With a range of new additions to their platform, Netflix are releasing the second part of the well-renowned series Lupin starring Omar Sy (The Intouchables, Jurassic World, Two is a Family).
As Assane’s journey for revenge against Hubert Pellegrini has ripped his family to pieces, he now has to think of a new plan with his back to the wall – even if it means putting himself in danger.
Lupin Part 2 will be available on Netflix from the 11th of June.
Watch the trailer below.
Hailing from Billings, Montana, Hey, ily! is the brainchild of Caleb Haynes, who combines influences from “Nintendocore, Emo, Powerpop, Shoegaze, and anything else the project can get its grubby mitts on.” Though Caleb has been active in local bands including Gray Joy, Rookie Card, and The Invertebrates, the way he blends disparate styles with Hey, ily! is both incredibly unique and strangely effective – it’s no surprise their two EPs, February’s (/ _ ; ) and latest release Internet Breath, blew up online, even without the push of his 92K following on TikTok. Hey, ily!’s music might spur arbitrary discussions as to where exactly it fits in the post-genre world, but what makes it so enjoyable to listen to is that it comes from a place of unbridled creativity, pairing frenetic energy and the impulse to experiment with the pure, nostalgic rush of a catchy chorus. These sounds shouldn’t work so well together, but they do – no small feat for a project that almost disappeared before it even had a chance to be discovered.
We caught up with Hey, ily!’s Caleb Haynes for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about his inspiration for the project, the process of making Internet Breath, and more.
First of all, is Hey, ily! a solo project? Who exactly is in this band?
That’s debatable. I think I like to leave up the mystery of like, “Are there other people in this band?” I guess the simple answer would be sometimes. Sometimes it’s a solo project and sometimes there’s multiple people in it.
But in terms of recording and producing, you do most of it yourself?
Yeah, I do pretty much all of the recording myself. Some people will come in and perform their stuff, but all the recording is done by me.
Is there a reason behind you wanting to have a bit of mystery behind the project?
Yeah, the idea of Hey, ily! as a whole is this kind of – I wanted it to be like a mysterious internet band, like, “Oh, who is this, what’s going on, what are these people, what are their lives like?” But I also want it to be a bit more transparent than that. I don’t want to be like Death Grips where I put out my first mixtape and no one knows who or what the band is. But I do want there to be a mystery behind it.
I know you’ve played in a few other bands before, so I was wondering what the initial inspiration for starting Hey, ily! was.
I think I was really sick of being in these bands that are just emo and nothing else. I was so tired of this copy-and-paste emo sound a lot of bands, including the bands I’ve been in, are doing. And so I was like, “I’m just sick of this. I want to make something that’s familiar yet super crazy and all over the place at the same time.”
The thing that I wanted to do with this project is – basically, I wanted to impress people on Twitter. I saw people on Twitter and I was like, “Those guys are so cool, I want to make music that they’ll like.” But in order to do that, I thought that what I would have to do is create something that people haven’t really heard before, and I was like, “Here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to combine influences from emo with chiptune and shoegaze and punk and all this different stuff to try and create something new.”
In terms of influences, you’ve also cited Nintendocore, which is a term a lot of people listening to your music might not be familiar with.
I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t know what Nintendocore was before people started calling my band it. But I think what Nintendocore is is, like, music inspired by video games that isn’t directly related to video games, if that makes sense. So it takes sounds from retro old video games but combines it with a modern kind of tint to it.
When it comes to emo and shoegaze and power pop, why do you think you gravitated to those sounds early on?
I kind of started my music journey with radio rock, like I was really into Red Hot Chili Peppers and Gorillaz. And then, I don’t know exactly what happened, but as I got older and I got more like an emotional teen, I got into Joy Division and indie stuff like that. And then from that, I discovered American Football – which, you know, when you’re in high school and you discover a band like American Football and emo stuff like that, you just get totally obsessed with that sound. I was really into the way that these harsher, not as prettily sung vocals combined with these really beautiful melodies. And so bands like Los Campesinos!, Say Anything, American Football really stood out to me in that regard.
How did you start playing and making your own music?
I started playing guitar when I discovered Radiohead, because the guitarist from Radiohead is always doing crazy, weird – I was always obsessed with weird sounds, I guess. Weird bleeps and bloops. And I saw that the guitarist from Radiohead, he could make bleeps and bloops with his guitar, and I was like, “That is so cool.” Little did I know that you had to be good at guitar, to be able to do that kind of thing. But I was like, “That’s so sick, I want to do that,” and so I got a guitar and I was like, “Wow, this sucks, I can’t do anything that that guy’s doing.” But I started learning guitar and doing that kind of thing, and as what I listened to change, my playing style also changed. I know a huge one was Coheed and Cambria. I discovered those guys and I was like, “Wow, these melodies that they’re doing, they’re playing leads on guitar while also singing leads, that’s so cool.” And I think that throughout my musical journey, a huge thing that I thought was super cool was bands like Mr. Bungle who would combine all these different kinds of music. And then 100 gecs came out and they were combining all these different kinds of internet music and I was like, “That’s sick.” And so, what I really wanted to do was to make music that combined these beautiful melodies with music that you wouldn’t ever think that it would be combined with, like hyper pop or ska or black metal.
That’s something I was curious about: Do you see yourself as fitting more into the internet aesthetic of 100 gecs and hyperpop, or do you see your music as belonging to a long-standing tradition of emo and indie music?
That’s a good question. I think I kind of flip flop back and forth, because some days, I’m like, “Oh, I just want to write an emo song and just have it be emo.” But then other days, I’m like, “I want to write a song that is what it would sound like if an anime intro was completely made with computers.” But I think that if you were to look at the majority of the things I listen to you and the things that I write, I’d say that it’s more of a traditional emo kind of thing.
Something that struck me in your bio was the confidence of, “Caleb wants to inspire people all over the world.” But when it came to describing your sound, there was this hesitancy of, “referred to by some as fifth wave emo.” I know there was recently some controversy surrounding this, but do you see yourself as a part of that genre, or would you rather avoid that tag?
It’s really funny, because when I first came with this first EP, fifth wave emo wasn’t a thing. I’d never heard the term fifth wave before – or even a little bit after I came out with that EP. But people started referring to that EP as fifth wave emo and I was like, “Yeah, sure, whatever.” I mean, I’ve always wanted to be part of a wave of something, you know. I’ve always wanted to be in a new genre. So I think it’s super cool that people are calling me and other people part of this new genre.
Do you think the pandemic has played a role in pushing bands to innovate more?
I think yes and no. I think there’s always been innovators in the emo genre and genres like it, but I think that the pandemic is forcing people to stay inside and just write music and record it with all these different limitations. It’s more relatable and people are finding each other more easily now, you know, like Home Is Where, Khaki Cuffs, yours arms are my cocoon, all these bands that are doing something different with the genre are finding each other and are being like, “Hey, check out these other bands that are doing something cool and crazy and exciting.” So I think that yes, it has in part to do with a pandemic, but also the pandemic just makes it more accessible.
