Tag: Los Angeles

The Dumes Dish Up Sweet Rock ‘n’ Roll Elixir With “Liquor & High”

five band members of The Dumes stand in front of the a makeshift backdrop
five band members of The Dumes stand in front of the a makeshift backdrop
Photo Credit: Emma Cole

When she took mushrooms for the first time, Elodie Tomlinson hopped on her bike and cycled up the Malibu coast to Point Dume, marking the northern boundary of Santa Monica Bay. High as a kite, The Dumes front-woman came to have several epiphanies about life, love, and her career. “I wanted to have a full day dedicated to being an artist, I guess,” she says.

She had just finished reading Patti Smith’s Just Kids and was feeling especially invigorated by its subject matter. During her bike trip, she plugged into plenty of ‘80s and ‘90s rock music, and as she gazed out across the ocean’s mirror-like surface, she had a realization: “I needed to start using music as an outlet for all this shit that’s been building up for a long time,” she tells Audiofemme. “I went home and had a photo shoot pretending I was Patti Smith. It was pretty hilarious.”

“Liquor & High,” premiering today, is the kind of pop/punk/rock hybrid that grabs hold and doesn’t let go. Alongside many of LA’s finest players, including Chris Dunn (drums), Liam McCormack (bass), Peter Recine (guitar), and Kyle Biane (guitar), Tomlinson commands every frame. Static fuzz vibrates through the speakers, and her voice rocks and rolls atop a very sticky beat. A ferocious energy emanates from her core in true rockstar fashion.

Intially written on piano, the feverish track is what Tomlinson calls a “relationship resume,” in which she admits her many friendships and romance suffer from her hectic schedule. “I was really busy at the time waiting tables, teaching kids how to play music, and my schedule was booked. I had a relationship at the time, and people in my life were frustrated with me,” she explains. “I didn’t have any time, and I was feeling a lot of guilt about it. When I wrote this, it was like, ‘Yeah, dude, I’m a piece of shit.’”

“I brought it into the practice room later, and I thought, ‘I’m bummed I was feeling so guilty about having a lot going on. I’m trying to get something done, and you should support that.’ Then, the song turned into [an anthem] about not being sorry.”

Dunn’s drum work throbs in the background, a framework to keep its volatility right on track. “We all sort of come from our own sad boy background when it comes to emo and pop/punk influences. We play with a mature version of that, sort of a mature aggression in some ways,” Dunn says. “This song, in particular, encapsulates that vibe. We’re trying to hit you over the head from the top and keep the energy up the whole time.”

“Liquor & High” is the second single from the band’s forthcoming debut EP, Everything is Horrible, slated for release sometime early next year. Following years of various musical pursuits, including an alt-pop duo Sibling, Tomlinson blooms into her own here as a vocalist, free to be as unapologetic as possible. It’s not the first time Tomlinson has considered releasing an EP – in 2019 the band premiered a song from it via Billboard, but the work didn’t seem to fit her story anymore. “Back then, it was pretty much just me. The guys and I had started playing together four or five times a week. We were just writing better songs,” she recalls. “I shelved everything, and it just felt right to focus on what we had going on.”

Tomlinson and Dunn both arrived in Los Angeles around the same time. It was 2012, and they hit the ground running. “He was one of the first people I met,” remembers Tomlinson, who formed the alt-pop duo Sibling with Bryan Osuszek (Dunn played drums). The endeavor lasted long enough for several singles and early industry buzz, but Tomlinson yearned for harder-hitting music that let her rip some rad vocal tricks.

A few years later, she approached Dunn about forming a proper rock ‘n’ roll outfit. He had plenty of connections with many of LA’s rising musicians, so assembling a band came pretty easy. Before long, the five-piece were operating on all creative cylinders. “I was at a similar place as Elodie was 一 where I had been playing in a few projects but was feeling a little dissatisfied and in a weird place,” says Dunn. “When she had the idea to form a rock band, I thought it was cool.”

As the primary songwriter, Tomlinson writes from a very “sad girl place,” as she calls it. When she brings the lyrics and perhaps a loose structure to the group, the band fleshes out her ideas into something gritty, unmistakable, and almost otherworldly. “We’re then able to flip the song on its back and take ownership and feel powerful about the things I have to say,” she notes.

Dunn chimes in: “That’s really fun from the other side of things, as well. She’ll come in with a really great vocal melody and lyrics, maybe some chords. Then, as the band, we get to mess with the arrangement a little bit and different tones where we help her bring it to life. It gets collaborative in a really cool way from there.”

On their debut, The Dumes worked closely with legendary producer Joe Chiccarelli, whose resume boasts everyone from My Morning Jacket and The Killers to Christina Perri, Jason Mraz, and Tori Amos. The moment they walked into Sunset Sound, one of the most iconic recording studios on the planet, it was “pretty much like we’d walked right into the ‘70s, like nothing had changed,” offers Tomlinson. “All of our favorite artists had recorded albums there, and there was definitely something in the air. Joe gave us a tour of the studio, and we knew it was where we wanted to record. It felt right.”

Once they set to work, Chiccarelli gave them free rein to follow wherever their muse took them. He was simply a presence to bring their vision to light. “He really encouraged us to push it and put the pedal to the metal 一 and to keep that energy going and not be afraid of the power we can create,” says Tomlinson.

“Especially for a guy that’s done a lot of really polished music, it was cool to see him embrace the dirtiness with our sound. He really encouraged us to be as down and dirty as possible,” adds Dunn. “He didn’t have anyone else in mind when recording us. He wants to make each artist sound like themselves and not like the other projects he’s produced.”

Most evident across both “Liquor & High” and the band’s previous single “Neverlost,” Tomlinson can surely bite into a lyric, calling to her biggest influences like Blondie and Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders. “Growing up, I just loved how badass these chicks were, and I wanted to do that,” she says. “I wasn’t really allowed to use my voice then, but I’ve learned to own myself now. And that’s why I put it all out there in this project.”

“I learned to use my voice in a way I’ve always wanted to use it,” she adds.

In their time together, Dunn notes a colossal shift in their musical chemistry has already taken place. “When it started, it was her singular vision,” he says. “As the band’s gotten closer, everyone’s individual voice has elevated it. The new EP represents that a lot better.”

Follow The Dumes on Twitter and Instagram for ongoing updates.

PREMIERE: Joyeur Makes Moves to Quell COVID Blues with “Motion”

Photo Credit: Jessica Chanen Smith

These days, it’s easy to let a whole day go by without tearing yourself away from your computer screen. The isolation becomes a self-perpetuating cycle: you spend all day online because you’re lonely, and that makes you feel lonelier, so you turn to social media or Netflix. Joyeur, the LA-based electro-pop duo consisting of Anna Feller and Joelle Corey, has a simple message for people in this situation right now: get outside.

Their latest single, “Motion,” is about dealing with COVID-related stress by getting out into nature and finding peace amid the uncertainty. “Why don’t they leave me ‘lone/I’m not a hater/I need some trees and stones/I’ll call you later/I saw a sign that warned me it was over/I’m going to hang my phone up,” Corey opens the song with a strong, simple beat and breathy voice that give off Lykke Li vibes. More tracks enter the mix in the chorus, giving it a chaotic techno sound that belongs in a nightclub; you can almost see the colorful strobe lights as you hear the heavy synths.

“We started writing the song before the pandemic, but it really influenced the choice of sounds, which are darker than our usual sound, and the pacing of everything really reflects our emotions about what’s happening — everything happening at once,” says Corey.

In accordance with the song’s title, they also wanted a sound people could move to. “We’ll want people to move to it but also feel some catharsis from the music, a kind of cleansing of everything that’s bottled up inside the body,” Feller explains. “I was using a lot of synth that I wasn’t using before, and rhythmical patterns that were a little heavy and techno-ey, to kind of reflect that.”

The song is off their second EP, which comes out early next year. Much of this project was written during quarantine and explores “the feeling of confinement and breaking free,” says Corey. “That’s sort of what ‘Motion’ is exploring — it’s a constant pattern and struggle, where we truly are playing hide and seek with ourselves. I find myself, and then I hide from that, either by numbing myself with social media or finding myself distracted.” Perhaps the song on the EP that embodies the spirit of quarantine most is “Living Room,” a sultry, almost bluesy ode to dancing in the comfort of one’s own home.

Because of the personal, intimate feel of the EP, the production is simpler and less showy than that of their past work, says Corey. Another difference? On their last EP, 2018’s Lifeeater, Feller did all of the production while Corey served as a singer/songwriter. On this one, their efforts were more split, with Corey experimenting with production by sending Feller interesting sounds, like ringtones she found on her phone.

“She started making up cool beats and melodies and sending them over to me, and I’d work on that,” Feller recounts. On the flip side, Corey encouraged Feller to get out of her comfort zone and sing. “I love harmonies, so I started singing the harmony on the record, which I haven’t done before,” she says. “I feel like we merged into each other and the process was much more fun because it’s more unpredictable, which I think Jo and I like. We like the challenge, but it also gives us confidence.”

The two members of Joyeur — a portmanteau of “joy” and “voyeur” — met when Feller’s husband was mixing a song for Corey. Feller’s background is in classical piano and production, while Corey’s is in voice, and they clicked right away and booked a show together the week they met. It took them a while, however, to find their authentic image rather than catering to music industry norms.

“When I was starting out with Jo, we were just women in the industry trying to be cool and looking good and trying to convince everybody of that,” Feller recalls. “In that process, I was encouraged to not talk about the fact that I am a mother. Maybe people were scared that it would be a turnoff or not relevant. I kind of went with it, and as time went by, I started feeling like we should write our own identity and not be told what this identity should be. I am a mother; I am a musician; I am a DJ; I am millions of things, like everybody is.”

Right now, Feller is pregnant again, which she says has actually aided her creative process. “I’m not experiencing things the same, and I feel like it gave me a different perspective on things,” she says. “Being pregnant really gave me a lot of ideas — my dreams are more vivid, I hear things differently, and this urge to create got even bigger. My brain is kind of changing, too. I feel like I got so much more detail-oriented and am just enjoying creation musically.”

“For some reason, we thought we needed to be 20-year-old sex symbols,” says Corey. “But we’re not, and at the end of the day, we just need to be who we are, and that’s what people are going to connect to.”

Follow Joyeur on Instagram for ongoing updates.

L.A. Post-Punks Agender “Preach” with New Video

Photo Credit: Chris Mastro

There’s a tension in “Preach,” the latest single from Los Angeles-based post-punk band Agender, of the world at a turning point. While “Preach” was seemingly made for 2020, the song was actually written late last year. “It was written in the old world,” says singer Romy Hoffman. She describes “Preach” as an “anti-elegy.” In other words, it’s not as bleak at is might appear on first listen. “It is positive,” she says, adding that the song is a call to “hold on to your power.” 

The video for “Preach” was made by Los Angeles-based filmmaker Anthony Maldonado, who has previously collaborated with Hoffman on visuals for her live, solo performances. “We weren’t sure this wasn’t going to be the first single but I think, with everything going on in the world, we just thought as a band that this felt right,” says Hoffman. But, the pandemic created some complications for making a video. “Obviously, everyone was very limited as to what you could do and where you could go and shoot and how you can shoot,” says Hoffman. “So it just seemed logical to me, the best thing to do would be more of a found footage kind of thing. I know Anthony’s very good at that, and I knew his aesthetic would suit the mood.”

Hoffman is a lifelong musician whose work has crossed genres, but bears the influence of punk. “Punk rock has been my staple,” she says. “It’s been woven into everything that I do musically. Growing up in the ’90s,  being around a DIY culture definitely shaped my everything – how I perceive the world, how I walk through it, how I react to things, how I make things.”

She adds, “My art has always been very immediate.” Hoffman describes her work as coming from a “pure raw place” that’s been accessible via punk. “I would say my musical career has always come from that urgent, raw energy, of just needing to make things for survival and just for existence.”

She launched Agender solo while living in Melbourne, Australia and played all the instruments for the project’s debut release. The first incarnation of the full band came together when she was ready to play live and that line-up went on to record Fixations, in 2014. Around the time of the sophomore release, Hoffman moved to the U.S., settling in Los Angeles. “It has this beautiful-brutal dichotomy thing that I love,” says Hoffman of the city, adding, “It’s this sunny, warm place but the music coming out of there at the time (and now) is really cold.”

At that time, in L.A.’s underground scene, minimal electronic, cold wave and industrial were thriving and Hoffman’s solo work, which she releases simply as Romy, was on a similar wavelength. “I fit nicely into that,” she says. She quickly gained a following around town as both a musician and a DJ. Agender made a comeback, though, after Hoffman met bassist Christy Michel, drummer Christy Greenwood and synth player Sara Rivas. As Hoffman points out, they’re a band with two Virgos and two Cancers and “it just works really well.” 

“It feels like family. It feels like we all support each other,” says Hoffman. “It feels very emotional, physical, spiritual.”

“Preach” is a teaser of sorts for Agender’s third album, No Nostalgia, which will be released in 2021. Hoffman wrote the record last year and the band recorded with former LCD Soundsystem member David Scott Stone between 2019 and early 2020. “We took our time with it,” says Hoffman, who finished work on the album right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.  

It’s only been in the past couple months that the members of Agender were able to start rehearsing again. “We all have masks and shields over our faces and are crazy with disinfectant and hand sanitizer,” Hoffman says. 

