Teen Suicide has unveiled two new songs from his forthcoming LP honeybee table at the butterfly feast. They’re called ‘i will always be in love you (final)’ and ‘new strategies for telemarketing through precognitive dreams’, and you can listen to them below.
Teen Suicide’s new album will be released next Friday, August 26 via Run for Cover. The 16-track effort features the previously shared singles ‘death wish’, ‘get high, breathe underwater (3#)’, and ‘coyote (2015-2021)’.
Rat Tally is the project of singer-songwriter Addy Harris, who is based in Chicago but also has roots in Boston and Los Angeles. After emerging in 2019 with her self-released When You Wake Up EP, Harris returned in January 2021 with the single ‘Shrug’ and the announcement of her signing to 6131 Records, which has launched artists such as Julien Baker and Katie Malco. On Friday, the label released Rat Tally’s debut full-length, In My Car, which exists in a similar lane of pensive indie rock but also highlights Harris’ unique knack for melody and evocative lyricism. Produced by Max Grazier, the album feels equally lived-in and reflective, speaking in metaphor as much as it addresses its subjects directly. The person Harris confronts more than anyone is herself: ‘Longshot’ opens the record with the image of her returning from a show, only to stare at the wall and “catch my thoughts but they’re all multiplying/ Like dust kicked off from the floor/ They spiral out and under the door/ Then float up and start to stick to the ceiling.” They never really stop spinning, but Harris’ vision is both sharp and wide-reaching as she untangles them.
We caught up with Addy Harris for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about the places she’s lived, her relationship to songwriting, the experiences that informed In My Car, and more.
You reference many of the cities you’ve lived in on the album: Chicago, Boston, LA, Colorado. Can you talk about what each of these places means to you, and how they all relate to your idea of home?
I moved around a lot growing up, so I lived in a lot of those places with my family. Boston, that’s where I went to school and met the majority of my friends and the people that I love. And Colorado, I went to high school in Denver. And LA is where I moved after school. I lived there for a couple years, and I hated it. But in general, the places that I’ve lived and the people that I’ve met there have really shaped me. I’ve done a lot of growing in each of those places and growing in different ways, and they’re all special to me.
I think I really built myself and built my life in Boston, and moving to LA was a really big life decision. I wasn’t prepared, I think, for being so far away from my support system – not just friends, but family. And while I was living there, COVID happened. I had only been there for like a year and a half and then the pandemic hit, so it was a very solitary experience. I was really depressed. From moving around so much, I’d say that home is wherever my family is, wherever my friends are. And it was really hard for me in LA to create a home for myself when those people weren’t around.
‘Mount Auburn Cemetery’, at first, seems more purely descriptive than some of the other songs, but then it naturally turns into something deeply personal. What time in your life are you referring to there?
I wrote that song while I was in LA. I’m kind of referring to just my time in Boston, and that time in your life where you’re a young adult, and there’s this hope that even if you’re not your happiest now, you have your whole life ahead of you. And you’re still kind of holding on to that hope, and you still have this freedom to choose who you want to be. I love that song. Like you said, it’s very purely descriptive. I feel like I’m really trying to highlight the place and not just reference it. I’m kind of paying my respects to it, I think, in a way.
I already knew I wanted to ask you about this song, and then I went on Twitter and I saw that the official account for Mount Auburn Cemetery shared it?
I know! [laughs] They just tweeted about it. I was like, “How would they even know?” It was just great. Like, who works there who could possibly know that this song exists? But that was really special. It felt better than getting a Pitchfork review.
I was really struck by the line, “We’d climb the tower and look from the top/ Just like how I still feel myself at twenty climbing through me.” I don’t think this feeling of climbing through yourself ever goes away as you grow up, but that’s quite a romantic and poetic way of putting it.
Yeah, I love that. That’s one of my favourite lines on the whole album. Before you’re really an adult, I thought getting older was going to be sort of this natural process where I just suddenly feel like an adult at a certain point. And that’s just not the way it is. We’re still ourselves, all those different ages.
I feel like there’s a misconception that our generation tends to romanticize sadness or this searching for self, but there are moments on this album that are just raw in their honesty, like ‘Prettier’ and ‘Phone’. You’re just portraying your experience – there’s nothing romantic about it, necessarily. But listening to ‘Prettier’, I wonder if it’s maybe ingrained in us to aestheticize melancholy as something that can be not just beautiful, but beautifying.
Yeah. I hope that the songs came off honest, very much about the experience. I’m really constantly concerned about romanticizing those kinds of things and romanticizing depression. I think it can be exploitative and it can become dangerous to do those things. But just from my experience, you find yourself more comfortable being depressed than to push through it. I think it does really become a part of you, and romanticizing that makes it easier sometimes. But I really tried to be careful, and make it more nostalgic and melancholy than romanticizing being depressed.
Do you think that’s what drew you to songwriting in the first place, this desire to lay those feelings down? What has the relationship between writing and mental health been like for you?
