2021 – Page 8 – Audiofemme

Haunted Like Human Explore Relationships Through Mental Health Lens with “Stay” Premiere

Dale Chapman and Cody Clark are natural born storytellers, so it’s only fitting that music is what brought them together. The two met by a happy accident, guitarist Clark voyaging across the country from Washington state to Music City where vocalist Chapman was working at a restaurant in Midtown. Clark and his friend came in just after arriving in the city; Chapman struck up a conversation with the musicians that serendipitously led to a co-writing session between her and Clark. Realizing the creative chemistry between them in that first writing session, they formed folk duo Haunted Like Human, releasing their debut album Ghost Stories in 2017.

“We were talking about the universal human experience of being a little bit haunted by something, whether it’s your past or a mistake. That part of being haunted in this human experience,” Clark describes of the meaning behind the duo’s name. “We really try to tell stories in every song we write.”

They channel this symbolism into their new song “Stay” (premiering exclusively via Audiofemme) from forthcoming LP Tall Tales & Fables, out October 15. The stirring acoustic number puts mental health at the forefront, as they ride ravaged waters with grace and ease, alongside a peaceful melody of guitar and strings complementing their haunting, yet serene harmonies. After taking a year-long hiatus from songwriting after the release of 2018 EP Folklore, the duo found themselves returning to the craft after opening for The Talbott Brothers at City Winery in Nashville in 2019. The lyrics of the chorus came to Chapman’s mind while driving in the car to her waitressing job, prompting her to record a rough demo on her phone to send to her bandmate, describing the song as a cross between the Talbot Brothers and Gregory Alan Isakov.

“It really became a deep dive into the way that relationships that we’ve been in have been affected by one or both people’s mental health, the struggles, and how hopeless that can sometimes feel,” Chapman explains of the song’s inspiration. “We both have wrestled with anxiety and depression a lot in different ways. I know for me, they will often feed off of each other in this vicious spiral of being insecure or feeling like a burden, and then you’re projecting that onto the other person, and assuming that they think that you’re a burden makes you feel more insecure, and what it looks like to try to work as a team on somebody’s mental health. It’s hard for everybody involved. It’s a good fight, but also it’s a hard fight.”

The duo doesn’t shy away from the hard fight on “Stay,” the gothic, instrumental score following the lead character as they battle their inner demons with whiskey and medicine, trying to keep a meaningful relationship afloat as Chapman pleads in the song’s opening lines, “You’re trying to be patient/You’re trying to be kind/But I know that you’re still running from the demons in my mind/But I promise this thing in my head/It ain’t got the best of me yet.”

“It’s a relationship that’s on the brink of falling apart,” Chapman explains. “We’ve all been there, and looking at it and saying, ‘There’s only so much that I can do for you as a person in this moment; there’s only so much that I can give. What does that mean for us moving forward?’ It’s a song about being up against a wall and really having to lay all your cards out on the table.”

This notion comes to a head in the bridge as Chapman and Clark echo, “Don’t give up on me/I won’t give up on you,” their harmonies calling out to one another across an abyss of vulnerability. What makes the song particularly unique is the way that mental health becomes a character all its own, serving as a present player in the story. The lead character seemingly drowns in their own reality, yet possesses the strength and resiliency to overcome those inner demons.

“I feel like I’ve had people give up on me in relationships before and that’s been a sentiment that’s felt very close to a surface. It’s like ‘I need you to not give up on me in this moment,’ something about the simplicity of it, yet it’s this back and forth communication,” Chapman reflects. “I feel like personifying mental illness and giving it a more active character to play in the plot is something that I have always enjoyed doing and it’s something that you’ll see throughout our discographies. I feel like we’ve made a lot of progress in the last couple of years about breaking down the stigma around mental illness and being more open about it and understanding. But to put a character and put some type of form and actions and motives, an antagonist in the story, it’s a little bit more physical than just something inside my head.”

The song ends on an intentionally hopeful note; Chapman offers the final line: “So darling, won’t you hold me close the way you used to do?” allowing the listener to determine if the darkness ends in light. “I didn’t want it to be hopeless,” Chapman professes. “[It’s] this olive branch offering in a way, of holding out a hand and working to potentially rebuild from where you’re at.”

“It’s nice to leave it open-ended. Let the audience decide how it ends,” Clark adds.

With “Stay,” the duo hopes the song offers a message of hope for those who need it, and that listeners will connect to its message of compassion and understanding. “To me, it feels freeing to put your own story into a song, almost like it’s therapy and you’re recovering from it. It’s in a song now, that’s not my burden anymore,” Clark observes. “People struggling with mental illness [may] hear this and hear, ‘You’re not alone, you’re not the only person struggling with this,’ and hopefully be encouraged to try to improve the situation.”

“Between music and telling stories, those are such powerful human connectors. That’s always what we’re striving to do is connect with other people in some way and make them feel something. I know the moments that I’ve felt the most moved [is] when somebody will come up to us after a show and be like, ‘This song, I love it because it hit me this way. It saw me where I was and I felt that.’ To have created that connection and shared that emotion, it’s so humbling,” Chapman says gratefully. “The fact that we get to participate in that is really incredible.”

Follow Haunted Like Human on Instagram for ongoing updates.

LIVESTREAM: Anna Fox Rochinski @ TV Eye

While the live music industry is slowly returning to normal, there’s still something to be said for a filmed concert performance. It doesn’t pack the exact same punch as a live show, which is not to say that it packs no punch at all, but rather that its significance rests more in its posterity. It means that we can revisit, that we can both relive the joy of a live concerts we actually attended, but also experience the magic of ones we did not, even ones that took place before our lifetimes.

With that in mind, we are thrilled to present, alongside BrooklynVegan, Anna Fox Rochinksi playing selections from her debut solo album Cherry at TV Eye in Ridgewood, Queens. Perhaps best known until now as a vocalist and guitarist for psych rock four-piece Quilt, Rochinski has refined her taste for contemporary pop artists like Madonna, Midnite Vultures-era Beck, and circa 1995 Robyn into her own unique brand of effervescent pop meets plucky ’70s art funk.

On set for “Everybody’s Down” (Photo Credit: Rivka Rose)

This production was directed by Alex “Otium” LaLiberte, who has directed Rochinski’s videos for singles “Cherry” and “Everybody’s Down.” Rochinski and LaLiberte list some of their own favorite concert videos as the 1984 Talking Heads performance Stop Making Sense, Madonna Live: The Virgin Tour, Gorillaz: Demon Days Live and Pink Floyd’s Live at Pompei. With influences like that, you know they brought the heat here.

“There is a type of collective energy associated with a live performance,” Otium says. “Knowing this [performance] was going to be watched in the comfort of one’s own home, perhaps alone, we had to find a way of substituting that excitement from the collective, with something that would be as stimulating, so we went with a different place and idea for each song in the concert – something you wouldn’t expect or be able to achieve in a traditional concert setting.”

And so they filmed the tracks in different rooms of Ridgewood’s TV Eye. The collaborative duo’s taste for unique, aesthetically appealing settings shines through strongly in the videos they created together, especially with “Cherry.” Its effectiveness lies in the trust they place in their own tastes: “I think that whatever visual you give people, they will find a way to connect it to the music, so it’s important not to overthink it and just do whatever you want to do,” Rochinksi says.

Otium agrees, adding, “I think visuals for music, whether it be a music video, concert video, or the projections/lights during a concert, should always aim to give the eye a complementary experience to the ears. When it’s really effective it can elevate the music to a place it can’t go strictly sonically, whether that’s because the video is tackling the theme or sonics obliquely, or perhaps it just adds an extra layer of congruency.”

So sit back and enjoy. Just because we can go to live shows again doesn’t mean there isn’t still a place for a thoughtful, beautifully filmed gig that you can absorb from the comfort of your couch.

Make a suggested $10 donation via NoonChorus and catch the stream here when it goes live at 9pm EST – the set will be available for 72 hours following the performance.

Follow Anna Fox Rochinski on Instagram and Twitter for ongoing updates.

A Place To Bury Strangers Return With New Members, New Perspective, and New Hologram EP

Coming out of quarantine, Oliver Ackermann offers this advice: “Everyone be good to one another. It’s nice when people are nice to other people.”

The founding member of iconic NYC noise band A Place To Bury Strangers is no different than the rest of us in the sense that the last year felt deeply strange, but ultimately contemplative and ripe with opportunities to grow. Lovingly hailed as “the loudest band in New York,” APTBS has seen many different line-ups over its nearly twenty-year lifespan.

“There was sort of a shift in the band,” Ackermann explains. “The last iteration of the band broke up kind of contentiously, so there was definitely some bad feelings, and the weird unknowing of what was going to happen [with the pandemic], so I was just like, I need to reform this band with people who I know are really good people, and friendly, and doing this for the right reasons.”

APTBS reemerges into the present with new members and a new EP, Hologram, out July 16 on Ackermann’s own DedStrange imprint. With it comes the video for single “I Might Have,” a raucous spin with the band around their neighborhood of Ridgewood, Queens.

“I [started] this for the reasons you always start a band in the first place,” Ackermann continues. “You’re there with your best friends, trying to do something together.” Enter John Fedowitz, Ackermann’s childhood friend who had played alongside him in underground Virginia shoegaze band Skywave, and his wife Sandra Fedowitz, who have joined the band on bass and drums, respectively, after playing together in Ceremony East Coast.

“I think we connected in all the right ways to bring all of us back to that fun and exciting place of starting a band, and doing things from the ground up,” he says of the overwhelming positivity and good vibes he felt every time he’d go back to Virginia to visit them. “That’s where this album is – that connection of the pure form of songwriting that’s inside of you, people who just easily get along and write songs together.”

He describes the new EP as “the glimmer of hope or something, the need for a future,” born of early pandemic solo recordings and “bizarre” writing sessions. It brings him back to writing the first APTBS record, released in 2007. “That was all just making music for me and my friends to listen to… When that album came out, it was just those demos that I recorded to get everybody excited about the music. It was awesome that people actually liked that and took to that,” Ackermann remembers. “I think this is the same sort of thing. I didn’t know what was going to happen, if music was going to continue, so we just started doing stuff to make some music that we wanted to hear.”

<a href="https://aplacetoburystrangers.bandcamp.com/album/hologram-ep">Hologram EP by A Place To Bury Strangers</a>

The new song and video for “I Might Have” reflects this return to the joy of creating without expectations: the band cruises around Ridgewood listening to a cassette tape endearingly labeled “demos” while hijinks ensue and escalate. The song itself is “a fuzz-soaked sonic disaster in the best way possible,” the band at its most honest and unfiltered. It captures the ironic purity and joy of youth, a time when there wasn’t anything to do besides nothing at all really, what Ackermann refers to as “street hangs.” In a way, this visual rendering of a simpler time is a testament to the weirdness of the last year as much as the music itself, the pent-up energy of all our favorite haunts and hangouts shuttered with no end date in sight.

“Originally I had this really loose idea of, let’s do what was fun for us to do growing up, which was basically just you’d drive around in a car and listen to music and that was it,” he says.

With that in mind, the band prepares for their return to live performance and touring. They have a slew of European tour dates already slated for spring 2022, as well as a number of festivals and one-off dates. “We’ve got as many shows as we can possibly play coming up,” Ackermann says, refreshed and more ready than ever to get back in the game. “Whatever it is, you know, someone’s birthday party or whatever, I want to play it! If you book A Place To Bury Strangers, we’ll come play.”

It’s a newfound sense of purpose that might never have been so acutely felt if not for the pandemic. “When you dance really close to death, or whatever, the potential of that, you reevaluate your life and think like, oh wait a minute, what’s important to me? Maybe I need to go to the beach today and not work on stuff,” Ackermann says. “I’m only starting to realize it now, what a weird time we just went through, how strange it was.”

Follow A Place To Bury Strangers on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

PLAYING MELBOURNE: The Emerging Artists and Established Acts You Need to Know About Now

Melbourne-based rapper Sophiegrophy returns with “Drehpehs” single (listen below).

Melbourne has been battered by COVID-19, but our city remains the music capital of Australia, regardless of what Sydney may try to claim. Across genres, there’s been no shortage of recent releases and emerging artists worth crowing about, or crowing at, or pursuing via social media with zeal. There’s no definitive sound to this city, though fanatic genre fans may argue otherwise. There’s an appetite, rather, for music that reflects individuals and leverages the enormous talent who work in studios, backstage, producing, writing and recording all the phenomenal artists emerging in this city.

Freshly out of our fourth lockdown, Melbourne is still wiping the tears off her mascara-stained face and adjusting her sunglasses to the winter sun. Live music is only just starting up again. It’s good to go out in the evening now and hear the wall-shuddering sounds of live music, the whoops of hungry music lovers. From wherever you’re listening, here are five Melbourne artists you need to know about (in no particular order), and one track that is definitive of their sound.

Civic – “Shake Like Death”

Civic formed in 2017, but their recent debut LP Future Forecast has rocketed them onto Melbourne community radio airwaves and won them a new coterie of fans. They deliver merciless, driving rock that practically sprays sweat from the riffs, shakes the bones of your home, and sneers when you smile. The five-piece band consists of Jim McCullough, Lewis Hodgson, Roland Hlavka, David Forcier and Darcy Grigg. They’ve released two EPs since forming four years ago: New Vietnam in April 2018 and Those Who No in November 2018, as well as a pair of 7″ singles.

Released in March via Flightless Records, Future Forecast has cemented the band’s “garage rock” or “gutter rock” classifications, but even that seems a rather lazy descriptor that Australian media tends to throw around for any band that doesn’t have a clean, super-glossy approach to production. None of the Civic members are new to the game; between them, they are made up of former members of A.D. Skinner, Drug Sweat, Whipper, Cuntz and Planet Slayer. The deafening, thrilling feedback that opens “Shake Like Death” heralds a snaking, menacing bassline before violent riffs tear the seams of civility wide apart. McCullough’s snarling, growling vocals hark to the raw, visceral energy of Black Flag. There’s more than a nod to Black Flag’s “Rise Above” on this track, in the best way.

<a href="https://civicivic.bandcamp.com/album/future-forecast">Future Forecast by Civic</a>

Time For Dreams – “Death to All Actors”

Significantly less frenetic and sweaty, Time For Dreams is an ethereal, trip hop-inspired duo that fans of Portishead and Mazzy Star will likely love, with Tom Carlyon on guitar and electronic instrumentation, while Amanda Roff plays bass and handles vocal duties. Their album Life of the Inhabitant has a tentative September release date, and the seductive, atmospheric “Death to All Actors” has been crackling and slinking from radios in anticipation. The echoing percussion provides an anchor, while swirling, somnambulic synths build a forest of sound before Roff’s breathy, sardonic vocals emerge organically from the lush centre. Their 2017 debut album In Time featured on community radio in Melbourne, but didn’t achieve the same attention and praise they’ve (justifiably) garnered recently.

