The Psychedelic Freaks take their own wild, whirling dervish-approach to jazz on their debut Passing Through The Doorways Of Your Mind, released on La Sape Records June 4. Like their name suggests, there’s a lot of adventurous, freak-out psych trips along a journey of the jazz spectrum. Vocals sound like they’ve bubbled up from deep underwater on the title track, which opens the record with its jubilant, eclectic sound centred around wah guitar.
The meeting of jazz with the tripped-out, mushrooms-and-disco biscuits world of psychedelic rock peaked in the late ‘60s as the same audience for Jimi Hendrix also spun Grateful Dead, Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington on vinyl. The genre-melding made sense: neither jazz nor psychedelic rock follows strict rules, both were always open to interpretation, individualisation and liberation.
Liberation and freedom in music while respecting its sacred nature is a hallmark of Horatio Luna (a.k.a. Henry Hicks), the Melbourne-based composer, improviser, producer and chief Psychedelic Freak behind this glorious, glimmering musical delivery. Founder of 30/70 Collective, a hip-hop/soul community, Hicks decided to move on after six years in late 2018. He’s also had his finger in the pie of multiple live and recorded acts and recordings around Melbourne. He’s restless, prolific, dedicated and – obviously – never short on inspiration and ideas. Also a member of jazz-house band Lush Life and collaborating partner to afro-house purveyors Teymori, Hicks may also be recognised for his remixes and contributions to numerous jazz/soul/hip hop compilations. Last year, his full-length album Boom Boom riffed on the joyful, juicy big beats of house music (titles like “No Words, Big Party” and “Bush Doof” give you an idea).
“I just don’t think there’s anyone creating this kind of fun, funky music in Australia,” says Hicks. “It’s like a time warp from the 1970s but explored in a new way, I hope.”
Stuck at home, Hicks was inspired to re-form The Psychedelic Freaks after starting and resting the project a few years before. The fruitful reformation resulted in their first, glorious LP, which – despite sounding live – was fully written and composed by Hicks then recorded on multi-track.
“Being in a room full of tape machines, effects pedals and guitars during the Melbourne lockdown, that’s when it all happened,” relates Hicks. “I’ve been a bass player for many years, and I’m a bass player first and foremost, but I really wanted to explore the guitar. I also really wanted to push the envelope in terms of what I could do with different genres like deep house, psychedelic rock and hip hop.”
Dreams, Fourth Way, Charles Lloyd and Don Ellis paved the way for big jazz band improvs into psychedelic sound. Think of a saxophone, trumpets, multiple basses and drums all working on nigh-on-impossible 17/8 time signatures or incorporating African instruments and call-response style vocals atop Latin percussion and Indian ragas care of the sitar, as Gabor Szabo did in the 1960s on LP Jazz Raga Impulse. In fact, Szabo’s quirky, country-meets-raga “Paint It Black” from 1966 spins The Rolling Stones’ classic right into another realm.
The Psychedelic Freaks’ “Illuminated Waterfalls” recalls the Afro-jazz of Fela Kuti, as well as tropical Bossa Nova and samba beats of the Astrud Gilberto school of Brazilian jazz. The bass is so prominent you might trip over it, were it not for the cosmic stardust glittering overtop.
The post-punk, doo-wop, spaghetti western guitars and wailing, punk rock vocals of 13th Floor Elevators’ “You’re Gonna Miss Me” lurks ghost-like in the wheels and cogs of this album – even if it’s only in rebellious, vivacious spirit. But it is not the wildmen of the ‘70s so much as multi-instrumentalist, rapper and producer Madlib who really inspired Hicks. Madvillain (Madlib’s collaborative project with MF Doom) is compulsory listening for anyone interested in melodic, adventurous hip hop.
“I was listening to, and informed by Madlib’s music, which is so inspiring to me because it’s multi-genre fluid,” says Hicks. “My own style of music is jazz house, or nu-jazz, jazztronic, whatever you want to call it. So, for me to get really deep on jazz house, I wanted to check out jazz fusion and all the derivatives of that, like acid jazz and things like that. By going really deep on jazz fusion, I learned a lot through the process and it gave me a better understanding of jazz house and the dance-floor sensibility.”
Hicks composed the album by himself, then sent the parts out to each artist with some basic directions. The multitrack recording was produced in Ableton. “I was working with some sample loops. I’d compose around the loop, then take the loop away at the end, and the result is what you hear on the record,” he explains. “That’s apparently how Madlib would make some of his music, except he’d jam with the DJ mix then take it away and hope he had something cool.”
The Psychedelic Freaks are spread across Australia, from Adelaide to Brisbane and Melbourne, they include Dufresne, Rohan The Intern, On-Ly, Billy Earwingz, and Felix Meredith. They’ll be playing a one-off live show at Melbourne’s The Evelyn in Fitzroy on June 11. Hicks will be playing with his own trio as Horatio Luna before The Psychedelic Freaks revel in their trippy, jazz fusion brilliance.
“It’s gonna be very psychedelic,” Hicks says with a laugh.
Naturally, he’s already working on other projects.
“I’ve always been a relentless creative,” admits Hicks. “I’m making a video clip for Lush Life at the moment… exploring my creativity in other ways, which is important to me. I do have the next couple of things coming up and ready to go. I’m always working on something because I’m very lucky to have the opportunity to do so.”
Follow Horatio Luna on Facebook for ongoing updates.
Photo By Lili Pepper, Art Direction by Nic Viollet
Creating dense, nostalgic soundscapes somewhere between Elliott Smith, Nine Inch Nails, and Britney Spears’ 2007 magnum opus record Blackout, John Errol lands squarely in his own unique, postmodern iteration of pop with debut LP Inferno. Dreamlike production weaves together self-reflective narratives depicting a world of haunting silhouettes, mischievous cowboys, and goth phantoms up to no good. Errol offers us a selective journey into his intimate, pulsating, and immediate songwriting. Each track on Inferno exists as its own mini episode built around nuanced, detail-oriented musical arrangement. The completely self-produced LP swells and expands deeper upon each listen.
With contemporary cutting wit and a dark LA-darling demeanor, Errol has the soul of a seasoned creative veteran, and comes off as a man who’s lived many lives by the tender yet dangerous age of twenty-seven. He’s an internal adventurer ready to guide you into the emotional fires of his musical revolution. In a collection of ten songs, John Errol unleashes a suitcase of inner demons into a nebulous healing chamber, accessible to the rest of us through headphones.
Inferno starts off with “Run Wild,” a poetic intro to Errol’s origin story backed by a Laurie Anderson-esque arpeggiator. “I stared into the sun/Saw a vision that was never mine/I thought, what have I done?/Started out so simple with a piano my granddad gave/He always wanted me to play a song when I was little/But now he says my tune has changed.” The lyrics reflect the musical dichotomy that has sustained and driven Errol since childhood.
Born in London and raised in LA by Turkish and Greek immigrant parents (his maternal grandmother owned the nightclub where his parents met in the ’80s, while his father was on a business trip), Errol has a way of compartmentalizing his backstory with comedic timing and handful of blunt one-liners. “My mom is a failed classical pianist. She’s incredible, don’t get me wrong, way more technically proficient than me,” he says. “But my immigrant grandmother pushed her really hard into a more traditionally Western occupation.” Not allowed to pursue music professionally, Errol’s mother made sure music was a large part of her children’s lives, and an outlet for expression from a very young age.
As a young child, Errol recalls being essentially mute. “An ideal weekend for me was playing the piano, and going to Color Me Mine Pottery studios to paint mermaid statues. I was literally on my own planet,” he recalls. He attended prestigious prep school Harvard Westlake, “which was nothing short of a nightmare,” he says. “I was an overachiever, and I worked my ass off to get there, but… I was in culture shock, and it was a huge wake up call.”
As a teenager he became obsessed with alternative music, taken under the wing of his older cousin. His first large-scale live music experience at the formative age of eleven was Curiosa at The Home Depot Center in Los Angeles. “Growing up, I was very misanthropic, a bit cliché,” he says. “I was cripplingly shy, and the editor of my school’s literary magazine. That demeanor works against me, even to this day; people think I’m an asshole at first glance. As for my music taste, I was listening to a lot of Robert Smith, and got a little Satanic at one point. I was obsessed with Jack Off Jill and Babes in Toyland. I went through a whole punk phase. In terms of the music I played, I kept it safe with just classical piano and jazz guitar.”
Errol took regimented piano lessons from five to fourteen, then segued into the guitar through jazz combos in high school. The early classical training led him to focus on ear training, partially out of dread of sight reading, which enhanced his sonic abilities and allowed him to become a self-sufficient artist and producer, as well as a mixing and mastering machine. The creative control he exerted over Inferno takes a page from the playbook of The Weeknd’s Abel Tesfaye; interestingly enough, Errol recently starred as the masked new wave keyboardist in “Save Your Tears.”
While he doesn’t have to share any of the engineering or creative duties involved with making a record, this visionary quality also drove him into the ground. Inferno was five years in the making, mostly because Errol endlessly rerecorded the tracks, experimenting with various sound palettes. He’d find himself up until the sunrise dragging amps into the shower, just for the reverb plate of the bathroom’s tile walls. It took a global pandemic for the record to be marked complete.
Making a record over the course of five years becomes an interesting journey because throughout the creative process the industry had dramatically shifted. “Spotify runs the world, essentially. And it’s created a genre of music unto itself, a hazy innocuous bedroom pop which I personally fucking hate,” Errol scoffs. “A quote I saw on Twitter summed it up so well: Songs are the new albums, playlists are the new artists. It was one of the most disturbing yet accurate summaries of what has happened to the musical landscape.”
Inferno stands in contrast to that model, demanding to be consumed as a comprehensive work of pop art. Its centerpiece is the eight-minute-plus “Blue Flame,” a multi-dimensional coming of age story. “Muted dreams won’t give you many signs to read/Better do what you’re told/And swallow your pride/A path has been laid in a prison built along the line,” Errol sings, his voice drenched in deeply resonating vocoder, merging classical piano with industrial synthetic drums, infectious guitar leads, and soothingly smooth melancholic yet melodic top lines. After many iterations of the track, he nailed it.
Though he could easily be a phantom figure from the future, traveling back in time, swaying under pink stage lights in a hazy Lynchian fog to an ’80s beat in a discotheque, the actual path that led Errol to present day is almost more interesting. The contrarian found his way to the East Coast, attending Bard College. “I had this idea of LA being this vapid center of bimbo culture. Now there’s a very established art scene, but as a kid I was never really around people who were interested in the same things,” he says. “At Bard, I entered this universe where there were people like me. I met my closest friends and collaborators. I think it was my second day, I met Adinah [Dancyger] who directed [my music videos].”
During his formative years Errol took a weekend job in New York City, crashing at a friend’s NYU dorm, and began keeping an ear to the ground for modern music in the New York scene. He snatched up his first professional music industry gig while working retail at Opening Ceremony, when he stumbled into buzz band Starred; after professing his admiration, they scooped him up to play keyboards on their tour with Courtney Love. “I was just stunned every night getting to watch her, because as a kid I was actually a major Courtney Love fan,” Errol says. “For my sixth grade talent show at my Catholic school in KoreaTown, I sat on the stage and played and sang a rendition of ‘Doll Parts’ – just chubby little me in a Catholic uniform. It was dramatic, and I was just so clearly a homosexual.”
When Starred disbanded, Errol re-emerged with with the knowledge that he wanted to pursue music professionally; he was no longer the kid at Kulak’s Woodshed Monday Open Mic on Laurel Canyon drowning himself in Elliott Smith-inspired laments (what the bubbly yet self-deprecating Erroll calls “the worst music of all time – how could I have gone out to sing those songs?”). He finished up at Bard with a thesis on Faulkner, but as his idiosyncratic blend of everything from industrial to country began to take shape, he found there were few who understood his vision.
“Past managers I tried to work with would say, what is all this insane, crazy industrial stuff you’re making? It’s incohesive, don’t do that. Don’t waste your time with it,” Erroll says. “I want to try a million different outfits, and find a common thread between all of them. I’m not as interested in focusing on songs that will ‘do well,’ because I don’t think pop music is guaranteed to do well or have a certain outcome.”
After parting ways from various managers and agents, Errol sought solitude and sobriety to regain his sense of purpose and center from the highs and lows of too much industry attention too soon. “Being in the process of assembling a professional team, while struggling with addiction, made me incapable of finishing music,” Errol says. “I just had this wall and blockage. I was a living cliché of the saying, ‘You’re your own worst enemy.’ That really was my main problem, and why it took me five years to finish the record.” Separating himself from his self-destructive tendencies, he instead found solace in 5am studio sessions. Now self-managed under the guidance of his distro company Terrible Records, Errol feels secure in following his own artistic and musical instincts.
On “Unbelievable” he describes these trials and tribulations, as well as the discomfort of self-marketing. His magnetic, twisted persona shines and his wit reigns free in the video’s satanic rituals, campy red gels, blood, gore, chaos and, surprisingly, choreography. Errol croons, “I lied my age/I stole my name/My head keeps spinning/And I can’t seem to stop/A million lies/I can’t rewind/A life that isn’t there/I am unbelievable.”
That self awareness only adds to John Errol’s mystique and charm as a brilliant and truly actualized artist. Through making Inferno, he has come to terms with personal demons, from his battle with addiction to his struggle with mental health, and the resulting album resonates themes of personal growth, happiness, and self acceptance. After a year of sobriety (during a global pandemic no less), John Errol has emerged as one of music’s most exciting up-and-coming queer indie pop stars.
“I totally didn’t think the band would get this far, and now I have to explain it and I feel kind of silly explaining it,” says ‘Pie’ Kanyapak Wuttara, vocalist in dreampop trio My Life As Ali Thomas. She’s referring to the name of the band; to create the powerful storytelling they do both sonically and lyrically, Pie needed a level of separation from her musical persona, and landed on “Ali Thomas” as a play on the word “alias.”
Based in Thailand, the band formed serendipitously in 2014 following an impromptu jam session between Pie and guitarist ‘Rack’ Wipata Lertpanya which led to their first gig together as well as meeting drummer ‘Taw’ Wannaphong Jangbumrung. “It’s kind of lucky. My friend called me saying ‘I have a guitarist who would really suit your music’ around the time I was kind of giving up on music,” Pie recalls. “After we jammed, the owner of the shop we were jamming in was like, ‘I’m just going to book you for a gig.’ It tumbled down from there and now we’re on our second album.”
Released via Warner Music Thailand, Peppermint Town serves as the sequel to Paper, the band’s 2016 debut. Opting to experiment this time around, they visit indie folk, post-rock, pop rock, and more, the album’s themes encompassing self-confidence, loss and love led by Pie’s ethereal vocals and visual storytelling. “The first album was kind of like meeting Ali Thomas, but the second is Ali Thomas taking everyone back to her house,” she says. “It was a lot of fun making it but it was challenging too. Sometimes you can make really abstract music and it’s how to make that abstract style work in a song formula as well as stretching the boundaries between a cinematic soundscape or a movie soundtrack and a song.”
Opening with transcendent, sunset-tinted “One Way Ticket,” the band play with the theme of fantasy, the disconnect between the reality of life around them and the limitless potential of the worlds we create for ourselves in our imagination. “My Red Golden Sun” shows off Pie’s narrative style as she picks apart the breakdown of communication between herself and a former partner. Handclaps and softly strummed guitar lend a sense of nostalgia and distance, heightened by Pie’s breathy vocal tone as she sings, “Why did you run away?/Left me faraway/Lost in foreign ways/My love, you were mine.”
“I wrote it after I’d just gotten out of a relationship,” Pie explains. “I was at a really low point in my life. Sometimes when you find love it can be bad but it shouldn’t stop you from looking for a new horizon. Music wise, I thought of going to a better place which was going back to the mountains, for me, so we pushed the drums way back sonically to see how it echoed.”
The trio demonstrate their fearlessness in the sound they create and throw themselves headfirst in experimenting with multiple genres and pushing sonic boundaries. This trait is My Life as Ali Thomas’ signature move, a trump card that they’re always ready, and more than willing, to play. Nowhere is this more evident than with “Rinn,” a heavy rock anthem for the socially anxious. “‘Rinn’ is about exploring your inner villainy. You can be yourself, but at what cost? We’re always conscious of other people’s feelings… but ‘Rinn’ is you being yourself without the cost,” Pie explains. “The lyrics aren’t that dark, but it’s got that energy of never caring.”
“Ocean” takes this experimentation to another level. The longest and most cinematic track on the album, “Ocean” incorporates orchestral instrumentation and melds it with Rack and Taw’s energy-packed performance. “It’s a whole world! The song feels like a spell to me – it doesn’t really feel like I’m singing. I feel as though I’m chanting almost,” Pie says. “It took forever [to make]; it started off with four chords and my voice and then I was just thinking back to being on a boat ride and seeing the ocean. I’m fascinated with that element. Water can be so loving but it literally can kill you. I wanted to capture that – how powerful it can be – and my perspective.”
Elsewhere on the album, “Baby, I Love You” explores themes of trust and connection to a poppy, romantic beat. “Luna Blue” soars with sonic explosions of strings that whisk away the listener to a feeling of emotional freedom. Acoustic guitar creates a softer foundation for “Pitch Black” as Pie communicates a need for sanctuary. “Dream Lover” picks at the concept of the intensity of romantic love and wanting to preserve the good, whereas “Dear All The Universe” sees the band utilise their indie rock roots to create an uplifting bop perfect for the summer. “Tears of a Clown” explores ‘50s sonic elements, incorporating more background vocals and brass instruments.
