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Bright Eyes Usher In A New Apocalypse

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After a nine-year hiatus, Bright Eyes' new album, 'Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was,' hinges on apocalyptic imagery, desire and loss
Caitlin Wolper
GRAMMYs
Jul 1, 2020 - 8:49 am

An announcement cuts through barroom chatter. In Spanish, a woman welcomes the crowd warmly, preparing them for the song ahead—at the end of a hallway, they’ll open the door of forgotten memory. If you don’t speak Spanish, you’ll still catch when she names the composition’s theme: "Your most vivid nightmares."

From there, "Pageturner’s Rag" dissolves into a ragtime overlapped with conversations; at first, it feels like you're sitting in the crowd.

But of course, the song is far stranger than that. Recorded primarily in Pageturner's Lounge, an Omaha bar co-owned by Bright Eyes frontman Conor Oberst, every line is deliberate. The bar "audience" received pre-written potential topics, phrases, or conversations on cue cards; you can hear those recordings throughout as Pageturner pianist Dan McCarthy plays and Bright Eyes member Nate Walcott joins on trumpet.

These conversations are spliced with snippets of a recording from Oberst's home, a three-hour conversation between him, his mother and his ex-wife Corina Figueroa Escamilla (the Spanish-speaking announcer) after they all took psychedelic mushrooms.

Oberst and his bandmates consider the dissonant opening track to be "what makes a Bright Eyes album a Bright Eyes album," calling it a "pay-at-the-door situation": if you’re willing to step through the oddities, then you make it to the songs. ("We’re kind of shitheads like that," he laughs.)

"I’ve always loved the idea of putting the music in a world that is outside of a sterile, cold, studio sonic environment, so the little sound collages and all the field recordings and bits of sound, that’s all throughout the record," Oberst says. "It creates a world for the songs to live in that isn’t just a straitlaced studio situation."

After a nine-year hiatus, Oberst, Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott have returned with a new Bright Eyes album. Named after a now-abandoned poem/flipbook that Oberst was making after his brother’s death, Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was finds them searching for what’s left among ruins.

Long considered eerie, surreal, or apocalyptic, Bright Eyes' wary-eyed paranoia is discomfittingly prescient for a COVID-era listener. Whether it’s capitalistic reanimation ("This old town looks empty but we knew it wouldn’t last/Behind bulletproof windows they’re still wiring the cash"), or more literal apocalypse ("This world went down in flames and man-made caves"), we’re in a strange world, made all the more disorienting by sudden, interruptive conversations and Mogis’ producing. The band wanted to ensure that after their time away, Down in the Weeds fit seamlessly into the Bright Eyes catalogue—as it stands, it could easily be a marriage between Fevers and Mirrors and Cassadaga.

Read More: I Love You Far Too Much: Bright Eyes' 'Fevers And Mirrors' Turns 20

While the album was recorded pre-COVID, its dystopian bend aligns uncannily with our present. A number of lines now feel eerie. Saying he’s "obviously not the only one with these ideas on my mind," Oberst believes he’s tapped into a collective consciousness "where maybe because of certain advances of the world, we’re all kind of dreaming the same dreams and having the same thoughts to some degree."

Reckoning with lost love, new love, endings, illness, and death, massive abstractions are cut with quotidian action—after all, even in the face of apocalypse, someone still needs to cut celery for soup.

"That approach of blending mundane things with more fantastical or supermacro broad philosophical concepts is interesting to me," Oberst says. "That's honestly the way I feel in my life: like most of life is routine and boring, but then I go to sleep and I have very wild nightmares or nice dreams, or during the day I’m preoccupied with some sort of gigantic thought that really has nothing to do with my life."

He says that, to some degree, he thinks of all his albums as concept albums because the songs come in waves and hinge on a specific set of obsessions. At the forefront on Down in the Weeds? Dissociation; paranoia; questioned faith; resurrection.

"To Death’s Heart (In Three Parts)" is the most outright search for meaning, broken up by the words of a lover (who calls him exhausting), the words of the pope (benedictions) and the last words of Parisians who died in the Bataclan (ephemeralness). The song ends with a distorted, spoken exchange between Oberst and another, where Oberst interrogates: "What I'm wondering is, do you believe in god, champ?" "I believe that, uh…" "But you’re the champ, right?" The next track, "Calais to Dover," opens with a narrator who can’t recognize himself.

And as the songs' narrators (all composites) look for and lose themselves, paranoia furthers that divide, pulling harder on the tether to reality. "Mariana Trench" captures an entire world, pointing listeners to extreme highs and lows while warning of what lies between them: "Look out for the plainclothes/Look out for what the wiretap knows/Look out on the ever-widening money trail and where it goes."

It’s an ever-running current of love that keeps the album from giving in to its dread. While “Just in the World” starts by affirming that humans either discover or destroy, it leads into a narrator facing storms with his love and concludes: “If it ever occurred/just once in the world/a love as absurd/as ours I would scream what we lost/From the mountaintop.” Down in the Weeds never loses its sense of the world at large even as the individual loves and loses.

“I feel like some of my songs come across as a little schizophrenic: one verse will be about one thing or situation or person and the next verse will be about a totally different person and situation and they’re connected,” Oberst says. “They connect perfectly, logically in my mind, but they don’t necessarily come across as clearly to a listener, which I think is OK. I appreciate that in other people's music, a more surreal logical line.”

Oberst loves records that unravel and reveal themselves upon repeat listenings. He credits Mogis’ production style for Bright Eyes’ ability to do so: “every little sonic taster, little delay or weird effect — all that stuff might blow by you the first time you hear it, but if you listen on headphones enough times you start picking out more things.”

Bookended with subterranean vignettes, Down in the Weeds offers us a world uncannily similar to our own, where conspiracies intermingle with heartbreak.

"I’ve always been a pessimist and I think there’s been a slightly dystopian, apocalyptic bend to my songs and words for a long time, so it’s nothing new to me," Oberst says. He adds wryly: "I take no joy in being right about all this stuff."

