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Half Waif

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Half Waif Has Come Home

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Ahead of the release of 'The Caretaker,' electropop visionary Nandi Rose spoke with the Recording Academy about writing through a character, exploring quiet moments and learning to love the fear
Laura Studarus
GRAMMYs
Mar 16, 2020 - 12:13 pm

As Nandi Rose recalls, leaving New York City for the twisted wilderness of Chatham in upstate New York was an easy decision. The relocation allowed Rose, who performs as Half Waif, to concentrate strictly on making music, and the extra time at her craft resulted in the lavish sounds and detailed production of her 2018 album, Lavender.

But having an album fans want to hear comes a price: namely, touring for long stretches of time. While Rose speaks fondly of her stint on the road (both with a backing band and as a solo artist) and has a slate of upcoming tour dates, the transitory nature of her career kept the self-described homebody away from the refuge she had created.  

Which is why she stopped. The forced stillness of a year spent at home was the basis of Rose's new quasi-concept album, a through-line she admits came as a surprise. Inspired in equal parts by the tangle of nature outside her front door, and wrestling with herself while alone, The Caretaker is a study in the beauty of small moments. Set against Half Waif’s trademark woozy synths, and spacious production, Rose's intimate revelations about operating through loneliness and introspection take on grand scale meaning. And as she explains, that’s exactly the point.

Ahead of the release of The Caretaker, dropping on March 27 via ANTI-, Rose spoke with the Recording Academy about writing through a character, exploring quiet moments and learning to love the fear.

How has having your own space changed your process?

It's so wonderful. I feel like I can treat songwriting less as like the divine inspiration strikes, and more like a daily muscle that I get to work. And just coming here, when I was working on The Caretaker, I would just come in every day and just try to write something and see what would come out when I like gave myself that space and time to write. So, I love this room. I've got all these photos of friends and family and little trinkets that people have given me. So, the energy in this room is so much love and support.

When did The Caretaker start forming?

The Caretaker's obviously me, but in calling it that and generating this character is sort of like seeing the stories like almost through someone else's eyes. It helps me to know that's who I was then and it's not who I am now. It's like sort of the character standing in for the former self of who I was when I was writing it. The cool thing about this record, and every album that I work on, is that I love doing things differently and taking different approaches, whether that's sonically, or just like mentally. After recording Lavender with a band, I found myself back to being a solo artist again after my band dissolved and I found myself alone again.

That must have been scary!

Completely scary, like major anxiety, and sadness! There were a number of reasons why it happened, and I don't think there's any blame. A big part of it was the people that I was touring with needed to go do their own thing. There was nothing but love and respect for that decision. But it was really scary to find myself in that position. And it happened right before I was going to Europe.

I didn’t have time to get a band together. I could cancel my tour or I go solo and get a solo set together. Canceling it would have been the easier route. But I really have been in this place in my life where if something scares me, then I know I have to do it. There's probably something on the other side of it that I am meant to learn, and to take a hold of and I'm not going to get there if I stay in my lane. So, I had the opportunity to start touring solo and it was incredibly empowering for me to do that. And it was that summer between my bandmates leaving and me going to Europe that I started writing The Caretaker.

So tell me about this character, the Caretaker.

The Caretaker is someone who's hired to come and live on an estate and, sleep in the little carriage house and take care of the land. But the idea is that this caretaker, who's been hired to tend to the grounds, has been left to her own devices and she is not doing a very good job of taking care of things. She's just preoccupied with memory and thoughts of her life. And so, the land is getting choked with weeds and, her friendships are failing and she's really alone in this place of isolation.

She's looking at the relationships in her life and trying to understand why certain things haven't worked and realizing that it's because the land, which is filled with weeds, to her internal landscape is completely choked with untended plants. So, its exploration of how to move through that dense jungle of feeling and emotion and clear the land so that there can be some clarity in her relationships with others and with herself.

I feel like everyone has gone through this portion of their life.

