For most of its history, Brisbane was a city people left. Ambition meant a one-way ticket south, to Sydney’s harbour money or Melbourne’s laneway cool. The joke, told often enough that locals stopped laughing, was that Brisbane was a big country town that happened to have a river running through it. Then, sometime in the last decade, the joke stopped landing. People started arriving instead of leaving. The clearest place to watch that change was after dark.
Daytime cities look much alike. It is the night that gives a place away: what stays open, who is out, and who is working while everyone else winds down. Brisbane’s night used to be short. Now it runs long, and the shape of it says more about the city’s reinvention than any skyline render or Olympic logo.
The city that used to empty out
The old Brisbane closed early by design. A conservative licensing culture, a spread-out population, and a habit of treating the city as a place to pass through kept the night economy thin. Talented people did not so much reject Brisbane as bypass it. The southern capitals had the venues, the labels, the galleries and the wages, so that is where the leaving-age crowd went.
Brisbane’s cultural history is partly a history of its exports. The Saints and the Go-Betweens, two of the most important bands the country ever produced, formed in its suburbs and made their names elsewhere. The pattern held for decades. The city grew the talent, and somewhere else got the career.
What turned it around was partly luck and partly weather. As living costs in Sydney and Melbourne climbed, the sums began to favour the north. The pandemic years sped it up, when space and sunlight suddenly counted for more than a short walk to a CBD tower. Queensland’s migration figures told a story the state had waited a long time to hear: the people moving in began to outnumber the ones the city had trained and lost.
What the night built
You can date the shift by its venues. Howard Smith Wharves, a derelict strip under the Story Bridge for the better part of a century, reopened as a riverfront run of bars, a brewery and a hotel, and it worked. Fortitude Valley, long the city’s designated entertainment precinct, matured from a rough late-night strip into something broader: live music rooms, laneway bars, restaurants that fill on a Tuesday. West End, New Farm and Newstead each grew a night of their own.
The change did not stay in the centre either. Suburban high streets that once went dark when the shops shut grew their own small bars and late kitchens. A night out stopped meaning a trip into town and a taxi home at the end of it. It could be ten minutes from your front door, which is exactly the sort of ordinary convenience that makes people stop treating a city as temporary.
None of this was incidental to the reinvention. It was the reinvention. A city persuades people to stay by giving them somewhere to be after six o’clock. The venues were the argument, and enough people found it convincing that the population kept climbing. Winning the 2032 Olympic Games, awarded in 2021, was less a cause of Brisbane’s new confidence than a confirmation of it. The city had already decided it was worth staying in.
The people who work while the city sleeps
A longer night is a jobs story before it is a lifestyle one. Every extra hour a city stays open is an hour someone is on shift. The bar staff and kitchen hands, the rideshare drivers running people home, the security workers on the doors, the cleaners who reset a venue before dawn: this is the labour a night economy runs on, and it grew as the night did.
The adult trade is one worked example inside that same economy, and it moved in the same direction. Sex work has always been part of the after-dark city, but the way it operates has professionalised alongside everything else. Where the trade once lived in the classified back pages of street press, it now runs through digital platforms with the tools any modern service uses.
A search for Brisbane escort listings today returns verified profiles, stated rates and clear booking terms, the kind of infrastructure that follows any service industry once it grows up and expects to be taken seriously. The framing is deliberately mundane, and that is the point. What was once informal and hidden now looks like the rest of the night economy: organised, contactable and accountable.
It is easy to sentimentalise a city’s nightlife and forget that, for thousands of people, the night is simply where the work is. Brisbane’s reinvention is usually told through the people who moved there to enjoy it. It is at least as true of the people who keep it running, and a decade of Olympic build-up will only add to their number.
A reinvention you can only see after dark
Cities announce their changes in daylight, through cranes and press releases and bid documents. They reveal them at night. The measure of Brisbane’s shift is not that it built a few good bars. It is that the whole ecosystem around the night thickened at once: the venues, the transport, the trades, the workers who chose to build a life around hours the city once shut down.
Brisbane spent a long time apologising for being a quiet town. It is quieter than Sydney still, and it may always be. But the quiet reads differently now. It is the quiet of a place that no longer feels the need to prove itself, told most honestly in the hours after the offices empty and the real work of the night begins.
There’s so much music coming out all the time that it’s hard to keep track. On those days when the influx of new tracks is particularly overwhelming, we sift through the noise to bring you a curated list of the most interesting new releases (the best of which will be added to our Best New Songs playlist). Below, check out our track roundup for Wednesday, September 23, 2026.