Phoebe Bridgers Talks 'Punisher,' Japanese Snacks & Introducing Conor Oberst To Memes

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Young Jesus

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Young Jesus Welcome You To Conceptual Beach

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GRAMMY.com talks to singer/songwriter John Rossiter about what the phrase "Conceptual Beach" means to him, how it's expanded over the years and how its creative spirit can be replicated in a time without live music
Eli Enis
GRAMMYs
Aug 11, 2020 - 9:10 am

The last two records from Young Jesus were all about letting go of convention. After years of writing and releasing songs within the boundaries of emo and indie-rock, L.A.-via-Chicago musician John Rossiter was basking in the creative liberation of improvisational jazz and amorphous post-rock. Young Jesus had been his songwriting vehicle since 2010, but once he moved to L.A. and overhauled the lineup with players who taught him to abandon traditional structure and embrace spontaneity, the band took on a much different form.

On 2017's S/T, a song like "Feeling" laced a trudging indie-rock hook in the vein of early Modest Mouse with tumbling, arrhythmic drumming and long passages of woodland field recordings. 2018's The Whole Thing Is Just There was even looser and featured frequent ad-libbing that culminated in a sprawling, 20-minute finale called "Gulf." That two-year period of prolific writing and frequent touring was as much a spiritual rejuvenation as it was a musical one, and naturally  the band were a bit tired when it wrapped up. Once they reassembled after some time off and began plotting the next record, the process felt less effortless than it did on the last two go-arounds.

"So we wrote a ton of songs and jammed a lot and it didn’t always feel great," Rossiter says. "It was the first time where I think we were playing and we would really question where we were going."

Whereas those previous albums were forged from capturing a feeling and not second guessing themselves, their new record Welcome To Conceptual Beach (out on Aug. 14 via Saddle Creek) was built by being more thoughtful and contemplative about the music. For Rossiter, that actually meant giving up some of his creative control.

"I think I can be pretty controlling sometimes and this record is reflective of, at least for me, grappling with that," he says. "Trying to trust more and let go a little bit on my own and be honest with myself and my shortcomings. What can I learn and where can I grow and what am I good at and what do I love? Those are questions I was asking myself and I think as a band we were asking ourselves."

The record that emerged is a lot more rhythmically focused and features more input from Rossiter’s bandmates and collaborators than ever before. Opener "Faith" is an organ-led bar ballad that verges on prog at points, "Pattern Doubt" is bolstered by gorgeous saxophone and dreamy piano sweeps, "Meditations" makes room for fluttering jazz flute, and "Lark" contains a passage in the middle where Rossiter speak-sings like a Baptist preacher over playfully campy funk music. There are moments of surging shoegaze and meandering post-rock that could’ve appeared on either of their last albums, but overall, Welcome To Conceptual Beach sounds less heady, less freewheeling, and more free-spirited than previous Young Jesus projects.

Some of that is likely a result of Rossiter making huge strides in his personal life that involved de-emphasizing intellectualization in favor of emotional tenderness. The lyrics of the record’s lead single "Root and Crown" serve as a sort of thesis for his new outlook on life through the lens of his band: "Every record needs a thesis, needs a crisis, or campaign / All my feelings need a reason, need a righteousness or blame."

"This record is about accepting the times when you’re wrong," he says. "Not necessarily having a reason but having a feeling and trusting that feeling and balancing it with reasoning. And learning that righteousness is really dangerous, to believe that there’s a right and that it’s not in flux or in negotiation with context and the people around you and the way people around you are feeling."

"That’s so important," he continues. "I wasn't noticing how people are feeling. At least in my band I was really pushing people very hard and I needed to take a minute and ask, 'Are you guys OK? Is this too hard? Am I pushing everyone too hard? Am I pushing myself too hard?' So that’s the record."

As Rossiter became more open with himself and those around him, he became more forthcoming about Conceptual Beach, which is what he describes as his "internal landscape." For years, Conceptual Beach had been both Rossiter's zine and a setting for personal journal entries, but back in 2018 he used the name for an event series in L.A. where Young Jesus were trying to deconstruct and rebuild what a concert can entail. Now, Conceptual Beach has made it into the title of this new album and Rossiter is even in the works of building an entire website around it called conceptualbeach.net.

We talked to Rossiter about what Conceptual Beach means to him, how it’s expanded over the years and how its creative spirit can be replicated in a time without live music.

The last time we talked, Conceptual Beach was an event series you were doing in L.A. where you would perform and people would do watercolor paint and it was this really multidisciplinary experience. How did the idea of Conceptual Beach expand from there?

When we had that concert and those experiences, it was really freeing. It's really freeing to see that you can have a show and not even play any songs and people will be excited about it. So it takes a lot of pressure off, I think I put a lot of pressure at least on myself, to write these epic, intense—I want the albums to be perfect. And that experience was like, "Wow this was a pretty often messy feeling thing."

I think Conceptual Beach was, for a while in many ways, me just trying to figure out how to live better on my own. And if I just write enough, if I’m just creative enough, my life will be good and happy. And it wasn't working. So I'm slowly learning to bring Conceptual Beach into the world and share it and ask other people what their inner landscape might be like and maybe I could learn something from that. And maybe the difficult, dark painful things and the joyful, lovely amazing things that I’ve seen on Conceptual Beach, I can start to share with my friends and my partner and my family.

I've never really cried in front of people before, and the past two years I quit smoking and someone asked me, how'd I do it? And I said, "Well, I cry four to five times a week and I feel really angry sometimes and I never felt that before." I put it all into a cigarette or maybe a drink, who knows. So Conceptual Beach growing has entered my life in a way that's changed me significantly, so I think it’s changed the music significantly and I think it's changed how we as a band deal with each other. How we deal with ourselves.

It's interesting how Conceptual Beach started as this very personal concept and has become more shared, whether it be in a concert setting or on a record that you collaborated so closely with your bandmates on. So as you've grown less guarded, Conceptual Beach has as well.

