PREMIERE: Beth // James Process Grief Through “Voicemails”

Photo Credit: Madeline Northway

In the studio video for “Voicemails,” duo Beth // James strike a balance between vulnerability and strength. 

The song was penned by the husband-and-wife duo of Mikaela and Jordan Burchill, an indie-Americana duo based out of Austin. Mikaela’s father passed away in 2019 and one day, she found herself going through old voicemails on her phone left by her late father. Hearing the sound of his voice saying “Call me when you get a chance” acted as a trigger that prompted the singer to write the personal song.

“I always save voicemails on my phone of people who I love in my life. I saved a bunch of voicemails from my dad and I hadn’t anticipated needing to use them so soon,” Miakela expresses to Audiofemme in a phone interview. “I was having a really rough day and I listened to one of them and it totally wrecked me, and then I wrote this song about it. It’s a song packed full of memories about him. I was thinking about all of the things that we’ve done together and that remind me of him and made him who he was.” 

“Voicemails” details all the nuances that made her father memorable, from reading the morning paper on the back porch with coffee (or whiskey) in his mug, to the story he’d frequently tell about the time he saw a young James Taylor perform in a coffee shop. But the song takes an emotional turn in the chorus as Mikaela professes with tender, yet passionate vocals, “I wish that I could call you back/Oh I wish it was as simple as that/Oh I wish that life was fair/But you’re not really there.”

Mikaela notes that while it was easy to write the lyrics, they proved challenging to sing – she admits breaking down in tears while in the recording studio. “Trying to sing about that from an honest place, it’s hard. You got to do it and get through it,” she says with a laugh. “We do like to have a positive spin, even on sad songs like this, and I think the positive message in this one is that you should remember the people that you’ve lost and think about the memories that you’ve had with them. That’s good thing to do and that’s a healing thing to do.”

“It’s always going to be a hard song to sing and a hard song to write, but I wanted her to feel great about it,” adds co-writer Jordan, who considered himself a support system as Mikaela released these emotions through song. “I love my wife and it was hard watching her having to do that because they’re all lyrics that hit home. Watching her record the vocals for the album was tough.” 

The couple gives the song new meaning with a live performance of “Voicemails” at Studio 1916, premiering exclusively with Audiofemme. Filmed in a house in Kyle, TX (just south of Austin) more than a hundred years old, the duo takes the song inside the sacred space and gives it a stripped down spin. With the camera panning slowly throughout the room, each musician gets a moment to shine in the soft lighting that bounces off the old-fashioned wood paneling, checkered curtains and eclectic tapestries on the wall. “We wanted it to be very real. We wanted to have a representation of the song that was somewhat like the album – a bit more lifted, but still emotional,” Mikaela describes. The singer-songwriter is poised at the piano, which connects to the song’s origins as she began writing the song on piano.

“Every time I sing it, it’s a little bit new and different. I think that has to do with where I am in my healing process. It’s easier to sing now, but it still feels vulnerable when I do it, especially once we all lock in together into that zone. I do feel like recording this video we all were very much in the zone together and it felt like we were all one unit performing it together,” she continues. “It felt really good.”

“I like that the house has a history and that the song has a history,” adds Jordan.

The couple agrees that the most vulnerable lyrics of the song come in the first verse as Mikaela poignantly sings, “I bet you’d like my new songs/I’ve been trying so hard/Just want to make you proud of your girl/While I’m falling apart,” connecting to the father and daughter’s mutual love of music that bonded them. “That’s so true, because he was always a really big supporter of our music and I know he would love this record. I know he’s listening to it somewhere out there,” Mikaela says. “Voicemails” is featured on Beth // James’ upcoming debut album, Get Together, set for release on June 3.

“He would love this record,” reflects Jordan. ”It hurts that he can’t hear it.” 

Seeing as the track was a healing mechanism for Mikaela, the singer-songwriters hope that it will have the same effect on others who are going through the grieving process, and know that they’re not alone. “Especially these past two years, there’s been so much loss in the world. We all know somebody who’s dealt with this in the past two years and hope they find comfort in the song,” Jordan remarks of how he hopes “Voicemails” will impact listeners.

“Many times that people hear it, they are reminded of their own memories with their own person. People have told me that they also save voicemails, or this sounds like their dad or mom, so it’s cool to hear that. It makes me feel real good,” Mikaela affirms. “It’s an experience that unfortunately everybody’s going to have at some point. I really want people to feel seen and like they’re not going through that alone. Everybody feels that together.” 

Follow Beth // James on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

Drummer Christopher Icasiano Brings Identity-Affirming Solo Debut to Barboza

Photos by Haley Freedlund
Photo Credit: Haley Freedlund

Anyone who thinks that the drum set is a one-trick pony surely hasn’t heard Seattle drummer Christopher Icasiano.

For more than a decade, Icasiano has been one half of the mercurial, genre-bending saxophone and drums duo, Bad Luck, and a frequent contributor to other beloved Pacific Northwest groups (including Pure Bathing Culture). Trained in jazz and improvisational music, Icasiano is unique in his ability to listen to his bandmates, his versatility, as well as his skill in harnessing the full potential of the drum set as both a backgrounding and foregrounding instrument.

His solo debut EP, Provinces, which he released in 2020 just days before the world shut down from COVID-19 pandemic, encapsulates many of the aspects that make Icasiano the person and drummer, so special. And, after several COVID-induced delays and cancellations over the last two years, Icasiano will present a re-release show celebrating Provinces on April 16th at Barboza, just a few weeks before he joins Fleet Foxes for their Summer 2022 tour. At the show, Icasiano will play the moving, exploratory record in its entirety, bringing his inventive approach to the drums, and his identity as a Filipino-American—to center-stage.

Icasiano was born and raised on the Eastside of Seattle, near Redmond, in a family that appreciated, and in his mother’s case, also played music. His parents bought him his first drum set when he was about eight years old. He continued to play throughout school, and eventually decided to attend University of Washington, where he was primarily focused in studying jazz. The tools he learned in jazz school continue to serve him, he says, but after he graduated, the elimination of rules and limits allowed Icasiano to more freely express himself—and embrace who he is.

“Coming out of UW, I think there were a lot of things that changed for me in that I was starting to get into music that wasn’t necessarily jazz, but improvised music,” he explains. “And that was definitely speaking to me a lot more because I was finding that I could be expressive in ways that felt less restricting, as well as being able to draw on a lot of other musical influences that I could put into that type of improvising.”

As he found himself musically, Icasiano says he still struggled with his identity as a second-generation Filipino-American. It isn’t shame, he says, but that the expression of his cultural roots almost always existed at home, in a vacuum. And, out in the world, he never felt like he fit in.

“I grew up in a Filipino family and was around Filipino things at every family gathering and in my everyday life. I didn’t really have Filipino friends or community outside of that, so it was an interesting experience for me in that my Filipino-ness only existed at home,” he says. “Outside of that it was just like, most all my friends for my entire life are white and have been and I had very few people I could [relate with about] being Filipino or even just about being Asian.”

Hence, for many years, Icasiano says he struggled with “not feeling Filipino enough” but he let those questions about identity simmer. Meanwhile, he played more solo drum shows.

“[Provinces] came kind of in different phases. For many years, I was playing solo drum performances and I was just kind of improvising with loose thematic ideas and I started thinking compositionally about how to approach a solo drum set and the different ways that drums can be applied to music in kind of unconventional ways,” says Icasiano.

From there, Icasiano applied for a couple of arts grants—and, as he wrote those grant proposals, his desire to better understand and contextualize his Filipino-American identity resurfaced.

“When I wrote the grant proposals they were really centered around exploring how to convey my cultural identity in my music and I do it through the drums in this way,” he recalls. “I ended up getting these grants so… I was able to go on a little writing retreat and [spend time] figuring out all of the melodic and harmonic material for the record.”

Sitting on the drum throne or at the keyboard, Icasiano says his mind was only on the music, but slowly, over the many months that the compositions were written, he noticed a stronger grip on himself and his artistry emerging. It helped too, that right after he finished the bulk of the record in 2018, he took his first trip to The Philippines, where he received more creative inspiration for the record and more understanding of his roots.

“My partner Jenny had suggested getting some field recordings in The Philippines and incorporating that into the music that I had recorded. What a perfect full circle thing to do, to write this record that is really about identity and connecting with culture and then finally getting the opportunity to go there shortly after that and being able to bring back a sonic artifact that I could then put back into the music,” Icasiano says.

Provinces, in its final form, is as tumultuous and triumphant as any successful quest for self-knowing is, as it takes snapshots of Icasiano, and the drums, from several different angles. At one point, his snare is soft and meandering like a flute, at other points, his sticks fall with sharp syncopation, ferocious like a Black Sabbath lick on guitar.

Auxiliary percussion, ambient keyboard, arranged and performed by himself—as well as his field recordings of subtle ocean sounds and the business of a Manila market—also bring a lushness and layered poignancy to every track. The mood aligns with how Icasiano feels reflecting on the project.

“There was so much of me up until [this release] that was like, ‘Oh, I have to do this record in this way to prove that I’m Filipino… After I put this record out, it felt really good to be able to put out a piece of art and music that was solely my own vision and to be like, oh, I don’t actually need to prove anything to anyone,” says Icasiano. “I am Filipino, even if grew up in Redmond and didn’t have Filipino friends. Even if I don’t speak Tagalog. Even if I’ve only been to the Philippines once when I was 33 years old. That’s all part of the experience of Filipinos around the world and it doesn’t make me any less so. I think it really did help me find more confidence in my own artistry.”

Follow Christopher Icasiano on Instagram for ongoing updates.

MUSIQUE BOUTIQUE: Juanita Euka, Beverly “Guitar” Watkins, Karen Dalton, Irma Thomas

Welcome to Audiofemme’s record review column, Musique Boutique, written by music journo vet Gillian G. Gaar. The last Monday of each month, Musique Boutique offers a cross-section of noteworthy reissues and new releases guaranteed to perk up your ears.

Born in RD Congo, raised in Buenos Aires, and now based in the UK, Juanita Euka has already made a name for herself through singing with groups like the London Afrobeat Collective, Latin/Afro band Aminanz, and Cuban fusion group Wara. Now she steps out on her own, with her exhilarating solo debut, Mabanzo (Strut Records). Euka’s musical heritage encompasses not only Latin and African influences, but also absorbing her father’s favorites when she was growing up in Argentina, like Sinatra and Roxette (“he LOVED Roxette!”), and discovering what she calls “female singers with attitude” (TLC, Salt-N-Pepa) via MTV. It’s a rich tapestry to draw from, making her music especially vibrant and enticing.

The opening track, “Alma Seca” (“Dry Soul”), begins with a simple, steady beat, adds gently tapping percussion, then brings in Euka’s cool voice, her light, breezy delivery offering no clue that the lyrics are actually about a failed love affair. Whether singing in Spanish, English, or French, the percolating rhythms draw you in, and there’s a decided life-affirming subtext to much of the album. “Suenos de Libertad” (“Dream of Freedom”) is a beguiling number about the struggle for justice as a way of honoring the past. “Blood” is a proud, uplifting song about the perseverance of hope. “Camarades” (“Comrades”) accentuates the positive in preparing for the future: “You have to change the day/You have to change your destination/It all starts in your head.” Euka’s musical journey is one that’s worth celebrating.

It’s been great to see pioneering women guitarists like Sister Rosetta Tharpe finally getting recognition for their accomplishments. Beverly “Guitar” Watkins is another musician who broke ground as one of the few women musicians on the R&B circuit, wielding her guitar for decades before she finally got the opportunity to release her first album, at age 60. Now, three years after her death in 2019 at the age of 80, comes her first live album, In Paris (Music Maker Foundation), taken from a 2012 show.

Watkins described her style as “real Lightnin’ Hopkins lowdown blues … hard classic blues, stompin’ blues, railroad smokin’ blues,” and she certainly smokes throughout this set, from the anti-war vibes of “Baghdad Blues” to the rollicking wrap up, “Get Out on the Floor.” She growls her way through a fierce take of “What’d I Say” by Ray Charles (whom she used to play with), and sweetly croons Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me.” And for a master class in blues you can’t do better than the steamy “Red Mama Blues,” named after one of her guitars.

Karen Dalton didn’t sound like any other folk singer, with a bluesy cast to her voice that drew comparisons with Billie Holiday (though she herself cited Bessie Smith as her greatest influence). Dalton, of Native American and Irish heritage, was born in Texas and grew up in Enid, Oklahoma, where she learned to play guitar and banjo. She arrived in Greenwich Village just in time for the folk boom of the 1960s, but never reconciled with the machinations of the music industry, and after the release of her second album, she retired as a performer (tellingly, an ad promoting the record was headlined “For 10 years, Karen Dalton has been trying hard not to be famous”). She later struggled with substance abuse, and died of AIDS-related illness in 1993 at the age of 55.

Over the years, Dalton’s music resurfaced in television series and films (Brittany Runs a Marathon, The Serpent). Now comes the reissue of that second album, In My Own Time (Light in the Attic) in an expanded edition. Dalton generally performed other people’s songs, and the album has a mesmerizing version of the traditional ballad “Katie Cruel,” a sorrowful tale of a woman in decline: “When I first came to town/They brought me drinks of plenty/Now they’ve changed their tune/And hand me the bottles empty.” There’s a fine honky-tonk rendition of “How Sweet It Is,” and, for the first time, the release of Dalton’s live recordings, including “Blues on the Ceiling,” “Are You Leaving for the Country,” and a heart-rending version of her best known number, “Something On Your Mind.”

Irma Thomas, “the Soul Queen of New Orleans,” had her first hit when her single, “Don’t Mess with My Man,” reached No. 22 on the R&B chart in 1960; she’d just turned 19. Over the course of her career she landed other hits on the R&B and pop charts, and released a number of gospel albums as well. Her songs also came to the attention of other artists; Tracey Ullman would record “Breakaway,” and the Rolling Stones would cover “Time Is On My Side,” both previously recorded by Thomas in 1964.

In the 1970s, Jerry Wexler signed Thomas to Cotillion Records, but the label only ended up releasing one single by her, “Full Time Woman,” in 1972; the rest of the tracks were left to languish in the vaults. They first escaped on CD in 2014; now vinyl fans can partake in the bounty on Full Time Woman: The Lost Cotillion Album (Real Gone Music), pressed on light blue vinyl. The title track is a stirring song of independence, sung from the perspective of a proud woman in search of personal fulfillment. There’s a powerful version of Bobbie Gentry’s “Fancy,” with Thomas’ own Southern roots adding further authenticity to this tale of sin and redemption. There’s also original material, such as the jauntily optimistic “Waiting for Someone,” with the promise of good times just around the corner.

PREMIERE: Savoir Faire Calls on Listeners to Examine Their Privilege with “Alias”

As a high school and college music teacher, Sarah Fard — known by her stage name Savoir Faire — is keenly aware of how people’s race, gender, disabilities, and other factors can affect how they’re treated and what opportunities they have access to.

“There’s a lot of gatekeeping for people with disabilities because of how we are traditionally taught is the correct way to do things; there’s a ‘correct’ or more esteemed way to read music and hold an instrument,” says the Boston-based musician. “Often, it’s the old dead white guys; we’re supposed to be upholding this music as the end-all be-all of what should be in a music curriculum.” To challenge these conventions, she once tried to teach her students hip-hop, and a superior told her that was “something they should do after school.”

She became inspired to write about this topic early in the pandemic while watching the show Alias, which features a spy who thinks she’s doing good work for the CIA but is actually working for a criminal organization. Fard saw connections between this show and the current political climate, where discussions of critical race theory were becoming more prominent throughout the U.S. and also were scorned. In her hometown in New Hampshire, people had trouble acknowledging the lack of diversity in the schools. “There was a lot of ugly talk on social media, and people were saying, ‘This town doesn’t need this, there is no racism no sexism here,'” she recalls.

“I started thinking about this duality of who we like to think we are [and how] we all have this implicit bias,” she continues. “And if we think we don’t, that’s actually really dangerous because then we’re not reflecting on it; we’re not addressing it.”