Each track on Peppermint Town is filled with a multitude of elements that on paper might look disparate. But My Life As Ali Thomas weave their influences seamlessly, while twisting them slightly to reveal a never-before-seen underbelly. Rife with sonic experimentation, raw lyricism, and cinematic beauty, it’s impossible to not love this album – Peppermint Town contains some of the band’s most evocative music to date.
Follow My Life As Ali Thomas on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.
Joy Oladokun has crafted noteworthy art with her major label debut album, in defense of my own happiness, out June 4 via Republic Records. Leaning into cinematic melodies that embrace a pop, R&B and folk-friendly blend, the Nashville-based artist has a voice rich and lush with stories of pain transformed into power. Across the album’s 14 songs – which include fantastic collaborations with Maren Morris and 23-year-old singer-songwriter and poet Jensen McRae – the Arizona native and child of Nigerian immigrants embraces themes of bettering oneself and cleansing her soul, shedding the trials of the past while standing tall in her own grace.
You can catch Oladokun on the road this year as an opening act on Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s tour in September, in addition to appearances at Bonnaroo Festival on September 2 and Austin City Limits Music Festival on October 1. Visit Oladokun’s official website for more information. In the meantime, here are five standout tracks on in defense of my own happiness.
“Breathe Again”
Featured in season 5 of This is Us, all it takes is one listen to “Breathe Again” to become an instant fan of Oladokun, even without NBC’s endorsement. Her voice sparkles like a gemstone under the light on this gentle piano number accented by a soft orchestra. “Breathe Again” serves as a true demonstration of raw vulnerability as Oladokun shares her personal, innermost thoughts with the world. Fragile enough to bend, but strong enough not to break under the pressure, Oladokun takes a hard look at herself as she’s trapped by inner demons, yet reaching toward the light. “Breathe Again” feels like a moment of self-betterment and rebirth, making for one of the album’s most triumphant moments.
Best lyrics: “Follow me down where the waters run deep/I’ll let you drown in the worst of me/If my intentions are good why can’t I come clean”
“Hold my breath until I’m honest/Will I ever breathe again”
“I See America”
The album’s second shortest track is also among its most thought-provoking. Here, Oladokun takes an aerial perspective on the melting pot that is America. Rather than taking a stark political stand, she looks at unity from a refreshing perspective. Blending subtle observations with potent lyrics that manifest god in the form of a man on the street with a tear drop tattoo on his cheek and dirt under his fingernails, she also manages to illuminate the balancing act of human relationships. As she reprises the pinnacle mantra, “When I see you/I see us/I see America/I feel your pain/I share your blood/I see America,” it has a powerful way of manifesting in the listener’s spirit.
Best lyrics: “I feel your pain/I share your blood/I see America”
“Mighty Die Young”
With a voice like an echoing beacon in the darkness, the dynamic artist delivers a tribute to the fearless leaders who used their voices to lift up noble causes, leaving this earth with glitter in their eyes, smoke in their lungs and dust on their tongues – symbols of a job well done. In two minutes and 18 seconds, Oladokun counteracts those who’ve dealt her more than her fair share of indignity with an endless well of kindness, ending the song with the fitting proclamation and a declaration of resiliency.
Best lyrics: “I’m not mighty/I’ve only just begun/The mighty die young”
“Heaven From Here”
Alongside glimmering harmonies from duo Penny & Sparrow, Oladokun confronts mortality in this gentle piece. She sings of seeing a heavenly view through the cracks of the stained glass windows in an abandoned house once shared with the person she loved, now a relic of their faded union. With a plucked acoustic melody that evokes the feeling of rain bouncing off a window pane, the song finds her asking the universe to give her another day to enjoy life. It is as much a song about perspective as it is about pondering the mystery of life, likely to prompt deep thought in anyone who listens deeply.
Best lyrics: “Just terrified of getting older/‘Cause no one goes with you to the other side”
“Jordan”
Oladokun ends the album on a light note with “Jordan.” Despite being baptized in the sacred Jordan River only to be bound in chains, she’s soon freed by a deep love. Building a new promised land with the person who saw past the scars and turmoil to the beauty underneath, the lyrics celebrate what they’ve built together. Carried by a peaceful instrumental, Oladokun culminates the song with the declaration, “now I’ve found love, there’s no turning back” — ending her beautiful debut album with a defining statement that sets the stage for a bright future.
Best lyrics: “You loved me though I was not lovely or deserving/You kissed the curse from my lips/And taught them to rejoice again”
“Doesn’t it hurt to be/The one they always point and laugh about?” Jacob Sigman asks on the first line of his new record, Why Do I Die in My Dreams, a surprisingly uplifting body of work considering the intro. In six songs, the Detroit-based pop artist and producer unpacks the last year of his life, which was framed by themes of mortality, aging and nostalgia – you know, all the fun stuff. But Sigman packages these heavy reflections in satisfying melodies and bubbly production that leaves the listener feeling comforted instead of morose.
“I think I’m always trying to be hooky and have [the music] feel good to listen to even if it’s sad,” says Sigman. “I try to say something profound but in a way that will make people want to listen to it again.” He does that well on “When We Were Still Young,” a track that longs for simpler times – something that felt extra prescient in the days of lockdown. He compares the innocent, blind belief of childhood to the existential crisis most 20-somethings experience: “Back when I was seven/I believed in heaven/Hell and everything in between/Now I’m twenty-five living just to stay alive/And I don’t even know what it means.” Ditto, honestly.
But instead of giving us a reason to sulk, Sigman reminds us that it’s not that serious. The chorus brings a wave of positivity that washes over the preceding feelings of doom as he self-soothes with major chords and calming mantras – “What’s within the shadow of a doubt?/Shine a little light and we’ll figure it out/Lately we’ve been coming around.” It’s a refreshing and comforting response to the listlessness we all feel from time to time, without feeling too much like that self-help book your mom gave you after your last breakup.
Sigman shifts from internal panic to reacting to his environment on the EP’s title track. He explains how the feeling of being surrounded by death on a daily basis caused him to grapple with his own sense of mortality. “It’s one of those things that oftentimes would come into my head and I would just quickly move onto the next thing because I don’t want to think about it,” he says. “But this year, there was no avoiding it.” The song explores his own subconscious fears about death and losing loved ones. Again, he finds words to comfort himself and others through the uncertainty, repeating: “I won’t let darkness take you/I’ll hold you ‘till you wake/Nobody leaves forever/At least that’s what they say.”
That’s the note that Sigman leaves us on with this project, undoubtedly a time capsule of being unexpectedly stuck in his 700-square-foot apartment (with a roommate), forced to figure out how to process the world around him and coming away with feelings of loss, hope, nostalgia, longing and peace. The vulnerability is palpable in his lyrics and his willingness to admit universal truths that a lot of people tend to shy away from. And doing this without falling into the quicksand of despair is his gift to his fans and himself. “Music has always been a really powerful creative outlet,” says Sigman. “But I don’t think it’s ever been quite as powerful as it was last year making some of those songs.”
Chicago post-punk quartet Ganser transcend genre with their five-song remix EP Look at the Sun, which dropped on Felte Records May 6. Using tracks from their 2020 LP Just Look at That Sky, artists Bartees Strange, Sad13 (Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz), GLOK (Andy Bell of Ride), Algiers, and Adam Faulkner (Girl Band) showcases indie rock’s range while building on the chaos and disillusionment of the source material.
Ganser is Alicia Gaines (vocals, bass), Nadia Garofalo (vocals, keyboards), Brian Cundiff (drums), and Charlie Landsman (guitar): moody rock n’ rollers indebted to bands ranging from Sonic Youth to Durutti Column. Their name comes from a mental health condition where a person apes the signs of a physical or mental illness without “really” being sick. Unsurprisingly, the group is at their strongest exploring that gray area between seeming and being unwell. Gaines describes them as an “inward facing” band.
In the ultimate unplanned irony, Just Look at That Sky—a meditation on times of uncertainty—went live on July 31 of last year. The cover is a matte goldenrod with a circle cutout revealing a black and white photo of a woman’s face. She’s wearing circular glasses that feel both high-fashion and nautical—almost goggle-like. In the reflection are two towering buildings. All the promotional material show the record against what reads like an ’80s vacation photo of ocean expanse.
It feels both serene and uncanny, both for the endlessness of the waves and how the image sits rendered in time. Against the water, the yellow reads like a geometric diving helmet pumping oxygen to the woman as she… swims toward somewhere unfamiliar? says goodbye as she plunges into water? observes at a gentle, bobbing remove? It’s worth noting Gaines—who handles the band’s artwork—is an award-winning graphic designer.
Yes, an emerging act delivered something that promised to be an existential puzzler when racial and economic tensions exacerbated by the pandemic were especially palpable. This strongly lured some while repelling others, making the album a sleeper hit that wasn’t much championed until end-of-year lists arrived. The music itself is familiar without feeling derivative—a heady cloud of the most swaggering punk bands and indie acts from the past 40 years. What did cigarette ads used to say about filters? “All of the flavor gets through.”
With two women sharing vocals in the band—one of whom is Black—it’s easy to be tempted to use identity as the primary lens for examining Ganser’s music. We’re in a cultural moment where so much art from marginalized creators is evaluated based on how affirming it is to people who reflect the creators’ identities—or how instructive it is for everyone else. But Just Look at That Sky isn’t about the unique experience of identity; it’s ’90s-heavy art rock about collectively feeling uneasy—not how any one individual arrives at that emotion so much as what it’s like being there. As Mia Hughes noted in Clash magazine: “It’s perhaps a political record, but only as far as our lives are political.”
Ganser is a mix of art school alumni, service workers, and freelancers. Some are Jewish, some are queer. They’re all millennials who’ve survived two recessions, and since the pandemic they’ve suffered personal and professional losses because of COVID-19. When it comes to capturing unease, each member has a lot of reference material, to say the least.
“Half of art is being able to tell a good joke,” explains Gaines. “The joke’s not always funny, but it’s about framing or contextualizing it so it lands. That’s the only way I can think to describe it. Post-punk is getting narrowed down to a very small little box of dudes shouting and trying to, like, out Nick Cave each other. I consider us art rock because, to me, art rock’s aim is to be amusing to the people that compose it. It forces listeners to think about how we got to the punchline.”
On Look at the Sun, the punchline doesn’t change so much as get rearranged. Looking at the sun is honing in on one piece of the sky. It can mean basking in the day’s glow as much as burning your retinas, and that tension is what this EP captures. The most compelling tracks are “Bad Form (Sad13 Remix)” and “Self Service (Adam Faulkner/Girl Band Remix),” which lend a haunting dreamlike quality to songs about feeling surrounded by people who ask for too much while giving little in return.
But the standout is “Told You So (Algiers Remix).” The song opens with an eager drum rhythm appropriate for a seventies car chase. In comes a distorted clip of art historian John Berger reading from his approach-defining classic Ways of Seeing: “To be naked is to be without disguise. To be on display is to have the surface of one’s own skin, the hairs of one’s own body, turned into a disguise which cannot be discarded.” Then abolitionist Angela Davis says: “Revolutionary hope resides precisely among those women who have been abandoned by history and who are now standing up and making their demands heard.”
The beat jolts forward, and in rushes Gaines’s voice—once languid and resigned, now reverberating with a dismissive, dance-y confidence. The song has an energy like DJ Keoki’s “Speed Racer” (minus all the sex jokes, plus mega cool-girl mystique). While Ganser is not a “political” band—that is, they don’t typically address politics head on through their music—the new introduction reframes lyrics like “Onwards and upwards/Almost gone/It’s nothing like dying/Nothing like me.” The words sound less self-pitying and more self-righteous, necessarily confrontational in a way that’s exciting and free.
If you follow Ganser on Twitter, you know that’s who they are at their core, but it doesn’t always translate to their music. That Algiers emphasizes this isn’t as much a revelation as a “HELL YES, THANK YOU!” Until the pandemic, Ganser was slated to tour with them. Hearing this track, it’s easy to imagine the raucous magic they would’ve brought to a shared stage.
“Before the world stopped, we were running around a million miles a minute,” explains Gaines. “We didn’t have time to wonder, like, ‘Why aren’t we getting booked for more support tours? I guess we have to keep trying. Or we suck.’ Once the album campaign started, we were getting in print magazines in the UK, but nobody would answer our emails back home.
“After a while, it was really jarring, but then it became pretty clear what was going on. We can’t help if people are intimidated by women expressing ugly emotions or intimidated by a Black person playing an instrument. I don’t know, I can’t read their minds. We’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing. We hide puns and jokes on our record. There’s a lot of layers. I guess people can just catch up.”
Chicago’s certainly there. Ganser might be the city’s best kept secret. The post-punk quartet recently won a donor-nominated Sustain Chicago Music grant. They’re headlining a nearly-sold out three day stint at the Empty Bottle, one of Chicago’s most taste-defining indie venues. In the Reader’s “Best of Chicago 2020,” they were voted audiences’ second favorite punk band (Rise Against took first, which I have MANY questions about). And in September, Ganser will make their Riot Fest debut. Not bad for a group whose sophomore release arrived in the middle of a public health crisis.
While the band is still coming into their own, their future should prove interesting. Is the rest of the world ready for such a promising powerhouse?
When indie pop songstress Holiday Sidewinder wants to make music, she goes directly to the best in the business. If the business is weird, transcendental, adventurous dance music, all the better. For her second album, Face Of God, she collaborated with dance music royalty Nick Littlemore, best known for his projects PNAU (with Peter Mayes) and Empire of the Sun (with Luke Steele). Australian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Littlemore has worked with Groove Armada and Elton John, while also stretching his composition skills as musical director for Cirque du Soleil in 2010. For her part, Sidewinder has been in the music business since her early teens, cutting her teeth with Sydney-based experimental indie rock outfit Bridezilla from 2005 until they disbanded in 2013.
Sidewinder has known Littlemore since her Bridezilla days, and says PNAU was the impetus for her own embrace of pop music. “I knew nothing about Nick before I met him when I was 15. I had been flown to Adelaide to sing on a Mercy Arms record and he was producing with Pete from PNAU. He had a shaved head and a missing front tooth when we met, so he had this big gappy smile,” Sidewinder remembers. “In a group of boisterous teenage guys, he felt like a cultured, spirited human that I could connect with. He told me I was a total pro and really boosted my confidence.”
In her final year of high school, Sidewinder did distance education while on tour with PNAU. “It is why I started pop music, actually,” she says. “After Bridezilla [shows], people would be crying, but with PNAU, people were having the time of their lives – they were so happy. It’s what spurred me on, and I thought I could make myself happier too. So I put sad lyrics to happy music!”
Still, working with Littlemore wasn’t on her radar until he asked her to sing his poetry over abstract music for his improvisational Two Leaves project. Both were living in Los Angeles at the time and recorded a rough version of Face of God in his Hollywood-based studio in just five days, with Sidewinder (a multi-instrumentalist in her own right) on guitar and bass. “Nick had that respect for me as an instrumentalist,” Sidewinder says. “I’m always writing my own lyrics, but it was nice to be able to meld someone else’s thoughts and ideas with my own in such an intimate way. Nick would leave me alone for hours to record vocals by myself, so I was able to sing however I wanted to sing without interference, to be vulnerable.”
But the album languished for years while Littlemore reworked the production with Broadway composer Billy Jay Stein and re-tracked the songs in 2017 with a New York-based band that included disco vets Nicky Moroch, Chris Tarry, and Doug Yowell. Finally released May 21 on Littlemore and Mayes’ Lab78, Face Of God is cosmic disco via transcendental dance, taking elements of psychedelic indie rock, electronica and new wave synths to result in a highly-referential, wholly new sonic playground. Depending on the age and musical knowledge of the listener, they may pick up on Bee Gees, Nile Rodgers and Blondie, or they may think it’s more aligned with Tame Impala and the xx, with a dash of Underworld and The Flaming Lips for good measure.
Holiday Sidewinder Carmen-Sparks (indeed, her real name) is right at home working with artists of the mind-bendingly wonderful variety. Her mother, Lo Carmen, is a singer-songwriter and actor, and her father, Jeremy Sparks, is a film set builder and engineer. Both her step-parents are well known actors (Aden Young and Claudia Karvan). Her godfather is the actor Noah Taylor.
As a teen, Sidewinder attended Newtown High School of the Performing Arts, which is where – aged 13 – she formed Bridezilla with a friend in 2005. Two years later, they were signed to Ivy League Records, and in 2009, Inertia Recordings. Their touring schedule included opening for John Cale, Wilco, Stephen Makmus, The Drones, Interpol and Sia. By 2010, the band chose to take a hiatus, re-emerging briefly in 2012, only to play their final gig a month after reforming. In the interim, Sidewinder had appeared on popular local TV show RocKwiz, performing duets with well-known fellow artists in the studio version and the live tours.
Two of those artists were friends Alex Cameron and Kirin J. Callinan, both known for their idiosyncratic artistry playing in bands and as solo artists. Sidewinder has known both since she was in her early teens. She’d toured with Cameron when he was in Seekae and Callinan when he was in Mercy Arms.