Totally. I think Lavender in a lot of ways also was dealing with how to care for the self. But it was sort of through the lens of these much bigger topics like grief and the apocalypse. The summer when I started writing The Caretaker, I got engaged. So, at first I thought, "I'm gonna write an album about love and marriage and this year of my life before I get married and it's going to be a hopeful album, it's going to be bright and optimistic." And then of course I start writing my songs, they're all very heavy and dark.

Don't you love how the muse just like takes you on a hard-left turn?

I've realized that when I feel happy and good in my life, I don't put it into music cause I'm out celebrating, either with people or, or just being out in the world. It's not the receptacle for my happiness. It's the receptacle for my sadness and frustration and, and that's just how it's always been. It’s like when I'm feeling those thorny feelings, I want to be alone and kind of untangle it in solitude. But when I'm happy I, want to be out in the world. That’s why this room has also come to be so important to me because this is like the place where the physical place where that can happen.

There's a line in "Ordinary Talk": "Don't worry about me. I don't worry about you." That lyric seems to speak to everything that you're talking about.

Totally. After realizing that it wasn't going to be a love and marriage record and I had already tackled big topics in Lavender, I sort of went into it giving myself permission to look at the smaller moments in our relationships with each other that actually come to stand for so much more. Our lives are created from these tableaux of our everyday moments. And so, I thought there was something deeper to explore there.

Are you good at recognizing those quiet moments when they're happening?

I'm not someone that needs like a lot of time after something to process it. I feel like I feel things really richly and intensely as they're happening. Do you read Patti Smith? She's like my ultimate muse in this regard where everything, every moment of her life is poetry. And I think reading her work has really helped me also be more mindful in those moments and see the poetry and artfulness of the quietest moments when you're sitting at a table having brown bread and olive oil. Like she does in M Train.

Are you able draw lines in your life and be like, "This is my daily life. I'm just going to enjoy my cup of coffee, go for a walk." Or is it all inspiration for you?

I'm on 100% all the time. It can be a blessing and a curse. It can be a mixed bag. I find it hard to turn off and rest. And I think that's one of the themes I'm exploring and searching for in The Caretaker is this idea of rest. So, the album ends with the line, "ready to rest" because giving yourself that space to turn off is really important. But on the other hand, I find it to be such a fun way of engaging with the world because everything I read or look at or see is filtered through this lens of inspiration. So, it's actually quite a joyful way of being in the world.

You've moved from New York City to a small town, you're a touring artist, you just wrote an album about a caretaker on an estate. How has your concept of like home evolved?

It's just become so much richer because now I have a physical home in a way that I didn't for a long time. Also, while writing The Caretaker, about a year ago, I told myself I'm going to take a year off the road because I had been touring a lot. And so, over the last year, I've really spent so much time at home, and come to find how much that sense of routine feeds me. And it's something I'm interested in as this career continues.

Any good nature stories?

[My husband] Zach and I went on our honeymoon to Costa Rica last August and we stayed at this amazing biodynamic farm in the rain forest and there was like a midnight rain forest walk. But what we really loved was the 6 AM bird calls. We got into birdwatching around here. It was really fun because for Christmas we ended up both getting each other like binoculars. So, he opened my gift to him and I was like, "He's gonna love it!" He just burst out laughing.

How good are you at dealing with uncertainty?   

I can't tell the future, but I will always write songs. I have this very vivid memory in high school. I would go into the auditorium during like lunch period, or whenever I had a free period. And, I would just play the piano to myself in the auditorium. But I just loved it. I was like, wow, there's a grand piano, not a friend. I can just go play it. Then there was this one week where students found out that I was doing it and they started coming, so the first day there were a couple of other kids there and then like by the end of the week, there was an audience. I remember feeling so cool and amazed and proud and kind of popular for the first time. And then, because it's high school, there was the next flavor of the week. And I went back to being alone in the auditorium. I look back at that, and I am so proud of myself because I kept going. I kept going and playing for myself even though no one was there because that's how it had started was always for me. And that's a really nice reminder in my moments where I’m not sure what this career is or where it’s going.

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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.

