Have you decided to become an artist and pursue it as a career? Or are you looking to take art as a serious hobby and hone your imaginative skills? It might seem daunting as you do not know exactly where to start and how to develop your creativity effectively.
You can become the successful artist you have always aspired to be with the right strategies and initiatives. As a beginner, it is innate to feel overwhelmed by the various scopes and genres. To make your journey to the world of art smoother, here is a compilation of effective tips for becoming a phenomenal artist.
Practice Makes Perfect
With continued effort and practice, you can improve your drawing, painting, and sketching skills. Being an artist is not easy at all. You need to draw or paint every day. With constant practice, your art style will become more refined, and your efficiency will also increase to a large extent.
Whatever art style you follow, carry a sketchbook and pencil everywhere you go. Draw as frequently as you can. A simple paper and pencil can be the perfect tool to overcome the artist block and get your creative juices flowing. Paper and pencil are easily accessible and can be carried anywhere.
You can also get some references from art-themed online sites. For instance, if you reflect with “a simple yet sophisticated” art style, you can follow an insightful minimalist art blog.
You do not necessarily have to be confined to the medium of graphite and paper. You can still get a burst of inspiration with chalk and draw on any hard or rough surface like the bark of a tree, a wall of an abandoned building, or even on the pavement. Do not forget to take pictures and keep a tab of your unconventional art prompts. By taking and browsing through the pictures, you can keep track of your progress.
Be Self-Disciplined
Regardless of the genre of the art you follow or the medium you work on, you need to practice every day regularly. Discipline is key to becoming a successful artist. Being self-disciplined and motivated is quite difficult initially, but once you establish a proper routine, you will get the hang of it after some time.
Art is also about embracing imperfections and broadening your views. Once you stop obsessing over every aspect of the art to be perfect, it will be easier to keep up with the daily regime. This will also help you stay motivated and look forward to the new masterpiece you will create on the first day.
Start slowly and take your time when you make the first art attempt. If you are struggling to find any inspiration, start with etching still life. You can practice getting the dimensions, sizing, and other features right by drawing random objects near you.
Furthermore, when you start realizing that your sketchbook is getting filled by your art attempts, it will keep you driven. You might even surprise yourself when looking back at your past artwork; it could even give you the inspiration you need for your future art pieces.
Be Realistic and Accept It’s a Lot of Work
It is no secret that being an artist is quite a struggle. It requires a lot of work. However, some people do not grasp the weight of the responsibilities of being an artist. Simply going to an art class once a week or signing up for a daylong workshop will not just cut it. You can not expect collectors and gallery representatives shortly after participating in a few workshops.
Of course, getting supplementary aid will help and boost your work. Being enrolled in a great art class can fuel your passion. But you still need to practice and refine your skills every day. Your goals should be aimed towards perfecting your art, not towards fame and publicity. Having clout will be of no good use; it will instead increase the risk of being distracted by the meaningless and vain features of life.
Keep a Day or Part Time Job
It would help if you also kept in mind that talented artists do not get proper support since the general public is not used to their work and has no idea what effort goes behind it. Art supplies can be costly, and so to sustain, you might want to get a day job. Having a job that pays reduces the stress and helps you continue your art.
Juggling with a job and then practicing on your sketches can be overwhelming but is manageable when you form a routine. It is good to expose it to the world to make your work known. You can have a social media account where you can upload your work.
This helps you establish a presence and will also draw in potential customers. When someone buys your masterpiece, you will be more motivated as you will feel more appreciated. It will also benefit your finances.
Consider All the Costs
It is wise to keep records of both your expenses and income. It is best to keep all the receipts so that you can keep track of all your expenditures. The number of resources and time you spend on your art piece will help you determine the right selling price.
The expenses can be balanced against the income tax when you can sell the artwork you slaved on. When determining your pricing, try to get a precise estimation of what it costs you to make and exhibit your art. You also need to assess the marketplace and see what other artists of your level are charging.
You need to be impartial and realistic regarding your skill and artistry level. More established and popular artists have a costlier price tag because they have accomplished getting their work known and appreciated. They too had initially set lower and affordable rates when they started.