They Are Gutting a Body of Water – ‘kool marder’ [feat. Cashier], ‘the rook’, and ‘free willy’
They Are Gutting a Body of Water have announced a new mixtape, KOOL FAITH / LOOSIES II, which boasts an impressive range of features. Out on October 16 digitally and November 20 physically via ATO/Julia’s War, the 29-track project includes collaborations with RXKNephew, Greg Mendez, Spirit of the Beehive, Hotline TNT, Full Body 2, DJ Manny, Total Wife, LUCY (Cooper B. Handy), and more. The Cashier-assisted ‘kool marder’, the slow-burning ‘the rook’, and the grittily propulsive ‘free willy’ are out now. “The word mixtape initially meant a homespun tape that you typically listened to yourself or gave to somebody else,” bandleader Doug Dulgarian said in a statement. “For me who was born later, it meant mashups of all my favorite artists by local DJs. And so that’s what I did with this one, mashups of all my favorite artists. Shoutout DJ WHITEOWL, RIP.”
Queens of the Stone Age – ‘Where the Goth Girls At?’
Drake Queens of the Stone Age have released a new single called ‘Where the Goth Girls At?’. Taken from their forthcoming album Perfecth, it’s inspired by frontman Josh Homme’ youth in a Palm Desert suburb. “Watching the goth girls working the counter at JCPenney and giving goth makeovers to the old ladies, that’s when I knew the only place I want to be is where the goth girls at,” he recalled. “Teenage love, ain’t it grand?”
RIP Magic – ‘Stadium Drive’
RIP Magic have announced their debut album, 1,2,3, which is set for release on October 30 via section1. The London outfit’s grubby, buoyant new single ‘Stadium Drive’ arrives today, following precious cuts ‘5words’ (produced by James Murphy), ‘Screwdark’, and ‘Light Over There’.
Sharp Pins – ‘How Can I Explain What She Does to Me?’
Sharp Pins have a new EP on the way, Electric My Icebox, which lands January 15. It’s led by the sun-kissed ‘How Can I Explain What She Does to Me?’, which follows the previously released ‘Saturday Sun’.
Sour Widows – ‘Choke Chain’
Sour Widow have previewed their forthcoming LP Sigil with a beguiling, luminous new song, ‘Choke Chain’. “In Egyptian mythology, when someone dies, the god Anubis weighs their heart against a feather to determine the fate of their soul — I like to think that when I’m dead, the relationships that caused me hurt will probably feel amusing,” the band’s Susanna Thomson shared. “It’s difficult to talk about the inherent consequences of desire as a woman without projections of cynicism and misogyny. The lyrics say it best.”
Jeff Parker – ‘Miles’ Mode’ [feat. Chris Speed, Kaveh Rastegar, and Aaron Steele]
In celebration of John Coltrane’s 100th birthday, Jeff Parker has shared a new rendition of ‘Miles’ Mode’, recorded with Chris Speed (The Bad Plus) on tenor saxophone, Kaveh Rastegar (Kneebody) on electric bass, and Aaron Steele (Chrome Sparks) on drums. “John Coltrane has been a steady muse for me ever since I started to study his music at a young age,” Parker commented. “It’s an honour to pay tribute to him on the occasion of his centennial with three of my favourite musicians from the Los Angeles music community.”
This Is The Kit – ‘Skim a Stone’
This Is the Kit, the Paris-based band led by Kate Stables, have announced a new record called Ghost Coat, which will be released on January 15 via Memphis Industries. Recorded at Rockfield Studios, it features Richard Dawson, Sam Amidon, Ben Howard, guitarist brothers Valentin and Marceau Portron (of Portron Portron Lopez), and Emma Broughton aka Blumi. The driving, curious lead single ‘Skim a Stone’ is out now. “What are the things that we wish on,” Stables reflected. “An eyelash? More than three skims of a stone? A folded crisp? What magical thinking do we employ in the hope that things will be OK and go our way. What repetitive behavior do we notice. How does it calm us down. How do we explain why things happened and then decide it’s OK to move on in life.”
DJ Python – ‘Forgetful Angel’ [feat. Tony Bontana]
DJ Python is back with a new EP, to accomplish many things, out October 23, to follow up to 2025’s i was put on this earth. The languid, gauzy first single, ‘Forgetful Angel’, features Birmingham rapper Tony Bontana and comes paired with a Vladyslav-directed video.
saoirse dream – ‘killer bees’
Portland hyperpop-emo artist saoirse dream has dropped ‘killer bees’, the abrasive yet colorful final preview of her new album grimdark. The record is out October 9 via Lauren Records.
Sammy Weissberg – ‘String Quartet No. 2 Mvt. II’
Sammy Weissberg – the Brooklyn, New York-based composer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist who has recent and forthcoming work with The Lemon Twigs, more eaze, June McDoom, Caroline Rose, and Allegra Krieger – has announced a new album, Music for Strings and Brass. Arriving November 13 via Dear Life Records, it’s preceded today by ‘String Quartet No. 2 Mvt. II’, about which Weissberg said: “This was the first movement I composed for String Quartet No.2. “I used the melodic material as a foundation to write the rest of the piece, and it’s loosely based on the traditional symphonic form. The quartet was composed with a conventional structure, but this movement was written intuitively, almost like a stream of consciousness. I wrote the melodies while singing on my bike. It feels more lyrical, like a folk song.”