I feel like it’s the only place that I can be completely honest, both to whoever’s listening and to myself. I think that especially through writing this album, I’ve worked through a lot of shit. [laughs] It’s my way of looking back on things and reflecting and trying to make sense of it. And for whatever reason, sometimes saying things through a song is easier than saying them outright to someone, or even your therapist. I mean, I’d say the reason I started and the reason I do it is for mental health purposes.
Over time, have you found that it’s sometimes important to separate those things?
I think it’s a balance now. Because as I got older, and especially over the past few years, songwriting, the art of it, is something that fascinates me and something that I’m really passionate about. I think there needs to be a healthy distance, but for now, I am sort of just writing about my own experience.
When did you realize songwriting was something you were passionate about?
I think in college, probably – I just was exposed to a lot more music than I had ever listened to, different genres. And just seeing the ways that other people and my friends were passionate about music and their crafts, I really started to dig into what I thought made a good song and the songs that I love, all the parts of it. Especially with lyric writing and melody writing – I could talk about that all day. But I definitely feel like I became more of a writer then.
What kind of things excite you about lyric writing and melody writing right now?
I’m really into literary devices. I’m really into alliteration, I think it’s very present on the album. I’m really into different kinds of rhyme, I really love internal rhyme and manipulating those things to kind of stray a little bit away from traditional rhyme schemes. But those things are the things that make people remember a song or remember lyrics, and they don’t even know it, you know? I just think it’s cool.
When you’re listening to music, do you tend to pay close attention and analyze those elements?
Yeah, I’m a repeat listener. I’ll listen to a song a million times if I like it. And through that, through listening to a song over and over again, I’ll start to analyze lyrics. I mean, I’m not highlighting stuff. [laughs] But there are songs and lines and the way that people rhyme that I try to make note of, to see if I could use it in something.
There are a lot of songs on In My Car that touch on mental health and how it can complicate romantic relationships, but you also mention your friends and your family, your sister specifically. I feel like those people are kind of at the periphery of the album, but you can feel their presence. Do you know how they feel about the album? Did you feel the need to reach out to anyone before including them?
Yeah, a lot of my friends, especially my sister, have heard a lot of those songs before they came out. I don’t know, they seem to like it, I think. [laughs] My sister really loves ‘Prettier’, and she loves ‘Phone’, obviously, because she’s in it. But there are people who I’ve written those songs about that, you know, aren’t the nicest songs, but we’ve had conversations about it. And I think, to them, it’s still special, that we had a friendship or a relationship and parts of it are encapsulated in certain songs. It’s nice to get those blessings from people.
Was that a new thing for you, to have those conversations?
Yeah. It was new. It’s always nerve-racking, you know? Because obviously, when you’re writing from your own experience, I think other people are always involved. But the same way that I wrote those songs to reflect, I think other people might relate to them too. But overall, it went well. There’s no hard feelings.
The song ‘Phone’ relates to what you were saying earlier about your experience being in LA during the pandemic. If you’re comfortable sharing, how do personally stay close to the people care about that may be physically distant – or if there’s any kind of barrier, be it physical or not?
I mean, so many of my friendships are long-distance now. And obviously, just utilizing the tools that we do have, like FaceTime and texting or whatever. But I think the biggest thing that I learned was sometimes, like in ‘Phone’, for example, it feels like you’re kind of just sitting there and nobody is contacting you, and it feels like nobody cares. And that people are so far away that you’re not really part of each other’s lives anymore. And your first instinct is to just feel like shit about yourself, you know? But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that if you’re feeling that way, you can be the one to reach out. You don’t have to wait for people. Because there’s a good chance they’re feeling the same thing. I think everyone over the past couple years has experienced some really intense isolation, and sometimes it’s hard to get past that first feeling of anxiety to reach out to people. But I try to do the best I can. Sometimes there’s also friends that you don’t speak to for a really long time, but it doesn’t matter and you can talk a year later and it’s totally normal. But you have to put in an effort into relationships, especially the long distance ones – try to reach out.
The production on the album is generally pretty spare, but there are these beautiful flourishes that stood out to me, like the strings that rush in when you sing “It reminds me of a fever” on the title track or the spacey synth sound on ‘Looking for You’. Even the guest vocals on the album feel very deliberate in their placement. How intentional were you about these kinds of choices?
For certain songs, it was more deliberate. ‘Looking for You’ was an interesting song, because it was the only song that we recorded that we didn’t have a demo of any production and kind of built it while we’re recording it. But the strings, for example – I play the cello, so I was able to write all the string parts, and those were very deliberate. I really tried, especially with ‘In My Car’, I tried to highlight a lot of those lines with strings. And in ‘Prettier’, too. I love those string parts, I’m really proud of that. And Max, my producer, does so much on the record. But it’s all pretty calculated. I’d say we do use it sparingly, only to really highlight lines in a song. I didn’t want it to sound overproduced. I was really worried about ‘Mount Auburn Cemetary’, actually, the balance of having nature sounds and the fact that there’s no drums – it is kind of stripped-down, I didn’t want it to be overproduced, but I wanted there to be other elements to kind of put you in that world.
What’s the most valuable lesson you feel you’ve learned over the past couple of years?