Before we get to Internet Breath, one moment I wanted to point out on the first EP is ‘The Sad Acoustic Song’. That outro especially is insane. When you set out to make a song, do you always start with the intention to make something both overstimulating for the listener but also challenging for you as well?
I think that most of the time I start with an idea, and I don’t really think about, Oh, how can I make this into something almost unlistenable? With that song specifically, I was like, “I’m just going to make this sad acoustic song and that’s going to be it.” And halfway through, I was like, “I’m bored of being sad and acoustic, let’s us make it super loud for no reason.”
I’m amazed that there’s this lo-fi quality to your songs, but it never gets unlistenable or overbearing. It sounds very intentional. How do you go about achieving that?
I record everything off of my phone, and I’ve been working with music on my phone ever since I started making music. I’ve always been interested in these people who are making music that I really enjoy with basically no money, like early Car Seat Headrest. And so I kind of wanted to do that, but I also didn’t want it to become a gimmick. I didn’t want like people to be like, “This is a lo-fi album,” you know, I wanted it to be emo, I wanted it to be all these different things – I didn’t want “lo-fi” to basically get in the way of that.
With Internet Breath, did you expect that it would get the reaction that it did? You said before that that was part of the intention, but why do you think it caught on?
I guess I kind of wanted it to catch on a little bit. I mean, everyone, when they make music, they’re always like, “No, I didn’t expect this huge [reaction],” but I kind of wanted it to happen. I was like, “Man, it’d be sick if all these people enjoyed it.” But no one thinks it’s going to happen. And I think that’s a real struggle when I was making Internet Breath, too, I was like, “I’m making music that I’m only going to enjoy,” because it’s so specific and so niche in what it tries to do. And so I was like, “No one’s gonna like this.” And then it kind of blew up, which is really cool. I guess it’s still kind of blowing up, and I’m really grateful for it. A part of me still wonders if it’s undeserved, because like – with this EP, I just wanted to make music that’ll scratch an itch for me, and I guess a lot more people have that itch than I imagined.
Something I didn’t notice until much later was that you also have a TikTok with a lot of followers, but you don’t really promote your music there. Is that a conscious attempt from you to keep things separate?
It kind of is, because I wanted to keep it separate. But also, part of it is like, people on TikTok have really short attention spans and I’ve tried to promote my bands on there before, and it just does not work out. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because the TikTok algorithm is broken. But people don’t really support you outside of TikTok – if you find a following on TikTok, your band might get a few extra followers, but most of the people just stay with your content on there, like people won’t try and find you on other places if even if you promote it on there.
But also, I feel like a lot of people that like my content on Tik Tok are kind of – I don’t want to sound mean or whatever, but they’re just starting to get into that kind of underground scene, and I think that they wouldn’t really like what I’m doing out there. I think maybe what I’m doing out there would be too in their face, you know. I think they’d still have to make the journey that I did.
Can you talk me through the process of making Internet Breath?
I do this thing a lot where I’ll find a project idea, whether it be with other people or with myself – I get really into this project idea, I put something out there, and then I’m like, “Wow, this project idea is really dumb.” And then I delete it and I just never think about it ever again. And that was almost going to be what Hey, ily! was – it was going to be like a one-off, just throw it up there, see what happens, and then take it down eventually. But people really liked that first EP, and I was like, “Well, I guess now I’m sticking with this.” And so the second EP was kind of made just because I wanted to give people that already liked the first EP something more to listen to.
Throughout the EP, you find so many ways to distort or push the limits of your voice, whether you’re screaming or running your voice through effects. How much of a challenge was that for you?
I kind of am not that great of a singer, and I don’t really know a lot of the inner mechanisms of how singing muscles and organs work. So I think for a long time, I’ve been just pushing my voice and distorting it a lot just because I wanted – I’m not really super confident with my vocals yet, so I wanted to disguise it in any way that I can, whether that be singing harsher or adding effects onto the vocals. I’ve been doing that for a while now, but the challenge was making it listenable too. Sometimes I’ll add too many layers or too many effects to my vocals and people will just be like, “Wow, this is garbage.” And so I think that a part of me was just trying to be like, “Let’s calm down,” but also, “Let’s not calm down.”
A connection I made has to do with the way you use your voice and the idea of the “internet breath” that you bring up on the lead single, ‘DigitalLung.exe’. Did you have a particular concept or theme in mind for this EP?
Yeah, most definitely. When I was writing this EP, I was like, “I hope people will pick up on this,” so it’s really encouraging to hear that at least you did. I really wanted this EP just to be about the pandemic and the way that has forced us to live our lives basically through the internet. We can’t really see – well, I guess now places are starting to open up – but for a while we couldn’t really see each other, so we had to rely on just texting and group chats and we had to rely on the internet for entertaining us for most of the day. So, really what I wanted most of the EP to be about which is that struggle of being forced to do everything online, whether that be communicating with your friends online or just not trying to become addicted to social media in general. And then, you know, body image in an era where all you’re doing is looking at other people and seeing other people’s success.
Were you immersed in internet culture growing up, or was it something that really changed during the pandemic?
I was exposed to the internet at an age that was probably way too young for me, so I’ve totally been on the internet for a long time. But the thing is that I would still always find a balance. But as the pandemic started to become a thing, it did start to just absorb me and kind of take over my life for a while.
Something that stood out to me about that song is how it starts with “I’m brainwashed, but I like it” and ends with “part of me wants to break free.” This obviously relates to what you’re talking about, but I was wondering if you could expand on that final sentiment of wanting to break free.
I am helplessly addicted to the internet and I’ve been for a long time. And I like being able to talk with people online, I like being able to talk to communities, I like being able to access music and art and all these things thanks to the internet, but a part of me just wishes that I could just go to a time when it wasn’t completely online, and if you wanted to have a community you had to go out and experience that, you had to be around people. A part of me just wants to be able to turn off my phone and turn off my computer and just experience life, you know, without the internet. But also, I think I enjoy the internet way too much to do that.
What are your ambitions for the project going forwards?
I finally have a full band figured out for this project, so I’m really excited for the future. I think that we’re gonna try and ride out the attention this EP is getting – more listeners for me and my label mates, everyone else in the record label, and then we’re going to try and just make something bigger and better. And it’s going to be hopefully a full-length album. It’s just going to be just everything turned up to 11 – it’s going to sound better, it’s going to be more crazy, there’s going to be a lot more different things happening in it.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Hey, ily!’s Internet Breath is out now via Lonely Ghost Records.
In the music video for ‘The Holding Hand’, Iceage frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt holds a lit candle to his face, staring at his reflection in the mirror. When the rest of his band members do the same, there is a sense of despondency and disassociation; with him, it’s as if he’s peering straight through your soul, even when his look is directed sideways or his eyes are kept shakily shut. It’s both a lucid performance and a direct confrontation, and it captures the magnetism of the Danish band’s music at its best: living in the suspended moment between a deathly stare and a deranged laugh, it’s not so much a vessel for pure darkness as much as it illuminates the dualities of the shadowy place from which it springs. When they strike the right balance, it can sound both restless and haunting, visceral yet steeped in melancholy.
