The songs on the rest, like the voices of boygenius, are often tangled up. Phoebe Bridgers uses that exact phrase on ‘Voyager’, relaying the intimate language of a chaotic relationship that echoes the one she longed to escape on boygenius’ 2018 self-titled EP. When she first played the song at a London show in July 2022, more than a year before its boygenius live debut, it was a solitary affair, floating somewhere in the Punisher universe and unadorned by the presence of her close friends Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus. Now, months after the release of boygenius’ debut full-length the record and near the end of their triumphant tour in support of the LP, the context of boygenius – an indie rock supergroup reaching and self-consciously navigating new levels of success – is both unignorable and empowering. The chemistry is more important still. Produced alongside regular collaborators including Tony Berg, Jake Finch, Ethan Gruska, Calvin Lauber, Collin Pastore, and Marshall Vore, the four-song companion to the record calls back to the trio’s debut EP, stripping down their sound and allowing each member a moment in the spotlight. They don’t sing about each other as much, but they look and lean towards each other in powerfully incremental ways – not using music as a means of decorating or documenting time so much as attesting to that they’ve spent together.
The pared-back sound of the rest suggests a band grounding itself in the midst of unsteadiness, but the thread running through it is cosmic. There’s no better description for the harmonies in ‘Voyager’ than a line Baker sings in the closer, ‘powers’: “The hum of our contact/ The sound of our collision.” It’s a beautiful projection of togetherness that remains subtle throughout the EP, resting less on language, which gives space for the members’ individual perspectives and poetry to rise and play off each other. Part of what connects these songs is, in fact, an interest in twisting perspective, particularly when it comes to matters of life and death. The lyric that stands out the most in ‘Voyager’ – “There are nights you say you don’t remember/ When you stepped on the gas and you asked if I’m ready to die” – is so striking in its recklessness it nearly throws the song off balance, not romanticizing but questioning what was fuelling the connection. Bridgers almost seems to be drawing inspiration from Dacus, who paints a more detailed scene on the previous track, ‘Afraid of Heights’, in which a conversation with a partner deepens her own understanding of mortality: “I wanna live a vibrant life/ But I wanna die a boring death.”
Do you have to risk your life to be able to live, to be fearful of death in order to hold hope for the future? Dacus’ isn’t alone in contemplating these questions. When Baker comes across a headline about a black hole that produces stars instead of sucking them up, it forces her to rethink the relationship between light and destruction. Rather than developing the thought by herself on ‘Black Hole’, she cracks the song open and lets it expand, both musically and through the introduction of Dacus and Bridgers’ voices: “Sometimes, I need to hear your voice” is the last thing you hear them say. But Baker cycles back to it on ‘powers’, her big moment: a kind of superhero origin story where the superhero (or “supergroup,” if you will) is less relevant than the story, which ends in mystery: “There’s no object to be seen in the supercollider/ Just a light in the tunnel and whatever gets scattered.”
Maybe the light in the tunnel looks something like the pale blue dot Bridgers mentions in ‘Voyager’, likely referencing the Voyager 1 spacecraft’s 1990 photo of Earth. Individually, the boygenius members have allsungabout wanting to go home. And as powerfully as their voices blended together on ‘Not Strong Enough’, the song ends just with Dacus, ringing with the pain of going home alone. But walking in the city by herself, feeling “like a man on the moon,” Bridgers isn’t fantasizing about alien abduction this time, but rather noticing the ease in her step, maybe also that of letting go. Not wishing hard, but looking, as Carl Sagan famously said, again at that dot: “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” Who could dream up a better view?
The first lyric on Daydreamer might be its best. “I don’t wanna waste my time again obsessing ‘bout how nothing fits,” indie rocker Molly Burch sings on the string-heavy ‘Made of Glass’. This lyric, and others like it that jumped out when listening to her fourth album, are astoundingly tuned-in to the angst, loneliness, and sometimes endless yearning all young people can relate to. “I’m so fragile, it’s not even funny,” she sings on the same song; “I’ve fallen out of love with myself” on synthpop lead single ‘Physical’; “I chase the feeling of being your favorite” on the jangly, upbeat ‘Unconditional’. Armed with inspirations ranging from Kate Bush to Ariana Grande — which was surprising at first, but after hearing her cover ‘needy’ on tour, it totally fits — Burch uses her soaring vocals amidst lush arenas of sound to create an ethereal and dreamy album.
We caught up with Molly Burch for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about the process of recording, her relationship to the music industry, and the relatability of her lyricism.
There’s this really entrancing quality to the record — your vocals soar in the realm of Kate Bush and they’re backed by this lushness of chamber pop. Who were some of your inspirations for this record, either with writing or its sound?
I love Kate Bush so much. Such a compliment. With this, sonically, Jack [Tatum] and I listened to a lot of city pop and 80s music. We both really wanted strings and horns, and really lush instrumentation. I think he did a really great job of like the balance of synths, but also a lot of natural sounds. And for vocal inspiration, I always have Ariana Grande on my playlists. It’s always like a mix of modern pop, lots of Madonna, ’80s throwbacks.
When I was listening to Daydreamer for the first time, the word that kept coming to me was ‘astute.’ There are so many good observations and snappy lyrics about life, anxiety, and the self. I wanted to ask about your writing process — are you a sit-down thinker, or does stuff come to you in the middle of the day that you hurry to jot down?
