Joanna Sternberg has released a new song called ‘A Country Dance’. It’s featured prominently in Between the Temples, an upcoming film directed by Nathan Silver and starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane. Listen to it below.
Recorded in upstate New York by Alex Wenquest, ‘A Country Dance’ was inspired by Sternberg’s close friend Sami Bronowski, who was the first person to encourage them to sing in public. “The joke of the song is: I don’t dance, I don’t drink wine, I don’t go outside and I DEFINITELY do not go out in nature (allergies and insect phobias), but I wanted a playful nonsensical song to sing and to capture the fun I have with my dear pal,” Sternberg explained in a statement.
“I think the reason the song can fit in this beautiful film, is that it captures a freewheeling imaginative feeling,” they added. “The lyrics are vague enough to be applied to anything, and it just creates a ‘fun and fancy-free’ mood!”
Desire have released a new single, ‘I Know’, taken from their upcoming album Games People Play, which is due October 2. It follows the previously unveiled singles ‘Vampire’, ‘Human Nature’, ‘Darkside’, and ‘Dangerous Drug’. The song’s accompanying video was directed by Desire and filmed and edited by Johnny Jewel. Check it out below.
“Lost in a hazy daydream on the islands of Malta & Gozo,” Megan Louise shared in a statement. “We can pretend sometimes…I know.”
Throughout the week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with the new releases that caught our attention the most, be it a single leading up to the release of an album or a newly unveiled deep cut. And each Monday, we round up the best new songs released over the past week (the eligibility period begins on Monday and ends Sunday night) in this best new music segment.
On this week’s list, we have Christopher Owens’ ‘No Good’, the defeated yet dynamic new single from his first album in nine years; Fashion Club’s revelatory duet with Perfume Genius, ‘Forget’; Charly Bliss’ ‘Back There Now’, a vibrant, catchy highlight off their new album Forever; Fievel Is Glaque’s ‘As Above So Below’, the fluttering, delightfully intricate lead single from the jazz pop duo’s third album; Frost Children and Danny Brown’s bombastic collab ‘Shake It Like A’; ‘Vanessa’, the haunting yet tender new single from Midwife’s upcoming album; ‘Mutations’, another captivating preview of Nilüfer Yanya’s new album; Merce Lemon’s stirring, subtly frantic ‘Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild’; and Wild Pink’s latest single, the bright, expansive ‘Sprinter Brain’.
Blockchain has thrown the world for a loop by stepping outside of crypto gambling and online gambling and into polling booths. The need for a transparent electoral processes has never been more important. With so many important issues on the line, it is time to say goodbye to traditional voting systems. Old voting systems face challenges such as fraud, manipulation, and inefficiency. All that is about to change with the introduction of blockchain technology and smart contracts. Reshaping the electoral landscape has nothing except benefits for people across the globe.
What are Smart Contracts?
Smart contracts are advanced self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement directly written into code. Smart contracts are part of blockchain’s impressive technology, and smart contracts can transform the way elections are conducted. Smart contracts can guarantee transparency and security in the electoral process, regardless of what type of election.
Why Use Smart Contracts in Elections?
Using smart contracts in elections gives a new sense of transparency. Smart contracts operate on a decentralized network, meaning every transaction is recorded on a tamper-proof ledger that all participants may access. Anyone with access to the blockchain can verify the entire electoral process, from voter registration to ballot counting.
Smart contracts can enhance the security of elections by preventing fraud and manipulation. The blockchain technology ensures that once a vote is recorded, it cannot be altered or tampered with. Thus, eliminating the risk of vote tampering, ballot stuffing, or other forms of electoral fraud. There are so many problems that plague traditional voting systems. Cryptographic techniques can encrypt voter identities and ensure the confidentiality of individual votes. Smart contracts are upping security in ways never thought possible.
The Unbeatable Efficiency of Smart Contracts in Voting Systems
One significant advantage of smart contracts in elections is the unbeatable efficiency. Traditional voting systems involve manual processes such as paper ballots and manual counting. Elections also require verification by electoral officials. All these tasks take up important time. Smart contracts automate many aspects of the election process. Previously slow tasks like voter registration, identity verification, and ballot counting would speed up drastically. Plus, smart contracts would reduce the need for human intervention effectively streamlining the process from start to finish.
Other ways smart contracts can help elections is by increasing voter participation and accessibility. In many countries, voter turnout is decreased by long queues, limited polling stations, and difficulty accessing voting locations. Online or remote voting through blockchain-based platforms would make the electoral process more convenient and accessible for voters. Smart contracts could change the ability for people to access voting, especially those unable to physically attend polling stations due to mobility issues or work commitments.
Building Trust in the Electoral Process
Smart contracts can build a greater trust and confidence in the electoral process. Blockchain technology can help address concerns about electoral integrity and legitimacy. Increased trust can encourage greater participation in the electoral process.
Smart contracts offer several perks but implementing smart contracts for elections is not without challenges. There are multiple technical considerations to tackle. The need for robust cybersecurity measures must be carefully addressed to ensure the integrity of the electoral system. Legal frameworks would require updates to accommodate the use of blockchain technology in elections to address privacy, data protection, and voter rights concerns.
Smart contracts offer solutions to many challenges facing traditional voting systems. Smart contracts can provide transparency, security, efficiency, and accessibility in elections. Blockchain technology is enhancing trust and confidence in the electoral process. As countries worldwide prepare for the 2024 elections,, adopting smart contracts could be just the thing needed to empower voters.
Author’s note: An earlier version of this essay appeared in Issue #6 of John LeMay’s The Lost Films Fanzine. It has been republished with his permission.
