Los Angeles singer-songwriter Christian Lee Hutson has shared the third volume of his The Version Suicides EP series. It features covers of Shania Twain’s ‘You’re Still The One’ with help from Julia Jacklin, the La’s ‘There She Goes’ with Fenne Lily, and Fugazi’s ‘I’m So Tired’ featuring Great Grandpa’s Al Menne. Check it out below.
The second volume of The Version Suicides saw Hutson take on the Cure’s ‘Just Like Heaven’ (with Shamir), Liz Phair’s ‘Why Can’t I’, and Bruce Springsteen’s ‘I’m Going Down’. For Vol. 1 of the project, he covered songs by Taylor Swift, ABBA, and Vanessa Carlton. His most recent LP, the Phoebe Bridgers-produced Beginners, arrived last year.
For the discerning genre fan looking for the next One Cut of the Dead(2017), look no further than Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes. Written by Makoto Ueda and directed by Junta Yamaguchi, this gleefully funny, supremely silly and surprisingly profound mash-up of science fiction, comedy and romance – shot on an iPhone and ostensibly presented in a single take – is the latest Japanese festival favourite destined to become a cult classic. Our Culture reviews the film here as part of its selection from the 2021 Fantasia International Film Festival.
Kato (Kazunori Tosa) is a café owner who is stuck in something of a rut. By day he runs his business; by night he lives alone in an apartment just a few flights of stairs from his workplace. He can’t even pluck up the courage to ask out Megumi (Aki Asakura), who works in the barbershop next door. In the blink of an eye, though, Kato’s painfully mundane life takes a turn for the absurd, as a voice begins to speak to him from his computer. And it’s his voice – from the future. He soon comes to realise that the screens he uses to monitor his business after hours have developed extraordinary and inexplicable powers: the one in his apartment can see two minutes into the future, while the one in his café can see two minutes into the past. Together with his employee Aya (Riko Fujitani) and their overly excitable friends Komiya (Gôta Ishida), Tanabe (Masashi Suwa), and Ozawa (Yoshifumi Sakai), Kato begins to explore the possibilities of knowing what has been and what is yet to come.
It’s a high concept, then, and it must be said from the outset that the physics of Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes are mind-boggling. It’s difficult to get a clear sense of exactly how its timeline works on a first viewing, and in this regard it is just as intellectually challenging as, say, Primer (2004), Timecrimes (2007), Coherence (2013) or Tenet (2020). What sets the film apart, though, is an enormous sense of fun; Ueda’s sharp dialogue and five pitch-perfect comedic performances ensure that it never takes itself too seriously. The film’s science fiction elements are present primarily to generate laughs – and while the “Time TV” is certainly a fascinating puzzle, trying too hard to solve it could easily detract from an experience both hilarious and heartwarming.
What was this strange voice coming from Kato’s computer?
Moreover, there is a sense throughout Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes that the film does not want its temporal mysteries to be easily unravelled. Its overarching theme – communicated through its farcical comedy, which deftly illustrates that being able to see a few minutes behind or ahead is not actually very useful – is that we can become far too concerned with the passage of time. We learn that Kato has long been obsessed with what lies ahead of him (“I hate the future,” he tells Megumi), while Megumi is much too fixated on events in her past. Ultimately, what the film communicates is that we should endeavour to live in the present – the here and now – and enjoy what we have while we have it; a profound message for a film that features bad guys brandishing plastic ray guns. And one, of course, that is common to many time travel stories – though rarely has it been communicated in such a playfully eccentric way.
Like its predecessor One Cut of the Dead, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is a technical marvel akin to a cinematic magic trick. Much of the film (aside from a short sequence preceding its title card), is presented in one continuous shot – and, in a 70 minute film, that one shot is a staggering 64 minutes long. Whether or not those 64 minutes were genuinely captured in a single take doesn’t really matter; the effect is utterly flawless. That alone is an achievement as baffling as the film’s central conceit, but even more jaw-dropping is the seamless insertion of past and future events on the two screens that constantly drive the plot forward at an incredible pace. The attention to detail required to make the movie work is head-spinning.