Yeah, so I'm in this book group that I help facilitate and it's full of these amazing people. One of the really powerful things about it and one of the things I've learned a lot through the friends I’ve made there is that they’re very embodied people. They're very connected with all sorts of transformative justice and social justice groups—it’s a current events book group so it draws those types of people towards it.

And some people suggested a few books that were really embodied and really optimistic. They offered a way out rather than pointing out what I think a lot of theory does, which is point out how shitty the world is and [present] a lens to examine its shittiness and really make an entire argument about how terrible it is. And a friend of mine who, like me, grew up really focused on our mind and our intellect, we started reading these books and we were like, "This isn’t for me. This is a bunch of wacky, new-age bullshit and it’s so accounting. It's asking the reader how they’re feeling. That's too much for me, I don't need that, I'm tough, I want people to get straight to the point."

And then we kept reading that and all of a sudden I was like, "Wait a second, this book cares about me. And it cares about the writer and how they’re feeling. And why am I upset about that?" Those are kind of beautiful things to do and to care about each other and to ask really actively how I'm feeling and how my friends are feeling. It really opened something in me. I would say I've probably read less this year than I have in a while and it doesn’t feel like a bad thing. It feels like I’m a little more connected with myself and, I think, to my friends.

I think it's kind of fascinating that you were really trying to reshape what a live show was a couple years back, and now the music community is facing an existential challenge and we need to reshape what a live musical experience is. Have you noticed anything anyone's doing that can maybe help carry on that spirit virtually for the time being?

I'm really working on it because honestly I get kind of anxious using social media so it's been hard for me to engage with it creatively. I do hope there's conversations happening and it's a conversation I'm continuing to have, is how to do these things without Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

And I think there's a lot of potential for these extremely creative people that are in D.I.Y. or influenced by a band like ourselves or some kind of mix of the two. So many people have so much energy and creativity and ability to think of new workarounds. These are the type of people who can figure out how to get a 7" pressed just out of thin air or print a zine that you bring on tour and figure out how to give all that money to a mutual aid fund. These are people, to me, that are at the forefront of creatively engaging with the world we're in right now and I think we need to be thinking about how to protect ourselves a little bit and protect our scene, protect our data.

So I'd love to see that coming into play. I'd love to see musicians creating more and more of their own platforms, which I do see happening. That's some of the ethos of the website which is conceptualbeach.net situation. There's a lot of possibility, so much possibility. I've seen Patreons and I think that's a wonderful model and it's kind of a hard sell for people but I would like to see that pick up more. There's also so many fun things you can do with recording yourself, so to continue growing in that direction, there are ways to do it.

Madeline Kenney Probes Foolish Love On 'Sucker's Lunch'

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Madeline Kenney

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Madeline Kenney Probes Foolish Love On 'Sucker's Lunch'

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The critically acclaimed Oakland songwriter and multi-instrumentalist details the roots of romance on her new record and why it deserves to be played in front of a real crowd
Zack Ruskin
GRAMMYs
Jul 20, 2020 - 9:32 am

"Honestly, it's pretty f**king heartbreaking," explains Madeline Kenney. This blunt assessment from the Oakland singer-songwriter is almost cruelly ironic when one considers the subject matter of her upcoming third album. Out from Carpark Records on July 31, Sucker’s Lunch finds Kenney grappling with the privileges and perils of love, often approaching bliss from a perspective of perceived unworthiness.

Inspired in part by what Kenney terms "the healthiest relationship I've been in," the album takes her brand of poignantly crafted art-rock to some dazzling new places. Synths serve as confections on opener "Sugar Sweat," while lead single "Sucker" pairs Kenney with the vocals of Lamchop's Kurt Wagner as the two sing of the inevitable cons we fall for again and again.

On "Sweet Coffee," the discordant sounds of machinery accompany Kenney's haunting vocals as a sparse piano line flourishes into something ultimately far sweeter. The song, as with every track on the record, also benefits from the presence of bassist Jenn Wasner and drummer Andy Slack (who together form the duo Wye Oak). Sucker’s Lunch also returns Wasner as co-producer, a role she first inhabited on Kenney's last album, 2018’s Perfect Shapes.

In lieu of a scheduled tour with Alex G., Kenney has spent her months in quarantine baking bread, making kits for protesters and working on her piano exercises. For an album that's been over two years in the making—and positioned as Kenney’s strongest release to date—the landscape into which she’s sending her latest creation is one ripe for heartbreak indeed.

On a break from hand-building an outdoor pizza oven in her backyard, Kenney spoke with GRAMMY.com about why she needs a thesis for her records, her initial hesitance to pen "ooey-gooey" love songs and the importance of making space to grieve.

This album finds you partnering once again with Jenn Wasner. After working together on Perfect Shapes, was that a forgone conclusion for you? When did [Wye Oak drummer] Andy Slack get involved?

Well, I lived with them in North Carolina, so we were all just like one big crazy family. We would go on tour together and then all come back home. They were touring so much in 2018. I was on some of those tours and some of the time I was just home alone, so I would work on songs by myself. Andy's room was above mine, so I would just knock on his door and say, "Hey, I have this demo. Would you track drums to it?" He was nice that he'd do it. Then, when it came time to get ready to make the record, I was so used to all of Andy's drum parts that I told him he should just fly out to San Francisco and record them with Jenn and I. They're like psychically linked as far as the rhythm section goes, so it just seemed logical. With Andy, this sounds so nerdy, but he has like this light touch that's very refined and tasteful.

Thematically, Sucker's Lunch addresses love from a lot of angles. Is it true that you met someone, who was in turn perhaps an inspiration on that front?

I'm walking away from him so I don't embarrass him! Right before Perfect Shapes came out, I'd just gone through a terrible breakup and it sucked. I was never really interested in writing love songs before. I guess it was just a topic where I felt like I didn't know if I had much to say, as far as like "ooey-gooey" love songs go but I started seeing this person and all of a sudden, I found myself... like it felt good enough to want to write about, which is new for me, to be honest. I can safely say it's the healthiest relationship I've been in. It's awesome but I just don't if I was used to that. It almost made me feel like I was crazy, which comes through in some of the songs.