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Wye Oak

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Wye Oak On Learning To Press Pause, Branching Out & Supporting Black Lives Matter

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Ahead of the release of their EP 'No Horizon,' the Durham-based duo tell GRAMMY.com about their love of metaphors, the joys of working with extremely focused youth musicians and how they’re trying to find positivity in the downtime
Laura Studarus
GRAMMYs
Jul 21, 2020 - 9:04 am

For many musicians, 2020 has felt like an indeterminable pause. Calling from their respective homes in North Carolina, Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack acknowledge that the unplanted time off the road has been emotionally trying. But for the members of Wye Oak, this era has also been an extended opportunity to regroup after nearly a decade of hustle, which in addition to their joint project has included solo work as Flock of Dimes and Joyero.

But despite the recent addition vitamin routines and socially distanced porch hang-outs, Wasner and Stack say they recognized the power of taking a beat to reflect early in their career. Across six albums, the duo has dipped into dream pop, rock, folk and noise, dotting their indelible compositions with waves of guitars and electronics in such equal parts, it almost feels like a dare to those looking to neatly categorize their efforts. Each tonal shift, says Stack, was the result of taking a needed moment to reflect.

“We spent a lot of time sort of like searching and questioning that and I think, in some cases, maybe disappointing some people with the directions we went, and with the choices we made,” he says pragmatically of the band’s gradual yet precise evolution.

The band’s newest offering No Horizon (out July 31 via Merge), was the result of one of those "what-if" moments. A collaboration between Wye Oak and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (a collective whose dazzling resume also features work with The National, David Byrne and Arcade Fire), the EP is a wash of unspooling synths, understated guitar, fleshed out by the choir’s haunting voices. With its themes of isolation and loneliness, it’s also an eerily appropriate release, in ways that both Wasner and Stack say they couldn't have anticipated during recording.

Ahead of the release of No Horizon, Wye Oak spoke with GRAMMY.com about their love of metaphors, the joys of working with extremely focused youth musicians, and how they’re trying to find positivity in the downtime. 

How are you handling being at home?

Jenn Wasner: This time in my life is something that is in many ways, deeply unpleasant to go through. I also strangely feel like it's something that will have been really good to have been through, if that makes sense. There's a lot about myself, that I feel like has sort of been buried underneath this frantic constantly in motion, sort of workaholic way of living my life that I've been basically at without really any sort of break or any slowdown for the past 12 years. So, the amount of personal growth, that feels like it's happening is kind of unprecedented in my experience, but at the same time growth can be very painful and very uncomfortable. And so, I'm like weirdly grateful for the opportunity to do some of this inner work that I feel like has sort of been lost or neglected, or, left behind in the shuffle of everything. But it's not fun.

Andy Stack: Everyone's also having a tough run. Especially musicians who are generally pretty scrappy and floating from one thing to the next. Everyone's had to change the way that they get energy from the world and expand and move into some new areas, and I'm certainly doing that. I think everyone's trying to find their next thing.

As a band with a platform, how have you specifically worked on being an ally to Black community?

Wasner: I'm glad you asked that question because I feel like we all have a responsibility. All white people, right now at this moment in history, have a responsibility to turn into what's happening in the world more than we ever have before. And I'm someone that I feel like has at least attempted to be very conscientious of how I spend my time and, and the efforts that I make privately. But in general, my relationship to social media on all counts is somewhat uncomfortable. I've never really felt super fluent in that space. It gives me a lot of anxiety and a lot of grief, but at the same time I do feel like I have responsibility and a call to do a better job with it than I ever have done. However, I also feel like I don't want to pour so much of my limited finite time and effort and energy into that platform that it drains me up the ability to do other things. Although it might sometimes feel like it, social media is not the be all and end all of the world itself. It’s not where all change is going to take place. I found what was happening was that I was just getting sucked into it and feeling more and more overwhelmed and depleted that I didn't have anything to do with these directives. And so, it's this weird tightrope walk right where you're like, yeah I want to say something and it's important not to say nothing, but you also have to be mindful of what you can actually physically give as one human being and take care of yourself guard your energy so that you can put it to use in the most constructive way possible. Because if you burn yourself out, then you're not going to be useful, and you're not going to be able to continue to have these discussions and continue to show up and continue to do the work. Dismantling white supremacy is a white person's problem. We created this problem, and it's our job to solve it.