These implicit biases are the subject of her latest single, “Alias,” which uses jazzy guitar, dark, pounding drums, and deep, rich vocals to explore the hidden sides of ourselves we don’t like to look at. “It’s not a face you think you’re wearing/The identity you think is you/You see, they fed you a backstory/That you think, you think tasted true,” she sings. The highlight of the track is the very end, where Fard’s voice echoes itself against heavy guitar, repeating the lyrics: “Your cover’s been blown my dear/And though you seemed sincere/I found you, I found you, I found you out.”

Fard’s goal was to have the song carry a nostalgic, vintage vibe, as well as a somewhat abrasive, moody sound that might force people to confront themselves. She recorded a demo with the vocals and guitar, then sent it to drummer and producer Dave Brophy to mix it. “The song is kind of an inquisition with the listener, sort of an old noir film where the detective is interrogating the suspects,” she says. “I hope with this song that anyone listens to it who understands its message might have a moment of reflection.”

Trained as a jazz guitarist, Fard released her first album Machine with a Memoir in 2018, followed by the 2020 single “1945” and then “Sweet,” a jazzy single released earlier this year that deals with sexist stereotypes and belittlement. “Don’t confuse helpful with helpless,” she bellows theatrically on the track, which claps back at people who pigeonhole her as spineless or easily manipulated because of her kind demeanor. “I just don’t know that men who are good at their jobs and helpful get called ‘sweet’ in the same way,” she says. She plans to compile “Sweet,” “Alias,” and another soon-to-be-released song called “Think Twice” into an EP within the next year or so.

Her desire to prompt listeners to question their assumptions and biases stems in part from the stereotypes she has faced as a female guitarist. “I didn’t feel like I had that representation growing up to feel it was possible to play,” she says. “That was because all the guitar players were men. You can say the same about flute-playing; boys don’t play flute often. Is it because they don’t enjoy it or because we’ve made it a feminine instrument?”

She makes a point to showcase her own guitar playing in her songs to combat the common assumption that as a woman, she must be primarily a vocalist. All three songs on her upcoming EP feature guitar solos. “A lot of my peers in college thought I was a vocal major or a flute major because people didn’t see me as a guitar major,” she says. “I think it never hurts to have more songs with killer guitar riffs and guitar solos by female-identifying people for the young female-identifying people who need that representation.”

All in all, she hopes her music questions — and causes listeners to question — the social constructs that limit people. For this reason, her songs can be confrontational, which serves an important purpose in today’s world. “Some day, I’m gonna write a feel good song,” she says. “But today’s not the day.”

Follow Savoir Faire on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

P.E. Redefines the Concept of the Muse on Sophomore LP The Leather Lemon

Photo Credit: Vince McClelland

NYC experimental outfit P.E. get super weird on their sophomore record The Leather Lemon – and I mean that in the best way. Out March 25 on Wharf Cat Records, the album opens with “Blue Nude,” wherein singer Veronica Torres purrs, “You want to make me beg,” establishing a power dynamic right off the bat.

Musedom – or inspiration – is central to The Leather Lemon, which is brimming with mystery, romance and sex appeal. “Blue Nude” references Matisse, while “Lying with the Wolf” is based on a Kiki Smith work. But Torres (who writes the lyrics) isn’t just casually name-dropping fine artists. As she stated in a recent interview: “I’ve always been concerned with this concept of muse… women weren’t allowed to be creators, so they would just be put on a pedestal and inspire art, which I think is bullshit.”

That Torres is grappling with such ideas in her lyricism becomes all the more intriguing when you consider that she is the sole woman in her band, which is a Brooklyn underground supergroup of sorts, composed of members of PILL and Eaters. Jonathan Schenke, Bob Jones, Jonny Campolo and Benjamin Jaffe (who plays the guileful saxophone slinking its way through the whole record) write the music, but as the lyricist, Torres is the megaphone imparting the band’s message. In that sense, Torres flips the script – she is not the muse; rather, she is looking outward at the muse.

When I ask her about this, she makes sure to emphasize that she is “lucky [to be] working with really talented and supportive dudes.” That said, she notes that “the whole muse concept in a historical sense [is] not very far away. You can go to the museum now and get a Guerrilla Girls tote bag – which, I totally want that tote bag – but you know, it’s funny that you’re getting this deliverable item referencing something that was only 30 years ago, which was a piece about how women weren’t in museums.”

While she is critical of this particularly feminized nuance of the muse as a concept, let us remember that its contemporary definition is “a person or personified force who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist.” While it’s a historically female word for the reasons Torres articulates, it really could be anything, and on The Leather Lemon, it is. 

It helps that several members of the band are visual artists. In fact, the album title comes from multi-instrumentalist member Campolo’s visual art practice. “The Leather Lemon is actually a phrase that Jonny Campolo coined,” Torres explains. “He was making these drawings out of lemon and orange rinds. However they fell, he would sketch them, and they often looked like people.”

The juxtaposition of these unlikely materials and textures speaks to a new era for the band. Wharf Cat describes the record as “a wild ride through chewy bubblegum pop, sweeping synthetic orchestrations, and mutant club beats.” Strangely enough, what the record evoked for me was the 1988 thriller Frantic, set in the smoky back rooms of Paris nightclubs against a soundtrack laced with Grace Jones and Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone. My mind wanders through the enigmatic, sensual amalgamation of jazz, synthy nightclub sounds, and ’90s Bjork, the last of which Torres emphasizes as a specific influence, although she quantifies it: “Can anybody be ’90s Bjork? No. But it influenced [the record].” At one point during the recording, Campolo even described the sound as “’90s Bjorkish,” to which Torres said, “That’s what I was going for!”

I found this to be the most evident on the latter half of the record, namely tracks like “The Reason for My Love” and “Magic Hands.” The supportive nature of the band knows no gender in the sense that everyone brings their weird, unique ideas and works together to layer them. “Someone will start with something, and then it’s just building, over and over and over, and there’s a lot of editing as well,” Torres states. 

“It’s nice to have people be so encouraging, enabling me to explore a different side of what I’m capable of musically,” she continues. “They’re also just so supportive of my weird lyrics.”

In that way the muse is fluid. Just as much as visual art and the idea of the muse itself are central to the album’s genesis, Torres says she drew equal inspiration from a more traditional source as well: “I’m in love, so there’s definitely love songs too.” So while she’s looking outward at the muse, she looks inward as well, and opens herself up to the possibility of being someone else’s muse.

On “New Kind of Zen,” she sings, “Make me part of your spiritual practice.” When taken in consideration with where we started – “You want to make me beg” – it sums up the idea that we contain multitudes. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. The muse is not a default position of creative resignation for women anymore; on The Leather Lemon, it’s just what you make it.

Follow P.E. on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Seattle Listening Party Premiere Interactive 3D Music Video “Find Ur Grind”

Jena Pyle has designed a music video like no other for “Find Ur Grind,” her recent collaboration with Jack Uppling’s solo project, Seattle Listening Party. Beyond writing the lyrical content and singing on the track, Pyle, who is also a professional illustrator and designer, created a fantastical and interactive lofi-meets-vaporwave 3D space in which she, Uppling, and other musicians on the track sing and dance in elaborate outfits designed by artist Janelle Abbott. By clicking and dragging in the frame of the video, listeners can move 360 degrees around a vibrant, cloud-covered room; on the walls, Pyle installed rainbow-arched doorways, realistic metallic flower planters, gold pillars, and several framed screens with performance clips.

The incredibly unique and interactive video is one of several music videos Pyle’s made for her own band, Sundae Crush, and other local bands like Tacocat. But, Pyle concedes, this is perhaps the most complex one she’s ever designed. “I went to school for design, but I taught myself 3D,” Pyle says. “I watched a lot of tutorials on creating a 360 room and a lot of the trainings. There’s a lot that went into it.”

What’s more, while there are a few other 3D videos out there (like the work of Blake Kathryn, one of Pyle’s favorite 3D artists), “Find Ur Grind” is one of the only music videos that uses this technology.

“Jena worked very hard on the video with Izaac Mellow and I love how it turned out,” says Uppling. “I’d never really seen a 360 room video before and I think it’s perfect for the song.”

Sure enough, the upbeat track paired with the original video offers listeners a really fresh and exciting way to experience the music and the concepts “Find Ur Grind” explores.

Pyle’s lyrics describe the hamster wheel of the of “rise and grind” culture, or the capitalistic idea that your value is first and foremost defined by what you can bring others, and bucks against it—mirroring a very real shift Pyle’s been going through in her personal life.

“I just realized I was giving my time to things I didn’t love or things I didn’t think were going to help me grow as a person,” she says. “So I started to really think more about the time that I had and how precious it was and started setting more boundaries with the things that I was going to allow in my life.”

For Uppling, it’s also a symbol of their perseverance with the project during the pandemic. “I haven’t often been very satisfied with the way my songs have turned out in the past, but this one is different,” he admits. “I really appreciate Jena working on this one with me for so long, throughout the pandemic. Receiving new files from Jena in 2020 were extremely helpful in getting me through the year.”

Uppling moved to Seattle from Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2016 with his band The Landmarks. For the next three years, The Landmarks played shows throughout the city, getting to know other artists and bands. But in 2020, when The Landmarks decided to go their separate ways, Uppling continued to make music on his own and set out to work with more talent from the rich community he’d become a part of. Inspired by the mixtape-style collaborations of groups like Gorillaz and Daft Punk, Uppling formed Seattle Listening Party with the intention to stretch himself creatively and collaborate with more local musicians.

“It’s nice to be able to release electronic and modern classical stuff on my own, but I’m mostly excited about working with different vocalists and musicians. This project allowed me to just do whatever and have fun with people,” explains Uppling.

In 2019, Uppling had already written the music for what would become “Find Ur Grind,” but The Landmarks never got around to playing it. In fact, he had five previously-written songs in the vault that he hoped to shop around and record with collaborators.

One of the first collaborators Uppling approached was Pyle, who was immediately drawn to the demo version of “Find Ur Grind” that Uppling had laid down with engineer/producer Dylan Wall (Great Grandpa) and Razor Clam drummer Jess Bierhaus in 2019. Pyle brought her own colorful sensibility to the track, which Uppling says was initially “inspired by coffee, skateboarding and Lisa Simpson.”

With the success of “Find Ur Grind,” Uppling plans to release other tracks as Seattle Listening Party, including one track with artist Tylee Toyoda from The Landmarks/All Star Opera on drums, Abbey Blackwell from Alvvays on bass, and Laja Olaiya and Alyssa Clarke on vocals, as well as another track featuring Lena Farr-Morrissey from Coral Grief. Eventually, Uppling plans to create an EP or LP of these collaborative tracks.

For her part, Pyle is just happy she got to be involved and make the video, a passion project that reflects her intention to protect her time and enjoy herself more.

“I just wanted to create a really fun music video,” she says. “I didn’t want to overthink it. I wanted engage with my friends, [wear] cool outfits, play around and dance around—to just have fun.”

Follow Seattle Listening Party on Instagram for ongoing updates.

mBtheLight Let Intuition Guide Her Solo Debut, How to Dress Well in the Dark

Photo Credit: James Adams

Some people spend their lives trying to make music happen, while others tend to let the music happen to them. It seems that Monica Blaire exists in the realm of the blessed few that experience the latter – acting as a vessel for the words, melodies and rhythms that seems to flow freely through her like a river. That’s not to say she hasn’t spent countless days and years writing music and continually growing in her craft, but that the way she does it is led by intuition and experience rather than any forced or external motivation. Her latest record, How to Dress Well in the Dark (H2DWITD), (released via Moodymann – founded record label, Mahogani Music) proves to be no different. 

“All of the full songs you hear are one takes, three at most. Nothing was written down, they’re all improv,” explains Blaire, who is releasing the project under the moniker mBtheLight. “I’m kinda slowly getting people into the idea that I can be called whatever I wanna be called,” says Blaire. “And that, yeah, Monica Blaire is the foundation, but don’t be surprised if I put out an album and I just called it Blaire or if I put out an album and I don’t wanna be called anything.” This languid approach to her moniker reflects the shapeshifting and transformative themes in H2DWITD.  

The record – which has been three years in the making – unfolds like a sonic diary, giving the listener glimpses into the external and internal conflicts that the artist faced over the last few years. Blaire explains that, after moving back to Detroit from Atlanta in 2018, life didn’t exactly go the way that she planned. She had returned to Michigan with the intention of making a record with Andres – aka legendary DJ and producer DJ Dez (of Slum Village) – and acting as a Creative Director for one of her friends’ projects. But, as she recounts, the process was slow moving and she felt like she had things she needed to get off her chest now. So, Dez and Mahogani Music founder and house music legend, Moodymann, gave Blaire the green light to embark on her solo record. 

Blaire explains that her writing process – for these songs and most of her songs in the past – is a very quick and spiritual process. “We sat in the studio and Moody just played me the tracks,” Blaire says. “This is how it happened –  Moody would play a track and I’d be like, ‘This is dope’ and we would start recording.” She says that she relies on instinct when it comes to writing and doesn’t allow herself to overthink or ruminate on a song. “Whatever the first idea I get is gonna be the one,” Blaire muses. “They normally come fully flushed, like ‘This is the song.’ Maybe not the words, but definitely the melodies and the placement.”

This direct method of writing probably explains the vulnerable and forthright nature of Blaire’s music. H2DWITD pieces together the more produced, fleshed out tracks that Blaire worked on with Andres, Moodymann and Nick Speed, with poignantly fleeting memories, composed solely by Blaire on her iPhone. She says that after sitting with the longer tracks for a while, she started to understand the story she wanted to tell, and wrote the interludes from there. But, although she had an idea of what she wanted to say, Blaire says a lot of the songs on her record told her things that she didn’t know yet herself. “My music tends to be very predictive because of my tap in,” Blaire states. “Sometimes, I’m feeling something and I don’t know why I’m feeling it and I express it through song and later it makes sense.”

Take the album’s lead track, “samesong.” Blaire says she wrote this track on her way home from a tour that was canceled due to COVID, and was surprised by how accurate it was listening back a few years later. “It kinda predicted all the sadness that was coming… and even some of the relationship things… some of it were things I was trying to get closure from, but it also ended up being predictive in some other ways too.”

This foreboding track sets the tone for the rest of the record, leading the listener through the peaks and valleys of Blaire’s self-discovery, acceptance and growth. “This is the darkest I get generally, in terms of what I put out and the things that I do,” observes Blaire. But in that darkness are heaps of hopefulness and clarity. Like in “release,” a cathartic meditation on realizing your needs and letting go of people and things that don’t fulfill them. Blaire begins the song with a reminder of the humanity in all of us – (“Be kind/A heart is still a heart/And a mind is still a mind”) while also maintaining her strength and sending a message to anyone who wants to get close to her (“Fuck with me if you wanna/Know that I’m different, though/I don’t take shit for granted/I dive in deep toes first”). The last minute or so of the song demonstrates Blaire’s unflinching vocal talent in an outpouring of emotional vocal runs that say just as much, if not more, than the words preceding them. 

Each song on the record packs in an equal amount of emotion, whether it’s five minutes or thirty seconds. The interludes, especially, encapsulate Blaire’s complex and genuine spirit, along with glimmers of the turmoil that she experienced while making this record. From her car breaking down and computer dying to going through a complicated breakup and delaying plans to move across the country, Blaire has been through a lot the last few years. From that came this unfiltered, vivacious body of work that yields proof of the beauty in chaos. “When that kind of chaos starts happening, I just know the universe is mixing stuff up and it’s about to be a real good time,” says Blaire.

Follow mBtheLight on Twitter for ongoing updates.

BODEGA Brushes Up on the Classics on Broken Equipment LP

Photo Credit: Pooneh Ghana

“It’s only when things break down does the presence of the thing reveal itself,” says “Bodega” Ben, a founding member of the Brooklyn “art-punk incendiaries” who release their new full-length record Broken Equipment today on What’s Your Rupture?. 