But a stare can also feel hollow, and for Iceage, as their name would suggest, keeping a cold distance has always been part of the point – even if they often juxtapose their enigmatic qualities with a sense of youthful vitality and apocalyptic gloom that sets them apart. Their fifth album, Seek Shelter, is at once their most revealing project to date and one whose occasional hollowness fails to translate in any meaningful way. Take ‘Vendetta’, for example, a propulsive musical highlight that Rønnenfelt has tellingly described as “an impartial, observative song,” one that’s “not against crime, and it’s not supposed to glorify it, either.” You can almost sense the singer’s sneering look in his delivery, but it falls short of conveying anything of substance about the subject, let alone provide some sort of incisive commentary. And it doesn’t have to – but in their attempt to move further away from nihilistic despair, the song highlights their struggle to embrace something resonant in the face of it.
But Seek Shelter is far from an inaccessible album, especially by Iceage’s standards. The quintet – Rønnenfelt, Johan Surrballe Wieth, Dan Kjær Nielse, Jakob Tvilling Pless, and new guitarist Casper Morilla Fernandez – recorded the album in 12 days with producer Sonic Boom (Pete Kember of Spacemen 3) in Lisbon, marking the first time the band have worked with an outside producer. The result is their most lush-sounding and refined album to date, one that continues the trajectory that started with 2014’s Plowing Into the Field of Love with the addition of even more strings and, this time, a gospel choir. The shining example of the band’s evolution comes in the form of the album’s opener, ‘Shelter Song’, a track whose soaring, anthemic chorus projects a yearning for tenderness that’s unlike anything the band have ever done before.
The rest of Seek Shelter evokes the conflict that occurs when romanticism and a general sense of weariness grow side by side, vying for space within the same body. ‘Love Kills Slowly’ is simultaneously hopeful and bleak: “We have nothing in the end/ But love,” Rønnenfelt sings, before completing his thought in the titular refrain, one that feels both earnest and heavy as it surrenders to the inevitable passage of time. On ‘Drink Rain’, though, the protagonist’s craving for intimacy is undercut by an air of absurdity that the band normally excels at; the strangeness here is alluring, but it feels subtly out of place in the context of the record. Rønnenfelt’s typically elusive lyricism still shines on tracks like ‘Gold City’ and ‘Dear Saint Cecilia’, but their poetic nuance is lost in an obvious attempt to scale up the band’s sound.
If the band’s vision becomes somewhat muddled as the album progresses, ‘The Holding Hand’ offers a tantalizing conclusion, bringing Iceage back to that eerie yet familiar place while serving as a bridge to something greater. The track ushers in a wave of confusion and uncertainty as impenetrable and overpowering as the music itself; Rønnenfelt is surrounded by ghostly echoes of his own voice, distorted electric guitar crushing down on him like a tide. “And we row, on we go, through these murky water bodies/ Little known, little shown, just a distant call of sound,” he sings. It’s at once the album’s most claustrophobic and transcendent moment, a song of punishing turmoil and renewed clarity, and exactly where Iceage need to be.
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 segment.
On this week’s list, we have an appropriately dark and throbbing collaborative track from HEALTH and Nine Inch Nails, ‘ISN’T EVERYONE’; Laura Marling’s project with Tunng’s Mike Lindsay, LUMP, returned with ‘Animal’, the lead single off their upcoming sophomore LP, which serves as a reintroduction to the “parallel universe” of LUMP and pulses with an eerie, hypnotic energy; Madi Diaz’s latest, ‘Nervous’, is an earnest indie rock ballad with just the right amount of grit; dodie’s ‘Before the Line’ is a hauntingly dramatic closer from her debut album Build a Problem; Little Simz offered the second preview from her forthcoming LP, ‘Woman’, a celebration of female empowerment set against a mellifluous groove and featuring a sublime guest appearance from Cleo Sol; L’Rains’ ‘Blame Me’ is a gorgeously layered single from the Brooklyn experimentalist’s upcoming sophomore album; and finally, New York dance music duo Water From Your Eyes shared ‘Quotations’, the latest teaser from their newest album Strucuture, a track that warps a sunny melody into something fragmented yet entrancing.
Best New Songs: May 10, 2021
HEALTH and Nine Inch Nails, ‘ISN’T EVERYONE’
Little Simz feat. Cleo Sol, ‘Woman’
LUMP, ‘Animal’
Madi Diaz, ‘Nervous’
Song of the Week: dodie, ‘Before the Line’
L’Rain, ‘Blame Me’
Water From Your Eyes, ‘Quotations’
A night in with your pals, with good food, fun, life chats, and an overall sense of rejuvenation (even if you end up staying awake far too late) can create the recipe for a perfect night. The following will explore some of the things you might want to consider when planning a night in with your friends. Of course, every friend group is different; if face masks or mudding or Skyrim are musts in your circle of friends, be sure to include these things. No one knows your friend group better than you do.
Before we dive in, it’s important that you don’t become glued to the idea of your plan panning out perfectly. Some of the best memories arise as a result of serendipity or random ideas followed through to the end. It’s fantastic to have a basic plan: this way, if nothing comes up or is going on, you’ve got all your bases covered. This being said, be ready to go with the flow and adjust the plan to the surprises of the evening.
We all have that one friend (we’re not going to name her here), but she likes to take over the role of DJ, and the brutal secret is none of the rest of us like her tastes. Get ahead of the potential problem by creating a few playlists. Have one full of music you guys tend to listen to a lot, have a throwback playlist in case that’s the mood, and finally, throw together something with a bunch of new music you think the gang would like. This way, you’ll be ready for whatever music needs you and the group has. Of course, read the room; you don’t have to have music playing all the time if that doesn’t fit the vibe. Be ready to pivot.
Food is crucial to any lengthy gathering. People get hungry, and then they get cranky, and then things stop being fun. If people are going to be drinking at this party, it’s even more important to ensure that there’s food for everyone.
A general rule of thumb is to have snacks available the whole time with a big meal at standard meal times and a smaller meal ready every four-ish hours. And, the cardinal rule is: always have more food than you think you’ll need. Someone might bring a friend. Someone else might have just gotten back together with that partner we all despise. Someone else might bring their sister. No matter how prepared you are, keep handy a few websites that deliver in case your crowd is hungrier than you expected them to be; www.swagbucks.com/shop/gopuff-coupons even offers coupons for deliveries from the 24-hour convenience store goPuff. Be sure to keep in mind when things are open for delivery and how long it will take to arrive when making your plans.
Are you all planning on jumping in the lake at midnight? If so, everyone needs to bring swimming clothes or a change of clothes. Also, do you have enough towels for everyone? Will there be a bonfire in the backyard? People might want to bring bug spray, camp chairs, or a big sweater. Are people welcome to spend the night but need to bring their own pillows and blankets because you don’t have enough? Let everyone know what all the options are ahead of time so that everyone brings the right clothing for whatever comes up in the evening.
There’s no such thing as too old for games. Something like Spike Ball, charades, Cards Against Humanity, sardines, or manhunt works no matter how long it’s been since you graduated. Peruse the internet and prep a few games for the group. It doesn’t matter if you don’t end up playing them or if you make your way through all of them in succession; you just want to have some fun options ready in case everyone is feeling like a game. Make sure to be aware of your group’s charades skills if you’re putting some tougher book titles into the charades hat. Start simple if you don’t know how everyone’s abilities stack up.