Freya Josephine Hollick – “The Real World”

Freya Josephine Hollick rode onto the cosmic country scene on her multicoloured unicorn when her 2018 sophomore LP Feral Fusion got national radio interested. It also convinced Creative Victoria to financially support her trip to the US to record with Lucinda Williams’ band, Buick 6, in Joshua Tree, California in 2019. The album came together at the studio of Eagles of Death Metal’s Dave Catching, Rancho de la Luna. Her lyrical themes, poetic and piercing, stem from her experience as a young woman – and a mother – in an industry of young dreamers and vintage rock dogs.

Hollick was born in Ballarat, in regional Victoria, just outside Melbourne. It’s a place that is steeped in goldmining history and there are still shopfronts and streets that hark back to the time of horses, panning for gold, and buying boiled sweets in jars. Perhaps then, it is only natural for Hollick to sound like something beautiful and nostalgic from old-time country radio. Her lovely “The Real World” is a sweet lament over pedal steel guitar to the universe we are eroding. As the title track to her forthcoming record from the Joshua Tree sessions, if there is more to come in this vein, then bring it on.

Gretta Ray – “Human”

Another solo artist, but one with a very different vibe, is Gretta Ray. The Melbourne singer-songwriter first broke onto the scene when she won national youth radio station Triple J’s Unearthed High competition in 2016, By her final year of high school, Ray had built a solid fanbase on the success of singles like “Drive,” from her 2018 debut EP Here and Now. After proving her popularity on national festivals, and supporting major acts, she’s finally set to release her follow-up, Begin To Look Around, on August 27.

Still in her early 20s, the album’s themes of the disillusionment of romance, untangling your identity from a partner, and first-time travel are all very much rooted in Ray’s formative years. She is adept at crafting a hook-filled pop rock song that tells a straightforward story without wrapping the meaning under a vast array of metaphors and mysticism, and latest single “Human” sees the singer relishing intimate moments with a new love, no overthinking.

Sophiegrophy – “Drehpehs”

Melbourne-based hip hop artist Sophiegrophy first garnered attention for her debut mixtape PURPULARITY in 2016, following up with super-smooth R&B verses and trap beats on “Fa$t Life” (2017); darker, sexier single “Bag;” and 2020’s BOLD EP. The Nigerian-born, New Zealand-raised artist has established herself as an unmissable live act, with spitfire skills as a rapper and also as a songwriter who can slink her way around a melodic hook; she’s performed at Rolling Loud, The Grass Is Greener, Brunswick Music Festival and Festival X. On “Bag,” she raps “I ain’t this, I ain’t that,” and indeed, it would be unwise to try to summarise her sound when she’s constantly evolving and surprising. Most recently, “Drehpehs” is another killer drop that fans of Missy Elliot, Ciara and TLC may find a lot of love for.

Reni Lane Takes a Lush “Detour” with Premiere of Latest Video

Life doesn’t always unfold the way we expect. That’s certainly been true for Brooklyn-based polymath Reni Lane, who has had quite an unpredictable journey – taking her from New York, to London, to Paris and beyond as a touring keyboard player for British band Razorlight, contemporary composer, high fashion runway model, Ivy League dropout, and proponent of the slow conscious creativity movement. Though she’s been a creative force in numerous communities and varying scenes, the modern-day “Reni-ssance woman” always comes back to music, and today she premieres here latest single “Detour” exclusively on Audiofemme.

“We’re going on a detour/Show you everything you ignored/Going on a detour/All the magic outside of your door/We don’t need a map/Your heart is all you need to pack,” Lane coos with earnest sentiment and richness of tone, echoing influence from Aimee Mann, Chryssie Hynde, and Stevie Nicks. “Detour” is an upbeat, timeless ballad – rhythmic and existential, the song pushes us to reclaim our inner strength, when we seem to venture off track from our intentions. In an opulent video shot in Ecuador by Oscar Zabala, Lane dons mysterious robes and frolics through cinematic landscapes with the cool, calm, collected poise of an androgynous 1970s glam rock-era icon.

The symbolism in “Detour” will feel relatable to almost anyone, but Lane’s own meandering personal journey certainly inspired it. Born Reni Jablonsky in the idyllic college town of Corvallis, Oregon, she spent a lot of time in the woods as a kid, building forts and learning about indigenous cultures. Her childhood was mostly solitary; a sibling was diagnosed with autism, and their friendship didn’t blossom until their adult years. One of Lane’s friends began to study the Suzuki Method on the piano. Fascinated, this inspired Lane to start piano lessons, which quickly became a time-consuming passion.

“My study of the piano took up all of my time. My obsession didn’t seem weird or unusual to me or to anyone else, because in our town in Oregon, there were a lot of artists and creatives.” Lane remembers; she soon felt ready to break free of the structured Suzuki Method, and began writing and experimenting musically. Her parents were nurturing and supportive, buying her a thrift store piano, and allowing her talent to thrive through supportive teachers. The culture shock came when her family moved to a more conservative town Williamsburg, Virginia when Lane was eleven. “I had never had to think about what I wore to school, or what was going on in pop culture. My idols were people like Hans Zimmer, Jane Goodall and Frida Kahlo,” she says. “I remember starting my first day of middle school in Virginia and people thought I was strange because I had no idea who the Backstreet Boys were.”

Still a self proclaimed nerd, Lane admits this was a turning point in her personal development, and finding her voice and truth in music became a protective shield. “It set me apart. Sharing my music helped me fit in and find my place as a teenage adolescent. It really did gain me respect, in a traditionally vicious public school setting,” she recalls. “I stayed true to myself – I was weird, the preppy kids were still going to make fun of me, but they had nothing on how good I was at music. It was my thing.”

Aside from music, Lane’s extraordinary abilities in math allowed her to graduate high school early, and she moved to New York City and took a desk job at a real estate company while pursuing music professionally with the support of a management team. The following year she enrolled at the prestigious Columbia University, first as a Philosophy major before switching gears to Creative Writing. She began forming and embracing her DIY ethos, commuting downtown for gigs at Sidewalk Cafe. Around this time, she began throwing parties and putting on live shows in her dorm room around a makeshift stage; she independently released her album American Baby in 2007. “That record was like a really expensive business card and a litmus test all in one,” she says. A self-shot, self-edited spoof video called “Frontiers of Science” went viral, prompting major record labels to court the young performer.

Lane signed to Universal Motown, and began living the dream of jet-setting around the world to meet with one hit producer after another. The label pressured her to drop out of Columbia to focus on the release of her major label debut, Ready. Consumed with the expectations from her label, she began to feel disillusioned and isolated, with her image and visibility under lock and key. “I always saw myself more as a renegade, DIY type person, but I was constantly pushed towards the Disney model,” Lane says.

Then, after a solo gig in Los Angeles, Lane was approached by Z Berg and Tennessee Thomas to play keyboards in LA buzz band The Like, on their tour supporting The Arctic Monkeys. “Joining The Like was a contrast to what I was experiencing in my own career. There were a lot of handler-type people around me in those days telling me that there were certain ways things needed to be done,” Lane says. “Once I joined The Like and saw their ship was run completely differently, it took a bit of the credibility away from those handlers, which was both terrifying, because it meant I was more alone than I thought, but also liberating. They brought joy back into my life in terms of just having fun with music.”

Though nowadays playing in multiple projects is understood as more exposure, back then, Lane’s management saw her involvement with a band outside her solo work as a conflict. Warned by seasoned manager Jazz Summers that Universal Motown was likely to drop her, lacked resources to promote her as a unique entity, and would “screw it up,” the exposure likely to come from playing for The Like seemed tantalizing. “It was the first time someone really straight up told me what was going to happen with my record deal,” Lane says. “I had this moment where I was like, wow, I actually really agree with him, but I was only nineteen and I didn’t know what to do. It felt like the right thing to do was honor my commitment to the label.”

But just as Summers predicted, Lane’s label dropped her after all. “It took me a long time to bounce back from that trauma and learn how to regain control and confidence in my own judgment. It took time and healing to trust my gut again,” she says. “I was pushed to do things that didn’t feel right to me, and I just went along with it. It was the kind of low-grade emotional trauma that can really fuck with your sense of self.”

Still, Lane is still proud of songs from her major label debut, co-produced with “guardian angel” Sam Bisbee. Long before “left-of-center pop” rose into the mainstream, songs like “Place For Us,” “Even You,” “We Don’t Forget,” and “Never Be Another You” helped Lane carve out her own niche even under the constraints of the label’s so-called guidance, and helped her secure crucial licensing placements in series like VH1’s Secrets of Aspen and The L Word.

If “Place For Us” was a self-dialogue to gain reassurance and find secure footing for her career as a musician, then a decade later, “Love Too Soon” became its follow-up anthem, blasting a wisdom that comes only with experience. Released in November 2020, Lane sings, “You gotta get away from it all/You’re gonna try your best not to call/Cause no one’s on the other line/To help you figure out when it’s time/To cut ’em loose,” as though reminding her younger self of the dangers of rushing into love, collaborations, and life. Projected fantasies may not pan out the way we expect, and can be detrimental to our inner creative world. With mindfulness, we can move on quickly and gain acceptance.

That’s where “Detour” comes in; it provides a bit of that optimistic magic needed to get something fresh off the ground, while leaving the listener empowered, with the new found self awareness, an ability to let the feelings pass and go with the flow. The song doesn’t call to action; instead it empathizes, and reconciles the universality of disappointment. Lane’s effortless narrative lyrics and ear catching melodies come from the moral conscience and wisdom of a profound songwriter and gentle realist.

Though she couldn’t have predicted it at the time, leaving the major label freed Lane up to license songs and play in friends’ bands and projects. Notably, Lane formed synthpop duo Fever High (Sire Records) with Anna Nordeen and late songwriter/producer Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne). In her collaborative element, Lane contributed piano, guitar, bass, trumpet and trombone to the band.

“When we formed that project I had practically been killing myself working so hard, gigging with all these different bands,” Lane says. “Sometimes we have to let go of this perception that good things are always going to be really hard. Sometimes good things happen, and they’re actually really easy, you know? And that’s kind of like how things were a lot of the time with Fever High. It was just really easy, and fun and it was all kind of like a break and escape from our regular grind day to day.”

And Schlesinger had a big effect on Lane’s songwriting, too. “Adam basically combined all the things that are really hard about songwriting, with all the things that are the most fun things about songwriting. He had that dichotomy nailed down. He would always find the really wordy mathy theory kind of melodies, tweak those, and then he knew how to pull really silly lyrics out of you in the studio. Lyrics that were both silly and profound…” Lane says fondly. “He always said, ‘Listen, you don’t have to be the best singer, or the best songwriter, you just have to have fun and believe in yourself.’ I really, really miss him. It’s not going to be the same New York without him.”

Lane has been drifting between Virginia and NYC for most of 2021, Tidying up a slew of new songs. She recently traveled to the UK in April, doubling up as stylist and keyboard player for the post-pandemic reunion of Razorlight’s classic lineup for a livestream concert. “All of this privilege is pretty mind-boggling to me given the current trepidatious circumstance of the world. I’m lucky to be one of the ones who could keep going with my chosen career during the pandemic despite the monumental losses occurring all around me,” Lane says. “As lockdowns were hitting last year I was finishing an intense schedule of Razorlight tour dates and then my bandmate Adam Schlesinger died early on in the first New York COVID wave. It was like a kick in the head. I’d also just been through a breakup so I had to slow down and take every day one step at a time.”

“Detour” reminds us to let go of what we cannot control and try to enjoy our non-linear journeys to the fullest. And now that she’s gained some experience and perspective, Reni Lane has some more advice for her younger self. “Get out of your head and into your body as often as possible. Does it feel good? Then do it! Be brutally honest with yourself. Screw all convention and question what you’ve been taught concerning the ‘proper’ way to do things. You know a lot more than anyone who is profiting off of your ignorance wants to admit,” she says. “Trust your vision. It can be as simple as combining touches of things you find beautiful or hiring musicians you admire. We’re all naturally drawn to things we like but the key is to do them with your own twist. So keep the inspirational juices flowing and replenishing! The last thing you want to do is to copy someone else out of blind ignorance. Maintain a high standard for things coming into, whether it’s art, people, ideas, or food.”

Her career has been “a long series of breaks that never ends,” but “I still find myself in situations among incredible talent that blows my mind because of some random show I played or last-minute gig I took on. But to give myself some credit, I worked really hard to get to the place to even be able to take those opportunities and run with them,” she says. “It’s incredible that any of us are alive in the grand scheme of things, so why not try our best to enjoy it? And what I enjoy most is making music and being as vulnerable as possible with the art I create, so fuck it – as long as I’m not hurting anyone, that’s what I’m keeping on with.”

Follow Reni Lane on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

TRISHES Validates the Anger of Women of Color with “Venom” Premiere

Trinidadian-American singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Trish Hosein (known as TRISHES) is all too familiar with being branded as “angry” or “sensitive” for speaking up about ignorant comments and the same old insulting assumptions people make about women – especially women of color. Growing up, she was made to feel like the problem was her, and not society’s micro-aggressions. But her latest single “Venom” pushes back against those who gaslit her and invalidated her anger.

Full of experimental electronic manipulations and vocal warping that sound like male and female voices singing, though it’s actually all Hosein’s own voice, the song has a truly unique sound and fierce lyrics that appropriate the snake as a symbol of anger: “I got venom on the tip of my tongue/Just like a scorpion, just like a snake/I got tough skin/Armor I was made in/Just like a champion/Rattle and shake.”

TRISHES says the intention was to create a powerful, chant-like chorus. “I wanted the chorus to be a place where I could reclaim this characteristic that was either projected on me or that I felt shame about,” she says. As a nod to her roots, she incorporated South Asian scales, such as major sevens.

She hopes that the single helps people form a new framework around the concept of anger, not as an emotion that makes someone difficult or overly aggressive but as one that spawns art and social change. As an activist and multimedia artist in addition to being a musician, this is the function that anger has had in Hosein’s own life.

In fact, the creation of “Venom” helped her to look back at times she was angry and see that her rage was not only valid but also productive. “I grew up being seen as an angry woman simply for being an honest woman of color,” she recalls. “After I created that song, I look back on it, and that’s actually when I had more realizations: this makes sense. It makes sense that you are angry. It makes sense that you had this sort of rage because you’ve always understood the idea of justice, and you could always feel when injustice was occurring, whether or not you had the ability to articulate what that injustice was.”

