If you were in your school orchestra growing up, you probably at some point played Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” a series of concerti that takes the listener through each season of the year. Future Moons’ latest EP Seasons is kind of like that, but instead of string instruments, the ethereal duo uses layered vocals, distorted guitar notes, and xylophone tunes to illustrate winter, spring, summer, and fall. Three evocative instrumental interludes between each song round out the seven-track EP.
The concept was the end product of a bunch of journal entries vocalist Kota Wade — who makes music with her husband, guitarist Tommy Oleksyn — wrote to keep her creative juices flowing. “I realized I had written about a lot of nature things and had a lot of different feelings for each season,” she says. “I turned my journal entries to lyrics and put music to it.”
In addition to the natural phenomena it illustrates, the EP presents “a love story throughout the 365 days of a year,” says Wade. “There’s no heartbreak, there’s no climax, it’s just this nice, comfortable love that happens in the span of all the seasons.”
“Entangled,” the first song on the EP as well as Future Moons’ very first single, encapsulates winter, with lyrics that paint the picture of a cozy indoor scene: “sheets all tangled at the foot of the bed / can’t tell where you start / can’t tell where I end.” The atmospheric production, breathy vocals, and piano add to the seasonal theme — almost the auditory equivalent of fog on the windows.
“To me, piano is very wintery. I just imagine sitting by a fire as someone’s playing,” Wade explains. “Winter doesn’t really have its own sounds because winter’s very quiet, so I wanted to be more focused on the lyrics and the intimacy and the love story.”
After an interlude called “Rain,” which portrays raindrops with a xylophone, the EP transitions to the spring song, aptly named “Petals.” On top of dynamic percussions that tie the song together from beginning to end, dark melodies contrast with hopeful lyrics: “two flowers vibing / stunned by the other, when the rain turns violent / we move to each other.”
Using samples of real cricket chirps, “Crickets” takes the collection from spring to summer, which is represented with the second single “Golden,” a song inspired by the Southern Californian mountains. Featuring soft guitars and synth pads, the track was meant “to feel like it was floating,” Wade explains. “So, it’s pretty minimal, a lot of layers in vocals. I wanted it to feel breathy and warm and almost slightly sensual, almost how summer feels, just dripping golden.”
The next interlude, “Wind,” aptly employs wind instruments before the EP closes with “Grey,” which creates a cinematic sound with heavy guitars, drums, and orchestral instruments. Wade’s voice gives off metal vibes as she sings, “I’m dancing on the breeze / I’m floating like I’m free.”
Wade considers “Grey” a throwback to the duo’s previous life as Bad Wolf, an alt-rock band they formed with several other instrumentalists. Last year, Wade and Oleksyn decided to break off and play under the new moniker Future Moons, and Seasons represents their first project since making that move. “We wanted to get more experimental, more modern with different instruments, and it just kind of branched into its own thing,” says Wade.
Wade also has a past life as a contestant on The Voice, which she says increased her confidence in her vocal abilities. “I had pretty much only ever considered myself a writer to that point,” she remembers. “I had been a vocalist in my bands, but writing was definitely what I considered my strength. So it was pretty crazy to go on there and have three chairs turned just as a vocalist. That was definitely a boost of confidence, like, ‘oh, I can do more than I give myself credit for!”
At the moment, the LA-based duo has another project up their sleeves, and its concept is even larger-scale than the last one: it’s an album inspired by outer space. “We kind of did a whole Earth album, with seasons based on Earth seasons in nature, and now we’re going outside Earth to focus on the other planets,” Wade explains. “We’re both obsessed with space – that’s how the new name came about — we just wanted it to reflect us.”
That one’s going to be a tough act to follow, but I’m holding out hope for an album that grants each galaxy in the universe its own song. In the meantime, Seasons will give listeners a newfound way of looking at — or at least listening to — the planet where they live.
Follow Future Moons on Facebook for ongoing updates.
When talking to musician Hollis Wong-Wear, it feels as though she has all the time in the world for you. This is indicative of the enjoyment she gains from meeting people and creating connections. “I am a very passionate host and I love bringing people together and cultivating a cool vibe,” she says as we chat over the phone. “My sense of self as an artist is inseparable from the community.”
Beginning her music career as one third of the band The Flavr Blue, writing music for other musicians and her band, it wasn’t until recently that she felt ready to create her own collection of work. “I had become this master facilitator. When I work with other people I can take on the responsibility of doing something as a joint venture to motivate me,” the singer-songwriter explains, adding that when it came to creating with her own voice and story it felt akin to an uphill battle. ”It goes back to that insecurity of ‘Why does my voice matter?’”
Her anxiety is more than relatable; in a social media-saturated world, anyone and everyone is clambering to have that big break in their career, whether they’re an artist, musician or writer. Knowing she was more comfortable collaborating and building community, Hollis used those skills to her advantage. She created her unique Hollis Does Brunch series, which takes place in a number of cities across the U.S., and acted as a Trojan Horse to get her used to performing her own music and telling her story. She released her debut solo EP half-life last February. A deluxe version of the EP arrives May 22nd, with two music videos to celebrate – live recordings of her singles “Sedative” and “Back To Me.”
Organizing food-related events was an organic step – growing up in her mom’s Chinese restaurant in the suburbs of San Francisco made Hollis a moth to a flame when it comes to good meals and community spirit. “I think food is kind of like the first art form that I really, truly understood… the idea of gathering people around music and food was a concept that, for me, was a natural connection,” she says. “My end of goal of why I create anything is to bring people together in a meaningful way and forge connections. When we did the [last in-person] Hollis Does Brunch session in Seattle, people brought their kids, their parents and their friends. It was fun and inclusive – people were drinking cocktails and feeding their kids! I want these sessions to feel good and welcome for all.”
When the current pandemic hit the States, it became clear that our lives would change drastically, and that necessary social distancing measures would protect lives. With this in mind, Hollis decided to move her brunch sessions online, creating weekly live-streams and raising money (and perhaps most importantly, awareness) for those most severely affected by the situation. She admits she had some personal motivations, too. “I love hosting and the worst thing for somebody who loves to host is not being able to have any people over to their house! So I thought: how I could scratch my ‘self-care’ itch? How can I extend that in a digital space?” she says. “If I can be a resource to others, that’s a privilege. I’m happy to get into the weeds with live-streaming because it provides that. I wanted the sessions to be about community – less ‘oh they watch me perform!’ and more about bringing in the insights of other folks. My heart hurts so deeply for all of the restaurants that have closed and laid off employees.” By organizing these sessions, Hollis hopes to provide a degree of nourishment both mentally and physically. It’s a symbiotic relationship as it brings Hollis herself a degree of commitment and structure.
Bars, restaurants, diners and cafes all played vital roles in how we lived before the pandemic. They were places of refuge and relaxation; after a busy day we flocked to them with friends, eager to shed our everyday stresses. For students and freelancers, cafes were the perfect hideaway when unable to focus at home. They housed our small ensembles to large gatherings; we shared birthdays, holidays and celebrations there, and in some cultures, wakes to remember lost loved ones. Yet they’ve endured some of the worst effects of the pandemic, the results of which has left many owners wondering if their small businesses will survive, and how they’ll pay workers who relied on tips.
These online brunch sessions raise funds for those groups especially in need during this time, such as Feeding America and the NYC UndocuWorkers Fund. Each organization is close to the heart of one of her guests joining that week; Hollis allows them to explain how they’re affected and why it’s important to extend a hand, as it were, and help lift up their chosen cause.
“One of the live-streams I did was fundraising for undocumented workers in New York City who were laid off, and then it was also fundraising for the restaurant of the chefs that I had on that day,” Hollis says. “After that I used the next session to raise money for two artist organizations in Seattle that are doing a Seattle artist relief fund, and they’ve actually already raised $200,000 and are trying to raise another $700,000 more because of the demonstrated need.”
In fact, many of the people Hollis invites have already begun their own fundraising, and the series helps garner even greater attention. “One of the chefs [Erik Bruner-Yang] that came on is doing The Power of 10 initiative, trying to raise $10,000 to hire 10 employees who will make 1,000 meals for people in the DC area. They’re trying to make that a pilot program,” Hollis says.
Like many who are working to support their local community, Hollis volunteers her time and it’s a testament to her hard work that many groups have received much-needed support in a time where it feels as though there is none. Her live-stream series “is really about giving – I’m not taking in money. The only thing I’m doing is starting a Patreon page, which I did feel conflicted about. But after looking at my expenses I realized I might need to!”
When asked how people can get involved, she stressed that there is no prescribed way to do so, and that simply being present for the brunch is enough. “I just hope that what I’m creating provides solace and support to this moment,” she says.
Lenii likes to drink tea (Barry’s Tea to be exact). While in quarantine with two friends, musicians Ryan O’Shaughnessy and Baby Bill, the trio easily down 12 or 13 cups of a day ─ apiece. Having grown up in Cork, Ireland, Lenii was accustomed to the culture ─ one which bred an environment of gabbing over tea with friends and loved ones. There’s something soothing about hearing someone say, “I’ll put the kettle on.” Whatever you might be feeling that day, it all washes down with some piping hot tea and good conversation.
“In Ireland, people drink like eight cups of tea a day,” Lenii tells Audiofemme. “If you visit someone’s house, the tea is offered before you even get through the door. I even have a tea cup tattooed on my arm because it reminds me so much of home.”
So, it only seemed natural to launch a “Tea Sessions” series during these very uncertain times. Born Ellen Murphy, Lenii launches this creative endeavor with a stripped-down version of her song “Cereal,” shedding away the gummy layers for a guitar and keyboard-driven performance. “I got lucky enough to be locked down in a house in LA with two amazing musicians, also from Ireland,” she says.
“We were just jamming one day playing each other’s songs and drinking tea, so I just thought it would be cool to film us,” says Lenii, whose voice is given a proper showcase. “The first episode was really spontaneous, and I loved the idea of a low-pressure quarantine ‘tiny desk’ type series.”
The original iteration of “Cereal” (co-written with and produced by Nick Sadler) unleashes a more biting attack, while the live performance video allows Lenii to feel looser within its structure. “The ‘Tea Sessions’ version of [this song] was really just myself and the boys having fun so the song took on a whole different mood. A little less aggressive and a bit more jazzy. Playing it outside was cool, too.”
Vibrant greenery frames the video, somehow drawing you into her world, if only for a moment. In many ways, this “Cereal” performance taps into the lack of human connection these days. Lenii admits the last few months have “definitely [been] emotional,” she says, “as I’m sure is the same for everyone. I miss playing live and going to sessions, but I’ve been quarantined with two writers so we’re still getting a lot done. There’s a lot of pressure to use this time to be productive so just remembering that it’s okay to not feel creative all the time is super important.”
Of course, worry often tends to seep into her mind. “It’s very strange being so far from my family at a time like this, so I think about that a lot. But [I’m] trying to go with the flow and not worry too much,” she says. “In the music world, I know playing live won’t be the same for a long time, and I think there will be a major shift in how the industry works.”
Earlier this month, Lenni’s 2019 song “Yellow” was named Adult Contemporary winner of the International Songwriting Competition, a distinction that certainly threw her for a loop. “I honestly didn’t even know ‘Yellow’ fell into ‘adult contemporary,’ so I was shocked,” she admits. “I came second in that category in 2017, so I was like, maybe A/C is my calling.”
She adds, “I would continue, regardless, and aim to get better all the time, but it’s a really cool bit of validation that I’m heading in the right direction.”
Lenii continues riding high on a string of singles, including “Regular 10,” the newly released “I (Don’t) Miss You” and “Crave U,” which was recently remixed by Cyril M. Though social distancing may have temporarily altered her trajectory, the “Tea Sessions” offer a fun, intimate portrait of an artist on the rise, doing her part to keep calm and put a kettle on for all of us.