There’s also this thematic element of "the idiot" that you’ve mentioned relates to this album as well.

The thematic element of the fool and the sucker and the idiot is that I'm the first person to friggin' logic my way out of anything good. Like all of these good things are happening to me, so here are all of the reasons why I don't deserve it and why it could fail and why it's a bad idea. I think it took a lot of mental work for me to get past that and say, "It might be a bad idea but it feels really good to go for it." I had that revelation while Andy and Jenn were on tour. I remember them coming back and I started shouting about how I understood everything. My need to have a thesis is so dorky and academic of me but I struck on this idea that you have to enjoy the good things in life. It might be foolish and it might not be safe but you have to do it. It applies both to relationships and also to having a career in music, as has been clearly proven by this whole quarantine COVID craziness. I couldn't have chosen a more volatile, stupid career.

Before Sucker's Lunch was announced, you've posted on Twitter about struggling with how, when, or if to release an album as the reality of the pandemic was settling in. What went into that decision for you?

I still have a lot of guilt about it because there are way bigger, more important things happening. I'm really trying to hold space for the grief I have for our idiotic country and its growing pains, but I also need to hold space for the grief that I have for this work that I put my life and my being into. Honestly, it's pretty f**king heartbreaking, to be blunt about it. I mean, I wrote these songs when I was crazy, goo-goo in love. We’re still together and I'm happy and it's all wonderful but it's going on like two years later now. For one, it’s like "sorry that I'm putting out all of these embarrassing love songs out right now." Second of all, I held onto these songs for a while. I wasn't sure how I was going to record them. I was scared to approach Carpark [Records] with it for some reason.

What was your hesitation?

Even though I'm on the label, I was just really sensitive about all of it. I showed it to some people—not friends, but people in the industry who I no longer trust. They were like, "I don't even know what this is. There's no single here. What is this?" I was really hurt by that and I just pressed pause on everything.

I held off on recording it and then I was like, "You know what? F**k it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to pay for it." I booked the studio time but I didn't tell Carpark. I just kind of started it. Finally, I worked up the nerve to send them some rough mixes and everyone was so receptive and nice. It was just all such a weird experience and also very drawn out. I mixed the record twice. I shot the cover twice. Everything was pretty meticulous and done over and over again to get it right.

That whole process delayed everything and then I was supposed to go on tour with Alex G. I had this vision of going on tour with him and having these great shows. Now, I kind of just have to watch all that die. Maybe not die but have it all happen so unceremoniously. I think it's okay for me to feel sad about that. I really want to experience these songs in a room with people and it just breaks my heart that I have no idea when that's going to be. Millions and millions and millions of people, including many musicians, are dealing with this uncertainty, which is so painful, but what a drag for that to be the end of a two-and-a-half-year process.

And what has your quarantine been like so far? Are you able to be creative or do you feel disengaged from that process right now?

I'm doing a lot of domestic shit. I'm baking and trying to build this pizza oven and stuff. I started nannying for this family. I’m helping to take care of a little two-year-old and four-month-old. That's been surprisingly nice, in the midst of the insanity of the world, to hold a chunky little cuddly baby. Plus, I don't know when I'll have music work again, so I need work.

I've been trying to record and stuff but I can't f**king write right now. I've never been more devoid of creative energy or inspiration, so it's really, really hard to get myself motivated. It sucks because we built a studio in our basement. Our basement was unfinished and we spent the last couple of months before quarantine building walls. I did drywall. Turns out I'm pretty good at doing drywall. It was very D.I.Y. It looks really sick and it's awesome and I can't write anything. It's really horrible, so I'm just trying to be forgiving of myself for that. I'm getting into the habit now of playing more piano and doing more exercise-type stuff—music exercises—instead of trying to force myself to write.

Have you been approached about doing any livestreams?

I have so many gripes with the whole livestream thing. I don't want people seeing inside of my house, man. Also, I don't want to play to my phone and not hear applause. As selfish as that sounds, it's just so empty. Then there’s the technology. That's the other thing: now we have to also be premium online content creators? It's just a ridiculous request. I feel like up until now, I felt accomplished just barely knowing how to edit and direct my own videos but I still have to hire people to work the camera because I didn't go to film school.

Some people are really good at it. I'm just not. I want my music to sound a certain way when people hear it. Nobody asks DJs to do acoustic sets but I've been asked to do acoustic sets on Instagram and stuff. Man, I like playing my electric guitar. I like my toys. I like my reverb and my vocal pedal and I use them to make people hear the music in a certain way. I don't want to be forced back into what's effectively an open mic circuit in my own home. No thank you.

It's just surreal that one of your next live dates is currently a slot at the Outside Lands Music & Art Festival next summer.

I really miss the live element for a million different reasons. I feel like it’s such a big part of what I do on this planet, so it feels really painful—especially in this moment of protests and all of the other work people are doing—to wonder when I’ll be able work. Like, in addition to everything else that I'm trying to do, that just feels like a huge part of my own career puzzle that's missing. To me, it is a positive contribution to the world and hopefully it helps makes people feel okay.

Illuminati Hotties Reclaim Themselves

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Sarah Tudzin of Illuminati Hotties

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Illuminati Hotties Reclaim Themselves

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As the L.A. punk project releases their experimental 'Free IH' mixtape, frontwoman Sarah Tudzin describes speaking out against their beleaguered record label Tiny Engines, plus drawing inspiration from acts like Cardi B and Death Grips
Danielle Chelosky
GRAMMYs
Jul 17, 2020 - 9:25 am

On July 1, a mysterious Soundcloud link and Twitter account circulated the web. "Occult Classic" was its name; they were a band, a secretive one, making ridiculously interesting, explosive music. It sent Twitter users amok, with indie rock lovers begging for answers, even though "Occult Classic" spell out their real name in one of the songs: Illuminati Hotties.