She wants those who listen to the song to be able to see themselves in the same light. “I would want women and girls like me to understand that their anger is valid,” she says. “Anger is valid, period, but specifically the anger that comes from being in a society that devalues you is valid, and it’s not something wrong with you per se.”

“Venom” will appear on TRISHES’ debut album The Id, which comes out October 22. As a follow-up to her 2019 EP Ego, an exploration of our consciousness and spiritual selves, The Id is concerned with “fear, shame, anger, violence, and the things our subconscious builds when we’re not nurturing our inner child.” Through warped vocals, soulful singing, and R&B-reminiscent beats, TRISHES creates a thought-provoking meditation on racial inequality, consumerism, and other social themes. She provided the vocals and keys for the album and co-produced it with producer Hakan Mavruk, who layered on bass and drums.

The Id was written not in structured writing sessions but over the course of Hosein’s daily life as inspiration hit her. “I don’t really sit down and write music for myself — I wrote it traveling, and I write things while I’m walking in my head and when I’m driving,” she says. “I wrote this album at a lot of museums; I’m super inspired at museums. When I’d gotten all the songs together and sort of knew what I was doing, it was a pretty straightforward process, but the actual writing of the album was just kind of a thing that happened in my mind over time.”

As an artist, Hosein also creates visuals to accompany her music by stippling with a fine-tip sharpie. For the cover of “Venom,” she created an image of herself with her hair resembling a scorpion’s tail. “I guess that’s how I feel that I’m perceived often, but it’s again centering around anonymity, centering around shame and fear and anger, and they’re images that I feel capture those emotions,” she explains. After releasing Ego, she created a pop art and music experience where people could check out headphones and take a tour through the album museum-gallery style, and she’s hoping to do something similar with The Id.

She considers her use of vocal effects and wide-looping — elements that appear throughout her music — reflective of the tensions that TRISHES represents. “I started this project five or six years ago, and I think I was going through a moral dilemma in my life, figuring out my what my idea of morality was apart from the way I was raised or the structures I was raised in,” she says. While her music doesn’t offer a definitive answers, it asks those questions in unfamiliar ways so that listeners can reflect on the larger power dynamics affecting their own sense of morality and identity.

Follow TRISHES on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Rodney Eldridge Lives Life with Intention on Black Box EP

If you want to know Rodney Eldridge’s life story, just listen to his music. The North Carolina-born musician and filmmaker discovered his instinct for music while spending his childhood days poised at the piano, playing one-finger chords as he deciphered which notes sounded best together. “Piano became a really big escape for me. It’s the first time I was like, ‘this is so therapeutic,’” Eldridge reminisces with Audiofemme.

As a child, Eldridge was diagnosed with a variety of learning disabilities, music serving as a sanctuary alongside reading and books. Eldridge turned the sentences on the pages into lyrics to match the melodies in his head, which led to a love of poetry and later, songwriting. He penned his first song for his middle school crush, asking her to be his date to a school dance by writing an original song as the proposal. “I think it’s always been there,” he says of his connection to music. “I would envision myself on this black stage. Everything’s blacked out but the spotlight, but I would be sitting there thinking, ‘this is it. This is my life.’”

Eldridge turned those visions into reality, setting the stage as a professional musician as part of the pop-rock band, Millennial, releasing their debut EP Dreamers in 2015. Though gaining momentum after a performance at South by Southwest, tragedy struck the group when guitarist Logan Fincher suffered a brain aneurysm that led them to temporarily disband. In the interim, Eldridge turned his attention to his other natural talent for filmmaking. Raised by a father who worked in the film industry, Eldridge was instilled with the mindset early on that if he wanted to break into the industry, he’d have to do it on his own accord. He fulfilled this part of his destiny working with a production manager based in Charlotte, quickly moving his way up the ladder to become a coordinator and production manager, graduating to the role of producer in the niche market of family-friendly films, scoring producing credits on a dozen films in his young career including the Cloris Leachman-fronted When We Last Spoke and The Warrant starring Neal McDonough of Yellowstone fame.

But throughout his filmmaking endeavors, Eldridge was always tethered to music, performing in bands and later reuniting with his Millennial bandmates to form a new group, Foxfire Run. But a major life change inspired Eldridge to go solo in 2019 when he and his wife divorced, leaving behind a trail of emotional pain that Eldridge transformed into his new EP, Black Box. “Writing’s always been like another form of therapy,” he describes. “I think with this record, you can definitely hear the rawness and the realness of it, and that’s how I’ve always written for myself. I don’t really share my emotions a lot in conversation, so a lot of times that is my way of getting out or expressing how I really feel.”

The four-song EP takes its name from the recording devices on airplanes that document all of the vital information in the event of a crash, Eldridge using the device as a metaphor for the emotional hard drive Black Box represents. “I very much felt that in my life, all these things were starting to crash. I was so overwhelmed with emotions and with life that it’s like my soul had this hard drive that was waiting for me to tap into it,” he shares. “I’m a huge advocate for self-growth and mental health, so that was a huge part of tapping into that black box and being able to be vulnerable and be real and have those moments and really hard conversations [with] myself – who are you, what do you want? I wanted tell a story. I wanted to create this journey that I’ve lived and tell it in a cohesive way.”

He takes listeners on this journey across a handful of deeply personal songs, beginning with the conversational “Came Here to Talk,” a piano-laden number that sets up an internal dialogue in which Eldridge confesses to feelings of sadness and loneliness. “I need you to know/That you’ll be okay I know,” he reassures himself at song’s end.

Then there’s “Am I Too Late?” an exploratory track wherein Eldridge reflects on his Christian upbringing and the inexplicable anger, fear, guilt and shame he lived with as a child, only to realize later in life that he’d become a passive person. The song holds a mirror up to the patterns and habits he now makes a conscious effort to break. “Healing in itself, I think, is a consistent journey. The moment you think you have it all figured out, you realize that you don’t, because something else happens and then you’re on this whole other growth path. That song comes from that place of realizing all the things in life that you’ve gone through,” he explains. “That song for me was finding that voice. I was able to pinpoint those moments in life. Once you recognize those parts of life, you’re able to then move forward from them and truly learn from it and be able to grow from it. I think that song did it for me when I was writing it. As I get to know myself I’m able to then move forward in a new way and a new light.”

He touches on this new light in lead single “The Weight.” The singer refers to the track as an “empowerment song” he penned while sitting alone in his parents’ basement singing the lyrics at the top of his lungs, releasing the emotions he was pouring into it. Eldridge greets the listener with a plucking acoustic guitar and lyrical gut punch as he sings in the vulnerable opening lines, “It’s hard to stay sober/When I’m feeling down/Kind of like right now,” conveying a feeling of being crushed under the weight of his own body. “But I won’t give up now/‘Cause I feel more empowered/Than I ever was,” he proclaims in the song’s defining closing remarks.

That empowerment stems from the intentionality “of living every day to be fully you and allowing yourself grace” Eldridge has strived to incorporate into his life following his eye-opening divorce. “I think one of the hard things for me, especially going through a divorce, is I didn’t have that intentionality with the one person you’re supposed to have that with. I am now intentionally being authentic for me,” the Nashville-based singer-songwriter expresses. “I think going through that and how I grew up, I dealt with a lot of guilt and shame that was put on me, that I kept putting on myself because of my background. Every single person is such a beautiful human and a beautiful part of the way life should be lived. Having that intentionality, going through life saying, ‘Whatever obstacles I’m in, this is meant to be lived for me,’ I think we can make that change to be intentional about everything that we say, intentionally being you, allowing yourself the freedom to just be.”

Through writing and recording Black Box, Eldridge’s spirit was liberated in a way he never knew he needed, and he hopes listeners find their own sense of freedom in the music. “I think your soul is constantly trying to talk to you. Your soul really wants you to pause and take a moment and ask those questions, dive in to you. That’s where this record really came from. It’s been one of the most freeing experiences of my life. I had to make very hard decisions, but the amount of freedom that comes along with it, words don’t even describe it,” he professes, hinting that there’s more music to come. “I want people to be them and be okay with it. I want people to find themselves and be okay with that and whatever that looks like, whatever they have to go through in order to get that kind of freedom. Putting out this record is a very weird, emotional thing for me. I really want people to feel like I’m pouring out my heart in it. If you can relate, if they can take something from it, then I’ve done my job as an artist. I just want people to love.”

Follow Rodney Eldridge on Instagram and Twitter for ongoing updates.

PREMIERE: Okayceci Has Butterflies in “Love Bug”

Valentina Vazquez, known by her stage name okayceci, is 21 years old and just started making music at age 18, but she’s already amassed nearly 200,000 TikTok followers and over 2.6 million Spotify streams for her first single, 2019’s cheeky, minimalistic “feel u.” Her fourth and latest single, “love bug,” follows in the footsteps of her earlier songs, with dreamy production and playful lyrics as she basks in the excitement of new love.

“You could be my love bug baby/And if you wanna we could get crazy/Like maybe driving in your car/Going pretty far/Tell me who you are,” she sings in an airy voice against laid-back guitar strumming. The earworm lyrics and melody are hypnotizing and practically beg to be blasted out of a window on a sunny day. Her goal with it, unsurprisingly, was to create a “repetitive, quick, catchy song for the car.”

The song was inspired by the early days of Vazquez’s relationship with her girlfriend, telling the story of “a crush or a relationship that just started — you know, when you get butterflies, like a new romance,” she says. “It’s just my second relationship with a girl, so it’s a lot of butterflies.”

okayceci · love bug

The artist likes to write about her relationships with women in order to normalize same-sex romances. “There’s not that many girl singers that rock out for a girl,” she says. “I try to make more music that’s girl-for-girl just so there’s more LGBT-type music — we need more representatives in the community.”

She recorded the song, like the rest of her music, on her own laptop. Typically, her producer/manager 199X Sound sends her a beat, then she improvises the song over it and sends what she likes back to him.

Vazquez has no formal training in music; she simply always enjoyed singing and decided to try writing songs one day in high school. “I just recorded on my iPhone, found some beats I liked, and that’s how I did it,” she remembers. Her artist name comes from her middle name, Cecilia, and a YouTube convention of putting “okay” in front of your name. She cites singer-songwriter and YouTube star Clairo – with a similar bedroom-pop style and LGBTQ themes – as her biggest influence, as well as Doja Cat, SZA, and Spanish-speaking artists like Bad Bunny (she herself has incorporated Spanish lyrics into her music).

After her breakout single “feel u” — which also spawned a danceable, disco-reminiscent remix — she released 2020’s “falling on me,” which features angelic echoes, infectious beats, and fun, flirty lyrics: “Likely, yeah, I like girls, they excite me/Hi me, I’m trippin’ on the weed, it excite me/Fight me, I do not fight but I’m feisty/Put it on my face, make your girl wanna try me.” Then, earlier this year, came “pink,” a dark, sassy, hip-hop-influenced single celebrating okayceci’s signature look and essence.

It’s not just okayceci’s catchy tunes that have rapidly garnered her fame, but also her endearing social media personality. Her Instagram bio simply reads “ur cute,” a phrase she’s considering as the title for her debut album, and her photos are full of hot pink hair, eye-catching fashion, and attitude. On TikTok, she posts intimate, musically illustrated snippets of her daily life, from dyeing her hair to playing with her cat to dancing to her own music with her dad.

She chalks up the success of her music in part to TikTok, particularly of “falling on me,” which features singer/songwriter Kinneret. After a TikTok trend of students doing their homework while listening to Kinneret’s “No Wind Resistance!” blew up, Vazquez noticed tons of people were suddenly streaming her music, too.

“We did the song ‘falling on me,’ and then she out of nowhere blew up on TikTok, so it was perfect timing,” she remembers.

Vazquez is currently compiling a collection of songs including “love bug,” “falling on me,” “pink,” and “feel u” into a debut album. “It’s very soft and, I would just say, cute,” she says of the project. “I kind of dip into some urban and go back into my main song ‘feel u,’ which is bedroom-pop Clairo-type music.”

Currently, the Miami native is learning guitar and also plans to learn to produce so that she can make her own beats. “I’m still in the process of learning, but I definitely want to be involved in the music-making for the beats,” she says. She and her girlfriend recently moved to LA so that she can dive more deeply into music, and given the scrappiness and creativity that’s characterized her career thus far, it’s exciting to imagine what she’ll do with even more support and focus.

Follow okayceci on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Lisa Crawley Premieres Retro-Inspired “Looking for Love” Video

New Zealand-born Lisa Crawley had stars in her eyes when she landed on US soil. Having lived in Melbourne from 2014 to 2019, after a bit of back of forth between New Zealand and the US, she ended up moving to LA in January of 2020 once she got the Artist VISA; those stars might have sparkled their way down her cheeks in tears though, since a year of quarantine sullied her plans for songwriting, performance and collaborative creativity.

Not all was lost, though – the resourceful Crawley initiated live streamed piano karaoke sessions three nights a week from her Hollywood confinement, attracting singers from around the world. No wonder, really. For homebound amateur stars with Broadway dreams, it was a dream opportunity to join in on sessions with the lead from the Auckland production of Tony Award Winning musical ONCE, Banff Centre songwriter-in-residence, and recording artist.

When she wasn’t live streaming, Crawley was writing her own music with the assistance of Grammy-nominated Rob Kleiner. He both co-wrote and produced on her upcoming EP, Looking For Love (In A Major) – due out July 23. Thus far, she’s released two singles from the project: “Clear History,” and “The Right Way.” Premiering on Audiofemme is “Looking For Love,” which explores the awkward – and frankly, sad and true – reality that many of us are not content with the one we’re with, imagining instead a more ideal partner. The promise of online dating, which presents much like a shopping catalogue, can fool us into a “grass is greener” belief.

Crawley and Kleiner wrote the song at his place with their friend Kevin Gibson, who was in a Chicago-based band called Tub Ring with Kleiner and can be heard in the song’s backing vocals. “We had a few people in mind who inspired us for the song – those people who are never happy. You’re so sure, and then you’re not really sure, you know?” Crawley says. “We wrote and recorded that song in one day. Rob’s a really busy guy, and he’s quick. I dwell on things when it’s just me writing at home, but he motivates me to get to work.”

The video is gorgeously kitschy – and Crawley’s part-time gig had a lot to do with the aesthetic. “The video is inspired by asking a date at the time to take me to a drive-in, but he never did,” Crawley explains. “I started working part-time at a drive-in cinema, which is the first time I’d been to the movies in America. All those retro ads – dancing drinks and dancing sausages – seemed to fit with the song. It also made me think that dating can be a bit like fast food, so throw-away, too.”