“We were a handful of people from that Sydney 2004 new wave, indie, electronic scene, who continued to do music and went on to have solo careers, which also includes Jack Ladder, my absolute best friend. We bonded over that and created a family of musicians,” explains Sidewinder. “Alex called me at a rough time, mid-breakup, and asked me to play keyboards on tour with him. I taught myself by ear how to play his songs and spent the new few years touring with him [until 2019]. Kirin would stay on my couch if he was in London and I’d do the same in LA.”
Once Bridezilla was finished, Sidewinder dedicated herself to relocation and her solo career. In London, she sought to establish herself in pop, and by 2014, had released the single “Carousel,” written with Mike Chapman (Blondie), followed by a string of singles: “Tra$h Can Luv,” “Baby-Oil,” “Whispers,” and “Leo” amongst them.
These tracks made it onto her 2019 synth-pop debut album, Forever Or Whatever. But her latest album is a much stranger beast. Beginning with the concept itself, the album pushes the boundaries of pop; as melodic and catchy as it is, it is not background music. With Face of God, she was able to return to more of the work she was doing as a teenager, which is “formless, without structure.”
When we connect over Zoom to discuss her new album, Sidewinder is in Thailand after spending a few months in both Estonia and Cypress. She doesn’t know where she’ll head next; she doesn’t like to plan and is a nomad at heart. “I felt like there was a bit of a ceiling for me in what I could achieve in Australia,” says Sidewinder. “You play the same five cities over and over again… and it’s so easy to tour Europe and the UK. The same with America,” she says. “I think there’s more room for niche music, whereas Australia has a tastemaker in radio and if you’re not in that, then you don’t have much of a career. The same set-up exists everywhere – you need to get on BBC 1 or 6 in the UK, but you can still be a full-time touring band without being on the radio because you can be working, interacting with fans.”
Being raw and real suits Sidewinder, and her own passion for music as a listener fuels her desire to write and make music that creates an emotional response in her own audience. “I have always found solace in music – it’s all I’ve known since I was a kid,” she muses. “I’ve been writing songs since I was three. My parents, grandparents, everyone writes songs. My mum worked at a CD store when I was a kid, so we’ve got a lot of indie stuff from the ’90s. I like to do deep dives into genres: there are times I just listen to female rap, or Bollywood music, piano house music, but sometimes nothing is moving me and it’s not until a song hits the right spot that I feel it again.” One song that always gets her there is Callinan’s cover of “Vienna” by Ultravox, she says.
Despite her successes in the music industry, Sidewinder has always had to hustle to get by, never quite able to just pick up a microphone and bypass the typical casual jobs all teens and 20-something creatives rely on to pay the bills. She’s written honestly about her years of (horrible) experience working in bars and cafes on her website, proving herself to be an excellent diarist. It’s easy to imagine her name on the front cover of a book, too – which brings us to a bit of exclusive news for Audiofemme: Sidewinder is working on a book. Her personal posts on her website caught the eye of an agent in Australia.
“A Hot Mess is a series of my memoirs, but I’m fleshing it out to write a whole book about my twenties, touring, and my life because I guess it is unconventional. I’m so slow, and I’ve just got to finish it. I think by the end of the year, I’ll have the full book together,” she says. “I’ve been really inspired by [artist and author] Eve Babitz. It’s so refreshing hearing a female voice writing about her life as it’s happening rather than looking back from some point of success in the future. As women, we get written out of history so much that it’s important we write our own stories and capture it.”
Follow Holiday Sidewinder on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.
Welcome to Audiofemme’s monthly record review column, Musique Boutique, written by music journo vet Gillian G. Gaar. Every fourth Monday, Musique Boutique offers a cross-section of noteworthy reissues and new releases guaranteed to perk up your ears.
TEKE::TEKE’s Shirushi (Kill Rock Stars) is a wonderous musical potpourri. One minute it’s raging indie rock, next you’re dropped into a surf rock setting, followed by the kind of twanging guitar that brings an Enrico Morricone soundtrack to mind. It’s a whirling dervish of delightful sounds.
The seven piece, Montreal-based group started out as a Takeshi “Terry” Terauchi tribute act, assembled for a one-off gig at a psychedelic music festival (Terauchi being a legendary Japanese rock guitarist). The performance generated such excitement, they decided to stay together, quickly adding original music to the mix. The blend of Western rock gear (guitars, bass) with Japanese instruments (koto, shamisen, shinobue) gives the band a distinctive sound, unique and intoxicating.
Each number is rather like a mini-movie of its own. “Dobugawa” is a romantic, languid number, enhanced by the cool, whispery vocals of Maya Kuroki. But don’t be fooled; the wild “Barbara” comes tearing in right after, with Kuroki morphing into a bold, confident singer to match the propulsiveness of the music. “Kizashi” has a hypnotic, industrial drone. The remarkable “Kaminari” starts out in a folk-influenced vein, before the sound drops out entirely, and a short flute line leads into a gorgeous, largely acapella vocal from Kuroki, before a sort of Euro-surf rock beat takes over (and all in four minutes!). This is creative cross-pollination at its finest, TEKE::TEKE busting through musical boundaries to come up with something truly imaginative.
Moon’s Shine is so mighty, you’d never guess such a thunderous sound could come from just two people: LA-based musicians Chelsea Dawn (vocals, drums) and Dan Silver (guitars, synths). The title track, which opens the EP, is a glorious stomper, Dawn delivering the good news with righteous fervor, as the musical backing steadily escalates from a single pounding beat, then ushering in the guitars, keyboards, and other noise to rock it all up. “Never Cross Me” is just as bracing, a fiery proclamation of strength. “When it comes to life experiences, we both have many stories to tell,” is how Silver puts it, “and some days you just don’t want to mess with us.” Point taken.
It’s not all sturm und drang; the rest of this release is more lowkey, though the intensity of Dawn’s vocals means there’s always an undercurrent of tension. “Sweetest Magic” and “My Oh My (I’ll Take You Home)” are love songs of exquisite yearning. “Down By the Water” is a slow-burning number about the true salvation that comes from within: “Down by the water, down by the sea/I found religion/the religion is me.” This is soulful gothic rock that reaches out and grabs you.
There’s a song on Chai’s third album, Wink (Sub Pop), that’s actually titled “Nobody Knows We Are Fun.” Well, that’s something that could only be possible if you’d never heard anything by this Japanese foursome (two pairs of twin sisters), as even the briefest listen to one of their songs makes it clear that their prime directive is to keep the party going.
In comparison to the exuberance of their previous albums, Pink and Punk, Wink is more restrained (the words “mellowest,” “minimal” and “introspective” crop up in the press release). This is a reflection of how the album was created, the band members collaborating over the phone and on Zoom, and recording using Garageband. “Donuts Mind If I Do” is a laidback ramble. “Wish Upon a Star” is a sweet lullaby, with singer Mana only backed by a single pulsating beat, a bit of keyboard, and vocal harmonies from the rest of the group. The cool “Maybe Chocolate Chips,” written by Yuuki, recasts her moles as chocolate chips (“I’m a fickle cookie/Bitter coffee makes it even more sexy”), with Chicago rapper Ric Wilson dropping in to add a bit of an edge.
Then there’s the flipside. The lively “PING PONG!,” with its video game beats and beeps, references a game the band members couldn’t play during the pandemic. The bright “ACTION” was inspired by watching TV coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests in the US. The light pop of “It’s Vitamin C” (it opens with a giggle) is a breezy delight. This is a record that celebrates life’s simple pleasures, from salty salmon rice balls to wearing pink.
Seventeen years after the release of Talk Show, the Go-Go’s finally went back into the studio to make a fourth album, God Bless The Go-Go’s. In celebration of its 20th anniversary, the album’s been reissued on Eagle Records. It’s a sweet pop treat that’s perfectly timed for summer release, providing just the right soundtrack for those carefree, sunny days.
The opening blast of “La La Land” is like an update of “We Got the Beat,” a pen portrait of Southern California life with its allusions to earthquakes and the vagaries of fame. This is a more robust Go-Go’s, the band’s musical chops tighter and tougher, songs like “Stuck in My Car” (another very LA experience) and “Throw Me a Curve” honed until they bristle. Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong even drops by to co-write, play, and sing on the brisk “Unforgiven.” It’s the first time the album’s been released on vinyl, and the CD/digital versions feature two bonus tracks, “I Think I Need Sleep” and “King of Confusion.”
Penelope Trappes was sitting at her kitchen table when she realized that if she wanted to get her point across, she’d have to drag a dead body across a parking garage. She didn’t intend to commit an actual murder of course – just to use an anonymous woman’s corpse as a stand-in for the societal expectations, emotional labor, and even physical discomfort intrinsic to the experience of living in a female body. The sinister nature of her endeavor would evoke the work of dark auteurs like David Lynch and feminist art icons Cindy Sherman, Francesca Woodman, and Ana Mendieta, soundtracked with Trappes’ single “Blood Moon,” from the third installment of her solo LP series, Penelope Three, out May 28 via Houndstooth.
“Basically the whole album’s supposed to be a film, but due to time constraints that’s not gonna happen ‘til later in the year,” Trappes explains. She’s released equally haunting and gorgeous clips this album cycle, co-directed with Agnes Haus, for “Fur & Feather” and “Nervous,” the latter of which she says “was very much about channeling that sort of romantic gothic witchy stuff… borderline horror… tapping into some sort of subconscious response to what you’re hearing.”
Indeed, those aesthetics play out sonically across the album as Trappes delves into themes related to motherhood, aging, anxiety, grief and healing – the final chapter in a conversation she began in 2017 with her solo debut Penelope One and continued on 2018’s Penelope Two. Appropriately, Three feels like the most fully realized expression of Trappes’ vision, brought to life by atmospheric drones, ghostly vocal loops, mysterious samples, disjointed piano, guitar reverb, and evocative percussion.
“I believe in the power of three – life, birth and death… the holy trinity. There’s so many things that all revolve around the number three. When One came out it was very much about rebirth and birth and new life, and self empowerment. Two came about when a very dear friend of mine had passed away, and it brought up all these feelings of loss and grief. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an actual physical death – there’s all sorts of deaths that we have in our lives;la petite mort, all the way through,” Trappes says. “I found myself surrounded by a darkness in that sense, and the same happened with Three – there’s this struggle between the dark and the light that I’m interested in trying to sonically produce, to find that balance. So with Three comes the closing of the chapters – birth, death, and now life, which is, I believe, in order to live really happily, a constant state of working on healing.”
Trappes began her solo work in earnest after a decade as half of NYC-based electronic duo The Golden Filter, and says the shift in focus came from wanting to express her own personal story more fully. “I’d been very much part of a team. My partner and I, we’re a couple as well, we see eye to eye on everything and it’s wonderful. But it had got to a point of my maturity as a woman where I just wanted to be me, myself, and I, and explore things that were unique to my life to date,” she explains. “Very individual experiences, like being a single mum for a while there, and my childhood growing up in Australia, and traveling before I moved to America, all these things. I really wanted to make it very much as if it was, in essence, sort of a journal entry.”
Because most of her lyrics are more impressionistic than a typical diary, Trappes is able to extract what feels like ancient wisdom from every corner of her existence. From moving to a huge old house in Brighton after years of living in London, to the act of unpacking her anxiety, Trappes’ exploits take stirring, esoteric shapes. Opening with “Veil,” which she says was inspired by meeting a friend’s newborn baby, taking root with “Forest,” in which she visualizes all of humanity as a kind of inter-connected mycelium, and coming full circle with “Awkward Matriarch,” Trappes explores matrilineal bonds in atypical ways. This narrative was inspired by the eternal bonds shared with her daughter (who recently turned nineteen and left home) and her own mother, who has suffered with Parkinsons since Trappes was a teenager but is still “strong in spirit.”
“Motherhood was always going to be one of the main themes with my solo work,” Trappes says. “The music world’s changed so much in the last few years that it’s not a dirty word to say you’re a mother and active musician. It’s ridiculous, but when I first started out I didn’t tell a lot of people because I just didn’t want to hear the judgement, whatever way it comes, you know? There’s this self-empowerment, there’s these things that you struggle through, and the love – whether you ever have a child or not, we all have a mother, and whatever those connections are that people have with their mothers, they shape who you are and what you become or what you struggle with, what you need to heal from. That was really important to me, not just on a personal level about my own daughter and my mother, but on a sociological level.”
Throughout the album, Trappes’ intrepid production elevates these narratives to something intensely primal. “Awkward Matriarch,” for instance, starts off “deliberately super minimal and quiet,” but Trappes chose to build vocal layers over it to symbolize women across centuries and millennia singing together – “all the voices and all the struggle, and the joy in one song,” as she puts it.
“All the demos come from these drones, whether it’s with a synth or a guitar, like just reverb echoing. Meditation moments are sort of what creates the initial demos,” she adds. “And then, a track like ‘Nervous,’ for example, needed more. It needed to almost build that anxiety. At the end you’ve got this lift but there’s still the weight of it all.” Where the song goes, she says, mostly depends on its subject matter.
Though it was written before the pandemic, many will find resonance in the agoraphobic truths at the core of a song like “Nervous” as we begin to re-enter society. Trappes set out with the intention of making Penelope Three about healing, a concept that feels especially prescient now. “Self care has to come into play now, because everything is getting faster and weirder and systems are breaking down and the environment’s fucked,” Trappes points out. “It’s quite heartbreaking, but there’s also a lot of hope still. ‘Fur & Feather,’ for example, tries to address the polar opposites of my generation [and my daughter’s] generation and still trying to hold on to that hope and love.”
“Again, I believe in a very matriarchal sort of self-care and community care and those themes of caring; it doesn’t have to be a matriarchal or patriarchal thing, it’s just self-knowledge and self-care and self-love. Every song has an element of that,” she continues. “Songwriting, or writing of any form, for anyone, is very healing, just to get it out there. And for me particularly, that’s why being solo has been really good.”
Next up for Trappes is a UK tour, for which she’s hired pianist Hinako Omori and cellist Maddie Cutter (Trappes herself will focus on guitar and triggering samples and percussion at the shows). “It was really important to have women on stage with me for this story, this chapter,” she says. “The last album when I did some shows it was just me doing everything and it was kind of exhausting. I was always like a mad professor having to really focus and I couldn’t necessarily engage with the audience the way that I like to do.”
Photo Credit: Agnes Haus
Now in her forties, Trappes refers to herself often as a “mature woman,” and admits that there’s a confrontational, almost punk attitude to the overarching narrative across her three records. She appears nude on the album covers, often twisting her body into alien shapes in defiance of conventional beauty standards, or letting a slow camera shutter distort her form. “As a parent, or as a performer, or I don’t know, any woman out there, is constantly under some sort of microscope as to how she should behave and what have you. So each song is addressing an element of that,” she says. “In every other creative arts industry, you get better with age; a novelist gets better, a film director gets better. Why should a musician be considered somewhat washed up after the age of 35, 30, 25? I find it really fascinating that being a mature artist in music is still frowned upon by certain parts of society.”
Trappes does recognize there’s been a shift in acceptance when it comes to aging and motherhood in the industry, only that it’s been a painstakingly slow one. “Look at Patti Smith and Laurie Anderson. They’re still going,” she says. “And I’m not stopping. It’s what you do, it’s what you love, it’s your life, and creation is life, so it just keeps going.”
Follow Penelope Trappes on Instagram and Twitter for ongoing updates.
You would be forgiven for not immediately associating the words “Satanic abortion ritual” with the empowerment of women, instead visualizing images of tenebrously becloaked acolytes chanting blasphemies while partaking in demonic rites by the light of hell’s own flames. In reality, however, such flights of fancy couldn’t be farther from the truth (although hang on to that image – we’ll come back to it later). This ritual is actually the fiendishly clever brainchild of The Satanic Temple (TST), which created it as a part of its long advocacy for women’s rights and includes various legal actions to protect bodily autonomy. As a federally registered and non-theistic religion, TST created its “Satanic abortion ritual” to empower women seeking safe abortions by circumventing the medically unnecessary restrictions imposed by some states on Planned Parenthood and other clinics.
Recently, TST’s deeply held commitment to women’s rights is being embodied in auditory form through the band Satanic Planet, in which TST co-founder and spokesperson Lucien Greaves gives voice to such causes through the medium of music. Alongside members Luke Henshaw (Planet B, Sonido de la Frontera), Dave Lombardo (Slayer, The Misfits), and Justin Pearson (The Locust, Dead Cross), Greaves’ words and lyrics speak of the devil as a symbol of rebellion against injustice and tyrannical authority. Satanic Planet’s debut album (out May 28 via Three One G) spans a dark spectrum of doom-laden industrial soundscapes, often with a distinct flavor of horror – frenzied screeches and howls à la The Exorcist, with snippets of Christian songs creepily sampled into the mix, and a pan-demoniac cacophony of horns juxtaposed against the lyrics “Mark of the Beast, 666” (told you we would come back to that first image of Satanic ritual!).
Satanic Planet is a wide-ranging project that features two women among its collaborators – namely, Shiva Honey and Nomi Abadi, both of whom have dedicated their multi-faceted careers to bolstering the voices of marginalized women. Honey is an ordained Minister of Satan with TST and founding member of the Detroit chapter and International Council. She has been involved in various national campaigns, including the organization’s efforts to bring its infamous Baphomet statue to Arkansas in 2018. Meanwhile, Abadi is a classically trained and Grammy-nominated pianist, composer, and singer, as well as founder of the Female Composer Safety League (a non-profit dedicated to protecting women in the composing industry from harassment) and inventor of the NORY® double keytar.