For many of us, there comes the point in the night where everyone needs to wind down a bit (or a point the following morning when everyone is hungover and wants to laze on the couch drinking Gatorade). Be prepared for this by keeping a list of movies and video games that might work well for the group. This way, if everyone’s too exhausted to make a decision as a group, you can just throw something up on the tv and let everyone veg out for a couple of hours.
The following morning everyone is going to be sleepy, sore (from sleeping funny with three people piled onto the only couch), or hungover. Be the best host in the world and sort out coffee, tea, and breakfast. Nothing gets people up and moving faster than pancakes. Nothing.
What do we mean by stragglers? We mean that one friend who sticks around for a whole other day (or even another night after that). When we have big group gatherings, someone always is stuck without a ride or gets far too hungover to drive the next day, or sleeps until 4 pm in the basement. Be prepared for this when you have a group of friends over for the night and try to avoid needing to be out of the house by a certain time the following day.
The above tips should help you plan a memorable evening with your buddies. Again, every friend group is different, so feel free to tweak these suggestions to fit the activities you guys normally enjoy. Keep in mind that spending several hours outside tends to result in people being hungrier than usual. If you want to push the boundaries a little and experiment, why not have a “no phone rule” for the party. Everyone pops their phone into a bowl at the start of the evening, and we all have fun like it’s still the 90s.
Marfa Fedorova established her brand in 2013, betting on street fashion. The new collection, presented as part of MBFW Russia, reflects the aesthetics of urban fashion with bright colours and buzzing textures. Once again, the designer became voluminous with items of outerwear and shirts, sundresses, and trousers. The collection can safely be described as practical with raincoats, windbreakers, and dresses with sleeves large enough to hide everything you need. Moreover, the designer did not ignore the trend for collars which engraved well with the ranging colour pallet from neutral to pops of bright red and yellow.
Here is the collection from Marfa Fedorova.
Russian Fashion Council is inviting designers worldwide to apply for the international hybrid fashion event Global Talents Digital. The third Global Talents Digital issue is dedicated to sustainability. Designers of virtual and physical clothing, footwear and accessories are welcome to join as long as they are working with upcycling, recycling, ethical fashion, slow fashion, or zero waste.
Global Talents Digital will take place phygitally in the end of July. Entries are accepted till June 30, 2021, at https://globaltalents.digital.
The previous edition of Global Talents Digital took place in September and got over seven million views. 103 participants from 34 countries and areas united to explore the issue of sustainability. Designer collections, works of artists and virtual models in collaboration with non-profit organizations and technology startups were watched from 1,519 cities throughout the world.
Talking about the event, the president of Russian Fashion Council and Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Russia Alexander Shumsky said: “The team of Russian Fashion Council will continue working on this sustainable event in Moscow, although the project will remain international. We invite designers working in sustainable fashion to apply so that they could share up-to-date sustainable practices with the world. Global Talents Digital is a long-term initiative that intends not to criticize but to tell the audience how billions of unwanted garments can be used, how to buy more reasonably, and how sustainable fashion philosophy can be extended beyond the professional eco agenda. This project is a place for artistic experiments and collaborations, and that is why we invite non-profit organizations, artists, and bloggers – the ones that have the sustainability concept at heart.”
Ten years after uploading her first original song on YouTube, dodie has released her debut studio album, Build a Problem. Though this marks her first full-length release, the 25-year-old British singer-songwriter, born Dorothy Miranda Clark, has established a strong online presence with nearly 2 million subscribers on her main YouTube channel, and her three independently released EPs – 2016’s Intertwined, 2017’s You, and 2019’s Human – went on to reach the UK pop charts. One thing dodie’s videos and her music have in common is that they both can feel like soul-baring admissions of vulnerability. Throughout her career, she’s channeled that intimacy through lush folk pop built around soft vocals and plucky acoustic guitars, and her debut LP is no different – this time, though, the variations in sound and mood also reflect the contradictions she often speaks about in her discussions of mental health. Working with producer Joe Rubel as well as an 13-piece orchestra, dodie uses the extra space to experiment with different styles and structures as the album delves into darker, more dramatic territory, adding rich, complex layers to her explorations of self-worth, shame, and inner conflict.
We caught up with Dodie to talk about the story behind each song on Build a Problem. Listen to the album and read our track-by-track interview below.
Your 2019 EP, Human, also opened with this kind of spare, vocal-led track, though this also has a really nice layer of percussion and keys. Was there a reason you wanted to continue this trend with your debut album?
I love an instrumental kind of intro. I had one ready, and I knew I wanted to use it. Especially this song in particular, it’s very, like – my arms are open, open to receive anything, whatever the world hits at me. It just feels very alive. So it felt right to go at the beginning and be like, “Hit me. Throw whatever you have at me.”
Am I right in sensing a bit of a Bon Iver influence here?
Oh, yeah, probably. Definitely, like, clustered harmonies. I enjoyed adding – cause that demo lives on its own on YouTube, but we added a sort of bass sub-type thing and also an echoed percussion part that we wanted to be really subtle, just to give it a little bit of a boost.
You said it feels alive, and there’s almost a sense of quiet optimism and excitement to it as well. Why did you want to open the album with this kind of scene?
I think because the album gets pretty dark – it can be quite heavy, and I don’t even think I realized this until I played it to my friends and we finished it and I looked around and they were like, “Oof.” And I was like, “Oops.” I didn’t really plan that, but I think that’s what happens when you naturally turn introspectively and really evaluate all of your feelings. So putting this at the beginning kind of gives it hopefully a positive outlook of like, “This is life. It’s full of extreme highs and extreme lows, but I’m ready for it.”
The album is named after a line from this song. I was wondering how the meaning of that phrase – “build a problem” – has changed since you first wrote it.
I think it always held a lot in it. For me, to build a problem means that like, I build so many problems [laughs], just around my life. And like, “Why does this keep happening?” But then I also think it relates to me being built, you know, and the problems that were built around me, and that therefore I became a problem as well.
That’s definitely a big theme on the album, the idea of how you’re built and how that affects your behaviour now. One thing I love about this track is how you portray this dialogue – be it internal or external — as a sort of dance, which maybe explains why it’s one of the more pop-oriented songs here.
Yeah, I love writing about something complex and maybe not as bright, as the track implies. Because this song is meant to be a little bit playful – I’m not really indulging too deep into the bad parts of this feeling. It’s meant to be like, you’re right, a silly dance I play. And I think I can almost look back on it, from an imaginary older me and see myself in these situations and ask, “Why?”
I wonder if that playfulness comes in retrospect, but in the actual moment, it feels heavy and all-consuming.
I think it can take a turn. It can get so ridiculous, this feeling of panic inside, that I can almost laugh about it in the moment – there’s a line in the song where I say, “What if I laugh now?” Like, “What if I just break this stupid atmosphere and say, ‘What is going on here? Am I going insane? Are you going insane? Can we just talk out?’” But I never do, and I think if I hold on to that a little longer, it’ll kind of tip into the darkness of, “Man, this is my fault.” I’m like, “How do I keep getting in these situations? There must be something wrong with me.”