Alice Barlow – ‘Garden’
Alice Barlow has unveiled a quietly mesmerizing new track, ‘Garden’. “It’s about my deep love for nature and the world, and the collective denial of so many difficult things happening in it – climate change, genocide, war,” Barlow explained. “It reflects on small things within daily life like dreams or walking my dog, and the dissonance of experiencing them with the backdrop of so much suffering. I made it in my own garden a couple of summers ago using just guitars and my voice, and making it was a cathartic experience – it became a vessel to process a lot of those feelings.”
Stephanie Gilbert – ‘An Elf in the Modern World’
Stockholm singer-songwriter Stephanie Gilbert has announced her debut EP, Elvish – out November 6 – with the fuzzy new single ‘An Elf in the Modern World’. “It started to scare me that I had once been so free, as if I was someone from a different time, as if I had been plopped down in this timeline from another,” Gilbert reflected. “I used to not know the trends of popular culture. I was so happily unaware, not because I was trying to be special but because my interests simply guided me inward and toward another place, to books, to writing, to frolicking in nature to long-lasting mornings and remembering my dreams so vividly when I woke up I truly knew that life was not as it seemed in the modern world. But I somehow got caught up in the web of consumerism, and became accustomed to the algorithm knowing my thoughts in real time. It became a blanket in which I wrapped myself in the morning, in the daytime and in the evening. I wrote this song as a way to call her back. The elf in the modern world. She lived on her own wavelength, and she spoke of ideas outside of the internet ideals and she didn’t even know how special that was.”
Angine de Poitrine have won this year’s Polaris Music Prize. The viral math-rock duo took home the award for the best Canadian album of the year for Vol. II, beating out records by Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Peaches, Rochelle Jordan, Charlotte Cornfield, and Tanya Tagaq. The album track ‘Fabienk’ was also named the best Canadian song of the year, making them the first act to win both awards, which, combined, come with $40,000 Canadian in prize money.
“That all this attention is being directed toward music this rock-driven and this complex is unexpected, yet entirely deserved,” the band’s manager, Sébastien Collin, said in his acceptance speech at Toronto’s Massey Hall, adding: “This artistic project is the result of a lifetime of refinement, collaboration, a drive to push beyond one’s limits, and a refusal to be confined by any established framework.”
Last year, the Polaris Music Prize went to Yves Jarvis for All Cylinders.
A day after announcing her new song, ‘Patient Zero’, Taylor Swift has revealed it’s part of The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore. Out Friday (September 25), the newly expanded edition of the pop star’s 2025 album features four new songs. Check out its full tracklist and cover art below.
“About a year ago, you guys did a truly unfathomable thing. Something that completely blew my mind…,” Swift wrote on social media. “You gave The Life of a Showgirl the biggest first week for an album in history. I took a trip to Sweden to celebrate with Max and Shellback, my two collaborators on this album. Really we just wanted to reflect and take in how grateful we were for the moment we were in, but there was a studio there and we did what we do when we feel anything at all: We wrote more songs. I hope you love them, because they were born out of pure gratitude for your exuberance for and celebration of the album we made.”
Earlier this year, Swift released ‘I Knew It, I Knew You’, her original song for Toy Story 5.
The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore Cover Artwork:
The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore Tracklist:
1. The Fate of Ophelia
2. Elizabeth Taylor
3. Opalite
4. Father Figure
5. Eldest Daughter
6. Ruin the Friendship
7. Actually Romantic
8. Wi$h Li$t
9. Wood
10. Cancelled!
11. Honey
12. The Life of a Showgirl [feat. Sabrina Carpenter]
13. Patient Zero
14. Cleveland!
15. Pink Clouding
16. Babylon
Miley Cyrus’ last couple of albums have hinted at her growing disinterest in the pop industry’s machinations. Following the mainstream success-seeking overreach of Endless Summer Vacation, she thwarted expectations with 2025’s Something Beautiful, a psychedelic odyssey a little too ambitious for its own good. She seems to remain in a similar lane on Bass Persuades, her first LP billed simply as Miley, which keeps some of the same collaborators – producer Kid Harpoon, fiancé Maxx Morando, and, in a refreshingly more pronounced role than its predecessor, experimentalists Model/Actriz – while framing itself as a gnarlier, throbbing dance record. Instead of being more focused, though, Cyrus’ approach is disappointingly non-committal, rendering Bass Persuades an album of diminishing returns, if one that gets surprisingly more personal the further it veers off course. It’s not quite the “extremely experimental” record she promised fans in the wake of Something Beautiful, but it contains glimpses of it.