Meanwhile, Hoffman has also been working on new solo material, which she may release in the near future. The band is aiming to release one more single at the end of this year and then drop the album next spring, but Hoffman says they’re also playing it by ear. “I’d like to release the record closer to when we know where things might be a bit more open and you can play shows in support of this stuff,” she explains. ” It’s very hard not being able to play shows, supporting stuff you’re releasing, especially when  we’re a live band. It’s so important to us playing it; it transcends the music to another level.”

Follow Agender on Facebook for ongoing updates.

Emma Jaye Asserts Her Self Worth on Latest Single “Ghost”

Knowing your own self worth can be an uphill struggle for many; we ignore our strongest supporters, deferring instead to our worst critics – the least of which is that overly callous voice in the back of our mind. As a lack of self-esteem or self-worth undermines everything we do, our conviction and confidence becomes brittle. “Ghost,” the latest track from Emma Jaye, serves as a canticle for those struggling with knowing their self worth. She sings about her experience with ghosting – a pervasive phenomenon well-known to most millenials – and focuses on the empowering positives, notably, the importance of asserting yourself and refusing to be led by the whims of somebody else because there could be a chance at love.

“It’s honestly so common and I don’t know a person that hasn’t been ghosted. But it’s cool because more people can relate [to the song],” says Emma Jaye. “It felt good to get that off my chest. It bothered me a bit and then after a few months my sentiments changed and I was like, so talk or don’t – up to you, I don’t care!”

“Ghost” sets the scene with a distinctive guitar riff reminiscent of the Police’s “Message in a Bottle” and Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” albeit with a lighter, poppier edge. As the riff repeats, Emma Jaye dives straight in with the line, “Radio silence then you blow up my phone” – someone she thought had disappeared has returned, but Emma Jaye isn’t going to continue repeating a cycle in which she feels trapped. Her immediate retort sets that conviction in stone: “Hey, thanks for trying, but I’m good on my own.” She turns the page and starts a new chapter in her life, with a new value system and renewed confidence in herself as a person. “‘Ghost’ is about me not basing my worth on somebody else’s inability to see me. It’s like, well, if you don’t see me, I’m going to see myself. That’s the energy of the song,” she says.

Steady percussion ticks away like a clock, and Emma Jaye seems to be counting down the seconds until she can say what she needs to say for herself and then shut the door without spending more time on this person. “Everybody wants love and approval and acceptance and I get that, but I don’t think a lot of people are able to stand on their own and get approval for themselves,” says Emma Jaye. “It’s important to know your worth and what you bring to the table.” The lyric video visualizes her words in a multitude of fonts reminiscent of the distinctive neon-lit skyline of Los Angeles that Emma Jaye calls home.

The singer-songwriter wasn’t always so in tune with herself. Stepping out into the world of acting as a child, she previously appeared in the hit TV show Boardwalk Empire as Edith Thompson and in the film Spring Breakers. With some success as an actress under her belt she could have chosen to pursue that route; perhaps it might have seemed the most sensible. But the self-reliant Emma Jaye took a leap of faith to pursue a career in music. “I love acting… but singing is the thing that I was born to do,” she says.

She has a hard time pin-pointing when she realized music was her calling: she felt drawn to it most of her life and asked for music lessons at age ten, but set it aside in her early adolescence and didn’t start singing again until she sought music as a comfort for loneliness. “I can always count on people to let me down. I can remember when I was 14… I didn’t really have anyone. I would come home from school, lay on the ground and listen to music because that was all I had,” she says. “It was kind of sad, but also, it kept me company in a way. Music and singing started to become more of a lifeline.” From that experience, Emma Jaye eventually got more serious about her career. “I had this strange epiphany moment when I could see everything in retrospect,” she says. “That was the real ‘wow’ moment – I had always known, but it took time to really remember. A real part of life is remembering who you are; I think that’s the journey for every single human being.”

Emma Jaye is poised to find success in music as well as acting, releasing a string of singles that showcase her ability to dig deep and bare her soul – all to the to catchy tune of a pop beat. Starting off 2020 with the release of “Dumb,” an infectious track that incorporates an eerie, off-kilter nursery rhyme quality, and “Overtime,” in which she expresses overthinking about a relationship to the sonic backdrop of an atmospheric, trance-like beat, Emma Jaye has solidified her presence in the industry. The songs she creates are a direct reflection of where she is now: “It took a lot of time and meditation honestly. It took growing as a human being because as I grew, my art grew with it and that was a reflection of where I was at that time,” she says.

Like with her previous tracks, Emma Jaye uses “Ghost” as a sonic Trojan Horse – her deeply personal work gives a voice to 21st century existence, in a deceptively fun pop package. She unabashedly uses “Ghost” and her other pop-oriented singles to assert her presence in the world – not just as a musician but as a young woman navigating relationships.

In essence, “Ghost” provides a blueprint of support for anyone in a similar situation. Emma Jaye tells the listener that she understands why some of us let this type of behavior slide, but projects the reality that it doesn’t have to be this way as she details the freedom and confidence gained from knowing your self-worth and trusting your decisions.

“I’m very familiar with narcissists – they are basically emotional vampires, and they are very manipulative and gaslight you and will keep you down to keep you around and use you like a battery if you have that empathetic nature. A lot of the things that broke my heart fixed my vision. To that point, I wouldn’t change who I am,” Emma Jaye says. “I knew who I was going into this industry… Honestly, leaning into heartbreak is the way back home and that was music for me.”

Follow Emma Jaye on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

DJ/Producer Maral Draws From Iranian Roots on Debut Full-Length

Photo Credit: Robb Klassen

Maral Mahmoudi grew up with Iranian music. The DJ/producer, who uses just her first name professionally, was raised primarily in Virginia, near Washington D.C., but spent fifth and sixth grade, as well as childhood summers, in Iran. “I I have this deep history with hearing the music at all times, blasting on TV,” she says by phone from her home in Los Angeles.

Later on, she would develop her own relationship with the music. Maral dug through her parents’ collection of tapes – they’re fans of Persian classical music – and learned more about the philosophy behind it, the connection to Sufism and the role that improvisation plays in it. “Everyone learns the same repertoire of music, which is this ancient repertoire that’s been passed down orally for centuries. Then, it’s up to you to play it in your own way and give it your own twist,” she explains. It’s similar, Maral notes, to the DJ mindset. “We’re all playing the same songs, but it’s how you play it that matters,” she says.

On Push, released through Leaving Records on October 14, Maral explores her passion for the music of Iran in an adventurous way. She plays with beats, samples and noisy electronics to bridge all of her influences, from Crass to Animal Collective to moombahton to David Lynch to the sounds she hears while walking around Los Angeles. Push also includes a track featuring Lee “Scratch” Perry, “Protect U,” which is based on an interview the dub legend did with online radio station Dublab, where Maral also has a show. She collaborated with Penny Rimbaud on “They Not They,” an opportunity that came about when Maral connected with the co-founder of the influential punk band Crass on Twitter. 

One of the instruments that you’ll hear on the album is the setar, an Iranian string instrument similar to a lute. As a teenager, Maral learned how to play setar; she played in a Persian classical ensemble as well. On Push, though, she samples setar masters. “Each master has their own specific way of playing the setar,” she explains. Maral wanted to showcase these differing styles. She also samples a Persian flute-like instrument called a ney. “I really love the way that I put distortion on it. It really sounds like you’re shredding on a guitar or something,” she says. 

Maral plays a little guitar on the album too, on the track “No Type,” but says that she doesn’t consider herself a professional musician. “I never really figured the music theory part out as well as I should have,” she says. “I let my intuition take me to wherever it wants to.” Intuition is crucial to Maral’s process. “I don’t really know how to use Ableton in the traditional sense either,” she says. “I just played around with it and figured out my own way of using [it].”

Maral was the kid known amongst friends for making mixed CDs. That eventually morphed into DJing with a cracked version of Ableton a friend passed her way. In college, at Virginia Tech, she fell into the same small music scene that would spawn the band Wild Nothing, DJing parties and mixing genres like indie and moombahton and putting her own twist on EDM tracks. Ultimately, DJing led to production, which she has been doing for about a decade. Last year, Maral released her first mixtape, Mahur Club, through Astral Plane Recordings. 

Much of Maral’s music stems from her enthusiasm for sharing the sounds that she finds with others. She recalls discovering the late Persian classical and pop singer Hayedeh back when she would dig through her parents’ collection. “I got really obsessed with Hayedeh and wanted to show people her music as much as I could and show people Persian music as much as I could,” she says.

After moving to Los Angeles, about six years ago, Maral had the opportunity to find more music from Iran. She says that’s impacted her work too. “In Virginia, we had a great Persian community. I learned about playing setar, playing all the classical instruments,” she says. “Then, coming to L.A. and having everything be more hyper-Iranian, because of the bigger Iranian population, has been amazing… Getting that chance to reconnect with the culture and having it be so prevalent in L.A. culture is really cool and, I think, important.”

In Westwood, the L.A. neighborhood that’s often associated with Iranian culture, she found CDs that would not just expand her collection of samples, but her musical knowledge as well. “I’m still learning,” she says. “There’s still stuff about Iranian music that I don’t know.” 

And, like her production process, Maral lets her intuition guide her digging. “Each time, picking out a random CD from the store, searching YouTube or going through my parents’ tapes, that all really informed me,” she says. “I do it all randomly and go towards whatever my intuition pulls me towards, but I’ve learned a lot in the past five years.”

Follow Maral on Instagram for ongoing updates.

PREMIERE: ZZZAHARA Confronts Death With DIY Ethos in “Starry Eyed” Video Debut

musician Zahara sips a bubble tea in front of a lavender wall covered in graffiti
musician Zahara sips a bubble tea in front of a lavender wall covered in graffiti
Photo Credit: Amy Avazian

On her debut single “Starry Eyed,” ZZZAHARA (a.k.a. Zahara Jaime of The Simps and Eyedress) proclaims, almost proudly, “I’m already on my way/One foot out, and one foot in the grave.” This morbid hokey pokey isn’t mere ambivalence; it’s a vehicle for Zahara’s existentialist approach to life and making music, one in which she controls her own decisions and finds her own meaning in an often irrational world, moment to moment.

Zahara’s nonchalant carpe diem philosophy was influenced by unthinkable tragedy – the “close calls” she’s had with death since the age of twelve, when her younger brother passed away from Leigh Syndrome after a long and agonizing hospitalization. Zahara mentions her late brother in “Starry Eyed” only briefly, but the impact of his death is something she only recently came to terms with. “It just really boinked what I thought about life. All my friends lived a normal life, but I couldn’t wrap my head around what I was going through. I guess it kinda hit me in my early adult years, like what the hell did I see?” Zahara says. “It was confusing, that’s how I would describe it. I was sad but… I never processed it really, I just was worried about my parents. But then as I got older I was like, you know what, actually I have to process it myself.” Zahara says that therapy, philosophy, and music have all played a role in making sense of what happened. “Ultimately, my philosophy, it’s not too dark. It’s just like, I have to deal with making the world a comfortable place for me to live in, but I also want it to be comfortable for everybody that I let in.”

“Starry Eyed” finds Zahara taking comfort in sleeping all day, drinking all night, and sometimes just closing her eyes and pretending she doesn’t exist. The video was shot by first-time director (and Zahara’s roommate) J.J. Lammers; black and white scenes give it a noir feel. Zahara pours whiskey in her coffee, explores a graveyard. Suddenly she’s lying in the bottom of a hole in the ground, covered in a fine layer of dirt. In the next scene, she’s also the one shoveling – a literal interpretation of line that repeats in an otherwise minimal chorus: “I’m d-d-d-d-igging my grave.”

https://youtu.be/pUNiKdiGh-o

Zahara says the line is reflective of her cavalier approach to mortality, and also how she feels about living in general. “I do struggle with depression sometimes. There are times where I’ll sleep for a week and I’ll feel okay the rest of the month,” Zahara admits. “I live life on the edge a little bit… I like to have fun and sometimes that fun is a little risky. A lot of people fear death – people that look to life as something to be super optimistic about. I’m kind of in this purgatory, like in the middle where it’s not so good but it’s not so bad.”

Like it has for so many others, the pandemic threatened Zahara’s characteristic stoicism when she lost her day job. But she took it in stride, using the combination of unemployment funds and spare time to get serious about home recording. Zahara had played in bands for years in and around the Highland Park neighborhood where she grew up, and recently joined forces with Idris Vicuña, playing guitar in his project Eyedress. The two are also planning to release music from their collaborative project, The Simps, by the end of this year.

Zahara says Vicuña’s encouragement and guidance sparked her interest in producing her own music, and was further buoyed by support from her friend Collin Cairo, a mixing engineer at Stones Throw. Cairo pointed her toward YouTube and Sound on Sound Magazine; eventually, Zahara invested in a thirteen-hour online engineering course with Alan Parsons, as well as new mics, a laptop, software plug-ins, a synth and a bass guitar. Every other day, Zahara would record a new song based on what she’d learned from Parsons’ videos, and those songs comprise ZZZAHARA’s debut EP, out October 23.