For easy calculation, take into account the money you spent on the materials, medium, and other resources like the electricity bill. Then add in more money that accounts for your efforts and time. The total amount with an addition of a reasonable estimated profit should be your selling price.
Final Words
Being an artist and making it your career can be challenging but not impossible. You can still have a passionate and successful art career when you can make the most out of your arts and crafts hobby, and it can be a side hustle. With a proper routine and constant practice, you can be an exceptionally talented artist one day.
Fall is a beautiful season to travel to some of the most breathtaking places in the world. When you are going to be surrounded in hues of brown and gold, and the air turns nippy, it is the perfect time to pack in the warm layers and vibrant colors for your sojourns to places unexplored.
Packing warm clothing is a tad tricky due to their bulky nature, and since you would want to keep your luggage to a minimum while travelling, choosing articles of warm clothing that are petite and would fit without any hassle in your backpack is a given. Take a look at a few of our suggestions for Petite Fall travel clothing to add some much needed glam and warmth to your trip.
1. Levi’s Faux Leather Moto Jacket
Fall fashion means layering up to keep yourself warm and cosy. What better way to do so than donning a quintessential leather jacket! Choose this moto leather jacket from Levi’s to pair up over a simple neutral print top and dark denims and complete the uber cool look with stylish ankle boots.
The snap-down lapels and a belted waist lend a timeless appeal to the moto jacket crafted from supple but substantial faux leather. Drop in at Nordstrom to bag this jacket for $74.90 after an exciting 23% rebate on the original price of $98.00.
2. Picking Shoes
Shoes seem like a pretty easy thing to get right when building your outfit, while in reality, they are quite tricky. According to many, once you shop air jordan 5 shoes, some black Converse, or leather boots, you can forget all about picking what to wear. However, that’s not true, even for the best of shoes. Of course, you can build your outfits around your favorite pair, but you need to do it carefully. Many people make mistakes when deciding on what shoes to wear with their outfits by either sticking to one color only or picking colors with no coordination at all.
3. INC International Concepts Animal Ombre Pashmina Scarf
Packing a scarf is a given when travelling during fall, which can be styled in multiple ways to keep yourself warm and cosy. The best part? It doesn’t take up space at all! Pick this versatile pashmina wrap with a subtle ombre palette and a beautiful animal print to pair with a basic top or dress in a neutral shade and let this scarf speak for itself!
With Macy’s New Markdown Sale, buy this scarf at a reduced price of $18.00. Avail an extra 20% discount by applying the Macy’s Coupon Code.
4. REI Co-op Hyperaxis Fleece Pants
Perfect to dress up in for a late fall hiking trip, these Fleece Pants from REI Co-op guarantee the utmost comfort and warmth. Crafted using the Polartec Power Stretch Pro, these pants provide warmth, wick moisture and have a 4-way stretch for a comfortable range of motion. The zippered hand pockets can be used to keep trail essentials handy.
With REI’s ongoing sale, you can grab savings of 30% on these pants to buy them at a final price of $68.99. Additionally, you can also get this item delivered to you for free, thereby saving the extra bucks on delivery charges.
5. Pine Peak Long Sleeve Thermal Tunic
This long sleeve thermal is the ideal pick to be worn underneath a jacket for those comfy layers on a fall vacation. The lengthy tunic is perfect to be paired with leggings, and the waffle-knit shirt has just enough stretch to keep up with all of your holiday adventures.
Head on to Columbia to bag this tunic for $45.00 only after a sizeable 25% discount on the retail price of $60.00.
6. +J Selvedge Straight Jeans
While packing denims for a trip, one may be in a dilemma as to picking the right one for your trip. Choose denims with quick drying mechanisms and stretchy comfort as offered by these +J Selvedge Straight Jeans by the popular designer Jil Sander. These jeans are produced on traditional shuttle looms to create a distinctive soft feel.
Available in 3 colors and a range of sizes, you can purchase these jeans from Uniqlo at a reduced price of $59.90, which is a good deal when compared to the original price of $69.90.
7. Mountain Sweatshirt Hoodie 3.0
For a simple, no frills, layered look, the best option is to pack in a cute hoodie. Choose to wear this Sweatshirt Hoodie 3.0 with a simple tee, fleece pants, and comfy sneakers for that laidback, casual explorer look. This sweatshirt is suitable for wearing while exploring in uncertain weather, thanks to the breathable Ventrix Insulation and water-repellent finish.