That dovetails with the lyrical inspiration for the song, as well. “I did a little bit of online dating when I first got here, then I realised that it’s a bit early for that. Being new to the country, I wanted to make friends. I did a bit of Facetime dating, but mostly I was observing other people doing it,” says Crawley. “The song is based on observing the dating culture here. I grew up in a pretty traditional environment [in Auckland, New Zealand], so it’s pretty eye-opening. It’s harder to get away with in smaller cities and countries, but here you think you want something – you have it – and then some tiny thing sets you off to the next option. It’s easy when swiping on dating apps to be so judgmental. Being ghosted, it’s never fun. It’s about that person that’s never happy no matter what they have, because there’s always something wrong no matter what.”

From the opening seconds of reverberating bassline, Crawley hooks you. The tropical vibe is all sunshine, cocktails and romance novels by the hotel pool. For any Audiofemme readers who were teenagers in the 1990s, or have schooled themselves in radio playlists of the era, they might find themselves recalling Swedish band The Cardigans when listening to Crawley. There’s something of the playful, poppy, ultra-feminine Nina Elsabet Persson in Crawley’s delivery.

That carefree execution belies the stress Crawley was under in her first few months of living in the States. The Artist VISA requires applicants to show that what they bring to the table is unique and that they have work lined up in their field – music, in Crawley’s case. It’s a lengthy, expensive process and Crawley didn’t want to set herself back since the VISA lasts three years and took multiple letters from colleagues to support her case. When lockdown happened, she was determined to stick it out.

“I’m in a tiny studio apartment in Franklin Village,” she says. “Something I enjoyed doing in Melbourne was improv comedy and I thought it would be fun to live around this area because I’m living next door to the Upright Citizens’ Brigade. I had to take an online improv comedy course with them even though they’re right next door!”

Crawley admits it was an extremely lonely experience to move to Hollywood and find herself isolated so soon. “It’s been really lonely, so I fostered a cat called Iris, because I’d had a cat in New Zealand and Australia for 20 years. In fact, I didn’t apply for a VISA until my cat was really elderly. She was like my child, but when she passed I applied.”

She only had two months to try to find work and meet people, and she did have a good run initially. “I got booked for some gigs and worked with other artists, but I don’t want this to be a ‘poor me’ story. I had help from Support Act in Victoria; they gave out grants which was definitely helpful since I was living off my Patreon. I had a placement on a TV show, Nancy Drew – a song ‘You Won’t Be There‘ played, and that helped, too.”

On fact, one of the draws of moving to LA was writing and working with TV and film. Five years ago, Crawley began networking in LA with film and TV insiders to kickstart the opportunities for getting her work on screen. A conference in Hawaii introduced her to a sync licensing company that began to set her up with writers and enabled opportunities to place her music on shows. It can be highly lucrative, however varied. “It is one of the few ways that artists can make money these days,” she admits. “Streaming…well, I’m sure you’ve heard the numbers.”

Crawley has scored her friend’s web series, Ex-Sisters In Law (still playing festivals, but not publicly available yet). She’d been a guest musician on Tuesdays@9, which organises test scenes between actors and writers; it was via that group that she was introduced to Ex-Sisters, co-written by Suzan Mikiel. It’s only one of the many collaborative projects Crawley is involved in, as much as it has felt like she’s alone. It reminds her of her first solo travel, post-school.

For four months, aged 19, she worked in a very isolated Japanese town, Atami, “with no internet, in the middle of nowhere.” She was working seven nights a week in a hotel, performing the same show – singing, dancing and piano – to entertain tourists in the hotel bar. Since 15, she’d played in bars at night and churches in the mornings while also writing her own music, so entertainment is in her blood.

“I became more of an introvert after that Japan experience,” she says. But with plans to venture out and explore America – Nashville, Austin, New York and New Orleans all beckon – it’s hard to imagine Crawley can maintain her introvert status for long.

Follow Lisa Crawley on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Khari Unleashes Institutionalized Sequel to This Is How We Feel EP Series

Khari continues his hard-hitting three-part EP series This Is How We Feel with Act 2 (Institutionalized). Picking up where Act 1 (Trapped) left off, the Cincinnati native continues to balance harrowing lyricism with thoughtful ruminations about racism, the criminal justice system, mental health and more. Production is handled by Courtney Kemper, G1, AvAtor Hughes, Nick Burke and Maaster Matt, with features from Kamiylah Faatin and Paris.

This year, Khari also launched his own record label, Be The Best (BTB) Records, through which Act 2 (Institutionalized) was released.

“I really wanted to… take back control over my art instead of just giving it out to streaming right away,” he tells Audiofemme.

Here, Khari talks about his new project, when Act 3 will be released, upcoming visuals and more. Listen to This Is How We Feel: Act 2 (Institutionalized) and read his full interview below.

<a href="https://btbkhari.bandcamp.com/album/this-is-how-we-feel-act-2-institutionalized">This Is How We Feel: Act 2 (Institutionalized) by Khari</a>

AF: What does that phrase institutionalized mean to you as it relates to this project?

This whole EP series has been a process of me taking the listener through what it means to be mentally in a prison, or even physically in a prison, because I’ve got a lot of family and friends locked up. So, looking at the similarities between those two, even in your day-to-day life, we can be institutionalized. We can be programmed. We can be conditioned to think a certain way. Whether it’s school – I’ve been institutionalized by that – there’s a number of things that line means, but that’s really like the main thing I was trying to get across to people.

AF: “Numb” is a super powerful song to start the EP with. That song, and a lot of these records, is very personal; what headspace were you in when you were writing and recording it?

I really wanted to be vulnerable and honest this time around, just give people more of me. And “Numb,” I wrote around the time when George Floyd had just got murdered. Everything was happening in the country, just a whole bunch of turmoil, and I was just feeling like super numb to it all because, mind you, this stuff been happening forever. I was at a point where I was like, I don’t even know how to feel about anything anymore. I’ve been through so much stuff in my personal life, and then also the plight of my people, it’s all weighed down on me. So, I tried my best to convey that on that record.

AF: “Eve” is another important song. How did you and Kamiylah Faatin get linked up?

She’s actually the first R&B singer [to be signed] to my record label, BTB Records. She’s super talented.

AF: Having her on the track took it to another level, for sure.

Oh yeah. That song was for Black women, so I really wanted her voice on there. She just really gave it that energy, so I was just extremely, extremely blessed to have her on the track.

AF: On Act 2, you talk about taking back ownership of your craft, and you’re releasing the project on Bandcamp and through your record label for one week before streaming services. What made you want to do it that way?

That was a big thing for me this time around. I really wanted to, like you said, take back control over my art instead of just giving it out to streaming right away. Because we only get half a penny for every stream. It’s like all this work just to build up a certain number of streams and hope people listen to it on these platforms, when there’s people that are willing to support what we’re doing out here. I just wanted to take it back to when I was a young kid, 15 years old, selling my mixtapes at my school. Just put it out there and allow people to support it this way and see what we can bring in. Especially now with the label, trying to build that up.

AF: It’s super dope that you launched your own label here because you’re keeping the talent and revenue in Cincinnati. Like, you can keep building it up and become a pioneer in the city.

It’s funny you say that, because that’s always been a big goal on my list. To really be a staple in Cincinnati. I think what we’re missing is the revenue and the attention. We can bring that in. We can make it so these talented artists here can start really living off this music.

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AF: I also saw your “Sha’Carri (Amari Freestyle)” on Instagram where you rap about Sha’Carri Richardson being suspended from competing in the Tokyo Olympics. What made you want to write a song about that?

It’s funny how that came about, because I told myself I was not gonna rap until the album came out. Like, no one’s gonna hear me rap until the album. But I just had to put that out, because that really is some bullshit. You know I’m saying? And that there are people locked up for [marijuana] right now. Why? When these big white corporations are eating off marijuana? I already was touching on some of these topics in the project, and then I just felt like I had to drop something because it’s a stupid situation.

AF: Absolutely. “Tin Man” is another song that stood out on the project. What was making that track like?

That was a fun song to record because that was my first time using auto-tune. With this project, I was trying to step outside my comfort zone and not be so locked into being this guy that’s only doing one type of sound. So, I wanted to do the auto-tune, I wanted to have more trap sounds, more modern sounds, but still give the substance and the content.

AF: You’re gearing up to drop a video for that song next; any release date in mind for Act 3 yet?

Well, I said Act 2 was gonna come out in January [laughs], but I do want to get Act 3 out soon, maybe at the top of next year, because I’m already working on some newer things that’ll be, like, the next phase of my career past This Is How We Feel. I’m excited about that.

AF: Who have you been listening to/inspired by lately?

I really like the new J. Cole album, that’s really inspired me a lot. Tyler, the Creator’s album is probably my favorite right now. And H.E.R., I’ve been really tapped in with R&B lately and her new project, too. But, I like what these more lyrical guys are doing right now, you know, stepping outside their comfort zone. I’m trying to do the same thing right now, so that’s given me a confirmation about what I’m doing.

AF: What else have you got planned coming up?

Visuals, visuals, visuals. I want to do a visual for every song on the project. And I want to do a tour, since we can do shows now. I’m definitely trying to tour in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky – do like a little tri-state tour. So, that’s getting set up for probably the fall.

Follow Khari on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Babehoven Keeps Going When the Going is Tough on Nastavi, Calliope

How do we mourn the living? Maya Bon of Babehoven unpacks this strange, but not uncommon, phenomenon on her new EP, Nastavi, Calliope, out today. The record strings together Bon’s meandering streams of consciousness, connecting moments of apathy to deep swells of emotion. She navigates deeply fractured relationships and loss of loved ones while searching for a connection to Croatia, her birthplace (“Nastavi” means “keep going” in Croatian and “Calliope” is the name of her eccentric childhood dog who passed away this year).

Bon says these two words served as a compass for her this past year as she waded through pools of grief, uncertainty and loss. “[Nastavi] just really stuck with me because that felt so true for me this year,” says Bon. “I really just wanted to keep going and feel okay in myself. Recording became my avenue to do that.”

<a href="https://babehoven.bandcamp.com/album/nastavi-calliope">Nastavi, Calliope by BABEHOVEN</a>

Bon explains that her reconnection to Croatia has been a way to form ties outside of a familial context. Her family left the country when she was five years old and her father stayed behind. She returned four years ago, at age 21, and saw her father for the first time in sixteen years. With this emotional reunion came a chance to connect not only to an estranged family member, but to her estranged culture. “My family is very painful for me,” says Bon, “so it feels very special to contain something that’s not family but is somewhere that I’m from.” This yearning to connect yielded Croatian classes and a seat in a Balkan choir, activities that have helped Bon root deeper into her identity.

Though Bon doesn’t overtly say in our conversation who she’s grieving, album opener “Bad Week” outlines a heartbreaking fallout. “You were both a father and a brother to me/You were my whole family,” Bon sings well into the song, illustrating the crushing blow of losing someone extremely close to you. Her pleading vocals narrate the cyclical nature of grief and the way that it feels like it will never end; “It’s hard to talk about it/Been a bad week/It’s been a bad week for a long time.” Bon says that she uses her songwriting as a vessel to communicate about things that feel too intimate to share in conversation.

“It’s weird that it comes out in my music because, at least in the beginning, I never talked about these things with people,” Bon muses. “Family, for me, always felt very private, because in a way, it was forced for me to be like that. There was always so much shame and layers of grief.”

Instead of overtly talking about loss and trauma, these feelings come out in fragmented lyrics, scattering puzzle pieces for others – and herself – to put together. This is especially palpable in “Crossword,” a vivid description of Bon’s internal monologue. “Angus carried my bike up the stairs as I stood at the bottom/And I’m not sure if I just stared/Or if I thanked him/There’s a high chance that I’m feeling broken hearted,” she sings in the opening lines of the song, poignantly depicting a dissociative episode. Even her lyrical phrases run into each other like waves in a storm, mirroring her jumbled thoughts.

Between these moments of grieving and reflection, Bon leaves space for appreciating the loved ones around her. In “Alt. Lena,” she pays homage to a close friend and captures the familiarity and comfort we can find in our chosen family. She says that this is actually the only song she’s written that wasn’t from a stream of consciousness, but constructed from a laundry list of things her friend, Lena, likes. Sun-drenched guitars and Bon’s relaxed vocals paint a picture of a person who feels like being on vacation. Lena’s aura is so strong it reaches through the speakers and to the listener, generating memories of those people in our lives who seem too magical to be true.

Although Nastavi, Calliope doesn’t exactly offer a cure to grief, it offers a hand to hold through whatever loss you may be experiencing, a reminder that you’re not alone and that there are beautiful moments sprinkled in with the sad ones. And that sometimes writing a song about making out with your best friend is the form of healing you need.

Follow Babehoven on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Philly Synth-Pop Artist Catherine Moan Broadcasts Aspirational Joy with “Drop It!”

Philly isn’t really known for a bustling electro-pop scene, but emerging synth artist and songwriter Catherine Moan just might change that. The city’s known more for its contributions to punk and hip hop, and Moan felt a bit lost in it all, not sure where she fit in. “It [felt] sometimes like imposter syndrome, where I’m like, oh well, I’m not using all these real instruments, like guitar and bass, and I’m not making grimy real sounding imperfect music,” she says. But with the onset of the pandemic, Moan had the opportunity to stop everything else and really delve into her sound, without the insecurity that comes with comparisons to others. The fruit of this labor is her debut LP Chain Reaction, out in September on Born Losers Records. Today, she shares her first-ever music video, for single “Drop It!”

Like many artists, the pandemic became a sort of blessing in disguise for Moan, where the cessation of soul-crushing day jobs and the influx of government aid allowed her to refine the music that had been floating around in her head for many years. “The entire quarantine situation unlocked this creative outlet that was so liberating… I was doing schoolwork and everything before so I was super divided, and so my personal projects, I couldn’t really focus. With isolation I was able to make that my number one priority,” she says. It wasn’t all good, though, and the balance here further unlocked a lot of creative potential. “At the same time, all these terrible things were happening in succession with the world and personal stuff. I had so much going on that was like a perfect storm of all these things you have to worry about. I even lost my therapist, so the music became my therapy. Each song I was working on I’d pick a specific problem I was facing and flesh it out, make it into a song, a sound, poetry.”

And so she wrote the entirety of Chain Reaction during lockdown, citing early Depeche Mode, CHRVCHES, and TR/ST as influential for how they were able to use high energy beats alongside somber lyrics to create a sound that was both fun and serious at the same time. “The number one thing with music that I try to keep in focus is that it’s kind of silly,” she says, articulating her own vision. “It’s not entirely serious, because you’re dancing around and singing in your bedroom. Even if I’m writing about something super serious and personal, I try to keep a touch of light-heartedness and fun and clownery in it.”