With this song, first of all, I wanted to know your initial, non-Twitter reaction to that Metro headline.
[laughs] Honestly, I just laughed. Because it wasn’t unkind, it’s completely right. I just think it’s funny how, it’s British press, and I don’t usually appear in British press. And I’ve often wondered what it would be like, you know – a good headline, a bad headline. But this was so perfect, it was just, “dodie’s bonk statement” [laughs]. It was just so great, it was such a novelty.
It’s so bizarre, too. It’s such a British press thing that I don’t know how many people outside of the UK will even really get it.
[laughs] Like, what does that mean?
Yeah, exactly. “Bonk” is such a ridiculous word on its own, but “bonk statement”? What?
I think it’s a play on “bank statement”?
Oh… Wow. I didn’t even think of that.
Yeah, layers. Layers to this headline. I think I was so – not afraid, but like, I was curious as to how people would react to me… not kind of coming out as sexual, but showing that side of me that I guess the internet does not see or refuses to see. And I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll show my more mature side, cause I’m 26. I’m a woman.” And then that was just such a nice way of bringing it all down, like, not making it that serious.
But the song itself also comes from a personal and lonely place following a breakup, and indulging in this sort of “revenge fantasy,” as you’ve called it. And it’s based on a real experience. How much do you see it as kind of straddling the line between fantasy and reality?
I will say, it’s not about one specific experience – it’s like a combination of one particular night of mine, but like, years ago, and then also something that a friend went through recently. But also, I think, just exploring this theme of trying to sooze loneliness with sexuality, and it being combined with a lot of shame, maybe unfairly. So it’s just exploring a few things within one obvious situation.
I loved this when it came out, and it remains one of my favorites on the album. But after I saw you retweeted that screenshot from Gone Girl, I can’t help but think of that scene whenever I listen to it, which made me wonder whether there’s more to it than I initially thought. Was that an influence?
Yeah, it definitely was an influence. I love that speech from Gone Girl, I’ve seen Gone Girl so many times. I definitely stole her bitterness as she kind of spits out that phrase, like, “Cool girl.” You know, she’ll be this, she’ll be that. I think in my song, there’s a lot more desperation, almost begging – it’s kind of like I’m whispering to other women or other people saying, “I found the answer, you just have to suppress everything.” But then there’s definitely a running theme of denial as well, like, “I know that this is not the right thing, this is not healthy for me.”
To me, there’s almost a melancholy to that desperation, which maybe comes from the way you sing the chorus. It gives it an undertone of, “I wish I could be all those things.” How did you land on that kind of delivery?
Yeah, I’m kind of singing through this breathiness, and I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s whispering – it’s kind of like an intense whisper. It kind of gives the effect of me gritting my teeth as I’m singing. I think that particular sound came from a lot of artists I was listening to. There’s an artist called Emily Kay, who I listened a lot to, and she kind of does that. And then same with, like, Ethan Gruska. I think those two artists combined made me find power in quiet. And that’s not to say – in a lot of the album I do try and belt a little bit more, but I think it really works in this song.
I see this as being on the opposite end of the spectrum — going from blaming yourself to literally saying “It’s not my fault.” How do you see the connection between this and the previous track?
I definitely think this is more just entirely playful. Like, when I was talking about ‘Hate Myself’ and it’s kind of this place where you can just laugh about it, and then I feel like if you think a little more, it dips into darkness. This is purely in that laughing place of like, “This is ridiculous that I feel this way or that I’m made this way.” It’s kind of like you’re sitting in this kind of manic place of, “Oh well, fuck it. I’m broken, things happen, shit happens, I have trauma. Oh well!”
There’s such a crazy, upbeat energy to this track, and the instrumental definitely fits that mood. What was it like working with Pomplamoose for this song?
It was so fun. They just bounced around the room and built this song with the rhythm I wanted and really helped to just add more vibes. There was also – it sounds like a double bass, but there’s actually an upright piano with rubber on the strings. It gives it this clanky hammer effect – it works so well because it’s so messy. And then I took it to Joe Rubel, and we made it into this kind of “smashed together but still vibing” thing, which I relate to [laughs].
You’ve talked about this track in relation to the following songs on the album because it’s the first that features a 13-piece string section. But I feel like it also relates the previous songs and ‘Special Girl’ in particular, because it revisits this theme of self-worth, but maybe leaning more on your upbringing and the environment you grew up around. I’m curious how you came up with the metaphor that opens the song, of being brought up in a line but feeling like you’re walking in circles.
I can’t remember the specific way I thought of it, but I guess it doesn’t just relate to sexuality. I think it’s a feeling of being raised with a certain kind of truth. And I felt like I was walking around and breaking it, and as I opened up more into the wild, I noticed the things that didn’t align with that line of truth. And then I realized that there is no one truth, and that’s just somene else’s truth. It was very confusing – I think it always is when you realize that, because all of those rules are still in you, because that’s how you were built. And then you have to keep reminding yourself that you now know this new truth. So yeah, it can be quite conflicting.
That conflict is definitely there, but I feel like this song arrives more at a place of acceptance compared the previous ones. Was the decision to introduce the string section here a way of reinforcing that?
I feel like this song deserves a nice bed, because there’s a lot of darkness in the verses, but I wanted the choruses to be swelling and wonderful. I just wanted those choruses to be a safe space, so I think it deserved a really nice, sweet place to rest.
What was the thinking behind including this first interlude, and what is the question mark in reference to?
It wasn’t called ‘?’ at first. It was just an unnamed interlude, and I didn’t write it after ‘Rainbow’ specifically. I was just playing with modes and liked the way that Lydian sounded and started playing in it, and noticed it sounded kind of dark and questioning. And then it seemed right to place in between ‘Rainbow’ and ‘Four Tequilas’, kind of like a weird bridge of taking all of the confidence and love of ‘Rainbow’ and twisting it. I feel like I kind of stray away from ‘Rainbow’, sort of like I walked too far, and it turns into something unhealthy. And then we added a rumble of strings, like a tremolo, which gave it kind of like a rumble of a self-conscious idea.
This song feels like a callback to ‘I Kissed Someone (It Wasn’t You)’, both instrumentally and lyrically. How much of that is intentional?
I didn’t even really notice that, but you’re right. I guess the themes are kind of similar, of like, sexual mistake. It’s funny, because I wrote ‘I Kissed Someone’ after ‘Four Tequilas’ – I wrote ‘Four Tequilas’ quite a long time ago. I think ‘Four Tequilas’, for some reason, sounds a lot sweeter.
There’s also this sense of losing control or feeling disconnected from yourself, which, on its own, could be viewed as a result of the alcohol, but there’s more to it when you put it into the context of the album and also your experiences with depersonalisation and disassociation.
Yeah, I definitely think there’s a lot of depersonalization in that song. There’s like a huge disconnect between voices saying, “Something in me says that this is okay,” and these outside voices saying, “Who the hell am I? I know this isn’t right.” There’s these two things fighting – it’s almost like there’s someone above me being like, “Stop.” There’s a drunkenness to it – I think ‘Four Tequillas’ is almost like the fumes of alcohol, whereas ‘I Kissed Someone’ is maybe in the aftermath, the darkness, where it kind of turns sickly.