This sweatshirt is not bulky, therefore, does not take up much luggage space, making it the preferred travel attire. Available in gentle, pastel colors in a wide range of sizes, this hoodie can be purchased from The North Face for $104.30 after a substantial discount on the original price of $149.00.
Take the trip that you have been planning for sometime now, since fall is a very beautiful time to travel. With some smart planning and packing, you can make the most of your trip without having to worry about lugging around bulky travel cases. Pick and choose your favorite fall clothing from the above curated collection, and travel in style this fall.
Is your home choc-a-bloc with junk? Your unwanted clutter could be someone else’s treasure, so why not have a clear-out and put all your surplus stuff on sale? You’ll make money as well as space that way, and selling is easy thanks to all the online markets and platforms at your fingertips. Here are a few pointers to help you gather up your unwanted possessions and turn them into budget-boosters.
What and how to select
Wander through your home and look at everything in a new light. Ask yourself whether you really need this piece of crockery or furniture, whether you really want these ornaments or those soft furnishings. Consider items you never use, such as kitchenware that’s inconveniently heavy or a chair you find too hard. Check duplicates of items you only need one of, such as fruit bowls, irons or weighing scales, and just keep the better of the two. Also look at broken, damaged and disfigured objects – perhaps they could be renovated and added to the pile. What games and pastimes have your family got bored with lately? Go through books, toys, board games, DVD and other activity items, as well as clothes, jewelry and whatever else you come across, picking out whatever’s gathering dust. Make each decision with care, and take a fresh look through your collection next morning, to avoid any regrets later.
How to present for sale
Invest in some low-cost cleaning solutions and accessories as needed, such as for wood, silver, glass and fabrics, and clean up all your collected items. You may be surprised how well the damaged ones can be improved. A non-functioning appliance may simply need a new plug, bulb or battery, for instance, and a frayed rug or drape can be invisibly stitched up. Stained wood can be sandpapered down, marks on fabrics can be lifted by soaking in hot, soapy water or a light bleach solution, and blemished paint can be touched up. Pens, pencils and other bits and pieces can be packaged attractively in sets. Make the most of every item.
Where to sell
Your best opportunities for selling are online. With browsers window-shopping all around the world every minute of the day and night, you’re sure to sell at least some of your goods, and with careful pricing to meet shoppers’ budgets as well as yours, you can count on some profit. You may not get much per item, but with a big pile of products for sale, the dollars will soon add up. If you’ve sold enough, you may think about investing your money for example to buy nft art.
Choose your selling platforms carefully and be prepared to use several different ones to suit your different items. An old dress might do well in a retro store, for instance, and craft work would look at home in a arts and craft store, such as Etsy. High-quality items will be worth auctioning, perhaps on Ebay or a similar site, and holiday souvenirs will sit well in a store dedicated to the relevant country or city. If you have a website, open a fresh page as a store of your own, or set up a new website for the purpose, linking in with social media.
You may have good off-line selling opportunities, too, in which case, make the most of them. You might be able to sell goods at work, or at your club or interest group. Flea market sales may also be profitable in your area, and if there’s a store down the road selling antiques, they can probably accommodate your retro items. Wherever you sell, be sure to set prices you’ll be pleased with afterward.
When you sell off your junk, you’ll have the great satisfaction of getting something for nothing. Then, with all that extra space and money, you’ll be able to treat yourself to something new instead.
MUBI, the beloved streaming behind the best of art cinema, has unveiled their list of films for November. Part of the MUBI releases, viewers will be able to watch 80 Years Old by Christelle Lheureux, Maeve by Pat Murphy, Friends and Strangers by James Vaughan, and Accidental Luxuriance of the Translucent Watery Rebus by Dalibor Baric.
This is the current list of films on MUBI in November 2021.