1. Bass Persuades
The opening title track positions Bass Persuades as Miley Cyrus’ MAYHEM, though Gaga never had to officially drop “Lady” off her moniker; mononymity should be a natural marker of pop icon status, not just the harbinger of a new era. What ‘Bass Persuades’ risks in its argument for dancefloor euphoria (“I don’t want to change your mind”) is sounding too anonymous, but aimed as it is at a young generation for whom that kind of movement can feel alien, its cold, industrial throb feels apt. The Model/Actriz remix tucked at the end executes the job much better, though, making the whole album feel short on ideas.
2. Different Religion [feat. Model/Actriz]
The Brooklyn noise rockers get a proper moment in the spotlight on ‘Different Religion’, by far the strongest cut on the album. Hitting the perfect intersection of domestic bliss and nocturnal thrill-seeking, it should have given the record direction, not just an early teaser that turned out to be something of a feint. “My god’s a hot boy,” Cyrus darkly intones, and he finds form in Model/Actriz frontman Cole Haden, who savours the attention. It heralds the promise of a new beginning that only begins to dissipate after this point.
3. Let’s Get Married
I could never pretend to be an unbiased critic, but personal circumstances certainly factor into my enjoyment of ‘Let’s Get Married’, released as it was the week before my own wedding. It’s one of Cyrus’ most instantly convincing love songs, evoking a gentle weariness that betrays the fact that, yes, this wouldn’t be her first marriage, but also a sweet conviction that makes her veil-clad vision sound totally uncomplicated; a simplicity that hits home when getting married is only a hazy idea, and, I have to say, when it’s so close to becoming a reality that no amount of stress could ruin it.
4. Orbit
After the first couple of tracks, it becomes clear the album’s middle stretch is going to be midtempo and ballad-heavy, and ‘Orbit’ channels the singer’s cosmic yearning with a mix of piano and celestial electronics; you have to assume Model/Actriz are responsible for the grubby low end that brushes against Sara Kawai’s harp. There’s a lot more telling than showing: “When you look at me, it’s primal/ When you wave to me, it’s tidal/ And the gravity is vital, else I’d float away.” Cyrus has already proven as much, but the track falls flat before it lifts off, more painfully than playfully sincere.
5. Aftermath
The dance beat that snakes its way through is a welcome surprise, giving this post-breakup song a sense of kinetic vulnerability. Cyrus’ language is more visceral, too: “You bathe in the sweat/ You mouth like a straw/ You’re callous but soft/ You trace every flaw,” she sings amidst a flurry of electronics, having just expressed her distaste for “poets being profound.” It’s sad in the least dispiriting way possible, which is enough to pick the album’s momentum back up.
6. REDLIGHTS
With its disco-country pomp and ostentatious instrumentation, ‘REDLIGHTS’ is a solid song that sounds entirely out of place on Bass Persuades. Had it been called Strings Persuade, maybe.
7. Neon Signs [feat. Andrew Wyatt of Miike Snow]
Unlike the other collaboration on the record, ‘Neon Signs’ is more baffling than it is sultry; it trades in the ABBA-indebted synthpop of its predecessor yet muddles things further. The line “Some people say I’m creepy, but others think I’m just right” is unfortunately the most memorable thing about it.
8. Innocent Ways
The album finally returns to a defiant mix of throbbing dance-pop and self-confrontational lyrics, this time addressing a familial crisis presumably involving her younger sister, Noah. Even if the beat isn’t as exhilarating as ‘Different Religion’, the writing keeps it engaging: “I kinda caved when I know better/ I should’ve never sent that letter/ But I was wired and in my feelings,” she admits.
9. Snow
As a closer, ‘Snow’ feels less like an exciting glimpse of Cyrus’ next phase than a retread of Something Beautiful, with its steady build and breathless romanticism. Though it begins as a forgettable acoustic ballad, it turns out to be a satisfying slow-burn that melts the album’s icy exterior more than any previous ballad. Track to track, it may be hard to gauge the temperature on Bass Persuades, but it ends on just the right note.
Life, artist Xiuzhuo Zhou ponders, may be no more than a fleeting moment and yet in our limited span meaning accrues in temporarily bestowed states, affected by the way in which we inhabit and observe our surroundings.
Across his photographic practice, Zhou has frequently sought to uncover the after-spirit of liminal ‘non-spaces’. How humans ascribe meaning to the wider world and how time and absence carries that meaning away. In vacant buildings, devoid of life, topophilic associations allow us to see more than what meets the eye. Internal architectures take up posts in hollowed halls, pregnant with sentimental interludes, faces and smells. When the body departs, the space remains, revealing a void that cannot be occupied.
Installation view of ‘The Same Earth (2025)’, Courtesy of the artist.
In his latest work, Zhou focuses on the fleeting and imperceptible transition between existence and disappearance. The photographic work, The Same Earth (2025) is a vanitas trilogy of sorts, presenting us with successional images of animal bodies that pass from life into death and decay. The living body of a lamb points to a present moment as it unfolds, the emaciated carcass to a past from which there is no return. Though temporally different, separated into discrete points, Zhou’s work embodies the kind of suspended time that Hiroshi Sugimoto achieves in his long exposure shots of theatres and seascapes. The instantaneous logic of the camera is stretched out, creating images that are silent, absent and brooding, and disclose an intent to preserve unresolved states of ephemerality.