I like that you sing “they’ll never know” and then you turned it into a song.
[laughs] I know. Classic.
I think this is a good point to talk about the string arrangements. What was it like composing those and working with the Parallax Orchestra?
It was truly a dream come true. It was just so magical, and I wish I could give that experience to everyone. I scored on – I actually used Logic and kind of placed the songs in the project and then scored in MIDI. I kind of did it how I would do vocal arrangements, just adding what I hear underneath, and then translating that into scoring and put it into software so I could tweak it and translate it for the orchestra. But my violinist in my band, Will Harvey, who runs Parallax Orchestra, was there by my side and really helped bridge that gap, because though I know how to read music, I’m not a classically trained string player.
How did you go about connecting the string sections throughout the album?
It was so fun. It tested my musicality to the limit, but in the best way. I think ‘Rainbow’ is in D, and then the next few songs are A, which is an easy place to get to, because a drone can run through and it can just make sense. So then it’s A for a while, and then ‘Sorry’ begins – I know we’ll get to ‘Sorry’, sorry – but then it has to go through so many things to get to ‘When’. So it was kind of easy at first, I think it made so much sense, until I got to ‘When’ and I was like, “How the heck am I going to get here?” But it worked so well, I think.
Were you worried that having the string arrangements start with ‘Rainbow’ in the middle of the album would disrupt the flow of at all?
Yeah, I wasn’t really sure where to place it. All I knew is that those six songs had to go together, which was tough for my label and my manager and everyone else. I think someone said to me, like, “Oh, it creates quite a dip, are you sure you want to keep these together?” And I’m like, “Yes, I wrote them to be together, that’s the whole point.” I know what they mean, but I think it works out okay to almost have like a line in the middle of the album – ironically, because there’s a song called ‘Before the Line’ – and I quite like that. I think it works well to have the singles at the beginning and then sort of holding your hand and guiding you into this more dramatic direction gradually.
What can you tell me about the origins of this song?
I think it’s a result of everything I talk about, but in a far more grounded way. I kind of live in this heightened, denial, chaotic, manic state of like, excuses and blame and then self-blame. It’s not very grounded at all, a lot is in denial, especially ‘Four Tequilas Down’. And then, I think there’s like a clearing in ‘.’, kind of like a breath of fresh air. And then ‘Sorry’ begins very empty, I think, and plain. It’s just a result of acting without looking.
It’s interesting that you say that it’s from a more grounded place. To me, there’s a heaviness to this song, because it arrives at this conclusion of like, “sorry is all I am,” where it almost becomes part of your identity.
Yeah, I think this is a very real kind of guilt, though. I think I feel guilt in a lot of ways throughout the album when it’s not really needed. And then this, I wanted to make sure that this is a real apology, because it is needed.
This song starts with this realization that you’re telling lies, but it’s revealed that it’s more a case of lying to yourself. And the “sick of faking diary entries” line made me wonder to what extent you feel that music is the most honest way of expressing yourself, or whether writing songs can sometimes feel like those entries as well.
I think I’m the most self-aware when I’m writing music. And it’s funny, because sometimes I can lie to myself and I know that I’m doing it, I don’t know why. But in my songs, I do. Which is odd, because my diary entries are meant to be private, and songs are definitely public, and I feel like it’s almost switched in the way in which I share.
How has the way you experience that dynamic changed for you? Is it something you’ve become more comfortable with?
I’m not really sure yet. I think I’ll always be open in my songs because I can’t help it. I will write for myself, and I’ll always say, “I don’t have to put this out,” but I always do [laughs]. And I feel like that’s what art is, you know, sort of being uncompromising. Growing up and finding boundaries in talking openly – I’m sure you can feel some of them, I’m desperately trying to hold up some walls to myself, but in the healthiest way possible. But in my songs, I feel like I can be as vulnerable as I want to be, because I’m protected by music.
I wanted to relate this back to the opening track, because so much at the heart of ‘When’, to me, is about not being able to be happy in the moment. And ‘Air So Sweet’ feels like proof of the opposite.
You’re making ties that I never thought, which is really cool [laughs]. But you’re right, I don’t even notice – I mean, I kind of do, because obviously, I know that I am conflicting in everything I think about. Every single truth or thought I have can change so dramatically the other way depending on my mood or situation. So I’m fully aware that sometimes my brain will tell me, “You’ll never feel pure joy.” And then sometimes I feel… pure joy [laughs]. I think it’s all about contradicting – I wanted to have an album of my brain, of like, “These are all the things I feel, and it doesn’t make any fucking sense. ‘Cause my brain doesn’t.”
I love this as the closing track. In terms of just composition and production, it’s maybe the darkest and boldest song you’ve made – I really like the liquid guitar tone that opens the song, which reminds me of Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher, and the ominous direction the song takes halfway through is just chilling. Did you intend to challenge yourself sonically with this song, and how was the process of getting that sound right?
It probably sounds like Phoebe Bridgers because there’s a certain guitar shop in LA called Oldstyle that sells a guitar with rubber bridges on it. And they’re all the rage – I think Phoebe’s got one, or Ethan Gruska who produces her stuff’s got one, you know, they’re just around. And they’re gorgeous, they’re so great. This song is played in this weird drop tuning that the strings kind of hang a little looser, so when I play, it smacks them against the bridge a little more – it’s almost like you’re playing a cello. It sounds really messy and sloppy and dark, so that kind of added to this feeling, especially when I go into that darker bit and I’m just really hammering on.
So Joe Rubel, my producer, had the idea of adding little parts from every single song into this song, which I thought was such a good idea. At first I was like, “Okay, I’m not quite sure how we’re going to fit it all in,” but then it adds extra production that I would never have added, by giving us that restriction. There’s like, a string tied over the first verse through the chorus, which adds this airiness; there’s a sort of vocoder type thing in that middle eight that adds a bit of grit. There’s so many extra things that add this sloppiness and heaviness, which I’m grateful for. And my cellist, Sophie [English], she’s incredible, but I was like, “I want you to play badly.” There’s a bit where the chords go [imitates chord progession], and I wanted her hand to slide up the fret, and like, “It doesn’t matter if you’re playing really sloppily,” because I wanted it to be angry and messy and dark.
What does “the light” represent for you in this song?
This song is about depersonalization and derealization, and just being so angry that I can’t break through and feel how I used to feel, and not have these symptoms of cloudiness and just distance. It sucks really bad. I think I’m just begging to not feel that anymore and have all of those symptoms just be released and feel completely present, but I can’t.
The way you evoke that – I think even if someone isn’t familiar with those symptoms, there’s this kind of universal experience of like, wanting to hold on to this “love for the world,” is how you put it in the song, and wanting desperately to hold on to the magic of a certain moment, but at the same time feeling intensely alone. And some might view it as a bleak ending, but you leave things pretty open-ended by repeating the question, “Did I let it go?” Why was this the note that you wanted to end on?