The “Drop It!” video reflects this in its perfectly simple concept, in which Moan sings alone in front of a green screen background, solid colors and nightclub scenes superimposed behind her while the lyrics pop up in the foreground. It feels aspirational in nature, like she’s trying to manifest the fun she’ll have once it’s all over. There’s no one else at the party, only her cat and multiple animations of herself dancing in conjunction with her real body. “I feel like that one is less about me and more about a collective feeling of what [we were] observing or experiencing during the pandemic [at] the peak of it,” she explains. “That winter was super tough, probably the worst winter we’ll all experience together. The one thing I really wanted to do was be dancing, be out with my friends, in such proximity that you’re almost overheating, and just find a way to channel that and forget and put myself in a headspace where it was like, we’re having fun, we’re dancing around, we’re having a great time.”

The timing of the release is serendipitous in that it aligns with the reopening of clubs and music venues. With this in mind, Moan begins to prepare for her very first live shows ever. She has no formal musical background, mainly just an urge to write music that was never placated by traditional instruments or outlets. “It was a bunch of attempts and failures the whole time,” she explains. “Once I got to college I got my hands on a mini-synthesizer and it clicked for me. I was just like, this is what I like! This is what I can do!” Which isn’t to say the rest was history – Moan attempted a handful of failed collaborations along the way, until she realized she created best on her own.

She faces the prospect of her first live performances with a mixed bag of positivity and nerves, excited for the opportunity to finally share the music she longed to create with the world. “I’ve never performed before, so it’s going to be really interesting. I’m very manic about it,” she says, continuing to sum up the whole project rather succinctly. “But I’m gonna have fun with it.”

Follow Catherine Moan on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Dick Texas Processes Grief with Debut Single “Flies”

There is no one way to grieve. Losing someone you love is one of the hardest parts of moving through life, and it often alters the way we see the world and ourselves. Valerie Salerno’s new solo project, Dick Texas, was formed out of a need to process her own grief and find a cathartic way to deal with the deaths of two of her closest friends. “I think that grief is something that just sticks in you,” says the Grand Rapids-based artist. “The best way to deal with it is to just put it into music. It just completely listens to you.”

In her first single as Dick Texas, Salerno uses dark synth tones and distorted recordings of her late friend telling a story to paint a portrait of her unique experience with grief. Before starting this project, Salerno played in Sojii, a noise-rock outfit that often prioritized a harsh sound over identifiable lyricism. She says that part of starting Dick Texas was fueled by her desire to be fully heard. “In a band, I kept hitting this wall where I couldn’t be heard musically and creatively,” says Salerno. “So, I was like, I’m gonna sit down and write all these songs by myself so I cant blame it on anyone else.”

This was in the spring of 2019, right before the pandemic started. She had decided to quit Sojii and start experimenting with synths. Shortly after, two of her best friends passed away. “Flies” deals with the painful fallout surrounding this tragedy and the exceptionally poignant agony of grieving in near solitude. “Never realized how full I was when I could always find you out there,” Salerno sings, starting the song with a familiar echo of taking loved ones for granted while they’re still here. She explains that the first lyrics for the song were spurred when she and a few friends were clearing out their late friend’s room.

“We were walking through [his] room, cleaning out his stuff and the air felt so palpable and thick and tangible,” Salerno says. That’s when she wrote down the song’s first lyric in her notes app: “The air in the room can’t hold its own head up.” It’s a perfect way to encapsulate grief – as if the air is absorbing the darkness around it and falling prey to the same sadness as the people who are breathing it in.

Salerno explains that although she sang in Sojii, a lot of it was screaming, and even that was often drowned out by other instruments or loud feedback. She says it’s been refreshing to have control over how her words are received. “Words and literature are my first love,” says Salerno. “I didn’t start playing music until I was ten but I was reading and writing before that so it’s really special to have that [voice] heard.” And while Salerno’s lyrics are poetic, she makes sure to communicate exactly what she’s feeling without fluff or euphemisms. “As a person, I hate small talk. It literally gives me panic attacks,” Salerno shares. “I don’t think I’m special in my loss and pain; I think everyone feels those things. People should feel better about being able to share them.”

Although Salerno’s right about the universality of loss and grief, her ability to distill the complexities of these feelings into a three-minute song is something that doesn’t come around often. She honors her friends by preserving the humanity of their relationship – the fights, the drunken nights and the feeling of home that comes when you’re around true friends. “I wish we could argue again/In flesh and blood/With words that cut/Like we’ve done before/Got a lot of poison in my soul.” Salerno lets herself miss every part of the friends she lost, to the point where she realizes it’s consuming her. “I wanna do more than just miss you,” she sings in a voice that mirrors the monotone of emotional exhaustion.

“Flies” is the culmination of Salerno’s grief, anger, sadness and resolve to heal. After a months-long bender of grieving with friends and loved ones, she turned to her music as an alternative coping mechanism. “I sat down and was like, okay, I’m not gonna drink anymore, I’m not gonna feel bad for myself. I’m just gonna start putting those feelings into music,” she remembers. “Flies” (and its intro, “Prelude to Flies”) are the first iteration of that healing process and a sobering reminder to love your friends while they’re still here.

Follow Dick Texas on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Poise Offers Compassionate Blueprint for Resilience with “New Kind of Love” Premiere

On Vestiges, her debut solo LP as Poise, Lucie Murphy spends a lot of time self-soothing, pumping herself up to face challenges head on, and generally standing her ground with integrity. When we spoke on the phone, she said that the overarching theme that ties Vestiges together is “resilience.” Early singles “Walked Through Fire” and “Show Me Your Love” see the Manhattan-raised, Brooklyn-based musician demand positive recognition outright, and with her fiery swagger, it’s certainly easy to pile on much-deserved praise. But on “New Kind Of Love,” the album’s third and latest single, premiering exclusively via Audiofemme, Murphy turns her affirmations toward a friend in a dire situation, counter-balancing self-assured guidance with sensitivity and grace.

“I wrote it at a time that a friend of mine was in this abusive relationship and a few of my friends and I were trying to figure out the best course of action, because it felt like any intervention would just exacerbate the problem,” Murphy recalls. “It was sort of all I could do for this person – offer my friendship and a place to stay. I could only offer what I had and I couldn’t really do much more and that was very frustrating and heartbreaking.”

What’s especially remarkable about the track is Murphy’s sensitivity to the fact that leaving can be complicated – and sometimes dangerous. “I wanted them to understand that I didn’t think that they were crazy for staying. Of course I can’t exactly understand, but I have sympathy,” she explains. “I tried to say it as succinctly as possible, and get across everything I was feeling.”

Because the situation “New Kind Of Love” describes is sadly all too common, Murphy says she’s been approached by those who can relate, either to her position as the empathic friend whose hands are tied, or as the person to which she originally addressed the song. In both cases, the track provides strength and comfort, and for those that don’t have firsthand experience with scenarios like these, the song is an excellent blueprint for approaching with nuance and compassion. “I’m really proud of that song,” Murphy says. She’s shared it with the person she wrote it about, too. “Thankfully they’re no longer I this relationship so I think they’re doing a lot better. I didn’t say that it was about them, and if they picked up on it they didn’t tell me. But they said they loved the song so that made me really happy.”

For the song’s lyric video, Murphy digitally collaged pictures of her femme friends from her teenage years, when she was first taking an interest in photography. She ended up studying photography and art history in college, seeing it as a more likely career path than making it as a musician (though her first official musical project, a three-piece called Bruise, was rather active, it fizzled before she was out of school). “I think it was a really nice way to repurpose the photos in service to my music, and it’s really nice to have my photo life work with my music life in that way,” Murphy says.

“A big theme of the song is childhood and people changing and growing up and patterns repeating,” she adds. “The person who was in this abusive relationship was someone I’d known for a long time and had a pretty tough childhood also, and I’d known them through all of it. It’s wild looking back at this time; we’ve changed so much but also we haven’t.”

Not only did Murphy edit the lyric video for “New Kind of Love,” she also directed videos for her two previous Poise singles, and is self-releasing Vestiges. “Labels were hit really hard obviously, in this pandemic, and it was honestly really hard to find someone who was willing to start a new relationship at this point,” Murphy says. “I think the next one will probably get a proper label home, but I’ve also learned so much in the process. It’s been cool. I’m excited to learn more and to get it out there.”

As for directing, Murphy says she “had never edited a video before. I just learned Premiere Pro by myself… I’m probably doing everything wrong because I’m not properly trained or whatever. I thought it was gonna be a lot harder than it was honestly, but it was a ton of work.” She has the added benefit of coming from a family who works in film, and growing up close to the industry. Her father, an avid record collector, guitarist, and East Village punk aficionado, made a huge impression on her.

“He was always playing at home and I think seeing him play guitar was like oh I wanna do that, that seems cool,” Murphy recalls. She started playing around the age of 12, and even formed an “after school band” in middle school with her current drummer, Theo Munger. “I started going to DIY shows when I was like 16 or 17 at Silent Barn and Shea Stadium. I heard about Frankie Cosmos and that was really kind of the catalyst that made me be like, oh, I can do this – it just seemed really accessible and inclusive and inviting to me at that time.”

Poise took on a life of its own as Murphy finished up college, with the addition of Munger and guitarist Sam Skinner, who were set to play in her backing band on her first tour under that moniker. But a year of grief, tragedy, and loss almost sidelined the project – Murphy’s father passed away, and just as she was about to get Poise going again, the pandemic hit. Murphy only became more determined and focused – and her resiliency allowed her to complete Vestiges, which is out July 30. “I came to realize this is really what I care about and this is where my community is, and this is really what I love to do and what I think about all the time,” Murphy says. “All of a sudden, having all this time for myself to write, I just kind of birthed this album. I wrote it really quickly because I felt really focused, like, okay, things are not gonna go the way I want them to maybe, so I’m just going to work really hard, be resilient and make this happen somehow, even though it seems kind of impossible.”

With the “impossible” accomplished, Poise blazes their way into the Brooklyn music scene, and are hoping to be able to play Vestiges live soon. The album is a stunning introduction to the person at the very heart of the project; Murphy doesn’t shy away from heavy topics, but remains devoid of self-pity. “I did feel like I needed to make a statement in some way. I think a lot of indie rock can be melodramatic in a way that I totally love sometimes, but is not very ‘me.’” she says. “I don’t want to feel sorry for myself. I feel like, especially when you’re a teenager that’s a lot of what you do. I was like, okay, I’m adult, I don’t wanna do that anymore. That was a big part of the statement – yes, bad things happen, but ultimately things are okay, I’m doing alright, and I’m lucky for that.”

Follow Poise on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Sedona Soars with Latest Single “From A Mile Away”

Driving through the Catskills this past Spring, I had Sedona single “Missing in Paradise” on repeat. Sedona’s causal, hauntingly smooth vocal delivery feels instantly familiar and comforting, easily as infectious as Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere.” It’s an anthem to follow your gut in the relentless and unruly game of love, asking “What makes up a lover?” answering through layers of glistening synths. The bridge exists as an inner monologue of an independent woman, tired of games, on the brink of giving up, she drives back to New York City, leaving the burden of love behind while longing to feel that familiar awakening of emotional instincts. Fresh nuance exists with every stream of the song’s infectious, uplifting hooks, sweeping chord progressions, lush harmonies, and thumping bass lines. Narrative arcs and concise musical arrangement creates sonic space for healing, retrospection, and forgiveness of our own past patterns of the heart.

Sedona’s latest single “From A Mile Away” tells a tale as old as time: the breaking of trust. The pain of betrayal exists as universal truth, and healing and forgiveness must come from sitting in the emotion, and seeing it through to the other side. The song offers comfort, and a reclaiming of power, when one faces “the cold hard truth.” The intro transports the listener back in time with ’80s synth leads, and a pulsating Laurie Anderson inspired vocal pads that reoccurs throughout the track.

Both singles follow Sedona’s 2020 LP Rearview Angel; together, these releases create powerful nostalgia that feels like time traveling back to the dreamiest soundscapes of the late ’70s and early ’80s, but Sedona arrives with authenticity and a firm grip on the hybrid of modern and retro influences.

The project began as cover band of Sedona’s mother’s original music. Reclaiming an underrated and amazing catalog, Sedona began performing the songs and bringing them to life in downtown venues of New York City. It wasn’t long before she caught the attention of Terrible Records, and inked a deal to distribute original music. Now fully releasing original music, the project has evolved into an eclectic Brooklyn-based five-piece, with Merilyn Chang on keys, Claire Gilb on guitar, Margaux Bouchegnies on bass, and Tia Cestaro on drums. Sedona plays the Weird Sister Records Launch Party at Our Wicked Lady on July 14th, with Melanie Faye and Sug Daniels.

Sedona plans to one day record an album of her mother’s body of work that kicked it all off, but for now she’s breaking out by making her mark on the LA/NY indie music scene. I caught up with Sedona over the phone, during a recent vacation to Mexico, to discuss her origin story and creative process.

AF: Can you discuss a bit about your childhood and the moniker Sedona?

I’m from a town in the valley called Chatsworth in Los Angeles. It’s a mountain town, with a lot of horses and hiking. It’s very quaint, and has western energy. Growing up, I remember my dad would always go to this local bar called The Cowboy Palace. It’s like a saloon – a weird, hidden gem of LA. I actually wouldn’t say gem; more like a weird, hidden, forgotten underbelly of the valley.

My parents divorced when I was three or four. I was actually at their wedding. My mom and I wore matching pink dresses. Yes, I am a bastard, and although the wedding was fun from what I remember, the meaning of Sedona actually comes from their break. The first memory I have as a child is in Sedona – it was really the only memory I have of my parents being together. I remember watching a horse slip on rocks in a creek. It was the first time I ever felt a strong emotion: fear. Music helps me address emotions I’ve been holding onto. I use the writing process as a form of healing.

As for my childhood, my dad captured my entire life on his VHS camera. He’s a photographer. I was always performing and trying to bring joy to my parent’s stressful lives. I became a bit of a jester, an only child trying to make them smile. I was performing very young, writing songs, and acting out crazy stories. They’re really fun to watch, and it all makes sense to me now, why I feel so at home with singing. I grew up singing in choirs, then marching band in high school, and concert band. I used to compete in a cappella groups and travel, which was exciting.

AF: Where do you feel most creatively free to write music?