Nomi Abadi plays the NORY® double keytar she invented. Photo Credit: Jessica Czarnecki
Honey and Abadi’s guest tracks will premiere at Satanic Planet’s virtual album release party, held online via TST’s The Satanic Estate platform on May 28. Tickets are available via donation, and the events include a band panel (hosted by yours truly), drag queen and art videos, and a dramatic “unbaptism” ritual by Honey. Satanic Planet has also released a range of clothing and beach towels, with proceeds supporting The Satanic Temple’s reproductive rights activism. To learn more, we spoke to Honey and Abadi about their powerful contributions to Satanic Planet’s first album and their long-time work that champions women and marginalized groups.
AF: How did you get involved with Satanic Planet? In what ways are the band and The Satanic Temple (TST) meaningful to you?
SH: I became involved in TST back in 2014. I had been doing a lot of creative work and community organizing and became a founding member of TST’s first chapter in Detroit. The tenets and ethos of the organization lined up well with my personal beliefs, and there was an incredible creative, dangerous, and exciting energy within the Detroit group that resonated with me. We were a band of artists and organizers on the creative edge that became responsible for Snaketivity, the Baphomet Unveiling, and many of the initial actions that brought TST into the hearts and homes of people around the world. During that time, Lucien and I became friends. We worked on setting up the International Council (one of our internal governing bodies for TST) and continuing to establish the organization as it grew exponentially. Eventually we started to collaborate on creative projects. In the fall of 2019 I asked him to contribute to some tracks to accompany my Satanic ritual book, The Devil’s Tome: A Book of Modern Satanic Ritual, and soon after he asked if I wanted to contribute to Satanic Planet.
NA: I was thrilled to be asked to sing and write vocals for “Devil In Me” by my friend and musician, Justin Pearson. I didn’t think twice about involving myself with music from the Satanic Temple. As an Egyptian Jew raised in South Orange County, I grew up sidelined by mainstream society, where being a Christian is a standard American expectation. The opposition I felt toward our system as a whole growing up, and still feel today, is palpable. While I’m not a Satanist, I have always felt warmth and acceptance from the Satanic community more than any other religious community, and believe that if Jesus were around today, he’d probably be a modern day Satanist.
AF: How is Satanic Planet different from your previous musical projects?
SH: I’ve been writing music since I picked up a guitar when I was 10! Music has always been my great passion, but I haven’t really been able to pursue it as seriously as I’d wanted until now. I’ve been in bands pretty consistently since I was around 16. They’ve ranged from rock, to jazz to electronic. I started Blood and Honey with my current collaborator Kyle Apsey just before I joined TST. We started staging occult and Satanic live performances the summer before I joined the Temple. I’m currently working with Kyle and Lucien on a record of Satanic ritual music with my band called Serpentīnae to accompany the Satanic rituals in my book The Devil’s Tome: A Book of Modern Satanic Ritual and The Devil’s Deck: A Tool for Satanic Enlightenment. Music has been such an important part of my ritual work, so I wanted to create something explicitly for the Satanic practitioner. The music for Serpentīnaewill be super eclectic, beautiful and intense – right now I’m working with live cello, synths, big guitars, and soaring vocals. We secretly released an EP, Solve et Coagula, last year directly to folks who backed my book, so it’s circulating but not available for purchase or on music streaming sites. Satanic Planet is united in Satan, but very different in sound. I’m really proud to be a part of both projects!
Photo Credit: June of 87
NA: It isn’t every day that you get to jump on counterculture music projects with musicians you grew up in awe of, like Dave Lombardo. Aside from TST’s cause, working alongside the musicians involved with “Devil In Me” has been the most incredible aspect of this project to me. I’ve played in so many bands and counterculture festivals (mostly for women’s rights and animal rights), but Satanic Planet is a culmination of so many different voices across the empowered, pissed and disenfranchised underbelly of society. If the system has ever left you out, there’s a place for you in Satanic Planet.
AF: Can you describe how you worked with the band remotely, and collaborated throughout the pandemic?
SH: I was supposed to fly to California to work on the record before the pandemic, but had to do everything remotely, ultimately. I have a lot of experience recording remotely, as most of the music recorded by Blood And Honey was written and recorded while I was in Detroit and Kyle was in Korea. This was way different because the only person in the band I’d met in person was Lucien, and I was pretty disconnected from everything. It was hard to navigate how much or how to contribute without that personal connection, but ultimately Luke sent me a couple tracks with ideas, and I did my thing. I’m hopeful I can add more to the next record!
NA: I joined Satanic Planet in the weird and uncertain beginning of the pandemic, and right off the bat, the guys were great to work with. I recorded my own vocals for “Devil In Me,” which sound as kickass as they do because of the magic that is Luke Henshaw.
AF: Nomi, tell me more about your contribution to the “Devil in Me” track.
NA: When Justin Pearson first came to me, I knew they wanted something dark and gruesome, and realized pretty quickly that I probably wasn’t going to be “singing.” I wrote a few different melodies for Lucien Greaves’ gorgeous lyrics, and the notes I kept getting from the guys at first were, “It’s too pretty, you’re singing it too pretty”… So I decided to go back to my black metal roots from high school, when I loosely referred to myself as a Satanist. Then I got the “Fuck yeah, this rules” e-mail back from JP and Luke, which made me really happy. And to be honest, fucking relieved.
AF: Shiva, how were you involved in the “Exorcism” and “Unbaptism” songs?
SH: When the project first started, Lucien Greaves sent over some music to the guys that he and I recorded when we scored Häxan live at the Philamoca back in 2018. Luke heard the vocal melodies and harmonies I created for those performances and wanted to incorporate them into a track. That vocal line became the backbone of “Exorcism.”
The lyrics for “Unbaptism” are based on my Unbaptism ritual from The Devil’s Tome. When the band was working on “Unbaptism,” Lucien asked me to send over photos and the script for the Unbaptisms I created for The Satanic Temple in Salem in 2019. They ended up using a lot of lines directly from my ritual. I also contributed screams, whispers, and vocals to that one.
AF: Shiva, how will your live Unbaptisms differ from your previous Unbaptisms? What can people expect at upcoming Satanic Planet concerts?
SH: The Unbaptisms will be an interesting feat in this time of COVID. The ceremonies I’ve conducted have been very participatory and intimate. We’re figuring out how to make it all happen as the time for touring draws nearer. I’m hoping the stage show will be grand. When Lucien and I have collaborated on live events in the past, we’ve made them intense, all consuming and engaging.
AF: You’ll be doing an Unbaptism at the Satanic Planet virtual release party at The Satanic Estate. What can the audience expect on May 28?
SH: Unbaptisms are one of the core rituals performed by Satanists. Many adherents find the act of formally separating from their former, often traumatic, religious life a freeing act of defiance and empowerment. As COVID continues to ravage the world and prevent us from gathering together in person, it’s incredibly important for us to be able to engage in these experiences, so I decide to conduct a virtual Unbaptism for the release party for Satanic Planet’s new record. I’ve got all the info on how to participate on my site.
This is the first time a virtual Unbaptism has been done. To make it intimate and focused, I created an introduction video and a video with pre-ritual work that people can do at home before the day of the Unbaptism. Then, on the day of the release party, I’ll be at TST’s headquarters in Salem to lead participants through their Unbaptism. I’ll conclude the event with a DJ set, then send those who were Unbaptized a certificate commemorating their Unbaptism that they can print at home.
AF: Satanic Planet has merchandise with all proceeds supporting The Satanic Temple’s reproductive rights campaigns. Can you tell me about why TST’s activism for women and marginalized groups is personally important to you?
SH: I was an organizer for years before I joined TST – one of the reasons I joined the organization was because it gelled so well with my values and ethics. I don’t believe in an afterlife – I believe that it’s my purpose to make life better for people now because it’s the right thing to do. This is part of my devotional practice as a Satanist. Whether it’s through art, music, supporting legal battles, or organizing, I’m trying to stir a revolution within and without.
NA: Yes, please support TST and their women’s reproductive rights campaigns! I’m deeply grateful to TST for putting a spotlight on these issues directly and intersectionally. For me, alongside founding the Female Composer Safety League (FCSL), which is reinventing the nature of toxic studio work environments and mentorships in film, game and TV composing, I’ve (somewhat unintentionally) brought activism into all my artistic platforms. Anyone who’s listened to my music knows that trauma/empowerment/angst toward our system has always been at the epicenter of what I do, and I have disdain for artists who don’t use their platforms to help others. For me, being an artist isn’t about pleasing everyone – it’s about having something valuable to say, and saying it lovingly with zero fucks.
AF: Both of you are multi-faceted artists. I’d love to learn more about your other creative projects.
SH: I’m just about to start shipping out The Devil’s Deck; tarot and oracle decks have been an important part of my ritual practice, so I decided to create a Satanic ritual deck that would link to my ritual book The Devil’s Tome and can be used to sharpen inner knowledge, aid in healing, and deepen personal power. I’m really excited – this printing is 666 copies, contains art from Lucien, Alexander Corey, and me and is this beautiful gilded art piece.
My next projects will be writing Satanic ritual music with my band Serpentīnae to accompany The Devil’s Tome and to finish up my next book, which will focus on how to approach death and grief from a Satanic perspective.
NA: One of my projects this year will be making a classical piano album. I grew up as a piano prodigy, and now I’m mostly a singer, actor, and horror and fantasy composer. I have a lot of scoring on my plate, including two horror films I’m particularly thrilled about. As excited as I am to return to classical, I anticipate being met by the classical community with many feelings about me rejoining the field as a crossover artist. So we’ll see. On that note, I also have an ’80s throwback project in the works that I play my double keytar on (NORY®) that I invented/patented, which is making its TV debut this year. This is the first year I’ll be embarking on documentary filmmaking, making a movie that ties very much into my nonprofit work, which I’ll be directing and scoring.
In the jazz tradition, the objectification and underestimation of women jazz vocalists (and instrumentalists) is commonplace. It’s a persistent discrimination that was written into the fabric of the genre 100 years ago, as a result of the social conventions of the time, which, in particular, barred most women from the smoky, late-night bars and clubs where the style was born. Women were also kept from learning the instruments traditionally associated with jazz, like saxophone, because it was considered a “male” pursuit.
Within this early jazz context, only the occasional woman singer and/or pianist could exist, and usually only as a sexual object. Remarkably, though the genre and the world have (somewhat) expanded their views of women since, the trope of a crooning, lipsticked singer leaning on the grand piano in her sequined dress remains a time-honored box that many in jazz still want women jazz artists to fit into.
This is a box that New York-based jazz vocalist and pianist, Lauren Lee, would rather avoid completely. This courage is what makes her new piano-vocal jazz record, The Queen of Cups, so special.
“I do not do music like that. I refuse to look like that. I’m not butch, but I’m not a girlie girl at all. I don’t wear dresses. I don’t sit with my legs together half the time,” says Lee, who released The Queen of Cups on April 30th via Ears & Eyes Records. “When your primary instrument is voice… I feel like either people want you to fit into the type of feminized sort of tier or they don’t want you there at all.”
Left to her own devices, Lee creates a swirling dream-space of interlocking, layered vocal melodies supported by adventurous, forward-thinking harmony on The Queen of Cups. With ease and authenticity, Lee turns the typical piano-vocal jazz record on its head, while subtly highlighting how the typical view of women jazz vocalists—that they’re just “eye candy” and that they don’t really understand the intricacies of jazz music—is preposterous.
“I wanted to do something that was very different than that to make people think about what the future of what this type of record, or the future of jazz vocal stuff in general, could be like,” she says. “You’ve got textures, you’ve got bass, and you don’t have so many lyrics and you don’t have really busy, heavy piano solos with lots and lots of striding left hands and chord voicings and things like that.”
On each song of the solo album, she accompanies herself on piano with subtle chordal patterns, oftentimes singing and scatting in duet with her piano playing. Meanwhile, Lee approaches her voice like a saxophonist or trumpeter—singing complex, bebop-inspired lines, and rarely even bothering with lyrics. Her skillful vocal approach to scatting and phrasing is a nod to that of the first jazz artist she ever fell for, Ella Fitzgerald.
“I grew up in rural, like really rural, Illinois. I played piano starting from a very young age. I was in band, I played saxophone, but not jazz because we didn’t have that,” Lee remembers. “I was taking regular bel canto voice lessons – I started getting frustrated around 16, 17. My voice teacher, who was a classical singer was like, wow, I have no idea what to do with you. [She said] ‘Here is a CD of Ella Fitzgerald,’ and I took it and played it in the car on the way home and I was kind of like, what is this? To this day, if I’m learning a new standard, she’s the first person I’d want to hear sing it, if she sings it.”
Fascinated by Fitzgerald’s approach, Lee listened to her records over, and over, and over again until she could scat back every note verbatim. She also began writing out Fitzgerald’s solos, eventually going on to study jazz vocals in undergrad, which then led her to move to New York a year ago to continue her education at NYU.
Once in New York, Lee began to regularly play in trio and quartet settings, which is how she first envisioned the original music on The Queen of Cups would be presented. When the pandemic hit, shuttering venues, practice rooms, and recording studios along with it, she decided to go a route she’d never gone before—a solo record.
“In February of 2020 I recorded four of those tracks, the ones that are all layered, as an EP,” she says. These included “Another Reality,” “Cocoon,” “Boxes,” and “Up In the Air.” “I was writing the rest of the music that you hear on the record to do a trio record,” Lee continues. “I ended up getting a grant for recording [but] I didn’t want to expose anybody to anything and I didn’t know if studios would be down. I started revisiting some of the material that I originally wrote for the trio and I was like, you know, if I’m doing this totally by myself, I can really kind of mess with it a little more than I may have in a trio format.”
In the end, Lee found the process of making a solo recording unexpectedly rewarding and she hopes to do it again. As well, the solo format allows the listener to really understand the breadth of Lee’s creative voice—her whimsical melodic ideas, clean, unadorned vocal presentation, and strong sense of modern composition which shines through, even on her renditions of jazz standards like “Footprints.”
The record ends, poetically, with Lee’s original, “Cocoon,”—an eerie and poignant tune that lyrically chronicles Lee’s deepened sense of self-acceptance and awakening. As she sings, “I can come out of my cocoon,” there is sense of hope and comfort in Lauren’s becoming and in what The Queen of Cups says about who women in jazz can be 2021—a multitude.
There’s no shortage of problems on Earth, but, when Heidi Alexander conceived of an EP named for our planet, she looked to the issues lying beneath the surface. Earth, the sixth installment from Earth Girl Helen Brown‘s series of EPs inspired by planets, taps into the intersection of greed and life.
“I wanted to deal with what I saw as the most significant social problem plaguing Earth,” Alexander says on a video call from her home in the Southern California Mojave Desert city of Yucca Valley. “If you think of humans as the biggest problem for Earth, what is the biggest problem for humans?”
For Alexander, greed is at the top of the list. “But,” she adds, “at the same time, there’s a biological aspect to that, where greed is a necessity of life. It motivates us to feed ourselves and to do the things that need to happen to keep all lifeforms alive. There’s an element of greed inherent to growth and life.”
It’s in that juxtaposition of greed as a problem and greed as a necessity that Earth thematically takes shape. Released May 21 via Empty Cellar Records, Alexander describes the EP’s themes as “how to move in the space to where we can think about changing something that is so fundamental to our nature.”
Alexander first inhabited the character of Earth Girl Helen Brown over a decade ago. At the time, she was living in San Francisco and had been invited to take part in musician Sonny Smith’s 100 Records project, which featured music made for 100 fictitious bands. “I really didn’t quite know what the deal was,” recalls Alexander, who now splits her time between Los Angeles and Yucca Valley. Still, she agreed to take part in the large-scale, collaborative art project and enjoyed it. “They were really demanding songs,” she says.
After 100 Records, Earth Girl Helen Brown briefly spun off as a real band. They recorded a handful of songs and released an EP. When Alexander’s old band, The Sandwitches, toured with Smith, they played a few Earth Girl Helen Brown songs at their shows. A few years later, after Alexander had moved to Los Angeles, they opened for Shannon and the Clams in San Francisco. Still, not much was heard from the group. “There was not a lifespan for that project,” says Alexander. “It was just a thing that happened.”
Meanwhile, Alexander had gone to graduate school to study architecture and became involved in projects like UCLA Grand Challenges, where she looked at energy infrastructure and stability in Los Angeles. “I think the discipline and grind of grad school for architecture certainly gave me some more muscle to approach a large project,” she says. “It also gave me so much discipline that I was wanting to do something undisciplined.”
Once she completed her studies, Alexander decided to give Earth Girl Helen Brown a different spin. “The original project was about love and the trials and tribulations of getting along, which is all good and well, but I wanted to talk about some other topics,” she explains. “I tried to take the same approach and involve a lot of folks and be really fast and collaborative, but do it in a slightly different way.”
In the process, the character had to evolve. “I guess the character changed in the sense that I had to embody her more,” says Alexander.
This incarnation of Earth Girl Helen Brown reemerged in 2017 for a series of EPs inspired by the solar system. Each EP thus far is named for a planet and takes on a different theme, with sales benefiting charities reflective of those themes. Each EP also delves into a different musical style. “Sometimes, it’s really specific, like house,” says Alexander. “Sometimes, it’s looser, like Sade.”