That’s so nice. I kind of struggled my whole career with confidence with my writing. And because I always sort of see myself as a vocalist, like, that’s my instrument. And I took a while to get the confidence to write songs. And I really didn’t until my first album, Please Be Mine. My last album, Romantic Images, I was so focused on the sonic shift, I did want the production to be more clean and more pop. And this album, I was more focused on writing and lyrics. I also took longer to write this album — I started in 2021. So it was more of a year and a half of writing a lot of songs, and being really nitpicky.
My process is just yeah, sitting down. I wrote both on the piano and guitar and I’ll basically finish a song: chords, lyrics, pretty much, and then take it to Dailey, who’s my boyfriend and guitarist. We’ll make the demo and flesh out parts and have an idea. And then of course, some of those ideas changed a lot when Jack produced them.
In the first track, ‘Made of Glass’, you talk about the downsides of being a sensitive person, which I can totally relate to. You sing “I’m so fragile it’s not even funny.” Can I ask what inspired this song?
This song is totally in the perspective of my 13-year-old self. I just kind of wanted to paint the picture of that angst and that first wave of feelings of insecurities. I really struggled with body dysmorphia: that was sort of when it first started with disordered thinking and eating. I would just stay in my room a lot and just really obsess over getting dressed and not being able to feel okay in my body and feel okay socializing. I still feel a lot of those things today, even though I’m past a lot of it and can mask better. I still will obsess over things not fitting. I just truly wrote that line to just help myself get over that. Because, logically, I know, it’s ridiculous. But that anxiety will really take over a lot, and I can become very obsessive.
You also end with the lyric “I’m made of glass/ And I’ll always be like that.” This finality, this personality trait you just know of yourself — do you think that makes being a sensitive person easier or harder?
I think easier. I was always kind of shamed because I’m different in my family — I always feel like my sister and my mom are tougher and I’ve always been called the sensitive one. I always felt so much shame about that, and that I needed to be change to be strong. Over the years, I’ve grown to accept that and love that about myself. I’d rather be extra sensitive and empathetic than rather not. I feel like it’s a strength. I do still feel like I’m fragile, but I’m also very strong.
Totally. I’m from a Jewish mother and an Italian father — growing up at family gatherings, all I’d hear is “You’re so quiet!”
My mom is Jewish as well, and the first time she met Dailey, she said, “Do you ever talk? Is he mute?” I love them so much, but there’s a lot of big personalities, and as the youngest, I shrunk down.
‘Physical’ was the first song I heard on the album, which made me really intrigued. Even though the instrumental is so upbeat, there’s this lyric that sticks out to me: “I guess the pills help/ But they really only make me feel less.” If it’s not too personal, would you mind explaining the meaning behind this lyric?
Absolutely. The whole song is really about my struggles with PMS, which goes hand in hand with anxiety, depression, and body issues. I wanted the lyrics to be broad enough so that people who don’t experience that can also relate, with generalized anxiety or something. I started taking anti-anxiety meds for PMS, and it really did help, but I just started feeling less. It didn’t fix everything, just brought everything down. Which can be good, and bad.
I also enjoyed it because I took it as a means of sticking up for yourself even when you feel awful, even when you don’t feel like a person. In all of the verses, you describe feeling flat, maybe not even physical, but in the chorus’ ending, you counter: “I’m not the one-dimensional girl of your mind/ I’m a literal woman moving through life.” What was the thought process behind this dichotomy?
Yeah, definitely. I wanted the verses to feel more insecure and the chorus to feel powerful, telling someone who doesn’t understand what you’re going through and can write it off. I feel like that happens a lot, with PMS, or periods, like, ‘Oh, you’re just on your period.’ But people don’t really understand that it’s so under researched. Women’s health in general, is just horrific. Nobody cares. And you’re going through so much mental illness during that time. It’s pretty intense. I wanted that line to tell someone off, like, ‘Don’t downplay what I’m going through.’ I have to remind myself of that all the time. Literally every month. I have to go through mental gymnastics of calming myself and saying, “This will pass.”
I read that ‘Tattoo’ is an ode to your late friend, and I think it’s a really beautiful song, especially the part where you say you got one of her tattoos in the same spot to remember her by. What does this song mean to you and what was the writing process like?
That song was the hardest song for me to write, ever. I’d never taken so long to write a song, and it went through a lot of different forms. I was like, ‘Maybe I’ll write a pop song.’ I wanted to write a song that maybe she would like. I really like where it landed, with the help of Jack’s production. I wanted it to be this ballad, but I did want weird elements. In the chorus, he added this strange ethereal guitar part. I love the ups and downs of it.
Basically, one of my best friends passed away in college. She was such an important person, and totally changed my life. I never wanted to write a song about her because it was too personal, but with this album, which is about my relationship to music and how I feel as an artist, she was the first person I played music with and really brought me out of my shell. She was so, so opposite. The only person I feel like I can compare her to is Sinead O’Connor: someone who is so bold and different. I truly feel like there was no one like her. She was so fun and extraverted and had this big orange curly hair, so beautiful. Everyone was drawn to her. I wanted to basically write a letter to her now, and wanted to talk about her and capture her essence and think about what she’d be like now. Part of me thinks she’d have a really hard time with it. She missed social media: that would have made her so anxious. She would have been blocked from everything. She Facebook messaged me a video of her talking out of her vagina. Yeah, she would have been banned on all platforms. That’s the line where it goes: “You wouldn’t believe it/ I think you would hate it.” Pandemic, everything that’s happened… She was so deeply sensitive, I think it would have been too much. That’s something that I tell myself, to make myself feel better, almost, that she would have hated it here and she’s in a better place. It’s definitely a special song to release, and why I wanted it to be a single too.