All of this becomes so much more impressive with the knowledge that Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is a micro-budget picture, shot on an iPhone during a pandemic. In short, it is the rare film that lends some credence to a tired cliché of the filmmaker Q&A: that in the age of the camera phone, anyone can make a movie. Under the direction of Yamaguchi (who also served as cinematographer), this joyful genre mash-up is thus a testament to what can be achieved through sheer creativity, will and ambition.
In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on August 6, 2021 (as of this writing, Kanye West’s Donda has still not materialized; a pre-order page shows an August 7 release date):
Nas has followed up his 2020 album King’s Disease with its sequel, King’s Disease II. Out now via Mass Appeal, the album was executive produced by Nas and Hit-Boy and boasts contributions from Eminem, EPMD, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Blxst, YG, Charlie Wilson, and more. Along with the record, Nas has also unveiled a music video for ‘Rare’, directed by Savannah Setten. King’s Disease earned the rapper his first-ever Grammy Award for Best Rap Album.
Foxing have released their fourth album, Draw Down the Moon, via their own label Grand Paradise. The St. Louis trio’s latest follows their 2018 LP Nearer My God and was preceded by the singles ‘Where the Lightning Strikes Twice’, ‘Go Down Together’, ‘Speak with the Dead’ featuring WHY?, and the title track. “It’s about the idea of your cosmic significance,” frontman Conor Murphy said of the album in a statement. “The way you feel like a tiny speck in the grand scheme of the universe, that’s a feeling everybody has. You can get lost thinking about how small you are. Draw Down The Moon explores how our connections to people and places and ideas are what binds us to the universe and reality.”
Lingua Ignota, the moniker of classically-trained vocalist and multidisciplinary artist Kristin Hayter, has issued her new album, Sinner Get Ready, via Sargent House. The follow-up to 2019’s Caligula was inspired by the landscape and religious history of rural Pennsylvania, where Hayter was living as she began making the LP. It was created using traditional instruments of the Appalachian region and recorded with Hayter’s regular collaborator, producer, and engineer Seth Manchester at Machines With Magnets in Rhode Island. Hayter previewed the album with the singles ‘Perpetual Flame of Centralia’ and ‘Pennsylvania Furnace’.
Laura Stevenson has put out her self-titled album via Don Giovanni. The 10-track LP, which Stevenson recorded while pregnant with her first child, was produced by John Agnello (Kurt Vile, Dinosaur Jr., Hop Along) and features a guitar contribution from longtime collaborator Jeff Rosenstock. “The album was written as a sort of purge and a prayer,” Stevenson explained in a statement. “It was a very intense experience to re-live all of the events of the previous year, while tracking these songs, with my daughter growing inside me, reliving all of that fear and pain and just wanting to protect her from the world that much more. It made me very raw.”
Three years after her debut full-length Sunset Blush, Kississippi’s Zoe Reynolds is back with the new album Mood Ring, out now via Triple Crown Records. The 10-song LP features contributions from producer Andy Park (Death Cab for Cutie, Princess Nokia), Sarah Tudzin (illuminati hotties), Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers, Conor Oberst), Bartees Strange, and more. “I wanted to reflect on my youth while also growing,” Reynolds stated. “The album is nostalgic, bringing you back to having a childhood crush and sharing those feelings with your friends. I went through a lot of self-doubt while writing, and was trying to find myself.”
Liam Kazar has released his debut LP, Due North, via Kevin Morby’s Woodsist imprint, Mare Records. The Kansas City-based, Chicago-raised musician, who has performed with the likes of Jeff Tweedy, Steve Gunn, Daniel Johnston, and more, enlisted drummer Spencer Tweedy, bassist Lane Beckstrom, keyboardist Dave Curtin (Woongi), co-producer James Elkington, as well as Ohmme and Andrew Sa on backing vocals to bring his vision to life. “There were two words I had in my head during the making of this record, which was joyful and vulnerable,” Kazar explained in a press release. “I was trying to talk about things that I’m scared about but acknowledging that I’m not that powerful and you can still be joyful in the face of your own insecurities.”
Pink Siifu is back with a new album called GUMBO’!, which follows his 2020 solo project NEGRO as well as collaborations with Fly Anakin (FlySiifu’s) and YungMorpheus (Bag Talk). The record features guest spots from Georgia Anne Muldrow, Bbymutha, Nick Hakim, Liv.e, and Maxo, as well as production from the Alchemist, Monte Booker, Conquest Tony Phillips, Ted Kamal, and others. “I just want you to just listen to this, and hopefully, be like, “Nah, Siifu his own cat,” Siifu recently told Stereogum. “He’s on his own shit.”