“Everything that I learned from those classes I really put into what I made on this EP,” explains Zahara. “It’s kind of like giving yourself homework. [My] music from the start of quarantine to the end [shows that] progress: watch some things, learn things, take from it, and then do whatever you like. That’s what I was doing all of quarantine.”

The EP deals mostly with being young, queer, and looking for love. “Spam Masubi Cigarette” is a heart-pounding tribute to her current partner, who she says she was grateful to get to know better when the pandemic drew them closer. “Up On Fig” and “Straight Crushes” describe more confusing situations – an affair with a neighbor, unrequited teenage fantasies about girls with boyfriends – and though “Starry Eyed” is somewhat of an outlier thematically, all four tracks are tied together with dreamy, shimmering production and Zahara’s wistful reverb-heavy vocals. Cairo helped mix the EP, but the production was all Zahara. The vocal effects were recorded on a performance mic and edited with Ableton plug-ins – another trick she learned from Parsons’ videos, particularly one that featured Lauryn Hill.

Though it may never have existed if not for the pandemic, the EP is much more than a holdover linking Zahara’s musical past and her future. “I’m just really proud of being able to produce an entire EP by myself during quarantine,” Zahara says. “This is basically me saying hey – I learned something and here’s a little piece of me. If I seem mysterious, it’s kind of an introduction to who I am.”

Follow ZZZAHARA on Instagram and Twitter for ongoing updates.

Skofee May Not be “Polished” But She Shines on Debut EP

When LA-based pop singer-songwriter Anna Marie Scholfield, known by her stage name Skofee (a play on her last name), sat down in her room to create what would become her debut EP Polished (out September 21), she faced an intense creative block. Struggling to write for hours, she kept reaching for her Juul – and suddenly, the first line of the EP’s title track came to her. “I just kind of took a breath and sat back,” she remembers. “I just was so frustrated and also mad at myself for being addicted to nicotine.”

What poured out of her was a song about her shortcomings and the anxiety of wondering how people see her.  “If I could be polished/If I didn’t lose shit/If I was more modest/Would you like that?” she asks against deep, loud, infectious guitar riffs by her collaborator Jack Demeo. “My hope with that song is that it hits in a light way and people can relate to it and cut themselves a little bit of slack when it comes to their inner dialogue,” she says.  

In the video, Scholfield walks on a treadmill in different rooms of the house, a visual metaphor for the feeling of being stuck in place that motivated the song. Animator Louis Harboe overlaid it with sketches to give it a light, playful feel. 

The rest of the EP conjures up ’90s pop, with R&B-inspired beats, catchy choruses, and climactic bridges. On opener “Fantomlimb,” she uses the well-documented phenomena of lingering sensation in amputated limbs as a metaphor to describe how our exes linger with us after breakups. “It’s just about the messy post-relationship stage where you’re maybe still seeing the person but it’s just not what it used to be, and you’re basically dealing with the pain of that while catering to the other person’s needs to make them feel fulfilled in the relationship,” she explains. The song shows off her angelic voice, with breathy high notes filling the chorus. 

On “Spiderman,” a collaboration with songwriter Via Savage, she explores another side of breakups, addressing an ex with sensual lyrics and poppy melodies reminiscent of Lana Del Rey: “Do you think about the way my lips move when I say your name and your eyes lit up? Can you live without feeling my breath on the back of your neck when you wake up?” 

“Crabapple” uses vocal layering to create an otherworldly effect as she paints scenes of climbing an apple tree, going to outer space, and cutting her own hair. “Bleach,” co-written with Scholfield’s friend McCall Kimball, combines ambient, futuristic-sounding instrumentals and electronic effects with poignant lyrics about witnessing a friend in a toxic relationship. “Bleach my eyes, sing me to sleep/Bleach my mind of all my dreams,” she sings in an eerily lullaby-like tune. 

Overall, the EP is about “dysfunction and uncomfortable growth,” she says. “It’s an amalgamation of the last few years of my life.” She cites Lorde and Lennon Stella as influences, but having been in a folk trio in college, her goal with her first EP as a solo artist was to find her own sound. “It was important for me to make sure that what I was putting out was exactly what I wanted to say and exactly what I wanted it to sound like,” she says. 

She wrote the songs using her keyboard then worked with two different producers on the album, Devan Welsh and Jamison Baken (known by his producer name Jameson), who is actually Scholfield’s roommate. “All of it was recorded in bedrooms,” she recalls. “We would just run back and forth between [them]. I loved the recording process, and I don’t produce for myself, but I love just being in the room while it’s happening and bouncing ideas back and forth with the different producers.”

She’s been working on a number of songs since, including an ode to a summer fling, recording from a studio she set up on her porch during quarantine. In the near future, she hopes to put out a full-length album. “I would like to have a really connected fan base,” she says. “I just want to keep evolving as a songwriter and as a musician, and I definitely want to be playing guitar on stage at some point.”

Follow Skofee on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

CrowJane Flexes Her Visual Art Skills in Music Videos For Her First Solo Album

In her video for “The Pharmacy,” singer CrowJane appears as a demon with blank eyes and a mouth oozing black goo as she writhes in chains, her long, sharp fingernails nearly scratching herself as her shackled hands clench and release.

CrowJane (sometimes also credited as Heather Galipo) is best known for her work as guitarist for the goth-leaning, post-punk band Egrets on Ergot and vocalist for the noise rock outfit Prissy Whip. She’s also a makeup artist in the film industry, whose professional work includes special effects makeup. With her debut full-length, Mater Dolorosa, out on September 15, and its accompanying videos, CrowJane merges her aural and visual creative pursuits.

“I do this to so many people,” she says by phone from her home in Los Angeles. “It’s always good to get a taste of what it’s like to be in the makeup because then you remember, this kind of sucks. You can barely see. You can’t touch things. You have a bunch of black stuff in your mouth and it tastes gross.”


 

She worked with Paul Roessler, the musician and producer who has been active in the L.A. scene since the punk era, with credits that include The Screamers, Nina Hagen and 45 Grave.

The two first bonded when Roessler produced music for Egrets on Ergot. Galipo recalls Roessler bringing her into the studio and encouraging her to write songs. She had intended to stick with an acoustic guitar, but, as they worked, the music morphed into something experimental. They made percussion instruments and created tracks that would become rhythmic and atmospheric.

“It sort of started as a therapy session, to be honest,” says Galipo about the album. “It was a way to get through a battle with addiction and different hardships in my life having to do with abuse and the list could go on and on.”

Roessler became her “spiritual guide,” in addition to her producer, co-writer and friend, on what would be both a musical and personal journey (Galipo has now been sober for almost five years).

She had put those ten songs aside, though, while focusing on her other projects and they would stay on the back burner for several years. Then, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, she was left without work and had spare time on her hands. Galipo had considered releasing the album herself, but Roessler suggested that she try to work with a label. That led CrowJane to Kitten Robot, which is run by new wave singer Josie Cotton.

With the album release coming at a time when work is slim in the film world, CrowJane had friends join forces to (safely) make music videos.


The first of those clips, “Terminal Secrets,” was released in August and is an exercise in stop-motion animation, where CrowJane made masks of her own face. “I had never shot anything in stop-motion before and I really admire it,” she says. The clip was shot at 12 frames per second, as opposed to the usual 24 frames per second. “Even then, we would work for 10 hours or maybe a little less and then walk out of there with maybe 10 seconds of footage,” she says.

For a forthcoming video of her cover of James Brown’s song “Man’s World,” she used leftover prop hands to make a pet that looks like a hand in a snail shell. It’s her favorite piece that she’s made for the videos so far.

“Part of the reason that I got into makeup effects is because I was so in awe into what these people can create,” says Galipo. Having the opportunity to bring together her love of movie makeup and effects with her own music has been a special experience. “I get to exercise the muscles of all the things that I love to do creatively and it all comes together,” she says.

The timing of the album presented CrowJane with an opportunity to flex her visual art skills as part of the project in a way that might not have otherwise been possible. Also, the time that elapsed between recording the album and the release of it gave her a chance to reflect on the material. She says that the meaning of some of the lyrics have changed for her over the years.

“If I hear the words that I wrote, some of the things that I would write about my abusers, I realized that I was writing more about myself,” she says. “Now that I look back, it’s interesting to see how that progresses. I’m grateful for everything that I did. My life is in a much better place and I appreciate everything that art has given me.”

Follow CrowJane on Facebook for ongoing updates.

Princess Cyberspace Critiques Instant Gratification with 12-Minute Video for “Born to Suffer”

Photo Credit: Miguel Diaz

As a self-described purveyor of “cyber-pop,” Los-Angeles based artist Princess Cyberspace materialized last year with her debut #Cyberpropaganda – seven tracks that amounted to 21 minutes of saccharine satire-laced critique of dating in the modern age. With vocals auto-tuned to oblivion and a tongue-in-cheek comical twist, #Cyberpropaganda hinged on a happy-go-lucky vibe that hid a deeper resignation to social media dystopia. But on her latest track, the twelve-minute “Born to Suffer,” Princess Cyberspace strips away the bubblegum to zero in on themes of desperation, depression, and dependency that so often drive the addictive need for approval online.

“I wasn’t originally thinking that’s what I was going to explore,” says Rebecca L’Amore Morgiewicz – the real-life, flesh and blood musician behind the project. “I didn’t really have a plan at all. It was just me expressing myself as I lived my life with clinical depression. It’s like a painter has a painting right? They have a canvas in front of them and they’re always adding to it… it was all in my head.”

When she wrote “Born to Suffer,” the artist was coping with a break up and searching for a release. Delivering melancholic lyrics in a deadpan tone over a repetitive loop, Princess Cyberspace asks, “They say we deserve each other/Is that true?/Are you undercover?” A feeling of unease permeates these ominous questions. But there is also familiarity as she pulls at dubious threads and unravels uncertainty that so many of us have felt in toxic relationships. “I was in a relationship with someone… and I never felt like I could trust him, I always felt like he was possibly lying about something,” she explains. “I think the lyrics really represent how it feels to be dependent on another’s love in order to be happy, and never knowing whether or not the person on the other side of the relationship is lying or being honest.”

The music video, premiering on Audiofemme, intersperses ’90s computer graphics with intimate shots of Princess Cyberspace wandering in an expansive desert juxtaposed with vague scenes of bondage which communicate feelings of entrapment. The track itself has a trance-like quality that the music video perfectly compliments as the visuals unpack the heightened emotions many of us have experienced as the emotional seesaw of lockdown continues. “Depression rates are higher than ever,” Princess Cyberspace points out, adding that the song feels “very relevant right now – especially not being able to have any social contact, which is such an important thing.”

Even the length of the track lends itself to that feeling of being on a never-ending loop of self-doubt – and the monotony of the pandemic. Produced with Ari Ingber, Princess Cyberspace says they left the track “obnoxiously long” because it worked with the song’s message so well, not only representing that internal struggle, but also providing commentary on our demand for immediate gratification. “All my older songs are like 2 to 3 minutes… we kept those songs short because it kind of shows how on the internet things are so impersonal and quick,” she explains. “This one is more of a drag because it plays with the notion of how long are we going to be unable to live a ‘normal life,’ how long is this plague going to last?”

Taking inspiration from how the URL world confuses IRL interactions between people, “Born to Suffer” critiques the use of social media to portray an image of ourselves that we prefer, hiding the parts of ourselves that society deems inappropriate. But Princess Cyberspace takes a sympathetic view, hinting that many of us don’t always possess the language to communicate how we truly feel. In a society that for centuries has portrayed the end goal of our lives as being happy and monetarily secure, we are only just learning that not being okay is also okay.

In a move akin to someone posting that perfect, happy Instagram picture when the reality couldn’t feel further from that, Princess Cyberspace reminds us of the ills that a social media-saturated life brings. By shining a light on the materialism she sees online, she hopes listeners will realize what really matters and what accounts for a life well-lived. “I think the problem is that there isn’t enough love,” she theorizes. “We’ve all become super independent, and people say that’s a good thing, but people are so concerned about money, status or other stuff like that. They’re focused on stuff that doesn’t really matter. I think that if you just follow your heart… that’s good. Humanity needs to go back to being old school and focusing more on love.”

Follow Princess Cyberspace on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

Dana Williams Reconnects to What’s Important with Latest Single “Stuff”

The process of reconnecting with oneself can alchemize from reading your childhood journal or slipping your hand into a tiny tap shoe you wore prancing at a dance recital or across the kitchen floor. These keepsakes, this stuff – are integral parts of ourselves and the imaginary spaces we inhabit when we’re still learning how to exist. We evolve into adults but the ages that exist within us – and the keepsakes we hold onto – live forever. We find creativity through our ability to access these years, and the self confidence that comes with the empire of childhood.

Dana William’s visual for her latest single “Stuff” gives us a peek into these sacred childhood spaces. A younger version of the singer-songwriter introduces herself, proudly announcing that her name is Dana Williams, and she is five years old. Her tiny hands are poised sophisticatedly behind her back, embodying the exuberance and charisma of a ’90s game show contestant; the emotive eyes of a Precious Moments doll, both vulnerable and full of wonder, light up her face. The visual intersperses home videos like these through introspective imagery of modern-day Williams poised gracefully in a brightly lit breakfast nook, writing lyrics with a mug of black coffee, an overflowing bowl of fresh lemons on the table, and her lush California garden right outside.