Life is a balancing act – sometimes, it feels like we’re living in the moment, and other times, it feels like we’re looking at our lives from outside in. This is the feeling Jessica Hottman wanted to capture on her debut EP as Sun Cycles, Imaginary, out later this month via Kansas City, MO-based label French Exit Records. The past few years have been a whirlwind for Hottman – last time we caught up with her, she was writing and recording with her sister Heather in aptly-named indie rock outfit The Hottman Sisters, but in the process of releasing their first and only EP Louder in 2018, Hottman began traveling between Omaha and Los Angeles, where her solo project Sun Cycles began to take hold.
Releasing a string of singles last year – “Rodeo,” “Bang Bang,” and “Kids” – Hottman says it was time to get serious and make a cohesive release. “When I feel like I’m transitioning [in life], I always feel like it’s time for a musical transition as well,” she says, explaining that the singles were a way for her to test the limits of what she could do, and the experience of working on them helped her feel more confident. “The music that I’d been listening to and life experiences all play into that – it just seemed like the right time to put something out that was a little more coherent, like a little body of work that goes together.”
Recorded in Philadelphia, with friends from Kansas, it’s obvious that Hottman’s fast-paced lifestyle contributed to some of the EP’s existential themes. Eventually, Hottman’s path led her to settle on the East Coast, and that’s where, riding the trains bleary-eyed at all hours of the morning, equally awed and exhausted by the grind of New York City, Hottman found her biggest inspiration for the four tracks that would comprise Imaginary. “The grittiness of New York City [gave] the music a dark, charged up, really synthy sort of feel,” Hottman says. “[NYC is] beautiful and life-giving and motivating, but there’s also a hustle to it, so I think that it morphed things in a different direction. [When] I decided to relocate out here, it just weirdly kind of made sense – it feels like I fully immersed myself into [Sun Cycles]. It went from just dabbling at it to being all in.”
The first single from the project, “Into Confusion,” features rapid-fire synths that sweep listeners up immediately, while Hottman hangs in lyrical limbo. “Got my foot on the pedal/Cruising the middle/What side am I on?/Where do I belong?” she asks. “‘Into Confusion’ is definitely about that grey area, the middle ground of wondering how much of life is in my control and out of my control and blowing that concept up even bigger,” Hottman says. “There are things that just feel at the mercy of the road ahead of us. I think it’s speaking to that, and wondering how to live the day to day is the confusion part.”
The single sets the stage for the rest of the EP, which Hottman says centers around the feeling of being caught between a make-believe world and the real one. “I’ve always been sort of a daydreamer, and I think many artists can relate to that – you’re living your life out, but you’re also sort of watching your life being played out, analyzing it, and creating art that speaks to that sort of outside-yourself feeling,” she explains. “That was the inspiration for this EP, particularly the two perspectives being together.”
“Untouchable” and “Make Believe” both center around the ecstatic fantasies born on the dance floor, while “Laugh Until We Die” again revisits the idea of drifting in those liminal spaces (“It’s 8 in the morning/I lay here mourning who they said I’d be/It’s 6 in the evening/I’m not sure I’m breathing/Suffocating in my dream”), comparing her disorientation to being whipped around on rickety carnival rides. The neon-lit production throughout adds both polish and a measured amount of nostalgia to get lost in; along the way, Hottman channels quirky pop divas like Imogen Heap and Caroline Polacheck with emotive vocals and dark, theatrical twists.
These songs differ from the Sun Cycles singles Hottman released in the project’s infancy, when she was spending more time in LA – thematically, the earlier cuts deal with dusty roads, plotting escape, shotgun romance, and other distinctly Californian motifs, but even sonically, Imaginary is loftier and looser, less concerned with looking put together than it is with taking listeners for the ride of their lives. “I was kind of coming into my own and testing the waters a little bit with those singles,” Hottman says; from that assured place, she jumps into the unknown and embraces the unexpected, the East Coast relocation dovetailing nicely with what felt like “time for like a new turn within the project.”
And Imaginary is also a departure from The Hottman Sisters’ EP Louder, which relies mote heavily on hook-laden indie rock swagger. Though part of it was logistical, Hottman says focusing on Sun Cycles just made more sense for her creatively. “I was writing all the stuff for the Hottman Sisters, so really it was more about taking my brain power from being in two projects and moving it to one project to focus on it,” she explains, though she also drops a few hints that her previous project is “not officially over and done” – the sisters have been chatting about working on new material together.
But most of all, Hottman says Sun Cycles has allowed her to come alive as an artist in her own right. “As a female coming up in this industry, I just think back to like five years ago when I was first starting and I felt like I had to lean in to like, a male character that was going to correct [me] – but I always felt like I had these other ideas,” she remembers. “I’ve found my voice more and more and I’ve been able to really come into my own and validate my own decisions. Feeling empowered as my own self and as a female to say, I can make these decisions, I can do this, has actually been really much more exciting than nerve-wracking.”
Now, she finds comfort in the unknown as much as she appreciates when everything goes according to plan. “The way that I accept that into my life is just knowing that two truths can exist,” Hottman says. There’s a line of resolve in “Into Confusion” that goes, “In the grey, I know I can carry my own.” Hottman keeps that mantra close to her heart, a reminder “to plan things out but also to just let things happen, too,” that no matter what, she’ll be just fine. That, she says, has given her the freedom to let Sun Cycles be exactly what it needs to be.
Follow Sun Cycles on Facebook for ongoing updates.
“I’m terrified,” whispers Emma Taylor. Her muted, somber admission opens her brand new song, “Made Your Bed,” a piano-based track, premiering today on Audiofemme. Its softness is deceiving, as the Los Angeles singer-songwriter wrestles with her demons and a past that just won’t let her go.
“I definitely feel like the creation of the song was very much soft and emotional, yet powerful,” she says. Written in just 30 minutes, the song, produced by long-standing collaborator Adrian Cota, emerges as her first straight-up piano ballad, a showcase of lyrics and story “with the production painting colors rather than taking over,” she observes.
“Adrian is so brilliant in being able to capture moods and drama through his insane attention to detail. It feels so minimalist when you are listening, but everything in this song is thought out ─ from how I sing each phrase to the little background elements that build the song into what it is.”
Taylor, whose angelic vocals offer a ray of hope, soon plants her feet and reclaims her self-worth. “I’m allowed to feel,” she sings, still in hushed tones. That line in particular underscores her ongoing journey in rediscovering who she’s always meant to be, as well as retrieving her emotions. “I think I still have to remind myself every now and then that I’m allowed to feel. It’s not easy to self-reflect and realize self-worth,” she explains. “There have been so many moments where I’ve felt that I need to hide my emotions, or where I’ve been ashamed of them, so to be able to write a song that tells people that their feelings are valid is a very special and important thing for me.”
She puts up a valiant fight, and as the strings build into a gentle stream around her, she rises triumphant and cleansed. “I’m at a very crucial and important time in my life where I am continuously growing and maturing emotionally and creatively, which is super exciting,” she declares. “I know that my core values and style are with me always, but I’m gaining so much inspiration from new music and my surroundings that allow me to take a step back and try new things with my art and with myself, in general.”
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Taylor had a pretty idyllic upbringing, surrounded by a loving, gracious, and supportive family. “I’m the only artist in my family so it was definitely a shock that I came out with such an intense passion for music” she says.
It’s not dramatic to say such legendary singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Carole King became transcendent for her. These pop music pillars were top-tier among their peers, but they were also strong, vulnerable, and sharp-toothed women who proved anything was possible. “I think the authenticity of those artists is very few and far between. Looking at an artist like Joni, she is so unique and so unapologetically herself which is such a beautiful trait to have,” reflects Taylor, whose own work is very much submerged in plaintive lyrics over ethereal melodies.
“I love how effortlessly conversational artists during that era wrote their songs because it made the stories flow and allowed listeners to truly digest and relate to them,” she adds. “I think that those singer-songwriters wrote purely for their own souls and pleasures so because of that vulnerability and realness, the world felt that and was moved by it.”
Thanks to her father, Taylor was surrounded by Mitchell, James Taylor, and Simon & Garfunkel, whose records were all on constant loop in the house. So naturally, those lush, identifiable melodies became embedded in her mind. “I started getting deeply into songwriting for myself during my early teenage years, and I was looking at the artists my dad played as my main source of inspiration and teachings. I loved the uniqueness of the melodies and how they worked hand and hand with the lyrical journey, so it’s something I’ve always wanted to emulate with my own work.”
Later, at the age of 12, Taylor attended a writing intensive during the summer, and despite having previously dabbled in songwriting, her hunger for it hit a new level. Now, 11 years later, she considers what she’s learned most. “I would have to say that I’ve learned how important it is to not worry about a scheme or a format. There’s no rules when it comes to songwriting,” she stresses, “and you are the only person who has the ability to create your own unique song. To have the power to [write songs] is so special, and it’s so important to me that I use that power to the best of my ability.”
But it hasn’t been easy to arrive here.
In defining her own singular perspective, stories only she could craft, it has been most difficult “trying not to get stuck in a bubble or write things that sound the same,” she offers. “That’s my biggest fear and still is my biggest challenge because when you’re comfortable with something or you’ve been doing it for so long, it’s easy not to want to change.”
“I sometimes get in my own head and think about what others might want to hear, and that’s when I have difficulty getting good lyrics out because my style and music relies so heavily on my truth and my vulnerability. I’ve been learning to find a balance between universality in my lyrics but still writing in a conversational way with ideas that are solely my own.”
Taylor first made an impression with 2017’s Hazy EP, containing such gems as “New Found Sound” and “Living’s Lonely.” Since then, she’s pivoted to issuing a string of singles, including this year’s “Why Can’t I Stop Loving You?” as a way to showcase her growth without a full commitment to a body of work (for now).
“I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find who I am as an artist and what I want to say, but I think that will be an ongoing discovery for me because life is ever changing and so many things happen that inspire me,” she says. “I’m at the point where each new song I’m writing is my favorite one yet and different from the last, which shows that I’m definitely in my prime creative phase of my art.”
Looking ahead, she promises “a lot of new music,” even if a follow-up EP or album has not quite marinated yet. “These songs show how far I’ve come in the past few years, and I can’t wait for the world to get to hear them and hopefully like them as much as I do. I’m writing constantly and am focusing on putting out as much music as possible.”
Gateway Drugs describe themselves as “drug pop,” which guitarist Liv Niles defines as “a sweet pop formula tethered to a deranged and disordered structure.” The band just put out their first album in five years, PSA, and while their earlier work highlighted dark ’80s influences like The Jesus and Mary Chain, their latest gives off beachy classic rock vibes with a modern garage-rock-meets-shoegaze twist.
Niles started the LA-based band in 2012 with her brothers, Gabe and Noa, along with their good friend, bassist/guitarist James Sanderson. “We’d played in other bands both together and apart but always knew we wanted to have a project of our own,” she says. “Our thought process is very similar — when we play music, we’re on the same page, which is difficult for a lot of bands. Creative trust is hard to find.”
They’ve been a musical family from the beginning; their father is Prescott Niles, bassist for The Knack. “There were always instruments laying around and records playing,” Niles remembers. “Our mom is a writer, so to have a musical and lyrical influence, we’re very lucky.”
The new album, produced by The Raveonettes’ Sune Rose Wagner, was recorded live in twelve days to create a “raw, sincere, chaotic, and primal” feel, says Niles. The title, PSA, is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the band’s name, which was inspired by a Breaking Bad episode where one of the characters refers to weed as a gateway drug. “They mentioned ‘gateway drug,’ and we looked at each other and said, Gateway Drug?! No, Gateway Drugs!” Niles remembers.
The title also serves to designate the album as a public service announcement about various issues the world is facing. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” for instance, is about “homogenized rebellion” and the commodification of progressive ideas, explains Niles, who broke from her usual role to sing on another track, “I’m Always Around.” There’s no one designated vocalist in the band; the singer on any given song is usually “the one who hunts down and catches the initial idea,” she says.
So far, the band has created videos for three songs off the album, all of them based around simple concepts. The “Wait (Medication)” video displays various shots of the band performing the song, which is a reflection on excess, madness, addiction, and how “extreme highs give way to extreme lows,” according to Niles. “I’m Always Around” simply features the lyrics written with marker on a piece of paper, while “Slumber” — a song about end of a relationship with an emotionally unavailable partner — shows the band dancing as they wander the streets and is intended as a glimpse into the members’ daily lives.