IDER have returned with their second studio album, shame. No longer signed to former label Glassnote, the duo of Megan Markwick and Lily Somerville wrote many of the album’s tracks while living in Berlin in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We got there, and we got COVID four weeks later,” they said in a press release. “We had three weeks of heaven where we wrote so much new music and it was everything we dreamed of, living that chaotic, no-routine lifestyle.” The new LP follows 2019’s Emotional Education and includes the previously released singles ‘obsessed’, ‘Cross Yourself’, ‘BORED’, and ‘cbb to b sad’.
Other albums out today:
Tinashe, 333; Liars, The Apple Drop; Vacation, Existential Risks and Returns; Abstract Mindstate, Dreams Still Inspire; Damon & Naomi with Kurihara, A Sky Record; Catbite, Nice One; Zachary Knowles, tendency to be a loner; Barbra Streisand, Release Me 2.
“As horror fans, we know that John Carpenter is the godfather and the gold standard so we’re so excited to get to work with him in any capacity,” CHVRCHES frontwoman Lauren Mayberry said in a statement. “His films and music have been so impactful on us over the years, and without the stories he created I am not sure that the concept of Screen Violence (and female narratives within the album) would exist in the way they do. On every album we get “remixes” but given the themes of this record, we had the idea that maybe we could get a song reimagined by a composer who has worked in that cinematic universe. John was top of our wishlist but we never really thought he’d reply, let alone that he’d send back something better than the original.”
Carpenter added: “Chvrches reached out to us through our tour manager, asking if we would be interested in remixing one of their songs for their upcoming album. They sent us three or four tracks for us to listen to and decide which one we wanted to remix, and we went from there. We chose the track we did because we connected with it the most and felt it would adapt best to our style. After we finished our remix, we asked them if they could also remix one of our songs in return, and they thought it was a great idea.”
Both remixes will be released on 7″ on December 10 via Sacred Bones. Screen Violence is out August 20 on Glassnote.
Absolutely! That is, if you want to look at it on paper. PC gaming will always have the potential to give you a better gaming experience than a console ever could. However, this is far more nuanced than it may first seem to be.
The fact is, everyone’s lives are different. For one person, all they want to do is play a couple rounds of poker at an online casino and get on with their day. Many people aren’t what some might consider “gamers.”
Another person wants to sit back on their couch and play the latest Triple A gaming titles by themselves or with some buddies. And, there are a thousand other kinds of people that play games in different ways.
This leads to the ultimate point being, whether a PC is better than a console depends more on the person than on the machines themselves. This may seem to contradict what I said in the first line of this article, but that is untrue.
PC Gaming
PC gaming will always have a greater potential than console gaming. The fact is, there is just so much more customization that you can do with a PC compared to a console.
A console is a closed proprietary system that is prebuilt by a company for the masses to simply just plug in and play right out of the box. PCs however, can be customized to whatever specs you need.
This has several distinct advantages over console gaming. That being that PCs can both (seemingly paradoxically) be far more powerful than a console, yet also far cheaper than a console.
What exactly do I mean by this? Well, think about it. A PC is simply just a Personal Computer. This means anything that is a computer is a PC. So, you can adjust how much you spend on your setup based upon your needs.
Do you only want to do some light gaming? Perhaps you mostly use your computer for taking notes in school or doing work. Well, you could spend a couple hundred bucks only on a cheaper laptop.
This means you don’t have to worry about spending a bunch of money on something that has more power than you need. This can save you possibly hundreds of dollars. With the 2 main consoles both being about $500 USD, you could absolutely build a desktop computer or buy a laptop for much cheaper.
Now, of course it won’t be as powerful, but that is my point. You can decide how much power you need, and how much you are willing to spend for that power.
And, chances are, you already need a computer for your regular life anyways! If you are a student or have a job, you probably need some sort of computer to do work on, take notes, write essays, etc.
This means that instead of spending $500 USD on a separate console, you could just put that towards getting a better computer or laptop that you would already need. This saves space, and would reduce the amount of machines you have in your house which could be a bonus for some people.