It’s okay to fail, in whatever way that may be. Failing in terms of showing up for yourself or for other people. It’s okay to feel like you made the wrong decision, and to change it. And also, to take accountability for any shitty behaviour or the way that you treated people – the way that I treated people. I keep saying that writing this album and reflecting on everything kind of made me a better person. But yeah, it’s okay to fail. You can try again – or do something different.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Rat Tally’s In My Car is out now via 6131 Records.
Caribou’s Dan Snaith has shared his latest single under the Daphni alias, ‘Mania’. It’s taken from the upcoming album Cherry, which includes the previously released singles ‘Cherry’, ‘Cloudy’, and ‘Clavicle’. Check out a video for it below.
Cherry, the first Daphni album in five years, is set to arrive on October 7 via Snaith’s own Jiaolong label.
Sophie Jamieson has announced her debut album, Choosing, which will arrive on December 2 via Bella Union, her new label home. To mark the announcement, the London-based singer-songwriter has shared a video for the lead single ‘Sink’. Check it out below and scroll down for the album cover, tracklist, and Jamieson’s upcoming tour dates.
“This song began as a love letter to alcohol, written from the cusp of falling into addiction,” Jamieson said of ‘Sink’ in a press release. “I had begun to trust this tool but I could feel it turning on me, like a bad friend. I knew I was close to losing control over it, and realised that I had to choose whether to fall in or not. This song exists at the brink of choice: whether to abandon yourself, or whether to make the colossal effort to rescue yourself. The video, like the song, approaches the edge – the tantalising mystery and comfort of it, the openness of possibility and also the quiet knowledge of the dead end. The shoreline is that edge: beautiful, eerie, infinite, and empty.”
Produced by longtime collaborator Steph Marziano, Choosing follows Jamieson’s 2020 EPs Hammer and Release. “The title of this album is so important,” she explained. “Without it, this might sound like another record about self-destruction and pain, but at heart, it’s about hope, and finding strength. It’s about finding the light at the end of the tunnel, and crawling towards it.”
Check out our Artist Spotlight interview with Sophie Jamieson.
Choosing Cover Artwork:
Choosing Tracklist:
1. Addition
2. Crystal
3. Downpour
4. Sink
5. Fill
6. Empties
7. Runner
8. Violence
9. Boundary
10. Who Will I Be
11. Long Play
Sophie Jamieson 2022 Tour Dates:
Aug 17 – Eat Your Own Ears Recommends – Shacklewell Arms, London
Aug 20 – Green Man Festival
Aug 24 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Aug 25 – Cyprus Avenue, Cork ^
Aug 26 – Roisin Dubh, Galway ^
Aug 27 – Dolans Warehouse, Limerick ^
Aug 28 – Workmans Club, Dublin ^
Aug 29 – Bangor Castle Walled Garden, Bangor ^
Aug 31 – Brewery Arts, Kendal ^
Sep 1 – The District, Liverpool ^
Sep 2 – End Of The Road Festival
Sep 6 – Glee Club, Birmingham ^
Sep 7 – The Horn, St Albans ^
Sep 8 – St Pancras Old Church, London @
Sep 9 – The Goods Shed, Stroud ^
Sep 10 – Brighton & Hove Folk Festival, Brighton
Sep 11 – Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff ^
Sep 13 – The Exchange, Bristol ^
Sep 14 – The Joiners, Southampton ^
*with Ezra Furman
^ with Willy Mason
@ with Jana Horn
Bedford four-piece Dog Race have released their debut single, ‘Terror’. Jessica Winter (Pregoblin, Jazmin Bean) produced the track, which was mixed by Jon McMullen (Wet Leg, The Comet Is Coming). Listen to it below.
“‘Terror’ was written during a time of DPDR and anxiety episodes where I would frequently wake up screaming in the night due to night terrors,” vocalist Katie Healy explained in a statement. “I tried to encapsulate something that spoke of a period of turmoil but important growth in my early 20’s, an experimental experience where I thought if I’d embrace these night terrors instead of hiding from them in the hope I could put them to rest completely.”
Throughout the week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with the new releases that caught our attention the most, be it a single leading up to the release of an album or a newly unveiled deep cut. And each Monday, we round up the best new songs released over the past week (the eligibility period begins on Monday and ends Sunday night) in this best new music segment.
On this week’s list, we have the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ cinematic, slightly ominous, and altogether captivating ‘Burning’, the second preview of their forthcoming album Cool It Down; Alvvays’ ‘Easy on Your Own?’, a swirling, infectious song that packs a whole lot of emotion in just a few minutes; ‘Dance Now’, the catchy yet intricate lead single from JID’s upcoming album, with guest appearances from Kenny Mason and Foushée; High Vis’ latest single, the driving and anthemic ‘Trauma Bonds’; Claude’s ‘meet me’, an entrancing highlight off her debut album a lot’s gonna change; a stirringly potent spoken-word track from Death Cab for Cutie titled ‘Foxglove Through the Clearcut’; and Rat Tally’s ‘In My Car’, the stunning, evocative title track from her debut LP, which features Madeline Kenney.