“Videos can be pretentious, with the interest of the song not at heart,” says Niles. “We wanted to make a sincere attempt of visually accompanying the music, hopefully leaving a bit more for the listeners’ imagination.”
In the wake of the album release, the band is currently focused on writing new music, putting out more videos, and live-streaming shows and band hangouts. Even without the ability to share their new music for live audiences, the authenticity of the album’s production and videos provides the next best thing.
Follow Gateway Drugs on Facebook for ongoing updates.
When Johanna Warren was twelve or thirteen, she recalls thinking that if she wanted to be a true artist, she would have to fuck up her life. Her musical idols – Elliott Smith, Kurt Cobain, Nick Drake – all died as tortured young poets. Warren hadn’t sung in front of anyone since she was a child, writing songs with her little brother as their alter egos, Horsey & Joe. Over the next several years, she’d throw herself first into musical theater, combating crippling shyness to play the parts she’d immediately regretted auditioning for, before preforming jokey songs at open mic nights about surviving apocalyptic floods by taking refuge in the Loch Ness monster’s vagina. It wasn’t until years later, in a grimy punk house basement, that someone took her seriously; even then, she felt a dark pull toward misery and misfortune. “I wanted to be a great artist, so I had to open a chaotic portal to invite in a lot of suffering because that’s where great art comes from,” Warren says. “I think it’s a really grave miscalculation that we’re encouraged to make. I can’t help but feel that there’s some kind of intentionality there, on behalf of some dark, oppressive forces that want us to dim our light and die young and never thrive.”
Fast forward about a decade, and Johanna Warren found herself recording her fourth solo album, Chaotic Good, at Elliott Smith’s New Monkey Studio. It wasn’t the only place she recorded – what started out as angry acoustic demos in her Portland garage transformed over the course of touring behind her 2018 self-released double album, Gemini, as folks she met on the road offered her free studio time from coast to coast. But New Monkey was a significant space for Warren. “Right when I was starting to look for places to record, the owner invited me to have a free day there. It’s all functional as a recording studio, but they have done a really respectful job of preserving things more or less as they were when he was there – it felt like a shrine as much as a studio,” Warren says. “That was so meaningful and that was really the beginning of feeling like alright, I’m making a record. And it felt like it had kind of [Smith’s] blessing. He’s sort of my patron saint of songwriting. I feel like he gave me permission to make a record like this, where it doesn’t have to fit into one neat little genre box, it can just be an expression of my feelings and my own inner hypocrisies and self contradictions.”
Also of particular relevance was the time she spent at the Relic Room in Manhattan, recording with her old bandmates in Sticklips, Chris St. Hilaire and Jim Bertini. Their band had fallen apart in 2012, following the death of Sticklips’ leader, Jonathan “JP” Nocera. JP was the one who, all those years ago, had sat Warren down and made her play every song she’d ever written, recognizing in her something she couldn’t yet see in herself. “He wanted us to keep going with it, but honestly he was the glue that held it all together,” Warren recalls. “I was not capable of keeping it together after he was gone because I didn’t know myself enough musically or emotionally. I wasn’t confident enough in my own ideas because the only music I had really recorded or produced was with them, and they were all slightly older men. At the time I was all too happy to let them take the reins. I was angry about it but didn’t even know that there was another way. My frustrations with that were building but I didn’t have the emotional interpersonal skills to communicate any of that so it just exploded.”
Despite the buzz around the band’s two LPs, 2009’s It Is Like a Horse. It Is Not Like Two Foxes. and 2012’s more minimally-named Zemi, Warren had decided to go it alone, and moved to the West Coast, touring with the likes of Iron & Wine and Julie Byrne. “It was definitely kind of traumatic because I felt like I’d always wanted to be in a great band – I was obsessed with The Beatles and Radiohead. Right as things started to really gel, it all fell apart. And I was so young at the time, it was really formative. I’m just now starting to open the door to collaborating with other people again, cause I’ve been licking that wound for the last decade.” Her first solo album, Fates, arrived in 2013, followed by numun (pronounced “new moon”) in 2015. After recording both Gemini records, but unable to find a label that would release them, Warren formed Spirit House Records from the ashes of a label that JP had gifted her upon his passing. Over time, it has evolved into a collective of experimental folk artists, mostly in and around the Portland scene. Later, Sadie Dupuis of Sad13 and Speedy Ortiz would re-release the Gemini records on her Carpark imprint Wax Nine, as well as put out Chaotic Good.
In the process of recording Chaotic Good, Warren says she looked to that younger version of herself for gems of wisdom and truth that had gotten buried and forgotten over time. “That’s sort of a theme of the album – burying the dream that never came true, and the presence of death and the spirits of the dead, but then the rebirth and new life that springs from the ruins of whatever you’ve buried and grieved,” Warren explains. “This last couple years have been all about a kind of return. It has led to me stepping into my own power, and then also remembering: I have a band – I left them in New York ten years ago. I just need to hit them up and make some amends.” Warren did just that, reuniting with St. Hilaire and Bertini to add drums, synth, and bass to her demos. “It was so healing for everybody to play together again in a completely different context, and for me to be able to assert myself and hold my own. It felt so satisfying to pick up that loose thread and weave it back into the tapestry.”
It was validating, too, to be in control of that process – the band added their parts over the vocals she’d recorded in Portland, as opposed to Warren adding her parts over Sticklips tracks. Back then, Warren says, “I was like the icing on the cake – even though it had been my song that was the foundation around which all of the other instrumentation had been built, I always felt like my stuff was just an afterthought. I didn’t even have the vocabulary to say I can’t hear myself, it doesn’t sound like me, it doesn’t sound like my song anymore. So to work this way with the same people, but have my parts actually be the backbone of the whole recorded construction was really cool. It was such an amazing testament to the collective work we’ve all been doing in the last ten years around gender and power and breaking down these oppressive hierarchical structures.”
The metaphor of excavating her old selves pops up in two videos for the album’s early singles, the graceful stop-motion of “Bed of Nails” and “Only The Truth,” which posits Warren as a Druid resurrected in present-day Los Angeles, still able to find magic in a neon-lit roller rink. “It was so fun to play that character for a couple days, cause I realized, I didn’t really even have to act – this is how I’ve always felt moving through the world, especially places like LA. So much of her world has been lost and destroyed, but magic still exists in everything, and that’s kind of what the song is about too,” she says, before quoting a lyric from the song: “I see light everywhere I go, I see the love in all of you.”
Warren, for what it’s worth, has long identified as a witch “as kind of an eco-feminist fuck you to the patriarchy,” though she doesn’t rely on ritual these days as much as she once did. She practices plant medicine and reiki, and her spiritual beliefs are subtly integrated throughout the album. “What you call God, I call the mysteries of the universe/What difference does it really make after all?” she asks on “Rose Potion,” a song that hints at her experience weaning herself off of pharmaceuticals prescribed for chronic illnesses that only worsened until she was able to find natural remedies and process past trauma. Piano-driven, woodwind-embellished album closer “Bones of Abandoned Futures” describes, in essence, a binding ceremony, in which Warren releases herself from the spells of the past: “Expell from my body the putrid mess inside me and call back my magic to me,” she sings, describing the process as “killing” and “slaughtering” the darkness before she comes to the final, poignant lines, “The time has come for stillness and mindful cultivation of light/Removing the sting and the sorrows of losing by singing with all of my might.” In that way, Chaotic Good is medicine all on its own – the album sees Warren confronting abusers past and present, personal and political, and stepping into her own power and anger as a woman.
“A big part of it [was] just recognizing that I have always had anger in me, inviting that energy into the room, learning how to scream, and giving myself space to do that vocally for the first time,” says Warren, who is at her most brazen on “Twisted,” a seething send-off that sees the singer posit herself as a warrior broken by loving someone incapable of empathy or understanding. “In my previous work I tried to repress it, because I thought it was ugly and scary and bad. I’d been limiting myself to this really pretty, clean, crystalline quality that gets praised a lot. But [for] this record and this time in my life, I’ve given up on prettiness and just gotten more interested in being whole, embracing all parts of myself and not trying to cut things out cause I don’t think they’re pretty.”
Parts of Chaotic Good still rely on the haunting beauty of Warren’s voice – like hushed ballad “Hole in the Wall,” rambling confessional “Every Death,” or wistful, warm acoustic number “Thru Yr Teeth” – but juxtapose them with with the same bitter emotions. As Warren lived her nomadic lifestyle, touring behind Gemini and snatching up time to experiment with newer songs in whatever studio spaces she could, the instrumentation on Chaotic Good grew more robust than any of her previous work, drawing that bitterness out sonically on songs like “Faking Amnesia” and “Part of It,” on which she sings “This is a time for me, everything else can wait/Whatever is meant to be will be and everything else can fall away.”
Indeed, Warren herself is the centerpiece of Chaotic Good, even as springy bass and shuffling drums give the tracks more punk rock energy than the pristine folk she’d cultivated in the past. “I was the only consistent player throughout – it was just me and my guitar and my traveling hard drive flitting around the whole country and working with different people in different places,” Warren says, noting that such an usual way of working was incredibly freeing in that it allowed her to explore different elements and ideas. “It was re-enlivening to get so many pairs of fresh ears on it, a day at a time. It was such a unique way of working. I’m not in any rush to go back to doing it the other way because it gave me so much time and space to reflect and change things up with low stakes.”
“That’s part of the namesake – the chaotic nature of recording it,” she continues. “I was like some little pollinating insect flying around flower to flower and getting the nectar of each moment in time in space,” she says. “I’ve never worked like that before… I feel like it translates to me synaestehtically; when I listen to the record all my senses are flooded with this feeling of variety. I feel like I see rainbows when I listen to it because there are so many moments in time, so many places, so many people, it feels like a travelogue of the last couple years that have been so beautiful really. So chaotic, but so good.”
More than any other song on the album, “Only The Truth” encapsulates Warren’s tumultuous journey, not only as a singer- songwriter, but as human being drawn into a series of co-dependent relationships. As the track builds, she calls out her past reliance on creating songs out of personal tragedy, describing “the sacred well of pain that I’ve returned to time and time again to fill my vessels with the nectar torture poison that my thirsty muse took a liking to.”
“That is to me, an encapsulation of a big over-arching process that I’ve been really invested in personally,” Warren admits. “I’ve taken a real stance against that in myself and in the world around me. It is possible to be happy and make great art and thrive and be healthy and live to a hundred twenty. And I want to do it. I want to prove to myself that that’s possible.”
Warren is currently holed up Wales, following the postponement of a European tour in support of Chaotic Good; she’s planting a garden, foraging wild foods and setting up a recording studio in a spare room, realizing that she needs this time to heal the body she’s put through years of touring. “I feel really happy right now, and honestly, I haven’t had that burning desire to create that I did when I was a tortured 20-something, when that was my only outlet,” she says. “Now, I feel really peaceful when I just wake up and walk outside and plant my beans. I don’t feel the urgency that I did, but I feel that I am making good work that I stand behind that is serving a purpose. And I feel very invested in dismantling that programming that has been running itself out in my mind for a long time and creating and alternative.”
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On “Spark,” which opens Sister Dynamite, Alice Bag crafts an earworm. “Hell no! I’m not dimming my/I’m not dimming my spark,” she sings. That line can stick with you throughout the day. In can infiltrate your dreams. It’s can be a constant reminder to be yourself no matter what, words of comfort and encouragement from an acclaimed singer and songwriter who admits on our recent phone call, “I felt like a weirdo my whole life.”
I’ve had the chance to interview Alice Bag a few times over the years and am still awestruck whenever we have the chance to catch up. She’s an icon of L.A. punk, one the founders of my hometown’s scene due her work in The Bags at the end of the 1970s. In 2011, she released her must-read memoir, Violence Girl, which spawned a creative resurgence as a writer, artist and musician. On April 24, she released Sister Dynamite, her third solo album in four years.