“When I see horses running as fast as they can, tears well up in my eyes.” poet Kenji Miyazawa
In February 1966, Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa’s exclusive contract with Toho—the studio that nurtured his early career and produced eighteen of his previous twenty-three movies1—came to an end, and he started considering the option of working overseas. Ever since Rashomon (1950) took home the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival in 1951, Kurosawa had steadily developed status as an international film icon; his period masterpieces Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961) were successfully remade as westerns, The Magnificent Seven (1960) and A Fistful of Dollars (1964); and more than sixty offers had poured in from Hollywood admirers salivating at the opportunity to work with him. (One proposed collaboration would’ve starred Peter O’Toole as William Adams, a sixteenth-century navigator who became the first Englishman to reach Japan and be appointed a samurai by the shogun.)2
That June, Kurosawa appeared at the New York Four Seasons alongside Embassy Pictures’s Joseph E. Levine (one of the key personnel behind importing Ishiro Honda’s 1954 Godzilla to the United States) and announced plans for an action picture called Runaway Train.3 It was to be Kurosawa’s first color production, though he intended to shoot it with a black-and-white sensibility: a dark locomotive racing through snowy landscapes. The following spring, word came out that he would also direct sequences of 20th Century Fox’s Tora! Tora! Tora!, a U.S.-Japan co-production about the bombing of Pearl Harbor.4
Alas, both projects ended up being realized without the famous director. Runaway Train experienced numerous delays and was eventually shot by Andrei Konchalovsky in 1985. And Tora! Tora! Tora! was a catastrophe on all fronts. The script Kurosawa and co-screenwriters Hideo Oguni and Ryuzo Kikushima spent months putting together was ordered trimmed by the American financiers, and Kurosawa found himself at odds with Toei, the studio in charge of the movie’s Japanese sequences. (Toei’s modus operandi was to crank out films in an assembly line-esque fashion, and the crew clashed with Kurosawa’s unflagging perfectionism.) Other complications arose: at one point, Kurosawa suffered a nervous collapse, and 20th Century Fox launched a campaign portraying him as mentally ill. Finally, on Christmas Eve 1968—after a mere twenty-three days of shooting—he was let go from the project.5
Fallout from the Tora! Tora! Tora! debacle left Kurosawa with a tarnished reputation in the Japanese film community. What’s more, he was now stranded in an industry no longer willing to support the kind of movies he liked to make. Television had arrived in Japan in 1953 and became a household commodity within just a few years.6 Proliferation of at-home entertainment contributed to a massive decline in ticket sales: by 1970, attendance had fallen from an all-time high of 1.13 billion in 1958 to roughly 255 million.7 Consequently, the studios downsized, and budgets became smaller than what’d been afforded in the ‘50s and ‘60s, when Kurosawa and others turned out classic after classic.
Some responded to this sea change by switching to TV. Kurosawa’s friend and contemporary, Keisuke Kinoshita, told historian Audie Bock in May 1977: “[I]f I had to work in theatrical films I’d only be able to make one a year at the most under today’s bad financial conditions. To make features now requires too much compromise with the financiers who demand a sure thing—and of course I’m no good at compromise. […] Of course I would rather make features, but in television I can do whatever I want and a lot of it.”8 Kinoshita’s protégé, Masaki Kobayashi, despite loathing television, agreed to make a drama called The Fossil—simply so he could edit footage from the show into a 200-minute movie.9 As for Kurosawa, when one of his producers suggested he try his hand at a TV show, he allegedly replied: “I just can’t direct a stupid television drama.”10
In July 1969—together with Kinoshita, Kobayashi, and Kon Ichikawa—Kurosawa established a new production company, Club of the Four Knights. “We borrowed from a bank and this is the first time they have helped [a] film production. If [our first] film is a success, they will give us more, so it must be a success.”11 Alas, the only movie to come out of this partnership was Kurosawa’s Dodesukaden (1970), made for ¥100 million (triple the cost of the average Japanese feature at the time).12 In addition to lackluster box office, the picture accrued less-than-ecstatic reviews both domestically and abroad. New York Magazine’s Judith Crist dismissed Dodesukaden as “disappointing […] pedestrian and trite, its effects garish rather than surreal. It is [Kurosawa’s] first film in five years; we look forward to his next.”13
As it happens, that ‘next film’ was one Crist and other international admirers did not see—for it wasn’t and to this day hasn’t been given an official release outside Japan. Not considered part of Kurosawa’s official filmography, the movie in question only occasionally appears in studies on his work—and even then usually in the form of a fleeting mention. What’s more, it was the sort of project unexpected of the great director: made for the small-screen medium he despised.
Co-produced14 and broadcast (on August 31, 1971) by Nippon Television, Song of the Horse is a 73-minute color documentary about equines in contemporary Japan, narrated by Noboru Mitani and child actor Hiroyuki Kawase. The duo had recently played a beggar and his son in Dodesukaden, and Kawase was fresh off a role in Yoshimitsu Banno’s Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971); he would later appear in Jun Fukuda’s Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973). As the narrators, Mitani and Kawase behave like audience members: while Mitani occasionally lectures Kawase about horses, their commentary largely consists of colloquial remarks on the images. (“Like a brush!” Kawase exclaims at a close-up of a foal swishing its tail.)
The film itself is virtually plotless. Following an opening pair of slow-motion close-ups of galloping thoroughbreds, Kurosawa presents a montage on the depiction of equines in Japanese art (paintings, sculptures, children’s illustrations, etc.). From here, he takes us to rural Japan, where horses, despite not being as plentiful as they once were, are revered. Mitani describes how the people of Nanbu (now part of Iwate Prefecture) “used to live, eat, and sleep” with the animals. We see Chagu Chagu Umako, an Iwate summer festival in which horses adorned with colorful fittings parade from Onikoshi Souzen Shrine to Morioka Hachiman Shrine. We see another festival in Soma District, Fukushima Prefecture, an area known for horse breeding. Mitani explains that while Japan breeds three thousand horses each year, their numbers are decreasing—as agrarians have less use for them thanks to advancing technology. Nevertheless, he assures Kawase (and the audience) that Japanese horses shall not vanish, for they’re still viable for entertainment.