He goes on: “What good art does is that it reveals these relationships we take for granted. And I like the pun of broken equipment too, because as artists, at least speaking for myself, we’re essentially damaged goods. We’re damaged people. We’re the jesters out in the world, and because of our pain – this is a gross oversimplification – but I think we can see things that not everybody can. We are broken equipment.”

The band borrowed the phrase from German philosopher Martin Heidegger, whose writings on technology and art and their interconnectivity with how we perceive the world loom large over this record. It all began with a philosophy book club, started in early 2020. The band had already written about a dozen new songs, but then the pandemic happened. Isolation allowed time for the ideas they had been grappling with to sink in. So they wrote more songs, and only about half of the originals made the final cut.

The beginning of the pandemic also brought with it some line-up changes, timing that proved serendipitous as it intersected with the formation of the book club. “De facto” book club leader Adam See is a philosophy professor, but also a bassist. 

“I know him first and foremost as a friend from the music scene, but didn’t really get to know him until we started reading philosophy together,” Ben explains. “I figured out he played a lot more bass than I knew, so it was kind of amazing that he was able to slip into being in the band.”

“A band is a gang, and it’s nice to have everyone bring their own personality, but the gang is the sum of its parts. And our band had that in a musical way, but there was something really special about the book club in the sense that it was rejuvenating for all of us,” he says. “It’s really fun to return to the classics that we had all read as undergrads, but in a non-academic setting. And that sort of bookish nature has slipped over into the band in a way that I think is really fun, which is more important than any books we read. It was the idea of reading together.”

So back to Heidegger. He appealed to BODEGA in the way that he, as Ben says, “puts you back in contact with what it feels like to be present in your body.” They were particularly inspired by his essay “The Question, Concerning Technology,” wherein he writes about man’s relationship with technology.

“We tend to think of technology as this neutral concept,” Ben says. “When a tool’s invented, it’s neutral, people use it, whatever. But his whole idea is that you go back to when the Greeks first invented the word techne, what they were really coining was an ideology of man’s relationship to the world, as he uses the [phrase] ‘standing reserve,’ so seeing everything in the world as a standing reserve.”

What this essentially means is that technology is not at all neutral, as it directly informs our experience with the world we exist in. The “I” you once were fundamentally changed when you held that first iPhone in your hands.

“In modern life, we tend to treat our own friends as standing reserve. We tend to treat our own bodies as standing reserve,” he continues. “What can you do for me? There’s this transactional relationship to everything, that extends to inanimate objects as real people. I feel like that rhymed with a lot of BODEGA concerns.”

Which brings us back to Broken Equipment, a logical next title in a series of albums that deal deeply with the ways capitalism, technology and their intersections have shaped our identities and experiences as humans living in the 21st century: Endless Scroll (2018) and its live counterpart Witness Scroll (2019); Shiny New Model (2019). In a way, that’s what this band is about – they read Heidegger so you don’t have to. They break these weighty ideas down into something more digestible, more palatable even, so that they might transmute these ideas that concern them to others in a way they’ll actually consume.

Vocalist Nikki Belfiglio puts it this way, referencing the American essayist Ellen Willis: “The true prophets [in a communication crisis] are the translators. And I feel like in a sense artistry is like that. We show ourselves almost as prophets, in a pretentious way, but in the way of the true form of pretension, we try to be more than what we are.”

She continues: “What I’m trying to say is artists fulfill this role as translators, and are trying to communicate these things, like broken equipment, things that have broken down and are not yet noticed by society, or uncommunicated in a sense, other than on an art-making level.”

As far as artistic endeavors go, this sounds heavy, ambitious even. But they’re also having fun with it. Part of what makes Broken Equipment such a special record is how evident the love and fun that went into making it is. When they set out to write it, BODEGA was tired of being lumped in with third or fourth-wave post punk bands. They believe in allegiance to artists and songs, more so than genre.

“What we want to do is trace how consciousness is changing,” Ben explains, “[but] people say to us all the time, wow your band is so boring. We get it, I’m on my phone a lot.”

In this sense, you might even note the influence of Martin McLuhan here; on Broken Equipment, the media is the message. BODEGA is all about how the constant bombardment of outside influences shapes us in this over-inundated media landscape, and the ways art, music and media have shaped the band are overwhelming on this album. The influences are all over the chart here – you can of course see hints of other contemporary punk outfits like B Boys, and Ben’s vocals are at times reminiscent of Show Me the Body’s frontman Julian Cashwann Pratt, namely on tracks like “Thrown” and “Doers.”

Which makes sense, given that they infused their sound with a lot of ’90s hip hop sensibilities; artists like Run DMC and Eric B. & Rakim come to mind as you make your way through the record. Gasps of pop and classic rock puncture the noise as well; Nikki says she jokingly refers to album single “Statuette on the Console” as their “Sheryl Crow Ramones song.”

With this, the message comes through as genuine, and never preachy. On opening track “Thrown,” Nikki shouts “Watch the thrown,” a warning as it were, to be on guard for all images and content the world will throw at you today. Ben jumps in to list the many ways he’s “thrown” by the world around him, “big rock ads” and “the itch on my back.”

We’re never free, and neither is BODEGA. But the band practices radical acceptance on Broken Equipment, allowing the many factors that influence them to seep together into something greater than its parts. There’s very little any of us can do on our own to stop the progress of technology as it snowballs more and more insidiously into our lives, for better or for worse. The best you can do is be conscious of it, and with that, maybe even have a little fun with it.

Follow BODEGA on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

Melbourne’s Sydney Miller Melds Crafty Samples and Synthpop on Debut EP The Inside

Photo courtesy of Sydney Miller

When Sydney Miller dropped her track “Out From The Inside” in the middle of 2020, the Melbourne singer-songwriter caused a clamour. Her dancefloor-friendly pop leanings suggested a steady diet of Britney, Ariana and Selena, but her curiously composed samples and glitchy, layered sonics have gleaned inspiration from Róisín Murphy’s debut solo album Ruby Blue.

“She’s a star. I’ve never really resonated with an artist and their progression so much,” states Miller. “My mom would play her dance music throughout the house, before I knew it was her. Once I got ahold of that 2005 album Ruby Blue, I listened to it every day, and it’s a huge reference for the production I learnt how to do. For that album they recorded vacuums and all this wacky sort of stuff, and I thought, why can’t I do that?”

Miller released debut EP The Inside on February 25th, and it’s jam-packed with field recordings, the ephemera of daily life, and manipulated found sounds, but – like Murphy – she has not created a sterile scientific experiment in sonics. Her richly atmospheric, hooky palette of pop flavours amounts to a joyful melange of glitchy, sweeping, artsy synthpop and vibrant, textured electro.

The restless, click-clack percussion of “Bad News” sounds like a spoon trailed over a long line of tall glasses. A thudding rave beat and the distant sound of a dropped-out phone line form the backdrop to Miller’s gorgeously girly vocals. Computer game-style bleeps and chords kick in about halfway through, giving a nostalgic patina to the hyper-fresh dance mood. She’s as inventive and strangely compelling as Billie Eilish, without the bleakly gothic, blackened heart.

“With ‘Bad News’ I was really tired of scrolling through social media and opening the news to all those classic COVID scares,” she reveals. “So, I wanted to make a song about that: sounds of phones, newspapers, books representing the idea of the media holistically. I made samples from that, came up with a hook, developed the lyrics and moulded it all together in a weird way.”

Miller is certain that the “rhythmic fixation” making its way kinetically into her music and songcraft stems from her years of studying dance. “I was a dancer growing up so that has a huge impact on the way that I write,” she proclaims. “I started with ballet and tap so the tap explains my interest in rhythm and textures, but as I got older ballet was too strict for me and I got much more into contemporary and jazz and I loved those.”

“In The Office” was inspired by the job she took up during Melbourne’s long string of lockdowns. As the supervisor at a call centre for COVID queries, she was working 40-hour weeks, often answering calls herself.

“The environment felt so loud because of the sounds and the fast-paced atmosphere, and what was going on at the time with everyone being freaked out,” she recalls. “I needed to make something that replicated the feeling that I felt going into it every day. It wasn’t an environment that I felt like I belonged in. Every day I’d walk in feeling frustrated that I was in that position, when really I wanted to be at home, making music. I felt frazzled and isolated going into that office.”

When developing the song’s sonic palette, Miller reached for the familiar. “I used a kit of chairs and pencils and that kind of thing, so that was pretty easy for me to manipulate at home…I have a weird chair that’s a bit squeaky, so I recorded that… Even knocking on my desk, I got good sounds of out that, wooden spoons, that kind of thing,” she explains. “I filled the gaps with typing on computers, mouse clicking, anything where I thought, hey – that sounds like an office!”

Miller’s singing and production skills go beyond her liberal use of household samples. Following years of choir and piano lessons from the age of four, she was classically trained as a vocalist, including three years under the tutelage of renowned Melbourne vocal coach Angela Wasley during her high school years. Miller holds a Bachelor in Interactive Composition from the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts, and the tiresome and demanding call centre job was her route to saving up to return to uni this year to complete her Honours.

“It’s a bit of a niche course, but it [involved] making and producing music for any art forms that we could get our hands on. I particularly took an interest in making music for installation art and that lead me into this art schooly, weird production thing for a conventional pop fusion,” she says.

Her professor put her forward when Dr. Heather Gaunt, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at Grainger Museum, was seeking a sound artist to collaborate on an immersive exhibition within the museum.

“The museum was looking for a classical composer, a hip hop composer and a psy-trance composer,” explains Miller. “I did not fit into any of those categories at all… but I submitted anyway. The head of the Grainger was filtering through all the music sent and she called and said she loved the piece I submitted.”

Dr. Gaunt commissioned Miller to create a sound installation that accompanies by custom architectural and animated elements designed by Professor Rochus Hinkel. The exhibition is planned for mid to late March and will also be part of Melbourne Design Week; while the museum has been completely empty, Miller has been recording atmospheric sound and creating her own samples to fit the feeling of the different rooms, be they linear and wooden-walled or curvy and metallic.

While it might seem a far remove from her radio-friendly pop EP, she has approached the process of music making in the same way as ever: forming a concept, building a kit of samples, then methodically turning her song into a story.

“I’m very holistic about the way that I approach a song,” she confides. “I might want to make a song about being trapped in a maze, and then I will find and make all the sounds and create a bank of weird sounds that represent being stuck inside a maze.”

The process is both soothing and cathartic.

“These emotions I’m bottling up or experiencing, I’m then able to compartmentalise it into a piece of music that I can put those feelings to,” she says. “That process of putting my emotions together and going, ‘ah, it feels like this!’ and putting sounds to that… comes together into something complete and encompasses everything I’m feeling into three or four minutes of sound.”

Follow Sydney Miller on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

Erin Rae Goes Deep on ‘Lighten Up’ LP

Photo Credit: Bree Fish

Erin Rae’s new album, Lighten Up, is an exercise in showing up for herself. 

In early 2019, Rae and a fellow singer-songwriter friend, Louise Hayat-Camard of The Dove & The Wolf, made a pact to write a song each day and send it to each other. For Rae, it was about developing a discipline, holding herself accountable to the craft. In doing so, the songs that comprise Lighten Up started to take shape, including the title track, “Cosmic Sigh,” and “Drift Away.”

“It was when those songs presented themselves that I started to imagine what the record cover would look like and see what the album will take shape around,” Rae describes to Audiofemme. She even sketched out plans for album art and wrote out a tentative track list that helped build momentum for the project, the title itself meant to inspire the listener to lean into curiosity.

“It’s not really my style to be directive and tell people what I think they should do. It’s playing around with that term and inviting people to be curious: ‘What is she talking about? Who does she think she’s talking to?’” she laughs of the “inquisitive” phrase. “Once you get into the songs and you hear that, it’s very much my experience that I’m talking to. Take what you like, leave the rest.” The album was released on February 4; Rae is currently on tour with Courtney Marie Andrews in Australia before returning to the U.S. as a supporting act for Watchhouse, beginning on March 31.

Rae’s previous album, Putting on Airs, confronted her inner darkness and past trauma, diving into her psyche on songs like “Bad Mind.” It details her experience as a queer woman in the South, the feelings she once had to suppress now finding freedom through song. “’Bad Mind’ was a song that I was nervous to share because I was like, ‘Are my collaborators going to think this is weird that I’m talking about being afraid to be gay in this song?’” the Tennessee native pondered, instead met with support from her co-writers. “I’m still aware of the intensity of the subject matter, but it feels like through playing it, I got freed up from any sort of fear around that or being uncomfortable with it.”

Lighten Up continues this healing process. Intentional about maintaining an introspective nature through the music, she wanted to honor the shift that’s occurred in her life since Airs was released in 2018. “Once you have done some of that deep digging and done some healing work, the turning point where I’ve seen all that stuff, now I have awareness and now I want to move into the next part of my life where I’m more into connection with other people and less inhibited by old survival skills or patterns of behavior, negative beliefs,” she explains. 

A major part of this healing journey was allowing all of the walls she’d built around herself to come down. “Cosmic Sigh” directly addresses this, a vintage-sounding acoustic number that sounds like it was transported from the golden era of folk. Here, Rae intertwines this sense of growth with images of the natural world as she serenely sings, “The sun/Day is dawning in the soul/And warms the melancholy/And come what may/She’s won/There’s no need to be afraid/With her illusions falling.”

“Something that I’ve worked with a lot in my life is how anxiety and negative self-belief has hampered that connection, or if I’ve connected with people, being hesitant to be as open as I would like to be,” she says. “Letting myself be known, be vulnerable, be messy, and not seeking to have it all figured out before entering into if it’s a romantic connection, feeling like that needs to be perfect. I think primarily a lot of my work has been to repair that relationship with myself. It’s not so much about ‘What do you think of me?’ It’s ‘This is what I think of me now.’”

Songs like “Cosmic Sigh” and “Drift Away” acknowledge these energy shifts, touching on days when it feels like time has slowed down, to experiencing the magic of one’s own dreams coming to life before their very eyes. Meanwhile, “Can’t See Stars” finds Rae in a soul-cleanse, driving far past city lines to escape the madness of the modern world and soak in the beauty of the night sky.

“One thing that I really enjoy in writing is drawing the correlations between my internal experience and then that of my emotional experience in nature and life itself on the outside that’s continuing to operate amidst all of us in our human stuff that we do,” she shares. “It’s the correlation between an over-saturation of social media and constant distraction and people, the internet, always having somewhere to distract myself, and then how that can add to the disconnect from myself and my intuition and that inner stillness. The physical manifestation of that is literally not being able to see the night sky because we have a billion city lights going all the time, and just needing to create some space and some distance from that from time to time.”  

As she continues to move forward and find inner peace, Rae has a new set of survival skills she’s cultivated through vulnerability, connection and building community, all of which will carry her through to the next bright spot in her journey. “Sometimes there’s a few steps forward and you’re like, ‘I think things are getting better and I feel hopeful,’ and then there’s ‘Why don’t I try to go back to my old patterns because that’s more comfortable and I’m a little scared to move into the unknown.’ And, and then it’s ‘No, we’re going to keep going,’” she notes. “My goal for this album is for it to be giving permission and compassion for myself and whoever listens to it and relates. My intention for this is to help there be a softness towards these deeper, emotional things that we all have, so that maybe there’s some space for them to be brought into the light to be processed.” 

Follow Erin Rae on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for ongoing updates. 

Stars Align for Chief Cleopatra with the Premiere of “Afrodite”

Photo Credit: Ismael Quintanilla III 

Raised in Corsicana, Texas, Jalesa Jessie, a.k.a. Chief Cleopatra, grew up feeling stifled by the limitations of her rural environment. In a small town best known for producing honky-tonk songwriter Lefty Frizzell and a “world famous fruitcake,” according to Jessie, she always felt like an outsider. But this outsider status has carried her all the way to the precipice of something big, with the imminent release of her second EP Luna, a follow-up to 2020’s self-titled EP and her first on Park The Van Records. Today she premieres “Afrodite,” the final single before the EP drops on March 4th.