But, what’s truly admirable about Bag is the way that she uplifts seemingly everyone around her through her work. The first time I interviewed Bag was in 2014, when she showed her visual art at a gallery in L.A.’s Chinatown. Bag had painted portraits of herself and her bandmates from the early ’80s band Castration Squad, calling attention to the women of post-punk Los Angeles. More recently, she collaborated with the poet Nikki Darling on the song “Dolores Huerta Street,” which directly led to an intersection in Boyle Heights named for the civil rights activist. Some people talk a lot about feminism and community, but with Alice Bag, it’s present in every aspect of her work.
Take the video for “Spark” as an example. It’s directed by Rudy Bleu Garcia, who is also the co-promoter of the beloved LGBTQ party Club sCUM, and is partially filmed at Chico, the Montebello venue that’s the party’s home base. It stars Vander Von Odd, winner of the first season of the reality competition series The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula. Bag first met Von Odd while DJing at Club sCUM.
“The back room at sCUM at Chico’s is really a tiny room. It’s where the DJ sits and usually there’s just one person back there,” she says. It’s also, Bag recalls, where drag performers change their outfits. “This particular night, Vander was there getting dressed and I was playing records. We bumped into each other,” she says. “We both turned around and were apologizing profusely, making sure the other person was okay, and then we just became friends. I found an instant kinship.”
The vibe of the party was important to the message that Bag wanted to convey in the video. “Whatever you want to do, however you want to express yourself, it’s okay when you go to sCUM events. You feel like you can be yourself, you feel like you’re with friends and family,” she says. “I really wanted that to be the feeling of the video, that it was a video meant to extend support to people who feel like they’re out there.” She adds, “When you find a community where you’re supported, where you’re accepted for yourself, it’s really a good feeling.”
On Sister Dynamite, Bag worked with her usual band members, including David Jones on bass, Sharif Dumani on guitar and Candace PK Hansen on drums. The album, which was produced by Bag and Lysa Flores (who also produced Bag’s previous records), includes contributions from regular collaborators and friends like drummer Rikki Watson and singer Allison Wolfe.
In the past, Bag says, she would select players who might work well with the instrumentation of certain songs. This time, she opted for a different method. “For this album, I really wanted to bring the energy and the rhythm that you fall into when you play together a lot,” she says. “I feel like we have a family,” says Bag. “I wanted to bring that feeling.”
Part of that is inspired by Bag’s experience as a producer for Fea’s 2019 album No Novelties. “They anticipated each other’s moves, everything. It was beautiful,” she says of the band. “I thought that we could have that.”
Photo Credit: Denée Segall
Bag says that bringing her bandmates to the forefront with her has been a process, unfolding over various tours. She asked her bandmates to sing more this time around too. “I feel like a lot of the backing vocals are actually co-leads,” Bag says. “It’s really rewarding for me to see my band step up and own it. They’re all in my band because I admire their musical skills and also because, as people, they’re fun to tour with. We get along great.”
For now, though, touring is on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bag says she’s waiting to see how her gigs for late summer and fall of this year will be impacted. She explains that, after being hospitalized for pneumonia about a eighteen months ago, she’s more flexible about performances. “In the past, if I had been sick, I would still play. I never, ever wanted to cancel a show because I didn’t feel well,” she says. “Now, I feel like I’m going to be around to rock another day. I want to be able to do what I like to do for a long time.”
Singer/producer Maddie Jay’s music sounds like it’s pulled from the collective diary of the millennial generation, taking inspiration from phenomena like the sitcom Friends and Jay’s own struggles with mental health. Her debut EP, Mood Swings, out April 30, puts a comforting spin on anxiety, depression, and restlessness in her signature fashion.
Jay first taught herself to play the bass during high school and moved from Canada to Boston to study the instrument at the Berklee College of Music. She relocated to LA after school, and soon, she was working as a session and live touring bass player.
After a few years, she decided to make her own music, which first reached people largely through Instagram. She’d share clips of “beat videos,” where she’d play every part for the camera then splice it to show her process. The clips of her productions earned her a spot on Mixmag’s “Best Producers on Instagram” list in 2019. More recently, she’s begun streaming her production process on Twitch.
“A lot of people do this now, but I was one of the first people to hit that niche, and I think people were really excited to see a girl doing everything,” she says. As few as two percent of music producers are female, but Jay was able to break through that barrier thanks to inspiration from artists like Tal Wilkenfeld and Esperanza Spalding.
Jay also chalks up her success in part to her early bass-playing career. “I am very rhythm-section oriented,” she explains. “I think it really helps me as a producer because before I was a singer-songwriter, I was very focused on all the other moving parts and roles of the band.”
In 2018, she released her first single, “Lunch Break,” an atmospheric, upbeat track about getting tired of your day-to-day life and lost in your daydreams. Her next single, 2019’s “I Got You,” sounds like a love song on the surface but is actually an ode to her roommate’s dog.
Mood Swings includes those two songs plus four newer ones. In “Shakes,” a track she wrote after binge-watching Friends, she sings about a hand tremor she experiences, which flares up when she’s anxious. “I literally watched Friends all day for two months because I was too anxious to do anything else,” she remembers. “I heard that theme song over and over again, and I started to love it and wanted to write about my anxiety with that early 2000s pop rock style of song as the backdrop.” Despite the somewhat dark subject matter, the melody is somehow comforting and familiar.
Anxiety and other difficult emotions constitute a repeated theme in Jay’s music. “I think this is a millennial kind of approach — we are all about therapy and talking about our feelings,” she explains. “We relate when someone says, ‘I’m sad literally all the time and I don’t know why.’ It’s a lot different than older songwriters like Paul Simon and The Beatles. They were all about stories and painting pictures of other lives. I’m trying to focus directly on my own life, shining lights into crevices in the hope that someone else will say, ‘Oh, damn, I’ve felt like that before.’”
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Many people currently quarantined without a partner are feeling their singlehood extra strongly right now, and that can be both a liberating thing and a lonely thing. Singer-songwriter Bryce Drew explores both aspects of the single life in her music, but her song “21” focuses on the lonely side.
“When I was younger, it all seemed so simple / Thought meeting someone was inevitable / I’m not talking diamond rings / Just looking for someone who gets me,” Drew sings candidly, about making it to 21 without ever being in love.
The rest of her songs share the same relatable, conversational lyrics and mellow sound, inviting the listener into her life as she tells little bits of stories like “I thought I found my dream apartment / With all I ever wanted, turned out / It could’ve been a closet” (“Lucky Number”) and “I have an entire queen bed to myself / I don’t have to share the covers with someone else” (“Love Life”). Her videos have the same effect, showing vignettes of what the viewer could imagine as her life, or even as their own lives.
For the release of the video for “21,” we talked to her about the inspiration behind her songs and her path to becoming a musician.
AF: Tell me about your musical background and how you got where you are today.
BD: I’ve been singing my entire life. I was obsessed with music as a kid, memorized every word to every song in every movie. I was pretty shy when it came to singing in front of other people, though, so I joined the choir. That’s how I got my start on stage. I went on to attend music magnet programs for middle and high school and picked up the guitar on my own at 16.
Sixteen was a year full of loss for my family and I, and my first songs came out of coping with that loss. It was then that I really realized the power of music and the level of passion I had for it. A few years later, I moved to Nashville to study songwriting at Belmont University. My four years there were spent building my craft, writing every day, playing, and going to as many shows as possible. I was on a writing trip to LA a year after graduating when I found myself in Greg Wells’ [Adele/Katy Perry/One Republic producer] studio. I played him three of my songs, and he said, “Let’s make a record.” So I jumped at the opportunity, moved to LA a few months later, and began recording. And that’s what you’re hearing now. “21” was the first song I played for Greg that day.
AF: What inspired the song “21”?
BD: I wrote “21” in college on a night I called all my friends to meet up and they were all out on dates. I think it just hit me that everyone around me seemed to have found some version of love, and I was still waiting. The song to me is about patience, expectations, acceptance, and the frustration that naturally comes with those things. The age “21” is a standout one to me because it’s the age my parents were when they first met, and the age most of my favorite artists were on their first records about love and heartbreak, so I guess I always had a vision for where I’d be romantically by then.
AF: What was the concept behind the video?
BD: The video was filmed in my apartment and on one of my favorite beaches in Malibu, Zuma. I am from Miami, Florida, with a Trinidadian background, so I’m sure you can guess that the ocean is an important place to me. It’s where I run to process life and emotions. So, the concept is me venting to the ocean, asking for patience and understanding in love.
AF: A lot of people can probably relate to the idea of expecting to find love by a certain age and then not having that happen. What would be your advice for other people in that situation?
BD: Comparison kills. It’s also natural. Allow yourself to feel, but remember that we all are on our own path. Try and enjoy your life where you are at as much as you can and let it unfold as it does.
AF: How does your song “Love Life” relate to this subject?
BD: “Love Life” is the sister song to “21”! It’s about me deciding to let go and enjoy my life being single in the meantime, making it clear that I’m not just sitting around waiting.
AF: What about your song “Lucky Number” — was there a particular experience that inspired that?
BD: “Lucky Number” was inspired by my move to LA. I was having the hardest time finding a place to live but was constantly seeing my lucky number everywhere. As difficult as the move was, it felt right in my gut, and that thing was my surefire reminder.
AF: The entire writing, recording, mixing and mastering process for “Lucky Number” was documented in an 11-part web series—what was the process like?
BD: It was crazy! Writing and recording are two really vulnerable things, and I’d never had a film crew in the studio before. It was nerve-wracking and exciting at once. I am so glad we have the process filmed to look back on because it was the first song Greg and I wrote together and the first song I ever released as an artist. On top of that, so many got to watch the song unfold and feel like they were a part of the process. Special stuff.
AF: What was it like to study songwriting, and how does that influence your music today?
BD: Studying songwriting was everything I needed as an 18-year-old with three songs in her pocket. I am a total music nerd and could talk about songwriting forever, so getting to break down lyric, melody, and song structure with my friends was right up my alley. It taught me a lot about how to navigate when I get stuck in a bit of a block. My professors used to speak about “keeping the antenna up” for lyric starts, and I find myself searching for inspiration everywhere I can because of that practice. It also taught me that a small edit can make a song a whole lot better and prepared me to be open to criticism.
AF: What are you working on now?
BD: I am currently editing the next music video! I am also writing for a bigger project to come. It feels nice to finally have music out and be able to connect with everyone through it. So, staying connected and building my audience is a big focus right now, too.
AF: What are your future aspirations down the line?
BD: When we can again, I want to tour! Internationally! With a full band! Have a fashion line. Make multiple full albums… create a world. I got dreams. This is just the start of them.
Follow Bryce Drew on Facebook for ongoing updates.
In January 2018, Colleen Duffy, front-woman of L.A.-based rockabilly band Devil Doll, emerged from a four-year health-related hiatus to announce a crowdfunding campaign for her third album. That album, Lover and a Fighter, has now been completed and comes out May 1.
Much of the album was inspired by Duffy’s journey with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, lead and mercury poisoning, and black mold toxicity, which led her to wake up paralyzed one morning and even reach the point where it was possible she could die. “I was writing out my will, and it just really kind of puts things in perspective as far as what is important to you. A pre-death-bed clarity,” she says. This experience inspired songs such as the slow jam “Mother Mary,” which she describes as her “Amazing Grace.”
The title Lover and a Fighter was intended to convey the same duality of light and dark as the name Devil Doll, plus the “fighter” mentality that got Duffy through her illness and other hardships in her life. “Just by being born, by coming into this planet, we have thousands of years of energetic imprinting and DNA that we’re walking into,” she says. “I just choose to embrace everything about myself, whether it’s pretty or not. That’s where the empowerment comes in.”
On her latest single off the album, “Back Home to Me,” she wistfully sings about pining for an absent lover: “The time, it ticks so slow/Wonderin’ if the wind will blow/You back home to me.” Musically, she considers it a nod to Otis Redding and Sam Cooke.