At this point, Song of the Horse changes emphasis, focusing less on the role the animals play in 20th century Japan in favor of depicting their daily lives in captivity. A colt is born in a stable; he learns to stand—a clattering of bells on the soundtrack accentuating his triumph—and later trots outside with the adults. Various groups of full-grown horses gallop at breakneck speed (as Kawase cheers “Run faster!”). The animals graze and spar: a clash between two stallions is filmed in slow-motion, underscored by drums and intercut with shots of cloud formations. As the picture enters its final thirty minutes, thoroughbreds are sold at auction and prepared for racing. If the picture has anything resembling a climax, it would be the 38th Japan Derby—June 13, 1971—wherein the horse Hikaru Imai emerged victorious.
Song of the Horse is a curious and lackluster entry in Kurosawa’s filmography. While some of the early sequences depicting equine reverence are lively and interesting, the majority of the film consists of grueling footage of the animals simply grazing or galloping through fields for interminable periods of time. The repetition becomes tiring, and the film seldom knows when to cut from a shot long after it’s ceased being interesting. In one punishing moment, the audience endures two long-lasting shots (more than three minutes combined) of a group of horses running. During which the camera occasionally zooms in or out on the animals but shows little else; the background, the scenery, the way everything’s shot—it all remains the same.
Part of the problem might be that Kurosawa apparently didn’t enact his usual practice of cutting the film himself. Song of the Horse’s editing is credited to Reiko Kaneko, an assistant to Kurosawa who previously cut Dodesukaden—in addition to three Ishiro Honda sci-fi movies: King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), Gorath (1962), and Matango (1963)—and it is the cumbersome image assembly that hurts Song of the Horse more than anything. (My recurring impression was that the picture had been intentionally padded out to meet a mandatory runtime, which in fairness to the editor may have been the case.) Despite some impressive visual tricks—slow-motion, rack focus on blades of grass, fences silhouetted against the morning sky, gorgeous vistas of horses grazing before the ocean—Song of the Horse lacks momentum. The impeccable rhythm and quintessential joining of shots for which Kurosawa is renowned is absent and, without a story to fall back on, the movie becomes one of the few genuinely dull entries in his career.
There are, however, a few discussions to be had on how Song of the Horse relates to Kurosawa’s life and career—beginning with the music. Masaru Sato had been the director’s regular composer since the mid-1950s, starting when he finished the score for Record of a Living Being (1955) after Fumio Hayasaka (Sato’s mentor) died of tuberculosis. He went on to compose for all of Kurosawa’s subsequent endeavors in the ‘50s and ‘60s, turning out a plethora of OSTs ranging from colorful and energetic—Yojimbo—to disturbing and atmospheric—Throne of Blood (1957). Having surrendered the baton to Toru Takemitsu for Dodesukaden, Sato returned for the little-known Song of the Horse and delivered a soothing score (performed by the Tokyo Chamber Orchestra) reverent for the animals on screen. In addition to drums and string instruments, he employs subtle touches (such as the aforementioned clattering of bells when the baby horse learns to stand), and his music is arguably the picture’s most appealing quality.
Alas, Song of the Horse marked Sato and Kurosawa’s final collaboration, as their partnership became one of many casualties suffered during the chaotic, unhappy making of Kagemusha (1980). Sato initially agreed to score this epic about a thief who becomes the body double for a feudal warlord, but creative differences caused him to walk before post-production. Shinichiro Ikebe ultimately scored the film, and Sato never worked with Kurosawa again.15
Perhaps the last noteworthy aspect to Song of the Horse is how it preluded the most infamous event in Akira Kurosawa’s life. On the morning of December 22, 1971—less than four months after the film broadcast on NTV—Kurosawa’s maid heard the water in his bathroom running loudly and found the director with slash marks across his throat and wrists. (“Later,” recalled Kurosawa’s nephew Mike Inoue, “he said the reason he had drained the tub was that he did not want his family to see all the bloody water. Luckily, because he did that, she heard him.”)16 Kurosawa recovered and two years later received yet another offer to make a film overseas. This one came to fruition, and the Russian language Dersu Uzala (1975) ended up being one of the most beautiful and engrossing pictures of his later career.
Kurosawa directed five movies after Dersu Uzala and never in that time disclosed the reason behind his 1971 suicide attempt. Some have suggested that he’d feared his career was over, due to the collapse of Runaway Train, the damage inflicted on his reputation by the Tora! Tora! Tora! debacle, and—we might speculate—the fact that a TV documentary was the only job he could land after the disappointment of Dodesukaden. But whether any of this was on Kurosawa’s mind when he slashed his throat and wrists constitutes mere speculation. In an interview with the Criterion Collection, script supervisor Teruyo Nogami remembered: “[W]hen we traveled to the USSR [for Dersu Uzala], foreign reporters had no compunction about asking Kurosawa straight out why he’d wanted to kill himself. He always answered the same way: ‘At the time, I couldn’t bear to go on living, not for one more minute or second.’ What made his life so unbearable he never said.”17
Notes and citations:
I am counting only the movies on which Kurosawa was the sole director and which he considered part of his official filmography. Films based on his screenplays but directed by others are not taken into account; nor are pictures of which he only handled segments, such as Kajiro Yamamoto’s Horse (1941) or the Toho labor union movie Those Who Make Tomorrow (1946).