That’s so beautiful. So ‘Unconditional’ mourns a relationship where you inhabited the ‘giver’ role, and the other person was the “taker,” who was afraid of commitment. What was the turning point for you, of realizing, like, “Hang on. This isn’t benefiting me”?
Basically, I was thinking about how I felt being an indie artist in the music business. This feeling really started when the pandemic hit, feeling like I have no control over anything. That’s just how it is in this business — up and down, sometimes you feel good and sometimes you feel horrible. It’s sort of a confident perspective, like, “Hey, I’m great, why don’t you like me?” I just wanted to have fun with it and have some salty, cheeky lines.
Let’s talk about ‘Heartburn’, which I think is the most interestingly-produced track on the record. It has nods of city pop with these big, explosive horns. How did this song come to be?
Dailey and I were just kinda messing around — the demo is so different, it’s a synthy, much chiller 80s track. I made lyrics afterwards and Jack took it and was really city pop-inspired. It was something he’d always wanted to do, and he sent me a little taste, like, “Do you like this?” Every time he said that, I was like, ‘Go for it!’ It was the first time he completely wrote all these parts for horns and strings, and it was a really cool experience to watch him do that.
Even though you start with the incredible lyric, “First time in a while got no man on my mind/ I’d rather chase my dreams on a Saturday night,” on the chorus, you admit that “Heartburn season” always gets the best of you, and you find yourself yearning. What is “heartburn season” and why do you think it’s so powerful?
So the title’s a nod to Nora Ephron, her movie Heartburn. I associate her and her movies with fall, and to me, whenever it’s fall, I get so nostalgic. When it’s not fall, I get so focused, but when it turns, I get this yearning vibe.
I really enjoyed how ‘Beauty Rest’ has this analysis of capitalism and how we’re forced to segment our lives in order to even live. You sing, “Too many people out here, I guess / Realizing their dreams on a daily basis.” Where did the inspiration for this song come from?
I believe this was the first song I wrote for the album, which kind of formed it. It was right when I was putting out my last record, Romantic Images, and the summer of 2021. Summer is my least favorite season, and I hate being hot. It was still pandemic-times, and we couldn’t tour. I think there was this misconception that, “Okay, 2020 bad, 2021 good! Normal!” I feel like we were all confident, putting out an album, and then it was like every single person on earth put out an album. I was feeling so overstimulated, so depressed, not being able to tour. I was basically dealing with all of the things I don’t like about putting out an album: thinking about how it’s doing, what’s the press like, etc. I get very seasonally depressed in the summer and happy in the fall and winter. I was thinking about capitalism commodifying your art. It just felt like everyone was working so hard. I felt like, “I wish we could all just chill out and not worry so much.”
What are you most excited about when touring this album?
It’s always fun to play new songs live, and we’re doing all the new songs, except ‘Heartburn’, because it was too tricky to figure out with all the horns. It’s just fun to see the fans. I love the structure of tour. We brought our dog, which is so fun, and kind of crazy, but it’s been nice. He loves the van, and he takes the tour well, which is good for mental health. I’m hoping to tour Europe and the UK next year, that’s something we haven’t been able to do since the pandemic.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
PinkPantheress has announced that her debut album, Heaven Knows, is set to arrive on November 10. Its first single, ‘Capable of Love’, is officially out now alongside a video directed by Aidan Zamiri. Watch and listen below.
Following 2021’s to hell with it, the LP finds the British singer collaborating with Greg Kurstin, Mura Masa, Danny L Harle, Count Baldor, Phil, and Cash Cobain. “The record is about grief for a loss but being at peace with yourself in your aloneness,” she said in a statement. “Journeying from hell into purgatory, but I’m ok with being there.”
On social media, PinkPantheress wrote: “what an intense insane moment ! my first album is coming out and you know i love a pun so it’s called “heaven knows”, out on november 10th. this album is an accumulation of music i’ve made over the last two years, with some beloved tunes that might sound familiar and some cutie features who i can’t wait to announce 📣. i love everyone here, i cried the other day thinking of how lucky i am to have people willing to listen to me, you are never taken in vain. to my fanpages, i love you, you’re always there for me and i will never forget about how safe you make me feel 💿💓. it’s been a long time comin from pain to capable of love, i hope you love each song you hear from me!”
Blink-182 have dropped another single from their upcoming album One More Time…, which is out October 20 via Columbia. ‘Fell in Love’ follows the previously shared tracks ‘One More Time’, ‘More Than You Know’, ‘Edging’, and ‘Dance With Me’. Listen to it below.
One More Time…, the first album from the classic lineup trio of Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker, and Tom DeLonge since 2011’s Neighborhoods, arrives October 20 via Columbia. The band has also shared a second trailer for the LP, which features more footage from their recent interview with Zane Lowe.
The Libertines have announced their first new album in over eight years. The follow-up to 2015’s Anthems for Doomed Youth is called All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade, and it’s out on March 8. Check out its first single, ‘Run, Run, Run’, below.
The Libertines recorded the new album with producer Dimitri Tikovoï, and all four band members share songwriting credit on every song. Of ‘Run, Run, Run’, the band’s Carl Barat said in a statement: “It’s about being trapped, and trying to escape your dismal life, a bit like the man in Bukowski’s Post Office. The worst thing for The Libertines would be to get stuck in a ‘Run-run-run’ rut, constantly trying to relive our past.”