The theatrical track, like many of her songs, was inspired by her own life but became more about a common human experience. “I tried to dip into that whole collective unconscious to go with the bigger picture, so sometimes, I start a song that may be instigated by a situation, but then I sort of relax into the whole dynamic that’s happening and try to go archetypal,” she says. “Most people have had that experience of being left or being invested in something and that relationship ending, and there’s that moment where we go, ‘The sky is falling and life will never be the same again.’ It’s one of those ‘come to God’ and ‘dark night of the soul’ moments.”
The album also contains several covers, including a rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man” with dueling guitar and fiddle. “That song has been a spiritual magnetic north for me,” Duffy explains. “It is healing how many times that song has come into my life out of nowhere. There were times I would listen to that song over and over again when I didn’t know if I was going to die or not. So, that was kind of my gratitude toward that song, putting it on the record.”
Duffy also tries to combat female shame in her music, like her unapologetic ode to having casual sex, “One Night Stand,” which also appears on Lover and a Fighter. “We have so many sides to the female psyche,” she says. “Some have been hidden in a dark box. Some have been embraced more than others. Let’s just dump out the boxes, unrope them from the stakes they were going to get burned at, and celebrate who we are without apology.”
Duffy is currently working on several books about her life and health journey, as well as some abstract artwork that she plans to show within the next few years. She’s also creating new songs that she hopes speak to and uplift her fans, as her music has in the past.
“There’s something very magical that comes through in the writing,” she says. “Sometimes, I feel like I can’t even take credit for the songs because I feel like they write themselves, and the songs take on this power, this life force all of their own, and people connect with them. It’s like it carries them. I feel like it’s in cooperation for something greater than myself.”
Follow Devil Doll on Facebook for ongoing updates.
Eden Iris’s crisp, soothing voice sounds like it belongs in the soundtrack to a Disney movie, and her latest song “Blue Home” is appropriately vivid and mystical. Her words paint a picture against electronic beats and string instruments: “There’s a storm coming in, grab your coat / I’ve found my shelter and I won’t let go / There’s a girl in the sky / And she calls your name / You hear the thunder but you don’t feel the rain.”
“Blue Home” will appear on the New Zealand-born, LA-based artist’s debut album, coming out later this year. She’s also been hard at work releasing several singles over the past year, including the meditative “The Love That Still Lives Here,” following her 2018 EP Demons. We talked to Iris about her songwriting process, what inspires her, and her upcoming music.
AF: How did you get started making music?
EI: I started learning classical piano when I was six years old. My mum told me, “you’re going to take lessons!” and I was resistant, which, looking back, I find amusing. I picked up the guitar when I was 12 years old, and from there, I starting busking on the streets of Auckland, New Zealand. One day, someone told me I would make more money if I sang, and that’s really what gave me a push to get started. I got into songwriting during my teenage years because it was fun to play and write in bands. I’ve kept writing ever since. I find it such a rewarding experience. And I love stories.
AF: What is the song “Blue Home” about?
EI: Like most songs, I wrote “Blue Home” to process what was happening for me at the time. The events are personal, but the song is about feeling shut out, rejected, and wanting to be loved. It’s also about holding onto hope, which is what the bridge lyrics “dreams will leave the room” are about. I wanted the song to feel melancholic but also uplifting to the listener.
AF: Musically, how does this differ from your past work?
EI: “Blue Home” has a little more of an electronic/indie vibe than some of my past work. Sophie Stern, who produced the song, recorded live drums in her studio, which created a bigger, more cinematic sound. I love the mesh of organic and sampled sounds that she brought to the table. There’s also a live string quartet playing that I have had a recording of for many years, which she worked in there.
AF: What else do you sing about on your forthcoming album?
EI: This will be my first album release. I talk about impermanence and letting go. There are a few love songs. The last few singles I have released will be on it. I was able to play the songs live at shows before I recorded them, so I think that helped me get to a place where the studio performances felt natural.
AF: What themes tend to come up most frequently in your music?
EI: I have written my fair share of love songs, but I have just as many songs that are about dealing with loss, change, and holding on to hope. I’m also kind of spiritual, so I tend to write about that a lot, too. Sometimes, when I’m playing music, it feels as though I’m channeling a higher power. When it happens, it’s instinctive, an unstoppable force, and when I reach that place, I know I don’t have to do anything but just be present and take it as a gift. Music has helped carry me through some of the toughest moments of my life, and after that, it was hard to not feel it spiritually.
Being in nature also helps me keep in touch with my spirituality. When I’m immersed in it, I feel as though I can reach an inner state of calm that is hard to find in the day-to-day grind. I guess I’m a bit of a hippie at heart, which is why I have so many lyrical references to nature!
AF: Who are your musical influences?
EI: I listened obsessively to Kate Bush and Tori Amos when I was a teenager. To name a few more… Joni Mitchell, Brandi Carlile, Maggie Rogers, and Matt Corby. Lyrically, I have been very inspired by Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, and New Zealand poet Sam Hunt.
AF: I know you moved from New Zealand to LA a few years ago — how do the music scenes in those two places compare?
EI: They are very different! LA is much more saturated with artists, which is cool because there are a lot of great opportunities for collaboration. New Zealand doesn’t have the same number of artists, but that can also work to your advantage because there is less competition for gigs. I think no matter where you are, it’s important to find a supportive community that you feel a part of. I’ve been lucky enough to find that in both places.
AF: What are you working on now, and what are your next plans?
EI: Right now, I’m finishing up mixing my album! So I am preparing for the release in the summer. There are no gigs at the moment, so I’m live-streaming from my Facebook Page every Friday night. My next plan: I’m going to keep writing, and see what songs I can catch!
Los Angeles-based DJ and music supervisor Francesca Harding had been wanting to dive deep into her favorite artists’ discographies. “This is a perfect time,” she says on a recent phone call; while clubs and bars in L.A. have closed and the people who frequent them are staying at home, Harding went to work, digging into the catalog of her favorite singer, Sam Cooke.
“I’ve been falling down this Sam Cooke rabbit hole,” Harding says. “He’s always been this large figure for me in terms of what it means to be authentic, what it means to hold space,” she says. “I really feel that what he did is still an example that we can all look to, even today.” That’s something we can all appreciate thanks to Harding’s latest mix, “Francesca Presents: Sam Cooke,” premiering today on Audiofemme. She intends this to be the first in a series of listening sessions dedicated to specific artists.
In the 1950s and early ’60s, Cooke wrote and recorded hit singles like “You Send Me,” “Wonderful World,” and “Twistin’ the Night Away.” He was an innovator, often considered to be one of pioneers of ’60s soul music, and even started a record label focused on releasing other artists’ music. Cooke was also a civil rights activist; his song “A Change Is Gonna Come” became an anthem of the era. Although his life was tragically cut short in 1964, his music has endured in the decades that followed. His songs have been frequently covered and his recordings sampled. All of that presented Harding with a challenge: “How do you do a best of mix when someone has shifted culture with their music in such significant ways?”
Harding, who wrote an artist statement about the mix that describes her personal connections to Cooke’s music, recalls hearing the singer as a child, when her mom would listen to his music. “It stays with us,” she says. “It forms us and we end up returning to it and loving it.”
As a DJ, Harding became known for playing Afro-Latin music and global bass with parties like Bodega and CULos Angeles. About two years ago, she began working in music supervision for film and television. “Luckily, for me, I have to sit down and go a little bit deeper in music just for the job description,” she says. But, through this mix, Harding gives listeners a chance to dive into Cooke’s repertoire with her.
Initially, Harding thought about organizing the mix like a more traditional club mix, starting with slower tempo songs, building up and then slowing down again. When she first recorded it that way, though, it didn’t work for her. “In doing this Sam Cooke deep dive, I kept coming across audio with him speaking and I’m like, this is perfect,” says Harding. “I was able to use Logic to chop up that audio to break up some of the segues of the mix.” She adds, “I like listening to him chit-chat and talk about soul music or what it means to be an artist.”
Harding cleverly follows various threads of Cooke’s career in a way that makes it easier for listeners to pick up. While it began as research project for herself, she’s hopeful that others might hear it and want to dig into Cooke’s work on their own, especially now that traditional in-person channels for experiencing music are on hold for an indefinite period of time.
“There is so much music to ingest and digest. If there’s ever a time for us to do that, I think it’s right now,” Harding says. “We’re in our homes. A lot of us aren’t working and we want the music. We’re hungry for the music. There’s so much music and so many genres out there.”
She’s curious to see how this extended period of listening to music at home will impact nightlife when it reopens. “I’m kind of excited about what will come out of this in terms of listeners, audiences, shaping their tastes because they’ve had more time to consume different types of music. What will it look like after this?” she says. “If I play Sam Cooke at midnight, maybe people will be more receptive to it because of this time. It will be really interesting to see how this all translates to the dance floor, for sure.”
It’s a mix made for anyone, but also one that comes from a very personal passion. “He’s such a gift and has been since I was young,” she says. “I just wanted to honor that gift.”
Follow Francesca Harding on Instagram for ongoing updates.
On her debut solo full-length, L.A.-based singer-songwriter Suzie Chism spins intensely personal, narrative songs that expertly flit across genres from rock to folk to synthpop. Where is an album about big life changes, new beginnings and finding a sense of self. And it’s an album that took shape in the closet of her Hollywood apartment.
Chism had spent eight years in Nashville, where she founded the band Moseley and had become embedded in that city’s music scene. Then, in 2018, she made the cross-country move to Los Angeles with her then-boyfriend. Their relationship ended shortly after arriving in town. Chism says that she wondered whether or not she should stay in L.A., where she hardly knew anyone, or return to Nashville, where she had a network of friends and colleagues in place.
“I wanted to like myself no matter where I’m at, which is where the concept of the album came,” Chism says. “I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere until I could get to know myself better. I stayed in L.A. and spent a lot of time with myself. I started therapy and I made this album.”
But Where isn’t a breakup album. Earlier, when Chism was still living at the home that she and her ex shared, she’d written some songs about the end of the relationship, but once she had moved into her own apartment, she was reticent to record them. “I didn’t want to hear that story anymore,” she says. “I wanted a new story and even though that scared me – because I became comfortable with my identity in L.A. of being this heartbroken ex-bandmate – I was ready for a new story.”
She spent nearly every day recording in the closet of her Hollywood apartment. In all, six of the nine songs on Where were created in that space. She played most of the instruments on the album too. “I had to figure out how to do it alone and had to learn how to play a lot of different instruments because I didn’t have the budget or the network here to hire people to play on it,” she explains.
It wasn’t always a smooth process. For the song “Good For Business,” Chism brought in a harp player to record inside the closet. While the space – which she calls “Suz Suz Studio” – isn’t tiny, it wasn’t quite big enough to fit the instrument. “I knocked over all my recording gear. Broke all my recording gear,” she recalls. The mishap forced Chism to upgrade her home studio. In the process, she realized that she learned how to use new gear and figured out how to better soundproof her closet. “It’s funny because, basically, I thought that was my final day of recording Where,” Chism says of that fateful recording session. “It ended up being the first day of recording Where.”
And it became a major learning experience. Chism drew from a list of influences – The Beatles, Harry Nilsson, Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton – as she created songs about new beginnings. She leveled-up on her musicianship and recording skills along the way too. “I feel like this album saved my life in so many ways. It gave me my life back. It also gave me new life,” says Chism. “It really helped me in a deep battle with depression that I didn’t realize that I had been going through, probably my whole life. Now that I’m on the other side of it, I feel really liberated and this creation is a huge part of it.”
The album came out on March 13, just as music events across the U.S. were being canceled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I thought it would be cool to do a Friday the 13th release,” Chism says. “Maybe now, in retrospect, that was unwise, but, I’ll never forget it. The world shut down about that day.”
Chism herself had gotten sick around the same time and, having been unable to get tested for COVID-19, self-isolated. She said that she was recovering when we first spoke on the phone, two weeks following the album’s release. When we followed up in April, she was already at work on a second album.