Other than power and costs, there are a lot of other great advantages to PC gaming when it comes to the actual gaming part. First and foremost, simply the amount of games you have available to you.
By a large margin, PC gaming will offer you the largest selection of games out of any option there is. With platforms such as Steam, Origin, Epic Games, and other gaming libraries, there can be a seemingly endless catalogue of games for you to pick from to purchase and play.
In addition, PC will offer you a wide variety of indie games that you would not be able to play on a console. In today’s day and age, it is seeming more and more like indie games are becoming the most popular.
Of course big Triple A titles will always hold the tops of the charts, but indie gaming is beloved by many people. It can be like a breath of fresh air, as smaller developers are willing to take risks with their games.
Indie developers I also find to seem to have more passion for the games they make. Triple A games are feeling more and more like cash grabs, rather than games meant to entertain us.
Loot boxes, DLC, in game purchases, and more of the like seem to plague Triple A titles more and more. Companies seem to be more emboldened than ever to add “for money” content to their games.
All of this is to say, PC gaming will offer you an immense assortment of games to “tickle your fancy.” No matter what kinds of games you like to play, I can assure you there will be something for everyone.
Another unrelated advantage of PC gaming is the customizability it offers you in your peripherals. You can choose whether you want a mouse and keyboard or a controller!
As someone who hates using controllers in games, I absolutely love this. A mouse and keyboard just feels so much more natural and precise to me when playing games. For me at least, a controller has always felt clunky and slow.
However, I do like that I have the option of using a controller should I choose. For certain titles, I must admit that even I prefer to play them with a controller rather than a mouse and keyboard.
It just feels more fluid especially in third person games. Especially if they are third person games that were not made for a mouse and keyboard, the mouse and keyboard can feel sluggish compared to how you would expect it to feel.
So, a controller in these cases is better in my opinion. However, in other people’s opinions, they want to use a controller all the time. And, guess what? You can!
All you need is a USB, Bluetooth, or other such controllers that are compatible with your computer, and BAM! You can play with a controller on a PC just like you could on a console.
Don’t forget, a console is ultimately just a computer with a fancy UI slapped onto it, some proprietary hardware, and they call it a day.
Console Gaming
I compared many aspects of console gaming to PC gaming in the section about PC gaming. However, there are a couple distinct advantages to a console I think is important to mention.
First are exclusives. There are many console exclusives that you simply can’t get on PC. If these are the games that you are most interested in, then it doesn’t matter how great a PC you could afford. You simply must buy a console to legally play those games.
Second is the price to performance. A brand new PC vs a brand new console, the console will give you a pretty hard to beat price to performance ratio, especially with today’s market where PC components are expensive or hard to come by.
However, if you know what you are doing, you could still get an equivalent or more powerful PC used. Despite this, I think new costs are important to talk about, as many people may not know enough about computer components to feel comfortable buying something used.
A Pre built PC of equal performance is going to be more expensive than a console if you are buying new. To many people, this will be enough to get them to pick a console over a PC.
Finally, an important downside to mention about console gaming is that you need to pay for online services. Both PlayStation and Xbox charge about $60 USD a year for their subscription service to play online. It is not a lot, but worth noting.
Conclusion
I think you can clearly tell from what I have written that I lean heavily towards PC gaming. It can be cheaper, more powerful, customized to your needs, and has by far the most exclusives (because of indie games) out of all of them.
However, I don’t want you to take this as me putting down anyone who plays on a console. Gaming is great no matter how you do it. I just hope I have helped inform you just a little bit more before your purchase!
Rico Nasty has dropped the new song ‘Buss’, which she previewed at Lollapalooza last weekend. Produced by Menoh Beats, the track follows her recent single ‘Magic’ and is set to appear on her forthcoming Rx project. Check it out below.
Vince Staples has released a new track called ‘Got ’Em’. It’s the rapper’s entry for the Pokémon 25: The Red EP, which also includes contributions from Mable and Cyn. The track is inspired by Pokémon characters Mew and Raichu (Arbok and Rattata also get a shoutout). Give it a listen below.
Vince Staples released his self-titled record last month, and is set to join Tyler, the Creator on his 2022 tour. He recently performed a ‘Tiny Desk (Home) Concert’ for NPR.