That’s an awesome question. I feel like for me, it’s not so much a place, but rather like a feeling of openness and comfort that I can really feel anywhere. I’ve written songs driving in the passenger seat of my boyfriend’s car. I’ve written songs in the passenger seat of someone else’s car. Now that I think about it, I definitely like to write in the company of close friends. I have built this little group of producers, writers, and friends, who I feel really comfortable writing with. I feel like I’ve finally found my circle. I love writing with my band. I love writing with my friends, Ben, Matt and Tony. Ben and Tony and I wrote “Missing in Paradise.”

AF: Who are your musical icons and influences?

Stevie Nicks, obviously. Gwen Stefani, Patrice Rushen. I’ve been listening to Missing Persons non-stop. Mazzy Star, Britney Spears. I love Stevie Wonder, The Mamas and the Papas, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, the list goes on and on. It’s really all over the place.

AF: How did you meet the amazing women that make up Sedona?

I have always wanted to collaborate with women and have a female band. I kind of set out on that journey early on. We met through mutual friends, and mostly on the internet. We actually just spent the last two weeks together, living in a house in LA recording eight hours a day for two weeks! It’s all new material that hasn’t been released for our album.

AF: I’ve had “Missing in Paradise” on repeat since it came out. I can’t get enough! What is the production process like when creating a song?

It’s different every time, and really depends on how the song started. If it’s a song with, Ben and Tony or my friend, Matt, who also produces me, we tend to write every part. They prefer it that way when they’re producing someone. I’ve tried to blend the two worlds, by sending the band the song and asking if they want to add anything. I’ll send my producers the band’s song and see what they think. It’s a lot of collaboration on all fronts. I’m kind of like the singular voice, and I co-produce everything I put out. I definitely have my hand in the arrangement and sounds. And when things come in, when they don’t, overall how things should feel. So I love that part of writing.

AF: Your most recent track “From A Mile Away” was produced by David Carrier and yourself. Can you talk about that process of creating the track?

We wrote it together over the pandemic from afar because we connected on Instagram and he was like, “I love your music” and I was like, “I love yours too!” So he sent me that track and I just popped into my home studio. I quickly sang some lyrics and top-line, and it stuck and he really dug it. So it’s literally just his track and my lyrics and top-line, and it just fits perfectly together.

AF: What was your experience releasing Rearview Angel during the pandemic?

Releasing music during the pandemic didn’t feel any different than releasing music during any other time. The only difference I felt was the sadness of not being able to perform the songs live, and give them life.

AF: What advice do you have for women in music?

All women and femme persons in music should be celebrated and their music shared with pride and joy. Women are underrepresented in the music industry, and finally women that rock are making their way to the top!

Self doubt is a bitch, but it’s not useful in the world of music making. As a woman in music, trust your gut and keep pushing forward.

Follow Sedona on Facebook for ongoing updates.

Dot Allison Teases New Record with Premiere of “One Love”

Some ideas are hard to forget. At least, that’s the case for Dot Allison. The Scottish singer began working steadily on her forthcoming album, Heart-Shaped Scars, sometime around 2017, with some songs, like “One Love,” (premiering today via Audiofemme), taking shape in 2020.

However, the seeds of the album, set for release on July 30, go back more than a decade before that. “Ghost Orchid” started out as a poem called “Church of Snow,” written circa 2004. “Forever’s Not Much Time” was a title she had been kicking around since before 2005. In the interim, she released the albums Exaltation of Larks and Afterglow. She collaborated with artists like Paul Weller, Pete Doherty, Darren Emerson and Slam and sang backup for Scott Walker and Sun O))).

Allison also took off time to raise a family. “I kept writing, but I just wasn’t making it into anything,” she explains from her home in Edinburgh. During this period, she says, she would write “one day here, one day there,” gradually building up a body of new work. “The ideas kept coming. I was banking ideas because I was doing these little bits of writing and then the kids just got a bit bigger,” she says. At around the same time, Allison had been introduced to musicians in Scotland’s folk scene, which became crucial to the development of Heart-Shaped Scars.

Since the early 1990s, Allison has crafted an eclectic career. She first came to attention as the singer for One Dove, whose lone album, Morning Dove White, was released in 1993 and spawned the single “White Love.” Andrew Weatherall’s “Guitar Paradise Mix” of the song remains an impeccably cool slice of ethereal house.

Allison’s sophomore solo album, We Are Science, which was released in 2002, is one of the essential early ‘00s electronic pop albums, and Felix da Housecat’s remix of her song “Substance” was one of the big club hits of that era. But, she’s also made a lot of music outside the electronic realm, and for Heart-Shaped Scars, Allison delves heavily into folk.

“I suppose I’ve got really eclectic tastes in music and just butterfly around listening to different things,” says Allison. “That’s reflected in my work. It’s not like I started thinking that I was going to go to electronic to this and this. There’s no grand plan.”

Allison connected with folk singer Amy Bowman and the two collaborated on “The Haunted,” the first song she made specifically for this album. It was based on a poem that Allison had previously written and she worked on the chords while Bowman handled more of the melody. “I’m so happy with what we co-wrote together,” she says.

Through Bowman, she met singer Zoë Bestel and they joined forces for “Can You Hear Nature Sing?” Allison, who co-produced the album with Fiona Cruikshank, also worked with composer Hannah Peel, who provided string arrangements. The resulting album bears a tender, yet, eerie sound in the vein of Paul Giovanni and Magnet’s music for the 1973 film The Wicker Man.

Back when she lived in London, Allison had a CD copy of The Wicker Man soundtrack that she kept in the booth of her studio. “In my opinion, it’s just really great songwriting in that visceral imagery, and melodically beautiful, like ‘Willow’s Song,’” she says. “It’s so gorgeous and pulls your heart strings.”

In the late ‘00s, Allison performed “Gently Johnny” from the film on stage at Glastonbury with The Memory Band. “It’s been in my sphere for a while, that film or that soundtrack,” she says. Of “Willow’s Song,” which is associated with a quite memorable scene in the film, she adds, “I just think it’s such an important song, really. I just love that song. “

Allison had already done quite a bit of work on the album before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, but the 2020 lockdown resulted in some reshaping of the album. She wrote “Goodbye,” “Long Exposure,” “One Love” and “Forever’s Not Much Time” during this period. The lockdown also prompted her to learn to play and write with a ukulele. “I just thought, I’ll pick up this ukulele because it’s a lovely ukulele and I just can’t put off trying it,” she says. Allison normally writes on piano, which she learned how to play as a child, and guitar. Because she didn’t know how to play the ukulele, Allison had to figure the songs by ear.

It was a revealing experience. “I may have been slightly hampered by knowing the chords on the other instruments,” she says. Allison adds that the songs written with the ukulele are “possibly the most musical songs” that she’s written. It prompted her to wonder, “Why didn’t I pick up the ukulele before?”

Lockdown, Allison says, “transformed” the album. “It ended up benefiting the record, even though it’s not a positive thing,” she explains, adding that the stay-at-home period forced her to sit down and try creative approaches that she hadn’t previously used.

With Heart-Shaped Scars, Allison challenged herself, while also taking listeners into an aural world they might not expect from her. “I do think that I quite like trying to cut a new path for myself,” she says, “Hopefully, that’s embraced.”

Follow Dot Allison on Instagram and Twitter for ongoing updates.

WOMAN OF INTEREST: Laura June Kirsch Captures a Specific Era of NYC Nightlife with Romantic Lowlife Fantasies

“I didn’t know anybody like the people I met in my 20s growing up,” says Laura June Kirsch. This statement neatly sums up Kirsch’s oeuvre of work, the irony being that her photographs capture anything but neatness. A consistent fixture in NYC nightlife for the better part of the 21st century, the photographer and writer has documented the city’s ever-evolving culture through the lens of shows and parties. She captured a very specific spot of time – the Brooklyn music scene in the post-Recession Obama years – and in doing so, carved a niche for herself as a young female photographer in an otherwise male-dominated field. She’s preparing for the release of her first book, Romantic Lowlife Fantasies: Emerging Adults in the Age of Hope, on Hat & Beard Press this fall.

The photo retrospective aims to articulate the concept of “emerging adulthood” as it pertains to the millennial lifestyle. The phrase began to pop up, according to Kirsch, in the late ’90s and early 2000s, as a way to comprehend the growing trend of delaying the traditional milestones of adulthood – getting married, having a family, buying a house. “Around the turn of the century, people started doing different stuff in their twenties,” Kirsch explains. “They weren’t getting married, they weren’t sticking to one job, there started to be this second adolescence.” As any millennial knows, these delays are fraught with nuance. We came of age in an era of endless war and economic crises, high interest student loans and the impending doom of climate change.

Kirsch manages to get right to the heart of this subterranean angst with her photography. One image that stands out in particular is a girl wearing a purple bob hairdo and Doc Martens tucked in the corner of a party, clutching a desperate (and presumably cheap) can of Budweiser while she sobs. She says she wanted to capture the unique moment of the Recession, “what that was like, being a grown up trying to get by in a world where there was no opportunity,” because with the weight of this type of economic uncertainty comes an unexpected freedom – if there are no jobs, who’s to say you can’t start that band, or open that music venue with your friends? Her photos bring to life an era of NYC nightlife that’s been lost to the skyrocketing cost of living in neighborhoods like Williamsburg, where iconic venues like Glasslands, 285 Kent and Death By Audio fell victim to corporate development.

“The scene we were in was a very special moment in time, and I think we all kind of knew that, catching a little bit of magic in the Brooklyn music community right after the economy crashed,” she says. “There was just a great artistic community we were all part of, and it was really fun.” She notes another important nuance of this time period – no smartphones. “This was the last time before everyone became completely glued to their phones constantly. So this was the last era of that real, uninterrupted human connection.”

It comes through in the photographs. She sets herself apart from a sea of concert photographers with her images of the crowd – couples embrace for what could be the first, or hundredth, time; friends dance into the early morning hours on what might be a Tuesday, ready to head to their underpaid “creative” 9-to-5s in just a few hours more. “I shot a lot of live music, but I was more interested in the people who were there,” she explains. “I had this great collection of pictures and I realized it was really just about millennials, and what lifestyle was like at this time, and what life looked like in these communities.”

A “great collection” is an understatement, as she goes on to say that Romantic Lowlife Fantasies is literally bursting at the seams: “I just had a big conversation with how page count works when you’re printing a photo book and we are out of pages.” Kirsch describes the book as a longstanding goal, “a labor of love,” something she aspired to ever since her early photography classes in high school. She’s been shooting this collection since 2008, beginning to sift through the content and piece it together in 2016. She began pitching it in 2018, and found Hat & Beard Press somewhere along the way.

In addition to the photographs, the book will contain original essays from influential figures of that era, among them Darlene “Dee Nasty” Demorizi, Allyson Toy, Brooke Burt, Caitlin McCarry, and Jessica Amodeo. “They just tell their stories,” she explains. “I wanted a bunch of female writers to write about their experiences working in male dominated fields at the time.”

This is a theme that pervades much of the book, and Kirsch’s work in general. In the late-aughts era when she cut her teeth as an events photographer, there weren’t a lot of women out there with her. Surely it wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that her unique perspective as a female photographer at this time is what allowed her to find the layers of emotional complexity that emerge from her photographs.

The future of NYC nightlife remains uncertain, battered as it were by the pandemic. The problems that underscore much of Kirsch’s photography remain problems, some of them worse. But it’s because of artists like Kirsch, ones that capture a bit of magic for us to look back on, that we find the hope that maybe, just maybe, history will live up to the adage and repeat itself.

Follow Laura June Kirsch on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Seattle’s Prom Queen Rally to #FreeBritney with Spears Covers EP Lucky

Lately, pop star Britney Spears has been back in the news as she fights to end her court-ordered conservatorship, prompted by a fame-induced mental breakdown in 2008. Thirteen years later, Spears is fighting to regain her autonomy from her conservator father, who limits her access to her estate and allegedly restricts her reproductive rights.

The battle for Spears’ freedom has sparked widespread discussions about disability rights and the public voyeurism that contributed to Spears’ tragic predicament. As society’s scrutiny of Spears’ personal life escalates once again, Seattle and L.A.-based artist Celene “Leeni” Ramadan, also known as Prom Queen, has decided to put emphasis on a part of Britney that she feels is often overlooked—Spears’ talent and significance as a musical artist.

With that in mind, Prom Queen will release a new EP on July 30th entitled Lucky. The 5-song EP is comprised purely of Britney Spears covers, interpreted in Prom Queen’s quintessential macabre-pop language, with a portion of the proceeds from the album going to the National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse.

“With this record, I want people to hear these songs in a different way, to celebrate Britney as an artist,” says Leeni. “If there’s a famous person who’s a man, and who is a brilliant artist but has mental illness, he is celebrated and he is given freedom and he is not being locked down by his mom. We make movies about men like this. These are celebrated stories for a man but for a woman to have any sort of challenges mentally is a problem and we need to lock her away and take away her rights and [say] oh my god, she can’t be a mother.”

Leeni, who is only one year apart in age from Britney Spears, has always enjoyed the pop star’s music and felt close to Spears, who she calls a “generational icon for people my age.” In fact, Leeni’s passion for Britney Spears actually helped her find employment after she first moved to Seattle in 2004.

“In 2005, I started really looking around for work and I was doing improv comedy and one of my improv friends was doing these singing telegrams through this agency called Livewire, and she got me connected with them. I became a performer for them and have worked with them for over a decade doing singing telegrams as different characters [including Britney Spears,]” she recalls. “I remember my first Britney gig – I was hired to walk around at the convention center downtown and all I had to do was wear this schoolgirl outfit and be Britney for a day and it was really fun. And then I remember also performing for some kid’s birthday party. It was so cute. There was a bunch of girls, and they just wanted me to show up and do a full Britney singalong with them.”

It was during her time working as a Britney Spears impersonator that Leeni said she learned Spears’ catalogue inside and out, and even then, knew someday she’d do a Britney Spears cover album. After all, Prom Queen loves to cover songs, something that garnered the band national attention in 2016, when Prom Queen’s mash-up of the Twin Peaks and Stranger Things themes, Stranger Peaks, went viral.

“I consider myself a melody junkie; there’s just melodies that I love and when you get to hear them in a different context – I don’t know, for me, it gives me goosebumps,” she says. “I want to hear a great interpretation of a melody that I love… Like when I did my cover of ‘November Rain,’ I was like, ‘That is a doo-wop song.’ I was so obsessed with making that song over the years. I think I started my first one in like 2009 and kept making that song until I felt like I got it right. I don’t know, I just always really love making covers.”

As for Lucky, Prom Queen has had the concept in her mind “for years,” and had been collecting and studying Britney Spears’ songs on a Spotify playlist, hoping to narrow down her extensive catalogue and choose the ones that would work best in Prom Queen’s style—which includes a slow country ballad version of Spears’ breakout hit “Baby One More Time,” a Dick Dale surf-rock version of “Toxic,” and a glimmering doo-wop adaptation of the EP’s eponymous “Lucky.”