1 November | The First Lap | Kim Dae-hwan | New South Korean Cinema 2 November | The Nun | Jacques Rivette | The Nun Double Bill 3 November | 80 000 Years Old | Christelle Lheureux | Brief Encounters | A MUBI Release 4 November | Mauvais Sang | Leos Carax | Love and Other Drugs: The Cinema of Leos Carax 5 November | Maelstrom | Denis Villeneuve | A Cosmic Trajectory: Early Films by Denis Villeneuve 6 November | Moments Like This Never Last | Cheryl Dunn | Portrait of the Artist 7 November | Unsane | Steven Soderbergh 8 November | Heart | Jeong Ga-young | New South Korean Cinema 9 November | Destiny | Youssef Chahine | Youssef Chahine: Son of the Nile 10 November | Friends and Strangers | James Vaughan | Debuts | A MUBI Release 11 November | Blue | Apichatpong Weerasethakul | Preludes: Opéra de Paris Shorts 12 November | TBC 13 November | The Third Wife | Ash Mayfair 14 November | Lean on Pete | Andrew Haigh 15 November | Winter’s Night | Jang Woo-jin | New South Korean Cinema 16 November | Donbass | Sergei Loznitsa 17 November | Accidental Luxuriance of the Translucent Watery Rebus | Dalibor Baric | Undiscovered | A MUBI Release 18 November | Sweet Thing | Alexandre Rockwell | MUBI Spotlight 19 November | TBC 20 November | TBC 21 November | The Killing of a Sacred Deer | Yorgos Lanthimos 22 November | Autoficción | Laida Lertxundi | Landscape Plus: The Films of Laida Lertxundi 23 November | 025 Sunset Red | Laida Lertxundi | Landscape Plus: The Films of Laida Lertxundi 24 November | The Trouble with Being Born | Sandra Wollner | The New Auteurs | A MUBI Release 25 November | Microhabitat | Jeon Go-woon | New South Korean Cinema 26 November | Annette | Leos Carax | Love and Other Drugs: The Cinema of Leos Carax | A MUBI Release 27 November | TBC 28 November | TBC 29 November | Maeve | Pat Murphy | Rediscovered | A MUBI Release 30 November | TBC
Snail Mail has released a new single from her forthcoming album, Valentine, ahead of its release next Friday (November 5) via Matador. ‘Madonna’ arrives alongside a live performance video filmed at the Armour-Stiner Octagon House in New York. Check it out below.
Lindsey said of the new track in a statement: “I am excited to share this one! In summation it’s about why love can’t exist between a person and a concept of a person. Remove the pedestal and you might realize there was never anything there at all.”
Elvis Costello has announced a new album with his band the Imposters, The Boy Named If. It’s set for release on January 14, 2022 (via EMI/Capitol), and the new single ‘Magnificent Hurt’ is out today. Check it out below and scroll down for the LP’s cover art and tracklist.
”The full title of this record is ‘The Boy Named If (And Other Children’s Stories)’,” Costello said in a press release. “‘IF,’ is a nickname for your imaginary friend; your secret self, the one who knows everything you deny, the one you blame for the shattered crockery and the hearts you break, even your own. You can hear more about this ‘Boy’ in a song of the same name.”
Co-produced with Sebastian Krys, the album is a collection of songs that “take us from the last days of a bewildered boyhood to that mortifying moment when you are told to stop acting like a child – which for most men (and perhaps a few gals too) can be any time in the next fifty years,” Costello added.
Elvis Costello’s last album, Hey Clockface, arrived last year.
The Boy Named If Cover Artwork:
The Boy Named If Tracklist:
1. Farewell, OK
2. The Boy Named If
3. Penelope Halfpenny
4. The Difference
5. What If I Can’t Give You Anything But Love?
6. Paint The Red Rose Blue
7. Mistook Me For A Friend
8. My Most Beautiful Mistake
9. Magnificent Hurt
10. The Man You Love To Hate
11. The Death Of Magic Thinking
12. Trick Out The Truth
13. Mr. Crescent
ME REX have announced a new EP called Pterodactyl, sharing the new single ‘Never Graduate’. The EP arrives February 4, 2022 via Big Scary Monsters. Check out ‘Never Graduate’ below.
“’Never Graduate’ is about the fear felt while moving into a new phase of life,” lead singer and principal songwriter Myles McCabe explained in a statement. “The feeling of unreadiness for inevitable change. Relationships that are shifting from simple circumstantial bonds to obligations of structured support. Hesitancy to move onto something new at the cost of the exclusion of all other possible futures.”