Luna finds Jessie delving deeper into her psychedelic soul roots and more experimental instrumentation, with featured production by singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Walker Lukens and performances by Curtis Roush and Jack O’Brien (The Bright Light Social Hour). “Afrodite” evokes the joy of love – not the heady ephemerality of infatuation, but the peace of consistency and belief in its lasting power. In the chorus she sings “I ain’t got nowhere to be, but with you,” layered over riffs that float along as though suspended in air, flecks of dust captured in the sunlight of a summer golden hour.

“‘Afrodite’ is myself in cosmic form… The goddess of love, eternal and insouciant,” Jessie says. “It’s a special, carefree, universal love song that ties together the very human yet otherworldly intergalactic joyride that is Luna. It’s a romance that starts on the ground and moves beyond the stars as they align.”

There is no insecurity here; there is no question of when or if the lover will leave. There is only right now, and the choice to enjoy the beauty of the present moment, rather than worry about when it will dissolve.

Jalesa Jessie’s first foray into music was classical training on piano, learning in competition with her sister. She quickly realized she lacked the patience to sit and practice for hours at a time, but those lessons revealed her ability to play by ear.

As a teenager, she dove deep into the sonic influences surrounding her (mainly gospel and soul) as well as exploring her newfound interest in rock ’n’ roll: Talking Heads, Smashing Pumpkins, Led Zeppelin. Her parents bought her the Zeppelin discography – alongside her first drum set. “I taught myself how to drum listening to John Bonham. [My parents] didn’t know anything about Led Zeppelin, but they knew I was really into it, so… that was cool,” ,” she says with a laugh. 

She moved to Austin 2012in search of greater musical opportunities, and quickly connected with guitarist Leonard Martinez, who would become her longtime collaborator. They began jamming together with a series of bands over the next few years, but when none of it panned out, the pair forged their own path and began producing music under Jessie’s new moniker, Chief Cleopatra. They released a collaborative EP, Lesa x Lenny Vol.1, in 2019.

From there, it’s been a constant up-and-up. Her biggest inspiration these days is Tina Turner – after watching the recent HBO documentary, she realized, “I wanted to be the next black female rock star.” And she’s well on her way – the band was quickly noticed by and featured in the Austin Chronicle, as well as by KUTX, performing on the station’s popular hip-hop and R&B show The Breaks in 2019, resulting in the band being invited to play the third annual Summer Jam in 2020. 

Though Cleopatra’s new sonic direction echoes fellow pop experimenters Blood Orange and Thundercat, that isn’t to say it will remain that way. “I’m an outsider, I’m an underdog,” Jessie maintains, describing her own genre-bending sound. “Being a Black kid growing up in Corsicana, nobody expected me to be over here liking rock bands, so I’ve always been an outsider in a sense, or outcast, in my hometown. My music is for people with no limitations. People who want to mix all these genres together to make this universal sound, and that’s really what I’m trying to accomplish.”

Follow Chief Cleopatra on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

Jamie McDell Recalls A Life of Wonder and Risk on Her Fourth Album

Photo Credit: Jake Smith

No pearl exists without the sandy grit that acts as both an agitator and a catalyst for the solid, iridescent beauty that results. So it is with the thirteen lovingly crafted tracks on Jamie McDell’s self-titled fourth album, pearls of wisdom and wonder formed by an adventurous childhood, early music stardom, and a series of migrations across three countries. Released February 25th, the latest LP from the New Zealand singer-songwriter celebrates the blessings alongside the burdens, delving into unexpectedly personal territory for the artist.

McDell spent some of her early years adrift – quite literally. Aged seven, she lived on a yacht with her parents and her younger sister, as her father helmed an exploration of the Mediterranean; it would be the first of many impulsive decisions that would consequently leave the family in financial peril. “It’s been quite a strong narrative throughout our entire relationship,” admits McDell, who is currently living in Papamoa in the North Island, New Zealand. “It probably wasn’t until I was in my late teens and early 20s that I understood the impacts that [taking off in a boat] had on their life.”

But McDell’s song “Poor Boy” is a reassurance and a thank you to her father for providing his daughters with revelatory experiences, and a sense that the world is large, wonderful and available to them if they breach the safety of the limits imposed on them by society, media and their own fears.

The song opened a dialogue between herself and her family that had been coursing below the surface for decades. Before releasing the single, McDell played “Poor Boy” for her dad on acoustic guitar, unsure what to expect.

“He did cry. I must say, I wasn’t entirely sure what the complex theme might have been of what he was feeling. I think my parents still hold quite a bit of shame and, absolutely, before I release something like this I definitely talk it through with them,” she says

“Poor Boy,” too, enabled her to consider the weight of shame in her own life and to alleviate some of its burden, something that she hopes will adjust the dynamic of her relationship with her parents, perhaps recasting their shared memories as formative, not damaging.

“I’m in an interesting stage of life where I’m learning, myself, not to carry so much guilt and shame for some of the decisions I’ve made,” she says. “My parents’ generation, they don’t necessarily have those same tools. I think we’re on a journey to develop our relationship and have it not be based so much around what they consider mistakes, but I consider moments in my life that have given me strength and made me more adaptable as a young woman.”

Now 28, she has known a truly peripatetic life, providing artistic manna ripe for shaping into song. Whisked off to sea when her father gave up his lucrative position within an Auckland law firm, most of what she listened to growing up was her parents’ collection of cassette tapes. The country-folk-rock soundtrack to their sea life was built upon days of Jimmy Buffett, John Denver and James Taylor. Enthused by her parents’ regular duets, young McDell sang along and began to teach herself guitar with the aid of her father’s John Denver chord books.

The experience coloured her 2012 debut album Six Strings and a Sailboat, which won the 16-year-old McDell gold album sales and New Zealand Music Award’s Best Pop Album of 2013.

She takes a deep breath in before discussing her debut.

“I really had an internal struggle with that [album]. It’s something I’m really trying to still feel proud of and what I fought to achieve as a young woman, because I can see that – at the end of the day – I’d gone into the studio, I was able to command these musicians so young, and we recorded a record that is entirely mine, no collaborations. Everything was written by me, no intervention, and I do think that’s really amazing,” she concedes. “I was young and didn’t know how to articulate all the kinds of sounds that I wanted. The aim was definitely to create radio singles and that was quite a different process to what I’m enjoying about music now.”

Her second album, Ask Me Anything, followed in 2015, and tracks like “Dumb,” “Falling,” “Crash,” and “Luck” give a sense of the emotional terrain she was feeling lost in. “My history in the music industry, to me had felt very commercial,” she reflects. “I got into the music industry really young and had one of those kind of dream stories where you sign a record deal and you record this album and it goes out into the universe and somehow all the singles get picked up and do really well. [I was] oblivious to the struggles of being a musician.”

The memories of Americana and country that permeated her childhood beckoned her to Nashville, and in 2017, she moved to the musical mecca, just after releasing her first independent, self-titled record with her sister Tess under the moniker Dunes. “Once I left my record label [EMI], I felt that I’d seen how a successful album campaign worked and there must be options out there for me to set up an independent release. I was really excited about that. I was quite business-minded, really enjoyed marketing and was excited to take it on myself,” she remembers.

In Nashville, seeking to reconnect with the country and roots music she’d loved as a child, she met and bonded with Australian expat Nash Chambers after she sent him a couple of tracks via email.

“I had this big spiel to him about my commercial history and how I wanted to move into a more country-folk sound and he said okay, cool, let’s stop talking about genres now and just worry about songs,” she recalls with a laugh. “I was dancing around what was important about this whole thing and I just think from there, I felt like we had similar values and he was going to be really good for me and getting down to the grounded songwriter that I wanted to be.”

Her third album Extraordinary Girl resulted from that journey. Funded by the renowned producer (and brother to internationally reputed country singer-songwriter Kasey Chambers, who features on opening track “Tori”), it was recorded in Nashville over two days at House of Blues studio, and she proceeded to tour and promote it through Australia and New Zealand throughout 2018.

“Coming from quite a pop background and having Auto-Tune playing on everything, that works for some people. But for me, that’s not how I like to hear my voice,” says McDell. “There’s an imperfection in many of my recordings, whether it’s a chord that goes off, something I’ve played wrong, something I’ve sung wrong, and I love those. I love that part. Nash has been such an amazing producer to work with in that regard because he really celebrates that.”

Seeking a change of scenery but still wanting to be within easy range of Nashville and Chambers, she moved to Toronto in 2019 with her partner. The Visa process was significantly simpler than trying to move to the US, she explains. It also took the pressure off her to be a full-time, hustling musician in Nashville. On the floor of her tiny apartment, she penned “Botox” as a way of expunging the frustration of witnessing a friend’s problematic relationship and her own sense of powerlessness. Released on The Botox EP that same year, the song reappears on her latest album.

McDell didn’t last long in Toronto, though. “Looking back now, we were definitely just surviving in Toronto. There was nothing that we could relate to back home in terms of the landscape, apartment living, a lot of concrete, not much nature, not really knowing anybody. I don’t associate it with a positive experience,” she says. “I did feel like I was running uphill all the time because I was trying to so hard to find a music community… I just wasn’t finding any pathways there.”

That community opened up for her in Vancouver, which proved a vastly more nourishing base for the couple. “Vancouver is like a different New Zealand in terms of landscape and nature; it’s very similar. We’re such outdoorsy people and it had all of that for us so we related to home a lot more and we had new friends there, we immediately felt a sense of community.”

From Vancouver, she had gone on the road, before dedicating herself to the making of her self-titled album. After opening a US tour for Texas Piano Man Robert Ellis in early 2020, she returned to Nashville to work with Chambers in his Eastside studio, joined by a coterie of enviably talented musicians: Dan Dugmore, Jedd Hughes, Dennis Crouch, Shawn Fichter, Jerry Roe, Jimmy Wallace, Tony Lucido, the McCrary Sisters, Erin Rae and Tom Busby (Busby Marou).

“My biggest fear comes from that dreaded imposter syndrome that I get from working in a studio in Nashville with really accomplished studio musicians,” she recalls. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that. Because I’m not technically trained, there’s this sense of unworthiness. Going into the studio I’m always super nervous that someone is going to say ‘what key is this?’ and I won’t know the answer. I’m much more about feel and that’s how I write songs.”

The songs on this latest album are, indeed, brimming and bubbling with feeling. McDell is more open than she’s ever been about the moments that have shaped her life. “I’ve recorded a handful of albums now, and it’s very unlike me to go into it with some kind of theme or whole picture in mind. I definitely write more ballads than I do upbeat tracks and with this album, we had such depth lyrically – so many moving moments – because a lot of the writing did become about my family and some of those personal stories,” she says.

The songs on this record are both poetic and humble in theme and delivery, able to disarm the hardest of hearts. Says McDell, “The balance to the imposter syndrome is that I have such belief in what I’ve written and I rarely feel the need to go in and change things around.”

Follow Jamie McDell on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

How Isolation Led ADULT. to Becoming Undone

Photo courtesy of ADULT.

Since the late 1990s, ADULT. has gained a cult following of devotees drawn to the Detroit duo’s genre-blurring, dark electronic music and knack for tapping into complicated, relatable emotions and situations. Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller hadn’t planned to begin work on a new album so soon after the April 2020 release of Perception is/as/of Deception. Yet, by the fall of the first pandemic year, the pair had commenced writing what would become their ninth full-length album, Becoming Undone; both releases draw from very different types of isolation. 

“Once we realized that there was no light at the end of the tunnel, we were like, okay, let’s make a new record,” says Kuperus by phone from Detroit. But unleashing that creativity was harder than anticipated. 

When making Perception is/as/of Deception, Kuperus and Miller opted to work  in a room they had painted black. It was an experiment in sensory deprivation that left sound as their primary form of stimulus. When the album was released, in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, record stores were largely closed and tour plans were canceled. “It was made in a void and it just went into a fucking void,” says Kuperus with a laugh. 

Where Perception is/as/of Deception was the result of isolation-by-design, Becoming Undone manifested out of an unexpected, but necessary, period of quarantine. “We had to be so careful because we had cared for my dad through hospice at home,” she explains; her father passed July of 2020. Additionally, her mom underwent cancer treatment and they were visiting her frequently. “We were literally not seeing anybody. We felt like we had to protect her,” says Kuperus. “It was a very isolated time.”

“You would think that would maybe help the creativity, but it didn’t help,” she adds. “The whole timeline of COVID seems so crazy to me. It feels like one big blob. Even though it’s two years, it feels like the same thing.”

However nebulous, Kuperus surmises that this period of isolation had a big impact on the writing process for Becoming Undone. “There’s no pressure for the songs to be anything other than they want to be,” she says. “It’s not like this has to be a dance song or a crowd-pleaser, because we were just working in such a strange moment.”

“Teeth Out Pt. II,” the final track on Becoming Undone, was actually the first written for the album. “I got this looper pedal and was experimenting with doing various vocal recordings of just noises I was making. Through my voice and the pedal, I made a structure, almost like a melody or a beat, but it’s far from there,” says Kuperus. “I had been writing down various things after my dad passed and that really came out of that.”

The song, written in November of 2020, would go on to set the tone for the rest of the new material. “In a way, we are making this record for ourselves,” she says. “Not that we ever make records for anybody else, but, let’s face it, there is a pressure and I think that this set the tone for what’s next. Where do we go from this point?”

The pressure, Kuperus later clarifies, isn’t about listener expectations. “I think I’m at a weird point in my life where I’ve been doing this much longer than I expected and we’ve had successes, but we’ve never been a big band,” she says. “It’s more your own legacy. You just want to be credible; you want people to respect and understand your work and, to have that, you hope to inspire other people by making important work.”

“I don’t feel pressure, like, will people like this?” she adds. “I just want it to be important in the realm of weirdo music that we do, that it has some kind of significance and that it’s long-lasting. So, there’s that pressure of making a good piece of work.”

All this led to some really intriguing moments on Becoming Undone. Kuperus brought out the same looper pedal used on “Teeth Out Pt. II” for “She’s Nice Looking.” Vocals build to the repetition of variations of the song’s title, and as it swells, it might make you feel like you’re trapped in an endless Instagram scroll of people commenting on a woman’s looks. The song itself reflects shallow popularity based on appearance. “You find these people saying, she’s nice looking,” says Kuperus. “You get really tired of that.” 

With Becoming Undone now out via Dais Records, ADULT. is planning to hit the road, first for a European tour through March and into early April. Their U.S. jaunt is set for April and May. The tour comes with a mix of emotions for Kurperus. ADULT. has only played a few shows since live music resumed in 2021. 

“You’ve gotta be safe and respectable, but, also, the show must go on and life must go on,” says Kuperus. “Whether it’s the artists or the people going out to the shows, we all need music desperately.”

Follow ADULT. on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

MUSIQUE BOUTIQUE: Natalia King, Bitch, and Songs of Yoko Ono

Welcome to Audiofemme’s record review column, Musique Boutique, written by music journo vet Gillian G. Gaar. The last Monday of each month, Musique Boutique offers a cross-section of noteworthy reissues and new releases guaranteed to perk up your ears.

“Well, they call me a hard-headed woman/I tell ‘em ‘I work at it every day’” is the proud, take-no-prisoners opening line from the title track of Natalia King’s latest album, Woman Mind of My Own (DixieFrog Records). It’s an album reverberating with the unvarnished power of the blues — despite most of it being recorded in Paris, where the Brooklyn-born King is now based.

At its heart, the blues is an expression of profound human emotions, and King’s album resonates with deep feeling. “AKA Chosen” is a stirring song of self-empowerment. “Once was part/but now I’m whole,” King sings, as the simple guitar opening gives way to a stomping beat and lively backing chorus. “Forget Yourself” seduces with an insinuating tenor sax solo. “So Far Away” is a compelling portrait of estrangement in a relationship. “Play On” cleverly uses gambling metaphors in its dissection of the game of love, as a moaning slide guitar hints of the danger that may lie ahead. Along with her own songs, there’s also an interesting selection of covers; a reflective rendition of John Mellencamp’s “Pink Houses,” and a wonderfully intimate version of George Michael’s “One More Try.”