“I’ve always wanted to do an EP of a single artist and Britney has kind of always been at the top of my list,” says Leeni. “I just feel like a great pop song is a great pop song and you can do a number of different things with it and if the bones of the song are good, you can really take it anywhere. I think these songs to me were some of the best. I had such a hard time choosing. I think these songs, it’s kind of my favorite cross-section of her [work.]”

Prom Queen started making demos of her favorite Britney songs in Spring of 2021, and sending them to her bandmate. She would lay down bass, the acoustic guitar and some sketches of the other instruments and then send them to other folks she wanted to include on the record—including locals Jason Goessl of Sundae and Mr. Goessl, guitarist Ben Von Wildenhaus, violinist Andrew Joslyn, and fellow Britney Spears-loving L.A.-based singer, Cassandra Violet.

“Cassandra Violet is a friend of mine and she’s a big Britney fan. She wrote a piece on Medium about Britney and she just released her debut album and she has a song about Britney Spears, and she and I have collaborated a few times so I thought it would be really great to have her sing the harmony on ‘Lucky,’” Leeni says. “And then I got Andrew Joslyn to do the strings, so those are real strings on the EP.”

Each musician recorded their tracks for Lucky in their respective home studios, for COVID safety, and sent them back to Leeni, at which point Tom Meyers, Prom Queen’s drummer, engineered and mixed the EP. Prom Queen has already released their video for “Baby One More Time,” and the band is currently working on a video for “Toxic.”

As for what she hopes this EP can achieve, Leeni hopes it reminds her fans that Prom Queen is still making music, and that it gives fans some fun nostalgic pop music to enjoy over the summer. She also hopes the EP’s celebration of Britney’s music can underscore the importance of Spears’ struggle, advocating that the pop star should get to choose what the rest of her life looks like—even if it means never returning to the stage.

“I hope that she can get her freedom. I hope they can end the conservatorship. I hope that she can even get a restraining order against her father or whatever she needs, but you know, I don’t think that she needs to be in the public eye ever again if she doesn’t want to,” says Leeni. “Whatever she wants to do with the rest of her life, I want it to be her choice.”

Follow Prom Queen on Facebook for ongoing updates.

Eva Tolkin Makes a Case for Saying Yes to the Universe with City and Sky LP

Singer-songwriter Eva Tolkin never imagined she would have a career as a musician. She was working in fashion when she met Solange Knowles and auditioned as a last-minute whim for work as a back-up singer, only to exceed expectations and ultimately get the gig. And after Solange’s True tour cycle wrapped, Tolkin went on to book tours with Blood Orange, Robyn, Lykke Li, and Charli XCX. The unlikeliness of it all inspired her to keep going, booking more tours and beginning to write her own songs.

“I feel like I didn’t even realize I was writing music. I was writing poetry, and coming up with little melodies, but it was when I got into the music industry that I fully realized what was possible,” she explains. “I think up until that point it never even occurred to me to follow through with any of these songs I had written. And so in a lot of ways, my music is very influenced by the artists I worked with, just by proximity and being inspired by them.”

By 2017 she was releasing her own singles, followed by her debut EP Truthfully in 2019. Though the pandemic halted touring, it gave Tolkin a chance to truly find her voice as a songwriter – an unexpected result of pandemic isolation. “I was used to touring constantly and never really gave myself the time to focus and dive into my own music and what I want to write about,” she says. “‘Weak as Water’ was the first song I wrote when touring was canceled last year, so it was more personal and thoughtful than some of my previous releases.”

“Weak as Water” appears on her brand new solo EP City and Sky, out last week. In many ways, it’s the culmination of years of refining her musical talents and finding the confidence to write and record her own music. The seven-song EP travels between sparse, melancholy acoustic tracks carried by Tolkin’s vocal prowess and more upbeat pop-inspired songs. The shifts in mood weren’t necessarily intentional – the pop-based songs were largely written pre-pandemic, while shutdown gave her the mental space to grow creatively and explore more personal themes. She says that it should be easy for listeners to identify the pre- and post-pandemic songs. Compare, for instance, the quiet introspection of “Weak as Water” with “Is It Love,” an upbeat track that sparkles with early-aughts radio pop vibes, all the way down to the clapping effects tucked into the beat.

<a href="https://evathaeva.bandcamp.com/album/city-and-sky">City and Sky by Eva Tolkin</a>

Tolkin had never played an instrument until this year. The cancelation of tours offered her the opportunity to sit down and learn the guitar, which ultimately contributed to this shift in sound. With that comes the uncertainty of endless potential; she didn’t expect any of this to play out the way that it has, so who’s to say what comes next? “It’s really just evolving all the time and I don’t even know, I feel like the next thing I do, next year or whatever, could be a different vibe,” she says. “I’m really just exploring right now. I kind of feel like I’m starting from scratch.”

This creative freedom is not without flaw, though, as Tolkin deals with the same type of existential dread many have faced with the loss of routine. “I have days when I feel like I’m forcing myself to do it. There’s just been so much time over the last year, because I have been completely out of work,” she admits. “There are some days that are very creative and fulfilling [but] I still have days where I feel like a total waste case, that I’m not doing anything.”

In the end, it’s all an exercise in patience, and Tolkin is a poster child for trusting the process, in that her commitment to listening to her heart has worked out in so many ways and taken her life to so many unexpected places. None of the artists she works with had announced shows as of the last time we spoke, but even after they do, she plans to “continue learning,” she says. “There’s so much more now that I’ve opened this whole new can of worms.”

The success Eva Tolkin won with a last-minute Solange audition years ago was formative in that way, a lesson she still carries with her to this day: “Saying yes to opportunities, going for things even if you feel like there’s no shot, that’s something that’s carried through and opened so many doors,” she says. “That one decision to go through with the audition has really changed my life forever.”

Let us all carry this wisdom into our new, uncertain present moment. Listen to your heart, follow the hunch – you never know where it may take you.

Follow Eva Tolkin on Instagram for ongoing updates.

After Two EPs and a North American Tour, Janette King Releases Debut LP What We Lost

“It’s funny, with music,” says Janette King by phone from her home in Montreal. “For me, at least, some songs take years to finish and other songs take hours.”

A singer, producer, multi-instrumentalist and DJ, King released her first full-length, What We Lost, via record label Hot Tramp on June 25. The album follows two EPs, Electric Magnolia and 143. Where Electric Magnolia, released in 2015, featured a live band and bore a distinct jazz influence, her 2019 effort 143 delved into electronic R&B. With What We Lost, King continues on the path set with 143, while also dabbling in house on the title track, as well as on album-opener “Airplane.” The latter was released as a single back in March of this year.

While some of the songs on What We Lost had been in progress for some time, others came together fairly quickly over the course of the past year. The initial plan was to release the album in early 2020, but, in addition to a pandemic-related postponement, King had continued writing new material, including songs that she wanted to appear on this album. She kept up the work until January of this year.

<a href="https://janetteking.bandcamp.com/album/what-we-lost">What We Lost by Janette King</a>

King, who has performed alongside artists like Sudan Archives and Jamila Woods, toured North American in 2019; shortly after returning from that jaunt that she began making plans for a full-length album. Much of the material was written and recorded in her bedroom, where she has a piano and guitar in addition to a production set-up. King worked with multiple producers on the album, including longtime collaborator Jordan Esau.

As a DJ, King plays primarily in Montreal and Toronto and her sets vary from ‘90s and early ‘00s hip-hop and R&B throwbacks to a variety of sounds, like dancehall and calypso, that nod to her Caribbean roots. Although she doesn’t sample often in her work, she says that DJing does impact her approach to songwriting. “DJing has helped me to understand BPMs better,” she says. When she’s writing, she can decide whether she wants a song to be downtempo or high energy, associate that with the beats per minute and build the piece from there.

King says that she often starts with drums, creating the beats before the lyrics and melody begin to formulate. “As I’m writing the melody, the lyrics come simultaneously,” she says. With some of the tunes on What We Lost, the first takes of the songs, where King says that she “word-vomited” the lyrics, were the keepers. “We just liked how it sounded, so we kept it,” she says.

As King continued writing through 2020, her songs began to reflect the year that was unfolding. “In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, that really stirred the activist in my soul to come alive through song,” she says. The tragedy inspired the song “Change.”

Elsewhere on the album, King draws upon self-empowerment and “empowerment through activism” as thematic elements. She considers the questions that arose during the year of physical distancing. “I think that now people are having the space to ask themselves ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Who do I want to be in this world?’ and ‘What do I stand for?’” says King. “They’re really choosing to see with their own eyes what’s really happening in the world.”

She points to social media as crucial to opening people’s eyes to systemic racism and social justice issues. “These things have been happening for so long, but now that we have social media, they are a lot more visible,” she says. “You can’t turn away from it these days. I think that a lot of people are starting to have empathy and compassion for people that don’t look like them and for people’s stories and honoring their own values.”

King says that she believes strongly in unity, as well as love and understanding. “Like they say, you can’t win unless we’re all winning,” she says. “One person’s struggle is all of our struggle.”

In writing What We Lost through such a tumultuous year, King created an album of personal reflection and healing. “Every time I write a song, it feels like I’m transcending something,” says King. “I think one thing that I’ve taken away from making this album is that I was able to dig deep into this spiritual sense of being creative.”

It’s also an album that could similarly impact its listeners. “ I guess that my biggest hope for people is that they feel themselves reflected in the music that I write,” says King. “One thing that I’ve taken away from it all is that it’s really therapy. It’s really healing. I hope that it is for other people as well.”

Follow Janette King on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

Kyd the Band Turns His Scars Into Compelling Stories on ‘Season’ EPs

Devin Guisande, aka Kyd the Band, can still visualize the photo his parents have of him sitting at a drum set, no older than the age of four. Introduced to music in the Pentecostal church he was raised in Northern California, Guisande was playing drums at mass by the age of 10 and singing in the choir at 15, yet he didn’t consider himself a singer until his brother and future collaborator Kyle pointed out his impressive voice.

“I never wanted to be a singer, but I remember driving in the car one day with my brother and he heard me sing. He’s like ‘you can really sing,’” Guisande recalls to Audiofemme in a phone interview. From there, the brothers formed a band with their friends, and Guisande dipped his toe into the songwriting pool, discovering a passion for the craft that he later turned into a career. He’s just released the latest EP in his four-part cycle, Season 4: Series Finale.

At 18, Guisande made a life-altering move when he left the church, venturing on a personal odyssey that led him to Los Angeles, where he tapped into his songwriting capabilities, turning his personal tragedies into compelling narratives. “I wanted to write my own songs because I felt like I wanted to say something. I didn’t know exactly what then, because I was so young and I didn’t live enough life to really have an opinion or just a story. But I knew I wanted to try to get there,” he expresses. “Songwriting, it’s like a muscle. The more you do it, the stronger you build that and the better you get. Over my life of living more, it cemented ‘this is who I am as a person, as an artist, and this is what I want to say.’ If I’m not the one writing my songs or being honest in sharing my story, then I don’t think there really is a point for me to do this.”

Leaving the conservative life of the church behind and moving hundreds of miles away from home for the fist time put a strain on Guisande’s relationship with his family, leading to what he describes as one of the darkest points of his life. He developed a substance abuse problem and overdosed, an experience he chronicles in the deeply personal “Dark Thoughts.” The ear-catching, dreamlike bass doesn’t overpower the song’s thought-provoking subject matter that serves as Guisande’s cry for help, reaching his hand through the dark as he professes, “I’ve been having dark thoughts/They’ve been cloudin’ up my mind/Like someone’s turned out the light on me/I’ve been having dark thoughts/Do you ever feel like me?/‘Cause I could use the company.”

“To me, that song was like an admission, a vulnerability saying, ‘this is me whether you like it or not, this is what happened.’ It was a face-to-face moment with myself,” he observes. “ I haven’t really talked to a lot of people about those things, and music was the outlet for that and gave me an objective, outside view of it. I think hard experiences and painful ones can inspire you and be a source of creativity. It’s been a way for me to help deal with those things.”

After coming to the realization that he no longer wanted to be in L.A., Guisande and his now-wife headed east to Tennessee, making Music City their new home. Soon after, his brother made the trek to Nashville, Kyle working at GameStop while Devin worked as a full-time assistant to a real estate agent. The two formed Kyd The Band, balancing their day jobs while making music on the side that resulted in such songs as “American Dreamer.”

After the brothers musically parted ways, Guisande continued on with Kyd The Band as a solo act, releasing a series of EPs throughout 2020 and 2021 with Season 1: The Intro, Season 2: Character Development, Season 3: The Realization and Season 4: Series Finale. “I figured out early on I wanted to release music as seasons and make it like how a TV show is formatted because the music’s about my life,” he narrates. “My life has gone in waves and different phases, and so the seasonal structure really made sense.”

Season 1: The Intro chronicles the California native’s childhood growing up immersed in the church. “Sad Songs” depicts a sense of loneliness while acknowledging inner demons through lyrics like “I only like sad songs/Something may be wrong with me/And I leave the TV on/So someone’s in the room.”

Season 2: Character Development candidly chronicles his journey of leaving home and moving to L.A. while blossoming into adulthood with songs like the aforementioned “Dark Thoughts.” By Season 3: The Realization, Guisande has embraced who he has become and come to terms with his own reality, though heavy themes are still present. On “Make It In America,” for instance, he narrates vivid memories of watching a creditor place a foreclosure notice on the door of his childhood home after his family went bankrupt (Guisande was 16 at the time). He recounts his family selling off their belongings off in a yard sale and driving with his father to the bank to surrender their cars.

But Guisande attributes these challenges for building his endurance and resiliency, the message connecting as much to the present as it does the past. “Had I not gone through those things, I don’t know if I would have the perspective or understanding that I have now of you can lose everything literally tomorrow,” he reflects. In the song, he ponders, “When my soul flies/I can’t take one thing/Why do I try so hard to make it in America?” – a message that certainly hit home during the pandemic. “Over the last year, if we didn’t know that you can lose everything tomorrow, we realized or remembered that. Things aren’t what matter. It’s the relationships that you have in your life, and it’s people that you have right in front of you. Those are the things that you need to put value on,” he says.

The collection concludes with Season 4: Series Finale and includes the motivational “Glory” and powerful “Real Problems,” the latter of which he cites as one of the most important songs he’s released. A collaboration with fellow Nashville-based artist Taela, the song was borne out of their parallel experiences with substance abuse and Taela’s struggle with mental illness and self-identity. Taela had already written part of the chorus when she pitched it to Guisande as a collaboration, the dynamic artist working his magic in verses that find him in a work-in-progress state, yet recognizing the strength he’s gained from walking through life’s obstacles.