“Selecting imagery of myself as a child serves as a reminder to be kinder to myself,” Williams explains. “It reminds me of the passion I felt that drove me to become an artist and it also serves as a reminder of where I came from.”

Later, as she sprawls beneath her bookshelves, Williams sets the tone for an existential, hip-moving lullaby: “I can’t find myself/I placed it on the highest shelf/With the rest of the stuff.” She invites her listeners into a deeply personal inner monologue, expressing universal emotions of self doubt, and a declaration of uncertainty. “Stuff” surveys a deeply personal journey inward, and creates a safe space to wash away the shame associated with losing ourselves in periods of distraction. It sheds the gift of honesty, a song to have on repeat for anyone in the process of inner spiritual work, of gaining access to one’s higher self, often so hard to reach amidst the clutter of our daily lives. With her warm vocal, Williams urges herself (and by extension, the listener) to keep going: “Maybe I’ll keep trying/maybe I’ll keep wrestling the wind/maybe I’ll keep lying to myself/in this life of sin.”

In an era where we’re quick to associate streaming numbers to relevance and equity in our long term career goals, it’s easy to lose track of our talents and abilities as our passion and joy. “I think that the song is really about what I’ve went through over the last year. I just feel like I had to really find myself again creatively. I feel like my identity was put on the back burner for other people’s expectations,” Willaims says. “I disregarded my well-being and creative sensibilities for an outlet as if it were an object. And then it just made me feel like I lost myself with the rest of the stuff. That’s why the word came into play. I felt like I was just so separate from who I was that I had to sort of refine it and rediscover who I was.” Through the creation and release of “Stuff,” Williams was able to override this uncertainty, and share the wisdom, resiliency, and defiance involved in reclaiming her inner artist as she continues her musical journey.

It’s no wonder Williams felt inhibited by external expectations. Within a year of booking her first show, Williams released her debut EP The Lonely One, whose opening track, “Keep Me Waiting,” earned the distinction of being the only original vocal composition featured in Damien Chazelle’s Oscar-winning film Whiplash. After delivering her sophomore EP Let’s Fall in 2015, she switched her focus to consistently releasing stand-alone singles; these include “Silly Words,” “Holiday,” “Do No Harm,” and “Hard,” many of them released alongside the acoustic demos, giving listeners a peak into her songwriting process. She’s gained accolades from various publications, including Idolator, who named her one of 40 Artists To Watch In 2020. She appeared as a featured artist alongside Aminé on Rejjie Snow’s “Egyptian Luvr” — a January 2018 single that’s garnered over 40 million streams to date – and was recently a guest performer on H.E.R.’s Girls With Guitars IG Live show (other guests have included Lianne La Havas, Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge, Chloe x Halle, Willow Smith, Allesia Cara and more).

She also participated in the short-lived reality series Rising Star in 2014, getting a taste of the pressures that come with being in the public eye. The show, similar to American Idol or The Voice, approached Williams based on covers she’d uploaded to YouTube, and Williams embraced the mass exposure, coming in fourth place on series. “It did feel surreal,” she says. But rather than hole up in a cramped hotel room with the other contestants, Williams talked producers into letting her stay in her own L.A. home during filming, which she says was grounding. “I reasoned with them, and said, ‘I live in L.A., I’m not going to go AWOL, I promise you I will always be on time, I will always be where I need to be,’ and they said sure. I think that was what really kept me from being too stressed out and anxious. I would just go home, hang out with my dogs, and practice my songs.”

The ease of her tonality and the naturalness of her musical abilities likely stem from growing up in a musical family. Through direct mentorship of her father, the late touring and session guitarist Dave Williams (who worked on iconic songs like Madonna’s “Like A Prayer,” Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back,” and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”) Dana had the privilege of naturally evolving into the musician she is today. “People always ask me, ‘At what point did you realize you wanted to make music?’ And it’s like, well, I just always have and it’s something that’s just a part of me.” Williams says. “One thing I would say that frustrates me, is when people say things like ‘Oh, you’re going to be so famous.’ The point of making music isn’t to be famous. I literally just love making music, and if people like it, then that’s awesome. I don’t know what I would do if I wasn’t making music – it’s such an important outlet for me.”

Given her father’s success as a guitarist, writer, and producer, picking up the guitar came more naturally to Williams than other instruments she’d played. Her father propelled her into the studio by guiding her through his own songwriting approach. “He would write a track, bring it home, and sort of taught me how to top line,” Williams recalls. She loved writing poetry and had been introduced to big book standards early on by her maternal grandmother, who was a jazz singer. With her father mapping out song structure, Williams became enamored of the songwriting process. “I was just like, spending my free time top-lining his tracks and sometimes if they were good, he would record them. So that’s how I started writing. And then when I got a little bit older, 12 or 13, I thought it would be so cool to create a song entirely on my own without his track.”

Williams went on to attend Sarah Lawrence, where she studied both classical guitar and poetry. “I would say that my biggest creative takeaway from college would be just being able to have those years to read and write a lot of poetry. I participated in a lot of the poetry festivals, reading my poems, and just honing my craft,” she says. Williams’ interdisciplinary approach and strong familial music background resonate in her grounded, modest, and gracious demeanor as an artist.

And yet, despite Williams’ strong foundation, she was almost swept away by influencer expectations that put artists at the risk of objectifying their own talents and compartmentalizing themselves as content creators. Writing “Stuff” helped her avoid that, and emerge with some sage advice for young women in the music industry: believe in your craft, be persistent, and stay true to yourself. “Social media is a double-edged sword,” she warns. “I think it’s important for self promotion. I also think it’s important to be yourself on it, stay active, and create a dialogue. It’s an interesting way to let people in to see who you are outside of your music. But it’s important to step back and realize that Instagram is not reality.”

Follow Dana Williams on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

Napalm Nanny and the Shack Offers a Weekly Dive Into Classic Tunes and Trivia

Photo Credit: William Pasillas

Every Saturday, L.A.-based podcaster Nancy Diaz-Ibarra adopts the name Napalm Nanny and drops a bomb filled with classic tunes and trivia. On Napalm Nanny and the Shack, music is a tool to dig into facets of cultural history that often remain fairly obscure. A disco set leads to the story behind the development of roller skating and an episode focusing on ’60s girl groups doubles as a love letter to the famed beehive hairstyle. Diaz-Ibarra isn’t just spouting facts for the sake of it, though – she’s making connections to bigger points about immigration, feminism and racism in the U.S.

Diaz-Ibarra had been sharing music, articles and podcasts – “whatever caught our eye,” she says – with friends every morning. One pal had tuned her into Steven Van Zandt’s long-running radio show Little Steven’s Underground Garage and suggested that she do something like that. Diaz-Ibarra didn’t know how to make a podcast, but figured she could teach herself. “I just thought if I don’t do it now, then when?” she says. “Why should I wait for a perfect moment to start something?”

Napalm Nanny and the Shack launched in February with Diaz-Ibarra learning how to make a show with every episode. She records and edits the podcast herself and, save for some commissioned pieces, makes the cover at as well.

Now half-a-year into her podcasting journey, Diaz-Ibarra recalls listening to some of those early episodes. “It was so cringe-worthy,” she says, noting the nervousness in her voice when she debuted. “Even my friends, they were very harsh critics, very honest critics,” she adds. She says that making the weekly show has been a process of becoming more comfortable with her voice and “finding a rhythm” that dictates how much music she plays and how much information she shares.

Each episode has a theme, ranging from The Cramps’ fetish influences to the role that some musicians played during the Cold War. “I honestly wish I could explain the message, but it’s all just scribbled in a notebook,” she says of the show. “It’s whatever I find interesting, to be honest.”

There’s a lot of research that goes into each episode. “I usually do it the old school way, where I read through articles and take my notes,” she says. “I might have an idea of where an episode might take me, but, sometimes, it completely changes depending on the research.”

Driving the series is the music, which varies from episode to episode, but includes a lot of garage rock and soul with a selection that’s impeccable. You’ll hear some stuff you know, but a lot of it may be unfamiliar. “For me, music has always been an escape,” says Diaz-Ibarra. “I didn’t grow up in the happiest of homes. I grew up in a city where violence was pretty common. I grew up in Lynwood. Watts, Compton, those were my stomping grounds as a kid,” she says. “Growing up and saying I can recognize gun shots, it’s not something that’s all that common. It’s common for me and my community. But, when I put on headphones or played with the radio, it sent me somewhere completely different and it’s something that meant the world to me.”

Diaz-Ibarra continues, “Because it means so much to me, it’s something that I want to share with others.”

Photo Credit: William Pasillas

Nanny Napalm and the Shack was made for her friends, but anyone else who wants to listen is welcome to join the ride. And they have. “I’ve met some really wonderful people sharing with me their interests or sending me music,” Diaz-Ibarra says. “It’s developed a pretty sweet community.”

In a recent episode, Diaz-Ibarra explored telenovelas, connecting the serialized television shows to immigration experiences. After the episode, she heard from listeners who recalled the series they had seen with their family. “I think that pop culture is something that we’re surrounded with, even if we don’t realize it,” she says. “We might be playing in the background, but whatever our parents are watching, it has definitely impacted us.”

Diaz-Ibarra recalls televnovelas being on at home while she was growing up. “I can’t remember which specific novela my mom would watch – there were so many of them,” she says. But, as an adult, Diaz-Ibarra reflects on the significance of the shows. “Having the language in the living room once again meant the world to her. For me, it was just noise in the background.”

Sometimes, one episode isn’t enough;  it’s in those two-parters where Diaz-Ibarra’s mission might be revealed. Take, for example, her “Ranfla Cruise” episodes, which looks at lowrider culture and how it was impacted by racist laws in California, which led to one customizer, Ron Aguirre, to develop the car hydraulics system. Today, everyone is familiar with lowriders, but they might not know who Aguirre is. “I think that there are a lot of misconceptions within these really niche scenes and that’s what I really love to dig into,” says Diaz-Ibarra. “There are a lot of unknown, unsung heroes there.”

Loretti Releases Video for “Los Feliz” After A Chance Encounter at an L.A. Gig

Photo Courtesy Loretti

Back in October of last year, Loretti played at Stories Books and Cafe in Los Angeles’ Echo Park neighborhood, finishing the set with “Los Feliz.” As the band played, animator Maggie Noble rode her skateboard through the alley behind the venue and heard the song. “She came in and she came up to my keyboardist after the show and was like, I love that,” says Aimie Lovett Sommer, the singer and songwriter behind Loretti.

That chance encounter would result in the music video for “Los Feliz,” out on August 14. In the clip, Noble incorporates Sommer’s lyrics into a blissful, psychedelic jaunt through new love in one corner of L.A.

The song itself was a long time in the making. It was one of the first that Sommer, who released Loretti’s debut album The First Arrest in 2011, had written after taking a couple years off from making music. The chorus manifested after her fourth date with the guy who would become her husband.

“I piecemeal songs together,” says Sommer. “It’s very rare that I’ll sit down and write a whole song.” As she worked on it, she decided that it should be about their first few weeks of dating – “the little breakthrough moments that made us really want to focus on each other,” she says.

Sommer worked out the song live as Loretti evolved from a solo project to a band, and it became a fan favorite. “Los Feliz” was recorded as part of an EP, which is now being released track-by-track, at Moosecat Recording Studio between April and June of 2019.

When Sommer first met up with Noble to talk about a video collaboration, she took the animator on a drive through Los Feliz. “I explained to her where each lyric came from and the memories I had there and we basically storyboarded the video with that first meeting and I’ve been working with her ever since,” she says. “She did an amazing job under a lot of pressure and during a pandemic to get this done for me and I really appreciate it.”

Loretti began as a solo project more than a decade ago, when Sommer was living in Dallas. She had played in bands before, trying out styles from blues and jazz standards to rock projects where she wrote lyrics and melody. “I had always been dissatisfied with anything I had written individually,” she says. Sommer says that she “couldn’t escape” the influence of the music that she heard as a child – mostly soft rock, country gospel and vintage country – that came to her via her parents and older siblings. “Any time I would go to write, that’s what it sounded like to me.”

Sommer tried to resist those influences, but had a change of heart. “I had a good nine months to be in musical solitude and made my peace with it,” she says. ” I decided to lean way into it and embrace it and really develop it.”

The name Loretti is a nod to Coal Miner’s Daughter, the Loretta Lynn biopic starring Sissy Spacek and one of Sommer’s favorite movies. She played around a bit in Dallas and Austin before an unexpected move to Los Angeles. Sommer had intended to relocate to Portland, but a friend who was moving to L.A. urged her to spend a summer in the city. It only took a couple days in town for Sommer to decide that she wanted to stay longer. Even then, though, she was thinking about staying a year and then heading up north. That was a decade ago.

In addition to Loretti, Sommer also co-founded a production company, Softer Sex Productions, with Rose Shawhan of the band Good Witch. The two launched the project at a time when they were coming off of music hiatuses and looking for ways to introduce their bands.

For Sommer, who admits to having been “a little shy” about mingling with the local music community, the project was a way to help get to know other musicians as well. “It really helped me,” she says. “It introduced me to some incredibly talented women and it was a fulfillment for me to go to the shows and be like, I helped put this together.”

Due to the pandemic, Softer Sex shows are on hold indefinitely, since Los Angeles’ live music venues are also closed. For Sommer, who is also a registered nurse, that pause is alright, even though she’s not anticipating a return to the stage anytime soon.