A few days prior, I had spoken with Sarah Tudzin, the frontwoman of that L.A. crew responsible for 2018's warm Kiss Yr Frenemies. She's gotten a little unhinged—which is why very few people can recognize who Occult Classic is—but to her core she still contains the heartfelt energy of that first record. "There's a tenderness I have not been able to shake," she tells me with a small laugh over the phone the month before the release of the idiosyncratic tornado Free IH: This Is Not The One You’ve Been Waiting For. 

That tenderness has carried on over into quarantine, prompting her to build a garden and finally get a dog. "Her name is Maeby. Like "Arrested Development" and like maybe I’ll get a dog, which I've been saying for the last five years."

Free IH was not some kind of impulsive quarantine project, as one might've guessed. It was whipped up in a short timespan—three weeks of writing in February, two full days in the studio (A.K.A. drummer Tim Kmet’s rehearsal space). This is only because Tudzin had worked on a complete record for the last year and a half, just to have it put in a weird position when the record label that represents Hotties—Tiny Engines—got exposed for mistreating artists. Hudson Valley's lo-fi indie act Adult Mom was the first to come out, claiming a breach of contract. This sparked others to speak up as well. Tudzin is the next.

Intended to be viewed as a separate project, this new Hotties record has experimentation at the forefront. It plays with samba, post-punk, noise, pop—it even features a mock-radio bit on tenth track "K - HOT AM 818." It is less of an album and more of a mixtape, embodying a collage rather than a cohesive line of thought.

Ahead of the release of Free IH: This Is Not The One You’ve Been Waiting For (July 17), Tudzin spoke with GRAMMY.com about fighting Tiny Engines, being inspired by Cardi B and needing L.A. punk.

What’s the mugshot from and why did you make it the album cover?

It’s from being young and stupid pretty much. That was taken about five years ago now. It just kind of struck me as being a fitting cover because a lot of the record came together very fast and a lot of it was me feeling emotionally targeted by stuff that was going on with my label. And being claustrophobic in the new space I was in and kind of having no mode of expression. You get a real strong flash of that when you’re staring at the camera of highway patrol. It fit hand and hand. The visual was great when it all came together. Corey Purvis made all the album art surrounding the photo. That being said, I was really lucky when I was booked and there are people who are far less lucky in the incarceration system. I walked away pretty scratch-free. Definitely the feeling of the situation I was in in that moment felt a lot like the quick and dirty feeling when I was making the record. 

What was your experience with your label Tiny Engines?

When it got messy was when we were trying to leave. What happened was they got roasted on the Internet, and they immediately shut their doors. To this day they haven’t made any statement or any sort of acknowledgement. They haven't let [out] any information about how they’re going to proceed. We were forced into this position where we were like, Hey, we were really excited for record two. We can’t reasonably promote it if you’re not going to bring any integrity back to the label. There’s no way I could've morally promoted an album with their label's name on it. We were forced into this six-month-long legal back-and-forth about how we were gonna leave the label. 

So, Free IH is coming out self-released. But that’s not without stipulations and payout and stuff that I had to do to exit the two record deal that I had standing with Tiny Engines. 

I noticed that they never put out a statement, and if you look at their Twitter they haven’t tweeted since 2019. I was wondering if they've paid the rest of the artists and if they have even been communicating with them.

As far as we go, we've been really on it and we've been going out of our way to communicate with them frequently and make sure that we're squared away on all of the royalties that we're owed. Also, we were in this conversation about how we could legally leave. I don't know; we were stuck in this weird place where days before everything hit the Internet about what happened with them we were talking about putting out a record that I had been working on for the last year and a half. They were really excited about it, and I was getting really excited about it too. 

That record essentially I put away because I was afraid about self-releasing it once this exit agreement was formed. When I realized what was happening and how long it was about to take, I whipped [Free IH] up real quick… I wasn’t really ready to let go of the record that I had really felt masterful about over the last year and a half.

I think what was so crushing about Tiny Engines was that they were an indie label, and people have faith in indie labels to be in it solely for the passion and the community. Do you think there will be distrust from now on?

I think there’s always been distrust in labels. The Tiny Engines situation is one of millions of stories that have happened with artists smaller than me and bigger than me. Across the board, there’s stories of artists being excited about something and not reading the fine print or not understanding what is standard for a contract like that. I gotta say, to Tiny Engines' credit, all of the struggles I've had with them haven't been financial. We've asked for statements from them, and they've given us accurate statements. We got paid out when we needed to get paid out. 

But the distrust of labels I think has always been around. Especially if you're a new band, you haven't done this before, and you aren’t really sure of how your music is gonna go. If thousands of people are gonna hear it, or millions, or billions, or whatever. You're faced with this person or group of people that have more power than you and that have—in some cases—money and in the case of Tiny Engines there was no serious advance. But they have access to resources and they have press and whatever. You're sort of validated in all of this hard work you've been doing in your art and you're like, This is my only chance. And they're saying, This is just how we do it. If you’re young and have no clue what’s going on, you have no choice but to say, Alright, that sounds good! I’m glad that somebody’s gonna listen to my music and somebody likes it.

How did you feel the morning you woke up and saw the Tiny Engines meltdown online?

I mean, it super sucks. It’s so heartbreaking for me and any of the other bands that still owed them a record. We were all hit with this wave of disbelief. Also, I think when you’re working with a label, everything feels comfy. Especially if you maybe don't know what you should be owed by your label; you mostly just go about your life feeling pretty good and feeling excited that you have the cosign. So, seeing that stuff on the Internet was shocking, and then immediately you're sort of like: What does this mean for the record I still owed them? And I know I’m not the only band that felt that. I know a lot of folks who were in this position of, Well what the hell do we do with anything that we still owe them as a part of our contract and what the hell do we do with all this stuff that they still own that we gave them on our first record and EP? There were just a lot of loose ends floating around. 