Galbraith, Stuart, IV. The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. New York: Faber & Faber, 2002, p. 441
Ibid
Ibid, pp. 444-48
Ibid, pp. 449-58
In 1953, the cheapest TV set in Japan cost roughly ¥175,000. By 1958, however, the price had dropped to ¥60,000, and the number of sets in Japan had grown from 866 to over 1.5 million. Source: Chun, Jayson Makoto. A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots?: A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953 – 1973. New York: Routledge, 2006
Galbraith, Stuart, IV. The Japanese Filmography: A Complete Reference Work to 209 Filmmakers and the More Than 1250 Films Released in the United States, 1900-1994. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996, p. 471
Bock, Audie. Japanese Film Directors. New York: Kodansha International, Ltd., 1978, p. 205
Ibid, p. 247
Galbraith, The Emperor and the Wolf, p. 487
Ibid, p. 474
Ibid, p. 486
Crist, Judith. “Uneasy Rider.” New York vol. 4, no. 11, 11 October 1971, p. 67
The credits list Kurosawa’s company, Kurosawa Production, as co-producer.
Galbraith, The Emperor and the Wolf, p. 559
Ibid, p. 487
“A Conversation with Teruyo Nogami.” Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter. Dodes’ka-den, The Criterion Collection DVD booklet, 2009, p. 18
Just yesterday, Loyle Carner, André 3000, Nas, Lianne La Havas, Ezra Collective, and many other great musicians performed at Uber One presents All Points East 2024 in East London.
Loyle Carner headlined the festival for the first time in his local park, calling it “the best night of my life.” Carner’s set showcased songs from his three albums, blending retro and contemporary hip-hop with a distinctly British flavour. Carner paid tribute to hip-hop legend Nas, who had supported him in the past, by returning the favour on this occasion.
The set included special guests, including John Agard, Tom Misch, Jordan Rakei, and activist Athian Akec.
André 3000 produced a spiritual and spontaneous set on the West Stage, featuring music from his flute album New Blue Sun and a meditative performance.
It was a truly lively set that showcased Nas’ remarkable ability to engage the audience in a non-stop thriller performance.
“This is supposed to be fun,” Eva Hendricks recalls her brother saying during the making of Charly Bliss‘ 2019 record Young Enough. “Fun,” guitarist Spencer Fox notes in press materials, is the Brooklyn band’s “natural state.” But for a particularly intense period in their lives, it was a state they had trouble accessing. Since the release of their last album, Sam Hendricks became a dad twice over. Eva, having just fallen in love with someone who lives in Australia, moved halfway across the world. She thought the group might need a little break as she wrote material for what would become their third album, Forever – out today – but ended up staying way longer than she had expected, so they had to find a way to work on the music remotely.
More than just time apart, it took a certain level of feeling good – individually, and as a collective – to get to a place where they could pour out all this feeling, gargantuan and unwieldy as it was. Co-produced by Jake Luppen (Hippo Campus) and Caleb Wright (Samia), Forever is catchy and crushing and, yes, deliriously fun, but it’s also an emotional rollercoaster, careening through the head-spinning euphoria of infatuation (‘Easy to Love You’), the double-edged sword of nostalgia (‘Nineteen’), new and old friendships (‘In Your Bed’, ‘Waiting for You’), and career jadedness teetering on self-deprecation (“As ‘90s rock revivalists, we’re just too late.”) One song is literally called ‘Here Comes the Darkness’. “How do you do it?” Hendricks sings about handling, well, all of it. “You get through it, and then you do it again.”
We caught up with Charly Bliss’ Eva and Sam Hendricks to talk about some of the inspirations behind Forever, including The Summer I Turned Pretty, friendship, HAIM, fatherhood, and more.
The Summer I Turned Pretty
I came across a TikTok you did last year – I think it was Sam – where you’re attempting to rank characters from the series.
Sam Hendricks: Oh, yeah.
Eva Hendricks: It was my first pick, but I did kind of choose it because it’s something we both love so much together.
SH: I got hooked in. I’m always like, you know, older brother, like, “This show, really?” And then she puts one episode on, and I’m like, “Alright, let’s watch another, see what it’s about.” [Eva laughs] And then I’m like, “Can we just finish this in one sitting?”
EH: I guess it kind of started because during the pandemic, I started working on a young adult novel. I started reading a lot of young adult novels because I really wanted to understand the genre better. One of the books that stood out to me as being perfect was The Summer I Turned Pretty. It’s a trilogy by Jenny Han. I came to it really late; I’m pretty sure the book came out in the early 2000s. I felt really excited because almost immediately after finishing it, I found out there was going to be a TV series. I was so excited and really ready for that. Overall, what appeals to me about young adult books and TV shows is that they are like a portal to a time I feel very close to, which is a time of huge emotions, big upheaval, and big romance. Everything you’re experiencing sort of for the first time, so it feels extra potent and saturated. That’s something I always try to access as a lyricist. I feel like that’s just how I am. I’m definitely a big feelings person, so that world feels really right to me.
When the TV show came out, it was so good, and it was so fun to experience it with Sam. In my mind, the coming-of-age story is best when the storyline with the teens is as compelling as the storyline with the adults, and I think they did such a good job with that. Sam’s wife said it best – we were talking about why the show is so good, and she was saying that it’s because it makes you feel like that time in your life, when you were a teenager, isn’t that far away. And also, what’s coming for you as an adult isn’t that terrifying; it’s exciting, too, and full of intrigue. I just think it’s a perfect story with lots of drama, which we all love. And great soundtrack.
SH: The soundtrack is great.
What you said about how the adults are depicted reminded me of My So-Called Life, which made me feel the same way.
EH: My favorite show of all time. That’s exactly right. And I think The OC also falls into that category. I love, love, love My So-Called Life. In fact, I almost put it on the list.
