort of blissed out haze, not unlike the concept of ambient television as raised in the New Yorker recently.
But why that album? For one, as I mentioned, it felt familiar and comforting. But I also think it has something to do with its rampant themes of detachment – “I never needed anybody,” Casablancas repeats on the chorus of “Between Love & Hate” – paired with a deep longing for intimacy. On each track it seems as though our narrator cares deeply but masks it with apathy, as if to say that something meaningful meant nothing at all to him.
Summer arrived. The sounds of sirens were replaced by the sounds of protests and the fireworks that exploded twenty-four hours a day. It was a shock to the system, that after all those months of silence in my Queens apartment I found myself on the streets surrounded by thousands of others. I cringe at the consciousness of my own privilege to say that it took these tragic circumstances for me to feel something like purpose or community again. But like so many other things this year, it is what it is.
Summer also brought with it a cautious return to socializing, for better or for worse. This was, and is, controversial of course. I know that some who reads this may judge my perceived irresponsibility and selfishness. In fact, I acknowledge my irresponsibility and selfishness, but I’d also retort that we’re all just doing our best to get by. Single and exhausted with the oppressive isolation of my apartment, I hopped on the dating apps with a sort of manic hunger for intimacy. I haven’t found it yet, not in a lasting way, anyway. What I have found are other tired souls desperate for a connection, as ephemeral as a night or a week or a month. It’s proved draining for me. Lately my anxiety of isolation in the initial lockdown has been replaced by the anxiety of being isolated that way again, an imagined race to cuff myself to another body before Cuomo shuts it down again. I eat less these days and I started smoking cigarettes again, some regression to my 21-year-old self who eschews the careful routine of self-care I have cultivated in all that time.
Never was on time, yes, I once was mine/Well, that was long ago and darling, I don’t mind
Where does that leave me now? Surely sitting on my fire escape, listening to “Meet Me in the Bathroom” again and smoking a cigarette, like a cliché. Lately I feel somehow less like myself and more like myself than ever. Less like myself in the sense that I never saw myself a real smoker again, a little boy crazy the way I was ten years ago and listening to the same indie rock albums I loved in high school. But more like myself for the same reasons I guess, that these facets of my being have somehow meshed with the person I’ve grown to be since then. I believe the major difference is that I’ve achieved some level of personal resilience, a gift with which this year has blessed me. I’m reminded of all my other blessings, my tiny home and my cat and all the friends who check on me. That I still have income. And the greatest blessing of all – that I have not personally lost anyone to COVID yet. The weight of that loss feels immense when you consider how many lives three hundred thousand can touch.
Two weeks ago I had a first date in my living room with a painter I met on Hinge. It was snowing outside and we drank hot toddies on my sofa. Normally I wouldn’t have a first date in my home, but the weather was bad and my pandemic fatigue has left me unwilling to imagine any more creative ideas for dates. I told him I was thinking of writing this essay and he agreed that it was a great album. He said he wanted to see me again but hasn’t made any plans.
Either way, I’m sure I’ll be fine.
Here’s to 2021.
Ticket Giveaways
Each week Audiofemme gives away a set of tickets to our featured shows in NYC! Scroll down to enter for the following shindigs.