Installation view of ‘The Same Earth (2025)’, Courtesy of the artist.
In his final book, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1980), Roland Barthes identifies the ‘noeme’ or essential nature of photography that sets it apart from painting and spoken word; that it is, ultimately, an emanation of a past reality. The photograph certifies that the thing was actually, physically there in front of the lens at one moment. In placing the planes of and death in close proximity, Zhou rouses the temporal vertigo that Barthes expounds upon, in simultaneously having viewed an image lost to time and one that anticipates a future the viewer can already predict. Perhaps the fate of the lamb, soft and sunned, bearing the fleshy pinks of its ear and tongue, is not, in fact, to expire alone amidst the rubble like its visual counterparts. Perhaps another death awaits. But still, death will come. Absence amplifies presence. The “catastrophe” as Barthes calls it, is already logically contained within the animal and too within the photographic moment.
Angela Autumn is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter who grew up in the Appalachian region of western Pennsylvania. She started playing guitar and banjo at 19, and the way she flits between the two instruments in her music both blends and blurs the line between its Appalachian and modern folk influences. Her first full-length album, Frontiers Woman, came out in 2021, followed by the 2023 EP Cowboy Jack Clementine. Her latest album, Believer, finds her reuniting with Isaiah Beard, who had already worked on ‘Electric Lizard’, the penultimate track that became a viral hit before its inclusion on the album. Taking shape in the wake of heartbreak, the record was written across the South and Appalachia: in a treehouse outside Asheville, in the Tennessee woods, and in an empty warehouse near Chattanooga. Throughout it, Autumn marries ample restlessness and nimble restraint in her search for a kind of light: “For a guarantee of sunshine, I got the blues,” she sings on ‘My Alchemy’, in a voice that’s alternately airy, warm, and gutsy. But she puts faith in the idea that the blues – like any other genre or place she may choose to briefly inhabit – is somewhere you can store memories for all time, even before they get to live inside you.
We caught up with Angela Autumn for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about writing on tour, her upbringing, recording Believer, and more.
I was reading an older interview where you mentioned your producer telling you, “You can always sing it differently live,” in the process of making Believer. Now that the record is out, do you feel inclined to follow that impulse and switch things up vocally and musically in a live setting?
Yeah, absolutely. I have been reworking some of the older songs in my set and playing around with speaking the words in a conversational way, because those songs have been in the set forever. Some of my songs, like ‘Dancer’ and ‘Electric Lizard’, have always been very prominent in my live set, so I’ve been playing with those ones more. It feels like I can kind of rest and be more experimental and be an actor in that sense. But with songs like ‘Bleach Bugs’, I didn’t really perform it until now, so it’s very fresh, and I just enjoy performing it like the record because it feels like a flavor saver.
I know you wrote parts of the record on tour, too. How do you feel that the sounds and the places you were exposed to bled into the core landscape of the album?
Yeah, it started in 2025 with Pickathon out in Oregon. I’ve been on this constant tour and I’ve been writing the whole time, so it feels like Believer is the first segment of my journey, and it’s guiding my next step. I’m definitely excited to go back to North Carolina, where I wrote most of these songs. I just love these places so much – I love North Carolina, I love the South, and I love the West, especially Oregon and California. I can only hope that the songs will bring me back to those places and that I’m able to share more about them on the next record. It’s really powerful to be able to experience and write about these places that I’ve been, and only because I’m a touring musician have I seen all these different spots. It’s really not something I think a normal job would ever afford.
I also think about the very specific places where you ended up writing, like the treehouse and the warehouse. Since smell is something that comes up on the record a few times, I’m curious how senses are maybe activated when you remember some of those spots.
Well, I was cold. Just seeking warmth, and seeking a source of some kind. Sometimes in the warehouse area where we were writing, I was sleeping on the floor on some sort of mattress pad, waking up in the morning, having coffee, and getting ready to track the songs and just feel it out. But when I was in the treehouse, it was so cold. There was no heat and no running water, and I was like, “This is going to be great, this is going to be so comfortable,” and it ended up being the opposite. I went outside in the morning to look at the stars, and they were so bright – the brightest I had ever seen. I felt so close to the cosmos and so close to whatever source I was looking for to help me along my path to capture these songs and capture the moment. I feel like the dark and the cold have always been really inspiring to me, because then I’m looking for a light. It sounds very cheesy and metaphorical, but it’s like looking for a fire in the dark of the winte sort of thing.
Do the songs help you tap into that in a live setting, or do you need to find other ways to get into that headspace?