What I love about a song like ‘Nineteen’ is that it also taps into both the emotional immensity and the kind of insanity of that time period. I think it’s normal to cringe at that version of ourselves looking back, and I wonder if engaging with these books or shows helps you empathize with it in a way that’s validating or conducive to writing.
EH: Definitely. I feel like I’m cringe and proud all the way through. [laughs] I used to feel like, “Oh my god, that was such a bad part of my past. It was so fraught.” And as much as going through it was torture, I also kind of feel like at this point, just because of how I am, having read all these types of books about tortured romance, I was always going to go out and find that in the world for myself. Overall, I just feel a lot of love and affection for that time in my life I was always going to go out and have a relationship like that, where it was awful, it was crazy, I never knew where I stood or what was happening. It was ridiculous, but I’m glad that I let myself mine the depths of what my emotions were capable of. And what’s even more wonderful about that is knowing you don’t have to live it again – living it once was enough. [laughs] And I’m so happy that I didn’t continue to pursue relationships like that. But I can revisit it through writing with the band, through writing for myself, reading these books, and watching these TV shows. I can go back there and think, “I remember what that felt like. I’ve lived that, and I’m so glad it’s over. But God, wasn’t that wild?”
HAIM
I remembered you picked Something to Tell You for Amoeba’s What’s in My Bag? series a few years ago. What keeps inspiring you about the band?
EH: Well, first of all, sibling band. Love that. Whenever I talk about the making of this record, I think about a feeling we were trying to capture amongst the four of us. Above anything else, it was so important to us to regain a sense of playfulness around making music and make a record that felt like a world. I think HAIM is a band that does that so well. They make records you just want to listen to all the way through. They bring so much fun and playfulness, and in their music videos there’s so much of that. You can almost hear on the record how close they are – obviously, that’s in part because they’re siblings, but also, band dynamics are complicated. What I hoped we would be able to achieve on this record is that anyone could listen to it – knowing as much or as little about our band – and hear the connection between the four of us, how much we were all on the same page, how much we were all just enjoying making music with each other, especially after however many years apart. HAIM do such a great job of that. Whenever we were stuck in the studio, we would revisit one of their songs and be like, “Okay, yes, it should feel like that.” It wasn’t even about how things sounded; it was more so a feeling that’s hard to communicate – of connection, ease, fun, and playfulness – that I think they achieve really well.
SH: Even from just a production standpoint, they are a pop band, but they are so uniquely them. They do such a good job of carving out their own niche in the pop world. We know that people have struggled to place our band – I mean, they’re probably going to struggle more than ever. [laughs] But just embracing what’s unique about us, like they embrace what’s unique about them, and treating that as a strength, not something that’s like, “Why can’t people understand?”
EV: That’s such a great point, because I also think they’re a tough-to-classify band. They’re working instrumentally in the same way that we are, but those albums, I would absolutely call them pop albums through and through. So that was also a guiding light for us in the studio whenever we were getting a little bit lost.
Friendship
Every time I listen to Forever, I hear what you’re saying, that even though it often revolves around tumultuous relationships, the friendship you share is always either in the backdrop or at the heart of these songs. Given some of the changes you went through while making the album, did you sense that friendship was always going to be a constant, that it would come through in this way?
EH: No way. For a long time, I felt like the most interesting thing about me and my experience only came down to my romantic relationships. But when I look back on it, the themes that are reoccurring on the album – of course, there’s plenty about romantic love, but there’s also so much on this album about friendship. So much of my experience over the last five years – with accidentally moving to Australia and being separated from my bandmates – was twofold for me. Coming out of touring our second album, Young Enough, the four of us were constantly together. I think we were on tour nine, ten months out of that year. It was really intense, and in some ways, we were due for a little time apart, but I could never have anticipated how much time – like, I thought were due for maybe a few weeks off, but it ended up being a year and a half that I didn’t see my bandmates. It was really overwhelming. I remember being in Australia, watching videos of us on tour, and wondering if I would ever get to do that again. Even just looking at how close I was on stage to each of my bandmates, I was like, “I would give anything to be in a room standing that close to them.” Something as basic as that. I missed them so much.
In terms of our band, it really shifted my perspective on our relationships. Like, Oh my god, these are the most important people in my life. No romantic relationship I’ve had, as someone who was prioritizing romantic relationships, has even come close to the length of the constant that our band has been for me in my life. I missed it – of course, I missed them, but it was also this realization that my biggest dream had come true. I get to tour the world with my brother and two of my best friends, and I had totally gotten caught up in things that don’t really matter, like how stressed I was, is the album doing well, are we were doing well. I missed the most important stuff because I was focused on the wrong things. A lot of the record, I think, comes from that feeling.
Simultaneously, I was also in a new country, on a new continent, in a place where I truly knew only one person in the entire country. It was sort of my first time as an adult having to make new friends and build a community. A song like ‘In Your Bed’ is about having a new friend in your life who suddenly makes the world make more sense because they’re part of your life. I was really thinking about this other part of my life for the first time. I was so happy in my romantic relationship, which was also a big part of what was going on in my life at the time, that I had the freedom to look at this other part of my life that I’d been neglecting. Because my romantic life felt really stable, it opened up my ability to be more invested in my friendships and feel so much gratitude for the other people in my life.
You mentioned before that band dynamics are complicated, and I think there’s something special about maintaining a friendship with your sibling. Do you mind sharing one thing that you feel makes the other person a good friend?