“My real concerns go out to the venues themselves and people who rely on them for income – the talent buyers, the other promoters, where that’s their livelihood [that’s] just completely gone,” she says. “I’m definitely not going to cry for how long it will take us to have our first show because I feel like there are more people where it’s a greater concern for them than for us.”

She adds, “I’m excited to go to their shows first when things do open back up.”

Follow Loretti on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Bassist Kathy Valentine Discusses The Go-Go’s Documentary, Writing Her Memoir, and “Club Zero”

Ginger Canzoneri couldn’t believe it. The band she managed, the Go-Go’s, was one of the hottest groups in Los Angeles, regularly drawing adoring, sellout crowds at top clubs. But despite the acclaim, they couldn’t seem to land a record deal. Even more flabbergasting was the reason why. “I had a file folder of rejection letters from record labels in Los Angeles [saying] ‘Thanks, but all-girl bands just don’t sell records.’” Canzoneri says, still sounding mystified, in The Go-Go’s, a new documentary about the band that recently debuted on Showtime. The quality of the music, enthusiastic audiences, and media raves didn’t matter. It’s a band of girls? Nope!

But as we know, the Go-Go’s and Canzoneri ended up having the last laugh. IRS Records finally signed the group, and their debut album, Beauty and the Beat (1981) became the first album by an all-female band, who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments, to top the Billboard charts, with classic singles “We Got the Beat” and “Our Lips Are Sealed” also rocking the Top 40.

And for most people, that’s where the band’s story starts: the moment they crashed into the mainstream and became “America’s pop sweethearts” (a label that still makes them cringe). But The Go-Go’s, directed by Alison Ellwood (History of the Eagles; Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place), opens up that story, finally putting the band’s history, and all their accomplishments, in their proper context. It’s a film that re-establishes the band’s importance, and their influence; a film that says, yes, the Go-Go’s mattered.

The band’s early period is arguably the most exciting in the film. The Go-Go’s started out as a part of the scene that centered around legendary LA club the Masque in the late ’70s, hanging out with the likes of the Germs and X. “I thought it was common knowledge that the Go-Go’s came from the streets of LA, the LA punk rock scene,” says Kathy Valentine, the band’s bassist, speaking on the phone during a whirlwind day doing press for the documentary. “And I was a little floored when Alison said, ‘No, this is a narrative that I don’t think has been told.’ And then I started realizing – for so many people, their only knowledge of the Go-Go’s is videos, MTV appearances, and pop songs on the radio.”

“There never would have been the Go-Go’s without the punk rock scene in Los Angeles,” Jane Wiedlin (rhythm guitar, vocals), says in the film. There’s a riveting clip of the group’s first lineup playing a St. Patrick’s Day gig, vocalist Belinda Carlisle’s black hair, black attire, and fierce glare totally at odds with her sunny, California Girl persona of just a few years later. Torn t-shirts and ripped fishnets were de rigueur; even a trash bag could be a fashion accessory. “The punk scene gave me an outlet to act out and be the badass that I thought I was,” Carlisle observes in the film.

“We saw no reason why we couldn’t be just as good as the boys, or men,” she goes on to say. “We weren’t going to be anything but a great band.” The band’s growing ambition led to original drummer Elissa Bello, who’d refused to quit her job to become a full-time Go-Go, being replaced by Gina Schock (Bello admits her dedication to the band wasn’t as strong as the rest of the group; “I stuck my toe in the water, but I never dove in all the way”).

And then one day, lead guitarist/vocalist Charlotte Caffey brought in a new song: “We Got the Beat.” Despite its obvious strengths, she admits to be “terrified” to bring it to the group because it was so obviously a pop song; “I thought, ‘These guys are going to throw me out of this band.’” But the group recognized its merits, and it indicated a shift in musical direction. Then Wiedlin brought in “Our Lips Are Sealed,” a song she’d written based on a letter from her erstwhile boyfriend, Terry Hall of the Specials, that was another foray into pop. It was too much for original bassist Margo Olavarria, who felt the group was moving away from their raw punk roots, with the motivation now being, she says, “Less about art and more about money.”

But Kathy Valentine, who would end up replacing Olaverria, recognized that the ultimate power of a band rests in the quality of their songs, and that the Go-Go’s songs were built to last. “The thing is, a well-crafted song is a well-crafted song,” she points out. “You could slow down a Buzzcocks song, or you could take ‘God Save the Queen’ — the elements of a good song are there, whether it’s played fast or snarled or pounding 16th notes. So the Go-Go’s, the bones of our songs were well-crafted, hooky, with smart lyrics.”

She credits Richard Gottehrer, who produced their first two albums, with giving their records their trademark sound. “Richard said, ‘Let’s give these melodies some room. Let’s slow it down a little bit.’ That was the big change. And now, when our music gets played, it doesn’t sound dated. And I’m so grateful that Richard knew that this needed to be a classic sounding band that didn’t adhere to some kind of trend of what was going on in studios in the ’80s. And a lot of bands do sound super dated. And I feel to this day, when I hear [our] music, I can’t believe how well it stands up.”

The group was not so happy with how others wanted to market them, once fame arrived. Their discomfort with their first Rolling Stone cover shoot clearly still bothers them nearly 40 years later. They reluctantly agreed to don men’s underwear for the shoot, but were mortified by the juvenile headline slapped on the cover: “Go-Go’s Put Out.”

“It was actually very weird to be sexualized,” says Valentine. “I know that guys had crushes on us and stuff, but it’s not like we were out there  dressing suggestively and gyrating around and grabbing our crotches. We were just kind of hopping around. The whole weird thing with the first Rolling Stone cover was, ‘Here they are in their underwear, and they’re still not sexy!’ Here they are without their clothes on, in their underwear, and it’s still the girl next door. Why isn’t it enough that we could just put our clothes on and smile and take a picture? Why is that not enough for this band? It’s enough for guys to go stand by a wall, or stand on a railroad track, or walk down the road, or all those photos you do with the guys. So that was annoying.” A later cover featured the band fully clothed, but with another questionable headline: “Women On Top.”

In addressing this and other controversial issues in the band’s career, The Go-Go’s allows the band to reclaim their own story on their own terms. They’d all felt that VH1’s Behind the Music episode on the band had been exploitative. “It had the format and structure of a reality TV show, where you form-fit the content that you shoot to fit the structure and narrative,” Valentine says. “Every time the show would go to a commercial it would say, ‘When we come back, more about Charlotte’s dance with the devil!’ I mean, it was so dramatic. It really focused on Charlotte’s drug addiction. They like to focus on the salacious parts.”

Conversely, while the band members openly discuss their substance abuse issues in the documentary, it’s not the focus. Bello and Olavarria get to tell their side of the story about their dismissals, and Canzoneri frankly admits her pain when she was sidelined after the group took on high-powered management. The publishing difficulties that led to the first break-up are also detailed.

Before work could even begin on the documentary, Ellwood had to get all the Go-Go’s together again. Valentine had been fired from the band in 2012, not rejoining until 2018. She used the time away from the group to write All I Ever Wanted: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoir, published earlier this year. “In writing that part of my story, I was really able to come to a mindset where I’m not gonna let ugliness taint and ruin for me what was one of the biggest joys of my life,” she says. “So when the band invited me back, and things healed in that regard, it was so much easier for me to let go and forgive and take my rightful place again, because of writing the book.”

Revisiting her past also allowed her to serve as an impromptu fact checker during her interview for The Go-Go’s. “There were lots of times they had to stop the camera, because I’m like, ‘No, no, you got that wrong,’ or ‘No, that date was this,’ or ‘No, this is what really happened.’ I knew my shit, because I had exhaustively documented and researched my facts!”

Though the film packs a lot into its 97-minute running time, it still doesn’t cover the entire story, skimming over the past 30 years since the 1990 reunion. But the ending is in the present day, showing the band at work on their first new single in nearly two decades, “Club Zero.” It’s an instantly catchy song made for the dance floor. But pay attention to the lyrics, and you’ll see this bright and optimistic song is also an anthem of empowerment, a deliberate choice on the part of the band members.

“When we decided to write a song for the documentary, it was a big deal, because we’ve never generated material while living in five different places, so it was challenging,” Valentine explains. “But the first thing we did, was we came up with topics that we felt we could write and sing about that we were comfortable with at this stage, as Go-Go’s in our 60s. And at the top of the list was what was going on with the patriarchy, and #MeToo and Times Up. There was just this strong feeling that, without being preachy, we wanted an anthem that really summed up the attitude of so many people, which is, we’re fed up. Things have to change. And that is the overriding sentiment; there’s large swaths of people that have just had it, whether it’s racial injustice or income inequality or women tired of being marginalized or LGBTQ [rights].” Valentine says the band went for a “Love Shack” vibe, except that Club Zero was a place where, as the lyrics say, zero fucks are given.

“I think the timing is kind of uncanny. It’s really grown on me, and I’ve started to feel like this could be really the right song at the right time,” Valentine says. “I don’t really dial up my expectations ever about anything anymore. I just kind of always expect the worst and hope for the best. But I don’t know, there’s something about ‘Club Zero’ that just feels really right for the time.”

While celebrating the Go-Go’s breakthrough of being the first all-female band to top the US album charts, the documentary also points out that no other all-female band has done so since, begging the question: why not? “I think about it a lot,” says Valentine, “because when I first became a musician, that was my longing, was to see all-female bands at the top. It’s just harder for women. If she gets to that point in her life when she starts a family and stuff, she’s not gonna go leave her kid at home. And unless you’re successful on a level of a Chrissie Hynde or whatever, it’s really hard. It’s a struggle for women in the professional realm all across the board.”

“That doesn’t mean there’s not really cool, awesome female bands out there. There’s tons of them,” Valentine adds. “Probably every city has got a cool female band in it. But for every one female band there must be hundreds and hundreds of guys starting bands.” As The Go-Go’s demonstrates, the band continues to provide inspiration to countless female musicians. “We’re not a super active band now, but I still think we put out a really positive, empowering message for women that as you get into your 60s, you can still be relevant. Maybe not in the way the pop culture defines the way a musician or an artist should be relevant, but there’s something about this band that, if I wasn’t in the Go-Go’s, and I was in my 40s or 50s, I would be inspired by seeing us,” Valentine says.

“The endurance of the band is in itself such an achievement. I’m so grateful that the documentary highlights the endurance, not only of the songs and the music, but of the band,” she adds. “I’m really grateful for what we are and what we have accomplished. I’m really grateful that these women are in my life, and that we are close, and that we care about each other, and that old hurts and betrayals have been forgiven, and that we have healed. That’s what I’m grateful for.”

The Go-Go’s is available now on Showtime.

PREMIERE: Girl Friday Rebels Against Gendered Limitations on “Earthquake”

Most women have at some point been prohibited from doing something they wanted to do because of their gender, whether due to subtle stereotyping or overt oppression. “Earthquake,” the latest single by L.A.-based, riot grrrl-inspired indie rock band Girl Friday, is an anthem for women who are sick of these kinds of limitations. “I have a lot of friends whose brothers did things like skateboarding or sports or things that were kind of messy and were told over and over again, ‘Don’t do that because you’ll get hurt, but your brother will be fine,'” explains guitarist Sierra Scott. “So it’s that energy of ‘you can’t do things that are destructive’ — it’s kind of just screaming for the sake of letting things happen.”

With a fun punk beat, angsty shouted lyrics, and energetic guitar riffs that evoke a feeling of mischief, the single is intended to sound like “an explosion of energy” and capture the feeling of being “stuck and trapped and wanting to shake things up,” both on an individual and a societal level, says singer/guitarist Vera Ellen. “I just want to feel like an earthquake/Everything is boring for fuck’s sake,” they belt in the chorus. Drummer Virginia Pettis remembers recording it in a basement with a floor covered in guitar pedals. “I feel like I saw the biggest pedal board in my life,” she says.

“Earthquake” is one of several highlights off the band’s debut full-length album, Androgynous Mary, out on August 21 via Hardly Art. On the LP’s first single, “Amber’s Knees: A Matter of Concern,” chaotic electric guitars take the listener through a narrative about watching reality TV and turning a blind eye to society’s injustices. On “Clotting,” a slower-paced, more classically indie track, the band sings of “exorcising demons like they own me.” The opening track and second single, “This Is Not the Indie Rock I Signed Up For,” is also mellow, but still uplifting, serving as a tribute to the band’s memories together. “Little burning and little lies/They pull at my hair and tell me what I’m like/But I’m so happy you’re here/I’m so happy you’re with me,” goes the heartwarming chorus.

“A lot of it is little moments of a lot of the past couple years of us being in a band, just kind of trying to paint small moments of community among darker times, connecting with other people or with yourself in ways and maybe in little unexpected moments that might otherwise go unacknowledged,” says Scott. In the same spirit, the video features campy vignettes of the band — which includes Ellen, Scott, Pettis, and Libby Hsieh (bass and vocals) — touring, then collapsing into giggles.

The friendship that’s so palpable in Girl Friday’s music and videos stems back to their days in college together at UCLA. After playing their first music together in Pettis’s room in 2017, they performed at house parties around campus before touring professionally. Their band name comes from a film class Ellen took where she learned about the trope of the “Girl Friday” — the secretary behind a powerful man who actually does all the work (they soon learned that they shared their name with many secretary agencies).