ME REX released their first EPs as a band, Triceratops/Stegosaurus, in 2020, followed by their debut album Megabear, a collection of 52 short tracks intended to be played in shuffle mode. “‘Pterodactyl’, while sticking to traditional song structures, very much picks up where the EPs left off,” McCabe said. “It includes the first songs that I knew I wouldn’t be able to play live by myself. While I have done solo versions of ‘Skin, it Itches’ and ‘Never Graduate’, I wanted to embrace parts of the full band set up that wouldn’t have been possible in a solo show.”
He added: “Pterodactyl is more complex technically and musically than any of the previous records, from the 10/8 time signature on ‘Never Graduate’, to the tapping guitar on ‘Skin’, it itches’, to the musical theatre inspired dynamics of ‘Giant Giant’. The songs explore the need for change, through personal growth, decay, or the apocalypse.”
The film was directed by Brent Wilson (no relation) and features the Beach Boys co-founder in conversation with longtime Rolling Stone journalist Jason Fine as well as appearances from Al Jardine, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Nick Jonas, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, Jakob Dylan, Foo Fighter’s Taylor Hawkins, and more. It comes out in theaters and VOD on November 19, coinciding with the release of Wilson’s new solo piano album At My Piano.
Shygirl has dropped a new song called ‘CLEO’. Her second single of the year following the slowthai collaboration ‘BDE’, the track arrives with an accompanying video directed by Trinity Ellis. Check it out below.
Last year, the UK artist released her Alias EP, which we named one of the best EPs of 2020. Earlier this year, she joined Mura Masa on the Dawn of Chromatica remix of Lady Gaga’s ‘Sour Candy’.
Brooklyn band Geese formed while its five members – vocalist Cameron Winter, guitarist Gus Green, guitarist Foster Hudson, bassist Dom DiGesu, and drummer Max Bassin – were in high school, writing, practicing, and recording in the basement home studio that they lovingly dubbed The Nest. Though they bonded over their shared love of classic and alternative rock, bands like Led Zeppelin and Radiohead and Nirvana, in recent years their interests expanded to the new wave of post-punk and art-rock represented by acts like black midi and Squid. All those influences come together on their upcoming debut album,Projector, which they made between junior and senior year after a couple of unreleased projects that taught them the basics of self-recording, using sneakers as mic stands and blankets draped over their amps.
Within months of uploading a track called ‘Low Era’, Geese suddenly found themselves having meetings with their favorite indie labels all while completing their final year of high school. They signed to Partisan Records/PIAS, home to the likes of IDLES, Fontaines D.C., and Chubby and the Gang, and released their first single, ‘Disco’, this June. Clocking in at nearly seven minutes, the outstanding and ambitious track was enough to make Projector, which is out this Friday, one of the most anticipated rock debuts of the year. Along with the follow-up singles, including the official version of ‘Low Era’, it’s fairly representative of the album as a whole, though hearing the way the group plays with dynamics all the way through – like how the frenetic outro on ‘Fantasies/Survival’ leads to the dreamier ‘First World War’ – makes the experience all the more thrillingly cathartic. It’s an intensely feverish document of an uncertain time in the band’s lives, and if its restless spirit is any indication, whatever direction they take next is bound to be just as exciting.
We caught up with Geese’s Cameron Winter and Dom DiGesu for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about their influences, the making of their debut album Projector, and more.
Do you mind sharing some of your earliest memories of enjoying music? Was music one of the first things you bonded over as a group?
Dom DiGesu: We were all into music separately at first, because we were all doing these music programs after school. That’s how me and Foster met, and it’s also how Max, Cameron, and Gus got closer, because they already went to school together. Doing those Led Zeppelin covers and the Rolling Stones covers when you’re like 10 years old is a perfect little memory I have of being with Foster in [the after school music program] School of Rock. I definitely knew I wanted to do something with music at that age. It was too much fun.
Cameron Winter: We all did that sort of rock cover extracurricular as little kids. So yeah, it was probably the same for me. But other than that, I remember just being really into, like, The Killers and Keane and Ben Folds as an eight year old, and stuff that my dad would play on road trips.