Previously, Earth Girl Helen Brown would enter the studio with songs written and it was during the recording that they would “try to infuse them with a genre.” This time around, though, Alexander and the band had an idea to make their own version of house music. “We just jammed,” she says. “We used about half of the tracks that we did and then I wrote over them.” The EP includes contributions from Eric Bauer, Lisa Boldyreva, Emilee Booher, Bradley Caulkins, Bjorn Copeland, Bart Davenport, John Dwyer, Tahlia Harbour, Doug Hilsinger, Warren Huegel, James Finch Jr., Graeme Gibson, Emmett Kelly, Enrique Tena Padilla, and Mikey Young.
Alexander described this process as “liberating” for her. “I’m kind of reluctant to get out of my shell in that way so it was invigorating in that sense for me personally,” she says, “but everybody else had so much chops. It’s the best kind of musical alchemy to just throw a stone out there and see what happens.”
Three of the five tracks on Earth came out of this process. “Fountain of Life,” a collaboration with Lisa Boldyreva, and “Pay to Play,” which was produced by Bjorn Copeland, were made outside of those sessions.
Like previous EPs, Earth will be released on “100% post-consumer recycled” tapes. In other words, the hard copy of the EP is recorded over pre-owned cassettes. It’s a solution to the issue of making physical releases without adding to a growing pile of waste. “There’s waste inherent in any activity and any purchase or product, and music is no exception,” says Alexander, adding that she had searched for cassettes made of recycled materials and records made out of material other than vinyl. “This is the best thing we came up with,” she says, “but we’re always looking for a better alternative.”
Follow Earth Girl Helen Brown on Instagram for ongoing updates.
Allison Russell has created a masterpiece with Outside Child. As a member of acclaimed supergroup Our Native Daughters alongside Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah and Leyla McCalla, and one-half of duo Birds of Chicago with partner JT Nero, Russell steps out boldly and bravely with her debut solo album, released May 21. With a voice that is modern, yet timeless, Russell calls to the listener’s soul with eleven compelling compositions wherein the Montreal native explores the deep trauma of her past, processing the abuse she experienced as a child at the hands of her stepfather.
“This is my attempt at truth and reconciliation and forgiveness – a reckoning and a remembrance,” Russell says in a statement about the album that she admits was difficult to write, comparing it to “sucking the poison from a snake bite.” “This is my attempt to be the hero of my own history.” The singer accomplishes this through deep, vivid imagery and awe-inspiring storytelling that captures both darkness and light, offering a profound perspective on the human condition.
Here are five standout tracks from Outside Child.
“Persephone”
The album’s third track finds Russell immediately addressing the violent physical abuse she endured throughout her childhood. Persephone, who in mythology is the goddess queen of the underworld and spring growth, materializes in the form of a friend Russell runs to as an escape from the abuse. “My petals are bruised, but I’m still a flower,” Russell observes, flexing all the dynamics in her voice. The song exudes a sense of softness in contrast to the tense subject matter it encompasses, as the steel guitar glimmers like a ray of sunshine that casts light in the darkness.
“Hy Brasil”
The cinematic score that opens the song immediately pulls the listener in with its striking blend of horns, gently shuttering symbols and foreboding drums, all establishing an ominous feeling that Russell allows to simmer for nearly a minute before she speaks a word. There’s a sense of heaviness and intrigue as Russell connects another myth to her complex reality; one can almost imagine traversing the Atlantic Ocean to find the unreachable island of Hy Brasil, with its black rabbits and 21 petals of daffodils shrouded in the mists West of Ireland. “Though I drowned for 10 years/I’m still rising/Stronger for my pain and suffering/My body’s been broken/But my heart’s reborn/I’m freer than the sky,” Russell chants, her intoxicating voice calling to her ancestors as she channels the empowering mantra born from pain and sorrow, her unwavering presence felt through the speakers on one of the album’s best.
“All of the Women”
Russell digs deep into her roots on this track, where a steady kettle drum provides a meditative beat throughout the homage to the one in three women who’ve endured violence and sexual abuse – and the many lives lost to such crimes. Experiencing the song is akin to walking through a dense, dark forest where the North Star reveals itself in the form of an unbreakable woman that remains unbroken despite the relentless trauma she’s faced – much like Russell herself. Get ready for chills as she wails, “It’s fear I can bear/’Cause I’m stronger than anxious/I’m tougher than luck/Never been despised so much/Or hit so hard I couldn’t get back up,” with the sound of choral voices backing her to emphasize the immeasurable strength and resiliency she, and the many others who have experienced abuse, carries within. It feels as though Russell is summoning the souls of all the women who “disappeared” and offers a melody that rings in one’s head long after the song is over, alongside a message that resonates even deeper.
“Nightflyer”
On the album’s lead single, Russell demonstrates some of her purest, most universal lyricism, providing a bit of respite from the heavy material, even as she revisits the painful moments from the past. Embracing all elements of the universe, Russell finds herself in the darkness and light, from the dove on the battlefield to a “violent lullaby.” But in line with a recurring theme of the project, Russell experiences a rebirth through lyrics, “I’m the moon’s dark side/I’m the solar flare/The child of the Earth/The child of the Air/I am The Mother of the Evening Star/I am the love that conquers all.”
“Joyful Motherfuckers”
A title like “Joyful Motherfuckers” is destined to be gold, and Russell certainly does not disappoint. Between a simple, plucked acoustic guitar with sprinkles of piano and soft drums, Russell ends the album on a gentle note that finds joy through the “fearless lovers,” “rainbow shooters,” “hopeful sinners” and “true forgivers.” Trading between English and French, each lyric is rich in wisdom and profound thought in a way that feels as though she’s reconnecting with her childhood self. “You got love in your heart/But it’s way down in the dark/You better let it see the sun/This world is almost done,” she professes, closing the album with the universal call to action: “Show ‘em what you got in your heart.” As Russell processes her trials and triumphs through this unforgettable collection of songs as a stronger, wiser and joyful woman, she provides healing not only for herself, but the world at large.
Follow Allison Russell on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.
If Tori Zietsch wasn’t a musician, she’s pretty certain she’d be a gardener. “I’d be growing lots of veggies, and planting heaps of flowers for the bees, and getting all my clothes and face and hands really dirty.” she tells Audiofemme. As fate would have it, Zietsch became an accomplished folk musician instead, performing under the moniker Maple Glider. Hailing from the sunny shores of Naarm/Melbourne, her debut album, To Enjoy Is The Only Thing, tells stories of love, loss and growth to a backdrop of delicate acoustics and unapologetic lyricism.
Growing up in a religious family, Zietsch found herself reaching for her pen and paper to escape into a world of lyricism and poetry. “Music offered an escape from the reality of what life was for me at that time. I spent a lot of time making up songs as a kid and I’d then lock myself in the bathroom for hours to get that good reverb! It drove my parents wild,” Zietsch remembers. “Songwriting is a skill I taught myself to self-soothe. Music just always made me feel really good. It took a long time before I even realised I’d spent a large portion of my life pursuing it as a career. I’ve just always felt compelled to be writing and performing.”
To Enjoy is the Only Thing is fuelled by self-reflection and inspired by a time when Zietsch took a break from music, moving to Brighton in the UK, and the period of time that followed. “In 2018 I decided to take a break from working on music, which was actually the first time since I’d started. Coming out of a relationship, reflecting on my religious upbringing, familial relationships, travel, and what it felt like to come home. The themes are pretty broad, but I feel very connected to the songs as a body,” she explains.
The album is out June 25th via Partisan Records and Maple Glider has shared a handful of singles so far as she gears up for the release. This includes hushed album opener “As Tradition,” in which Zietsch repeats the lyrics “love is just a word;” there’s a sense that by using it as a mantra she’s fastening herself to the belief as a method of protection, even as she offers a malleable persona up to listeners (“I can be soft/I can be just what you want”).
“Swimming” picks up where “As Tradition” left off, with Zietsch’s vocals and the soft acoustic strumming providing an almost trance-like quality. The mournful, solemn lyrics detail the evolution of Zietsch’s relationship with her ex. “My ex wanted me to write them a love song and honestly that’s all I was trying to do. I really sucked at it though. I just couldn’t make a happy love song. It forced me to be honest about our situation, and how I was feeling. We broke up not long after,” she says. “There were so many beautiful moments within this song though. It’s nice that they can be held onto somewhere.”
“Good Thing“unpacks Zietsch’s past self-destructive behaviours; poetically raw and sonically rich, her vocals echo over some the album’s finest instrumentation, building to the powerful line “I guess that’s how we learn/By setting fire to things that bring us life/Before we get to watch them burn.” The tangible emotion in her voice only adds to Zietsch’s skill as a storyteller and her ability to relate to anyone with a similar self-destructive streak.
Maple Glider’s latest offering, “Baby Tiger,” emulates a lullaby and was inspired by a cat named Coriander. “I nicknamed our house share cat Baby Tiger; Baby Tiger hates closed doors. She’ll always want to know what you’re doing on the other side. It became routine to hear her scratching at my door. It was something that felt constant and unwavering and regular at a time when I was a bit vacant. Her energy made me feel lighter,” Zietsch says. She had just moved home to Melbourne after living away for a couple of years and was struggling with her mental health. “I think I started to use dating as a bit of a distraction from dealing with it,” she remembers. “I hadn’t really done that before; sought out comfort from strangers.”
Elsewhere on the album, “View From This Side” incorporates an intimate minimalist sound as the track renders delicate portraits of the lives of those around her; “Performer” explores the disconnect Zietsch feels between herself and her persona on stage; the album’s final track, “Mama, It’s Christmas,” juxtaposes the joviality of the holidays with the difficultly of an absent family member. Throughout To Enjoy is the Only Thing, Maple Glider guides the listener into their own world of contemplation and reflection through her rich vocals, which paint a mesmerising sonic picture. The combination of Zietsch’s raw emotional power with the tender instrumentation makes for an unforgettable debut.
“I’ve come to really value the time that I get to spend writing and recording music,” Zietsch says. “I feel so lucky to have been able to make my first record, and to have had the life experience leading up to it that really made me want to create an album so badly.”
Follow Maple Glider on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.
Indie pop-rockers Blossom Hall have been household names in the Cincinnati alt-rock scene for the better part of half a decade, and now they’ve released their studio album, Pyre. Notably, it’s both the band’s debut record and their last project before going on a hiatus. It’s also a great summation of the raw songwriting, swelling instrumentals and orchestral flair that the duo – comprised of vocalist/bassist Nancy Paraskevopoulos and vocalist/guitarist Phil Cotter – is known for.
Pyre also features several other Cincinnati acts, including Strobobean’s Katrina Eresman, MADQUEEN’s Jaki Howser, Molly Brown, Elsa Kennedy and Brooklynn Rae; drummers Zach Larabee, Tim Weigand, Matt McAllister and CJ Eliasen; violinists Sarah Gorak and Jacob Duber; and saw player Andrew Higley.
Blossom Hall fans were first introduced to Pyre with “God Girl” – the album’s lead single and a fuzzy rock mixture of anthemic drums and haunting vocals about loneliness and the divine feminine. Other highlights on the record including the mantra-esque “Peace to Everything That I Have Hurt and That Has Hurt Me,” and sunshine-pop “Parasols.”
Over the years, Blossom Hall has shared stages with the likes of Broken Social Scene, performed as the Pixies for a Cincinnati tribute show and created a well-defined sound and fanbase. Thankfully, though Pyre is the band’s last album for a while, fans can look ahead to upcoming solo music from both Nancy and Phil and, hopefully, a reunion in the near future.
Audiofemme caught up with Nancy and Phil over email about Pyre, the evolution of their sound, what’s next for the band and more. Read on, and stream Pyre, below.
AF: Pyre is both your debut studio album and your last project before going on hiatus. Do you think this will be Blossom Hall’s official last album, or are you just planning on taking a break?
NP: Probably more of a hiatus. I expect we’ll shift gears to be a recording project.
AF: What prompted the band to take a hiatus?
NP: A lot of things. With the pandemic, my life turned upside down. Before 2020 started, I had planned on leaving my full-time job to go to massage school, which I did in 2020. The idea was it would be easier to tour. But partway through, I realized the middle of a pandemic was maybe the worst time to learn how to be a massage therapist. I left school. I applied to and was hired for my dream job. Life just happens.
AF: Pyre feels like a good summation of the band’s years together — what was the timeline of putting this project together? For example, “God Girl” was originally written 10 years ago, right?
PC: It is a great summation. Nan wrote “God Girl” a long time ago, but the arrangement is new. That song especially, but also the album as a whole, distills the ultimate Blossom Hall sound to me. Darkness with a sense of humor. Big landscapes with minute details.
The timeline of the album is long. We originally went into a studio, which we love, back in 2017. And although the sessions went well, we realized the arrangements just weren’t ready. We wrote new tracks and rewrote some others and began to record the album in my home studio. The acoustics of my space and the gear I use is always evolving, so that created an interesting contrast between lo-fi and hi-fi audio elements. We were originally planning to release it a year ago, but when COVID happened it didn’t feel right. Anyone who mixes audio, especially their own songs, will tell you they could tweak them forever if there wasn’t a deadline. So I spent a huge chunk of quarantine mixing and re-mixing the album.
AF: What went into the shaping of “God Girl” — adding or changing elements — to make it the song that it is today?
PC: It started as a haunting ukulele tune, entirely written by Nan. When I first heard it, I immediately heard the dynamic shifts possible, as well as the range of strange things we could do around what I hear as a psychedelic vocal. The first thing I contributed was building a rough garage rock demo with the dynamic shifts I heard and more of a chugging, constant pushing rhythm.
Nan then added a vocal to help me hear the song take shape. Most of the original takes of my drums, guitar and her voice actually remain in the final version. Once her vocal was in there, I knew I wanted background vocals on the loud parts, so I did a few passes improvising them through the whole song and came up with the “sshhhh…hah…hah…” part, which I love so much.
NP: My favorite element that we added to that song are the drums in the bridge. I wanted to encapsulate the deep well of loneliness and self-pity that I had fallen into when writing that song. I asked one of our drummers Zach Larabee to just play something chaotic, which was a feeling I couldn’t have orchestrated alone.
PC: I knew we needed something ethereal and spooky and started reaching out to friends to see if anyone knew a trained theremin player. I’ve always wanted an excuse to hire a theremin player. Instead, we found Andrew Higley, an incredible saw player. I actually prefer the saw because it sounds more organic, and if you listen close you can hear the dissonant overtones of the bow on the saw.
After that, we had four non-male singers to come in and replace the placeholder background tracks that Nan and I sang. Then I just had to mix all of these elements sonically so that you could hear everything, but the emotions also come across the way they’re meant to. It’s a dense arrangement, and probably the most challenging to mix.
AF: In 2018, you played a tribute concert to the Pixies in Cincinnati. What bands influenced the making of Pyre?
PC: For my songs and arrangements: Ohmme, St. Vincent, Roomful of Teeth, Pixies, Dirty Projectors, Fleet Foxes, late era Beatles and early solo McCartney, White Stripes and early Todd Rundgren.
NP: I don’t know if these projects influenced the album, but I was into them the five years we made this particular music. We both love the music of the Dirty Projectors (especially the Amber Coffman era). Dixie Cups, Thelonius Monk, the Pixies, Beams, specifically Billy Joel’s “Vienna Waits for You,” Louis Prima, Mount Eerie, Billie Holiday, Erykah Badu, the song “Joyful Joyful” from the Sister Act 2 soundtrack, Thank U, Next by Ariana Grande, Jeffrey Lewis, Lizzo, the Books, Friendship and not a music project but Dharma talks from the Portland Insight Meditation Center.
Photo Credit: Bobby Tewksbury
AF: Where did the inspiration for the album’s title come from?
NP: The song “Pyre” is about a relationship I had in which I was yelled at daily, called names, there was financial abuse, he was always threatening to break my stuff, he trapped me in the apartment. It was terrifying. When we go through trial by fire, we often come out a different person. The person we were is no longer. Our bodies have new memories, and it is a kind of rebirth – for better or worse.
AF: Will you be celebrating the album’s release with any livestream performances, or playing any in-person shows when things open back up?
NP:Will things open back up? My job has me going to the hospital and going to court regularly. With the new strains, it might be dangerous for my clients and for audiences for me to play bigger shows.
PC: No plans at the moment – we need a break.
AF: Are you working on any solo material/projects at the moment?
NP: I am playing with friends but nothing I want to announce just yet!
PC: Lots of other projects, some would say too many. Solo (folk), Golden Theory (live band hip hop), Party Blimp (soul music) and many freelance music projects for clients. I have a Patreon where I release a song a month, and I follow my whim on what kind of music to make in a particular month.
AF: What is each of your favorite songs on the album and why? NP: I love the song “St. Louis.” It’s sweet and relatively simple. It’s focused on longing, which I try not to live in, but it happens – and can be fun! And Phil and I had fun writing it. PC: Gotta be “God Girl” for me. It’s just so damn epic. I’m so proud of that arrangement and I adore Nancy’s lyrics and melodies. “Peace to Everything That I Have Hurt and That Has Hurt Me” is a close second. The first half is so soothingly groovy and pensive, while the second half feels so nourishing and epic.
Starting off her career as a country artist enabled the public to pigeonhole Tori Forsyth. But Forsyth can’t be tamed. Her voice – rootsy, impassioned, and earthy – has all the glorious storytelling, lived-through-it quality of a country singer, and Forsyth hasn’t packed her bags and left country. She’s eased out the door, but left it ajar.