Speaking about the album, he added: “Our first record was born out of panic, and disbelief that we were actually allowed to be in a studio; the second was born of total strife and misery; the third was born of complexity; this one feels like we were all actually in the same place, at the same speed, and we really connected.”
“I feel like we’ve completed a cycle of some kind as a band, and finally now we can add these songs to the set list, because we’ve got some bangers in there,” Pete Doherty commented. “Now we’ve opened the hotel and used the studio ourselves and it’s all worked out—more Libertines records? I should hope so!”
All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade Cover Artwork:
All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade Tracklist:
1. Run, Run, Run
2. Mustang
3. Have a Friend
4. Merry Old England
5. Man With the Melody
6. Oh Shit
7. Night of the Hunter
8. Baron’s Claw
9. Shiver
10. Be Young
11. Songs They Never Play on the Radio
Bad Bunny is back with a new album, Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana. Announced earlier this week, the follow-up to last year’s Un Verano Sin Ti features the early singles ‘Where She Goes’ and ‘Un Preview’, as well as appearances from Arcángel, Bryant Myers, De La Ghetto, Eladio Carrión, and more. Its title translates to “Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow” in English. In an interview with Vanity Fair earlier this year, Bad Bunny said, “It’s impossible that the album that comes after Un Verano Sin Ti will sound like it – never, ever. I am always going to look for a way to do something new.” He added, “I am playing around and enjoying myself, letting go. I’m being inspired a lot by the music of the ’70s, but I’m not sure if this is going to shape my music, generally or just one song.”
Troye Sivan has returned with a new album, Something to Give Each Other. The follow-up to 2018’s Bloom is billed as “a celebration of sex, dance, sweat, community, queerness, love and friendship” and was promoted with the singles ‘Got Me Started’ and ‘Rush’. “I didn’t mean to take 5 years to make this album – Bloom tour happened (lmk if you came), then i started working on it, then cockbig19 (COVID-19), then The Idol, always working on the album in all the moments between..and now here we are,” Sivan wrote on Instagram. “Enough excuses now. Enough saying ‘soon’, this is for YOU and it starts NOWWWW.”
Jamila Woods has released her latest LP, Water Made Us, via Jagjaguwar. The follow-up to 2019’s Legacy! Legacy! was previewed by the songs ‘Tiny Garden’, ‘Boomerang’, ‘Good News’, and ‘Practice’. “Water Made Us feels like the most personal and vulnerable piece of art I’ve ever made. I love creating from source material, diving deep into a subject and extrapolating from what I discover,” Woods said in a statement. “We sat in the house for 2 years and I became my own source material. Shout out to the therapists, the astrologers, the family members and friends who listened, who helped me process and transform my journaled thoughts and questions into this body of work. I hope it feels like a playlist that carries you through the life cycle of a relationship, whatever stage of the journey your heart may be in.”
Squirrel Flower’s new full-length, Tomorrow’s Fire, has arrived via Polyvinyl/Full Time Hobby. Following 2021’s Planet (i), the Chicago-based singer-songwriter’s latest includes the advance tracks ‘When a Plant Is Dying’, ‘Full Time Job’, ‘Alley Light’., and ‘Intheskatepark’. Williams helmed the album’s production alongside engineer Alex Farrar at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville, where she was joined by a studio band that included Matt McCaughan, Seth Kauffman, Jake Lenderman, and Dave Hartley. “The songs I write are not always autobiographical, but they’re always true,” she said in press materials.
L’Rain, the project of Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Taja Cheek, has unveiled her new album, I Killed Your Dog. Following 2021’s Fatigue, the record features the advance tracks ‘New Year’s UnResolution‘, ‘Pet Rock’, and ‘r(EMOTE)’. “I’m not really interested in being separate from the world,” Cheek said in a statement about I Killed Your Dog. “I’m envisioning a world of contradictions, as always. Sensual, maybe even sexy, but terrifying, and strange.”
Margo Price has put out Strays II, a companion to her most recent LP Strays, which was released in January. Out now via Loma Vista, the album was recorded at producer Jonathan Wilson’s Topanga studio during the sessions as its predecessor and contains nine new songs presented in the form of three acts: Topanga Canyon, Mind Travel, and Burn Whatever’s Left. It features contributions from Strays collaborators Jonathan Wilson and Mike Campbell as well as Buck Meek of Big Thief and singer-songwriter Ny Oh.
Helena Deland has issued her second album, Goodnight Summerland, via Chivi Chivi. The Montrea-based singer-songwriter co-produced the follow-up to 2020’s Someone New with Sam Evian at Flying Cloud Recording in upstate New York, and the LP was mastered by Heba Kadry. “In discovering another person, there is a heightened awareness, a life-affirming purposefulness,” Deland said in a statement about the single ‘Bright Green Vibrant Grey’. “It is akin to creative inspiration; the painter in the video whose work holds such power and immediate force to her ultimately wonders where her work will end up after she’s gone. When I first went to Sam Owens’ studio, we made this version of the song, which led to the decision to record the album together. ‘Bright Green Vibrant Gray’ will accompany ‘Swimmer’ and ‘Spring Bug’ on Goodnight Summerland, my own humble painting of sorts.”