While Los Angeles has been staying at home, Chism decided to revisit the songs that she had written in the midst of her breakup. “I realized that, emotionally, I wasn’t really strong enough to play those right away and be out performing them,” she says, adding that some of those had been part of her earlier live performances. But they’re songs that she feels are solid, and now that enough time has passed, she’s more comfortable singing them. One of the tunes, called “Paco,” was just about finished when we spoke and she was preparing to get to work on another one, called “Surprises and Apologies,” which she describes as “the theme for the second album.”
And, yes, she’s continuing to record in Suz Suz Studio. “I sometimes wonder if it’s time for me to start dreaming bigger than my closet,” she says, “but it works for now.”
Follow Suzie Chism on Facebook for ongoing updates.
Not too long ago, Anabel Englund was in what she describes as a “depressive state” – but luckily, she already had a cure in mind. “If you’re feeling down, all you have to do is get in your car, where there’s no traffic, and blast some house music and dance and feel sexy and sing along and it just feels so good,” she says by phone, offering a reminder of why she loves the genre.
Chances are that, if you also love house, you’ll recognize Anabel Englund. The L.A.-based singer/songwriter has spent the better part of the last decade collaborating with dance music luminaries, among them Lee Foss, Jamie Jones and MK. She’s also released solo tracks like “London Headache,” “So Hot,” and “See the Sky.”
With “See the Sky,” Englund delves into ideas about heaven. “In religious terms, heaven and hell is something above or below. To me, heaven or hell can also be lived on earth in a lifetime,” she says. “This song represents living a life in heaven.” She sings of family, connection, and, she explains, of living “in that realm of heaven where you’re surrounded by love and there’s no fear.”
When she released “See The Sky” in March, Englund followed it with an Instagram performance of the song featuring her younger brother and frequent live collaborator, Jackson Englund. When she performs live, he often mixes her sets and plays electric guitar. For acoustic performances, he typically plays guitar and sings background. It’s a natural collaboration, taking something that they had previously done together just for fun into a professional setting. “I like to work with him as much as I can,” Englund says.
Englund grew up in suburban Los Angeles in a performance-minded family (her grandmother is Cloris Leachman) and had been doing “little things” in music since her youth. “Because I came from a musical family, music has always been at the forefront of my mind, whether I intended it to be or not,” she says. A YouTube video of Englund singing “Girl From Ipanema” caught the attention of ABC Family, who hired her to write and sing for their shows. While she was making music for family-friendly television, Englund dove into Los Angeles’ dance music scene with her fake ID. “I was a little mischief-maker out here. I was so drawn to it,” she admits. She befriended older people who schooled her on house through DJ mixes and was hooked. “I just fell in love with the dark side,” she says.
Englund recalls the moment she was listening to a mix and realized that dance music was where she could find her voice. “It wasjust this internal consciousness – you can do this and you can make something of yourself this way. You have to do this. You have to give people the chance to hear you,” she says. “I think, from there, I was on this mission to sing on a track and make something because I knew the capability that I had to make something great.”
It was a mix of determination and happenstance that made Englund and in-demand vocalist. After sneaking into a party where Lee Foss was DJing, she and a friend ended up hanging out with the popular DJ. Foss asked to hear her sing.
It was a fortuitous meeting. The following week, Foss offered to introduce Englund to his friend, the DJ and producer MK. Almost immediately, Englund began work on her first collaboration with the two producers, the 2013 track “Electricity.” Not long after that, Englund headed to the U.K. to work with Foss and Jamie Jones on their album as Hot Natured, Different Sides of the Sun. Englund appeared on the popular single, “Reverse Skydiving,” as well as the track “Emerald City.”
“I knew what I needed to do. I knew I needed to get on these producer’s tracks. At the same time, they were all inviting [me] to get on their tracks as well,” she says. “It was divine timing. I couldn’t have planned that kind of thing. It was very serendipitous and I’m so grateful for it.”
In spending her early career collaborating with top producers, Englund learned how to approach her solo work. “First of all, I figure out who I like to produce with and what style I like. I know each one has their own vibe,” she says.
“Whenever I’m working with someone, I’m thinking ‘I like what they’re doing here… let me remember this so that I can implement it on this track that I want to make,'” Englund adds. “I’m always taking what I like and figuring out a way to blend it with my likes and dislikes and creating something new from what I admire in someone else’s work.”
Englund has maintained her collaborative relationships. Last year, her single “So Hot” was remixed by MK and Nightlapse. She dropped a new video for that track on April 12.
In late 2019, she teamed up with Jamie Jones again for the single, “Messing With Magic.” The video, released in March, takes Englund from downtown Los Angeles to the desert, where she dances with a monster covered in tinsel. “It’s basically about a journey to self-love, dancing, and being in this place where you don’t know what’s happening and it’s really dark and dreary and then finding the fire and grabbing it and chasing after it,” she says. “That’s what the tinsel monster represents: self-love and going off and dancing with that.”
Englund says that she has a collection of new tunes that she hopes to release over the coming months with a “lengthy” EP to follow later this year.
Follow Anabel Englund on Facebook for ongoing updates.
It’s one of those days. The sun is bright, but the news is bad and everyone’s eyes are on the clouds, peering from the windows of our hermetically-sealed homes, perfectly composed as if to somehow stave off chaos. On the surface, things almost seem normal, even as a slow-moving blaze encroaches. Enter post-punk outfit Bizou, with their latest EP Stilllifeburning: a fierce, yet plaintive collection of darkwave vignettes made for those solitary hours in a world on fire.
While Bizou’s sound has an inherent freshness to it, the LA-based quintet is comprised of veteran musicians – singer Marissa Prietto (Wax Idols, Glaare), multi-instrumentalist/producer Josiah Mazzaschi (Light FM), bassist Nicole Fiorentino (Cold and Lovely, Smashing Pumpkins, Veruca Salt), drummer Erin Tidwell (Tennis System, Jennie Vee) and guitarist Nicki Nevlin (Light FM). Time and experience has clearly benefited the band, as each single on Stilllifeburning comes across as the perfect synth soundtrack for days spent daydreaming about nights downtown, rubbing elbows with leather-clad shoe-gazers, eating ramen in the early hours after a show.
It begins on an urgent note: “Now there’s crashing sky / in your green eyes / a crashing sky / crushing you, crushing me too,” Prietto sings, apocalyptic visions swimming in the mirrored reflection of her lover’s eyes. “Burn Your Name” takes us racing down a darkened street, looking for a shadow, a memory of the person she once knew: “Fire to change you / fire to tame you / fire to burn your name / fire to chase you / fire to save you / fire to burn your name.” “Kiss The Stars” taps into the slow burn of a doomed romance; the lofty synths and Prietto’s sullen, wistful vocals give off some killer Say Anything vibes, if Lloyd Dobler had been really into to The Cure. Stilllifeburning is a story told in the alleyways, neon lights blaring in the windows of a club; it immediately gives off the sensation of watching a silent film, faint images flickering with only music to accompany each scene. Prietto hints at watching that disintegration from afar on “Trapdoor” as well as in a press statement about the record as a whole that uses the same metaphor: “If you could dive into the subconscious of another person totally separate from you, as if through a trapdoor — that to me would describe the feeling of these songs,” says singer Marisa Prietto.
Listen to AudioFemme’s exclusive stream of Stilllifeburning below and read our interview with the band.
AF: As a band, your pedigree is fire. How has the experience of working together in Bizou differed from past projects?
JM: We were all friends first so it’s very platonic in this band. We’re all really easygoing. and have many similar musical tastes.
NF: It always feels very natural working with these three. There’s a lightness to it, a flow that hasn’t necessarily been there in every project I’ve been in. It makes it really easy and fun to be creative!
NN: This has by far been one of my favorite experiences with a band. we get along so well and we are pretty much 100% on the same page about everything. It’s kind of rare!
MP: It’s really different starting a band from scratch as opposed to entering an established band with existing dynamics and work flow. I think that has made collaborating really easy for us. There is no hierarchy. Regardless of which of us brings in a song or an idea, we all have equal input on how that idea is ultimately executed.
AF: What aspect of the song-writing process is your favorite? A hook, a line, a melody? The moment someone layers on a sound that gives it that certain something?
JM: A lot of our songs stem from Marisa’s or my demos. When Marisa sends me a demo I get excited to chop her song ideas up in Pro Tools and add my own parts and melodies.
NN: I love the process of creating guitar lines with Josiah. Also love the moment the vocals are laid down on the track – you can hear the magic come together.
MP: I love it when Josiah chops up my songs. It always makes them exponentially better. As a singer it’s satisfying for me to discover a hook, but arranging and listening to my bandmates lay down their parts is my favorite.
AF: Tell us about the genesis of this new EP. You’re just released your self-titled debut last year. What did you go into the studio hoping to convey?
JM: I’m always in the studio, so for me my approach was trying to dedicate as much attention to detail and critical listening that I give to all the projects that walk into my studio.
MP: This EP is so different from our last one. The demos started from this much moodier, and I wanna say, straightforwardly post-punk sound. We wanted to mess with that format and tweak it until it became something more our own.
AF: Which song is the most personal to each of you and why?
JM: I really like how “Burn Your Name” turned out. It sounds like a goth Go-Go’s song! Marisa’s vocals sometimes reminds me of Belinda Carlisle.
NN: I think “Call of the Wild” will always have a special place in my heart because it’s the one that brought us all together.
MP: “Kiss the Stars” is the most personal for me. It’s a catastrophic breakup song sourced from one of my first-ever demos. I felt vulnerable bringing it to the group. The lyrics aren’t as distanced or metaphorical as some of the ones I write. It makes it a little unnerving to perform live sometimes which I guess isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
AF: At what age did each of you start playing music and what were your first songs about?
JM: I started playing drums when I was 12 in band and then in punk/hardcore and industrial bands in my later teens.
NF: About 14, I started playing bass. I was really into riot grrrl at that time so all my songs were about feminism!
NN: I started playing guitar at 13 and only played Hole and Breeders songs over and over in my bedroom!
MP: I started playing piano and doing voice lessons when I was 8 but I didn’t write any songs until I was like … 28? Seriously. And I didn’t play any of them for ANYONE until I was in my 30s. Late to the party but happy to be here.
AF: You have such a clear, distinctive sound and style as a band. Do you ever write a song or hook and you’re like: “Damn, this is not a Bizou song. This is totally Roy Orbison.”
JM: I’m always throwing song ideas at the band. If I write something that doesn’t sound like us they’re usually like, “nah.”
NN: Sometimes something super clubby will come out of the studio, which is a lovely surprise!
MP: Me and Josiah pass around demos all the time and sometimes we are like fuck this is cool but this is completely, like, not a Bizou song. Josiah makes so much music it’s insane, and not limited to any particular genre, which I love. Going forward I’d like to incorporate more of that, and take more risks with our sound. I don’t think want to be confined to a specific genre.
AF: What bands/music inspire you, but are out of Bizou’s genre?
JM: I’ve been working with this industrial/post-punk band called Aurat. They sing in Urdu. It’s really unique. They are within our genre but their background is definitely different but cool!
NF: Neko Case, Tegan and Sara, Nina Simone, Jenny Lewis, Fleetwood Mac.
MP: I’m not even sure what our genre is, but if I had to guess, it’s goth and goth-adjacent? I’m actually scrolling through my most recently played stuff and I it’s chaotic as usual: Clinic, Ariana Grande, Cleaners from Venus, Material Issue, Eartheather, Hunny, Holly Herndon. I don’t even know what to make of that.
AF: You’re an LA-based band. What about the city gets you going creatively? Any favorite spots?
JM: So many amazing bands from all around the world come here. It really is a global melting pot. Inspiring!
NF: My favorite spots are The Bootleg, The Hi Hat, Satellite. There are so many great venues here it’s hard to list! We have an incredibly supportive community. I’ve always felt that way living here. It doesn’t feel competitive here the way it does in some other major cities.
MP: I grew up in and around LA. As cheesy as it sounds, I do get a lot of creative inspiration from being here because I am bonded to the place and it really has always felt like home. Even in my worst times I’ve always felt in control and empowered just like, driving around on the freeways here because I know them so well. Being here gives me a sense of continuity that makes me feel grounded enough to stay creative.