You mentioned those classic rock influences, but you’ve also talked about how you were listening to a lot of contemporary post-punk while making the album. Are there any artists that you’re into now that maybe don’t directly influence your sound but have shaped how you view music? Stuff people may not expect from listening to the album.
DD: With the bass lines, I take a lot of influence from classic rock stuff, it has that background and context, but it also has the funk and jazz stuff that I was doing in school and the new post punk stuff we were listening to when we wrote the album. So it’s just building off of what I already knew, and then adding on other genres’ elements.
CW: I’m trying to think of like a weird influence. I mean, we all have different weird influences. In terms of things that influence us all, we kind of always have to circle back to prog rock and classic rock – that stuff is what we built our understanding of rock music on from a very young age. But I mean, I was just listening to this –
DD: Cameron, I saw you were listening to some 700 monthly listener thing this morning. I’m a little spy when it comes to the Spotify friends list.
CW: [laughs] Oh, this morning? You caught me listening to Hiroki Ishiguro, my man.
DD: I didn’t know what that was. I’m gonna listen to it later.
CW: It’s whack. It’s definitely just like comfort music. I listen to all this sort of nostalgic Japanese electronic music –
DD: All of the songs have under 1000 plays. How did you find that?
CW: I was listening to this crazy compilation of Japanese pop from the CD era, Heise No Oto, I think it’s called. It’s okay, but –
DD: [laughs] It’s okay.
CW: Well, but there’s two or three songs that are crazy. Like, there’s this dude, Keisuke Sakurai, he has this deep house album that I had to like hunt for on the internet, so you know it’s good. You can’t find a YouTube link. It’s not that good, but it’s really weird because it’s like, Buddhist chant but also a deep house thing. He’s got this thing in the background, these eight-minute songs where it’s just like [makes percussive sound] and then over the back he’s just nonstop like [mimics chanting] for seven minutes. I just heard one of those songs and I was like, “This is insane. This is so fucking cool.” And then I listened to an album and it’s that for 50 minutes.
DD: Wow.
Do you all go out of your way to find the most obscure music?
DD: Honestly, I probably do it the least. Everybody tries to find the most obscure shit ever just to show everybody else the next day.
CW: [laughs] It’s true. You know what you like, though. You don’t need that pretentious sort of –
DD: I never had the urge to find more stuff like you guys did. I mean, I do, don’t get me wrong –
CW: No, you do. You show me cool stuff.
DD: No, I go hunting, but you guys find some whack shit.
CW: Foster’s recommendations to me, I don’t think he’s ever missed a single time with an album that he’s recommended to me. That dude crate digs – whatever the internet equivalent of that is.
DD: For a couple of years, Foster used to listen to a different album every single day. He did that for like a couple years throughout high school. And every day I would be like, “Yo, Foster, what album are you listening to today?” And he’d do this whole thing about this 40-minute album he’d found on Rate Your Music.
CW: Essentially, we all sort of became music nerds together.
You had an EP and a record that were removed from the internet before focusing on this as your official first album. What are some of things that you learned during that process that you carried onto Projector?
CW: Before we were working on Projector, we were going in a direction that was very electronic, almost. We used to have two synths on stage – this is when we were like 15. Because we had spent all this time playing rock standards together as little kids and we had a decent amount of know-how – we didn’t really know how to record but we were working on it – we were just trying to break away when we did our own stuff and make this sprawling, like, “We’re gonna make the craziest shit a 15-year-old band has ever made in in the history of the world.”
DD: We kind of went in over our heads and made some psych prog stuff that didn’t make sense and didn’t sound that good, but…
CW: We kinda knew it.
DD: I mean, we liked it at the time. But we took it down because we thought that the Projector run would be a good fresh start, especially because it was like, if we’re actually going to focus on music instead of having it be like an after school or weekend-type friend thing, we might as well start with a clean slate and let everything speak for itself. We don’t play the old stuff, we don’t rehearse them, it’s not like they’re in our repertoire at all, but we used one song from 2017 for a B-side on a vinyl, and that’s the most that you’ll see from them probably.
How do you look back on the process of making the album and everything that went into it?