“When you’re starting somewhere you’re going to get remembered for that particular thing,” says Forsyth. “Country music is definitely something I still listen to and love. As a musician, I learn from listening to different genres and I love indulging that. I do make a point of normalising creative freedom. I was 19 when I wrote that first EP and I’m 26 now, so I’ve had experience as an adult that impacts how I see the world, how I consume and create music. I’ll always make music that is true to my life. Who knows what’s next for me?”
Her newest album Provlépseis is a maturation following her debut EP Black Bird in 2015, and her debut album, Dawn Of The Dark in 2018. Its title means ‘predictions’ in Greek – though Forsyth isn’t fluent, she understands the language due to her mother’s Greek heritage. It was written pre-COVID, but Forsyth says, “It’s interesting to see how much more relevant this record is to me now in post-COVID times than it was when I wrote it.” While that might be true lyrically, Provlépseis will likely sound like a bit of a throwback to those of us brought up on Sonic Youth, Hole, L7, PJ Harvey and Liz Phair.
“I was listening to predominantly ’90s [music] when I was writing this record. A lot of PJ Harvey, a lot of Hole, a lot of Soundgarden, even some Audioslave…a lot of Alanis Morissette and The Cranberries,” admits Forsyth, adding that the album “is very much a ‘90s lovechild for me.”
There are moments throughout the album where the very ‘90s grunge vibe feels less like a homage and more like a nostalgic indulgence. The promotional artwork for Provlépseis does seem like a recreation of PJ Harvey’s iconic 1993 album Rid of Me, in which Harvey is depicted in black and white, her dark, wet hair whipped around her bare face. In other artwork to promote the album at the time, Harvey is in a bath, half emerged. Forsyth, too, has released promotional media shots of herself…in a bath. “[Is it] a complete copy? Absolutely not,” she says. Having been born in 1995, Forsyth is not reliving the ‘90s – she’s discovering it anew, and if younger listeners are inspired to seek out the ‘90s artists who’ve inspired current acts, they’ll be richly rewarded. “I’ve definitely pulled inspiration from PJ – like I said, she was a massive influence on this record. It’s not my intention to be a carbon copy of somebody else, but I definitely pull inspiration from artists that I listen to.”
Another ‘90s icon gets namedropped in the slow-burning clap-back “Courtney Love.” Forsyth croons, “I paid rent, so long/Empty house, broken throne,” and it’s hard not be furious on her behalf, even though the melancholic acoustic ballad doesn’t quite reach “Violet” levels of scorched earth. In a video directed by Emily Avila, Forsyth sits in a bathtub full of dirty water, hugging her legs as the water goes cold.
She’s also worked extensively with Bradley Murnane, who directed the video for “Down Below,” both glamorous and grungy in the style of Garbage and Nine Inch Nails. When it comes to her videos, though, Forsyth says, “I’m definitely very heavily involved, probably a control freak. I love the visual element of creating a story in conjunction with a song. It’s another facet of creativity for me to indulge and I feel lucky that I get to do that in this career. I write the concepts up for pretty much all of my film clips.”
For the new album, Forsyth has again called upon nationally-celebrated producer and country artist Shane Nicholson. “I met Shane at the very beginning of my career,” says Forsyth. “We have a really great friendship now and I worked with him on Dawn Of The Dark. We get along so well because we have very similar musical tastes. It’s an awesome relationship that is built around love for a lot of different music.”
They recorded Provlépseis in Nicholson’s home studio in Gosford, on the central coast of New South Wales (Forsyth had been living in NSW at the time of recording but has since moved back to Queensland). “As far as production, Shane was heavily involved in engineering and producing both my albums. We’ve gone heavier on guitars, which was hinted at on Dawn Of The Dark, but it’s definitely expanded here [on the new album],” says Forsyth.
Provlépseis was written with the intention of being performed live and Forsyth is still in the planning stages. “I’m definitely organising a tour for after June,” she says. “This record was very much written with live shows as a focus. I want to do the songs justice in the way that I see them. When I tour, I’ve got a band: Reece Baines and Zach Miller, who have been a permanent fixture with me on stage for a long time now. My ex-partner was my guitar player so we’re in an in-between stage at the moment.”
Once the logistics are worked out, Forsyth will take her show on the road – enabling her audience to discover the weird and wonderful voice she’s learned to prize. “Early on in my career, I was told I had a strange voice. A singing teacher told me my voice was hard to work with because it was ‘different.’ Being told that it’s weird kind of sticks in my head, but now I’m pretty grateful for my weird voice,” shares Forsyth. “For me, creativity and writing have been about that therapeutic element of self-expression. Having a career out of that as a by-product is incredible and I’m grateful.”
Erika de Casier spent part of the last year like most of the rest of us – bottling kombucha, making sourdough bread, watching a shit ton of movies and spending a lot of time on her phone. But the other part was spent doing something most people struggle to do – putting feelings of heartbreak, transience and solitude into words and music and bringing a new meaning to the phrase “party of one.” The Copenhagen-based producer and songwriter’s sophomore record, Sensational, glimmers with honesty and danceability and finds de Casier asserting her needs with poise and a tight beat.
de Casier spent the earlier part of the pandemic in a relatable state of existential and literal dread. Between constantly watching Covid-19 numbers rise and experimenting with lacto fermentation, she says that she struggled to find meaning in making music. “Writing songs felt really meaningless,” she remembers. “And then, at some point I realized that it’s the only thing that gives me meaning now… you can escape a little with music. You can still make a song about going to a party with it having a meaning because it means something different for us now to be able to be together.” de Casier’s music, which fuses gentle vocals with R&B chords and UK garage beats, feels like the perfect soundtrack to dancing alone in your kitchen, longing for the days when leaning up against a sweaty body wouldn’t give you a panic attack.
She encapsulates this loneliness in her video for “Drama,” which follows her on the rollercoaster ride that accompanies complete solitude. It starts with the quintessential “dress up to go nowhere” routine, followed by a luxurious bubble bath and thirst trap selfies, then ends at risky texts and regret. de Casier perfectly describes the aftermath of this specific kind of emotional bender in the chorus when she sings, “I wrote you twice last night/Wish I could press rewind/Take back whatever I said/But I can’t do that/Thought it was going so well/Now I don’t even know.” She balances remorse with levity when she admits her tendency to lean towards the theatrical side of things. “I don’t mean to cause any drama, it’s just somehow, it always gets me.” In fact, de Casier blends self-awareness and irony so well, it’s hard to tell which one is which. Or maybe it’s both, and that’s what makes it so good?
That duality characterizes Sensational, where de Casier glides from wanting a no-strings-attached romance in “Someone to Chill With” and thinking about a lost flame on “Secretly.” But just like in “Drama,” no one feeling is truer than the other. You can miss someone and still want to explore other people and feelings. You can be an R&B singer with a soft voice and proclivity for trip-hop. It’s what makes de Casier’s music so loveable and so her. She explains that it took some time to reach this signature sound.
She describes her early recordings as “artsy” and “soundscape-y” with little to no vocals. “I convinced myself that was a choice but, really, I couldn’t make a beat if I wanted to,” she says, followed by a laugh. Feeling limited by what YouTube University had to offer, de Casier enrolled in an electronic music program where she was able to grow her skillset as a producer. She was simultaneously acting as the main vocalist and songwriter for the project Saint Cava, which she started with her friend Andreas Vasegaard. Performing with Saint Cava allowed de Casier to start producing solo tracks on her own, free from pressure. “That’s when I wrote ‘Puppy Love’ and it just made me so happy,” she remembers. “I felt it was completely me.”
But even feelings of euphoria can be interrupted by the dark cloud of imposter syndrome, which is what happened to de Casier. She felt self-conscious about producing because she was surrounded by producers – Vasegaard and her long time friend Natal Zaks – who she saw as way ahead of her skill-wise. “I compared myself a lot with them, like, ‘Why even bother when there are other people who are so talented?’” But her search for the sound that felt right for her inevitably broke down that mental barrier and led her to produce her debut album, Essentials. “I think I reached a point where I actually had this style that I didn’t get from any producers I was working with,” she says.
If Essentials was de Casier’s first major foray into producing, it’s clear she has a well of talent to dip into, and Sensational proves that. She stays true to the base that she created in her first record while adding layers of more live-sounding instruments and experimenting with genre. “I think what changed is maybe… with Essentials, I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was just having fun with it,” she says. “Now, I feel like, okay, that went well, so I’ll keep doing that I guess.”
Follow Erika de Casier on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.
“I have never felt true to my age, and every time someone asks me how old I am, it’s like I’m lying,” says Billie Marten, certainly the epitome of an old soul if ever there was one. Not yet 22, the British singer-songwriter spent her mid-to-late teens releasing delicately rendered folk music across two albums and two EPs; though her work has always exhibited a precocious composure, her latest, Flora Fauna, out May 21 on IMPERIAL Music/Fiction Records, sees her shed the diaphanous layers, materializing into something fuller and more earthy. It’s a confident step away from the ethereal and into the reality of adulthood; on Flora Fauna, Marten feels less like a wispy daydream and more like a woman waking up at the end of the world.
“I think I thought I was very much an adult on the first and second albums, but I was so confused and so impressionable and was trying to put across this very, like, English lit, bucolic sense of personality, which is a section of my personality, but I’ve now realized that it’s not the entirety. That’s why all the artwork this time around is kind of confrontational and I’m literally eating mud to kind of get rid of that whimsical waif idea,” she explains. “I didn’t wanna be this kind of floaty ethereal waif anymore. I got rid of that person.”
Signing with Chess Club and releasing her debut Writing of Blues and Yellows when she was just sixteen, the boutique label no longer felt like “home” by the time they were absorbed by parent RCA/Sony (they’ve since become independent again). Though she went on to release sophomore effort Feeding Seahorses by Hand via the major, she amicably severed ties with her entire team apart from longtime producer Rich Cooper by the time she’d begun writing Flora Fauna at the end of 2019. “I just called him up and we started making sounds together again. And it was so quick and easy and natural to me and none of it was trying to force this particular image or writing style out – it was very immediate for me,” Marten recalls. She took up playing bass, which she says was a “huge moment” musically. “It just made all of these sounds come out louder and broader and more immediate.”
Marten had already been listening to a lot of Fiona Apple as she began recording Flora Fauna at the start of 2020. Apple dropped surprise opus Fetch the Bolt Cutters just as the pandemic put a temporary halt on that process, and while it was more stripped back and jazzy than the previous albums Marten had gravitated toward, it was an important reminder that Marten stick to her own vision. “We just began layering live sounds and re-amping everything and making sure everything had a huge backbone and was massive, essentially, in your ears,” she says. “I wanted that bass tone to be so juicy. I didn’t want any thinness.” Rather than rely on the quirks of incorporating organic sounds as she had on previous records, she wanted Flora Fauna to “feel a lot more live and present.”
That extended to the album’s themes as much as the instrumentation. The springy bassline of album opener “Garden of Eden” snaps around lines like “I’ve been growing leaf by leaf/Dying for the world to see” before bursting into a twinkling chorus. Metaphors meld the natural world with Marten’s personal and musical growth over the course of the record, making statements both direct and roundabout about humanity’s place on this earth.
Sometimes, that’s intensely personal – more than a few of these songs see Marten coming to terms with her human shell. While previous albums were abstract about her experiences with depression, Marten retains the poeticism while offering very literal insights into cultivating “a good healthy relationship with the one person that matters most” – herself. “Growing up I felt very alien to my body. I developed an eating disorder when I was like 13, 14, and I’m still battling with that now, but the past two albums I was not ready to admit that or address that at all,” she admits. “This album takes into account all those hypocrisies and the changing of minds that you have each day; whether you feel positive or negative about yourself fluctuates daily and I wanted to address that in every song.”
On “Heaven” she’s looking for salvation or relief, trilling the mantra “give my body patience to be free” over exotic guitar tones and fuzzy synth. Soaring strings lend conviction to Marten’s boundary-setting assertion on “Kill the Clown:” “After all I am not a baby doll/I’ve got bills to pay and they never go away… I see everything in color/And I’m done with that.” On the plucky, self-deprecating “Ruin,” she acknowledges she’s not always friends with herself, stretching her airy falsetto over an elastic alt-pop chorus.
“Something happens when you go through puberty and you develop more and become this womanly shape which is supposed to get you ready for making babies and being strong and traveling and whatever. When you just so don’t want that to happen, you just go into yourself and your posture gets really bad, and you’re trying to be this skeletal image of yourself, which is not accurate,” Marten says. But on album album stand-out “Liquid Love,” she does achieve some kind of balance, even if its only a self-soothing sentiment she aspires to – it’s a breezy, easy-going love letter to what her body is capable of in a sensual self-appreciation slow jam.
“That was one of the quickest songs that came out, cause it’s kind of this repetitive nursery rhyme chant thing I have going,” she says, referring to a repeating line: “all our actions are reactions.” She built chords around a sweetly hummed vocal looped with Cooper’s Yamaha sampling keyboard, added a lazy little bassline “just doing its own thing,” and paired a drum machine with a live kit for a nice mix of digital and organic percussion. “It’s an incredibly immersive pool of a song and it sort of opens you up into this world that isn’t really familiar, but it’s kind of comforting,” Marten says. “There’s no chord changes, no key changes, it just is what it is. I wanted to layer vocals and be my own choir… and then I wanted the main vocal melody to just be an ascending mantra.”
At its heart, the song is about creating a space to protect and cultivate her well-being. “I just wasn’t doing that and I wasn’t hanging around with good people that made me feel good and that’s sort of the first step I think. If you reflect good things they come back to you, and I was reflecting some bad, bad stuff throughout the past year and a half, two years. People have noticed that I’m smiling now, and that never happened. I can kind of carry myself a bit more,” she says. “It’s a big learning curve, for sure. But I’m definitely getting there.”
Marten isn’t wholly preoccupied with herself, but also her place in a world dangling at the precipice of an environmental apocalypse. Her focus on nature as a grounding force is evident enough from the title of the record, and while there’s a subtle vein of confrontation railing against prior generations’ disastrous stewardship of our shared planet, Marten sees climate change as a systemic issue rather than a wholly individual responsibility. “For me it’s about respecting the earth a bit more, and that could be completely impractically – it could be just thinking about it fondly, or making sure you’re walking every day or buying a new plant that makes you feel good,” she says. “Concepts like nature are so abstract and evocative and it can be anything you want it to be, versus very specific problems like self love and self hate and relationships. Knowing that something is that huge puts everything into perspective for me.”
Still, there are times when something as innocuously tragic as a one-legged pigeon sends her reeling into a “long boring old man rant about modern life,” as she does on “Pigeon.” “I’m a very sporadic writer – I’m not good at daily writing. I can only write at the point where something needs to come out of me right now, and it needs to be honest,” Marten says. “I was picking up all these worldly anxieties… just stuff you can’t control at all, things that will happen with or without you. To the point where I’m sitting down and writing, that’s usually just have had it.”
The album ends with a haunting push-and-pull; “Walnut” sees Marten opining the forbidden fruits of love from a nut too hard to crack, while “Aquarium” admits her reliance on friends and lovers alike (“I am too bold without them/I am too cold without them… Couldn’t count on any others,” she sings).
“I wanted to keep up with that cyclical theme – I liked the fact that [Flora Fauna] opens with ‘Garden of Eden’ and you’re set up on appreciation and positivity and growing and goodness, and then in ‘Walnut,’ I wanted to express the forbidden nature of love and nature itself and happiness and how you’re just always climbing through this cave or maze, and it’s more of a struggle than you realize,” Marten says. “Aquarium,” she adds, is a portrait of herself at her lowest points. “Excuse me while I lay here in the shade,” she pleads, retreating into said garden.
The religious allusions throughout the album are more of a Leonard Cohen-esque device for exploring mortality, Marten says, than an indicator of her own beliefs; her father is a “strong atheist,” and although she grew up going to church with her religious mum, “I was mostly just observing; that’s one of my favorite hobbies. I just love looking at other people’s lives and being very quiet,” she says. “But religion is often talked about within song because quite often you’re trying to describe something that is unattainable. It’s a good way to connect the abstract with immediate things.”
Marten has always been skilled at tapping into resonant imagery, but if anything, Flora Fauna feels like the truest rendering of her personhood to date. “I wanted to face things head on, and lyrically speaking, I got much less abstract and just said how I felt, and it felt amazing,” she says. “I didn’t have to carry the pretense of being an artist – and now I separate the two, you know? I’m not who I am writing songs and on stage, that’s not my entirety. I’m a completely different person when I’m not making music and that’s something to accept.”
On the newly-released version of her single “Cinderella,” Seattle rocker Julia Francis repeats the phrase, “Getting intimate in my mind,” with rasping, smoky vibrato. Francis’ distinctive vocal performance—and the emotionally tumultuous content of “Cinderella”—brings to mind Janis Joplin and something she once said: “I’m a victim of my own insides. There was a time when I wanted to know everything. It used to make me very unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn’t know what to do with it. But now I’ve learned to make that feeling work for me.”
Francis, too, once had a difficult time facing the storm of emotions she had inside. This is evident in the lifespan of her single “Cinderella,” and its psychedelic new video that Audiofemme premieres today. She first wrote the song in the early 2000s as a way through divorce and addiction, but the new version of “Cinderella,” which will appear on Francis’ forthcoming Live at The Royal Room, is a powerfully re-contextualized comment on self-empowerment and Francis’ journey to “celebrating her grief.”