EH: Oh my God, you’re going to make me cry! I think Sam has a really special ability to make other people shine. Whenever I bring anything to Sam – first of all, he’s the most talented person I know, and so, when we started this band, it was so intimidating to show my older brother music that I had been writing. But then, I think what he brings to everything is so much belief in other people. He has been such a great supporter of me and my musical abilities, even though he’s definitely more classically trained as a musician. I feel like he’s never made me feel stupid, dumb, or wrong for any of the things I don’t know. He just takes what I bring to him and makes it so much better. I think that has created such a safe, patient space between us as writers, because he’s a writer as well, and I hope I bring the same to him.
SH: You do.
EV: Ahh, thanks! [laughs]
SH: I would say, among many other things, I know Eva always has my back, no matter what. She’ll hear me out if there’s anything I’m feeling funny or weird about. She always makes it a top priority to remedy that, to make sure that I and everyone else in the band feels good about what we’re doing. With this album, as you’ve been talking about, we really prioritized all of our mental health and how we feel about everything. We wanted to make sure we all felt good because, in previous album cycles, there were things that were stewing under the surface that we didn’t talk about. Only after talking about them did we realize, like, “We can’t control how people receive our work, but we can control how our band operates and how we communicate with each other.” I just always know Eva will hear me and make it a top priority to make sure that I’m feeling good.
EH: Aw, I love you.
SH: Me too.
Eva’s car
I read that you started tracking demos on your phone while sitting in a parked rental car. What made it a good place to sit and record?
EH: When I went to Australia, the idea was always like, “I’m going to go to Australia for six weeks and I’m going to work on writing.” That was going to be my priority. But I was staying with this new guy in my life at the time, and he had roommates, so I felt really embarrassed about trying to write at the house. The only place I had where I could be totally alone was my car, so I would just drive to a different location every day and record and work on songs. Then, I ended up being there way longer than I thought it was going to be, so I had to return the rental car and started recording in the back of my boyfriend’s car, and then I finally bought my own car. Then I finally bought my own car, and I hadn’t owned one since I was a teenager. My favorite thing about having a car was always, you know, you’re on the road with other people and can sing really loud and be in your own little world out in public, which is the dream. I sort of fell back in love with singing through having a car because it offered me the privacy to enjoy singing, both our songs – when I was stuck lyrically, I would just drive until I figured it out – but also just singing along to other people’s songs.
Whenever anyone has asked us, “How do you hope people will hear this album?” we’ve always said across all records, the dream is that it would be in a car, with all the windows down, screaming along. I hadn’t actually had that experience in a really long time, so to be back in this place where I had my own private space, I had my own car, and I could just drive around – and especially where I live in Australia, I was driving through these gorgeous rainforests, mountain ranges, cane fields, this epic landscape while working on our album – it really brought me back to this playful approach to making music. And I know you’re a big radio fan, Sam.
SH: I mean, not anymore.
EH: But you were in the car all the time.
SH: I was in the car all the time. Listening to the radio was interesting. For a while, I loved it, and I was hearing a lot of stuff I hadn’t heard before, and I was like, “That’s cool.” But then you start to realize, at least with American radio, they just play the same things over and over again.
I love that the album starts with ‘Tragic’ and that line, “Once you let me drive the car, you know I’m gonna crash it.” It’s classic pop recklessness.
EH: Thank you. We’re actually coming up with merch right now for the tour, and we were like, “Oh, we should make a bumper sticker.” And Dan had the idea to put that line on a bumper sticker. But I was like, “I don’t know, maybe that’s taking it too far.” [laughs] No one wants to drive behind the person with that bumper sticker.
Lexapro
EH: I guess I would include all SSRIs under that, but for me specifically, I’m on Lexapro. Mental health has always been at the center of what a lot of Charlie Bliss songs are about or themed around, and I’ve really struggled with my mental health. I’d say overall, this has been an extremely happy period of my life, and it’s almost more illuminating about the state of your mental health when you are really happy, because there’s this fantasy that if only everything were going right, I wouldn’t feel these feelings. I’ve thought that at times in my life – maybe my anxiety is situational, maybe my depression is situational. But then I find myself saying many times, “I’m doing everything right, why don’t I feel better?” You know, I exercise a lot, I was living in – still live in – this tropical paradise, I’m really enjoying my life. Why do I still feel anxious and depressed? Why can’t I be enjoying my life more?
I’ve always put a lot of pressure on myself with my mental health, thinking, “I can solve it, I can fix it on my own. If only I did this or that, it would get better.” But I hit a real low point a few years into making this record with my mental health, and I had to acknowledge that you can do everything “right,” whatever that means, and still really struggle. I remember one of my first therapists, one of the first people I ever really talked to about mental health, said to me as a teenager – because I was feeling so much frustration with myself, like, Why do I feel this way, I don’t want to feel this way, I just want to be normal – he said something like, “If you had diabetes, would you hate yourself for taking insulin? Would you hate yourself for needing to do things to take care of yourself?” It’s the same thing.
I had really resisted taking medication for my mental health, but then, honestly, Spencer and Sam started, and a few other people I was really close to. I was really scared about starting it and what it would mean. Does that mean I’m giving up? Does that mean I’m not… But then I did it because I felt like I had to. And, oh my god, it was like this huge moment of self-forgiveness. Like, “Oh, this isn’t my fault.” The things I struggle with are not my fault, it’s not a personal failing. It’s literally chemicals in my brain, and it was so freeing to feel this ease in my life that I had never felt before. And I still do all the things that also help – exercise, therapy, meditation, all of that – but it was such a huge relief to finally have that help and feel like I could keep my head above water and not have to work so hard at it all the time. It was such a positive development in my life, and it had always been framed to me as, “If you do this, you’re giving up.” But it turned out to be a wonderful change, and I’m so grateful to all the people in my life who were honest with me about the reality of what it was like for them, instead of this thing I had built up in my head as a bad thing. Do you want to say anything about your experience?