State of the world got you down? A little Bitchcraft (Kill Rock Stars) will lift those spirits. “You’re the man, you’re the man, you’re the man,” Bitch sings in the song of that name, ending the litany with the telling reminder, “Well, I’m the woman.” Yes, she certainly is. The artist, formerly one half of queercore duo Bitch and Animal, has created an album that delights and dazzles, from the bright pop of “You’re the Man” (with its rallying cry “In the underground, the most amazing sound/We sing through everything that tries to cut us down”) to the stark, brittle sounds that percolate in “Easy Target,” to the soothing harmonies of “Polar Bear,” which imagines the natural beauty of a world without humanity.

She’s as much a visual artist as a musician. Check out the eye-popping video for “Hello Meadow!” – the explosive color and rapid-fire editing match its pointed lyrics attacking the corporate greed that’s destroying the natural beauty of our delicate planet. The more somber “Nothing in My Pockets” dissects the nature of heartbreak with the liberal use of black light and streaks of day-glo paint. Aurally and visually, Bitchcraft casts an enticing spell.

This month marked Yoko Ono’s 89th birthday, on February 18, and in celebration of that event comes a new tribute to her work, Ocean Child: Songs of Yoko Ono (Canvasback Music/Atlantic Records/Chimera Music). The various artists compilation was conceived and curated by Ben Gibbard, lead singer/guitarist of Death Cab for Cutie, in hopes of generating new appreciation for her work.

Ono was originally a visual artist, and, more enigmatically a “conceptual artist,” as demonstrated by such “instructional poems” as this — “Painting To Be Constructed In Your Head: Observe three paintings carefully. Mix them well in your head” (from her book Grapefruit). Not coming from a traditional rock or conventional pop music background gives Ono’s music its unique quality; she’s made up her own rules about how she wants to make music. Hence the nursery rhyme in the middle of “Dogtown,” a song that benefits greatly from Sudan Archives’ cool delivery.

There’s also an undercurrent of sadness in much of her work. It’s understandable in a track like the haunting ballad “Nobody Sees Me Like You Do” (a beautiful performance by Japanese Breakfast), which was written in the wake of the murder of her husband, John Lennon. But it’s also there in “Run, Run, Run,” which predated that tragic event, in which a “run to the light” becomes a “run for your life;” Amber Coffman’s rendition has a decided Americana vibe. Other contributors include U.S. Girls, Thao Nguyen, Sharon Van Etten, and The Flaming Lips, making for an imaginative collection honoring an equally creative artist.  

Sasami Weaves a Cathartic Tapestry of History, Anger, Art and Fantasy on Squeeze

The writhing, bloody-mouthed woman-monster illustrating Sasami Ashworth’s sophomore album Squeeze is fearsome but familial. As the musical, lyrical and sensory terrain of her latest album divulges, the Californian singer-songwriter has been digging into her past, her mother’s family history, and discovering generations of capture, imprisonment, racism and displacement. The fury that emerged was only compounded by her own experience of being put in her place by techies on tour.

“I went into making this album with the intention of making a heavy rock album because touring the first album with mostly a queer femme band, I was met with a lot of toxic male sound person energy: questioning our abilities and knowledge of our instruments, and always asking us to turn our amps down. Inherently, that just manifested in me being more chaotic and turning my amp up louder, becoming more aggressive. I knew this chaotic, restless energy that’s on Squeeze was already bubbling on my first album tour,” she explains.

Ultimately, Squeeze (out February 25th via Domino Records) manifested as eleven tracks of macabre industrial and hypnotic sonic textures. Sasami produced most of it herself, with acclaimed garage rocker Ty Segall co-producing on a couple of tracks. “Ty is so strange and funny and goofy and bizarre, a perfect collaborator,” Sasami says.  COVID restrictions limited who she was able to work with, but they are a fine roll call nonetheless: her studio partner Kyle Thomas (King Tuff) co-engineered and composed; Christian Lee Hutson and Hand Habit’s Meg Duffy added guitar and encouraged Ashworth’s folksier leanings. None other than Megadeth’s drummer Dirk Verbeuren rumbles in devilishly on a number of heaving, grinding bangers, including opening track “Skin A Rat,” a snarling, metal-industrial grinder built on militant drums, a tidal storm of crushing guitar riffs and the sing-song, suggestive refrain about three quarters in: “There are many ways…to skin a rat.”

Ghosts of Nu Metal weave their spectral fingers throughout the album, never more so than on “Say It.” The savage, distorted percussion (courtesy Moaning’s Pascal Stevenson, aka Fashion Club) is softened by Sasami’s soothing, calmly collected voice, even as a chilling mechanical refrain, disembodied and hollow, assures “Everything’s okay/Lie to me/Why don’t you rip it off?” There’s a resignation in Sasami’s sultry, cool response: “I don’t want you to apologize, just say it, say it, say it.”

She insists that there was no one person, nor one experience that inspired each of the songs. They were designed to be malleable to a spectrum of listeners, contouring to whatever personal grievances and ideologies they needed to hear echoed back to them, or expunged in cathartic howls.

“Whereas my first album is very autobiographical and diaristic, I built this album thinking way more about how a listener would use the songs to have an emotional cathartic experience, or creating art that echoes an emotional sentiment…” she explains. “I really wanted to make music that could soundtrack anyone’s, not just my own, experience of wanting to process frustration, rage, disappointment or anger, whether it’s systemic oppression or personal unrequited love or lack of communication. The main through-line I’m exploring is what if I, instead of trying to brighten my negative mood or get bogged down by sadness, leaned more into frustration, rage and violence? Then, in a fantasy kind of way, I’m able to burn some of that excess rage or frustration.”

The snaking, malevolent bass chugging away, skewered by shredded guitar fizzing like broken power lines on “Need It To Work” sounds like an action hero theme song warped and misshapen, eminently more interesting than a Bond song. But she nimbly evades pigeonholing by situating “Need It To Work” next to the ’90s folky-grunge-country of “Tried To Understand,” which channels some big Liz Phair and Sheryl Crow energy. “Feminine Water Turmoil” is a whole mood in itself, a rising tide of strings that surges and builds before transitioning into album closer “Not A Love Song,” in which Sasami’s lovely, yearning voice radiates over the surface like a sunrise over wide expanses of ocean. “I tried to turn it into something so profound/It’s not a love song/Just a beautiful, beautiful sound,” she sings, and it is beautiful and profound, with the timeless quality of a Celtic ballad. 

“I wanted to build the album more like a movie or a haunted house as opposed to being one long mood or meditation. There are different scenes or rooms on the album,” Sasami says of the constantly shifting soundscape on Squeeze. “It was definitely a risk… [I was] trusting that my voice was enough of a through-line to connect it. I very intentionally put some slap bass and distorted guitars on some of the songs that, within a certain genre, wouldn’t always have that. ‘Call Me Home’ is a mashup of folk, synth-pop and heavier rock all mixed up into one song. It was a very intentional experiment in putting things together that don’t always go together.”

She had years of musical training, live touring, studio composition, recording and production experience to rely upon when going out on a limb. A 2012 graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Sasami started out as a composer of orchestral arrangements for film, screen commercials and other artists’ albums. From 2015 she played synths for scuzzy-rock band LA band Cherry Glazerr, before pulling up anchor and setting sail as a solo artist at the beginning of 2018.

From the get-go, her solo tracks won industry acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork and The Fader. She toured with – amongst others – Mitski, Soccer Mommy, Snail Mail and English indie band Menace Beach. Exactly twelve months after going solo, she released her self-titled debut. Singles “Jealousy” and “Free” (featuring Devendra Banhart) only solidified her reputation for tight arrangements, a light hand on production, and a nuanced appreciation for the interplay of hard and soft, organic and machine, violence and sympathy. Though it sounds very different from her debut, the rogue experimentation of Squeeze could not have happened without SASAMI introducing her to a dedicated audience.

“It comes from a place of being super grateful to have gotten attention on my first album, humbled knowing that people will listen to this album,” she confirms. “The instrumentals all came first on this album. Music in itself is a language and I wanted to tell stories with the instruments first, then find lyrics and words that tap into the same emotional world that’s being built. That’s why I was drawn to nu metal and classical music, because they’re so contrasting and so extreme. I wanted to create a feeling of whiplash, a chaotic environment, very intentionally.”

Traversing the extremities of sound and emotion was not without cost, but Sasami is candid about the realities of working within such revered and fiercely protected genres. “That was hard for me, to be shameless. It’s so easy to be insecure and worry about what people will think about your choices, especially [when] metal and certain realms of rock are gatekept and very white cis male-centered,” she says. “It’s scary to put yourself out there and even put yourself in the same world as that music, knowing very well that women of color are the most criticized artists in a lot of ways and held to a certain standard that other people aren’t.”

Ashworth is a descendent of the Zainichi people on her mother’s side, a diaspora of ethnic Koreans who lived in Japan during Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. The descendants of the Zainichi – the second largest ethnic minority in Japan – are still systematically oppressed in present-day Japan. The word “Zainichi” is Japanese, meaning a foreign citizen “staying in Japan,” implying only temporary residence and inherently reminding people of their outsider status for generations.

“I grew up understanding a little bit that my mom had a difficult time as a Korean person in Japan,” Sasami remembers. “But growing up, especially being a typically Asian-looking person in a white neighborhood in America, I was so obsessed with assimilating into Caucasian culture that I wasn’t digging into my mother’s history.”

The pandemic circumstances provided her with the time to do a deep dive into her family’s mixed Korean and Japanese history and culture. “Being in America during 2020, while we were going through this extremely intense cultural reckoning about racial identity and inequality, it’s natural that it pushed me to do more research about my family’s heritage and my personal identity and how I connect with my family’s historic identity,” Sasami says. “Zainichi people chose to either claim their Korean identity despite oppression or assimilate more into Japanese culture.”

In reconnecting to her roots, Ashworth stumbled upon stories of the Japanese yōkai folk spirit Nure-onna (translation: wet woman) and was immediately awe-struck by this mysterious water creature, emboldened by how Nure-onna was feminine and noble, yet powerful and vicious enough to brutally destroy victims with her blood sucking tongue.

The album artwork weaves together Sasami’s historical, personal tapestry, just as her skillful balancing of sonic elements draws you in to Squeeze: sweet, sour, grinding and gristle, dramatic, melodious and deeply feminine. There is something earthly in it, in the pared-back, stoic nature of her voice contrasted with the heavily treated, warped harmonies that snarl in and around her. There’s a darkness, too, though it is not so much horrifying as a curiosity, like the vampiric deity with the head of a woman and the body of a snake that adorns the album cover.

“My mom’s youngest brother – he actually passed away recently – was an anime artist, producer and director, so when I wanted to build this fantasy avatar for my album cover, it made sense to draw inspiration from that,” Sasami says. “I connected with Andrew Thomas Huang, who has collaborated with fka twigs, Bjork, and Charli XCX, and he was down to find inspiration from Japanese and Korean folk tale characters.”

Sasami’s Nure-onna avatar has been modified with crab-style legs in respect to her Cancer star sign, and despite the bloodied mouth, the creature – like Ashworth – is captivatingly beautiful in all its diverse meanings and nuances. “I was actively experimenting, trying to push genre… to marry something so harsh, industrial and heavily aggressive with a texture that’s more intimate and personal. I think that all humans have such a range of emotions and characters that all these contrasting elements fit together, and it’s very human to have these super contrasting things within one body,” she says.

Sasami is humble and candid in conversation, wearing the hats of artist and observer just as skillfully as she juggles production and songwriting. But thematic heart of Squeeze is a self-assurance, and a validation that our fantasies and realities must exist beyond judgement, only inviting awareness and curiosity. “I think it’s a very human thing to want to feel powerful while maintaining some sort of beauty and femininity,” she reflects. “It’s about ownership as opposed to what’s right or wrong… being honest with how you feel, what you want to be, and who you want to be.”

Follow Sasami on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Pop Punk Haley Graves Finds Herself on Sophomore EP Over

Twenty-one-year-old Haley Graves, who self-defines as a Black Queer Pop Punk Artist, has found herself—but it’s been a tumultuous journey.

Adopted from birth, Graves, who is mixed race, grew up as one of the only non-white kids in a small, sheltered town in Maine—an upbringing that made it hard to claim and understand her identity fully.

After moving to Seattle to study music at Cornish College of The Arts in August 2019, Graves began working avidly as a session musician, and in 2021, dropped her debut EP, She Thinks My Pop Punk Is Cringey. On the heels of these big moves, the artist has become more secure in herself and her identity as an artist, and she’s excited to share that confidence on her sophomore EP Over, which drops today.

Growing up in South Bristol, Maine, which is 97% white, Graves says she didn’t really realize that she was Black until she was about 13. “Everybody would touch my hair without my consent. It was a thing. It’s still a thing when I go home and like, when I push people off me, they’re like, ‘Um, why can’t I just touch your hair? What’s your problem?'” says Graves. “What if I just came up to you and started petting you?”

At that point, the gears started turning, and Graves became more aware of what made her different—her Blackness, as well as her bisexuality. Around this same time, Graves was also really into Justin Bieber. She credits the pop star with getting her into guitar.

“I was just in love with him! It’s so embarrassing to admit because I’m so pop-punk now. It’s embarrassing to be like, this teeny-bopper pop star got me into guitar,” says Graves. “He played a little bit. The occasional pop star amount, the occasional G-A-C-E-B chords, the cowboy chords. But you know, he was cute, so everyone was like oh my god, he’s so hot. You know what I’m saying?”

She laughs at how far her childhood adoration of Bieber and Disney Channel stars like Selena Gomez took her—to identifying with the Latina and Black members of the pop girl group 5th Harmony and finding the yin to her bad girl yang in a 5 Seconds of Summer cover of the Green Day hit, “American Idiot.”

“That’s when it all shifted, when I found Green Day,” said Graves. “At 13, I felt kind of misunderstood [and] I wanted to project this bad girl image.”

Though Graves is much more gritty punk these days, she still brings the innocence and exuberance of those early pop influences to her music, particularly on her debut. Songs are short and consonant, as all ear-worm pop should be. This is particularly charming (or cringey) depending on your relationship with Y2K-era Top 40 rock bands like Green Day, Good Charlotte, and Avril Lavigne—but Graves knows and owns that.

“I wrote ‘She Thinks All Pop-Punk is Cringey’ right before I turned 20 about my Republican [ex-]girlfriend. She made fun of my taste in music quite a bit,” says Graves. “I had a conversation with a few friends and I was like, yeah, my girlfriend thinks pop-punk is cringey, and I immediately looked at them and was like, hey guys, I got to go, I’ll be right back, and I just started writing. I remember looking at the closet like flannel, she doesn’t like my flannel, she doesn’t like my Neck Deep tee, and I was like, okay that’s going in the song. I was so excited about it. I remember playing it for like everybody at Cornish, like, guys, I just wrote a song, I’m so proud of it.”

She’s also proud to lead with the fact that she is a Black, queer artist in a typically white-dominated genre, recognizing the opportunity in her unique perspective. “It’s not really heard of in the pop-punk scene. Pop-punk is very white. Male driven. So being Black and queer is two different things people don’t know much of,” she points out.

Palpable confidence leads to experimentation on her new release, Over, which features stretches of spoken word and more vulnerable autobiographical confessions and was co-written and produced by Grammy-nominated producer-composer Phill Peterson.

If Graves’ debut was about chasing the girls, Over, she says, is more about being chased—which nicely encapsulates where she is in her personal development and career.

“Last year, I kind of made a very big entrance in the Seattle music scene [with my debut EP]. I woke up one day and everybody in Seattle knew who I was and that was intense,” says Graves. “It’s empowering… I think I’ve started to figure myself out as an artist.”

Follow Haley Graves on Facebook and Instagram for ongoing updates.