“’Cinderella’ was written in the early 2000s and I actually released it on my first album in 2005, an album called Five Challenges to Flight,” says Francis. “And the song, I feel like it’s a wonderful snapshot of my own internal journey in that when I wrote it I was going through a divorce, I was dealing with addiction and a lot of difficult things. At the time I wrote it because I was feeling like I was somehow trapped or I couldn’t get the love that I needed or deserved.”
There has been significant trauma for Francis to overcome in her life through music—and it started young, when her parents divorced, forcing her to split her time between her California birthplace and the remote island of Kodiak, Alaska, where she eventually went to live full-time with her father.
“My parents divorced when I was 12 and then when I was 14, my mother had a hard time dealing with me because I’m a very independent headstrong person. So, when I was 14 she sent me to live with my dad in Alaska,” remembers Francis. “He’s an alcoholic and very unavailable. So I spent my adolescent years really raising myself and navigating a lot of dangerous, largely sexual, situations without a lot of guidance.”
These dangerous sexual situations eventually led to an assault. “That’s where a lot of my anger definitely came from. And feeling anger towards my father as well, because he wasn’t available to protect me either,” she says.
This hard time—and the loneliness it brought—was what first prompted her to pick up music and express herself through art, a modality with which she felt she could be witnessed safely. Francis found a sort of magic in singing, much like the fairy-tale Cinderella of her song’s namesake, creating peace and love though locked in her own little chamber and denied her power.
“I think for many years I felt my artistic expression was the only safe place to express my emotions,” she says. “As a very young child I remember trying to go into sort of secret places and make sounds and sing. I always felt really connected to the Spirit when I made sounds and I often didn’t feel like it was safe to be heard by others.”
All of this early life trauma played into the writing of “Cinderella” in the early 2000s, as did her leaving a marriage and getting real about alcohol and cannabis, which Francis said she relied on heavily to mute her unprocessed grief. That’s when the “getting intimate in [her] mind” really started—and however salacious the line may seem, she says it’s not about sex.
“It’s more about trying to understand my own internal suffering and trying to dialogue with myself. ‘Why can’t I stop obsessing about people or things?’ ‘Why can’t I sit with my own emotions and feel them?’ ‘Why do I feel this way?’ ‘Where did it begin?’” she explains. “A lot of it is about struggling with having compassion for the self because those voices inside… are telling us ‘You’re not good enough. You’re a failure.’ I think ‘Cinderella’ was about actively acknowledging those voices and trying to find a way to lessen their influence over me.”
While all of these early struggles still color “Cinderella,” the song’s essence has taken on new life for her forthcoming album, Live at The Royal Room, slated for release in Autumn 2021. Francis says there is added fierceness in the new version, which she says stems partly from motherhood, something she left music to do full-time for a decade before returning to the scene in 2015, as a reason for the song’s renewed intensity.
“The experience of having a child was a big part of… owning my own female power. The ability to make a child, and birth a child, it’s a profound, life-changing experience. I was able to open up my voice more expressively to represent all of the different parts of myself inside, the more that I felt the courage to live by my instincts and to fulfill and pursue my desires,” says Francis. “Even though I love her more than anything on the planet, [and] I wouldn’t change any of it, I also think as I revisited the song in the last few years I realized oh, some of that anger is anger at myself that I chose to step away from my music and how unfair it is, [that] as women we often have to sacrifice and put our own needs aside for someone else and there’s a lot of rage in that.”
This newfound conviction also stems from the years of spiritual progress Francis has made through therapy, meditation, and learning about shamanic healing sound healing. Through that personal exploration, she has found a way to further express her pain through her music, in the hopes that it can help others make lemonade from lemons, too.
“If I could boil my work down to one theme it would be grief. That we all have so much grief. I believe we can’t fully move forward and heal ourselves and the planet until we actually express and share our grief with each other. So, I want to be a tool in helping facilitate others to move through and celebrate their grief,” says Francis. “In the 20 years since [I wrote] the song, I have done a ton of internal work and I have explored the unprocessed grief that was passed on to me by my parents and my ancestors, the sexual trauma that I experienced as a teenager… and [I] realized that the song is really more about feeling and channeling all of those emotions to help share my own healing journey in the hopes that it helps others.”
This message is all over the trippy yet simple video for “Cinderella,” as well. It’s in the way Francis carries herself as she performs live with her band in the video. As she “gets intimate in her mind,” she radiates confidence, self-love, and truth. Like Joplin, she’s learned to make the feeling work for her.
For Mia Joy, journeying into the insular, mystic world captured on her debut LP Spirit Tamer has been her life’s work. A meditation on the connection to self, creating and debunking personal myth, enduring changes post-heartache, and believing in the promise of discovering anew, Joy’s nearly three-year undertaking writing and recording the project is detailed across its 10 tracks. Swept up in dreamy guitar, Joy uses her instruments—including her haunting voice—to start a conversation; confronting those she’s met along the way. Not to mention, herself.
Now that the album’s out, she trusts she’s exactly where she should be. “I naturally got here, I think, because of my very niche, specific interests,” she says over the phone the week after Spirit Tamer’s May 7 release via Fire Talk Records. “Luckily for me, they kind of lined up. It all kind of fell into place as I became a user of all the colors I’m made up of and the tools at my disposal.”
“And,” she pauses, “I just got really lucky that people choose to listen to me.”
Joy, born Mia Joy Rocha, figured she’d be some type of creative when she grew up. An appreciation of music has always been strong in her family, particularly on her paternal side—starting with her grandmother, who had a love of Selena and bar bands, according to a recent Chicago Reader profile. Some of Joy’s earliest memories include singing for her as a child. Joy’s dad is a veteran blues guitarist in the city and her older brother also followed the musician’s path.
“I always sang – as soon as I could talk, I would sing,” she recalls. “My dad would make me sing with him. He always had a studio in the basement and I would sit on his lap and we would sing together. There was a lot of Boomer dad rock: Steely Dan, Jimi Hendrix, Santana. We’re also Chicanas, so he would sometimes show me other traditional Mexican songs his mother showed him.”
“My mom, a poet, loves Sadé and Enya and Bossa Nova,” Joy continues. “She introduced all the R&B ‘90s greats. I’m a melting pot of both of them,” she laughs, “but obviously I went in a lot of different directions as well.”
Though she sang in her church choir with her Sunday School class and spent three years as part of the Chicago Children’s Choir starting in fourth grade, Joy didn’t pursue a formal musical education—instead opting for painting and pottery while advancing her knowledge of indie sub-genres and avant-garde artists at the library or alone in her room. Bands like Cocteau Twins, Grouper, and Deerhunter, and pioneers Brian Eno and Björk served as entry points to another realm of musical possibilities.
“As a millennial, there was a lot of really legendary indie music coming out of that era,” she adds, remembering aloud. “2009 to 2012 was such an epic time for our generation, and I think that was also the precipice of me not being just a super fan or super music nerd and instead picking up the tools I had around me to replicate the music I was listening to in my own style.”
As she got older, her interest in storytelling also grew. Inspired in middle school by her English teacher, whom she remembers as “nurturing” and incredibly supportive of her writing, Joy found other parts of herself among the pages of Greek mythologies and the heroes and heroines connected to the cosmic.
An open interest in astrology has become trendier while garnering more mainstream acceptance, but when Joy was first introduced to the study she kept it under wraps; fearing it would further ostracize her “nerdy, little middle school” self from her peers. Practicing in secret until fairly recently (unless you happen to be part of her inner circle), she uses it to explore the spectrum of human experience and connect with others beyond superficial interests. Though she dabbled in music criticism and considered a career path on the editorial side of the industry, songwriting called her back.
The earliest iteration of Mia Joy as a musical expression can be found on her Soundcloud page, started in 2013, where songs “Soliloquy” and “L*U*C*I*D” serve as archives of the artist’s lo-fi roots and other skeletal recordings foreshadow tracks like Spirit Tamer’s stunning “Saturn.” The connections between music, astrology, and storytelling inform her to this day.
“Music is foremost a coping mechanism and a way I kind of regulate how I live and how I feel, and that is the way in which I approach music,” Joy details. “Astrology is in the foreground in the ways I try to understand the world as well and connect with others and myself. It’s naturally made its presence known, especially in the way I write stories and songs.”
“Saturn” is particularly treasured. Apart from being one of Joy’s earliest songs, the first she intentionally wrote along with a melody, it’s taken on new significance in light of her own birth chart.
“The funny thing is I wrote it when I was 20 or 21 years old,” Joy admits. “It’s written in the voice of Saturn, asking you all the ways it’s helped you or hurt you and how you’ve grown through disappointment and abandonment and sorrow. All of those restricting kind-of life lessons. Then it does this callback to me answering and my specific relationship to Saturn. Now it takes on a different meaning because I’m actually going through my Saturn Return, and my album came out during my Saturn Return.”
Simply put, Saturn Return is when the planet returns to the same place it occupied in the sky at the moment of a person’s birth. For astrologers, it’s an important occurrence that ushers in a period of intense change; leading us out of the last remnants of childhood and into lessons of maturity, responsibility, and discipline (characteristics of Saturn). Basically, it could explain why the end of your twenties can be incredibly turbulent and ultimately, life-changing—and why everyone’s relieved when they enter their thirties.
“It feels like the album is reaping the benefits of all the sorrow and disappointment, and it’s proof I’ve learned how to be self-reliant and resilient and own those things in my life,” she says. “It’s very symbolic, and I always cared so much about that song and wanted to do it justice by having a more elaborate, higher production-value version of it. I was waiting for the opportunity to make an album to throw it on there. It’s one of my favorite songs. It reflects my music taste and the direction I want to go in.”
Such intimate consideration is part of Joy’s practice. It’s part of why Spirit Tamer was such a labor of love. As she peeled back the layers, exploring the intersections of her life and extensions of her experiences became central to finishing the album as she envisioned.
“It’s been such a private relationship for 10-plus years,” she adds. “It’s really bizarre to be talking to you about it now, publicly. My parents are pretty religious so I had to hide it from them for years. I’m still hiding it from them, so I’m kind of horrified,” Joy laughs nervously, “but I don’t know why I’m almost 30 years old and still hiding things from my mom. Spirituality is prevalent in our family for sure, and I really appreciate that open-mindedness, but I think I just went really far to the left with the witchy stuff.”
Photo courtesy of Fire Talk Records
Despite often describing herself as a private person who is usually shy and quiet, committing her truths to tape has become comfortable for the artist. The idea of touring and playing live shows again, however, brings on as many nerves as it does tepid excitement.
Gigging around Chicago helped Mia Joy build a cult-like following among garage and psych rock fans after the release of her 2017, reverb-drenched EP Gemini Moon, but her interest in more ambient, abstract sounds could be heard bubbling beneath the surface. Replacing the electrified anxieties behind Gemini Moon is Spirit Tamer’s soothing, but no less stirring, state.
Rather than starting things off with a bang, her unassuming stage presence commands its audience as tension builds across her live set. It’s unintentional, but fans have come to recognize when Mia Joy and company have found their groove. Knowing she’s not going to be the loudest in the room, playing shows hasn’t necessarily come with the same certain ease as creating behind the scenes.
“It feels like this Shakespearean tragedy,” she laughs, poking fun at her stage fright. “The thing I want to do most in life is sing songs and then I have to do it in front of a lot of people.”
She’s felt at home in the coziness of venues such as Hideout, whereas others have found her in a battle of wits with the crowd. Bantering turns to light heckling to remind patrons talking over the set that someone’s on stage trying to entertain them. Navigating the space between the urge to engage and just lose herself in her own performance has come with time over the past six years of appearing around the city.
“At different venues, sometimes you can just play a show and know people will talk over you or be annoying. Sometimes I can just have a whatever attitude and be silly with Joey [Farago, keyboardist] and make banter. Those are the good shows, where I’m just kind of in a ‘fuck it’ attitude and have fun with it. Then there are shows where I’m feeling really sensitive and I want to do my best,” Joy says.
“I do like performing once in a while,” she clarifies. “Once you get into a good flow and you and your bandmates are connecting, it is a wonderful thing. Empty Bottle is where grown men at the bar are yelling and talking, and me and Joey are heckling them on stage as we’re performing. It’s hard to hear, so I just have to be like ‘You in the yellow shirt, what are you talking about?’ I try to do it in a silly way, but yeah, I don’t like people talking over me, of course.”
A showcase of Joy’s musical curiosities in its intricate compositions and audiophiliac production, her work requires your attention to fulfill its immersive purpose. Her voice softly floats just above a gauze of layered strings and synths, exercising restraint without sacrificing its raw power. A husky whisper, with a bit of grit to boot when necessary, she lulls you into tales of forgiveness, forgotten birthdays and exes who loved Korn’s “Freak on a Leash.”
“It was really important to me that I wasn’t pigeonholed or sticking to one sound because it wouldn’t have been authentic to the direction I wanted to go in,” she says. “I listen to and care about so many textures and sounds, it made sense for it to be kind of… across the board.”
Joy reunited with friend and longtime collaborator, Pallet Sound’s Michael Mac for production on Spirit Tamer. The two have known each other since 2014, when she moved into a coach house in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood. Mac occupied the basement, then playing guitar with art rockers Oshwa and recording other local artists in his spare time. He’s since had a bird’s eye view of Joy’s evolution as an artist and confidant.
“My song ‘10,000 Things’ was my first demo ever that wasn’t in my bedroom – it was with Michael because we lived together. We’ve been collaborating and working together pretty much my entirety of making music,” she says.
“I feel really grateful, but I also feel so spoiled because I know at some point I’m going to have to work with someone else,” Joy half-jokes. “Michael’s a great person to work with in general, and as far as working with men who are audio engineers, he wants to make the vision that lives in your head. He’s not overstepping his bounds and doesn’t have an agenda other than patiently working with you and listening.”
Some of the songs on Spirit Tamer were ripped straight from her loop pedal, which she’s had for years. Recorded alone in her bedroom, she says she was “insistent” Mac keep some of those takes; the almost inaudible guitar plucking, dissolving in a haze of Joy’s gentle vocal play – it’s ethereal.
“That energy is really hard to recreate. You can create a perfect take in the studio, but to me, it’s not the same as having the energy in my bedroom,” she explains. “I think a lot of lo-fi artists can relate to that and it’s easier for me to be secluded and private and take vulnerable vocal takes – especially with tracks ‘Sword (I Carry)’ and the harmonies in ‘Saturn.’ They’re visceral. They pay homage to my roots.”
Most of the folks who lent a hand to the making of the album have been around since the beginning. She tapped friends Farago and Moontype drummer Emerson Hunton to contribute keys and percussion. It takes a village to bring a dream to life and, with the release of her very first full-length album, Joy feels the weight of the love of her own.
“That’s part of what makes this project so special,” she gushes. “Almost every single person that I’ve worked with is a close friend of mine. It shows the trust put into how these songs were made. The people who were involved with this record are also emotionally involved. They wanted to make it happen and wanted it to be out there because they care about me.”
The support from Chicago’s music community and in studio also helped Joy stand firm in her convictions when it came to how she wanted Spirit Tamer to be packaged and how she wanted to be represented as an artist to a wider, general public. In the summer of 2020, she signed with Brookyln-based label, Fire Talk Records. Joy is the fifth Chicago artist to sign to the label, alongside fellow powerhouse acts Dehd, Deeper, Fran, and Accessory (a project of Dehd’s Jason Balla).
After speaking with Fire Talk’s founder Trevor Peterson, she felt her autonomy was respected and that Peterson shared her mission of fostering a supportive, inclusive environment for artists.
Further proof of the groundedness she establish through the solitary reflection behind bringing Spirit Tamer to life, Joy – who opened up to Audiofemme about living with depression, experiencing tough times throughout her childhood, and the trauma of losing one of her best friends – isn’t afraid to advocate for herself in business talks.
“The album was ready and I was feeling very worried that nothing was ever gonna come from it,” she says. “I had sent it to other labels and I’m so grateful things never happened with them just because of general ethics. I didn’t want to feel tokenized as a person of color, being the only person of color on an all-white roster, ran by all white people. That was a conversation I had with Trevor. That’s something I will continue to care about, making the music industry a more intersectional place. It’s essential for me to feel comfortable in the creative community in continuing to be a musician.”
“I’ve never been on a label of this size before,” Joy continues. “I’m new to this industry. [Signing] was very exciting and I was very honored and am very grateful. From the very beginning, as a female, I was very firm in my boundaries and my vision – especially as a woman of color. With a little status behind me in the beginning, I made sure I expressed how I wanted to conduct this and what the sound was all about. Had they not been receptive to it, I would’ve just kept moving on. It’s really comforting to know we’ve established a rapport and trust. I feel very taken care of by my label and think they go really hard for me. I love that.”
The conversations extended to her public relations team, who would promote singles like “Haha” and “Freak” and “Ye Old Man,” to make sure her music wasn’t reduced to “break-up pop songs” or her continually evolving familial relationships. “The imagery and symbolism of Spirit Tamer and being the master of your own feelings and your own direction, collecting all of your lows and your highs and creating resiliency – it’s supposed to be for soothing and for solace and to contemplate yourself,” Joy muses. “Heartbreak is very strong and very universal and there are songs on there about it, but it’s also like, my dad makes me sad sometimes. There’s a song about my friend passing away that was hugely traumatic and a big part of my life.