AF: With Coronavirus keeping everyone at home, have ya’ll been meeting up via video chat? Are you still writing or just taking a break for the moment?
JM: I’m working from home and not in my studio. I’ve busted out an old 4-track recorder from my garage and have turned my couch into my studio.
NF: Just taking a little time to reflect on everything that’s going on in the world and how it affects me, my loved ones, our community. I think there’s gonna be a lot of amazing art that comes out of this time. But I also think it’s important to slow down for a minute while we can (and have to). Really puts a lot of things into perspective. Already I’m seeing the things I’ve taken for granted and already I can see the ways I am going to be different after all is said and done.
MP: I’ve definitely been writing— it all sounds like shit though! Until we can get into the studio with Josiah, it’s going to remain sounding like shit, and I am going to keep writing, because I need something to do with my hands in the time of Corona. I think we do have a band FaceTime scheduled in the next couple days. I miss everyone. I miss playing together.
Preorder Stilllifeburning HERE. Follow Bizou on Facebook for ongoing updates.
Lena NW’s video game/album Nightmare Temptation Academy begins with a giant trigger warning. The elements of the game the player is cautioned about include “graphic sexual cartoon violence,” “glamorization of romanticizing of mental illness,” “furries,” “feminism,” “cartoon vagina,” “cartoon penis,” and “inter-dimensional sex.” This opening encapsulates the darkly hilarious art that is the work of Lena NW, also known as Fellatia G.
NW has been known for games including Viral, which explores internet culture through a quest to become a social media star, and Fuck Everything, which addresses rape culture and the male gaze through a bar setting that allows the player to have sex with various people, animals, and inanimate objects. Her creations are incisive, educational, entertaining, and disturbing all at once.
Nightmare Temptation Academy takes place in a high school during an apocalyptic era, mixing social critique with teenage angst — a lot of teenage angst. The soundtrack to the game, interspersed throughout it in the form of music videos and performed by NW’s rapping alter-ego Fellatia G, features lyrics such as “I hate my fucking life and I kind of want to die,” “I’ve got no self-awareness but I’m still so self-conscious,” “I’ve been forced to endure my existence / I never consented to being born,” and “Dorian, you’ve got me worrying / snorting heroin again / laced with fentanyl / blaming mental illness / it’s detrimental to your health.”
Throughout the game, you navigate through high school as the protagonist, a horny and depressed 14-year-old girl, tries to convince a senior boy to have sex with her, contemplates suicide, views a classmate’s erotic art featuring two boys in school, and argues about feminism with a popular girl.
NW started rapping when she was 15 and selected the name Fellatia G to take ownership of her reputation as a high school “slut.” She embodies this persona in a way that almost parodies herself; when she noticed that the song “Armageddon Is So Whatever” contained no sexual references, she added the evocative, seductively sung simile, “It all just blows up in your face like a hot load.”
Nightmare Temptation Academy is largely a reflection of what NW was dealing with during her own high school years. “I struggled with depression and not fitting in and all the stuff going on in the world, but it’s easy to sort of be like, ‘Oh, I could not exist,’ and that’s almost a comforting place to go,” she says. “In the process of making music like that, I’m dealing with these feelings. There’s almost a sense of humor in having to deal with this condition — it’s almost like a coping strategy to make light of your darkness, to have fun with it.”
The apocalyptic theme seemed particularly appropriate to DB during this time in history, especially now that the release of the game happens to coincide with the coronavirus pandemic. People are trying to “cope with the feeling like either we’re being robbed of a future or the future is uncertain, and trying to grapple with feeling everything is hopeless,” she explains.
The game also hyperbolizes the brainwashing that technology allows for: in the fictional school, the characters put on helmets that directly implant messages into their minds. “It’s like the cyber space of our of millennial internet culture deteriorating on the other side of the screen,” she says. Even as the world is ending, the characters are still wrapped up in their own petty social dynamics, which serves as commentary on the lack of concern many people currently have for world issues.
You can currently download to game and play for yourself on itch.io, but be warned: You will encounter graphic sexual cartoon violence, cartoon genitalia, furries, feminism, and much, much more.
“Growing up in Vegas taught me how to throw a good party,” Stefan T says, and his new single “All Night” certainly has the swagger of the strip: lights, dirt, a sideways smile.
From his upcoming album NightShift, due out April 24th, “All Night” is a departure from the album’s previously-released alt-R&B-tinged singles, “Keep Me Guessing” and “One” (featuirng B. Rose) with their sensual lyrics and electronic, glitchy background sounds. “All Night” takes the party out of the bedroom and onto the dance floor.
Stefan T (which stands for Tisminezky), started playing classical guitar at age 10 and graduated from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Electronic Music Production and Sound Design. After moving to Los Angeles, Tisminezky put his music production chops to work, writing music under the moniker The Saint Machine. The music he created was a mutli-layered, fast-paced whirlwind into the future, awash with robotic signatures and lengthy solo synth attacks; it was a cathartic release of energy, stemming partly from Tisminezky’s then-recent sobriety.
Craving to create something with more commercial appeal, Stefan began to play around with chord progressions; “All Night” was a collaboration with his friends Spencer and Levi. They supplied the guitar riffs and Stefan “filled in the rest.” Synths are prominently featured throughout, specifically a Moog Mother 32 and DFAM, as well as a Korg Minilogue. These alien sounds, like vibrations from a time warp, help to raise the nu disco to another world altogether.
Listen to AudioFemme’s exclusive stream of “All Night” below:
Follow Stefan T. on Instagram for ongoing updates.
You might recognize Elle Winter from her early days on Radio Disney, or from her appearances in movies like Three Generations, Code Red, and The After Party. The recent LA transplant released her first two singles, “Day Away” and “Incredible,” through Walt Disney Records in 2012, but now she’s back and more focused on making music than ever. Her debut EP Yeah, No sees Winter expressing herself like never before, and her message is one of empowerment.
Winter got back into making music in 2018 with “One More,” then released several more songs last year that became part of Yeah, No, which came out on March 6. Winter describes the EP’s title track as an “empowerment anthem.” It reads like a post-breakup declaration of independence, with the lyrics, “Thinking that I’m spending my time home alone crying / Wondering whying / Wishing that you were still mine / Yeah, no / Yeah, no / Stop thinking I miss you / Don’t/ I don’t / It never was an issue / So let go.”
Winter wrote “Yeah, No” after the end of a relationship while she was living in Nashville. “I’d just gone through this breakup, and my ex would call me to check in, and I wrote it because I felt like that was almost kind of condescending,” she says. “I was with this person for a long time, and they knew I was a very independent person.”
But the lyrics came to mean more to her than just asserting that she didn’t need her ex. “A lot of times, people can misunderstand who you are — so, in this situation, it’s an ex thinking you’re still in love with them — and oftentimes, we feel like we’re not given a voice to set the narrative for our own story,” she says. “So, I think people connect to that storyline. It seems to resonate with a lot of people.”
Music is Winter’s way of shaping her own story in a world that constantly tries to shape the narrative for women. Her video for “Yeah, No” intentionally includes women striking fierce poses and performing strong movements without any male love interests present. “I want to reclaim my power as a woman and help others to tell their truth and hold their ground,” she says.
Credit: Damien Blue
Every song on Winter’s EP ties into the larger theme of self-expression and standing up for yourself. “You keep bringing me down / You think you’re winning the crown / But this ain’t no competition / If I’m a judge, I’ve made my decision,” she sings on “Do You.” On “110%,” which grabs the listener’s attention with a catchy chorus and fun electronic backtracks, she sings about being unwilling to settle for a partner who gives her less than their all.
For now, the emerging pop princess is hard at work on new music that aims to give people something they can relate to and help them feel connected during divisive times.
“We all post highlight reels and kind of just show the best of what’s going on, but what I think my music does is be vulnerable and honest and show every side, the good and the bad,” she says. “We all strive to show how different we are, and in the end, we’re actually more similar than we think. So, I think it’s important to make people feel connected. In that three-and-a-half-minute song, we can stop thinking about our differences and be together and think about the fact that we all share this human experience.”
For her synthpop project Love You Later, Lexi Aviles writes honest, open lyrics that make you feel like you’re reading someone’s diary. The 21-year-old artist released her first EP, How Many Nights Do You Dance With Tears in Your Eyes?, in 2018 and has since put out several singles that deal rawly with heartbreak, growing up, and other emotional topics.
Born and raised in Orange County, Aviles has been writing songs since she was 13. She moved to Nashville right out of high school to make it as a singer-songwriter and has since settled in LA.
Her songs are relatable not just because of their subject matter but also because of the conversational tone she writes and sings in. “It’s weird I find my comfort in the city / I miss my mother / cause she’s not here / no, she’s not here / I’m going home this weekend and I’m thinking about / not leaving / and it’s kind of weird,” she sings in 2018 single “Growing Season.” She candidly addresses a lover on 2017’s “Emily,” “Well you can say you’re sorry for nothing / Cause I know that you’re feeling something with her / So go get her.”
Love You Later’s latest single, “Making Plans,” is about a phenomenon many people can relate to: dating as a means of self-distraction. Her second EP, which includes this track and others, is set to come out this spring. We talked to her about her latest song and video and her future plans.
AF: What was the inspiration behind the song “Making Plans”?
LA: It’s hard to be alone. As humans, sometimes we just need someone to pass the time with to get our minds off of the bad stuff. It’s so easy to feel isolated and drowned out in such a big city with so much happening but no one to do it with. I wrote this song from a state of isolation, self reflection, and transparency, which hopefully people can relate to.
AF: What was the concept behind the video?
LA: The video illustrates me and this guy having this exciting and sweet date night, really just to get my mind off of things. He is acting as a placeholder more and more as the night carries on.The shots go back and forth from me enjoying the date to me getting frustrated with myself for choosing to go on this date in the first place because it stems from selfish reasons (loneliness, sadness, emptiness, depression, desperation, etc.).
AF: Does your music aim to help people with the kind of loneliness you sing about?
LA: I definitely hope to reach people through my music. Vulnerability is such a special part of being an artist. Having a platform to share my story and express my honest feelings is a privilege, and I strive to create a safe space where people feel like they can connect. That’s why I do this whole music thing in the first place. I’ve learned that when you open up, other people will, too.
AF: What other themes do you explore on your upcoming EP?
LA: The EP sums up the freedom, relief, and liberation I felt after I ended a relationship that wasn’t good for me. All of these songs show the progression of that relationship – before, during, and after. The EP is very transparent and emotional, but at the same time, more lighthearted and self aware than the first EP. I’m so excited to release it into the world. I can’t exactly tell you the name yet, but it has five songs featuring “Making Plans” and “Said That You’d Be There,” my two singles leading up to the release.
AF: Who are your biggest influences?
LA: The Japanese House, Bleachers, Caroline Polachek, No Rome, King Princess, MUNA, Clairo, Charlie Puth, LANY, The 1975, and anything ’80s.
AF: Speaking of making plans, what are your next plans?
LA: Releasing my EP in April, playing some shows in the spring/summer, another video coming very soon, and lots more!
Follow Love You Later on Facebook for ongoing updates.
Growing up in LA’s San Fernando Valley, Molly Williams, known by her stage name MOONZz, started playing piano and developed a love for music at a young age. By the time she was 25, she’d released “Satisfy,” a flirty, empowering electronic hit that ended up in a Victoria’s Secret commercial. She then went on to perform at Coachella and Electric Forest, open for Jai Wolf and ODESZA, and release two EPs, Trust Cycles(2016) and Aftershock(2018).
Her latest EP, Modern Ritual (out March 6), explores “the patterns and actions that define your life as well as the lives of your network and beyond,” she explains. The EP’s eponymous song, “Modern Ritual,” for instance, was originally written about the LA “ritual” of canceling plans — though she ended up giving it a more positive spin, her sultry voice singing about “webs of my forgotten friends / sending love to all of them.” The EP is danceable and catchy from beginning to end, and among its other themes are “self-love, letting go of expectations, feeling helpless and empowered, and falling in love,” says Williams.