I think sometimes I feel like the depression is my truth. And I think maybe my depression spoke for me then, that it wanted to leave a mic drop of, “This is it, this is the truth.” Like, “This is all shit, this is all rubbish, and I let it go.” But at the end, there’s an organ that kind of carries on. And it’s the same note that opens the album, the same beginning note of ‘Air So Sweet’, so it kind of leaves you into thinking that it will lead into ‘Air So Sweet’ again. And then the cycle will continue, and suddenly my truth will flip from dark to completely light again. And I think it just goes to show that, yeah, truth is not truth. It just changes all the time.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
dodie’s Build a Problem is out now.
This Norwegian thriller is a visceral dive into the supernatural, but because it deals with the mysteries of the human mind as it comes of age, Thelma is as eerie and haunting as its atmospheric settings. The contrast of Thelma’s Oslo university against her moor-like country home seems strange at first, but when she begins experiencing seizures, nightmarish flashes of her childhood begin to creep up on her in this seemingly safe urban environment.
Inexplicably, Thelma soon displays strange supernatural abilities, unsure if anyone around her is able to perceive them. On top of this, she’s trying to fit in with her college classmates, including the kind and effortlessly cool Anja. After a religious upbringing, Thelma is afraid to reveal to her over-protective parents that she’s seeing a girl, going to parties, drinking, and trying substances. Between occasional visits and regular phone calls, Thelma feels their tense and overly formal check-ups are becoming invasive.
The film has won several awards for its vibrant cinematography, creative editing, and effective use of music. Here are sixteen stills from Thelma.
Ever since the release of their debut album, 2015’s Lowlight, Los Angeles-based musician Rosie Tucker has combined wry humour and playful sincerity to craft songs that can be both bracingly intimate and unabashedly fun. Their third album, Sucker Supreme, the follow-up to 2019’s Never Not Never Not Never Not, is their most dynamic and ambitious effort yet, steering even further from the stripped-back indie folk of Lowlight to embrace a more expansive, heavier sound. It’s Tucker’s ability to sift through different moods and styles that makes it such an engaging, powerful listen – a single song can include some of the album’s most searing and funny lines: “Wouldn’t we be perfect together if we wanted exactly the same thing?” they sing on the standout ‘Habanero’, before eventually landing on the realization, “I can’t believe I’ll die before becoming a frog.”
These are some of Tucker’s sharpest songs to date, filled with catchy sing-along choruses and cheekily political lyrics; but then, with the same self-awareness and ease, the singer-songwriter will venture into more experimental territory, from the slinky electronics of ‘Creature of Slime’ to the hypnotic deconstructions of ‘How Was It’. By reworking opener ‘Barbara Ann’ into the strange collage piece that brings the album to a close, Tucker suggests that growth doesn’t always mean leaving things behind; it can mean learning to take those pieces and molding them into a different shape, each element part of a complex, ever-evolving whole.
We caught up with Rosie Tucker for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about growing up as a queer person, their fascination with frogs, making Sucker Supreme, and more.
In a press release, you tell this story of being at your grandparents’ farm and laying an open arm at the electric wire that surrounded it, even though you were told not to. And reflecting on that experience, you say that you “desired knowledge more than you feared your parents.” Was that a feeling that you remember kind of having a lot growing up, the desire to know things despite any potential risks or criticism?
I was a really, really obedient child. I was really into church and into Jesus. And stressed – I think that I was sort of trying really hard to do the right thing all the time. But I really enjoyed solitude. And I think that’s part of where that kind of like, “I’m going to put my hand on the electric fence” – that was sort of like, allowing myself experiences, but only in secret. And forming a sense of myself that I cultivated away from other people, which I also relate to, like, queerness. And it took me a really long time to come out or confront those things in myself. So yeah, I think I was not much of a troublemaker. I was really trying hard to do a good job, but you can’t help it. You got to figure stuff out, you know?
I thought it was interesting, how you talked about desire in that quote, because it’s something that you also mentioned when talking about the single ‘Habanero’ – that “desire is not the same thing as a sense of self, but it’ll work as an added sugar corn syrup kind of substitute.” Can you think of something that you feel does or did form part of your sense of self? Obviously, this could be music, but it could also be something completely unrelated.
I think that my sense of self, for a long time, revolved around my ability to use words and to use music. I started writing songs as a teenager, later in my teenage years, and before that, I was always good at writing. And I think that something that is useful about writing that relates to desire and relates to sense of self as well is, you can simultaneously create what you are, but you can also obscure it. I think that’s part of the art of poetry or of songs, taking an emotion that is so raw and would be so embarrassing to perform in front of other people and using craft to turn it into something that you can present. And so, I think that I grew up as a pretty emotionally repressed person, and poetry and songwriting were an acceptable way of exploring emotion and of sharing emotion. And in fact, they were encouraged – like, I got literally applauded when it comes to sharing music. And so I think that early on, it was sort of like, “Okay, this is an avenue where I am able to share pieces of myself that I’m not sure would be applauded otherwise, parts of myself that I feel are unsavory or unacceptable for whatever reason.” So learning how to articulate through words and music has formed my sense of self a lot.
And then, I also think the process of coming out and the process of knowing a lot of queer and trans people has been really important to how I see the world and how I interact with the world. I think accessing those parts of my identity and also coming out enabled me to relate to how I think about systems of power, how I think about discovering new information. I think going through the transformation of, assuming myself to be straight, and assuming myself to be cisgendered, which not everybody does – I know that some people are, you know, four years old and they’re like, “I’m gay.” Like, they just have it. And I think with me, it took a long time to be safe enough with myself, and it took knowing a lot of other queer and trans people to allow myself the safety and the security to bring those things out into the world.
How did those two things connect for you – the desire to express yourself through music and poetry and the process of discovering your identity?
I think it’s no coincidence that a lot of queer people have migrated to more abstract arts like poetry or like music. If you’re growing up in an environment where being honest about yourself is taboo, I think that having a craft is a way of honestly expressing oneself, without kind of having to own up to being gay or being trans, being the thing that might get you kicked out, you know. I wrote a lot as a kid, and also, I was really into stories – and it’s a very specific genre that exists – but girls cross-dressing and pretending to be boys and disguising themselves to go fight in wars. I have a memory of being in Blockbuster with my dad and him being like, “Well, go ask them,” and me being like, “Hi, do you have any movies about girls dressing up as boys and fighting?” [laughs] And now I look back and I go, “Oh…” Like, “How did my parents not know? How did I not know?” I mean, there’s always romance in them and it’s usually between the main character, who is a girl, and a boy, but it’s like, still very gay because she’s disguised as a man whenever she meets the man that she’s gonna end up with. So, I feel like just looking for those kinds of signals all over the place, looking for poems about – I think a lot of poetry is kind of free from gender, or looking for poems about anger about gender, or just reading and identifying with boys and kind of being able to cast myself into other gendered spaces and not assuming that that’s something separate from me or that doesn’t belong to me.
How was it going from absorbing these works and stories to then trying to express that yourself?