Heather Bond Highlights Nashville’s Stellar Female Musicians with “The Mirage” Video Premiere

Photo Credit: Meg Sagi

In the middle of filming the video for “The Mirage,” Heather Bond decided to kick off her heels, not just for the comfortability factor, but to foster the intimate atmosphere she was aiming for. Surrounded by tall plants, dimly lit lamps, and paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling, Bond wanted to create a “relaxing, chill vibe” for the visual, premiering today via Audiofemme.

The song is Bond’s second co-write with accomplished bassist Viktor Krauss, and became a favorite on local indie radio station Lightning 100 – so much so it was named to the station’s top 100 songs of 2021. “It’s one of those reflective songs that I think everybody can relate to,” Bond explains. It was inspired by the nostalgia of thinking about past relationships, how they change over time, and how they shape us. “When you’re looking at everything in retrospect, suddenly everything is very clear, [even if] at the time it wasn’t, and it feels messy and muddy and you’re trying to figure out who you are and who you are in a relationship,” Bond says. “From a distance it’s very clear – wouldn’t that be nice if we could recognize that in the moment?” 

Bond had never performed the song live – until she assembled a supergroup of female musicians and background vocalists at The Studio in Nashville. Describing the experience as “surreal,” Bond reveals that it was an “emotional” day of filming, hearing her song come to life with such an exceptional group of players. “The energy was really cool,” she adds. 

Bond takes center stage with an iconic ’70s-inspired look: burnt orange leather pants and geometric patterned shirt to match. Accompanying Bond is Megan McCormick on guitar, Melissa Mattey at the piano, Elizabeth Chan on drums, Krauss on bass and Devonne Fowlkes and Emoni Wilkins serving up background vocals. “I have never played music with a whole group of women, so that was surprisingly a very powerful experience for me,” Bond expresses, citing them as “talented, beautiful and so kind.”

What makes the video particularly unique is the way Bond allows each person their moment to shine, the camera capturing each performer’s gifts and the way they light up the room, whether Mattey is grooving to the melody on keys or Chan is transfixed on Bond, while Fowlkes and Wilkins fall into a rhythm with the singer as they sway to the beat in synchronicity.

For Bond, it was important to give each person their moment in the spotlight. “I told Craig [Hill] that I really wanted him to focus on everybody. There are certain artists that really highlight their band members and I think it’s amazing – it’s my song and I’m singing this song, but the whole thing would not come together without each performer. So I wanted to highlight everybody, and they’re all so good,” she praises. “I love how I felt like each of them were so committed and connected to what we were doing in the moment.”

At one point, the camera crosses over Wilkins to find McCormick getting lost in the melody during her guitar solo, allowing the feeling of the song to take over her hands as she played. “I love that moment where she’s just grooving on the guitar. I’ve watched that quite a few times,” Bond says. “I get lost for a second. This was the first time hearing my songs with the full band, and so when there’s a moment that I’m not singing and it’s just the music and Megan is playing this gorgeous solo, I was able to sink in and lose myself for a bit.” 

Getting lost in the moment and overtaken by the music was one of Bond’s goals for the video, and it also reflects the ’70s and ’80s influences of her upcoming album, The Mess We Created, out February 25th. “We wanted it to match the way that the record sounds and feels. I wanted for it to feel relaxed, like a mix between a studio and living room thing where you feel like you’re in the room and hanging out with each player as they’re taking their turn on camera,” she describes.

She also wanted to bring a sense of solace to viewers after a chaotic couple years of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Life has not been easy for anybody, and the past two years have been pretty intense,” she says. “I’ve been very lucky in a lot of ways. I know people have had it much worse. I definitely need those times where I slow down and reflect and remind myself [that] it’s going to be all right. You’ve been through some stuff, you’re going to go through more, but right now, take it in and let go what you need to let go. So a lot of the songs on the record are like that for me, just accepting what has happened, letting it go and trying to move forward.” 

With a live EP to follow The Mess We Created on March 25th, Heather Bond is already looking ahead. She hopes listeners will do the same, while drawing a sense of tranquility and clarity from the song itself. “One of my favorite things when I’m listening to music is when I put on a song and it makes me feel nostalgic or makes me start thinking about my life and who I loved and who I’ve lost and I’m not even necessarily honed in on the specific lyrics, it’s just a feeling,” she observes. “So that’s how I hope that ‘Mirage’ translates – you’re listening to it and the feeling takes over and you’re able to reflect.” 

Follow Heather Bond on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for ongoing updates. 

BROODS Take Experimental Approach to Processing Heartbreak on Space Island LP

Georgia and Caleb Nott of Kiwi brother/sister duo BROODS have crafted their most conceptual, atmospheric album to date with Space Island. Their fourth album is chock-full of heartbreak-on-the-dancefloor beats, bass and confessional lyrics, with the compositions dipping into artsy, experimental arrangements and the epic, compelling schlock sci-fi of ‘60s cult movies.

“This album really has brought us together in a way that we just haven’t really tapped into until now. Partly [it’s] because of the time we’ve had during the pandemic, and how much we’ve grown as people outside of music,” says Georgia Nott. “Because we had all this time, we sat in the world of Space Island together and collectively dreamed it up… we let it appear around us just by talking about it, dreaming about it and listening to records that we thought were like Space Island.”

Nott is living with her brother and her partner (producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Noah Beresin) by the ocean in Piha Beach, New Zealand, pending a return to her second home of Los Angeles, aligning with BROODS’ May tour of the US. She is quick to respond when asked where she’d ultimately like to reside.

“Nowhere!” the flame-red haired singer-songwriter exclaims with a full-throated laugh. “LA has been a pretty inspiring place to live, be it difficult at times. It’s taught me a lot about what I’m capable of and what is possible. There’s so much pushing of the boundaries there, which is fun to see then test out yourself. Whenever I come back to New Zealand, I’m really inspired by nature. Piha is so beautiful and that brings out a whole other side of my songwriting and I just want to sing about the ocean all the time.”

But, she adds, she is at her most inspired and productive when unmoored. “I really have loved having a bit of time over the last couple of years that’s been this forced nesting period, but at the same time, I like to flop around and float around because of how it makes me feel. I write a lot when I’m focusing on living my life and not making my music. Travelling is what’s really inspiring to me and as long as I’ve got the guitar, then I’m good to go… Once I’ve racked up a bunch of songs that’s when I’ll sit with them and make it into a record.”

Originally from Nelson, New Zealand, the Nott siblings are not strangers to US audiences: they’ve collaborated with Tove Lo; toured with Taylor Swift and HAIM; and performed at both Coachella and Lollapalooza. Debuting in 2014 with a self-titled EP, followed by their first album Evergreen the same year and their second album Conscious two years later, ten New Zealand Music Awards had already confirmed their homeland popularity. Their 2019 album Don’t Feed the Pop Monster lead to appearances on Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Late Late Show with James Cordon. But Space Island firmly asserts them as an act that can stand alone, unshadowed by celebrity tourmates, TV hosts and festival gloss.

Notably, this is the first of their albums in which the Nott siblings haven’t worked with producer Joel Little, but they remain close friends with the Los Angeles-based producer. “We started to make different music to what we made before and he was making different music. I think it’s important to switch up collaborators; it helps you to broaden your knowledge and new people inspire new things out of you,” Georgia explains. “He was obviously a massive, massive part of our first two albums… he’s still a massive part of our lives.”

Like some of the greatest pop and rock albums, the glamorous, epic, theatrical fabulosity of sound and mood blossomed from grief. Not long after the release of Don’t Feed the Pop Monster, Georgia and her then-husband divorced. Creating music that was strange, expansive, otherwordly and transportive enabled her an escape valve from all the feelings. Inevitably though, the threads of memory and all the dreams of forever that ended with her previous relationship weaved their way through her lyrics.

“When I first experienced the breakup that this album was about, it was like an explosion, then a crash. Through that crashing period, I had really good friends and amazing support. I started dating this person that was really, really emotionally intelligent and had all these perfect soundbites to help me quickly gain perspective and stop judging myself… that made me able to write the album that we wrote,” she says. Beresin ultimately had a hand in producing Space Island, having worked on ”Gaslight,” “Alien,” “Like A Woman,” and “Days Are Passing.”

Ensconced in their home studio – complete with Caleb’s newly purchased Farfisa organ – the duo mostly worked alone bar occasional collaborations with producer friends Leroy Clampit (Ashe, FLETCHER) and Stint (Santigold, Carly Rae Jepsen). Tove Lo adds vocals to “I Keep,” a song that stemmed from Georgia’s vision of a moth flying into a porch light, burning to death, being reborn, and repeating the process every night. Whether it’s a romantic relationship, a job you despise, a toxic friend, a family relationship or an addiction, it’s a rare human who can’t relate to the sense of repeating cycles of behaviour that corrode our spirits until we’re spun off course by force or circumstance.

If that song bears witness to the darkest elements of the psyche, then “If You Fall In Love” is the first cloudless, sun-drenched spring day that emerges after a long, devastating winter. It is all summery, soft-pad synths, waves of lush dream bubbles blown into the ether. Georgia’s delicate, dusky vocals float through the interplay of synths as organically as air, water and light co-existing.

The crackle of dust on vinyl opens “Goodbye World, Hello Space Island” – a chilled out, slow-trip, downtempo house mood transitioning seamlessly into “Piece Of My Mind,” redolent with spacegun sound effects, fervent energy and restless beats. Georgia’s vocals sound like they’re being warped in from a distant planet, spectral and beautiful.

Nott candidly confesses that given free reign, she’d exist in the world of sad, grief-infused guitar pop. But make no mistake: Space Island does not wallow in any mires. Caleb’s internal radar for bass-and-beats provides ample counter to his sister’s downtempo leanings.

“Songs like ‘Distance and Drugs’ are very Caleb; they are his brain in song form. Songs like ‘Heartbreak’ [are very much about] his basslines and visceral beats. He really wants to feel it,” she says. “The one that feels most like me is ‘Gaslight.’ When I’m left to my own devices that’s the kind of music that I churn out – sad-ass guitar songs with lots of lush harmonies. That song, it still makes me feel a lot right in the pit of my stomach. When we practice it, I just want to cry. That’s how I know that it’s so important, to me, anyway.”

Nott has been immersing herself in regular sessions with her Perth-based psychological-somatic therapist. It has made a world of difference in her ability to articulate her feelings and to feel confident enough emotionally to reveal herself through this album. There has never been a point though, albums or not, where she hasn’t been documenting her observations and ideas. “I’m always writing on my own, whether or not we’re going through that whole studio album process,” she says. “For me, I like to keep writing through it because it’s my way of processing my whole life.”

The music industry, Nott admits, can be “fucked up” sometimes, tossing humans around like bits of seaweed in a tsunami. Going to therapy, doing bodywork, having a good, noisy cry and very open, honest conversations with her brother, her partner and her friends have all given her a sense of security the past few years.

“This album has been such a cathartic experience because we’ve learned to get the support that we need as individuals to carry on sharing really personal things and giving your soul up to people every time you release an album. It’s intense and it’s taxing sometimes and it’s really important when things get busy to know that there’s support there,” she says. “The pandemic has been really, really hard but it’s made a lot of things that wouldn’t otherwise come to the forefront, surface. Even though it’s been pretty full on… I feel like I haven’t lost any of my openness or my sensitivity.”

The lovely, sweet sonic pulse of “Heartbreak” revels in her sensitive, open suggestion: “Let your heart break,” she sings. “Gives an opportunity to get your feelings straight.”

The song was the sad dance music equivalent of a howling exorcism of grief. “’Heartbreak’ is about reminding myself that holding it in is really, really toxic and it does not make that feeling go away, it just makes it ferment into this poison that becomes even more painful when you have to deal with it later,” she says. “A lot of women have trauma held in their bodies. I don’t know what it’s like to be a man – maybe they do too.”

No promises then, but a visit to Space Island might be the cathartic, bass-driven, dancefloor therapy we all need right now.

Follow BROODS on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Sydney’s Coconut Cream Deliver Fresh, Romantic Indie Pop On Their Sophomore EP

Photo Credit: Hudson Reed

Sydney-based quartet Coconut Cream is on a smooth, sweet transcendence into public consciousness. They’ve just released their sophomore EP What Kind Of Music Do You Like To Listen To?, a six-song showcase of their gorgeous, jangly, shoegaze vibe, with ancestral roots in nineties indie bands like Lush and Slowdive.

The foursome formed quickly after meeting at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2018. Songwriter/vocalist Astari Mudana remembers, “Given it was the first year at a music school, I was very keen to get something going.”

So keen, she barely waited a week. “The first day that you met me, you asked if I wanted to start a band with you,” laughs drummer Jasmine Tan. “And I didn’t really think that we were going to eventuate because I was like, this girl just met me and she’s asked me to be in a band, I don’t know how real that is! We organised a jam session the week after, and we played just the two of us and it built from there.”

Bassist Chad Kennedy and guitarist Oscar Saran were already friends. “When we all came together, we all developed our own little friendships,” says Kennedy. Those friendships – as they readily admit – have only strengthened through being constantly in each other’s pockets. “We have grown really close as a band because we spend a lot of time together.”

Mudana and Tan came up with the band name on a trip to Melbourne, when they went out on the town for an extended tour of the city’s bars. “We’d been struggling for and name and not everyone could agree on the same thing and it was tearing us apart,” Tan says. “We ended up in this cocktail bar – we were pretty intoxicated by then – and Astari was reading the menu and she exclaimed ‘What about Coconut Cream? For the band, Coconut Cream?’”

Nobody hated it, and thus, it stuck. They debuted in 2019 with single “Laney,” then their debut EP Out of Touch, making family of a diverse gang of four.

“We all grew up in different places and obviously, that made our listening journeys quite different,” says Tan. “Chad’s from South Africa, I grew up in Papua New Guinea, Astari’s dad is Balinese and her mum’s Australian…”

And Oscar?

“I’m pretty standard Australian. I grew up in the hills in Hornsby [North of Sydney in New South Wales],” says Saran.

Those diverse musical and cultural heritages may result in a more exploratory album in future, but their sophomore EP reveals the shared musical language they all united in: a deeply dreamy, confessional, hazy dreampop informed by skilled, nuanced melody and harmonies. After releasing stand-alone single “Fairy Bread” in 2020, they put releasing new music on hold; What Kind Of Music Do You Listen To? feels like a big, relieved, joyful exhale.

“A couple of the tracks on the EP we wrote a while ago from our old repertoire, and the rest we all wrote in the past two years and just built up a bunch of tracks over time,” says Mudana. “We had a bunch of songs that we really loved, then we culled them down to the six on the EP. Now they all kind of seem a bit old to us because the EP has been pushed back so much, but to everyone else they’ll be new.”

Tim Fitz, bassist for Middle Kids (winners of Best Rock Album in last year’s Australian Record Industry Awards for Today We’re The Greatest) took on production duties for the EP. “After the first lockdown in Sydney we were able to meet up and record with Tim at the end of 2020,” explains Kennedy. “Tim has a little home studio with all this gear he’s collected over time. It’s a super fun place to record in.”

“Having a week, we literally did every single instrumental thing in a week and that in itself is quite hard,” adds Mudana.

Tan is more confessional. “There were a lot of dark moments but it turned out good. I think it’s being in a creative space for a concentrated amount of time, there’s a lot of pressure and tension in the air but it’s all pushing to get it all done.”

Fitz is not the only big name associated with the EP. It’s the first album they’ve released on Broth Records, a new imprint from ex-Gang of Youths guitarist Joji Malani. Says Saran, “It’s a funny story how we met Joji. Basically, he messaged us on Instagram. He asked if we were playing any shows anytime soon.” They were playing that night. Malani made it to the show on short notice, and after attending a few more of their gigs (and arranging meetings in which he was vague about how he might work with them), he organised for a session with Fitz.

Their first single on Broth Records was jangly, poppy number “Your Drug On Computers,” an homage to Mudana’s teenage years. It’s gorgeously nostalgic in its throwback to surfer-meets-shoegaze ’90s indie pop, as if constructed from bubblegum, worn out sneakers and melting ice cream. “Our label felt was the strongest track to kick off the EP with, which is why we released it as a single,” says Tan.