Playing with loaded phrases and layers of meaning is something Girl Friday does exceptionally well. Though it’s steeped in metaphors and knotty guitar licks, “Public Bodies” is meant to convey “the idea of being under the foot of somebody else or disadvantaged in some way and trying to push the foot off, get out from under the foot,” says Ellen – in that way, it’s thematically similar to “Earthquake.” In the video, the band looks after a collection of plants – some real, some animated, perhaps in a nod to the millenial horticultural self-care boom – until kitschy stop-motion weeds threaten that peace of mind. It’s playful, but it’s also not hard to draw a parallel to the very real frustration with the patriarchy and how it can interrupt someone’s well-being. “Does the average man feel like he’s on the outside?” asks the song’s deadpan lyrics. “When I say I’m in pain, they don’t believe it.”

 

The title for the album is similarly intriguing – while the group was walking around, they passed a mural of what looked like an androgynous Virgin Mary, and something about the image spoke to them. “Androgynous Mary is all of us — she lives within you,” Hsieh jokes, describing the music as less clean and edited and more aggressive than the band’s past EPs, mimicking their live sound. “When we recorded the songs, we tried to get everything live and dub over to sound thicker or heavier and get different tones,” Scott explains.

The band members, currently in different parts of the world, have been working on music independently and plan to record more together once they’re in the same place again. In the meantime, their album serves as a testament to the bonds that remain unlimited by constraints, whether temporal, geographical, or societal.

Follow Girl Friday on Facebook for ongoing updates.

Harry the Nightgown Deconstruct Their Relationship on Experimental Self-Titled Debut

When Sami Perez and Spencer Hartling met at a Ventura, CA dive bar where they’d both performed in 2014, they had an immediate connection that was both romantic and artistic. It turned out the latter outlasted the former, but this didn’t put a damper on their band, Harry the Nightgown. In fact, it fueled it; their self-titled debut album is dedicated to this very experience of making music with your ex.

Perez and Hartling had already written much of the album’s music while they were still together — then, after their breakup, they were tasked with the challenge of writing the lyrics. “Pretty much all the songs are about each other or how we were feeling trying to pursue working together while also managing separating romantically,” Perez explains. “It’s kind of like a representation of our commitment to working together as musicians, because I think as musical partners, we really click.”

Though both members wrote the lyrics, they often did so on their own, then came into the studio and shared them with each other. This meant that the process of making the album initiated some big post-breakup conversations. “There were many times where one of us would be in the live room recording vocals, showing the person the lyrics for the first time, and the other person would be in the control room, kind of panicky, freaking out, or appreciative — it was such an emotional process,” says Perez. “It’s taken a year now, but we’re finally at a place where we can comfortably work together and not feel so much tension that you feel with an ex-partner.”

You might not surmise the album’s heavy subject matter from the fun sound, and indeed, many of the songs put a humorous spin on breakups. In “Pill Poppin’ Therapist,” Perez reflects on her desire to help her partner while using him to self-medicate her own issues: “Rocky Horror sleepover/I needed you/Seemed so healthy from a distance/Something new/I made a pill out of you.”

In the duo’s first single “Ping Pong,” Hartling sings about making peace with the breakup and feeling confident in he and Perez’s ability to move through it and stay friends: “I’m a decent friend at best and I know you see it/But you don’t want to sound uptight/I’m a careless ex, I know, so don’t waste time here/Yeah, you’ve got better things to do.” The video keeps up the silly tone of the song, with Hartling singing and strolling around with a lampshade on his head — a “runaway lamp” getup inspired by his most recent Halloween costume.

With both members on guitar and bass and Hartling on drums, the L.A.-based duo has mastered an aesthetic encompassing a variety of indie rock styles. Perez’s saccharine voice has earned the band comparisons to Deerhoof, while the use of electric guitar on songs like “Ping Pong” is a bit reminiscent of The Strokes. The band cites Kate Bush, Raincoats, XTC, and Rosalía as major influences behind the LP. Both had played in various bands before forming Harry the Nightgown; Perez started the band The She’s with several of her friends in middle school, then began playing bass for L.A.-based rockers Cherry Glazerr in 2013. Currently, she balances these two projects with Harry the Nightgown, while Hartling’s focus is more on sound engineering.

Harry the Nightgown — a name that stems from Perez’s nickname for a tree outside her childhood window — also made use of electronic techniques on the album. As sound engineers, both Perez and Hartling set out to push the bounds of what they could do production-wise. Recording at John Vanderslice’s all-analog Tiny Telephone studio, where they both worked, they’d spend entire days messing around with old Moog and ARC synthesizers and create harmonies through vocal layering. In “Babbling,” which Perez remembers struggling to record right after the breakup, her voice slowly, hauntingly soars above a choir created by multiple recordings of her own voice, while “In My Head” adds discordant arcade-like instrumentals to a similarly multi-tracked vocal.

“[An all-analog studio] sets limitations, but in a way that forces you to be really creative,” says Perez. “For example, there’s only 24 tracks, so how do we make a song sound interesting and complex without just adding a million tracks? That’s a challenge.”

The duo plans to donate a portion of their singles’ proceeds to the Summaeverythang Community Center, which brings organic produce to South Central L.A. and works to empower Black communities. After processing their breakup in the studio, their professional relationship is still flourishing – they’ve got two more singles and a new album on the way. And, along with Vanderslice, they’ve established a modest backyard studio in Los Angeles called Grandma’s Couch. With a knack for deconstruction that extends from their own romance to their sonic aesthetic, Harry the Nightgown may have created the experimental indie equivalent of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours – without sacrificing their creative kinship.

Follow Harry the Nightgown on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Winter Infuses Synthy Dreampop with Magic and Wonder on Third LP

Photo Credit: Angel Aura

Samira Winter has been putting out charmingly sweet yet sassy songs through her indie rock band Winter since 2013, capturing her Brazilian heritage with Portuguese lyrics in many of them. Her latest album, Endless Space (Between You & I), is full of the same infectious shoegaze she’s so adeptly mastered, but it stands out in its dreamy style, which she dubs “fairy tale surrealism.”

The 11 songs are each experimental in their own way but also incredibly catchy. “Healing” opens with warped synths and a sweetly sung verse that will almost certainly get stuck in your head — “Why’d you have to be so cold?/Everybody knows that it’s not your way” — then disintegrates into dissonant notes at the end. Winter croons about a scene “higher than the sky” in the chorus to “In the Z Plane,” which resembles a children’s song, with a simple melody that makes you feel like you really are floating above the clouds.

The LP’s title track gives off subtle ’80s vibes, with Winter’s angelic voice mellowly singing, “I don’t want to feel afraid to give the love I have to you.” She says it was originally written about an unattainable love but, in the days of COVID-19, has come to signify “the space between humans,” she explains. “The space between human relationships right now can feel so infinite, and the time from now until the way things were pre-COVID feels like an endless amount of space.”

The LA-based artist released a stunning video for the single in April, featuring her turning into a butterfly amid natural imagery and celestial lighting that belies where it was shot: in a New York City apartment. She worked with a director whose background was in puppetry and old-form storytelling, and the result was a style she describes as “old Hollywood mixed with fairytale story.” The metamorphosis is meant to symbolize “coming into your own skin,” she says.

Winter’s childhood in Brazil introduced her to the beautiful, softly sung melodies that now characterize her work, then later on, she became inspired by the shoegaze and dreampop she listened to in college. Endless Space (Between You & I) is her third full-length album, and she’s already released two EPs and is working on her third, but has mostly been taking it easy during the pandemic and hanging out with her cat Zoey, who happens to be the subject of what is perhaps her catchiest song and definitely her cutest video.

All in all, Endless Space (Between You & I) has the heaviest psych-pop influence of Winter’s music. “The way I write songs is very melody-heavy, so I think it’s a cool mix of dreamy, beautiful melodies with psych arrangements and a lot of ambient influences,” she says. “I’d run my mics through pedal board on every song.” She and producer Ian Gibbs also got creative by incorporating samples of bird sounds and fireworks she heard outside her house.

The experimental sound and outdoor samplings suit the natural and otherworldly themes of the album. Winter’s interest in occult literature, tarot, and astrology influenced her songwriting; “Pure Magician” is named after a tarot card, and keeping the video for another single off the album, the airy “Here I Am Existing,” features Winter dressed as various tarot cards. “I was really inspired by the tarot,” she says. “I think they’re really powerful ways to express different human stories and human archetypes.”

Endless Space unfolds the more you listen to it. The album as a whole aims to depict “a utopian dream world — this place that you can either discover deep within yourself or that you can journey in your dreams,” she explains. “Through music, I like to take people through a magical world.” With darkness hovering over the real one, it’s nice to have that escape.

Follow Winter on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

LA’s All My Friends Hate Me Recall Youthful Recklessness With New Song, “Blood”

All My Friends Hate Me don’t shy away from thorny topics. On their 2019 debut, the brutally volatile Metal Butterflies, the pop/punk band uprooted themes of gun control, near-sexual assault, the LA machine, and exorbitant college debt. Their rebellious artistic habits serve them well, even if the band’s name makes them seem unpopular. When it comes to their new single “Blood,” the four-piece playfully recount frontman Bobby Banister’s teenage recklessness and his tendencies to blow off steam by joyriding in his mother’s car.

It’s a high-voltage bridge-builder from their previous work, yet continues pushing their stylistic boundaries further near the cliff’s edge. “I was alive, going down for the summer/With my eyes open wide/God knows I tried/I can’t get back the feeling of the very first time/I was that guy, switching lanes, mother fucker/Middle finger to the sky,” Banister spouts. The song initially runs somber and plaintive, but as he finds freedom on the highway, midnight air caressing his skin, it soon catapults into souped-up velocity.

As a kid, Banister “felt pretty trapped the whole time by insomnia,” he recalls, “and was restless from some pretty extreme ADHD. Being awake more hours than most people can be an advantage, and now I’m able to spend those hours on creative projects. But back then, being a 14-year-old with ADHD and insomnia and nowhere to aim it led to some interesting stories.”

One of his many stories involved snagging his mom’s keys, tip-toeing through the house, and hopping inside the family car for a midnight spin “just to have somewhere to scream out ‘Heroes’ by David Bowie,” he says. “When I was that age, growing up in a small town, being a musician meant you’d probably get laughed at, so that was like a safe space for me. It was just hard to keep a straight face when my mom would turn on the Volvo to drive me to school in the mornings and have no idea why the light on the gas gauge was blinking or why there was mud, grass or a drop of blood on the floorboard of the driver’s seat.”

Other kids soon gave him the affectionate nickname “Bob Zombie,” a moniker he found “pretty sweet,” all things considered. “Writing ‘Blood’ was going back to the driver’s seat of a soccer-mom Volvo and that late-night feeling of freedom ─ those times when it’s brave over brains. ‘It’s the blood that makes us who we are’ is not saying it’s in your genes, but that after the mistakes, the hardships, the scrapes and scars, what you take away from those experiences is what makes you who you are.”

All My Friends Hate Me prides itself on its lyrical whips. With “Blood,” they layered deeper instrumentation on that vocal foundation than ever before. “It was fun to experiment a little and see where it led. It wasn’t a difficult process, but it took a bit more time to create than other songs did,” Banister says.

Alongside the single release, the band is issuing a bright new hoodie emblazoned with the slogan “All My Friends Hate Systemic Oppression,” with 100 percent of proceeds benefiting B.E.A.M. (Black Emotional & Mental Health). Like many white artists, Banister and his band mates Beau McCarthy, Xander Burmer, and Justin Kroger have done plenty of soul-searching this year, from learning about the societal injustices that led to the the tragic murder of George Floyd to listening to the ongoing rallying cry for justice for Breonna Taylor. “Our privilege is definitely something we’ve had to confront. Being brought up to trust the police and not having to be warned how to act around them because of fear is one huge privilege, out of many,” Banister says. “We hope to see and to be a part of real change in the ways of racism, sexism and discrimination, in general, and we’re not shy to talk about what we believe is right.”

“The way that this generation has taken it upon themselves to light up this movement, bring it to the forefront of conversation, and let everyone know we will not put up with this, is inspiring to see, especially in person at the protests,” he continues. “At the same time, the fact that humans are still being discriminated against in 2020 and that so many police are murdering, yet seeing very little punishment, is unacceptable.”

Therein lies the reason for creating the new hoodie, as not only a symbol but a way to move the needle, even in the smallest way. “We recognize our own white, male privilege, and this is one way that we can do our part to help remove the many barriers surrounding communities who have been discriminated against. It’s one of the ways we’re taking action, rather than just talking on social media.”

In taking such actionable steps, they’ve also seen things change in their everyday lives. “In terms of the conversations we’re having and anyone we’re choosing to work with, we’re being more intentional in certain ways, like knowing when to speak and when to listen during conversations and in making sure everyone AMFHM works with is socially conscious,” Banister offers. “We hope, as society starts to rebuild from the COVID-19 pandemic, that we start to see even more positive change take place. If we don’t, you can bet that we’ll be back out in the streets of DTLA again.”

Follow All My Friends Hate Me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for ongoing updates.