I did not really address any of my queerness until I was about 19. And I fell in love, basically. For so much of my life before that, I was just surrounded by queer people, and I always thought, “Well, I’m straight, I’m just surrounded by queer people.” And they were all really nice about it, and I’m sure no one was surprised when I finally came out. But I think I’m a slow-moving person and I don’t like to make any sudden changes in my life. And so, for a few years, I would say, “I think that I’m straight, but if I met the right person, then I would allow myself to fall for them.” Because I don’t want to live that way, where I’m preventing myself from having experiences that I don’t think are morally wrong, even if I’m scared.
So I met a person who I fell in love with, and that was a catalyst for coming out to my parents and for starting to also reconsider my relationship with gender as well. Because I think that when I started gay dating, I guess you could say, I realized how much physically, up to that point, had been about attracting boys. And I remember when I was 19 and I was dating a queer person, I was like, looking in my closet to go out for a party. And it was like, “Oh, I don’t know what to wear, because I’ve already attracted the person who I want, and they’re not the person who I thought it was going to be. So, what do I – me, what do I want wear? How do I want to present myself? And what kind of attention am I trying to get, if not attention for being a cute girl?” And so, that started the slow path of opening up these other questions. Like I said, I’ve known a lot of queer and trans people, and I think that having those relationships has just been vital to me embracing myself and being okay. I think that being able to make good on those relationships has always propelled me to be brave, when I myself – I don’t think that I am a brave person, but I feel like I owe it to the people in my life who are brave to own up to who I am.
What role, if any, did music play in this process of figuring out yourself? Did it change at all since you first got into songwriting?
I think that music is such a personal and honest place for me that I did not need to change very much. Music is the first place of my life where I really learned how to retreat and to not give a fuck about what other people think about me. I felt that with my own art, I didn’t have anybody to please but myself. And so it’s always been the core of my own self-safety.
I do think that – so, I use gender-neutral pronouns, I use they/them – and that’s something that I started doing in spaces with a lot of queer and trans people where it made sense, it was just one of the options. And it was like, “Well, now that I have the option, I think I like the gender-neutral one because I feel neutral about gender, that’s it.” That is one place within my music project where it was sort of like – there’s really not too many opportunities to go around declaring your gender to people, and it made sense to start including my pronouns publicly. I didn’t really think any of it through – I didn’t really think, like, “Oh, this means I’m gonna be ready to explain this to people, ready to explain my gender.” It was just sort of like, “This is my music, my music is where I’m safe. That’s where I’m the most myself and this is something that I’m exploring, so I’m going to attach it to my music.” And, you know, the project is leveling up and interacting with an increased number of people, which brings an increased number of opportunities for me to correct people about my gender and to explain my gender, which I’m always in the process of how to do that, but it has also put me in touch with so many other people who feel the same way. On the one hand, I never really intended to be that public about my sexuality or my gender, but on the other hand, where I have decided to take those steps, it has always rewarded me by putting me in touch with other people like me, which is kind of the point of making art in general, I think.
Yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting to me how, regardless of how you wanted to present yourself, how that changed, the music itself has always served the same purpose. There’s obviously been a clear progression throughout your musical output, but what drives it hasn’t really changed. So, I wanted to take this opportunity to ask about your new album, Sucker Supreme. With your previous records in mind, what was your vision going into this one? Did you know from the start that you wanted to do something different?
Yes, definitely. I made this record with Wolfy, who produced my last album as well, Never Not, and Jessy Reed, who played drums on my last album, and Jess Kallen, who has toured with the band. So, a really loving, close-knit group of creative people. And I think that the goal for the last record was just, my songs with a band, pure and simple. We’re just trying to arrange for a band. And I think that the goal with this record was to sound better and bigger and more professional, but to still have the process of creating the album be very personal and very full of love. So feeling like, “Can we scale up, can it sound shiny and successful and like, real ass music you would hear on the radio if it’s just us, making it and having a really good time doing it?” And recording, some of it we did in the studio, a lot of it we did at home. So I definitely intended for this record to be different, but I always want the process of recording to be personal and fun and a good time for everybody involved.
I think that’s definitely reflected on the record – it sounds bigger and more refined, but there’s still a charming kind of energy to it, a lot which comes from your lyricism. There’s just so many quotable lines here, and I wanted to bring up one from ‘Habanero’ specifically: “I can’t believe I’ll die before becoming a frog.” There’s also a reference to “feeling amphibious” on ‘Trim’, and you mentioned in that press release that you were obsessed with frogs growing up. Why do you think that is?
Oh man, I loved frogs growing up. I had this T-shirt that said “Frog Facts” and it was just covered in like, “The African bullfrog can eat an entire sparrow.” As a child, I don’t think I ever thought about what the frog means until kind of working on this record, but I just thought that they were very, very cute, and I think I really did want to be one. I felt an affinity for the amphibious, and I did not, at the time – obviously, because I was a kid – connect it to any kind of bisexuality or queerness or any of that, but I think that there’s something very attractive about the ability to be between worlds, to be a creature that is on land and in water. Especially if you’re a kid and if you’re queer and you don’t have language – I mean, it doesn’t have to be about queerness, it can be about any part of ourselves that we don’t have language for yet. I think that recognizing myself as amphibious enabled me to leave room for different identities and to not have to, I guess, repress, and to feel like, “Oh, well, I’m a land creature and a sea creature,” you know, “I like to be with people and I like to be alone. I think sometimes I’m a boy and I think sometimes I’m a girl.” Not having to reject any of those feelings, and instead recognizing that contradictions can exist within us.
It’s interesting how the symbolic language to understand it often comes later on, but that fascination is there from the beginning. And it’s not just frogs – there’s all sorts of creatures on this album, and you often describe people and situations in those kinds of terms. Where do you think that comes from?
I definitely don’t think that it’s very planned. I think part of it is, when I was a kid, I was only allowed to watch Animal Planet and Discovery, I was only allowed to watch educational television. And so, I internalized a lot of animal facts, and I think that those are also very useful ways for me to talk about myself and other people without having to say, like, “You’re a monster, you’re squeezing me to death, you’re so overbearing.” Instead, I can put that emotion elsewhere without having to, you know, talk a lot of shit.
I wanted to go back to that memory of being in your grandparents’ farm, and I thought the conclusion that you drew from this story was interesting – how we basically inherit certain things from our families and then spend the rest of our lives trying to make sense of them. Could you expand on that statement?
I think that as children we can’t help but be impacted by the ways that our parents cope with stress, and they were impacted by the ways that their parents cope with stress, and these things form how we react as we move through the world and relate to other people. Everybody’s childhood is imperfect, and so much of adulthood, to me, is the process of being able to examine why I have the reactions that I have and working through them. And also, I think understanding your parents is kind of a lifelong process, because when you’re a child, so much of what adults do can feel arbitrary and unfair. And you grow up, and sometimes you learn that, actually, now that you have the responsibility of being an adult, the adults in your life were just doing what they had to do. And sometimes you look back and you go, “Wow, that was arbitrary and unfair, and someone shouldn’t have treated me that way as a child.” So I think there’s just a lot to process, a whole lifetime’s work. I don’t think you ever get done.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Rosie Tucker’s Sucker Supreme is out now via Epitaph.
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