“I knew I wanted to talk about the struggle of it and of living with things that have happened in your life, or things that you’re currently dealing with, to talk about that in a really honest way,” he says. “There was a strength in saying, ‘I have some things that I’ve gone through and they’re legit, real life things, and they’re not always pretty.’ I think there was a strength and courage and admitting that.”

“It took some real problems for me to grow and become who I am,” he continues. “When I look at my life, that’s the truth for me. That’s me going through what I did and the things I talk about in Season One, Two and Three to really figure out who I am as a person and what matters to me and what I believe. I’m thankful for all of it, the good and the bad, because it’s gotten me to where I am now.”

All roads lead to where Guisande is in present day, with the mission of inspiring others to share their truth and find methods of healing, just as he’s done countless times. Turning his scars into musical works of art dovetails with the goal of making others feel like they have a true sense of belonging. “If they feel different, if they feel like they don’t fit in, there’s other people out there that feel like that too,” Guisande shares. “We’re all in this together. At the root of it, that’s what I hope.”

Follow Kyd the Band on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for ongoing updates.

Squirrel Flower Burns Rubber on New LP Planet (i)

musician Squirrel Flower, wearing a denim jacket, stands partially turned away from the camera, with bright glare from the sun partially obscuring the image — Photo Credit: Tonje Thilesen

“I feel like I’m like a hedonist,” says Ella Williams, the mastermind behind whimsically-named alt-pop project Squirrel Flower. “I just allow my impulses and my desires to affect the actions I take.”

She’s discussing the beating heart track of her newest album, Planet (i), out June 25th on Polyvinyl. “Flames and Flat Tires” is one of the record’s most untethered tracks, with a sense of looseness and levity that contrasts with some of the album’s darker moments. And while the character in “Flames” isn’t explicitly Williams, she isn’t denying that sometimes she feels like she, too, is hurtling through life with her foot on the gas.

“[‘Flames’] is partially inspired by this novella by an author named Torrey Peters,” she explains. “It’s called Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones. It’s like a queer, trans apocalypse story, and it takes place in Iowa, and the first couple scenes are this person on I-80 Iowa in this fucked-up car that they’re trying to like, fix themselves.”

Planet seems to be quite taken with the things we can’t fix ourselves — natural disasters, busted cars, narcissistic people — but it’s not meant to be fatalistic. “[Planet is] not an apocalypse album because ‘apocalypse’ implies one event that changes the earth and makes it uninhabitable,” Williams says. “I think it’s just that we’re kind of living in an ongoing apocalypse, and in that are both moments of incredible utopia and moments of actual full-on disaster. And I think acknowledging both of those as things that happen at the same time is a huge point of the album.”

<a href="https://squirrelflower.bandcamp.com/album/planet-i">Planet (i) by Squirrel Flower</a>

While disaster has certainly been the flavor of the past year and a half, Williams has been immersing herself as much as she can with the music scene in Chicago, where she recently moved. “I’ve been going to a lot of techno raves,” she says with palpable excitement. “It’s [these] incredible moments of utopia that I was talking about — just like very queer spaces and beautiful community spaces and dancing and techno, and it’s so sick.”

Williams moved to Chicago in part to be closer to her bandmates, but the opportunity to get to know a delicious new scene was undeniable. “I first went to a DIY show in Boston when I was sixteen,” she recalls. “From there it just like took over my life and changed my life and changed the way that I thought about music and [how I] thought music could work.” Williams emphatically credits the Boston music scene as instrumental to her journey as an artist — as well as the scene in Iowa and her experience recording Planet in London.

While the constant moving and adjusting can be difficult, Williams feels she has some precedent for living her life the way she does, mainly inspired by her grandfather, Jay Williams, who was a writer, Vaudeville performer, and “card-carrying Commie,” and his wife Bobby, a community organizer. “Every time I’m like, ‘damn — it would be nice to have like a little more money or a little more stability and not be living in like five different places every year’… I think about the way my ancestors have lived, which is very transient and allowing art and music and love and connections and relationships to guide them through life, as opposed to anything else,” Williams says.

While the overarching lyrical themes on Planet certainly reflect this transiency, there are a few small moments that approach it from a different angle — lead single “Hurt a Fly” and “Deluge in the South” both detail the experience of searching for refuge in other people, specifically in their homes. “But then I showed up at your door/With my head in my hands/And you took me in,” laments the narcissistic partner Williams channeled in the former, while she promises “I will take you in/Wrap you up again,” in the latter. While the two songs are not specifically connected, the concept of constructing home where you can, with what and who you can, is classic apocalypse.

But like Williams said, this is no apocalypse album. If anything, it’s simply observational. As a function of her DIY ethos, Williams has been rather boots to the ground since 2015, when she self-released her first EP, Early Winter Songs from Middle America. But even after her much-praised label debut (2020’s I Was Born Swimming, on Polyvinyl) Williams wasn’t allowed much distraction, instead finding herself stuck in quarantine with little to do but process everything she had experienced on her last self-booked tour. “I got home and had just like seen all of this really insane shit. I saw the desert in California for the first time and I was driving through Missouri and there was so much flooding that it looked like we were like driving through this field of glass, and there were billboards and trains going through and coming out of the water, and it was so nuts. Just like, insane storms after shows.”

Williams is very preoccupied with weather and the power of water on Planet. It gets mentioned on almost every single track, most notably on “Desert Wildflowers.” “I’m another piece of debris/Flying above the town/Closer to the stars than I am to the ground,” she coos before the song’s central manifesto: “I’m not scared of the water/The rain is my parent and I am the daughter.”

“Desert” was the first song she wrote for the record. That songwriting session must have been some kind of unconscious preparation for things to come, as the song feels like an affirmation in the form of a lilting lullaby, like some part of Williams knew it was time to face the particular fears — or strengths, depending on how you look at them — that drape Planet like tapestries.

“I got home and the song just came out,” she says. “And I kind of just rolled with it.” She wrote so much, in fact, that there is a whole other Planet album that exists somewhere in the stratosphere, or in some hidden folder on Williams’s computer. Call it Planet (ii), or call it the ghost album — either way, Williams doesn’t have any plans to release those songs any time soon. But it does haunt her in some ways, as ghosts tend to do. “Is the music only what’s shared with other people?” Williams asks. “Or is the music what you make and experience with yourself and your process?” Williams has plenty of time to keep looking for the answer, no matter where it takes her in her busted-up car.

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Summer Like The Season Makes a Timely Return with Premiere of “Root Mean Square” Video

Summer Like The Season – a.k.a Summer Krinsky, Scott Murphy and Liam McNitt – has a way of creating its own little world. Krinsky, who explains that texture and rhythm serve as the guiding forces of her songwriting, meticulously builds this world, brick by brick, using field recordings she’s captured on tour or in her home, layered vocals and unexpected rhythmic patterns. On latest single “Root Mean Square,” Krinsky reflects on the complexity of “remembering past relationships as a full picture instead of just highs and lows,” she says.

While the song emits bursts of longing, heartbreak and understanding, the video, premiering today via Audiofemme, is pure comedy. “The music is all pretty serious so we wanted the music videos to be a little lighter and fun,” Krinsky says. The setting for the visual takes place in an old dollhouse at Krinsky’s grandmother’s home. She was visiting one day when she was struck with inspiration. “Summer calls me up and says, ‘Get your cameras – my grandma has a dollhouse and we’re gonna use that to make a music video,’” Murphy recalls. “’Just get all the action figures you have and come on over.’”

Murphy, a self-proclaimed “bad visual artist,” took up cinematography at the start of the pandemic and ended up shooting the entire video. While Krinsky’s vocals tell a story of loss and perception, a completely different kind of tension builds in the film. A tiny mouse family is ambushed late at night by some bad guys who came to rock. “The bad men come and they break into the mice’s house with the sole intention to jam,” says Murphy. “But their jam gets out of control and they kidnap a mouse,” adds Krinsky. The band casted, wrote and shot the film all within a day, in the type of fever dream-haze that many experienced during lockdown. “One might say it was manic,” Krinsky jokes.

Though the video was made within a matter of hours, Krinsky explains that the band’s forthcoming record, Hum, was a process three years in the making. “It was written and recorded, mixed and remixed a million times,” she says. When she finally finished the record, the pandemic happened and she felt like the timing wasn’t right to release the record; it’s finally been rescheduled for release September 3, 2021.

As frustrating as holding on to a body of work can be, Krinsky said it gave her time to reconnect with the songs and to make videos like this one. Space away from these songs that she spent countless hours on gave her a chance to return to them with a different perspective. “I was kind of worried that I’d feel really disconnected because [the album] was written so long ago and at first… I was feeling that,” Krinsky says. Because she writes and records almost all of her songs alone, bringing them to the band to arrange for live performance helps make them feel new again. Before they’re transformed into their live versions, Krinsky’s compositions are lush, intricate tracks, usually including multiple samples she’s recorded herself.

“Root Mean Square,” in particular, includes a recording she made while unloading at a show in Duluth, Minnesota. “When we were on tour , I made it a point to take a sample in every city that we go to,” says Krinsky. “Every song has some hidden sample either from tour or like other things around Detroit or in my house or my dog.” These unique sonic textures combined with her shapeshifting vocals are what make up Summer Like The Season’s alternate universe; a place where rhythm has no rules, mice can be held hostage for a jam session, and the remnants of love lost are splayed out for all to see.

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SPELLLING is a Conduit of the Divine on Orchestral Pop Concept LP The Turning Wheel

“It’s never just a love song.”

So says Chrystia Cabral, the Bay Area-based creative lifeblood behind the critically acclaimed experimental pop project SPELLLING, of what drives her songwriting. “I’m always striving to insert these spiritual questions because that’s what fascinates me to make music,” she adds. On June 25, she released her third full-length album, The Turning Wheel, via Sacred Bones.

Known for her sparse, synth-based musical aesthetic and repetitive, incantatory lyrical style, her quest for spiritual growth has informed her artistic style all the way down to the SPELLLING moniker itself. “I really love theater,” she continues. “The idea of theater, ancient Greek theater, and muses, and all that drama. I’m so into that, I really romanticize it. It goes into my project as SPELLLING, and ideas of rights and rituals and bringing that through the music.”

Thematically, the record deals primarily with “human unity, the future, divine love and the enigmatic ups and downs of being part of this carnival called life.” The title itself evokes the concept of karma, or what Cabral refers to as “the life cycle, and just accepting that reality is this constant transformation.” She had this in mind when she made the intentional creative choice to release the album as a double LP, split down the middle into stark, separate halves that serve to emulate this constant cosmic balance: “Above” and “Below.”

<a href="https://spellling.bandcamp.com/album/the-turning-wheel">The Turning Wheel by SPELLLING</a>

While Below rests on the dark and eerie tone SPELLLING is best known for, Above takes us to another dimension of Cabral’s artistry with warm, jubilant acoustic elements and pleasantly surprising, ballad-like lyricism. “When does reality stop circulating around itself? When do we reach this angelic state?” she asks, before continuing: “The Above and Below part makes sense with the mood of the songs, but also to communicate the idea of circulation, transformation, odyssey.”

The elegant collection of twelve songs builds on the bewitching synth-based sound she’s consistently refined since 2017’s Pantheon of Me, evolving in terms of lyrical complexity, sonic richness and conceptual depth. Born largely of the past year spent in isolation, these shifts all serve to signal the exponential potential of Cabral’s creative capabilities. The pandemic forced her to abandon an ambitious September 2020 release date, frustrating in the moment but ultimately a blessing in disguise for how it allowed her the time to grow artistically and transform her demos into layered narratives. “I was forced to listen deeper, and I really focused on lyric writing, and I think that’s been the greatest transformation from my previous work,” she explains. “All the songs on this record are pretty long, over three to four minutes – there’s even a seven minute song. I didn’t ever think I would be writing music this way.”

While the introspection of lockdown surely contributed to this lyrical growth, Cabral had begun to experiment in her writing for other reasons as well. When I point out the theatrical, choral expansiveness of tracks like “Always” or “Turning Wheel” on the Above half, she reveals that she wasn’t so sure about including some of these tracks on the record, so different they were from her previous work. “That song was written in mind for someone else. I was starting to experiment – I love songwriting, and what about later in my career, what if I wanted to write for other people? Over the summer, alongside working on The Turning Wheel, I was writing songs for other people, like hypothetical other people,” she says. “I started writing ‘Always,’ and I’m like, okay, this is not something I would sing, but I just went with it, and then I got so attached to it, and I was like, well, who else is gonna sing it? I have to.”

She explains that when she writes, she imagines the song as the soundtrack to a scene in a movie. “I try to not get in the way of what the song wants to do, and not insert myself. It helps me to start to create a story in my mind,” she says. “With ‘Turning Wheel,’ the first note I [struck] on the piano, it definitely felt like it was striking something kind of musical, like The Sound of Music or something like that. I just ran with that and that song ended up being about the urge to escape, like leaving the city and living away from all the concerns and demands of living in the city.”

In addition to growing in her songwriting, Cabral took on the ambitious and unprecedented challenge of collaborating with an ensemble of 31 musicians, which helped to build the album’s orchestral hugeness. The resulting record defies categorization. It combines elements of her unique influences, ranging from soul to psych to pop to noise. Ultimately they coalesce into something else, an eclectic auditory adventure that seems to channel the divine. Having written her previous two records almost entirely on her own with just a synth, this fell way outside her creative comfort zone. “Personally I’m a really introverted person, so this process took a lot of courage. It was a big challenge for my personality,” she shares. She notes with humor the irony of taking on such a task right as this period of isolation began, and reveals that the additional challenge of having to conduct so many of these collaborations remotely over Zoom was both a blessing and a curse.

“It was a lot of back and forth, and that became so hard, where I was like okay, I don’t know if this is gonna happen the way that I envisioned it, which was this ‘in the moment’ kind of thing where we can all be together and improvise, so I had to let go of that and just work with this new mode,” she explains. Ultimately, though, “it kind of played to my strengths where I could work with people more one on one instead of this huge orchestration of people in the same room together, so I’m really happy with how that came together,” she says.

As she begins the preparations for a live show to accompany the songs, she is exploring how to play with interpretive movement and conceptual art as a way to deepen the thematic experience, citing fellow Sacred Bones artist Jenny Hval as a specific inspiration. Incorporating this exploration of conceptual art into both the live show and the structural organization of the album itself adds another layer of beauty to an already beautiful record, surprising in the depths of its complexity. But then again, with SPELLLING, it’s never just a love song.

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Year: 2021