Why is this release so secretive?

I just really am sick of the press cycle and it never really strikes me even as a fan to go through the singles, single and a music video, single, full record stream the day before, full record comes out the next day. It all seems pretty robotic and I don’t want to say that I’m never gonna do that again because that’s just sometimes a part of how you hype up a record. But it’s really not interesting to me and there’s so many ways to do this. Especially with how fast everything travels on the Internet. I feel like you don’t really need to do all of that necessarily. Some of the greatest record releases we’ve seen have been really quick turn arounds like Frank Ocean or Beyoncé. Obviously those drops were far more dramatic [Laughs]. I think just putting out the record is hype enough. As a fan, I also feel pretty uninspired by just hearing the singles and I usually just wait until the full thing drops.

The opening track "will i get cancelled if i write a song called, 'if you were a man, you’d probably be cancelled,'" is an insane way to start the record—even just with the first line: "Let’s smash to a podcast." What was the process like writing this song?

[Laughs.] I was doing a lot of work with Sadie [Dupuis] from Speedy Ortiz at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. She's just constantly sending me and constantly making amazing, palatable music that’s in crazy key signatures. I was like, I gotta do something this fun and unhinged in this very unmathematical way. Then, a lot of it was honestly just that I had verses that didn’t really fit properly into a regular old song. A lot of writing the riff is writing it to words that didn't fit rhythmically into a normal sounding song [Laughs].

This record has moments that remind me of L.A. punk bands like The Paranoyds or Girl Friday. Does the scene there inform your music?

Of course! L.A. punk is really built into my bloodstream. If you grow up in the Valley and you just like skating around and it’s hot as shit outside, the only thing you can listen to is punk rock. Black Flag's from out here and so many bands that have been a part of the lore for so long. Girl Friday's so sick. There's a lot of pretty great D.I.Y. venues that are still happening out here. And the way Illuminati Hotties has gone, admittedly, has moved more into the nationwide scene, I guess. We've toured around, played some very not punk venues in the last two years [Laughs]. But there is so much good punk out here and there has been so many spaces for that kind of music since I’ve been a kid even with The Smell being around for the last however many one or two decades. With the new stuff that keeps popping up, it’s so cool to see that people still want to make noise and it’s a really nice break from what people think about L.A. music. When people hear that word, it seems very Hollywood. There’s still a lot of great kids making loud music.

The press release says that the sort of sensory overload aspect of the album is inspired by mixtape culture. Could you expand on that?

I think there's two aspects to that. One is that several times in the last 10 or 15 years of music it's super common for hip-hop artists and rappers to put out mixtapes to fulfill contract obligations and collect bits and pieces and collage together a project to fulfill the requirements they need to do to either move onto the next label or the next record or they just feel like putting something out in some capacity. That’s just a part of it; it’s just that mixtapes move fast. And I guess the other part of it is that they’re not necessarily connected stylistically, like songs stop in the middle. It’s beat sketches and verse sketches. And mixtape culture is super fascinating to me because you’re putting out the all-you-can-eat buffet for everyone to come and take a look at [Laughs].

You've said that your influences for this record range from Cardi B to Death Grips. I have to know more.

[Laughs.] Well, I think Death Grips makes the most interesting music of all time. And also just performatively are such interesting people, in terms of how they live their whole lives and how they’ve presented their music to their fans over and over again. How they refuse to engage with normal music industry culture I think is so cool. There was a version of this record that only one track made it onto what you’re hearing which is this fully instrumental noise moment on there, and there’s a lot more tracks like that which are just me making a bunch of noise. I wanted to put a completely noise record and the songwriter and producer in me refused to acknowledge that initial instinct. But Death Grips lives so loudly and so purely themselves that it was hard to ignore that influence and hard to not steal from the sounds that they create which are so cool and unabashed. 

And then Cardi B, she also lives like that. In a totally different lens. She's so in the eyes of the public in a fully wild way and she came up through such an insane lifestyle that I have no concept of how it felt to live that life. Cardi B is so interesting to me because she is now a rapper, but I don’t think it’s because she wanted to be a rap star. I think it’s because it’s part of her brand and that is so fascinating to me. In order to be the fully personality Cardi B, she needs the fashion and she needs the cars and she needs the music. Now she's also a movie star. Also, the way she delivers the verses that she has is so her and so cool. That definitely informed a lot of rhythmic choices that I made.

L.A. Punk Icon Alice Bag Talks New Album 'Sister Dynamite,' Respectful Listening & Reevaluating Life In A Pandemic

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Haim Open Up About 'Women In Music Pt. III,' Protesting In L.A. & Music Industry Sexism: "Not A Lot Has Changed"

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Ahead of the release of their third studio album, Alana, Danielle and Este Haim sit down with GRAMMY.com for a wide-ranging interview about loving (and almost leaving) L.A., battling gender-based genre stereotypes and much more
Pamela Chelin
GRAMMYs
Jun 25, 2020 - 8:43 am