The Weeknd is back with a new single, ‘Take My Breath’, which he previewed earlier this week. The track was produced by Max Martin and arrives with an accompanying music video directed by Cliqua. It marks the Weeknd’s first new solo material since his 2020 album After Hours. Check it out below.
In a new interview with Mark Anthony Green for a GQ cover story, the Weeknd said his upcoming record is “the album I’ve always wanted to make.” Green also described the album, which hasn’t been completed yet, as “Quincy Jones meets Giorgio Moroder meets the best-night-of-your-fucking-life party records.”
Taylor Swift has shared a new teaser for Red (Taylor’s Version) on social media. The cryptic video features several track titles in code, and fans can unlock ‘The Vault’ on the album’s newly launched pre-save page by correctly guessing the titles. As @TaylorSwiftNZ revealed, Red (Taylor’s Version) will include collaborations with Phoebe Bridgers, Chris Stapleton, and Ed Sheeran, as well as the long-rumored 10-minute version of ‘All Too Well’. Check out the Vault tracklist below.
Red (Taylor’s Version), Swift’s second re-recorded album following April’s Fearless (Taylor’s Version), is set for release on November 9.
21. Ronan 22. Better Man 23. Nothing New feat Phoebe Bridgers 24. Babe 25. Message In A Bottle 26. I Bet You Think About Me feat Chris Stapleton 27. Forever Winter 28. Run feat Ed Sheeran 29. The Very First Night 30. All Too Well (Ten Minute Version) pic.twitter.com/TCDlxYFuj7
21. Ronan
22. Better Man
23. Nothing New [feat. Phoebe Bridgers]
24. Babe
25. Message in a Bottle
26. I Bet You Think About Me [feat. Chris Stapleton]
27. Forever Winter
28. Run [feat. Ed Sheeran]
29. The Very First Night
30. All Too Well (Ten Minute Version)
“I’m gonna show you/ All that I can do,” Lucie Murphy declares on the opening track of her debut Poise album, Vestiges, and with that promise, she charges into a devastating yet strikingly confident reflection on grief, sorrow, and creative catharsis. While the New York City native was readying her first, self-titled EP under the moniker, her father – an avid record collector and musician who introduced her to everything from old blues and folk to punk rock – passed away unexpectedly, and the pandemic hit just as she was about to embark on her first tour with the project. The songs on Vestiges came together during a period of intense introspection, channeling uncertainty into resilience by finding different outlets for the artist’s whirlwind of emotions – sometimes it lights up in a fiery explosion that nods to the punk music she grew up surrounded wth, while much of the record’s second half is more of a slow burn, cavernous and mournful. From the heartbreaking title track to the cinematic ‘Vessels’, another promise – “I will live the biggest life for you/ So no one can ever forget you” – becomes an internalized truth: “So with every breath I work to preserve you/ We are inseparable now/ Live is all I have to do.”
We caught up with Lucie Murphy for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about her earliest musical memories, the making of her debut Poise album, and more.
Do you mind sharing some of your earliest memories of enjoying music?
My dad was a musician, just sort of amateur – he played guitar well, but he didn’t play professionally at all. But he had an encyclopedic knowledge of music, he just knew everything. He knew really obscure old blues and jazz, that was where his knowledge mostly lay, but he also liked punk and ‘90s hip hop. And I grew up just sort of listening to everything – he would just blast music in our apartment all the time and I would dance around. He would also play guitar and that really inspired me to pick up the guitar, because I just thought it was so cool. As far as I can remember, we were always sharing music with each other and disturbing all our neighbours.
What do you think it was that resonated with you at the time – was it more the music itself or the connection that you shared?
I think both, yeah. I think the connection was a really big part of it. I don’t listen to that old blues stuff as much. I want to know more about it; I wish I could pick his brain more to find out more and learn more about that world.
What were your first attempts at playing music like after you picked up the guitar?
I started playing seriously when I was 11 or 12, and I just sort of used YouTube and the Internet to teach myself at first. And my dad taught me – he didn’t know music theory or anything, but he showed me basic chords. And then he had a mutual friend, my guitar teacher Sara Landau, who I’ve been taking lessons with since then for about a decade. And she plays in the Julie Ruin, that band with Kathleen Hanna. She was just starting that project around the time that I started taking lessons with her, so I witnessed some really early Julie Ruin practices with Kathleen Hanna. And I was so young, I just didn’t understand that that was really cool and important at that time. [laughs] But now I look back and I can’t believe that I was around that.