“The song ‘Ye Old Man’ is about my dad, actually,” she reveals. “I think it’s important that people don’t think that’s just a cheesy break-up song. Me and my dad had to talk about it because he’s really proud of me and he shares my music with his buddies. I told him, you know, ‘I don’t want you to think I hate you and this is me burning you or anything.’”
Taking a breath, Joy chooses her words delicately, “It was coming from a place of realizing sometimes parents make mistakes and I had to accept him for his flaws. Sometimes they’re not just a parent and sometimes I’m not just a child. We’re learning the dynamics of how to understand and relate to each other as we get older. I think I’m still a puzzle to them. Hopefully I will make more sense to them now that I’m starting to share more of myself with the world. I know they’re proud of me.”
Remaining aware and vulnerable to the process of understanding and accepting the realities of who and what surrounds you will follow Mia Joy as her ascent persists. It’s the never-ending work she agreed to long ago and if Spirit Tamer is any evidence, her pursuits are paying off. Though live music is making its return, she doesn’t have anything booked for 2021 yet. She hopes to do some performances throughout the year and tour in 2022, but hasn’t stopped writing new material.
Don’t be surprised if her re-emergence feels like playing catch-up.
“Musicians can relate, especially if it’s a really long-term project like this was for me,” she says. “In a way it’s a cathartic relief. It’s both scary and exciting now that it’s time to think about something else. I’m in a vastly different place, listening to different things, being influenced by different things. I’m going further down the ambient rabbit hole; getting even more avant-garde and wacky and experimental.”
Grace in her tone, Joy humbly accepts her current place in the spotlight.
“I can’t say how grateful I am enough. It’s such a crazy privilege to even be able to release anything right now with the state of the music industry and society and everything at large. It’s not lost on me,” she expresses. “This feels like such a shooting star in a really dark time. I’m just a nerdy, anxious little guy over here. It feels really surreal.”
When Billy Kim left the East Coast to return to his home base in California, he was leaving more than his beloved Italian deli. For some time while writing his debut EP, Imago, and touring with Tycho, his studio was a little table at his now-wife’s apartment. He would miss the waterfront view of New York City and the places where he was healing from the early death of his father.
There was no manual to grieving, just the catharsis of writing his first song for the EP, “Let Go.” The multi-instrumentalist, who adopted the stage name Karaboudjan (a nostalgic nod to The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin), began writing “Let Go” almost a decade ago; the journey of the song’s completion mirrored Kim’s own mourning.
“All I had was the verse for the melody, back years ago. I had this tiny glimpse of some sad lyrics. I didn’t know how to finish it. I needed time,” he tells Audiofemme. Finally finishing the chorus right before recording Imago brought his feelings into perspective, when he had the revelation of completing it in an uplifting way. “It does have a happy and light vibe. I wanted to contrast with the darker lyrics. End with a positive vibe, rather than just sad sad sad,” he explains. It’s the second single he’s released from Imago, following “Seems Like;” the EP will arrive later this year.
The video for “Let Go,” directed by Justin Gaar, emphasizes just how bittersweet grieving for someone who is absent can be, updated to reflect the current reality of the COVID pandemic. Two characters, played by Adam Lee and Nick Ley, twirl around a neon-lit parking garage roller skates – another nod to nostaligia – as the video flashes between memory, fantasy, and the lonely drudge of present day. The carefree magic and love in the choreographed movements is juxtaposed with the weight of loss and sadness in remembering, the instrumentals always dream-like, verses flowing together in an electronic ripple.
The video completed the project as a whole for Kim, who admittedly loves focusing on the instrumentals more than the visuals. “It’s been really fun to work with people who take their own interpretation toward it. I’ve always only written the instrumentals first. For me, it’s a blank space to figure out what mood the song will be,” he reveals. For “Let Go,” the synths and melody embody such strong emotions, that Gaar had no doubts about the vision. “His passion for his vision combined with our top-notch production crew from Half/Half really made for a smooth day of filming,” says Kim.
Last year, the US declared a travel ban on Kim’s birthday while he was overseas. After scrambling to fly back, he had finally buckled down for the long year ahead. The East Coast was where Billy Kim ate his first Grandma slice. Where he met his wife. Where he finally finished recording Imago. And where he finally finished writing “Let Go” in a place of healing and gratitude. “It just clicked. It had to be a big ‘thank you,’ to life and people that we’ve lost.”
Tiny Jag has never been one to mince words. Ever since her first EP Pollydebuted in 2018, Jag has been known for her no-bullshit lyricism and cutting delivery. Though her sound has grown and shifted since then, the heart of it remains the same: an uncompromising sense of self that’s easy to sing along to. In the video for her new song, “How It Was,” Jag emphasizes the importance of keeping your circle small and supported.
“When I made this song I was dead in the center of thinking about what relationships were working for me and which ones weren’t,” Jag explains. She says that the last year has been a time of not only looking inward, but looking around her and tempering expectations around friendships and relationships. What she discovered was that supporting herself first and foremost yielded the ability to show up for others in the way that she wants to. “I feel clearer over the last few months since that song has been created,” she says. “Just being comfortable in exactly where I am at any moment… and finding a way to have my own back… makes it easier to figure out what you expect out of the souls and spirits around you.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTJML_cJrts
This realization led Jag to write the ultimate ride-or-die anthem that mirrors the relationships in her own life. She explains that her tendency to keep her circle tight in her personal life bleeds into her creative process. In an industry that is built off of multiple people – sometimes strangers – co-writing songs and cranking them out like an assembly line, Jag takes a more intimate approach to songwriting. She says that 99% of the time, she’s going into the studio with someone she has a prior connection and strong basis of trust with, and if not, that bond is made before the session even starts. “Any producer that I went into the studio with blindly, we probably talked for like two hours before we started working,” says Jag. “I think that for my peace of mind, and the way that my anxiety is set up, I need to focus on the people that feel the pull… some type of law of attraction has brought us together and here we are vibing the fuck out.”
The video follows Jag and her besties (Jag’s long-time DJ and friend Wah Wah and local musician Shannon Barnes of White Bee) as they devise a plan to rob their douchey corporate boss. At some point, we’ve all probably fantasized about tying up our boss and taking all of their money, which makes sense, considering that the average CEO in the United States makes up to 320 times more than a typical worker. The visual shows Jag and her posse enduring various morbid circumstances like domestic abuse, a messy breakup, and debilitating debt. The three decide that in order to escape their current situations, they’ll team up and take down their superior, Robin Hood-style.
While the video was inspired by fantastical scenes like the Joker walking away from a burning hospital in Dark Knight and the grocery store heist in Good Girls, Jag says her vision was one step closer to reality. “I wanted it to be something that you could see some mother fuckers fuckin’ around and doing,” she says. And that’s how a Tiny Jag song usually makes the listener feel – like you could rob your boss and get away with it. An indestructible aura surrounds her music, permeating through the speakers and touching whoever is listening. It’s fitting, then, that Jag’s ultimate goal as a creative is to be an entity rather than solely a musician.
“Even when I started doing music, I knew it was going to be a leg of something bigger. I always wanted to be a force more than any one designated thing,” she says. “I would rather be a reminder of something that reminds you to be yourself, or don’t be wasteful, or don’t throw your trash on the ground or whatever the fuck.” She lives out this intention not only through her music, but, more recently, through repurposing old fabrics to make her own merch. She explains that having multiple outlets allows her to nurture her creative self and shift focus from output to being present with herself and her art.
Jag’s unending quest towards self-discovery is what keeps her music so authentic, and inspires listeners to do the same. “It feels like every time I talk to you, I talk about how I’m being my most authentic self and that’s the best thing that’s going right now,” Jag muses. “But, every time, I feel like I’m getting closer and closer to that most internal piece of myself, that highest self.”
Like the airbag that “popped and knocked sense into me” in her debut EP’s opener “Car Crash in G Major,” Ottawa’s fanclubwallet comes out swinging on Hurt is Boring. The punchy blend of indie rock and bedroom pop, helmed by Hannah Judge, brims with bouncy, high octave keys, asserting joy in a way that contrasts some of its darker subject matter. Hitting you with disaster from the get-go—a violent, traumatizing car crash that serves as a metaphor for a doomed relationship—is way of commanding attention, and Judge’s breezy delivery is a Trojan horse; worms nest so casually in your ears that you find yourself humming about your skin falling off as you brew your morning tea.
Fleshed out while a Crohn’s disease flare-up left Judge bedridden for ten months, Hurt is Boring touches on every emotion across an omnipresent spectrum of existential ennui. Lucky to have podded up with her producer (and grade school best friend) Michael Watson, just a few modifications were made for an adapted recording process in her childhood home that’s as literal as bedroom pop can get, with Judge tracking vocals while lying down as Watson set up shop “at a very tiny overcrowded desk in the corner.” “I’m really grateful that [Watson] was so accommodating and willing to help me find ways of recording that worked for me,” Judge says. “There’s a photo of me somewhere lying in bed with an overhead mic and holding a keyboard. It looks a little silly, but it got the job done!”
Hurt is Boring follows a steady stream of singles dropped throughout 2020 after finding success with her cover of the Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place.” The pandemic, coupled with her boredom in recovery, gave her the time and mental space to hone in on her first cohesive project. She fittingly describes this past year as “pretty bonkers…for everyone,” and though disability might not have been what did us all in, the sentiment is familiar: we’re all, categorically, tired; with her upbeat musings and a soft charm, Judge wakes us—and herself—up.
“I love music with a consistent beat, stuff you can dance to or at least bop your head to,” she says. “Whenever I sit down to actually produce things, they end up being a lot happier than they originally sounded just on guitar.” Recounting a relationship’s disintegration in the most brutal way over a bright, almost Sheryl Crow-like instrumental shouldn’t make as much sense as it does, but it’s liberating.
“I’m never really intentionally trying to write really depressing lyrics, just kind of talking about what I know,” she says. “C’mon Be Cool” came of “overanalyzing how I thought people might feel about me,” she continues. “‘C’mon be cool, I’m not gonna be rude to you’ is just me being like, ‘Okay, let’s all just take a breather… it’s been a rough year.” She renders that misery in small details like a bandaid left on just a little too long, but also offers a little kindness: “I don’t see what you see in making all this fuss.”
Judge scatters these sharp and severe elements throughout the EP, from flying shrapnel to a cold bathroom floor, echoing the lyricism of Hop Along’s Frances Quinlan and Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse, two songwriters she admires. Situating metaphors for bitterness and grief over easy pop beats normalizes them, breaks them down into something less cynical and more serene.
On maintaining mystery to her lyrics, she explains, “I don’t like to give too much away… I think life is really just built up of small moments that we think about over and over until they feel like big ones… It means what it means to me, and if it means something entirely different to you that’s cool too.”
“I would love to write a really happy song, but I’m just not quite sure how,” she confesses, but these tracks are happy, albeit in their own refreshing way. The abrupt fanclubwallet approach comes from Judge’s proclivity for “dwelling” (“I honestly never stop,” she admits), but by the time you reach the EP’s end, you realize that hints of optimism hide between the glittery synths and danceable beats of each track. It’s funny to think that “Hurt is Boring” was written about a year before the others, but makes for a rewarding end—it’s her admission that “Hey, it’s okay to feel like crap sometimes,” simply put. “Otherwise,” she reasons, “you won’t notice the good stuff.”
Follow fanclubwallet on Instagram for ongoing updates.
Stevie Jean is an honorary Melbournian. Hailing from Humpty Doo – a small town about 30 miles North of Darwin – she’s transitioned to the considerably colder, wetter city and embraced it as her own. And Melbourne has embraced her, or it will, once her album The Dark gets heard in live music venues around town.
“Honestly, the transition from Darwin to Melbourne was not too bad. I was dealing with hectic stuff in Darwin so coming to Melbourne, living with two of my best friends, and having my own room was a great transition. I’ve been going to gigs, it’s been a good old time,” says Jean.
Released on May 14th, The Dark is a mishmash of her influences from rock and hip hop that she’s made entirely her own. Determined to face her fears, Jean has eloquently revealed what haunts her most and given herself and her listeners permission to be vulnerable but also merciful through the scars we share.
“I was between 17 and 20 was when I wrote The Dark,” says Jean. “Some of the songs took 20 minutes and some took years, and I write alone. The only song that was co-written was ‘Menace.’ That’s got Kapital J on it, and Tasman Keith wrote a little bit of it. I co-produce with an amazing producer Kuya James, based in Darwin. He’s been in the industry a long time.”
Indeed, James is an ARIA-nominated producer, touring musician, songwriter and DJ who has worked with many artists based in the Northern Territory. Kuya means big brother in the Filipino language of Tagalog, and he’s certainly been a guiding force for Jean’s music.
Likewise, Jean credits her mother’s choice to send her to a Steiner school – an alternative educational model oriented more towards holistic learning and social skills than academic achievement – with her embrace of her own creative skills. “I had the privilege of going to Steiner school. My mother was involved in the school opening. She didn’t want me to go to a mainstream school, so the first day of that school opening was my first day of school. There wasn’t enough funding and there was only about 50 kids, so I graduated year 6 [primary school] and it was mainstream from then on.”
At home, Jean’s parents raised her in a music-loving household. “My mother loves R&B and folk and I grew up with rock. I was also hugely inspired by a woman named Netanela Mizrahi,” she recalls. Mizrahi is a composer, music therapist, and music teacher. She’s also the Darwin Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Second Violinist. “She does fellowships all over the world. She was my violin teacher and got me into choirs. She was one of my biggest influences growing up. When I graduated, we started working together on a different basis where she would call me in to do certain projects with her.”
Through primary school, Jean was exposed to “a lot of Vivaldi and folk music” but once she entered the mainstream school system, hip hop became her biggest inspiration. “I found Eminem and then Kendrick Lamar, Nicki Minaj and then later, Princess Nokia, so much amazing hip hop: it’s rhythm and poetry, an incredible thing,” she says. These artists directly influence the EP she made with Tasman Keith, called Evenings, released in 2019.
But The Dark is much rockier and bluesier than her influences in hip hop would suggest, and is more akin to her Blame Game EP, also from 2019. “[The Dark] is my first album and I really wanted to pay homage to the rock that raised me,” says Jean. “So, Led Zeppelin and Black Keys, but then a lot of hip hop too with trap beats, 808… it’s an amalgamation, so you could call it psych rock or punk rock.”
Its title hints at the demons that inspired much of Jean’s lyrics. “I don’t talk about this very often, but for a few years I suffered from [an undiagnosed mental illness]. My brain tells me that nothing is real. I’m dealing with that in my own way – it’s an exaggerated lust for life, because if nothing is real, do whatever you want,” Jean says. “That’s where a lot of music on The Dark comes from. I’ve got it under control, but when you’re 17 and the world is a video game, it’s pretty scary. There are those moments where I felt ‘This is not okay, I don’t want to be here.’ I went to a counsellor who freaked out and booked me in with a psych who told me not to smoke weed, so I just never went back. I don’t want to be put in a box and judged based on having a psychiatric record, so I went on a really strict diet and that took the cloud out of my brain for a year, then I gradually reintroduced things back in, embraced exercise and that is still really important to me.”
Photo Credit: Jett Street
The raw, steely guitars that kick in on the opening track, “Send Me Home” merge with a groovy, boxy beat, and then Stevie Jean’s singularly beautiful, old school blues voice comes in. There’s something timeless about her voice, channeling both Erykah Badu and Rickie Lee Jones in its throaty melodiousness.
“’Menace’ happened so fast,” says Jean. “I was going to be in a movie, but that didn’t happen. They’d asked me to make a punk song for it, and Kuya James and Kapital J were in the studio and I sat down and wrote the song in about 15 minutes. It was a laugh, to be honest! Tasman Keith put his vocals on it then my backing band in Darwin, Draft Day, played their parts live over the track. That’s why it’s so hectic.”
The Dark was recorded across Park Orchards Studios in Victoria, with Benjamin Edgar sending his guitar tracks, recorded remotely from his home in Germany. The rest was recorded in Studio G (named after Gurrumul Yunupingu) in Darwin.
Jean’s plan is to play the album live around her new home city, accompanied by “the cool kids” in her band: Miggy Zamba on keyboards, Takoga Smith on bass, and “an incredible drummer,” Myka Wallace.
What would her dream lineup be, if she could perform with a couple of other acts?
“My dream lineup would be Haarper, Ashnikko, Princess Nokia and if The Black Keys showed up, I would probably cry,” she reveals.
But when she’s not performing, she is a prolific writer. “I’m actually halfway through production on my second album – I love writing, I’d do it all day if I could,” she says. “I don’t know when it will come out, but I’m enjoying just creating every day. I’ve taken this album I’m working on in more of a hip-hop direction. The Dark has elements, but the next record is more balanced between rock and hip hop.”
Until her next album arrives, there’s enough soul, rock, and raw, honest truths on The Dark to warrant repeat listens. It is easy to believe Stevie Jean could be the next Australian artist to garner major international interest and shiny, big deals. But, like many talented artists in this nation and worldwide, she’s working a couple of casual jobs to get by.
“As artists, we get treated like we’re replaceable and there’s so many amazing artists in Australia working in [hospitality]. There’s nothing wrong with hospo, but it’s really taxing to work two or three casual jobs and try to write an album. I’m trying to be a poet, an actress, and a musician on top of a couple of hospo jobs. I’d love to see a change in the music industry, I really would.”
Follow Stevie Jean on Instagram for ongoing updates.
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.