Burning Desire is the surprise new album from MIKE. Out now via his label 10, the 24-track effort features guest appearances from Earl Sweatshirt, Liv.e, Crumb’s Lila Ramani, Larry June, Venna, El Cousteau, Niontay, mark william lewis, and more. MIKE has also today shared a music video for the album track ‘What U Say U Are’, which was directed by Alex Huggins, and announced a run of European tour dates that will place next year.
Mali Velasquez has come out with her debut album, I’m Green, via Acrophase Records. Ahead of its release, the Nashville singer-songwriter unveiled the singles ‘Tore’, ‘Bobby’, ‘Shore’, and ‘Medicine’. “Getting these songs out has been really healing for me,” Velasquez reflected in press materials. “Before, the way I was grieving was just kind of holding it all in, waiting for it to release. These songs have given me a new perspective on grief. At one time, I didn’t think anything good could come from this. There’s nothing left of my mom on the planet, and that can be super strange to talk about, but I do feel like there are little pieces of her living in these songs, which is very comforting to me.”
Maple Glider, the project of Naarm/Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Tori Zietsch, has followed up 2021’s To Enjoy Is the Only Thing with her sophomore album, I Get Into Trouble. Released via Pieater in Australia and Partisan in the rest of world, the LP was recorded with producer Tom Iansek and touring member Jim Rindfleish (Mildlife) on drums. It includes the advance tracks ‘Don’t Kiss Me’, ‘Dinah’, ‘You’re Gonna Be A Daddy’, ‘Two Years’, and ‘Do You’. “This album feels more like an opening up because there are things I wasn’t feeling ready to publicly share through songs, but now I finally feel ready,” Zietsch said in a statement.
✞✞✞ (Crosses) – the duo of Deftones’ Chino Moreno and producer/multi-instrumentalist Shaun Lopez – are back with their first album in nearly a decade. Goodnight,God Bless, I Love U, Delete., which follows their 2014 self-titled debut as well as 2022’s EP PERMANENT.RADIANT EP, features guest appearances from the Cure’s Robert Smith and Run the Jewels’ El-P. “When we started working on Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete., there was so much more light coming in my life, for numerous reasons,” Moreno said in a statement. “There’s a lot more optimism. Even the darker themes are more romanticized and not coming from a place of despair.”
Holly Humberstone has dropped her debut album, Paint My Bedroom Black, via Polydor/Darkroom/Geffen. The record was previewed by a series of singles, including ‘Antichrist’, ‘Room Service’, and ‘Superbloodmoon’. “My favourite artists create work that magics up an entirely new universe,” the singer-songwriter said in a press release. “That’s what I want to do with my debut album and live shows.”
Land of Talk, the Montreal-based project led by Lizzie Powell, have a new album out called Performances, out now via Saddle Creek. It features the previously unveiled songs ‘Pwintiques’ and ‘Beautiful Self’. “I realized right away that I was not feeling electric guitar for this album,” Powell explained in a statement. “At first, I felt like something was wrong with me: Land of Talk is about guitars and me rocking out. But is that all I am? Can I get away with doing a Land of Talk record without a ton of electric guitar?” They added, “I would write demos and think, ‘Oh, that doesn’t really kind of sound like Land of Talk.’ But then I realized that I’m Land of Talk.”
Jonny Pierce has put out the sixth studio LP from the Drums, Jonny. Out now via ANTI- Records, it includes the advance tracks ‘Obvious’, ‘I Want It All’, and ‘Plastic Envelope / Protect Him Always’, and ‘Better’. “When I finished Jonny, I listened to it, and I heard my soul reflected back at me,” Pierce said in a statement. “It is devastating and triumphant, it is lost and found, it is confused and certain, it is wise and foolish. It is male and female, it is hard and gentle. To encapsulate ones’ whole self in an album, to honor each and every part of you – even the parts that feel at odds with each other, is to make something deeply human, and because my religion is humanism, the album becomes a sacred place for me to worship. Each feeling a different pew, each song a hymn to the human heart.”
Other albums out today:
Offset, Set It Off; CMAT, Crazymad, For Me; The Menzingers, Some Of It Was True; Westside Gunn, AND THEN YOU PRAY FOR ME; Upchuck, Bite the Hand That Feeds; Spencer Krug, I Just Drew This Knife; Jenn Champion, The Last Night of Sadness; Sarah Morrison, Attachment Figure; Faith Healer, The Hand That Fits the Glove; Institute, Ragdoll Dance; Paul Wall & Termanology, Start, Finish, Repeat; Green-House, A Host for All Kinds of Life; Venera, Venera; Goat, Medicine; Allah-Las, Zuma 85; Laura Misch, Sample the Sky; Beartooth, The Surface; Melanie De Biasio, Il Viaggio; Blue Ocean, Fertile State; Roger Eno, The skies, they shift like chords…; A Beacon School, yoyo; Hooveriii, Pointe; Popular Music, Minor Works; Justin Walter, Destroyer.
Some people would do just about anything for a child. One of them is Dee-Dee, the narrator of Elle Nash’s third novel, Deliver Me, who has been trying for years with her insect-obsessed partner Daddy. She’s finally pregnant again, and thinks it’s the one, before losing the child alongside the introduction of Sloane, a past friend and lover, back into Dee-Dee’s life. Determined, Dee-Dee won’t let go that easily, and feels the presence of her baby despite the ultrasounds and the doctors telling her otherwise. Combining body horror, toxic relationships, and a swell of past trauma, Deliver Me is a whirlwind of emotions perfect for any horror lover.
Our Culture talked with Elle Nash about how motherhood shapes fiction, delusion, untraditional literature, and more.