SH: Yeah, I mean, I was also very scared and hesitant. Spencer was the one for me who made me realize this isn’t something bad. It’s like everything Eva said: there’s nothing wrong with me. I have this mental illness, it runs in our family, and why wouldn’t I treat it? Why would I want to spend the rest of my life just struggling through it without helping myself? But I think, more than anything, it was the acknowledgment of, “Okay, I do I have chronic depression and anxiety.” That acceptance was such a huge, freeing thing. I think we all really prioritize our mental health as a collective unit, but also as individuals. For this record, the pandemic was so weird because it killed a lot of the momentum we had at the time, but if that didn’t happen, if we didn’t get this long break, I don’t know if I personally would have taken the time to address my own things. I don’t know as a group what we would have done. It’s complicated, but at the forefront of everything, we just want to feel good. If we feel good as a band and as individuals, then we’ll keep doing this.
I think we were putting so much weight on like, “How are people gonna perceive this? If they don’t like it, what do we do?” And now it’s like, “You know what, we worked really hard on this. We’re so proud of it. We’re so happy with it. I’m at peace.” No matter how it’s received – and this has not been true for other releases – it’s not going to affect my feelings about it and my feelings around the making of it. It’s a really refreshing feeling. It’s nice to just be like, “Whatever happens, happens.”
EH: And that’s hard-won. All of the work we did on ourselves is part of the product we created, and it’s also the process around it, what we worked on in ourselves. I remember Sam used to say to me all the time when we were making Young Enough: “This is supposed to be fun.” I feel like we were banging our heads against the wall, like, “Why isn’t it fun?” And so much of it was our attitude towards things, but also, exactly like you were just saying, we weren’t looking after ourselves. Our ability to make this record and make the album we wanted to make is so linked to our ability to look after ourselves and really address what we were talking about. There’s so much about this album taking forever to come out that was brutal, but I also think it couldn’t have happened any other way.
Fatherhood
Before talking about fatherhood more broadly, it’s funny to me that it’s referenced directly in ‘I Don’t Know Anything’ [“Sam has a kid and he’s setting the date”]. Sam, I’m curious how you felt about that line initially.
SH: I mean, I’m used to certain lines getting in there that are, not even about me specifically, but just like, “Oh yeah, I know what she’s talking about here.” [laughs] Direct, you know what I mean? So when she wrote it, I was like, “Yeah, cool.” We talked about – she might have to update it because Sam has two kids now. But I would never want to limit anything Eva can say.
EH: It was such a huge moment. When we found out you and Kate were going to have a kid, it was such a shift in what was happening. It was like, “Oh, shit, we’re grown-ups now.”
How quickly did that settle in for you, Sam, the way it might change things? And how did you experience those shifts?
SH: I’m the type of person where I tend to overthink really unimportant things in my life, and then I tend to just wing it with major decisions. [Eva laughs] I don’t know why that is, but that’s something I know about myself. As far as fatherhood affecting my life and the band and everything – how it affects my life, obviously, doesn’t need to be stated. It’s a huge change. My daughter was born in February 2020, just a month before the big lockdown happened in the United States, and it was the most difficult time in my life, emotionally, by far. One of the reasons is because, with parenthood, I was kind of like, “I’ve always wanted this, I’ll figure it out.” But I was so emotionally unprepared for that change – and I don’t think there’s anything you can really do to prepare, in hindsight. It was definitely a time of big feelings, and a lot of those big feelings were extremely hard – some very dark times. Which kind of gets multiplied when you’re feeling like, “Wait a minute, I’ve always wanted this, and now I have it, and I’m feeling this really dark feeling, and now I’m feeling guilty for feeling that way.” It’s just a multiplier. It took me a really long time to work through it, and thank god I have such a supportive partner, because she did everything she could to get me feeling better.
As far as songwriting goes, I don’t write lyrics, but so many of these songs were written or started around that time. Some of the songs with the biggest emotional impact, like ‘Nineteen’, that was in 2020. I am incapable of writing a song that doesn’t evoke big feelings, I don’t know why. I think because I was feeling so many strong things, it came out in the songwriting. I haven’t been the best at letting those feelings out, and I think maybe they were coming out in songs, unintentionally. It’s hard to say.
EH: You’re blowing my mind right now.
SH: I was having song ideas every single night when I was in this really dark time. Sorry, I’m kind of speaking on the fly because I haven’t really thought about it that much until now.
EH: You’re so right. I’ve never even related the fact that, damn, we are really similar. I’m doing big feelings lyrically, and you’re doing big feelings musically. For me, it’s like, I’m waking up in the middle of the night like, “I just had a lyrical idea, I have to get this down.” You’re waking up in the middle of the night like, “I just had an idea for a chord progression” or whatever. That is so epic.
SH: I’ve never paid much attention to lyrics; some of my favorite songs, ones I’ve listened to ten thousand times, I don’t know the lyrics to. For me, it’s more about what I was feeling when I first heard it or when I listen to it during a major life experience. It attaches to that, and then the song means something to me that’s maybe not even close to what the lyrics are about. A song like ‘Nineteen’ is the perfect example of pouring emotion into a song without putting a word down on paper. That song is such an emotional release.
EH: That was beautiful, Sam. You really blew my mind.
You’ve never talked about this? The similarity in how you emotionally approach songwriting?
EH: No! [laughs]
SH: No, not really.
EV: It’s changing my life.
SH: It’s weird, because I never sit down and am like, “I’m going to write a song. Let’s think of something. Oh, this chord progression’s cool.” It always comes from somewhere. An idea comes, and then it’s like, “Let’s roll with it.” I don’t tend to overthink it, but now, reflecting back, I’m like, “Well, why did I have so many song ideas during that time in my life?” It’s definitely connected. I didn’t feel like I had anyone to talk to, except for my wife, and I felt so bad that I was feeling so bad, I didn’t want to keep dumping that on her. And because I was so isolated, literally, and everyone was so isolated during the pandemic, I felt like I had no one to talk to. I didn’t want to talk to other dads because I felt like they would be like, “I didn’t feel that. What are you talking about?” And it would just make me feel worse. So, I’m sure that it was a way of releasing some emotion, subconsciously.