I do think it’s important to visualize while having a performance – I visualize things that are different for each song. For a song like ‘Roving Jewel’, I visualize middle America and Arkansas when I’m playing and performing it, but for a song like ‘Believer’, I visualize Nashville. I’m very visual in my mind, so I think channeling that out through the words and through the playing is what keeps me centered during the performance. You can’t be thinking, “How’s the audience feeling?” It’s your job to paint a picture for them through the words and through the instrument and orchestrate the energy in the end a little bit.
How do you visually remember the first time you performed to a live audience? Is that an image that has stuck with you in a vivid way?
Performance was like the first drug I ever took, and when I took that drug, I could never go back to not performing. But now, I don’t think the same thing that attracted me to performing is what keeps me doing it. I don’t get off stage and am like, “Oh my god, that was the most…” I’m just like, “This is my job.” But obviously, 18 years have transpired since I stepped on stage with a guitar, and it’s just a magical thing. I think when I first started – I was like 12 or something – I was like, “This is magic. How is it that I didn’t mess up that entire song?” It’s really just mind-blowing. So, gaining confidence, and for so many years just doggedly doing it – a lot of time has passed.
And in the middle of that, you moved to Nashville. How many years has it been?
It’s been like seven or eight years. I’m very grateful for the level of experience I had when I got here, but I really cringe sometimes looking back at who I was as a performer, even three years ago. I think last year was when things really clicked for me, especially out at Pickathon when I had a trio of bass, drums, and electric guitar. That was when everything started to feel really, really good.
What do you remember about that moment?
I just remember playing some banjo parts on my electric really well, and my drummer was playing really fast. I was like, “I don’t know if I can keep up,” because it was kind of technically difficult stuff, and it just felt really cool to be plugged into an amp. I was always an acoustic performer and player, and the electric has been so fun. It’s been incredible, and things have really become a lot more exciting since then. Coming to Nashville, you’re definitely going to be surrounded by really stellar professionals. If you’re used to playing with folks who are half-assing it, even if you’re hyper-talented, it’s not going to click in a live setting. This year has also had a lot of solo acoustic performances in between, and that can be a huge, jarring shift – being naked versus having your band, standing there with just the guitar and needing to fill all of that space. But I still love to do that, too.
Growing up, I know that you were exposed to different kinds of music in a communal way, like in church. I’m curious when it became more of a private thing for you, and how you nurture that side that loves the communal aspect of it, but also the privacy of songwriting as its own ritual.
Well, I have an anecdote about this. But I can also just share that I am very serious and protective over my own writing space. I think the difference is, I’ve never been in a band or anything like that, so it’s just always kind of been my own project. I love to collaborate in the right place and the right time and get inspired by other folks. Obviously, we need the creative energy of others and witnessing them to have any desire to be inspired. I do feel that I need to see music live that I enjoy and that is inspiring in order to create. I’m not saying to create in a vacuum – that’s just a recipe for disaster. Don’t do that. I don’t think people should lock themselves away. But some people do – I read recently that Grimes locked herself away when she was making Oblivion. I also read an interview with another artist that you did, where he’s like, “I wrote in this same room.”
Which one?
Oh, Greg Mendez. And I’m like, “I write on the road.” My car is my spot, and I’m just driving. But it works for some people.
What’s the anecdote?
I took choir as a young person because we had to choose if we wanted to be in choir or band, and then choir or art. So I chose choir. And my chorus teacher, she loved me. She gave me all of the solo things, and she was like, “You’re my favorite.” I remember I performed during Guitar Day, which was when everyone who played guitar would perform to the school. And after that, she didn’t talk to me. She gave me the cold shoulder. I was 12 or 13 at the time, and I think it’s just that when you’re different, you’re different, and you’re doing your own thing. That’s kind of how I see that. It was definitely a big trauma. I was like, “Oh my god, she doesn’t approve of me playing guitar music.” She’s just like, “No, that’s not us, that’s not me, therefore you are not anything to me anymore.”
You talked about being protective of your writing space. I know you tracked more than half of the songs in a few hours, and then you spent weeks overdubbing and adding textures. In that production phase of refining and adding things in, did you feel protective or conscious of preserving the immediacy and attitude of the original songs?
I felt entirely safe working with who I worked with, so the strategy was to keep the live vocals from those six songs. So everything from those six songs – a song like ‘Bleach Bugs’ or ‘Mountain Stream’ – all of those core vocals are live, and that was enough for me. I was like, “I’m happy with it, so whatever we add to this is just fun.” I think with a good producer, you shouldn’t have to feel protective over your creation, because you know they have enough respect to not step on what you’ve done. But if you’re in the production process and someone starts to direct how you’re singing, change the delivery, mess with the flow of the song, or tell you how to do something, to me that is just a red flag.
Part of it is the singing itself, and then part of it is how you treat the vocal, or how many vocal tracks you add. I know you double-tracked for a few songs, and I feel like the choice to not do that is just as intentional, like on ‘I Don’t Think About You at All’; the reverb is used very sparingly and pointedly on that song. Were the vocal effects and layering something you went back and forth with a lot?