TeaMarrr Lets Loose With Candid Lyrics and Crossover Appeal on Before I Spill Myself EP

Haitian-American R&B artist TeaMarrr‘s latest EP Before I Spill Myself began as a humorous and candid exploration of sex and love – but somehow, the songs turned into something more than that. For instance, “Doin It Wrong” rips into a bad lover, but after releasing the music, she realized it was healing people in more ways than she anticipated. “At first, I felt guilty or ashamed that I was like ‘look at me, look at me,'” she says of promoting the release. “But people are actually using this to find themselves and escape and find a little break form the madness.” In the same spirit, “One Job” describes a man who gets “emotional” when she only signed up for “the dick;” on social media, activists began re-appropriating the lyrics in service of social justice, writing statements like “they only have one job: arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor,” and “they only have one job: protest,” says the singer.

When she recorded Before I Spill Myself, TeaMarrr was “trying to put a beginning, middle, and end to the feeling of meeting somebody and falling for them and realizing they weren’t it,” she says. “I wanted it to be through my heartbreak and betrayal. I just wanted to put something out that’s relatable and medicinal for people that are going through it in the same way that I was, when it comes to being unsure of yourself.”

With her brazen lyrics and crossover appeal, TeaMarrr is to the Haitian diaspora what Nicki Minaj is to Trinidad or Rihanna is to Barbados. TeaMarrr doesn’t typically write her songs before she gets to the studio — she finds a beat then freestyles over it until she finds something she likes, a style borne from her early days recording her voice over beats she found on YouTube. This method gives her lyrics a conversational tone that makes you feel like a friend is giving you advice. In “Done,” for instance, she speaks the words, “Just calm the fuck down/K, you don’t need this human/You don’t need any human/OK, I lied, but/Just understand that you are enough.” On opening track, “Chasing Amy,” she warns a new love interest about herself: “I kinda bite.” In “Whorey Heart,” she complains about a partner who can’t help but sleep around: “You don’t want walks in the park/You just want everyone sucking you off.”

The Boston-born, LA-based artist is intentionally open about sexuality, which she considers a form of empowerment. “A lot of my lyrics, even more emotional ones, stem from the empowerment I feel not from getting fucked but fucking someone,” she explains. That’s what she sings about in “Tick” ft. SiR: “I ain’t had it in a long time, but while we’re on time, let me fuck you/Love me from moon shine ’til your morning wood/Give it to me for the one time ’cause you dumb fine and I want you.”

TeaMarrr’s sexual candidness also shines in her latest video, for “Doin’ It Wrong.” In the James Bland-directed clip, she and a group of women dance in front of Insecure actor Jean Elie and other men, addressing lyrics to them like,”Please slow down/Too much tongue/Don’t fuck up the rhythm/Are you done?” The video was inspired by musical theater, with the women performing on a stage and venting about bad lovers in a backstage area while they’re doing their makeup.

TeaMarrr’s ties to Insecure don’t end there – she was the first artist signed to Issa Rae’s joint venture with Atlantic Records, Raedio, which encompasses publishing, live events, music supervision, and artist development. TeaMarrr says she saw herself in Rae’s Awkward Black Girl series, and making that connection felt manifested. Rae, for her part, told Billboard in February, “I want her to succeed. I am listening to everything and I am giving my opinion about everything.”

All in all, different listeners can take very different meanings from the EP, but TeaMarrr hopes that in some way, it helps them all to heal themselves and reflect on their lives. “We’re in quarantine, so what are we here to do besides look in the mirror?” she points out. “This is the perfect time for the music to come out because people are trying to reinvent themselves. We’re in a new dimension in 2020, music-wise, historic-wise, so I’m excited to see what comes about.”

Follow TeaMarrr on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for ongoing updates.

L.A. DJ Bianca Oblivion Shares Her Eclectic Tastes With New Tracks and Zoom Livestream

The first single Bianca Oblivion owned was “Pump Up the Jam,” the 1989 techno-pop hit from Technotronic that would endure on club dance floors for decades to follow. “When I was a little kid, I made my parents go and buy that for me,” she says by phone. It proved to be a seminal influence for the L.A.-based DJ and producer.

“Early ’90s house and techno were a big influence,” she continues. “You’re a kid, you don’t really know what it is. You just know that it’s music you like. So, I didn’t really identify what it was until later on.” Instead, it came together with Madonna, Janet Jackson, ’90s hip-hop and everything else that Oblivion heard in her childhood to build a foundation for the eclectic tastes she would develop in the DJ booth and her home studio. Today, Oblivion links together styles like baile funk, reggaeton and house-offshoots like Jersey club, vogue and UK funky.

Oblivion got her start on college radio in the ’00s, playing indie and post-punk tunes alongside her collection of hip-hop records, with some freestyle and house thrown into the set. In 2006, she began playing at clubs in and around Los Angeles. She set her sights on remixing and producing music in 2016, about a decade after her start in the club world. Oblivion’s first releases were unofficial edits. The two earliest of those, “The Girls Dish n Tell” and “House of Gully,” drew from early ’90s house jams. Not long after that, her edit “Chant Con Sal,” which melded the King Doudou cut “Sal” with “I Chant, You Vogue” by Leggoh, got a shout out in FACT Magazine. “That was one of my first edits and it got some attention,” she says. For Oblivion, that was incredibly exciting, so she kept going. Since then, she’s released of edits, remixes and original tracks.

Locally, she’s perhaps best known for the Latin American and Afro-Caribbean-focused party CULosAngeles, which she co-promoted with Francesca Harding for two years. She’s known for playing a broad range of music and for cultivating events that are inclusive. “I’ve always made it a space that’s inclusive of women, LGBTQIA artists and party-goers and want to make it a safe space for everyone with all different kinds of influences and sounds coming through,” says Oblivion.

Even during lockdown, Oblivion has been keeping the party going. On a Friday night, not long after Los Angeles County shut its bars for the second time during the COVID-19 pandemic, spirits were high on Zoom where Oblivion was DJing. It was 9pm in L.A. and there were already 66 people in the room when she began her set, some of whom would raise a drink or turn on the dance moves when their screens pop to the front. Oblivion gave the crowd a bounty of late-night, heavy-impact beats, with traces of turn-of-century pop – Destiny’s Child, Britney Spears, Nelly. It was the first of her two sets that night for Spiral, a weekly Zoom party founded by fellow L.A. DJ The Saddest Angel. Oblivion initially came on board as a DJ, but recently, she’s been co-promoting the event.

“It’s unpredictable,” says Oblivion by phone. That goes for both her set and the crowd, which can bring in visitors from virtually anywhere with an internet connection. Oblivion had tried other livestream platforms before and says Zoom is surprisingly comparable to the club because of crowd response. “You an see the people vibing and dancing to it on screen,” she says. “Even if they aren’t on screen or don’t have the video on, they respond by chat.”

It’s become a special space, lockdown aside, because of the virtual party’s ability to bring in guest DJs and party-goers from across the globe. “I would actually hate to see this space disappear once the regular clubs open,” says Oblivion. “We don’t know how that’s going to happen or when it’s going to happen. I imagine that, at least in L.A., it will be this way for some time.”

Oblivion, who also hosts the monthly NTS show Club Aerobics, has also been spending the time at home working on her productions. Her latest track, “Calling,” appears on the Club Djembe Vol. 2 compilation (out today), from the label (and U.K. club night) Club Djembe. Oblivion says that she was influenced by ’90s Latin and tribal house for the track. ” I don’t know if people really expect that from me,” she says, “but I think that once you hear it, you’ll understand that it’s a good fit with the rest of what I’ve done.”

She also recently collaborated with the MC XL Mad for another new tune, “Bubble Pon Di Bed,” that Oblivion will self-release in August.

“I actually feel that my current production really does stem from the initial edits I did, which also stems from my DJ style,” she says. “I just love to mix a bunch of different dance genres.”

Follow Bianca Oblivion on Instagram for ongoing updates.

PREMIERE: Lauren Lakis Spreads Optimism With “We’ll Be Fine” Video

Shoegaze/dream-pop artist Lauren Lakis originally wrote her latest single, “We’ll Be Fine,” about an imagined future breakup with someone she was dating at the time. “I was just trying to convey that no matter what happens between us, we’ll still be friends and it’s all good because there’s so much love between us,” she explains. As it turns out, they did break up and they did remain friends, so the message of the song proved true. But in the apocalyptic COVID-era world, the song, like many works of art, came to take on a whole new meaning. During a time when everyone is wondering what life will look like on the other side of the pandemic, the song offers a reassuring answer, wrapped in calming waves of reverb and cascading vocals.

Lakis hopes the song teaches listeners that “it’s okay to work through the shadow self,” she explains. “It’s just kind of all a part of life — we all have to experience yin and yang. And sometimes, when we’re going through hard times or difficult times or scary times — actually, usually when we’re going through those things — it’s only going to elicit a transformation within us.”

The progression of the song itself embodies the concept of transformation. Lakis wrote the beginning and ending of “We’ll Be Fine” at two different times, and that shows in its varying melodies, paces, and instrumentals.

The track starts off slow and contemplative, a wash of cymbals accompanying a drawn-out, echoey vocal, but picks up as Lakis almost shouts the next verse: “See you walking on the water/Praying for a miracle now /Won’t you fuck it up, suck it up, Do, you got your miracle now?/See the man in the moon?/The man in the moon is you.” Lakis never sings repeated lyrics the same way twice, stretching her witchy intonations over crashing drums as though willing the positive outcome she promises.

The video for the single paints a mystical scene, with celestial-looking light shining down on Lakis as she wanders across a bridge, runs through a forest, and picks flowers in a fairy-like blue dress. Impressively, it was filmed while Lakis was sick with an illness she thinks might have been COVID. She was quarantined with her producer in Portland, so they decided to film it in the woods nearby.

“It kind of felt like more than being trapped in the house — I felt trapped inside my own head and trapped with recurrent thoughts and my own habitual behavior,” she says. “Being in the woods was symbolic of being trapped inside one’s own head. I felt like I was running from myself. At the end of the video, I was running through the woods and I was out on the street, and it was at the end of the quarantine life, like a ghost town, emerging from the depths of one’s own mind to society, but society isn’t even there.”

The single encapsulates a more standard indie rock aesthetic than much of Lakis’s past work, with reverb-laden vocals and guitars in the vein of Band of Horses and Fleet Foxes. “I wanted it to feel big and swirly,” she says. “I wanted to go for a really energetic and powerful vibe. I wanted it to elicit chills if possible, but in a good way. I just wanted it to be hopeful, something you could belt out on a road trip while going through a breakup or whatever.”

Her upcoming album, Daughter Language, contains a mix of this style and a heavier rock, almost doom-gaze sound, with prominent drums and baritone tracks. It was recorded at LA’s Seahorse Sound Studios, where there are microphones going up three stories, creating reverberation off the walls, which allowed for a big drum sound on the album.

Each of Lakis’s releases thus far have offered up a distinctly different aesthetic. Her last full-length album, 2018’s Ferocious, had more of a dark ’80s punk sound, while last year’s Sad Girl Breakfast EP gives off a chill electronic vibe reminiscent of Phantogram. She sees Daughter Language as tying these two styles together. “It kind of traverses different vibes much more so than the other two records, and it’s a little more all-encompassing,” she says.

Thematically, Daughter Sound deals with healing various wounds from Lakis’s childhood. “Fear of God” reflects on her experiences in Catholic school, and in “Sail Away,” she talks to her inner child, expressing the wish to protect the little girl still living inside of her. “All of these things that happen in our childhood become imprinted,” she says. “We don’t even realize that maybe those things are calling the shots in our relationships and the things we’re drawn to. I think so much of that happens during these years, where we’re just not even aware of how much is entering our brains.”

Currently residing in LA, Lakis is not just a musician but also an actor who’s appeared on a number of movies and TV shows including Big Little Lies and Homecoming. She’s been playing guitar since high school but first got into music professionally when an actor friend of hers invited her to audition to sing in his band, indie grunge-rock group Hobart W Fink, in 2013. She did that for three years, then made the leap into solo artistry in 2016, after her favorite female artists’ music helped her through a series of hardships.

Most recently during the quarantine, she’s been making new music that she describes as somber, slightly depressing shoe-gaze. “I’ve always kind of walked the line between completely hopeless and depressed, but optimistic at the same time,” she says.

Follow Lauren Lakis on Facebook for ongoing updates.

INTERVIEW: Sofie Discusses Moving to Austria from LA to Make Stones Throw Debut LP Cult Survivor

Photo Credit: Manuel Haring

On June 26, Sofie Fatouretchi will release her debut album, Cult Survivor, on Stones Throw. For the Vienna-based musician, who performs under just her first name, it’s a bit of a reunion; early in her career, she had worked for the label. “When I was 19, I applied for an internship at Stones Throw Records, not really thinking that I would get it,” she says on a recent call. “I wrote a very long, convincing letter – please hire me – and they gave me an internship.”

Sofie, who grew up in California and spent her teenage years in Austria, had graduated high school early and went on to study performance violin and computer science. “I guess that there has always been that love for music there, but the reason I ended up getting a job there was because I had a technical background to fall back upon,” she says. She was the label’s digital manager for several years and worked on the A&R end for a couple artists, including her former roommate MNDSGN, who she collaborated with on “Abeja,” a track from a Stones Throw mix she curated. Sofie, who is also a DJ, went on to spend a handful of years working with Boiler Room when the streaming network was still in its infancy.