CW: We were working so hard on it because there was an intense time limit in terms of: we have to do this before we go to college. I don’t know, it’s sort of nice to look back because you really didn’t think anyone would fucking listen to it. This cannot be overstated: we thought that this was for fun, randomly, and this was just going to, at the absolute most, at least for me – other people had higher ambitions in the band, maybe, especially Max, he was like, “This is good, this is gonna get something” – but I was just like, “This might get pressed for like 250 copies maximum, we might get a four figure advance that we could split between us.” That was my highest ambition for this record, because we had no experience with the music industry whatsoever. It was this far away thing that you had to just grind for like 10 years to even be a part of, or get insanely lucky. I always just thought that that was never gonna happen, especially not if we had less than a year before we wouldn’t, like, maybe never see each other at the same time again. It was really just for the love of making something.
DD: Yeah. Like a final high school project.
How does it feel different from a high school project now?
DD: Now that the record label’s involved and stuff like that, we’re taking it way more seriously, I’d say, for sure. We would be rehearsing maybe once a week in like 2019, but now we have a full schedule mapped out, we have a manager scheduling everything. We’re very on top of our shit now.
CW: We have to. And that’s sort of the thing that scares me about – you talked about nervousness about putting it out – this is something that we made with no consequences in our heads whatsoever. If it fails, that’s what we’re expecting, so there’s nothing that can go wrong. But now there’s like a team of over 100 people who are trying to peddle this thing that we made where we were absolutely like “We’ll do whatever we want, and if it’s good, maybe we’ll get like $500 or something like that.” So that’s a little nerve-wracking retrospectively, but I think it’s gonna be okay.
Could you talk a bit about the story behind the cover artwork and how it’s connected to the ideas that informed the album?
CW: It started out with a dream – I can’t even remember at this point, it was so long ago. But I remember being sort of obsessed with this idea of having a masked figure, so I was picturing like a Majora’s Mask, the Zelda shit with the bug eyes. I was like, I’ll make something sort of like that, so I made a mask out of a cardboard and bought two stick-on closet lights from Lowe’s and stuck them on to make these bug eyes. And then Foster put the mask on and took off his shirt and we went into the freezing cold in the middle of December with a camera, and we were like, “Foster, strike a weird pose!” And he didn’t get it right for a little while, but then he got the arms dangling around him like contorted, and I was like, “That’s really cool.”
DD: The story that Cameron just told was our first time shooting it, we ended up shooting it twice or three times, I think. And it ended up snowing the last day, so that’s why the ground’s all snowy and stuff, so Foster really did just get in the snow with no shirt at like 2am. We had a professional photographer take it, and I think someone edited it a little bit to make it look cooler, but the photo is real.
Lyrically, the songs are quite narrative-driven but also conceptually abstract, which leaves them open to interpretation. Cameron, did you have a specific goal with this one when it came to the lyrics?
CW: Back in early high school, the songs would be these sort of all-encompassing, like singing about death and existentialism and stuff, and I was trying to make these broad-strokes messages that were really dark and edgy. And for this one, I don’t think I was ready to do like a soul-bearing thing that much, so I usually tried to inhabit maybe different characters or tell something that’s a little more grounded in the self, tell something that has less of an overarching conceptual theme that everything sticks to and more like a vignetted, small, low-stakes narratives.
One song that stood out to me as one of the more personal moments on the record is ‘Exploding House’, in terms of expressing uncertainty about the future and how it seems to reference The Nest, which is what you call your practice space. Dom, since the other members aren’t here, can you speak to whether that was a song you all resonated with for that reason?
DD: ‘Exploding House’ is probably one of the last songs we did, if not the last. When Cameron came back with the lyrics, the nest line was really cute, we were like, “Oh, that’s nice.” But as time went on, every time I hear you sing it, it hits, low-key. It makes me think about it, gets me in my feels.
CW: I didn’t even mean the nest like the basement.
DD: Yeah, I know you didn’t, that’s the thing.
CW: That was definitely one of the ones where I probably borrowed more from my own personal experience. Just really not feeling ready to be anything close to an adult – ‘cause like we said, success was this sort of distant, impossible thing, and I was going to college for Communications, which I’m sure would have been fun. But I didn’t really know what, besides music, I was good at or wanted to do or wanted to improve at.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