Best New Songs: August 15, 2022
Song of the Week: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, ‘Burning’
Alvvays, ‘Easy on Your Own’
JID feat. Kenny Mason and Foushée, ‘Dance Now’
High Vis, ‘Trauma Bonds’
Claude, ‘meet me’
Death Cab for Cutie, ‘Foxglove Through the Clearcut’
Rat Tally feat. Madeline Kenney, ‘In My Car’
College on its own is stressful, but debut author Antonia Angress wanted to take it up a notch — an elite art school, where pretentiousness and unflappability run amok in its students. Louisa, Karina, and Preston are all enrolled in Wrynn College of Art, but with vastly different personalities and dynamics — Preston wants to break free of his class upbringing, and Louisa and Karina, roommates, are entwined in lust and competition within their art. A third point of view comes with professor and semi-retired artist Robert Berger, who is unsettled by and familiar with Preston’s ambition.
In this debut, the lives of all four collide, break apart, and find each other after long stretches of time and places, giving the reader a journey through art, capitalism, and finding yourself out at such a young age.
We sat down with Angress to discuss her debut, her writing process, and the messiness that comes with college that no one prepares you for.
Kind of surreal. I worked on it for such a long time without knowing it’d actually be published, so hearing from people who read it and connected with it has absolutely been a highlight.
[Laughs] Yes, it was a lot harder! I mean, I’m always thinking about whenever I read a book I’m impressed by, where it just seemed like it appeared out of thin air, I always have to tell myself, if it feels incredibly natural, like it poured out of someone, it probably took a lot of work and frustration to get it right.
I wrote this book over the course of seven years, so there was a lot of throwing drafts away, trying again, making Excel spreadsheets, mapping out the book beat by beat, chapter by chapter and character by character. So it wasn’t an easy feat, but I also didn’t make it easy for myself by deciding to write a four-POV novel for my first book. My next book is one-POV. It took so much out of me to make it work.
A lot of that came from my own experience leaving college, and going out into the real world. I began writing this book when I was just out of college, 22 or 23, and I was teaching elementary school at the time. That was a very jarring transition, to go from a college environment, a really intellectually vibrant college environment, to being around little kids all day and not having any adult conversations until I went home at the end of the day.
I went through this period of mourning, I think, where I really missed being an undergrad, even though in many ways it had been really hard for me. I certainly don’t think back to college as the best years of my life; I think I was a mess back then. But I began writing this book almost as a way to will myself back into this environment.
The very first seed that emerged was a short story about a young painter who has just dropped out of school, who deals with the aftermath of that decision. And that was a very real reflection of the sort of loss I felt — not only the loss of this environment and all the friends I had made there, but also of the person I had been and no longer was. Over the years I worked on this book, and I got older, and the gap between my age and the age of many of the characters I was writing about widened, I became interested in exploring that transition from an insular bubble of school — art school, in particular — into the real world. And especially when you have a very idealized or romanticized idea of what your life is gonna look like after college and how that collides with reality.
Congratulations!
Yeah, and I think part of that came from my own experience. It certainly was not perfect, and I wasn’t happy all the time. Certain parts of that experience were categorized by a lot of despair and self-doubt and feeling like I didn’t fit in, and really struggling. I think that’s true in particular of really elite colleges. You’re told that you’re really lucky to be there, and you’re special because you’re there, and you’re human, right, so you’re gonna get bad grades and have conflict with your friends and shit at home is gonna drag you back to the person you used to be. So I was interested in exploring how soul-crushing and lonely those really elite environments can be sometimes.
There’s all this pressure to be happy, but you’re not fully formed yet. You’re still figuring yourself out. That involves a lot of growing pains and being full of self-doubt. All this to say, good years are ahead.
So I started with Louisa. She was the first character that I wrote. She’s from Louisiana, which is not a place that I’m from, but it’s a place where I’ve lived. My partner’s from there, I’ve spent a lot of time there, and I have a lot of love for Louisiana. It’s a really unique region in America.
I sort of began with a character who was in many ways, quite passive. And I think that remains true even in the final draft. Louisa is not a particularly active character — she has a lot of fear, self-doubt. She’s very inward-facing and introverted. You know, you can have a passive character driving a story, but it’s really difficult. Some of the advice I got from early drafts said that, you have this passive character, but all these really intriguing characters surrounding her, like Preston and Karina and Robert. One reader in particular said, ‘What if you gave these characters points of view? What if you got in their heads?’ Because they’re really interesting, but there’s a limit to how much the reader can access when they’re being perceived from the perspective of a passive character. So I wrote some exploratory chapters from their points of view, and I really liked them. It really worked. It unlocked this part of the novel I hadn’t been able to access before. So I decided to have four points of view, not to write them in first person, but stick to a close third POV. Even though I was writing in third person, which allows me some narrative distance, it was still important that their voices and interiorities be distinctive, so as not to read as the same consciousness filtered through slightly different shades of glass.