“Not necessarily the strongest,” counters Saran, “but the most ‘get-things-up-and-going’ type deal.”

“It’s just a fun one,” Mudana says, and she’s nailed it.

The second single, “Safety Net,” arrived in November, both solidifying their songwriting prowess and taking a more melancholic swerve. The starry-eyed, dewy freshness of their melodies and harmonies remains a golden thread weaving all their varied expressions to the one plumb line.

“I feel like we’ve worked out a songwriting style that works,” Mudana says. “I write the basis of the track on acoustic guitar and vocals then I take it to the band and we just get a feel of the song, what vibe and feel we want it to have, the time signature. Then everyone writes their parts around what I’ve written. Most of the time, it comes together pretty quickly and we all fit together.”

“Safety Net” builds slowly with the spotlight firmly on Mudana’s voice – technical, emotive, somehow both grounded and spine-tinglingly intimate. Immersive, echoing guitar feels like a shimmering cocoon of sound in which Mudana’s somehow singing just for you. The echoey harmonics (a la Lush’s “Sweetness and Light”) give a warm, sunset feeling to the lamenting lyrics, which detail the all-too-common story of inviting a past lover to come upstairs even though you know it can’t and won’t heal all the scars of your shared past: “You start to cry you missed this/And I said I’m not sad anymore/Then you tell me what I’ve been waiting for/I know I seem fine but I’ve got too much time.”

“All the tracks are personal stories of my own,” admits Mudana. “They all are a bit different and talk about different things: heartbreak, or falling in love, or breaking up, all those kind of themes. They’re just songs I hope people can relate to even though they’re personal and specific. In terms of presenting them to the band, the band all literally know my love life stories, freakin’ everything!  There’s nothing to hide. I’ll write a song and Jas will be like ‘I know who this is about.’”

Tan pipes in, “When I first heard it, I really loved it because it was beautiful. We’d been trying to write a more upbeat, more poppy, dance type song. Astari came to me with this and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so sad and beautiful as it is, we can work on it.’ The drum part came last because I was struggling a lot with how to fit my part into the song since the bass and guitars sounded so beautiful and I didn’t want to bang on them. Chad helped a lot with that drum beat, so I think we came up with that one all together. The verses I had a vision for the vibe but the chorus I was struggling with a lot.”

Saran ended up cutting his original guitar part. “I feel like it didn’t serve the song. We reworked it when we were recording, and it’s been through a lot of renditions,” he says. “I feel like that song is a stream of emotion, quite direct, and you don’t want to get in its way, so there’s a lot of textural slide guitar bits that can fill out space and complement Astari’s vocals.”

Kennedy’s bass was intentionally minimal. “It was such a beautiful song, I didn’t want to do too much on it. I knew the chorus was gonna build up, but I wanted to keep it simple and groovy because the verses are so lush and beautiful. I wanted my part to sit there and create a rhythm rather than something melodic.”

While they all miss playing live, there’s something special about putting their songs down for posterity and enabling the world to unfurl them at their own pace, in their own way, as Tan describes: “With the recordings, it’s like a present. You open it up and get something new every time.”

With their luscious, romantic sophomore EP, Coconut Cream has given a gift that will surely keep on giving.

Follow Coconut Cream on Facebook and Twitter for ongoing updates.

Aarti Jadu Auto-Tunes Sound of the Sacred on Debut LP L’Ecole De La Caz

Photo Credit: Nicole Reed

For Aarti Jadu, sound – whether voice, instrument or digital manipulation –is how they make sense of the unmapped inner geography connecting their Indian heritage and their own identity as a first-generation Australian. Jadu’s explorations have manifested as trauma-informed workshops for voice and somatics, and neuroscience-informed artworks that explore how the interplay of voice, music and physical space can convey human experience and perhaps address emotional trauma. Jadu is an anthropologist, an explorer, and an experimentalist when it comes to sound – and on February 11, they released their debut album L’Ecole De La Caz via Heavy Machinery Records.

“The concept was to try and make it like an alien choral folk album,” Jadu states. It was made under the multi-directional pressures of COVID lockdowns, an unstable home situation, financial pressures, and their own personal expectations, doubts and insecurities. But with funding from Flash Forward, the opportunity to make new work was impossible to pass up.

“You do what your life’s calling is and the gamble is that you might not feel stable,” they concede. “I called it ‘school of house’ in French; learning what it is to reinvent the idea of home and house and strength in the self as opposed to the material world around my body.”

Jadu was raised in Perth before following their brother across the country in 2011 to settle in Melbourne. Though they loved singing, their life’s calling seemed to be another creative form at first.

“I just came out of studying fashion and did an internship with a fashion designer here,” Jadu recalls. “Through doing that and seeing how much of my energy was not being used for singing, which was a really important part of my being, I decided I should put more focus on music and make fashion a secondary creative outlet.”

For nine years, they’ve been a student of Vinod Prasanna, a performer and teacher of traditional and contemporary Indian devotional music. “I started off in devotional music, singing chants and group songs [or] bhajans, which are primarily used to activate a spiritual or deeper sense of self with a community. Only when I was 20 or 22, I started writing songs of my own that were more poetic and not for that purpose, but for my own enjoyment.”

Yoga, too, has been elemental in their mind-body-spiritual practice. Jadu’s teacher, Nina Alfers, is depicted on the album artwork, having planted the concept of finding home within the body within Jadu’s mind.

“I think yoga reminds one that it’s always a practice and that it cannot be sold and that we always have a responsibility, and an opportunity and right, to reach for something that is spiritual, and that comes from within through expressing outwardly, a recognition of ritual,” Jadu says.

Jadu’s intention on their first album was to make sense of how their two worlds – making devotional music and their artistic and electronic works – could share a language and an intention. “How do I create devotional music and also these wider spaces of my self in a club, or a performance space where the shrine is the person as opposed to this other, greater, higher existence?” she asked herself.

When the State of Victoria/City of Melbourne Flash Forward project arose, providing funding to create an album to a brief deadline (a couple of months maximum), Jadu was conflicted since they had another artistic commission and a course in public art creation underway simultaneously. On the other hand, they felt compelled to create a cohesive body of work that channeled two of their biggest fascinations: Auto-Tune and devotional music. These explorations into the digital manipulation of sound, voice and instrumentals inform L’Ecole De La Caz through each of its seven hypnotic tracks.

First single “IT/THAT” feels akin to fka twigs’ strange, digital, ghostly RB harmonies, punctuated with breathing, gasps, moans and whispers. As the twisting, modulating voices in their upward lilting melodies – both celestial and artificial in tone – layer and build, they embody the nature of gospel, hymns, chanting and sacred ritual. It begs the question: are these sounds sacred purely because they mimic all the elements of sacred music? Does it matter whether these sounds are made by human or machine? And then, where do we define who exists, who is holy and who is laity, and why do we insist upon divisions when all beings are drawn to the very natural, organic act of making music in harmony and praise whoever our Gods or higher powers are?

Arranged like a choral album, but with a twist, Jadu used multiple Auto-Tune sources to create an Auto-Tune choir of some sort. “Choir music indicates that there’s a sense of leaving yourself and joining others and becoming one big instrument rather than having individual ego or something to say that’s separate to the other,” Jadu explains.

It’s a unique sense of comfort, one Jadu desperately needed when circumstances left them without a stable home. The impermanency was emotionally exhausting, and as Jadu speaks about it, it sounds like it remains a thorn in her soul. “Unfortunately for many musicians, it’s always a transient space – to have the rug pulled from under your feet so many times,” they reflect.

But despite all that, Jadu offers the sense of soothing too often in short supply on L’Ecole De La Caz. Even without intellectualising, or trying to tackle the big existential queries Jadu has been in dialogue with in the making of this album, it is thoroughly immersive and transportive. Listen without analysis, be moved, and perhaps be transformed subtly and incomprehensibly.

For the string arrangements, Jadu called upon Aurora Darby and Esther Henderson. Their vocal ensemble comprised Abbey Howlett, Aurora Darby, Emma Ovenden, Joli Boardman, Melanie Taylor, Olive Yaah, Siobhan Housden, Stav Shaul, Xan Coppinger and Yannick Rosette.

“A lot of the fleshing out was done at home in the beautiful room that I eventually left, so it was precious to have it as a time capsule. We set up in an empty room in the house [in Coburg]… to record strings in and the choir,” Jadu says. “I was fortunate enough to also jump into a studio and track some of the vocals that I needed to sound fairly intimate and clean.”

They’d been accustomed to Auto-Tune pedals after becoming hooked on Algerian and Spanish pop songs that heavily relied on vocal tuning. They’d been experimenting with manipulating their vocals for a couple of years and gigging with the pedals between lockdowns.

The heavily treated vocals make it difficult to differentiate between human and computer, inviting listeners to question why and how they are drawn to this sound that is both ancient and familiar, but also strangely artificial and engineered.

“I varied the microphones considerably and I also used Auto-Tune or hard tuning effects – what you’d hear on Cher or T-Pain,” they clarify. “I find Auto-Tune a very sophisticated pedal and I used software and hardware to create various version of that. Some of the synths sound like vocals and some of the vocals sound like synths. That was a whole lot of fun to try things out.”

Jadu used Logic to make the whole album and the Antares plug-in, as well as the Boss VE-20 Voice Manipulator and looping station. “I just enjoyed how crisp and tacky to process it through hardware before putting it into the digital world,” they explain.

The result on L’Ecole De La Caz is indeed an alien choral folk vibe. After the intensity of making it, discovering what they knew and didn’t know, and proving they could improvise under pressure, Jadu says it’s a relief to share it with the world. “I didn’t want to let it go. I wanted to keep fixing it,” they say. “But it’s a good process to let it go and I was quite happy to move on and make something else.”

Follow Aarti Jadu on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Caitlin Sherman Faces Challenges Big and Small with “Up The Street, Diving Down” Video Premiere

For Seattle songwriter Caitlin Sherman, 2020 was supposed to be a transformative year for her music career. She’d just recovered from two break-ups—of her band, Evening Bell, and of her relationship that anchored that band—and recorded her transcendent debut solo release, Death to the Damsel, which she dropped like a Valentine to herself on February 14th, 2020.

Then, just as she was getting on the road to tour with her original psych-country album, the pandemic ended her release tour and forced her to turn back for Seattle.

“It was heartbreaking to be on the road and have to turn around after so much planning had gone into my album release year. And it quickly became very clear that playing music and performing was my coping mechanism for a long history of depression and past trauma,” she tells Audiofemme. After coming to that realization, Sherman decided to make 2020 transformative in a different way than she’d planned—she started addressing her mental health and really assessing the reasons she makes music.

“I was able to take a step back and reflect,” she remembers. “At the start there was this deep sense of dread. Why is music even important while the world is falling apart? Will people even miss live shows? Is art important?”

Setting out to answer those questions and determined to make the best of her botched release year, Sherman found ways to be there for others (and show up for herself) with her art. In that spirit, she’s releasing the never-before-seen video for “Up The Street, Diving Down,” a single from Death to the Damsel, with Audiofemme today.

“Up The Street, Diving Down,” which Sherman wrote after the end of her long-term relationship, is a story of doing the sensible thing and staying in—despite the urge to go out and do shots with your old flame.

“I really hadn’t been single my entire adult life. So at 34, I was learning how to navigate that and also process the two back to back romantic/creative partnerships I had,” she explains. “The joke is that when old ladies say they are going ‘sailing’ they mean they are going to garage sales. So when I say ‘diving’ it means going and drinking at dive bars [when] the subject of temptation is in your neighborhood at the bar.”

Characterized by Sherman’s cheeky vocals and moaning Telecaster, the song captures her tongue-in-cheek desperation: the lyrics cleverly describe pouring salt in the doorway and even locking herself “into her nightgown.”

The concept for the video is similar, showing Sherman “left to her own devices,” distracting herself from temptation. Videographer Ryan Jorgensen shows Sherman in several charming and relatable scenes—playing chess with herself at the dining room table, bouncing on her bed with a hairbrush microphone, embracing a plastic mannequin on a velvet couch.

Written before quarantine was in full swing, the song now holds even more resonance for Sherman and listeners—as we’ve all become masters of finding unique ways to stay entertained in our homes in the COVID-era. For the video, which Sherman filmed while housesitting for her friend Brent Amaker (of Brent Amaker & The Rodeo) in 2021, Sherman says they wanted to play with that shift in the idea of staying in.

“To lift my spirits at the year anniversary of my debut album, I asked permission to use his house as the setting for the video. And boy, did we use it as much as possible. [We did a] twelve-hour shoot [in] multiple rooms, and [with] costume changes,” she says. “Kate Blackstock painted the mannequins; they are meant to be my ‘companions’ while isolating. We shot some far more creepy scenes with them but that didn’t make the cut. Had to ask ourselves wait… is this weird? Our collective gauge on sanity may have been a bit off in early winter of 2021.”

Nearly two years since she first released Death to the Damsel, Sherman shares this video in celebration of the song, which never really got its fair shake—and of being recently named one of Seattle nonprofit Black Fret’s 2021 grant recipients. With the $5000 grant, Sherman is looking forward to the future and planning to use the funds to record her next album—which promises to be a doozy.

“I have songs that I’ve been collecting for the past few years for my next album. A different phase of life provided for plenty of inspiration,” she teases; she’ll perform old and new favorites when she opens for Chuck Prophet at Tractor Tavern on February 25th. “In the darkest moments of isolation and the craziness of the past couple of years, I managed to keep playing and writing. Not every day, and not without dry spells, but I pushed through as best I could.”

Follow Caitlin Sherman on Instagram for ongoing updates.

Los Bitchos Craft Deranged Tropical Rock on Alex Kapranos-Produced Debut

Photo Credit: Tom Mitchell

Fusing a global array of funky, psychedelic sounds, London-based quartet Los Bitchos has crafted the soundtrack to strange days and weird nights shared with your friends, where it seems like anything can happen. Their debut album – fittingly called Let the Festivities Begin! – is comprised of instrumental rock bangers with cheeky titles like “Tripping at a Party” and “Lindsay Goes to Mykanos.” The latter is a nod to the reality series Lindsay Lohan’s Beach Club. 

“We’ve always had that sunshine, tropical sheen with an edge of deranged-ness. I think that’s been there from the get-go,” says Guitarist Serra Petale on a recent video call. “Sound-wise, we really cemented ourselves in the studio because that was the first time that we all recorded together in the same room and we were able to really get behind the production-side of things.”

Petale and bassist Josefine Jonsson had known each other for years through a mutual friend. Nic Crawshaw came into the fold after the band had formed and put out a call on Facebook for a permanent drummer. “Up until that point, we were getting our friends and stuff to fill in for gigs,” says Petale. But\ it’s the story of how Petale and keytarist Augustina Ruiz befriended each other that says a lot about Los Bitchos’ vibe.

The two had run into each other around town, but an encounter at a party cemented their friendship. “I had fallen into a body of water and I was wet and Augustina was really kind to me and she helped me dry my sock and shoe and we were talking for the rest of the party,” Petale recalls as her bandmates, who have all joined in the call from their respective homes in London, laugh in the background. “She was great. We really hit it off from there.”

In a bit of happenstance, the band was able to connect with Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand to produce the album after he caught them live. “We wanted to promptly go into the studio and we thought that we would just ask him,” says Petale, adding that they had only “semi-met” him at the show a few weeks earlier. “The worst he can say is no. But, he didn’t. He said yes!”

“It happened really quick. One minute, he’s saying yes and then the next minute we’re having a meeting with him at our manager’s house and then weeks later we’re in the studio with him,” Petale adds. Those first sessions resulted in the band’s previously released singles, “Pista (Fresh Start)” and “The Link Is About to Die.” Later on, they would go on to record the full-length. 