What were you like as a teenager?
Well, I really hated my high school so much. I grew up downtown and my high school was an upper east side and it was very, like, no one was really into music or art. It was very small, I didn’t really feel like I fit in at all. And I chose not to fit in, too. I didn’t want to be a part of it. And so I had that, but then all of my friends were downtown and I had a really vibrant social life downtown, you know, exploring other parts of the city. So it was kind of this combination of me feeling really depressed during the day at school and then going home at the end of the day and hanging out with my friends in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village.
Was that sense of community partly rooted in music?
Not really, I was kind of always the one who was good at music within my friends. I studied photography in college and my love of photography really started when I was in high school; it was more art and photography that all my friends were doing. But I started a little band through my guitar teacher Sarah Landau with two other girls who were around my age, it was called Pink Veins. And we would rehearse a couple times a week maybe; it was just people to play music with at that time. And so I was doing that as a music outlet.
Did you know at the time that music was something you wanted to pursue?
I think I always saw myself doing it but I was afraid to take the first steps. You know, I was really nervous at that time and very shy. And I think I really wanted to be successful at something, because growing up in New York, it’s very competitive, people are very successful in different realms, which was a great environment to grow up in but it also put a lot of pressure on kids. So I knew I really wanted to be really successful at something, and music just seemed really hard to be very successful at. So I kind of was like, “Well, with photography, I see more of an actual career I can have and I can actually make money.” So I kind of put my eggs in that basket at first, but I found more of a music community in college at SUNY Purchase, and I really found that music was where my community was. Music is really what I thought about the most, it’s really what felt the best. And I also love that music requires so many other mediums, like, photography is a big part of my music and my visual studies have really informed my music.
At the same time when I was studying photography, I was in this band called Bruise with a couple of friends, and that was really taking over my life. And I had to stop because I had to finish college and we were getting too active. But just my community was music and my friends were playing music and just playing shows felt so much better to me. It just felt more positive and encouraging than the fine art world.
Where did you go in terms of songwriting after that?
So, I was in Bruise for like two years, and we played a lot, we toured. And it was basically getting to the point, especially because the photo program at Purchase is so rigorous, I couldn’t do both anymore. And then, I was writing a little bit during that time, but it honestly was very hard to have two creative outlets at the same time, so I kind of took a break from writing for a bit. And I tried being a tour photographer and I was trying different things with music that I thought I might enjoy. I didn’t enjoy it that much. When I graduated, I moved back to Brooklyn, and that’s when I was really like, “Okay, now I have time to really write and start this new project, I’m really going to get out there and give it my all, because this is what I love and I’m really ready now to give myself to music fully.” And that’s where I’ve been since.
What was your headspace like after you put out your first EP as Poise in 2019?
So, I moved back to New York after college, my dad passed away six months later, basically as I’m trying to get my music stuff together. And I hadn’t finished the EP yet when my dad passed away, so that was another roadblock and delay. You know, when something like that happens, your life is on pause for a while, you have to step back from things. So my headspace was weird because I was trying to make my career happen, but also my dad passed away and it was really hard to find the strength to get out there. And then also, three months later, the pandemic hit. So I was in a pretty bad headspace, but you know, that’s what inspired all these new songs for this new record. I think I was just frustrated that things were not going as I had planned in my head, but it also lit this fire in me.
Was that when you decided to rent a cabin in Vermont to make the album?
Yes. So what happened is, when the pandemic hit, I moved out of my apartment, and I’ve been kind of floating around ever since then. We rented the cabin just to make the record, because when the pandemic hit I just wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote for three or four months and most of the album came out. And so we got the cabin to record it, and my engineer Sam Skinner has a mobile recording rig that he brought up with us and we just recorded it in the house over the course of a month.
Were you thinking at all about your identity both musically and personally during that time?