That was inspired by a Louisiana artist named Cayla Zeek, who I actually know personally. My partner is also a painter, and they grew up together in Lafayette, Louisiana. So when I was living in New Orleans right out of college, she was someone sort of in my social circle, but I didn’t know her very well. I was working on the novel, at this point for a couple of years, and I had this character, Louisa, who I had mostly figured out, but there was this giant piece missing, and it was what her art looked like. I just couldn’t figure it out. One night, I went to White Linen Night, an arts festival in New Orleans, and Cayla had a solo show. I walked in, and I had this very immediate reaction to her work, which I loved. It’s very much inspired by the flora and fauna of Southern Louisiana, and also mythology. I had this very visceral reaction, which was ‘This is what Louisa’s art looks like. I found it.’ Again, this was sort of a moment that unlocked a bunch of stuff for me in the book. In many ways, it directly inspired storylines in the novel. For example, [Louisa’s] bird woman painting in the novel was based on a real painting by Cayla Zeek called She Sits, She Waits, and that painting inspired a whole storyline that’s pretty pivotal to the novel.
So I felt really grateful to Cayla, and after I sold the book, I wrote her a long letter about how much her work meant to me. She ended up collaborating with a publicity campaign, which was really cool, getting a real artist involved with the promotion of the book.
No, she didn’t, that was somebody else. But we did a preorder campaign that involved giving away a print of that painting.
I think in many ways, they’re the same person, but several decades apart. Obviously not the same exact person, but I think Preston is in many ways, who Robert would have been had he come of age in the Obama years, rather than the 60s. For Robert, that recognition is really disturbing. His animosity is marbled with admiration, which is disturbing to him, too. He has this begrudging admiration towards this person he can’t stand, but he sees glimmers of himself in. He can’t quite admit it to himself, but his feeling of being drawn to Preston is, in many ways, animated by that recognition, and I think the same is true of Preston. His need to antagonize this older man is driven by a sense of grudging admiration, but also deep frustration with the decisions that Robert has made in his life and career. I think on a subconscious level, Preston is maybe afraid that he’s seeing a future version of himself.
Yeah, that’s part of it. I think what they feel towards each other is complicated. Obviously, they’re attracted to each other and they feel admiration towards each other, but at the same time, each feels envious of and threatened by the other in different ways. That is a particularly fraught dynamic, that I think sometimes, in my own experience as a queer women, between queer women who want to be together, but in some sense, want to be each other. I think there’s a lot of that going on between Louisa and Karina, where they’re drawn to each other, but there’s a sense in which one wants to be the other, which makes things really complicated for them.
Yeah, I am. I’m working on a second novel about an elementary school Spanish teacher in New Orleans. It’s still sort of in flux, it’s still very early stages, but it’s a love story about language and untranslatability.
Sirens & Muses is available now.
Netflix’s Heartstopper is a wholesome, uplifting series based on the comic books by English author Alice Oseman. Oseman is also the writer behind YA novels Solitaire, Loveless, Radio Silence, and I Was Born for This. Heartstopper‘s main characters find their origins in Solitaire, and the TV adaptation expands on the story even more. Nick (Kit Connor) and Charlie (Joe Locke) are students at Truham Grammar School for Boys who meet when they’re put in the same form class. Openly gay Charlie is shy and anxious, while Nick is a popular rugby player whose friends are always trying to set him up with a girl.
When Charlie gushes about Nick to his friends, he insists that Nick isn’t like the other rugby players; he’s nice. Nevertheless, Charlie’s skeptical best friend Tao (William Gao) is unhappy when Charlie joins the rugby team and befriends Nick. Even though it strains Nick and Charlie’s relationship, Tao stands up to the bullies, while Charlie prefers to avoid aggravating people. Meanwhile, Tao and Charlie’s friend Elle (Yasmin Finney) is settling in at Higgs, the girls’ school across the road. After struggling to put herself out there, she eventually befriends Tara (Corinna Brown) and Darcy (Kizzy Edgell), who have just come out as a couple. Tara has been finding the new attention difficult to deal with, especially when her peers are expecting her to get together with Nick, who she once kissed at a party.
Despite dealing with some dark character traumas and insecurities, Heartstopper is a joyful and optimistic celebration of queer youth. The characters’ chemistry is palpable and infectious thanks to their teasing rapport, as evident in these great quotes from season 1.
Charlie: So you don’t have a crush on anyone at the moment?
Nick: Well, I didn’t say that.
Charlie: What’s she like, then?
Nick: You’re just gonna assume they’re a she?
Charlie: Are they not a girl … Would you kiss someone who wasn’t a girl?
Nick: I don’t know.
Charlie: Would you kiss me?
Nick: Yeah.
Charlie: You don’t get to have an opinion about anything I do.
Ben: Do you want me to go around telling people about you and Nick?
Charlie: Do you want me to go around telling people about me and you? That’s what I thought. Except, I wouldn’t do that, because I’m a decent person. I understand that you’re figuring out your sexuality, but you don’t get to make me feel like crap anymore just because you hate yourself. So leave me alone. Just leave me alone.