No, it’s like a relationship. You know how in a relationship, you’re like, “What, should we do this? Should we go here? Should we do this? Should we do this?” And then at a certain point, you’re like, “Do I even want to be here with this person if it’s going to take so much?” It’s like a breeze with Isaiah. He would just say, “Can you go over this? Would you be down to double this?” And he just does it. I feel like that’s such a blessing to have with a producer, and that wasn’t intentional from me – that was Isaiah. I don’t know how he recorded my banjo and vocal for ‘I Don’t Think About You at All’, but he did, and I just played them at the same time. I don’t know how he even had access to one over the other, because they were miked right beside each other. Producers always complain, like, “Can we please overdub the vocal?” But I feel like he understood that I wanted to do them together.
What did you learn about your voice in making this record? Not just in recording, but even in writing these songs and carving out melodies for them. How did you have fun exploring your voice?
Well, on this record, I hear a lot of my “fairy voice,” which is just this high and lonesome, nasally, kind of twangy, girlish voice. But I also hear it with what I’m saying in the lyricism being a little bit darker and occult. So I think there’s a nice contrast between the vocal style that I’ve been building for years – the delivery being soft and kind of sweet – and the words being heavier, and the guitar being heavier, playing with that contrast. As opposed to my previous works, where I feel like they were more on the same plane – just country guitar, country vocals. On this one, there’s definitely more of a gap forming.
Thinking about the structure of the record, it sounds to me like escaping into nature and getting more into this darker, stranger territory around the middle stretch – from ‘Mountain Stream’ to ‘Sage Bundle’ to ‘Bleach Bugs’.
Yeah, it does feel like they represent a no-man’s-land, or a journey, a venture. Whereas ‘I Don’t Think About You at All’ and ‘My Alchemy’ were both written in my bedroom in Nashville, so I think that’s very true. I think that’s very clear – it kind of comes full circle back to the self, reflecting at home and wondering what’s next, and then the middle is more about getting lost, or being in the dark.
‘My Alchemy’ makes sense now that you mention that. It does feel like it’s really at home in that sense, and almost resolves the question of the title track.
I love that you connect ‘My Alchemy’ to ‘Believer’, because to me, they’re from such polar opposite times of my life. But the interesting thing is, I feel like ‘My Alchemy’ is an answer for me, because I was struggling a lot with finding the answers when I was writing ‘Believer’ and just feeling ungrounded. Listening to ‘My Alchemy’ feels almost like a future, higher self talking. I don’t know if it’s necessarily me.
Belief can feel like such an abstract concept, but I feel like “power of my alchemy” narrows it down a little bit. That’s how it feels like an answer to me.
Yeah, it brings it down to just being by yourself, cooking food or smoking weed on your own, which I think a lot of people can relate to. Just these containers for small revelations to happen, you know? We’re going into the winter months and people start to spend more time by themselves processing things that have happened. It makes sense that ‘My Alchemy’ closes the record because it was written in the beginning of the fall, the autumn time, taking the prisoners and dragging them back into the woods.
On ‘Garbage’, you describe home as being “among the concrete, crooked fences.” What else comes to mind when you think about home?
Man, I’ve had so many homes over the last several years. I think what I’ve been doing is gathering ideas of home for myself – different ideas of home. I come from a very traditional, small community, and if my own idea of home had never shifted, I would not have been able to create a structure for this. I do believe that our life can be like a rotation, and then you get back to where you started. And that’s acceptance, you know? I don’t reject where I’m from. I love my home, but I’m also in acceptance that that’s not where I’m meant to be. I’m not meant to be in my hometown, seeing the same things over and over and over again. But in the adventure of discovery, it can get repetitive, actually. Just seeing new places can be its own level of hell and repetition. So you do have to settle into acceptance with home eventually – everyone kind of has to, or else you’re just a wild Anthony Bourdain for the rest of your life.
I was thinking about the line, “Your face is covered with clouds” in relation to the album cover, and it may be a stretch to make any connections to the South, but I wondering if there was something there about a cloudiness of expression, or just as a blurry mood that resonates with your idea of the record.
You know, I’m just a person who goes on dates and has relationships, and it was just about a specific person. But that theme is about sobriety and just witnessing what not being entirely sober can do. I think there are a lot of different ways to sedate yourself with everything that’s going on. I’m not saying the South is more sedated than other places, but they are definitely more chill down here. I mean, it’s just slower. I’m from the East Coast, so yeah, there are reflections between what I see in my relationships and the flow of the South. That’s kind of why in the song I say, “This is not my home,” because I get that people might have adapted to living here in their own way, but it’s not going to be my home. I might live here, but I don’t have to turn away from reality in the way that I saw other people turning away from their reality. I just don’t want to. I would rather be clear and open to different things, and it can be frustrating when others don’t want to see what you’re trying to show them, but whatever, to each his own.