Yeah, I’m still – I think I’m going to be someone who’s always gonna change her sound. You know, my first EP was so grungy and rock and then the album is way more pop-based and some country influence and a lot of different genres. I really had a lot of fun playing with different genres, and I think the next record is going to be a little more cohesive in that way, like really carving out a niche for myself. Basically my attitude was like, I’m not gonna worry so much about it being one genre, I’m just gonna try everything I like and not limit myself.
Part of the reason I’m asking is because there’s a line on ‘Vestiges’, “I’m thinking anyone who meets me now/ They won’t ever really know me/ If they can’t know who I came from.” I was wondering if that’s something you were especially conscious of – that even though you might not be able to capture it in words, you felt the need to talk about that heritage, because it truly is a part of you.
Yeah. My dad and I were so, so close and he’s such a big part of my identity, musically and otherwise. He was a photographer, we had so many of the same interests, just very similar personalities. And I always felt like he really represented me – I’m very close to all of my immediate family, but I always felt the most kinship with my dad, we were just the most similar. And losing that person definitely felt like a big erosion of my identity.
I don’t think I was thinking about that so much when I was making the record, other than just that one line and just reflecting about my life. I don’t think it plays as much into my music, I think it’s more just – I always felt really proud to be my dad’s daughter. Even though he definitely had his own problems, I always felt really proud to have this cool interesting dad, you know, and losing that was hard, for sure.
Is there another moment on the record that would isolate as being particularly special to you on a personal level?
The song ‘New Kind of Love’, that song means a lot to me. It’s about a friend of mine who was in an abusive relationship and it’s about how tough it is to navigate these situations, because there’s not that much you can do as a friend who is outside of it and not really involved. Because you can’t force someone to leave, you can’t force them to make better decisions for themselves, you have to just let them know you’re there to support them and that if they ever need anything you’re here. And it’s something that is still really hard to navigate. But I just really wanted this friend to know that I didn’t think that they were crazy, I had all the sympathy in the world for them, I understood why and how you could find yourself in a situation like that. Thankfully this person is no longer in that relationship, so things are definitely better. But yeah, that song, it took me a really long time to write the lyrics because I want to be very careful about how I talked about something so heavy and something that was not really my story to tell, other than my perspective. I think I said what I needed to in a really succinct way.
Do you feel that writing these songs that are so inspired by personal experiences, and also having this space from them now, has given you a new perspective in general?
Well, I think what it really teaches me is more just the power of putting your trauma and your pain into art. It always makes me feel like it was all worth it, if I can turn it into something beautiful. If I can turn it into a song that resonates with people, all the pain was worth it. I also think with this record, writing the lyrics, I really learned to be vulnerable, and I really was not afraid to say when I felt lonely or when I felt insecure, whereas before I felt more guarded. And I just realised that the lyrics that hit me the hardest are always the most vulnerable, the most honest, and it really is hard to do that.
Was there a specific song that felt vulnerable in that way and made it seem less scary?
Yeah, I think ‘Vestiges’ was a big one where I just really felt vulnerable. I think the song ‘Forgive’ for me was really vulnerable because it was about my relationship. And I’m in a really happy, healthy relationship, but even in healthy, happy relationships you have challenging moments. I really wrote that song thinking, “I’m going to write this and I’m not going to think about whether or not it might hurt someone’s feelings, and I’m just going to write what I feel.” My partner and I have talked about it and it’s all good, but just giving yourself that liberation, like, if the person that I was writing about didn’t know it was about them or wasn’t around to hear it, what would I say? It’s really scary but it’s important, because I think that’s what people are going to resonate with the most.
What do you hope people take away from the album?
I hope it’s comforting to people; I hope that it makes them feel less alone if they’re going through grief. I hope that it just colours their life and helps people get through their day. So much music has done that for me in my life – you know, we were talking about why I chose to pursue music instead of photography after all this time, and I think I really realised that music colours my life in a way that photography doesn’t. When I was depressed in high school, Elliott Smith just like saved my life. It sort of romanticizes your life in this really beautiful way, in that you can feel cooler and better about yourself just by listening to some band. It just heightens experience in a way that photography doesn’t as much for me personally. So I hope that I can do that for someone; I hope that it can heighten their experiences and their life somehow.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Nas
Foxing
Lingua Ignota
Three years after her debut full-length Sunset Blush, 
Liam Kazar has released his debut LP, 
IDER