Claude is the dream pop project of Chicago singer-songwriter Claudia Ferme, who released her first EP, Enactor, last year. Although the focus of her songwriting has since become more introspective, the collection offered a glimpse into the existentialist bent and evocative character of her music, which has only grown more dynamic and versatile on her debut LP, a lot’s gonna change, out today on American Dreams Records. Bolstered by Michael Mac’s artfully delicate, stirring production, the album foregrounds Ferme’s bracingly honest lyrics, which have a fascinating way of twisting and unfolding to the rhythm of a song: listen to the way she weaves an intricate string of words on ‘roses’, or how loneliness breeds overthinking on the ethereal ‘turn’. There may not be much space for hope in the dark corners of a lot’s gonna change, but Ferme strikes you as the kind of uniquely self-aware and personable writer who’s constantly looking for a new outlet for her overwhelming concerns: casually anxious, bleakly relatable, and ultimately, pretty damn defiant.
We caught up with Claude for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about being a twenty-something, her songwriting approach, a lot’s gonna change, and more.
The title of the album, a lot’s gonna change, is something you might say when you’re at the cusp of a big transition, when you sort of see a storm coming and you don’t know what it’s going to bring. At the same time, you often don’t realize how much change is already going on in the background. Did you find yourself in this kind of situation around the making of the album?
Actually, there’s a Weyes Blood song called ‘A Lot’s Gonna Change’, I took inspiration from that. [laughs] Even with that song, it felt really nostalgic, and it feels like a phrase that can encompass positive changes but also negative changes – it can mean a lot of different things, good or bad. When I was writing the songs, it was definitely a big period of growth in my early to mid-20s, getting into situations that felt like patterns – you know, you go through situations and realize that, like, Oh my dod, what’s wrong with me that I keep ending up in this situation? Definitely figuring out who I was, learning a lot from mistakes or from situations I was in.
But it’s funny, I keep thinking about how, even in the past three years, I feel like I’ve gone through things that are even more crazy than when I wrote the album, so it’s interesting to look back on that time. When you’re in it, things feel so hard and they matter so much, and then you get older and you look back and you’re like, Why was I so worried about that? Especially with my songwriting, because I feel sometimes maybe I’m a little bit too honest and too open, it’s funny listening back to things that I write about and then being like, “Maybe I don’t feel that way anymore.”
On ‘twenty something’ from this album, for example, you talk about it feeling like “the ending of something I never had.” It reminded me of ‘Everything’s Great’ from your Enactor EP, where you sing about the world coming to an end. This line has a different weight to it, though, and it feels more personal.
In general, I feel like the EP was a lot more reflecting on the outside world and how I related to it and it related to me, whereas this album feels way more personal. That line was more in regards to, like, relationships you have. But then again, if I think about that song, you can even think about it in terms of being being a twenty something in general – I felt like a lot of my 20s were robbed from me because of COVID; time was robbed from us in the last couple of years. [laughs] It’s funny listening back to certain songs of mine and being like, “This has more weight to it now than I felt like it did when I wrote the songs.”
What weight did ‘twenty something’ hold originally?
This is not very deep at all, but I was, like, in a situationship. It was something that lasted a month. And it’s, again, feeling like when you’re in your 20s, you let people treat you the same way or you go through the same situations. And that situation, it wasn’t even a relationship, so it felt like something I never had. I guess you can apply it to different things relating to my 20s, because you’re also trying out new things – just going through situations that you keep going through because you don’t learn from them, or you’re still trying to figure yourself out, or you want to feel like you have hope in people but you keep getting let down.
Is hard to write about these situations, when you’re still in the process of figuring it out and you don’t have the full picture of what it could be?
I’m not very good at expressing myself through words [laughs], so writing has always been a really good tool of being able to put things down on a page in a concise way that feels me and that feels like I’m describing it in a way that makes sense to me, and to other people, I guess, if they hear it. Every time I write about something, it helps me process, and I feel like sometimes you don’t even realize what’s happening until you write it down and you’re like, “Oh my god, that’s what was happening.” I don’t I don’t think I find it hard to write about, I find it really therapeutic and helpful.
When did you realize that writing had that effect on you?
Since I was a kid, I always loved reading and writing. I had a diary, and I remember writing silly songs when I was a kid here and there. But I started officially writing songs when I was in high school. Even the nature of having a diary as a kid, I think a lot and I always have stuff going on in my brain, so it’s nice to have a time when you can let it out in a way that makes sense and you can visualise, and to make something that’s completely yours and uniquely yours and that shows your point of view in a way that’s specific to you. I’ve always found those kinds of escapes, like reading and writing, really helpful. I’m also a more introverted person and a more quiet person, so any escape like that where I can go into a different world or go into my own world has always been helpful.
Do you have any early musical memories that you can share?
My dad plays guitar, and so I grew up around music. I started playing piano when I was a kid and was in choir in school. I remember seeing – I think I was a sophomore in high school – seeing the movie about the Runaways, the one with Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart. I don’t think I had ever seen a band of all women – I didn’t know that existed. I didn’t know it was possible – obviously, I knew about pop stars, but that was me seeing women playing instruments, and they were so young, too, and writing their own songs. And they just looked so cool; the outfits, the makeup.