Congratulations on your third novel! How does it feel now that it’s out?
Thank you! It feels good, it feels weird. It doesn’t feel real yet, even though I’ve done a couple of events. I think it takes me a while to believe in things. Even if I’m walking around in a bookstore and I see my book, I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s there,’ but it’ll take me years. We’ll see! But it feels really good.
Does the process get easier each time, or does each book come with its own set of challenges?
I think each book feels different. Every time I sit down to start a new book, I feel like a beginner each time. It feels daunting. You sit down for a new project you haven’t started yet, like, ‘Oh my god, I have to write a new book.’ When I already have the book, and I’m editing, then that’s fun, but when you’re looking at a new project… Oh, man. But I feel like I learn about myself every time, and at this point, recognizing that I feel like a beginner every time, that’s a good sign.
Who are some of your literary icons that have helped shape your work so far?
I would say the biggest are Chuck Palahniuk, Francesca Lia Block, Tom Spanbauer, and Marya Hornbacher, when I was still in high school and in my early twenties. As I’ve grown, I feel like my influences have changed and transformed. I started reading Dennis Cooper during COVID, and he became really influential for me. My contemporaries feel very influential, like, Charlene Elsby is a writer I’m insanely inspired by every time I read her work. I feel like everything that I read influences me in some way. Whether it’s something I enjoy deeply or end up not enjoying, and I feel like when I’m reading I’m constantly thinking about the experience, the language, the people. I was reading Tove Ditlevsen, The Copenhagen Trilogy, and it’s hard to read it and not think of her as an artist or an author in real life. There are these words and the way she’s constructing them and there’s an art to it, and she’s also a person with her own experiences in the 1930s.
In Deliver Me, we meet Dee-Dee, a meatpacking worker that goes home to an apathetic boyfriend named Daddy with an insect obsession. Dee-Dee wants to be a mother so badly, and after a series of miscarriages, she is finally pregnant and feels like this is the one. What was the first jolt of inspiration for this book, and did it change throughout writing it?
The first jolt of inspiration was that I had read about this crime that occurred in my town in 2015, and I thought of it for a really long time. In 2018 when I sat down to write the novel, I did a little research on the crime as well, because I was very fascinated about it. The crime itself delved deeper into some people who had been involved in larger cases of it. Maybe the inspiration didn’t change, but I learned more about these peoples’ experiences, and my understanding of it deepend. I always knew at the outset what the ending would be, and how I wanted it to look like.
Something that gave me a whole new outlook on the book was that you wrote it while taking care of your first child. The book is so full of body horror and these meditations on pregnancy — was it this outlet to funnel all your feelings toward?
I don’t know, that’s a good question. In my personal experience, I loved being pregnant. I did feel super emotional all the time, but it was funny. I saw a trailer for A Dog’s Life and I’d cry. At a dog! It was so funny, because it was so cheesy. I would say when you have a baby, as a mom, as soon as you have it, the first couple of months, you think about death all the time. You have this new life that you’re suddenly responsible for. It’s different from babysitting, it’s a different kind of bond. There’s this 24/7 constant thought of, ‘What if the baby dies?’ It’s the kind of thing you worry about. It’s a survival mechanism. A new mom will be thinking of these survival tendencies. The consistent thought of death definitely surprised me. As [my child] has gotten older, it’s not as intense, or it’s in the background and I’ve gotten used to it. The learning curve, now, it’s like, ‘She’s six, so I know I’m doing a good job.’
I wanted to speak to you because I love delusion and this book is so full of it. After Dee-Dee loses her child, she shrugs off what the doctors tell her, says there’s a mistake, and she’s still pregnant. She doesn’t tell anyone, and goes as far as buying a fake baby bump and eating more so that she’ll look better. Was it fun to inhabit the mind of someone who is not quite living in reality?
I wondered how I was going to successfully represent how this person experiences things in that way. In some ways, it was fun to puzzle out how I’d be successful with it. My favorite thing about fiction, whether it’s my own or writing it with people, is that there’s a logic puzzle to things. You have all these elements and ideas, and you’re like, ‘How am I going to jam all this together?’ Being successfully able to get all the pieces to click into place is a satisfying thing, for sure.
One thing I did like is that Dee-Dee isn’t wholly confused — she does keep remembering she’s not pregnant, then snapping herself out of it, saying that it can’t be true if she doesn’t believe it. I loved this darker and more unhinged side of manifestation and visualization.
Yeah, one of the things I was thinking about was there’s a sense of depersonalization or dissociation that can happen with some mental illnesses. I was hoping that I could successfully demonstrate this sense of feeling grounded, sometimes you have those moments. Suddenly and without warning, you could slip up, and turn 90 degrees, and your entire perspective is different and you become swallowed up in it. That’s kind of the same with a lot of mental illness or with anyone who has struggled with instability, which everyone does. I try to think of it in that sense — everyone has a moment where they’re completely turned by whatever’s going on in that moment. With Dee-Dee, it happens to be this incessant desire because she feels like this is her pathway to her highest self.
The ‘Daddy’ character is also really interesting, with his love of insects and how it can imbue itself in the sex he and Dee-Dee have. How was it like writing this macho, arrogant figure?