“He really transformed the album. He put a lot of himself into it, and his ideas, they’re just so creative, and they come from such good and clever place,” says Petale. “The way that he would explain ideas and why things can go somewhere or why he can turn this structure around on its head or working on little parts of the songs, he put so much of himself on the record. Again, he invested as much love and time as we all did, which I think made the record that much more special.”

The collaboration resulted in friendship as well. “It was really nice to get to know him and become mates,” says Petale. “It’s a nice thing to have in your life.”

Photo Credit: Tom Mitchell

It would take some time, though, for Let the Festivities Begin! to come to life. They had finished a good chunk of the album in early 2020, with Petale and Crawshaw recording some of the final percussion overdubs just prior to the initial COVID-19 lockdown. “Then the rest of the guitar overdubs and synth sounds and things all happened gradually whenever people were allowed to get together,” says Crawshaw. 

Overall, the band members estimate that it took at least a year to make the album— “with very big gaps in between when no one was allowed to do anything,” Crawshaw adds. 

Yes, that did make it a bit of a frustrating experience. “With any record, you either want to feel like you’re constantly working on it or you just want it to be finished,” says Petale. “You want to put it out because it’s a body of work that we’ve all been working so hard on.”

But, adds Petale, “There were other issues in life at the time. It’s just the way that it was and it happened how it happened and now it’s finished and we’re super happy with how it turned out.”

Follow Los Bitchos on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Bitumen Dance Through a Dark, Industrial Soundscape On Sophomore LP Cleareye Shining

Photo Credit: Emily Herbert/Joshua Watson

Dark, viscous, harsh and dramatic: fair to say that Bitumen lives up to their moniker with a sonic offering that weaves elements of metal, post-punk, synths and layered harmonies. On sophomore album Cleareye Shining, the four-piece sounds like the lovechild of My Bloody Valentine and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult. It skins your knees one moment and soothes the rawness with dreamy, nuanced melody the next. This month, the album finally sees release on vinyl and CD, having been available digitally since November 2021 via Heavy Machinery Records.

Melbourne is laying claim to them, but Bitumen – Kate Binning, Bryce, Simon Maisch and Sam Varney – originated in Tasmania’s capital city of Hobart. Binning and Varney have been partners for eight years, while Varney and Maher had been best friends for even longer. And Maisch? “We knew Simon peripherally, but he was in this punk band [Bears] – he was this intimidating guy with bleached blonde hair and a cool tattoo,” Binning recalls. “We moved to Melbourne in dribs and drabs over six years ago. We were all in bands in Hobart that ended when we moved so we were all, individually, looking to start something. Simon was really the catalyst because me, Sam and Bryce were all living together and Simon invited us over to his shed in Preston [in Melbourne’s inner north] for a practice, and it came together super well.”

Bitumen, having established a solid camaraderie as musicians, and with the bonus of Maisch’s production and engineering skills, made waves with their 2018 debut Discipline Reaction, recorded at Magnet Studios in four days.

That debut showcased the metallic echo of distorted, furied post-punk guitar on “Twice Shy,” which rubbed up against the clanging percussion, mewling guitar and ghostly vocals on “At Bended Knee.” The vampiric, wild spirit of Bauhaus lurks in the wings, along with a sprinkling of the pop-driven catchiness of The Cure and the midnight splendour of Dead Can Dance.

Cleareye Shining was financially and artistically supported by City of Melbourne and the Victorian State Government’s Flash Forward program. It sounds like an organic evolution, a consolidation of their sonic identity, rather than a left-turn from Discipline Reaction. “We wanted to keep, even expand on, the drama, really, [and] the cinematic nature of the songs, make them even more dynamic,” proffers Binning. “I think of the songs as little movies that have act one, act two, act three and they really go somewhere.”

Whereas their debut album was recorded with the intention of capturing their live energy, Cleareye Shining was very much an investigation of what they could create with layers, synths, production and with the financial and creative freedom given by the grant. When the pandemic struck in February 2020, the band had most of the songs for Cleareye Shining in draft stage. Their intention to create an album that captured the fizzing, unvarnished effect of their live performances transitioned into the sharper, more polished studio album of nine tracks.

“We just leaned into doing a studio record and we weren’t as concerned about capturing the energy of playing live. [Instead] we went about crafting something really meticulous,” Binning says. “We’d been listening to ‘80s big production – Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush – where the production is its own element as much as the instruments and the words; the way something is recorded and put together is an artistic choice.”

Theirs was a decision made in the dire circumstances of lockdowns, but rather than lessening the impact of their lusciously layered, immersive, and savage metal-dance dramatics, the careful production emphasizes the almost mathematically precise measures of bass, synths, piano, menacing guitar and honeyed vocals. If you put a bunch of ‘80s goth anthems, ‘90s Nu Metal bands and a bunch of lusty machines through a meat grinder, it might sound a lot like Cleareye Shining.

“The beat or the percussion is evolving all the time as the songs are evolving. It’s constant. We’ll be making a demo, thinking about it for the next week, then going back to practice and adding or changing,” says Binning. “On this album, we started using synths because we let go of the idea that it was something we’d perform live. So we leaned into layering it up and having people making a few different instruments on the same song. My lyrics and vocal melodies would usually come in at the last second.”

Binning had a notebook of words, ideas, and phrases that she translated into lyrics once she could decipher the mood, energy, and visuals associated with the instrumentals and melodies. That cinematic quality was the overriding essence of the album. She’s already envisioned the film it would soundtrack.

“We said it would be like an erotic thriller meets a dystopian action movie,” she reveals. “I love Paul Verhoeven movies, I think he’s a genius. I said it was like Basic Instinct meets Robocop. A lot of the songs are futuristic dystopian, or utopian, leaning. It’s intrigue, it’s romance, and it’s drama.”

Photo Credit: Steven Patrick

The band, a tight unit that thrives on collaboration, experimenting, live drum sequencing, looping and sampling, were determined to only create when they could be in the one space together. Trading files and Zoom meetings were not on their agenda. So when restrictions allowed, they recorded the majority of the album at their Brunswick studio, then did a final block of six days at The Aviary to achieve the final overdubs, vocals and re-amps.

Bringing in accomplished Melbourne engineer, producer, and guitarist (in metal band High Tension) Mike Deslandes on mixing duties was “invaluable,” says Binning. “When we handed it off to him, there were 80 different tracks in the sessions, so he had to go through all of them and mix it all together, which I do not envy.”

“Because we’re so insular and work on our own all the time,” she continues, “it was the first time someone had listened to the whole thing with fresh ears. So it was interesting hearing his take on certain songs. He’d say, ‘This is a pop song,’ and we hadn’t thought of it like that… Mike is genuinely almost like a savant! Watching him use the computer… it’s all a mystery to me. He’s able to wrangle sense out of a fairly nonsensical arrangement, sometimes.”

Billing readily nominates “Spun Gold Heaving” as a favourite from the album.

“That is just so fun to play live. The germ of the idea for that came from listening to – I hate name dropping Nick Cave because it’s so cliched! – but listening to [1996 album] Murder Ballads, and even that whole genre that goes back to the whole blues tradition of murder ballads,” explains Binning. “What does that mean, not to write a song that’s personal or confessional, but as a character who’s awful and a murderer? The guitar parts the boys came up with were really intense and made me feel really powerful so that was a great song for me to make my murder ballad. It’s tongue-in-cheek and also so raucous and heavy.”

The last song on the album, “Luxury Auto” slithers in like a ravenous viper seeking prey. Binning’s ghostly, femme fatale vocal bristles with malevolent, vampiric intent. The guitars shiver with kinetic energy, letting go into frenzied metallic whips. It’s elegant, sexy, and full of glamorous, gothic drama.

“That’s the last one we wrote in the chronology,” she says. “We had all the other songs ready. It came from quite an organic jam. The boys named it ‘Luxury Auto’ when it was still an instrumental because it felt mysterious, thinking about espionage, spy movies and that European feel. Then I found it to be really emotive and was thinking about the espionage theme. In life we all have our missions, and our allies, our enemies. It can feel very mysterious not knowing other people’s intentions and who’s out to get you. The vibe of the song emerged from the music and I just naturally went from there. We haven’t worked out how to play that one live yet, but that’s one of my favourites as well.”

As long as they’re crafting melodic, utopian, immersive synth-guitar soundscapes worthy of an Alex Proyas, Luc Besson or Paul Verhoeven movie, Melbourne is going to lay claim to Bitumen. Just don’t tell Hobart.

Follow Bitumen on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.

Cate Le Bon Wrestles with Unstable Futures on Sixth Album, Pompeii

Photo Credit: H. Hawkline

Cate Le Bon has a knack for poetically weaving dualities: history and imagined futures; progress and destruction; the personal and the collective; the orderly and being “tethered to a mess,” as she sings on “Moderation” from her latest LP Pompeii. From a bedroom in Cardiff last year, she made her sixth album, out February 4 via Brooklyn imprint Mexican Summer, with collaborator and co-producer Samur Khouja.

Since September last year, she has returned to her adopted home, the US. When we chatted last December, she was in Topanga, working with Khouja again to produce Devendra Banhart’s album after playing a festival in Marfa.

“We’ve rented a house that we’ve turned into a studio. It used to belong to Neil Young in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” she tells Audiofemme. “Devendra and I are both living and working in the house. It’s just so easy and lovely. We’re having a dreamy time. There’s not many people you can live and work with and still look forward to seeing in the morning.”

She has plans to make another record this year, on her own terms rather than under the restrictions imposed by border closures and lockdowns, but producing for other artists is also on her agenda.

“It’s just joyous to see other people’s process and it’s a real beautiful thing to trust someone with your record,” she says. “I’m not looking to do it full time but there’s certain people that I love working with and will always have the time to do that.”

Topanga is a long way, geographically and metaphorically, from the Cardiff bedroom where Pompeii was recorded. The texturally-rich tapestry of saxophone, strings, synths, bass and multi-track guitars is the most danceable excursion into existential inquiry, wrestling with faith, intention and purpose. Le Bon’s catalyst was Brazilian-Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi’s 1958 essay “The Moon,” in which she laments the perversion of dominance, control and technology in the pursuit of knowledge.

“The underlying theme of the record is: you will be forever connected to everything,” Le Bon explains. “It was this Lina Bo Bardi essay that I’d read… about how man will destroy everything, really, in this attempt to eat the moon, and nothing’s changed, and I suspect nothing will change. All these incremental changes that have been made under the banner of progress is probably why we’ve ended up in a global pandemic, with everything shut down and hundreds of thousands of people dying. There’s this sense of being connected to those very first decisions that were made that started the wheels turning… about knowing all that and still wanting the things that you know are bad and contributing to [destruction].”

The Welsh artist had been demoing Pompeii in Joshua Tree in 2020 with repeat collaborator, drummer and producer Stella Mozgawa but an invitation from John Grant to produce his album Boy From Michigan took both her and Mozgawa to his adopted home of Iceland. She had been in Iceland when the pandemic began closing borders in March 2020, choosing to remain and continue working, though Mozgawa took the last flight back to Australia.

“When I was working in Iceland and everything shut down, I was lucky because it’s quite a fortunate place to find yourself when a global pandemic kicks off. I was somewhere safe and I was earning money, which seemed to be a massive problem for friends and family back home,” she remembers. “I was locked out of America and my partner [Tim Presley, collaborator in Drinks] who lives there, we’d just bought a house and I couldn’t get back into the States. My instinct was to get home to Wales, to get home to my mum and dad and my sisters, my best friends from childhood and be amongst them.”

She returned to Cardiff in May 2020 after two and a half months in Iceland. Pompeii was created not only in her homeland, but in the same Cardiff house she lived in 15 years ago, in her late twenties. That would have been around the same time she released her debut album, Me Oh My in 2009, a year after her EP in Welsh language Edrych yn Llygaid Ceffyl Benthyg (Looking in the Eyes of a Borrowed Horse).

“I think [Pompeii] certainly captures the time and everything that was going on in my small little world. Everything was put into that record and it’s beyond words to try to distil everything that you’re feeling when everything is unstable and the future is dark. So, to be able to really put that into music was cathartic. It was all I could do at the time,” she says.

Khouja was her trusted accomplice, and the two worked diligently for months within the Cardiff house that Le Bon knew so intimately – every light switch, every mirror, every creaky floorboard.

“It’s not a bedroom record in the traditional sense,” Le Bon acknowledges of the luscious, textured sounds of the album. “We had a lot of gear and Samur is the best engineer you could dream up.”

She first met Khouja at his recording studio in downtown LA – he was engineering her third album, Mug Museum. “I just really loved the way he worked,” Le Bon says. “It’s always forward motion with him. He’ll never say ‘you can’t do that’ or ‘that’s ridiculous.’ He’s so into exploring and his curiosity is so infectious.”

From the opening strum of guitar on “Dirt On The Bed,” there’s a sense of languid luxuriousness to the sound. “That was the first song that we tackled, Samur and I together, and it was a song that was born from something else then reduced to a one-note bass synth line that everything else spring-boarded off,” she says.

Strings writhe around each other, resonant and metallic at the top end but accompanied by a deep twangy bass. A resolute sigh of brass rises and falls away like the shrug of shoulders. Like walking deep into a forest, the harmony of animals and trees, rivers and undergrowth has an organic symphony effect. Le Bon, central but unimposing, is the guide to this raw, unexplored new territory.

“Moderation” bounces along, guitar spraying its sunny beams out over a warm, deep bassline. Le Bon’s radiant falsetto and sweet harmonies rise over the track in their glorious multi-coloured beauty like a pastel, shimmering rainbow. “French Boys” is a simmering haze of ‘80s-style synth keyboards and saxophone with the vaguely disjointed, crystalline half song-half spoken word ode to les garçons.

“It’s a song about the cliches drowning you, I suppose,” Le Bon muses. “The guitar sounds on it are so beautiful to me. The guitars are running through about eight different pedals and some magic Samur’s working. That was a bit of a labyrinth to record and work out all the paths.”

Le Bon plays all the instruments on the album, except for the saxophones (care of Euan Hinshelwood and Stephen Black, both members of her live band) and drumming by Mozgawa (of course).

Stella Mozgawa’s minimal percussion, complementary and organic, was provided from her homeland in Australia. Fresh from working with Courtney Barnett on Things Take Time, Take Time, Mozgawa is in her element when partnered with visionary women who are confident in what they like and how they want to convey their vocals and musicality, but are nevertheless open to guidance and influences.

“She’s so accomplished on the drums, it’s insane. I tear up watching her play drums. She’s unbelievable but she doesn’t have an ego. It’s like she’s got nothing to prove and she never reacts. She always responds to people in the studio, it’s always really thought through. She’s just a true master, phenomenal to work with,” Le Bon says. “Stella played a huge part in a lot of things I’ve done in the past five or six years. Working with her is one of the greatest joys. She’s phenomenal… it had to be her drumming on this record. She was in Australia and we were in Cardiff doing sessions on Zoom chatting to each other, then Samur was linked up to Pro Tools. It was not the same as being there but it was an amazing second option.”

Mozgawa was the drummer on Crab Day too, Le Bon’s fourth album, in which she worked with Noah Georgeson and Josiah Steinbrick again – the producers of her 2013 album Mug Museum.

Pompeii arrives only two years after 2019’s Mercury Prize-nominated Reward, her first album after signing with Mexican Summer. Since, she’s performed with composer and musician John Cale at the Barbican, backed by the London Contemporary Orchestra. It is the cherry on top of a catalogue of really candid, cadenced and – ultimately – beautiful albums. A tour in support of the record kicks off in Woodstock, NY on February 6.   

The process of creation was Le Bon’s coping strategy, and she admits that it was a time – as it was for many – in which the lack of a certain future was both reassuring and scary. That duality is played out in the musical and lyrical dynamics, as listeners will discover for themselves.

“You’re processing all this stuff and music and writing is such a beautiful way of processing something,” she says. “The language of unsurety is quite a difficult code to crack, it’s kind of explorative and complicated and at times I just had to trust that something felt right… trusting that it was almost like a letter to my future self.”

Follow Cate Le Bon on Instagram and Facebook for ongoing updates.