And then I joined, there’s this thing called School of Rock in Chicago, it’s like a chain of music schools. You can take music lessons, and they also have this program where every three months they do different themed shows. You could sign up for whatever part you played and you would have rehearsals like you were in a band, but there were way more people and then you would perform at venues in Chicago at the end of that. That was my first experience playing a live show. Around that same time, I started writing my own songs on SoundCloud. It’s funny because I’m a really anxious person and performing live terrifies me, but I’ve always been really into fashion and clothing and makeup. And it was this thing of: I can put my own world together. Not necessarily like a persona, but it just felt like something that was very me that I had control over and that I could express myself in a way that was fully on my terms, the way that I envisioned it. It was just always something that brought me a lot of joy.
You’ve said that your songwriting process is pretty intuitive. Can you describe what that feels like or looks like for you in practice?
There have been a couple of songs, like ‘roses’ and ‘Enactor’ from my EP, where I read books and was really inspired by a line in the book or a concept in the book. Both of those are based on things I read, so sometimes it’s that. Sometimes it’s an experience that I had, like the song ‘claustrophobia’ on the album. I lived in this apartment with three other people, and this was like the summer of 2018 or 2019. We had a party at our house and it was like the hottest day of the summer, and I wrote that song while there was a party happening – I locked myself in my room and I was like, “This is too much.” [laughs] And that song is literally about that. So sometimes it’s like that, where something’s happening to me and I need to get it out. Sometimes I’ll be walking or doing something and a line pops into my head.
It’s really hard for me to be like, “Today I’m gonna write a song,” and sit down and write something. It has to be sparked by something. Which, I don’t know if it’s the best way to go, because lately, it’s been really hard to make things for some reason. I know a lot of a lot of songwriters, they make it a point to have a time during the day where they write or get things out. But so far, for me, that’s been my process – it’s more intuitive.
One of my favorite songs on the album is ‘Meet Me’, and I love the dynamic between the verses and the chorus. Can you tell me about coming up with that one?
For that song – I can’t remember what happened around that time that was making me think of this, but I was just thinking about the fact that, even with the people closest to you in your life, like your family members or your closest friends, even though you think you fully know them, you don’t, really. Because when they go off and, like, go to work or you’re not seeing them when they’re interacting with other people that aren’t you or when they’re in situations where you’re not there – you’re not seeing who they are or the things that they’re doing. So, in a way, you just can’t fully know a person. For some reason, I was really taken and obsessed with that idea, and relating it to myself, too; I feel like you can even see it internally when you’re interacting with different people – sometimes you act different ways with different people. And you make yourself small in certain situations, some people make you feel super confident – just that duality of what it’s like to be human and have relationships and the complexities of that. When you’re with a person, that time is completely yours and theirs; when you’re with your friends or whatever, that time is completely with you and them.
What do you mean by that?
I guess that those are the moments where you do know who they are because you’re there and you’re experiencing it. But when they go off, there’s this little part that you’re unaware of. Maybe this says more about me than it says about other people [laughs], but I feel like you’re never really sharing 100% of yourself, because obviously you can’t be that way with everyone that you interact with – you’re holding parts of yourself. But those moments are yours, and that’s the part of the person that you do know.
Can you give me an example of a time where you felt that way, where there wasn’t really any doubt behind that?
I just think about myself when I’m in certain spaces – and again, I guess that’s just the nature of being a human and navigating the world – but just thinking about myself and the way that I interact, even being back in school and, like, not knowing anyone. The fact that I just walk through campus and go to class and sit there and interact that way, but then when I’m with my family, I’m a lot more open and warm. You’re not seeing the way that people move through the world all the time, and there could be things that like you don’t know about. I don’t know if any of this makes sense.
I’m an introvert too, and I feel like for some people, that’s actually pretty comforting, the fact that you can move through the world without people knowing your full self the whole time. But if you’re someone whose internal world seems to take up a lot more space, you can go about these everyday situations and feel like it’s not matching with what’s happening on the outside. It’s not necessarily that you don’t want to be around people, but that you wish that the people you’re around could be their full internal selves more of the time.
Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of that too. And I feel like there are a lot of feelings in that song, too, of not being fully seen or fully understood by people. Because if you can’t be your full self, and if you can’t share the full spectrum of yourself with people, then how are they really going to understand – fully understand who you are? So yeah, there’s definitely a lot of that too. [laughs] You know, just classic overthinking.
I know, it’s getting pretty existential. I don’t know if you can see, but it’s getting dark here too.
Yeah, it’s raining today – well, actually, it was really gloomy and rainy earlier, but now the sun’s coming out, so that’s weird that it’s like the opposite.
I’m just thinking of this in relation to what we were talking about before, in terms of like, going through phases of asking yourself, “Who am I?” I feel like when you’re in your 20s, or for some people it might be at a different stage, but at some point you start taking others more into consideration. So the question becomes, “Who am I to you – with you?” Or just, “Who are you?” And maybe that reckoning becomes less about what your identity is than when you feel more like yourself, and around what kind of people.
Totally, yeah. And I feel like that was a lot of the growth that I went through, too, during that time. Just figuring out exactly who I felt comfortable around, the people that were really bringing out my full self; it doesn’t necessarily always have to be your best self, because I feel like you should be able to be the full spectrum of yourself around people that really care about you. As someone who’s more introverted, I think I’m definitely more guarded, but I sometimes am too honest, and just realizing that you can’t share that much or you can’t be that fully open with people, because not everyone is going to take it in your best interest.