Seeing Paramore at Madison Square Garden
EV: This one’s easy. [laughs]
SH: Yeah, ending on a fun note. All of us in the band want to take this thing as far as it can go. We want big songs, big shows, big everything, and seeing them – God, they have so many unbelievable songs, and the stage production was just so insane. It was like, “Damn, let’s write songs that fit in a setting like this.”
EV: When we saw them at MSG, I wasn’t even supposed to be at the show. Sam’s wife was supposed to go with him, but she’s a doula, and she got called into a birth, I think.
SH: Yeah.
EV: So I ended up going with him, and I literally didn’t find out I was going until maybe an hour before the show. It was just this incredible night at this iconic venue in New York.
SH: It was like, “This is what we aspire to right here. This is it.” I have so much respect for them because they started as one thing, and now they’re another thing. I feel like people didn’t take them seriously at first, like, “Oh, it’s an emo band.” But I loved them from the start, and I’m so happy to see that they’re getting the respect they deserve because they’re one of the best bands, in my opinion, of the past however many years. As a band that has always felt like we don’t know where we fit in, it’s really inspiring to see them just do what they’re excited about and see people respond positively to it. I know every band experiences it, but there are people who have heard the singles so far and are like, “Oh, I miss the guitars.” And I’m like, “First of all, there are guitars. I don’t know what you’re hearing, because there are guitars everywhere on this record.” [Eva laughs] But we’re not trying to do something that feels inauthentic to us. We’re doing literally the opposite. We’re doing exactly what we’re excited about. Do we hope people love it and are along for the ride? Absolutely. And if not, our other records will always be there for you.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Hozier has released a new single, ‘Nobody’s Soldier’. It’s taken from the just-unveiled Unaired EP, which features three unreleased songs recorded during the sessions for his latest album Unreal Unearth. Hozier debuted ‘Nobody’s Soldier’ during his headlining set at Lollapalooza on August 1. Check it out below.
In a note to fans, Hozier said:
Dear Souls, I want to thank each and everyone of you for everything over this past year. It’s been a privilege to travel and play the music and be met with so much love and support. This has been a very special time for me, thank you all sincerely.
“Nobody’s Soldier,” which some of you may have heard live already, “July,” the sister song of “Wildflower and Barley,” written while awaiting the pandemic’s passing, and “That You Are,” a song that I was blessed to write with Bedouine in Los Angeles and record together shortly after.
I sincerely hope you enjoy these additional songs from this chapter. Thank you again for your support, I hope to see some of you at a show soon!
Peggy Gou has shared a new single, ‘Find the Way’, ahead of her biggest headline show to date at Gunnersbury Park in London this weekend. The track finds the producer returning to her own Gudu Records after releasing her debut album, I Hear You, via Ninja Tune earlier this summer. Take a listen below.
The graceful human body in motion, minimalist performance settings, the touch of others and self—these are the most immediate visual experiences for audiences viewing Wenxin Fu’s dance films. As an innovative artist who blends modern dance, dance film, and interdisciplinary art, Wenxin Fu is not just a dancer but also a film director. She has long been committed to expanding the sensory experience of dance films beyond traditional human perception, exploring the mysterious connection between vision and touch.
Wenxin Fu’s work delves deep into complex emotional and psychological themes such as intimate relationships, dreams, and psychological trauma. Her representative work, the “Light Distortion” series, redefines the traditional two-dimensional space of film through the use of light refraction and mirrored paper. In these works, she explores the choreography of the camera, deconstructing the dancer’s body to create a surreal visual effect. This style not only challenges the audience’s conventional understanding of dance films but also opens a door to the mysteries of touch through visual representation.
In Wenxin Fu’s works, the external and internal aspects of the human experience are often mirrored, sometimes starkly different, sometimes echoing each other. Using mirrored paper as a medium, she portrays the struggle and interaction between external appearance and inner reality through changes in light and shadow. The dancer, reflected in the mirrored paper, may represent the external projection or the internal reflection, both engaging in a struggle for existence within the dance, displaying emotions such as oppression, conflict, comfort, and acceptance. This exploration not only reflects the complexity of the human psyche but also reveals the subtle relationship between the body and space.
Wenxin Fu’s artistic achievements stem not only from her ongoing exploration in creative fields but also from her solid professional background. She began studying dance at a young age, underwent 12 years of professional training, earned her bachelor’s degree in Modern Dance from the London Contemporary Dance School, and later pursued a master’s degree in Creative Practice: Transdisciplinary Arts at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. During her graduate studies, she deeply researched the combination of dance and film, gradually forming her unique artistic style and creative philosophy. Her works have been exhibited and performed in the UK, Italy, China, Hong Kong, and have received widespread acclaim in the international art world. She continually challenges and transcends her artistic expression, drawing audiences into the dreamlike world she creates.
Wenxin Fu’s artistic creation consistently revolves around the core question of how to integrate tactile experience into film. Through the precise use of camera choreography and light, she breaks down the boundaries between vision and touch, transforming dance films from mere visual presentations into explorations of touch. Wenxin Fu’s works lead the audience into a space beyond reality, allowing them to feel the texture of the body and the warmth of emotion within the visual experience. Her artistic practice not only redefines the relationship between dance and film but also opens up a new exploration of human sensory experience, highlighting her exceptional creativity and deep thinking as a transdisciplinary artist.