While conversing over Zoom, it’s easy to see why the Haim sisters work so well together. Chatty and affable, they alternate between finishing each other's sentences and talking in unison, and paying rapt attention as each sister speaks. Born and raised in a tight-knit family in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, bassist/vocalist Este Haim (34), guitarist/vocalist Danielle Haim (31) and guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Alana Haim (28) grew up playing in Rockinhaim, a covers band with their parents. In 2012, Haim released their debut EP Forever for free on their website before releasing their debut full-length album, Days Are Gone (2013), which shot to number one on the U.K. Albums Chart and garnered a GRAMMY nomination for Best New Artist. Something To Tell You, their sophomore record, was released in 2017. After opening a string of dates on Taylor Swift’s 1989 tour, headlining their own international tours and selling out both New York City's Radio City Music Hall and London's Alexandra Palace two nights in a row, a couple of "SNL" performances, and attracting celebrity fans in Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks and U2's Bono, the trio is on the verge of releasing their highly anticipated third record, Women In Music Pt. III.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, WIMPIII’s release date was initially pushed to August from April before being rolled back to June. The viral outbreak also cut Haim's promotional deli tour short (they had just begun a jaunt performing at delis across the United States). On its surface, a deli tour may seem strange. But for Haim, who share a lifelong fondness for delis, it's actually a natural fit. "We grew up going to delis and when we were introducing the record we wanted to do something creative that we’d not seen before. We really do feel at home the most in delis," Alana tells GRAMMY.com. "We really wanted to do a different thing and we thought how cool if people can go and be able to eat Matzo ball soup." In fact, Haim's first gig with their parents 20 years ago was at West Hollywood landmark Canter's Deli, where the band also hosted a star-studded party with special guest DJ Mark Ronson in 2017. Earlier in the year, Haim—along with their frequent music video collaborator director Paul Thomas Anderson—shot Women In Music Pt. III’s album art Canter's. In the cover photo, Haim are shown standing behind a deli counter with sausages (wink, wink) hanging behind their heads with NOW SERVING 69 (hint, hint) prominently displayed.

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Co-produced by Danielle and longtime collaborators Ariel Rechtshaid (Danielle’s live-in boyfriend) and Rostam Batmanglij (formerly of Vampire Weekend), WIMPIII is Haim's favorite record to date. "For the first time, with this record, I don't think I’ll ever get sick of it," says Alana, crediting their years of recording experience. "We’ve always been confident but this is our third record, our third time around the sun if you will, and even thinking back to Days Are Gone, we didn’t know anything in the studio." "We knew the fundamentals of production when we first got into it, but now we know so much more," says Danielle. 

This time around, it was important to Haim, who are known for their highly energetic performances, to capture their live sound on record. "We wanted it to sound like the person listening to it was in the room while we were recording it, and that’s why it sounds super live," says Alana, who says they played as loudly as they could and put a room mic in the corner of the studio. Danielle says making use of her home studio was pivotal, too. "Being in expensive studios on Days Are Gone, there was so much pressure with being in those kinds of professional studios. But at Voxx [Studios], where we also did our last album, too, we'd do basic tracking and then take it into a home studio, and that’s where we feel our most comfortable," says Danielle.

Their most mature, contemplative, revealing and musically realized record, the melodic, hypnotically rhythmic and catchy WIMPIII reflects Haim's huge evolution over the last eight years including a deep lyrical exploration of myriad relationships (romantic, self, each other, the music industry and the media). In Haim's customary genre-busting musical style, the 16-song offering incorporates a variety of musical influences, seamlessly blending pop, R&B, hip-hop, folk, ska and classic rock (in addition to splashes of Prince and '90s pop-radio mainstays Savage Garden). Despite the range of musical influences going into WIMPIII, what comes out the other side sounds uniquely Haim.

Hoping the record's title Women In Music Pt. III speaks for itself, they are understandably as tired of talking about being women in music in 2020 as they should be. "In the back of our minds, we were hoping that because we’d named our album that, it wasn't going to be the first question everyone asks," says Danielle. "That’s why we put our song 'Man From The Magazine' in music form so we would be able to touch on it without having to have it be the thing that we talk about constantly."

The lyrics of "Man From The Magazine" discuss Haim's experiences with sexism ranging from a male journalist inquiring inappropriately about the faces Este makes when she plays bass (Man from the magazine / What did you say / Do you make the same faces in bed / Hey man what kind of question is that / What did you really want me to say back?) to a guy working at a music shop who assumes the sisters are beginner musicians. (Man from the music shop / I drove too far for you to hand me that starter guitar / Hey girl why don’t you play a few bars / Oh what’s left to prove?)

Asked if things have improved over recent years, the sisters sigh. Unfortunately, they haven't. One after the other, Alana and Este both say, "Not a lot has changed." 

What frustrates Haim further, which Danielle elucidates as another of WIMPIII’s themes, are perpetual attempts at forcing genre-specific labels on their music. "We have had to deal with people trying to put us in a box our whole career and not understanding what we do," she says. "There was a lot of, ‘Oh, you’re a girl band’ or ‘Oh, you make pop music,’" says Alana. "We've always felt that we carved our own path and made the music we wanted to make and we never put a label on it and we were OK with it. But to some people, if they don’t understand what box you go in, they get confused and say they don’t understand it, which is weird to me. We’ve always bridged the gap over a bunch of things and we’ve never been afraid to explore different kinds of genres and different kinds of songwriting." 

"I think other bands that aren’t all female can dabble in a bunch of different genres yet they're still called a rock band," says Danielle. "Meanwhile, we’re women and we dabble in all sorts of genres, [but] because we’re women it’s pop. That’s frustrating to be honest with you."

When they first received recognition in the U.K., Danielle says even being tagged with having a "California Sound" was baffling. "It was funny when people started saying that we have a 'California Sound.' We didn’t realize. We were just making music that we were coming up with. It's interesting. We never thought about it that way. Maybe it’s the harmonies? I don't know," says Danielle. "Our hair?" asks Alana. "Our long hair? Our middle parts?" says Danielle. "We never really felt super L.A. until we went to the U.K.," says Alana.

That’s not to say they resent the L.A. tag, though. You’d be hard-pressed to find greater L.A. champions than the sisters Haim, between their album art, lyrics (songs on the new record reference Crescent Heights, earthquake drills and freeway overpasses), music videos and recent promotional photos showing the band gracing the front page of L.A. Times Calendar section strategically placed over their seemingly naked bodies.  

"We’ve always been advocates for our city and we've repped it super hard, and throughout our whole lives we had to deal with pop culture telling us, ‘L.A. sucks.’ I feel like that was a popular theme," says Danielle. "Yeah, New York is the cool place. L.A. sucks," says Alana. "Yeah, it was always, ‘L.A. sucks’ in a lot of different movies," says Danielle. "In movies and TV shows, it never got respect," says Este. "We ride for L.A.,” says Danielle. "And I think with this record we embraced it. We talk about L.A., and obviously 'Free Fallin’' and Tom Petty are huge huge inspirations to us our whole lives. Actually, Wildflowers was a huge inspiration on this album."