You can kind of get away with that in music, though, right?
Yeah. [laughs] It’s funny, I was cat sitting for a friend of mine, and he had this quote – he also writes music and loves reading – an he had this quote on his wall that was like, “Only write about things that you wouldn’t share with anyone.” It’s like, that’s the way that I write, for sure. [laughs] I feel like there’s the barrier of the fact that, first of all, that you’re putting music to it – you can write a song that’s super dark, but depending on the instrumentation, you can make it deceptively be like a really happy song depending on what you put behind it. But then there’s also the layer of, like, when you put out music. And it’s weird, because I didn’t feel this way with the EP, but I definitely it with the first two singles that I put out. It was almost like post-partum depression. It’s like I’m putting out these things that I worked so hard on, that literally came from inside of me and that I created, and now it’s not mine anymore. So there’s that layer, when you’re releasing music, that it’s almost not yours anymore.
When it comes to this album, there’s a lushness to the production that really enhances that feeling. Were there any reference points sonically that you kept coming back to with your producer, Michael Mac?
Again, even that process felt really intuitive. Basically all of my songs I start out with me on guitar and vocals, so for a lot of the songs on the album that are more produced, it was a lot of back and forth on what feels right. And most of that is thanks to Michael, because he’s incredible. One of my favourite artists right now is Okay Kaya. The production on her songs is really simple, but it holds up the lyrics, because her music is really lyric-based. And my lyrics are some of the most important things on the album, so I always want instrumentation that holds up the lyrics, I don’t ever want it to cloud the lyrics. I want the lyrics to be at the front and centre. I don’t think any of my production sounds like hers, but I’m just really inspired by people like that who are able to have interesting and cool production that’s dynamic, but that also holds up the lyrics.
You said that since you’ve finished writing the album, you feel like there’s a lot more change that has happened in your life. Could you talk about how you feel you’ve grown since then?
Um… [laughs] I was gonna say, I feel like I’ve been hardened by the world. The world feels like a really scary place right now, so it’s been hard to find – sorry if this sounds really dark, but yeah, it’s just been hard to find hope and to find inspiration. I think I’m trying to remember that I’m one person and I can only do so much in my life, and I can only control the way that I interact with people and the way that I interact with the world. I’m trying to remember that the weight of what’s happening around me is not all on my shoulders. [laughs] Which is sometimes hard not to be overwhelmed by.
But I guess I’ve learned that I’m more resilient than I think I am, because obviously, going through those things gives you a new awareness. Even with relationships – like I said, I went through a really bad relationship a couple years back. We were talking about being really cautious about the people that I choose to spend my time with – realizing that our time is really, really valuable, and I only want to spend my time doing things that I feel good about and that I want to do, and spending it with people who I really care about and who deserve my time and attention.
I think feeling hardened by the world is totally normal. I was going to ask you about that part in ‘Everything’s Great’ where you sing about losing the fire, losing the desire, but judging from our conversation and listening to this album, it doesn’t seem like that passion has gone away, which is important.
I’m glad that comes across. [laughs] Because honestly, even just making music in general is really hard. It’s a lot of work, and you need help – it’s a very collaborative process, unless you know how to do everything yourself. And obviously, we don’t really get paid. I think being a creative in general, it’s a really hard thing to go into. But then, as I’m rolling out stuff for the album, I was having a similar conversation with a friend of mine about how doing music feels really hard, and she was giving advice for the album listening party that I have on Friday. And as we were talking, she was like, “Well, as we’re talking, you seem really excited about this.” And I was like, “Yeah.” All of these things still bring me a lot of joy: the creative process of music, bringing people together with these events. I haven’t played a show in a really long time, so practicing with people again, even though it’s really hard, it feels really good. And it feels exciting.
So I’m trying to take in these good moments and remind myself that it’s not all difficult. It can be fun, and it can be exciting. Hopefully, I can apply that, because like I said, I barely practice anymore, I barely write. I’m just trying to remind myself that it doesn’t always have to be this serious thing. That’s why I started making music: because it was a fun thing that I enjoy doing.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Claude’s a lot’s gonna change is out now via American Dream Records.
Fifa 23 will mark another massive instalment in EA’s cash cow franchise. The football game that has dominated its niche will be once again released on platforms like the PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.
But, the question arises. Will it be free?
Sadly, Fifa 23 will not be free on the PS5 and the Xbox. The game comes in two different editions. The cheapest and most popular is the Standard Edition. This edition comes at £69.99 and includes a few perks such as FUT Ambassador Loan Player Pick, Career Mode Homegrown Talent, and Untradeable TOTW 1 Player Item and a few other bits.
Moving ahead, we have the Ultimate Edition, which is £20 more. For this, the player will receive 4600 points, three days of early access and a few other great perks.
If you’re a PC gamer, you’re a bit luckier because the game is around £10 cheaper on both editions compared to the PS5. It will also have crossplay features meaning you won’t need to leave your console friends behind.
Yes, while the license will run out after next year. The current FIFA 23 and FIFA 24 video games will be titled as such.
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