“Runnin’,” the first single off Modern Ritual, does what MOONZz does best: inspires and uplifts. “I’ve been cut down like a diamond / trying to move with the lightning / always been quick on my toes / follow where the chaos goes,” it opens, building toward a chorus that assures listeners, “I’m not done running.”
“The song is a message to myself to keep on fighting for what I want and what I deserve,” she says. “I think a big part of MOONZz is showing the duality of struggle and breakthrough and all that comes from the struggle.” The new album is full of motivational messages like this; the fun, upbeat “Love Myself” features melodic “oohs” alongside the refrain “I just gotta love myself,” and “Battles” reminds listeners, “I gotta pick and choose my battles” and “I look for blessings in my life.”
Women’s empowerment has always been part of MOONZz’s platform, but she doesn’t limit that message to women. “My music is for everyone, and I’ve always felt that way,” she says. “I preach empowerment because everyone should get support, opportunities, resources, and encouragement. I want to be that resource for people.” She accomplishes this not just through her music but also on social media, with fun Instagram posts about individuality, overcoming self-doubt, and gratitude.
MOONZz, who will soon announce several shows around LA and elsewhere, cites her biggest influences as Thom Yorke, Kevin Parker, Greg Kurstin/The Bird and The Bee, and Fiona Apple. But her latest album was also inspired by the music of Sudan Archives, Victoria Canal, Moses Sumney, Emily King, and Garden City Movement. She describes Modern Ritual as “more cohesive” than her previous albums. “The harmonies are more fluid and I feel vibrationally connected to the details and colors of each record,” she explains. “I’m in a really happy place in my life, and it shows.”
Magic City Hippies at The Regent (photo by Ashley Prillaman)
“What kind of music was that?” my husband asked as we left The Regent on a Saturday night. We had just finished watching Magic City Hippies perform for the second time (the first at the That Tent during Bonnaroo 2019). I scrolled over to Spotify and found the band’s self-written description: “a mosaic of poolside grooves and lingering, sun-kissed melodies.” That, we agreed, was an accurate description.
Miami boys to the root, the band started on the streets of the “Magic City;” Robby Hunter had been performing as a one-man-with-a-guitar-and-a-loop-pedal band, but after meeting Pat Howard (drums) and John Coughlin (guitar) at a local haunt the Barracuda Bar in Coconut Grove, a trio was formed. Originally called The Robby Hunter Band, they performed ’90s rock and hip hop covers before hitting it big with 2015’s Hippie Castle EP; the EP led to a successful tour with bands like Hippo Campus and Moon Taxi, laying the groundwork for 2019’s LP Modern Animal.
The Regent has been home to some of my favorite nights out in Los Angeles. The crowd was already pretty thick for openers The Palms and unlike some shows where the crowd merely tolerates the opener, the audience was behind them from the first licks of “Future Love (We All Make Mistakes).” A duo comprised of Los Angeles natives Johnny Zambetti and Ben Rothbard, The Palms brought both swagger and swag (Zambetti paid homage to Kobe Bryant with a jersey draped across an amp) to the stage. The set was tight, with even the bouncer bopping his head along to Zambetti’s vocals, a bit of an Alt-J invocation at times, but clearly influenced by iconic Cali locales, with songs like “Beach Daze,” “Sunset Strip,” and “Mulholland Dr.” “Levitate” ended the set with a perfect shot of melancholy hope: “All these thing that they told me / Used to mold me / But that’s the old me / We’re going straight to the stars / ‘Cuz that’s who we are.”
The Palms (photo by Ashley Prillaman)
Magic City Hippies started their set in the dark and with the first beats of “Spice,” the party began. Robby Hunter has the kind of bravado one often finds at country music shows: he’s relaxed, confident, and clearly enjoys the music he’s making. It’s a rare treat to watch a band that seems equally into playing their b-sides as their singles. “Franny” was the first song that got the crowd seriously groovin’; a woman in front of me was sliding around in sneakers and a neon jumpsuit.
“How many lives are you gonna let expire / How many sparks of love have died in vain / How many nights will it take ’til you grow tired / Hunting the one that got away,” Hunter sings sweetly on “Limestone” (my tried-and-true favorite). Vocal manipulation is a mainstay throughout Magic City Hippies’ music and is sometimes jarring to hear in a live setting. At times, the effect was a little too auto-tune-tastic for my taste; at best, the manipulation created a distinct flavor that separated songs from each other. As with many great bands, the Hippies music has a feel to it, a vibe that’s altogether their own. So the occasional vocal change-up on songs like “What Would I Do” were refreshing.
“We are here for one reason and one reason only and that’s to mother fucking party with you!” Hunter shouted into the crowd midway through the set. The group didn’t shy away completely from their cover band past, covering Anderson .Paak’s “Make It Better” and Travis Scott’s “Goosebumps.” The band doesn’t rest; there were no water breaks or long stories. From drummer Pat Howard’s relentless beats to Hunter’s occasional Sprechgesang, the band members never let up, understanding that this a paid performance and the audience is going get what they came for: the funk. I left wanting to revisit 2019’s Modern Animal… and will admit that it’s been on heavy rotation for the last few days now. With two MCH shows under my belt, I’ll be front row and center the next time they make their way back to the City of Angels.
At The Novo in Downtown LA on Friday, February 21, indie rock band Cold War Kids performed their last show in a six-week tour with electronic duo Overcoats. From a cappella harmonies and classical string instruments to electric guitars and keyboards, the two acts brought together diverse styles of music for a night that kept the audience on its toes.
Overcoats, consisting of singer-songwriters Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell, released their first album, Young, less than three years ago, but they’ve come a long way since. Over the past few years, they’ve put out the singles “Leave If You Wanna” and “The Fool,” which give off poppier vibes than their earlier music. Their next album, The Fight, is out March 6.
Despite their musical evolution, Elion and Mitchell still present on stage much the same as they did earlier in their careers — like two good friends having a blast together. The members have been friends since they met in 2011 at Wesleyan University, and it shows. Throughout their performance, they danced together, twirled each other around, and even did a synchronized head-bang.
The opening act’s selections ranged from their lullaby-like 2016 cover of Hozier’s “Cherry Wine” to 2019’s heartfelt “Keep the Faith,” complete with energetic guitar interludes, and the catchy “I Don’t Believe in Us” off Young. Elion and Mitchell were joined by drummer Madi Vogt and Sara Lupa on bass, keys, and guitar, and they were all visibly enjoying themselves. During the country-inspired “Leave If You Wanna,” Elion lay down while Lupa played on top of her, the audience clapped their hands along with the band, and Cold War Kids’ Joe Plummer jumped in to shake a tambourine.
Cold War Kids built up the anticipation for their set; all the audience could hear for several minutes was the belting of an operatic voice before the band took the stage. At last, they opened with “Love is Mystical,” the first single of 2017’s L.A. Divine, full of catchy keyboard tunes and drum beats. Lead singer Nathan Willett’s voice was soulful and powerful, a bit reminiscent of a young Van Morrison. On the wall behind the stage, it read “Cold War Kids” and “New Age Norms,” the name of the band’s seventh studio album, released last year.
The main act went on to play “Who’s Gonna Love Me Now,” a bluesy song released just the week prior, and “Lost That Easy,” a single from 2013’s Dear Miss Lonelyhearts that epitomizes indie rock with danceable synths, dreamy lyrics like “a swollen tongue, a plastic gun / red burn from an orange sun,” and triumphant chords. The audience went wild for the chart-topping 2006 single “Hang Me Up to Dry,” dancing and cheering and singing along, and the band fed off the energy of the crowd, coming down to the center of the stage to dance together.
Willett performed the 2019 ballad “Beyond the Pale” by himself on the piano, then Overcoats returned to harmonize with him. Cold War Kids followed with an emotional acoustic version of “So Tied Up” and a rendition of “Calm Your Nerves” accompanied by a violinist and cellist. The same instrumentalists added a haunting layer to “Dirt in My Eyes.”
While Cold War Kids and Overcoats differ in style, and the former has been around longer than the latter, both acts appear intent on continuing to expand their musical horizons and experiment with different sounds. Altogether, they delivered something you couldn’t get just from listening to their recordings — and isn’t that the point of seeing live music?
Singer-songwriter Leila Sunier just moved to Los Angeles from Colorado in September. The 23 year-old chose L.A. out of a relative familiarity—she once spent a summer interning at a music library in the area—but the change of scenery is also symbolic of her ambitions in music.
“You kind of transplant yourself [here] because you know there are so many creatives focused on their craft and they’re very serious about it and you know that you can hopefully meet people that are like-minded and collaborate with them,” said Sunier.
“Ghost” is the second single released in promotion of her forthcoming EP, If Only to Bleed Out The White Noise. The EP, which drops February 14th, has all the trimmings of indie folk—but with a little something extra. There’s the experimental elements of noise and metal, and the authentic heartache of country-blues and vintage jazz—and she comes by each influence honestly.
“I didn’t listen to contemporary music really until I was 13 [or] 14,” said Sunier. “I grew up in a household where we played a lot of old country. Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, that was every Saturday. We played a lot of swing jazzers. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin. And then on road-trips, my dad grew up as like a metalhead, so of course there’s like Aerosmith, those bands from the ’80s, and whatnot. [I had] a very diverse and eclectic background.”
Her debut EP is also driven by the loss and struggle inherent in coming of age, says Sunier. Within the last couple years, Sunier completed her music studies at University of Miami and ended a formative romantic relationship, and the latter is delicately chronicled on If Only to Bleed Out The White Noise. “Ghost” is particularly nostalgic for the initial stages of her romance, and of a life where possibilities were endless and spirits were as high as a kite on a windy day.
The simple video, premiering exclusively on Audiofemme, bolsters the mood of “Ghost.” Crafted by L.A.-based filmmakers Jessie Klearman and Vivian He, and co-starring actor Gibran Zahedi-Mitchell, the video follows two lovers as they frolic smilingly on a beach, soaked in the faded colors of an overcast Santa Monica day, to the tune of Sunier’s misty, almost-familiar melody.
“This song I wrote at the beginning stages of a relationship and I really took this idea of like, ghosting – when somebody just suddenly leaves, there’s no explanation, they’re just kind of gone,” she said. “But then there’s this other side of it. To this day I still think it’s really incredible – how do you get to know somebody? Their story, and their life kind of becomes invisibly intertwined with yours; it’s something that isn’t immediately perceived, you’re just starting to like, join energies or whatnot. That was really the whole crux, the concept. I was watching this relationship start and it was really exciting and new. And then it’s kind of funny, the phrase ‘ghost’ kind of popped up in other songs on the project because in the creation of this project I watched this relationship begin and then end.”
And “Ghost,” is the most optimistic track about this romance. In general, the painful end of this relationship—and the beginning of a new stage of life—gives Sunier’s debut EP a haunting, aching sort of quality. She contends with emptiness and confusion most of the way—the ghosts of what she’s lost in the process of loving and leaving this person. The hollowness is in the background on the first track, “Cut A Smile,” but only continues to grow in urgency as the EP goes on. By the final track, “Outro,” it’s in the foreground, and Sunier addresses the pain directly to herself and her listeners. “I’ve been living with ghosts of myself,” she sings.
“The project was almost called ‘Ghosts of Myself,'” she said. “But then it also really focused on this idea of noise. If Only to Bleed Out the White Noise is a lyric from the second to last song called ‘Young Thing,’ which is me reckoning with growing up and what that means. I think a lot of people my age generally, it’s like ‘Wow, I have to grow up.’”
Through the process of listening to the EP, the listener gets to grow up with Sunier. A certain hollowness is filled. In that way, If Only To Bleed Out The White Noise has the storytelling power of a concept album. After all, Sunier crafted it over a two-year period of her early twenties, a time universally known for its growing pains. With each song, Sunier’s understanding of herself and of her creative voice expand into an ever-widening horizon, and the magic here is how artfully she tells her own story and draws in her listener. By the end of this stunning journey, she’s found her voice—a lush, honest, and individual one at that.
Follow Leila Sunier on Facebook for ongoing updates.
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