On Cult Survivor, Sofie weaves narrative songwriting through a collection of soft pop-rock with occasional, exceptionally subtle nods to early ’80s electronic funk. There are traces of Los Angeles on the album, notably in the songs “Hollywood Walk of Fame” and “Figueroa,” two tracks that stand out in particular for their vivid lyrics. However, Sofie made Cult Survivor in Vienna, writing the songs primarily on a ’70s keyboard in a university basement.

Sofie had relocated four years ago, after her mother, who lives in the Austrian countryside, was diagnosed with cancer. “I was going through a lot of personal stuff at the time that I didn’t deal with well and it really hit me very hard. It was so uncertain to know how her situation would progress,” she explains. “I ended up moving here because of that and I was at a crossroads of what to do.” She headed back to school, but freed from the daily work grind that had been part of her life since she was a teenager, she was able to dive deep into her creativity without distractions. “I was very much removed from what I have previously known and what I was previously doing,” she says. Her music took shape organically as she was adjusting to her new life.

“For me, music was always very intrinsic and I really loved it,” says Sofie, who playing violin at age four and is self-taught in piano. Being in Vienna allowed her to make music without the kind of “external influence” that existed in the cities where she was surrounded by her network of friends and colleagues. “I had the luxury of boredom that I think allowed that creation to be a possibility,” she says. “I don’t know if I would have written this record had I been anywhere else.”

Sofie kept in touch with Stones Throw founder Peanut Butter Wolf and sent him some demos. “At some point, after we were emailing each other back and forth, he said, you know you have enough here for a record, at least,” she says. They edited the collection down to the 12 songs that are on Cult Survivor. Sofie released her most recent video, a melancholy clip with a vintage feel, for the song “Guest” earlier this week; it follows previously-released videos for the songs, “Asleep,” “Truth of the Matter” and “99 Glimpses.”

When we spoke in late May, Sofie had been working on music and painting since March, when Vienna, like so many other cities, went into lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I’ve been at home for the most that I’ve gotten to be home in a really long time, which has been really great,” she says. “I know a lot of fellow artists and musicians have been saying that this time to yourself has been so valuable and we don’t really have the opportunity to do that, so I feel very lucky that was able to happen in my life without big, further repercussions and that my family would be okay.”

Still, it took Sofie a long time – and an overseas move – to realize her potential as an artist. “I think it’s very hard when you work in the creative industry and you are creative,” Sofie says. “When I was younger, I thought that you had an infinite amount of creative energy or potential and ideas, but you really don’t.”

Follow Sofie on Instagram for ongoing updates.

PREMIERE: Solvej Schou Speaks to Universal Need for Closeness with “No One Can Take Our Love” Video

Photo Credit: Ted Newsome

I have a duty as a human being and a white Jewish American feminist to educate myself, learn, listen and fight every day against systemic racism, white supremacy, police brutality and anti-Black violence with dollars, words and actions. Many Black musicians have inspired me, from Aretha Franklin to Etta James, Billie Holiday, Sharon Jones, Prince, Bill Withers and Otis Redding. I know their incredible words and voices, but I do not know their struggle. With this video premiere, I’m donating 100% of all sales of my album Quiet For Too Long and my other music on Bandcamp to two organizations: Ethel’s Club, founded by Naj Austin and named after her grandmother Ethel Lucas, with the mission of creating healing spaces that center and celebrate people of color; and the National Bail Out, a Black-led and Black-centered collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers and activists building a community-based movement to end systems of pretrial detention and ultimately mass incarceration. BLACK LIVES MATTER. – Solvej Schou

When Solvej Schou wrote “No One Can Take Our Love,” it took a different turn from her other songs for the 2019 album, Quiet for Too Long. By phone from her home in Pasadena, just outside of Los Angeles, the singer-songwriter describes it as perhaps “the most positive song on the album.”

On Quiet for Too Long, Schou digs into politics, beauty standards, mental health and loss. “No One Can Take Our Love,” is, as the title implies, a love song, which she wrote for her husband. “I also wanted to have a universal theme, like love in the face of hate,” she says. “Even writing a love song,” she says, “there has to be intensity in there.”

Schou commissioned experimental filmmaker Meejin Hong to create an animated video, which premieres today. In the video, desert cacti transform into loving, clasped hands and the world splits into lip-locked faces. “The video was all about closeness. It’s all about love,” says Schou. “It’s all about physical togetherness.”

In the time that passed between when Schou commissioned the video and its premiere, both the song and the clip have taken on new meaning. On March 13, Schou developed a cough. About a week and a half later, the day after she received the video, the she was told by the doctor to consider the cough to be COVID-19 and advised to distance herself from her husband. “We ended up doing that for three weeks,” Schou recalls. “He slept separately from me. We separated everything in our kitchen and our bathroom. I didn’t leave the house.”

Meanwhile, the video that she had commissioned, and just received, was a celebration of physical connection. “There’s this weird irony in having this video all about coming together and being this unit and having to distance from my husband and see him from afar,” she says. In the midst of a very personal period of social distancing, the song and video became symbolic of everything Schou had to temporarily avoid. “It’s maybe the sense of aspiration of touch, even though it was made before the pandemic,” she says. “Seeing it for the first time felt even more powerful to me.”

Even the song itself plays as if it has been written for this specific time. Schou references a lyric, “When the world feels like a bubble that’s about to explode, you’re not alone,” that’s all-too-relevant in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re living in the precipice of great collective grief and loss and we’re so isolated,” she says. “Yet, at the core of being human, we’re not alone.”

When Schou was able to get a COVID-19 test in late April, the results came back negative. It wasn’t an antibody test, so she doesn’t know for sure if she had the illness or another respiratory ailment. “I know there are other people in the situation of just not knowing, having that uncertainty,” she says.

Schou, who is also a writer and  penned several essays for the 2018 book Women Who Rock: Bessie to Beyoncé. Girls Groups to Riot Grrrl., grew up in Los Angeles and was influenced by a mixture of rock, blues and soul artists. Quiet for Too Long is her second solo album, the first to include a full band, and draws heavily from her political and feminist values. The album’s title comes from opening track “America.”

“The song ‘America’ came out of my horror at the murder of unarmed black men and women by police,” says Schou. “It also talked about immigration and gun control and a lot of issues pertaining to America.” Elsewhere on the album, “Age and Beauty” refers to women growing older and “Flicker Away” is about “being a woman and dealing with anxiety and depression and how to survive, push through that.”

The title of the album, she says, came as a surprise to some who knew her. “There is a part of me that loves talking to people, that has a lot of experience interviewing people because of having been a writer for so long, that loves singing loud and forceful,” she says. “Then there’s a part of me that’s pretty introverted and feels comfortable processing things alone. Quiet for Too Long can be interpreted in different ways.”

After recovering from her illness, Schou is regaining her own voice as well. “It is literally my therapy, singing everything out of me,” she says.

Solvej Schou performs live on Instagram this Saturday, June 13. Follow her on Facebook for ongoing updates.

Skyler Day Strikes a Chord Between Art and Empathy With ‘Six Feet Apart’

Courtesy of The Mixtape PR

There’s a strong correlation between art and empathy, a powerful notion Skyler Day carries into her work as an actress and singer-songwriter.

Day knew the arts were a part of her destiny at the age of six when she discovered her love for singing while making her stage debut as the smallest Christmas tree in her school’s holiday play. She added songwriting to her list of talents at the age of 10 and learned how to play guitar four years later. While honing her musical capabilities, Day was also fostering her passion for acting, informing her parents that she wanted to hire an agent to book auditions. “I told them by the time I turned 11, if I booked the lead in a film, then we would have to move to Los Angeles so that I can pursue my acting career,” Day recalls to Audiofemme. True to her word, the determined child soon landed a part in an independent film, her parents shutting down the gymnastics studio they owned in their hometown of Cumming, Georgia, and made the cross-country move to LA to fulfill their daughter’s dreams.

Day has since become a working actress with roles on TV shows including Parenthood, Law & Order SVU, CSI: Miami, Pretty Little Liars and many more. In between appearances on major network shows, Day continues to sharpen her songwriting skills. With a growing catalog of introspective acoustic numbers, the Georgia native credits country music for inspiring her songwriting style. “I feel like country music really takes care of the story,” she describes. “It’s really the foundation of everything I do. It’s how I learned to write. It’s the reason I picked up guitar instead of some other instrument. I love the storytelling, and that’s really how I fell in love with music in general.”

The 28-year-old breathed new life into her career as a songwriter when she won a 2019 BumbleBizz contest for aspiring female songwriters that included a mentoring session with Kacey Musgraves and a performance slot at a major festival. Citing the six-time Grammy winner as a “huge inspiration,” Day flew to Texas to sit down with Musgraves before her appearance on Austin City Limits and imparted her wisdom onto the budding artist. “The main thing that stuck out to me was ‘write what you love, make the music that you love, and then let the rest take care of itself,’” Day recollects of Musgraves’ sage advice. “I love that, and I’ve always subscribed to that, so it was nice getting some reinforcement.”

For Day, writing the music you love means embracing her empathetic side. While acting allows Day to call on her imagination to bring other writers’ words and ideas to life, songwriting creates a personal outlet for her to share her own stories and experiences. “It’s the art of empathy and I feel like that’s the same with music,” she describes of the commonality between acting and songwriting. “It’s about being dead honest about your experience, and I feel like that translates with songwriting. You can tell the same with acting, you can tell when somebody’s being so truthful. It feels more real and like you’re creating a connection there.”

This focus on empathy shines in Day’s latest creation, “Six Feet Apart.” Penned in her LA home days after the stay-at-home order was put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Day’s emotions toward the situation were bubbling beneath the surface, in need of a way to get out. She turned to Joni Mitchell’s album Blue for comfort, sitting in solitude and letting the lyrics wash over her. But at album’s end, Day noticed something profound taking place outside her window. “It got quiet and then I listened and the birds were going crazy. They were singing so loud,” she remembers. “I was thinking, they’re singing so loud and they have no idea what’s happening in the world.”

Her emotions soon began spilling onto the page, Day reflecting on the people who bring color into our lives, from our family and loved ones to strangers we pass on the street. She captures the heart of the song’s message in its potent closing line: “I guess that it’s simple/Now we know that our hearts/They weren’t made to be six feet apart.” “I hope that people feel less alone in the fact that someone else feels the same way and that we’re all really feeling the same way. I didn’t notice how important everyone is around you when you’re walking down the street or you’re at a restaurant. These people in the world, they fill up our lives and now I’m noticing how much I took that for granted,” Day professes. “I think it’s beautiful to now be so aware of the fact that we really need each other.”

Follow Skyler Day on Facebook for ongoing updates.

Nicole Mercedes Celebrates Uneventful Nights Out With “Filters”

If spending so many nights in has got you feeling antsy, let Nicole Mercedes remind you that you’re probably not missing much. The dream-pop singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist’s latest single, “Filters,” is about those nights when you go out and absolutely nothing of interest happens — which, she conjectures, is probably the way things turn out most of the time.

“I feel like that’s the real truth of it — sometimes, you’re just like ‘I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna get dressed and go out,’ then nothing happens and you kind of just go home,” she says. “There’s something kind of nice about that. It’s not even sad. It’s just kind of the regular single life.”
Synths set a fun, dreamy mood as Mercedes sings, “I’ll conjure up a small mess/A filter to see the rest/Of the night through until I’m undressed.”
The video, which shows a man in drag performing the song in front of an empty room, was inspired by a real experience Mercedes had at a karaoke bar drag night in Cape Cod during off-season, when she saw someone passionately sing Kelly Clarkson to almost nobody.
“I just thought it was the saddest, most beautiful scenario,” she says. “No one was paying attention to this person, and they didn’t care, and I thought, ‘Wow, that is such a beautiful moment.’ It seemed like that’s just what they do off-season.”

The song is on Mercedes’ second LP Look Out Where You’re Going — a title inspired by “I Know a Man,” a Robert Creeley poem about a man driving a car. “The poem in general just symbolizes thinking you’re in control and that you’re behind the wheel but then realizing that you’re not,” she explains. “I thought of it as a reminder to look out where you’re going, keep your eyes on the road, make sure you don’t drive off that street.”
The album, which comes out June 5, was largely inspired by the loss of a partnership and a close friendship. “I felt extremely alienated from a lot of friends that I had,” she remembers. “I think a lot of the songs were dealing with being a little weirdo out in the world and feeling a little bit detached and trying to navigate it.” This feeling dates back to Mercedes’ childhood and early adulthood, having been born in LA, moving to Israel at age 10, then living in Berlin before returning to the U.S.
Sonically, her goal with the album was to create “a sound where, even if you didn’t listen to the lyrics, you would understand the mood,” says Mercedes, who produces her own music and partnered with producer Joe Rogers for Look Out Where You’re Going. “It was very important to me for everything to be dream-like and a little bit eerie.”

Even though going out in any capacity is currently a challenge for most, Mercedes believes “Filters” offers an especially relevant philosophy: embrace the uneventful. “I do quite enjoy the feeling of loneliness, and I think it’s something to embrace,” she says. “It’s okay if nothing’s going on.”

Follow Nicole Mercedes on Facebook for ongoing updates.