Ironically, WIMPIII’s opening track, "Los Angeles," reveals Haim contemplating moving elsewhere. "That song is speaking to the mass exodus of everyone and their mom moving to L.A. and having a vindication that, yes, L.A. is the best,” says Danielle, "So the aftermath of that for me was, ‘Wait, is this city even mine anymore?’ Maybe I recognized why some people didn’t like it and we kind of collectively thought maybe we should move somewhere because we’ve never lived anywhere else." It's plain as the Hollywood sign on a clear day, however, that the sisters aren’t going anywhere. "I love it," says Alana. “L.A. is stuck with me.” 

The only thing stronger than the love for their hometown is the sisters’ adoration for each other. The penultimate track on WIMPIII, "Hallelujah," is a beautiful guitar- and vocals-driven ode to sisterhood emanating a "Landslide" vibe that would make Fleetwood Mac proud. Solemn and somber, the tender and naked ballad reflects each sister's grappling with personal and heavy topics—Este’s Type 1 Diabetes, Alana’s grief for a close friend who was killed in a car accident years ago and Danielle’s coming to terms with Ariel’s testicular cancer (he’s now cancer-free)—while expressing gratitude for each other’s support. Their close bond is most sharply illuminated by the lyric "three roads, one life."  

"That was a cathartic song to write, a hard one to write but a really nice release," says Este. "I think we had so much to say and it flew out. I remember the day we wrote it, it felt like I lost 20 pounds and felt light as a feather and needed to happen," says Alana. "Another overlying theme of the record is dealing with things we’d kind of been running away from. For years, we’d been a touring band that [thought] leaving your troubles in L.A. is the easiest thing to do. 'See ya when I come back, probably not but OK bye.'"

Meanwhile, the sisters have been isolating separately from each other, and lockdown has been tough. "It sucks,” says Este who’s suffered the most in isolation. "I feel I’m a strong, independent woman but I think that I’ve realized in this quarantine that I also crave human connection. It’s also why I love touring so much, and the idea of not being able to do that is heartbreaking. It feels like I’m going through a breakup and, truly, the relationships with audience members that you foster on the road—to me, that’s connection. To go from feast to famine is really, really difficult for me. I very much love the routine of touring and being able to share it with my family is so special. And now being home is kind of sad.

After spending the first month of lockdown without seeing each other, the longest time Haim have ever spent apart, the sisters made a pact only to visit with each other and no one else. Though they’ve used their lockdown time productively, doing press for their record, appearing on talk shows and hosting weekly Zoom dance classes for their fans, it’s been heartbreaking to sit on a record that was specifically made to be played live. "The thing we wanted to make sure with this album is, and it’s bittersweet now, but we were really thinking about how we were going to play this album live. That was at the forefront of our minds. Playing live is such a big part of us and something we take seriously," says Danielle. "We were just stoked to play this shit live. That’s the thing. We love the studio but we love the tactile act of playing music, so the idea of not being able to do that is pretty tough,” says Este.

Notably, even while Haim air their grievances and disappointments, they remain warm, upbeat, enthusiastic, playful and positive. They are grateful for their success while simultaneously seeming slightly incredulous as if they are still pinching themselves to make sure they aren't dreaming. "The fact that we started out playing at the Echo, first of three [bands on the bill], and have made it to this point, just on our own, is the biggest gift," says Alana, who is still stunned that Haim sold out L.A.'s Greek Theatre in just a few hours. Her eyes widen in disbelief as she says, "Man, the f**king Greek? What? What?"

While they are L.A. to the (hard)core, the sisters haven't gone Hollywood. Down to earth and accessible, they are highly interactive with their legions of fans online where they post regularly. Recently, when a fan posted concern on Haim’s Instagram page that WIMPIII’s release date would be changed yet again, the band immediately responded with assurance. "It’s just how we’ve always been and how we’ll always be," says Alana. "We truly crave human connection and thrive on it. We’re just three sisters from the Valley, you know," says Este. "You can take the girl out of the Valley but you can’t take…," Alana trails off with a wry smile.

While they typically veer towards quirky and lighthearted online, the sisters have switched gears in some of their recent Instagram posts voicing support for justice for Breonna Taylor who was shot eight times in her apartment by police in Kentucky, posting photos from Black Lives Matter protests they attended in Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and calling upon L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti to fire LAPD Police Chief Michel Moore after unsettling remarks in which he said protesters and looters also had the killing of George Floyd on their hands (the remarks were later rolled back by Garcetti and retracted by Moore, who issued an apology).

"When the protests began, we knew there was a risk with COVID, but we had to go out, support and protest," says Alana. "It didn’t feel right to just stay at home. We needed to be out there with everyone. Walking down Hollywood Boulevard with everyone chanting the same thing, moving together, it was a really special feeling. There were so many people that came out to help one another, too, to make sure everyone was safe and protected. People were handing out masks, hand sanitizer, water, etc. it’s been really beautiful to see everyone come together and stand for change."

"Having this platform is not something we take lightly, especially during times like these," says Este. "We've been protesting, donating, calling and sending emails to help raise money and awareness to help organizations like the People’s City Council Freedom Fund and Black Trans Femmes in the Arts Collective. We’ve been encouraging our fans to do the same."

In the meantime, while it's anyone's guess as to when bands will be able to perform live, the sisters are happy WIMPIII is finally being released while remaining cautious about scheduling future tour dates. "We can’t wait to start playing shows but want to be sure that we’re keeping our fans, our crew and everyone’s health and safety a priority. When it’s finally safe for everyone, we’ll definitely be playing live," says Este.

"I do feel when things are opening, then maybe we can finish the deli tour," says Alana. "Or if delis are open and that’s the only form of how to play music, I can solely do a deli tour. If that’s the only way to play live, I’ll solely play delis."

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