I think one thing that’s happened recently is accepting that I have my own limitations that come with being somebody that records and releases music, and that I can’t possibly pretend like I don’t make my own mistakes and fumbles in the world. I can’t ever pretend that, and I think I do a good job with my music of balancing my own self-reflection and self-awareness with what I see in others. Maybe what I’m seeing is just reflections of my own inner self, which is all I could hope to show through my music anyway.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
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For Black women, hair has long been more than a question of appearance. It can reflect identity, creativity, culture, mood, and personal style, while also requiring thoughtful care and protection. That is one reason versatility matters so much in Black hair and beauty. The ability to move between textures, lengths, shapes, and styling methods allows women to express different sides of themselves without being limited to a single look.
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Beauty trends may change from season to season, but personal expression remains at the heart of hairstyling. A sleek straight look can create a completely different impression from defined curls, a short cut, or a voluminous textured style.
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Texture plays a significant role in the way a hairstyle looks and feels. Curly, coily, wavy, and straight textures can each create a different visual effect, and the availability of different styling options makes it easier to explore those differences.
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Ninety seconds. That is roughly how long Nazli Donmez has to make a stranger stop scrolling and pay attention to a film they have never heard of. As a theatrical advertising producer currently working at a Los Angeles entertainment marketing agency, she leads the creative process behind film and television trailers, teasers, and marketing campaigns. Over the past five years, that work has put her name behind campaigns for some of the most talked-about titles in film and television, from the fourteen-time Emmy-winning series Widow’s Bay to the Palme d’Or and Best Picture winner Anora, alongside blockbuster campaigns for titles including Marvel Studios’ Fantastic Four: First Steps and DC Studios’ Superman.
Building the first spark
Compression is the whole job. “My job is to lead the creative engine that turns a film, show, or campaign into an unmissable event,” Donmez says. She takes a two-hour movie, sometimes a full season, and pulls out a ninety-second arc that still has its own beginning, middle, and gut-punch of an end. The rhythm of a cut, the exact words in a tagline, where the music swells before a single line of dialogue is spoken: all of it gets decided here, long before an audience ever buys a ticket.
Take Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay, a horror-comedy about a small island town hiding a deadly secret. Donmez worked on all three official teasers, and the show went on to win fourteen Emmys. She has also touched campaigns for Anora, the Palme d’Or and Best Picture winner, and One Battle After Another, which swept six Academy Awards, plus All of a Sudden, where Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto shared a Best Actress win at Cannes. She was a part of the group that picked up a Grand CLIO Award, advertising’s top honor, for the trailer behind A24’s Problemista, and a Golden Trailer Award for Focus Features’ Midwinter Break.
Adapting one message for many markets
Not everything travels. A joke built on wordplay rarely survives translation. Neither does a needle drop tied to a very specific American cultural moment, or a punchline that only lands if you already know the actor delivering it. Donmez spends real time on what she calls regional adaptation: adjusting pacing, voiceovers, sometimes the graphics themselves, market by market, while the core creative idea stays exactly the same wherever the trailer ends up airing. A single campaign can move through a dozen cuts before release, each one passing between editors, sound mixers, localized dubbing houses, and the legal teams clearing music rights territory by territory, all on a release calendar the studio sets and nobody moves.
She traces the instinct back to where she grew up. She studied in Istanbul first, then went to film school in Paris, then earned a business and communication degree at Chapman University in California, with minors in journalism and Italian, followed by an MBA. “Crossing Turkish, French, Italian, and American cultures built cross-cultural fluency,” is how she puts it, and that fluency turned out to matter more in a trailer bay than it ever did in a classroom. Early on, she had to make the case that coming at the industry sideways, as an outsider, was worth something. Now it is just how she works.
Building a career through disruption
She did not plan any of this. Donmez spent years in arts and events management before trailers, producing international art fairs and festivals, the kind of work that unfolds in a room full of actual people. Then the pandemic hit, and the live events she had built her career around largely stopped happening. Budgets tightened, and the ones that survived moved online or got pushed back indefinitely. Somewhere in that mess, she moved into creative project management for brands and studios, and from there into producing the teasers and trailers that now carry her name.
She still sits as a jury member for the Los Angeles Diversity Film Festival. For a while she wondered if festival work and studio marketing were pulling her in two directions at once. They were not. The instinct she uses running arts events and festivals like the Bombay Beach Biennale is the same one she brings to a trailer cut.
What comes next
“I want to continue building my career at the intersection of film and TV advertising, creating collaborative experiences that unite cross-disciplinary creatives and open doors for the next generation,” she says. She also wants to make her own films eventually, and finish the short story collection she has been chipping away at for years, mostly on planes and between jobs.
“What consistently inspires me on this path is the ability to bridge creative vision with strategic execution, shaping that first moment of interaction between a film or show and its audience, and creating a world for them to experience intrigue, desire and interest for what’s to come,” she says. That is how she treats a stalled campaign or a career pivot too: as a chance to evolve, explore, and find a new angle on the same problem.