A little cathartic and a little scary at times. Just thinking about how to present this character as a person. I try really hard to present characters in my novels without a sense of judgment on the page, because I want people to make decisions for themselves about how they feel. I’m never sure how something will be perceived. It’s always this thing where I’m hoping that I got the character right. I think, with him, I wanted to create this ballast for Dee-Dee, since he is her sense of stability, and he tries to be this supposed guiding light for her, towards logic, away from religion. At the same time, he is also proselytizing to her and preaching to her about these other concerns that live in the world of rigid masculinity, that some people feel that women have to live by in order to survive in the world. It’s like leaving one very thin hallway, entering into a wide foyer where she can choose where she wants to go, then choosing another thin hallway. That’s kind of how I felt about that.
We also get a glimpse of Dee-Dee’s background with the church, and her mother, who remains in her life and advises her pregnancy. How do you think this sustained contact influences Dee-Dee?
For a lot of churchgoers who leave, the weird thing is that you’ll know the ideology is not for you. And maybe you’ll know you’re not a believer. But there’s still something painful about leaving that world behind. I did not grow up extremely fundamentalist, as depicted in the novel, but I have been a part of tight-knit and rigorous communities. You still think about it, because there’s oddly beautiful things you experience in religion on top of all the toxic things. It can be hard for people to let go because when you cut the cord, you have to let go of the beautiful and negative things so you can grow healthy as a person. So it affects her in those ways.
Especially people who do grow up in it, your early language and early mental structures do become formed by these ways of thinking. The most difficult thing is rebuilding your structures with total confidence and belief in yourself. Instead of getting your self-worth from your reverence from God, you have to get your self-worth from your reverence for yourself. And that’s really hard! That’s one of the things that Dee-Dee is really struggling with — where is that self-worth gonna come from? And unfortunately for her, it’s still getting that approval and validation from Daddy, her mother, and Sloan still.
Even as an adult human who has studied Christianity, I still find myself saying, ‘Where are these patterns of Christian thinking that are still there? What work do I have to do in order to pull them out?’ Even as someone who doesn’t necessarily have the deep, religious trauma of leaving. It can exist so deeply in people.
Sloane is Dee-Dee’s high school crush that comes to live in the same apartment building, which brings up all this jealousy in Dee-Dee, as Sloane is actually pregnant. Dee-Dee kidnaps Sloane’s first daughter, Steg, for a while, and constantly thinks about her. Why do you think she has such an effect on Dee-Dee?
I think that the biggest thing is that Dee-Dee is obviously in love with Sloan. But she didn’t grow up with the language to express what that means. So it just becomes repressed. Through that repression comes a higher level of obsession and broken thinking. Not that I’m a psychologist, but in life, when it comes to analyzing the psychology of someone who is criminally insane, people who gets driven to anti-social, anti-human behaviors because of their psychological makeup, Dee-Dee is an obsessive person, and it occurs because of a lot of reasons. Because she’s repressing this, the obsession becomes stronger for her, and it becomes this way of having these feelings and not knowing how to express it. This expression comes out through intense rivalry, bitterness, paranoia, that she thinks that Sloan’s going to be with Daddy, and eventually, she starts expressing other things: the boundary-breaking behaviors like kidnapping or going through Sloan’s things. She’s like, ‘How far can I push this before somebody stops me?’ The obsessiveness and the impulsiveness pushes her to keep breaking the boundaries because she’s not necessarily getting the societal repercussions for doing it. She kidnaps Steg, but it’s just a slap on the wrist.
I also read on your Instagram that some editors were turned off by the ending because they were ‘unsettled’, which I think is a lousy excuse for passing up on a book. Do you worry that the publishing industry is focusing too much on these feel-good romances to really appreciate a book that makes you feel, even if it might be distress?
I used to worry about it a lot. I think I used to be a person who was really concerned that mainstream publishing was boring, they’re creating this flat landscape where they’re not creating any risky books because they want and need stuff that sells. Colleen Hoover, for example, has like six out of the ten books on the best-seller list right now. The thing is there’s this danger of positioning myself against this cloudy monster of mainstream publishing rejecting me for whatever reason. Thinking, like, ‘I’m not built for that’ or whatever. Because it starts to take up space in my head, and then that risks clouding the space in my head that I dedicate to wanting to create. Because then what I’ll be doing is creating an identity that I’m thinking antithetical to something else. It creates a block. It’s a sense that it isn’t possible for me, because of xyz. I don’t like that kind of thinking — I like an open road, in my mind. I don’t like thinking of myself as, ‘Oh, they’re gonna reject me, so I’m not even gonna try.’ You can limit yourself.
The independent publishing industry is, I think, thriving. There’s a lot that’s up-and-coming, there are publishers that are taking on these risky books, and they are smaller, but they’re there. People do demonstrate everyday that they do love reading a ‘risky’ book: there are readers there and they do find them. It’s harder to make what I would consider a ‘traditional living’ in that world, especially because of how terrible the United States’ economy is, and that’s unfair and unfortunate, but just in the arts perspective, there are pathways to success that aren’t traditional. There is so much good work coming out. Publishers like Unnamed and Clash Books are publishing work that is so interesting and unique. And they’re selling! Eric LaRocca, Everything the Darkness Eats, sold 11,000 copies in six months. That’s fucking incredible! That’s more than many copies of FSG books ever sell. That means people are reading, and helps the independent publishing industry as a whole. So I don’t worry about it anymore. Any author with that mindset needs to focus on the writing and not where it’s going to end up.
Personally, I liked the ending. It was extreme in the best ways and horrifying and a perfect conclusion to Dee-Dee’s rampage against her own body. You say that even if editors passed, you wanted to hold onto it. Why was it so important to you and how was the writing process like?
It’s the whole reason I started the novel. It is just so sad. Some of the cases that I’ve read of this type of crime are just totally heartbreaking. It’s the whole purpose, the reason why we’re being taken through this novel. One of my intentions when I began writing at the outset… Most people, when they look at someone who commits a crime, they’re like, ‘They’re a monster,’ whatever. But I wanted to say, ‘Can I successfully bring a reader with me on this ride to the point of eliciting empathy?’ Empathy is, in my opinion, why we’re alive, to love people. With the novel, I’m like, ‘Can I have people care about this person?’ Because that’s what real life is like. Something really awful can happen around a person if no one cares for them. There was nothing in the ending that I could change. If I did, it wouldn’t be the novel that it is.
Finally, what’s next? Do you have an idea of your next novel, and is anything in particular influencing you?
I do have a couple of projects I’m working on, but I don’t talk about them because I’m superstitious. Then I won’t have the energy to complete it, maybe the energy will dissipate. But one thing I am doing is a lot of research on vampire lore and history. I’m a nerd, I play Vampire: The Masquerade. That’s one area, and then I’m thinking a lot about Mary Shelley and her life. I’m thinking about how that stuff will all coalesce.
The art of data representation has revolutionized drastically over the years. One striking method that has gained popularity is the use of pyramid charts. Below, we delve into what pyramid chart examples are and how to effectively use them. Keep reading to get a full grasp of pyramid charts and their various uses as data visualization tools.
Understanding Pyramid Charts: Definition and Significance
A pyramid chart is an inverted funnel-shaped diagram that consists of various sections stacked over each other to represent hierarchical relationships, proportion, and priority among different elements. It’s a unique manner to display structured information and can be used in various domains, including business, education, and research.
Different Types of Pyramid Charts: A Brief Overview
Pyramid charts can be divided into several types based on their structure and intended use. The primary types of pyramid charts include; the population pyramid, energy pyramid, and nutrition pyramid.
The population pyramid, often used in demography, represents the distribution of various age groups in a population, providing an effective visualization of the age and sex structure of the population. This information proves critical in policy-making and resource distribution.
Energy pyramids, mainly used in the field of ecological sciences, display energy flow within an ecosystem. They highlight how energy decreases as it travels up the food chain, with the base representing producers and the tip denoting top consumers.
Lastly, the nutrition pyramid, typically used in the health sector, represents the recommended intake of different types of food. From the broad base representing foods to be eaten in large quantities, to the narrow peak denoting those to be consumed sparingly, this pyramid guides towards a balanced diet.
Step-by-Step Guide To Creating Pyramid Charts
The first step is to define the data that needs to be visualized. This requires understanding the different categories of data you want to represent, which will form the layers of the pyramid.
Next, each category or layer should be assigned a numerical value. These values are used to determine the size or width of each layer. More significant values will make broader pyramid layers and vice versa.
Once categorized, it’s time to create the pyramid. Starting from the base, each layer gets narrower as per the decreasing values. Add labels and colors to every layer, which makes understanding and interpreting the chart easier.
After these steps, review and adjust the pyramid chart to ensure it accurately represents your data. Regular practice will make the process smoother and faster, leading to the masterful creation of pyramid charts.
Pyramid Chart Applications in Business and Education
Pyramid charts have wide-ranging applications in various sectors. One of the most common is in the field of business where it assists in strategic planning and performance measurement. It brilliantly visualizes the hierarchy of needs or tasks in project management, making planning and execution easier.
Moreover, pyramid charts can also help visualize sales funnels, depicting the journey of a customer from awareness to purchase. It can display how many potential customers are at each stage, helping businesses devise strategies and prioritize actions.
In education, pyramid charts can assist in presenting complex concepts in an easy-to-understand format. Educational models like Bloom’s Taxonomy, which categorizes learning objectives, are frequently represented using pyramid charts.
Lastly, pyramid charts find usage in representing healthy eating habits, storyline plotting, and even in the corporate world, for showcasing organizational structures. With a clear understanding and proper implementation, they can simplify complex data and make it easily understandable across a wide range of applications.
Ice Spice has teamed up with the Nigerian artist Rema for a new song called ‘Pretty Girl’. Check out the RiotUSA-produced track below.
‘Pretty Girl’ marks Ice Spice’s first new music since the July EPLike…? Deluxe. In the past year, the Bronx rapper has collaborated with the likes of PinkPantheress, Nicki Minaj, and Taylor Swift. This Saturday (October 14), she will be the musical guest on the season 49 premiere of Saturday Night Live.
Annie Trevorah, an award-winning British artist, will unveil her solo exhibition Triffids at Pump House Gallery from the 18th to the 22nd of October, 2023.
Curated by Francesca Dobbe and advised by Kensu Oteng, the exhibition takes inspiration from John Wyndham’s post-apocalyptic novel The Day of the Triffids (1951), in which a carnivorous plant runs amok across the English countryside after escaping its experimental greenhouse. Trevorah reconfigures various textures and forms found in Chelsea Physic Garden’s greenhouses to imagine this species in its destructive hybridisation and how it may flourish in a future hostile to human survival.
Spread over Pump House Galleries’ four floors and featuring a combination of hanging, floor and wall-based sculptures, Triffids features unique sensory structures for plants that breathe, eat, digest and move while sharing many of the same interactive systems as humans. Among such chimeras are plants equipped with armour, thorns, spines and noxious defences that threaten the hubris of human exceptionalism in which we are predators but never the prey