Give that you both have multiple projects outside of Wye Oak, when do you know it’s time to come together for another album? 

Wasner: I think the answer to that has probably changed because our lives have changed so much in the past six months like everyone. I don't do super well personally with mental health without having some kind of a project to focus on. And so maybe there'll be more records sooner than there would have been otherwise. Music is one of the things that fills my life with meaning and purpose. So, if touring is out of the question, then, you know, time for record making.

Stack: We haven't, I should say we haven't in the last few months, really been making much music together. We've been sitting on the porch and catching up, and taking walks and stuff, like that but we're not we're not like germ bubbled up together, so that I think if we were, that would definitely change the equation for us. But we have also have made a lot of records where we've been on opposite sides of the country and we're pretty comfortable with that process of each of us working in our own little sphere and then bringing it together when the time comes. Right now, we're both in the middle of a couple other things. And so, that's where we're putting our energy, but at the same time we, we talked about like being excited to get back to it.

Wasner: Yeah, I think the important thing to keep in mind is that I feel really fortunate to be in a situation where like, we don't feel cornered into making a record before we have something that we're excited to share and like something we have today.

Has that been the case in the past?

Wasner: I feel like when music becomes your job, then your livelihood, there's this pressure to have something always have something new to promote so that you can continue. Making a living as a band is borderline impossible position. And so, in general, the more, for lack of a better term, you can create, the better equipped you are to continue to survive. So, it's just nice to not feel that pressure. In many ways like this EP is a perfect example of that because I feel like that's something that maybe would have never existed if we hadn't sort of taken a breath and give our given ourselves a chance to just sort of branch out and experiment and try and make something different than anything we've ever made before.

Stack: I think we're going on like 15 years of having since having started working on this project and I think a lot of the last like 10 years or so has been feeling pressure to be making a thing. To use the lamest terminology possible, but like the question of like what the band is and what the band sounds like and what we represent. And we didn't quite know and we spent a lot of time searching and questioning that and I think, in some cases, maybe disappointing some people with the directions we went, and with the choices we made. And I think a large part of the process for us has been getting more and more comfortable with that. Just kind of saying "f**k it" to that, and not feeling beholden to stylistic choices or expectations.

How did you begin the process of writing for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus?

Wasner: That was really exciting. Something that we've never done before. Very far out of both of our comfort zones. But I was also really intimidated by it. A because yeah like I don't, I wish I'd never really written or arranged choral music. It was something that I had to kind of figure out a long way. But also, because it was actually surprisingly very challenging to write music that was separate from my own personal perspective because so much music I've written has been emotionally linked to my experience or semi-autobiographical. It was like one of those things where I was like, well, this sounds really hard, but maybe that's a sign that we should try it. It was really hard. It was extremely hard I had a near meltdown in the process.

Stack: Yeah, but you gotta like schedule that in whenever you're making music. There's always some kind of meltdown and definitely some self-doubt involved.

I’m a big believer that sometimes you just got to cry until things makes sense.

Wasner: Yeah, meltdowns have been a really big part of my life. Melting down can be very healing and really helpful. Sometimes if you just let yourself completely fall apart, you can move through things faster than if you were trying to hold yourself together.

What was it like working with the kids?

Wasner: They're so advanced. I don't have kids. I'm a f**king weird loner freak, and I you know I don't have the great fortune of spending a lot of time, particularly with kids of that age. They were very impressive really wonderful.  If anything, I felt lucky to be there.

Oh, that's awesome. How involved were you in the recording session?

Wasner: We recorded our parts separately. Here in North Carolina. And then, Andy I think for you were on the Lambchop tour, somewhere were somewhere in Europe.

Stack: I think I was doing Lambchop stuff. So I couldn't be at the session. Jenn, you were doing Bon Iver stuff. She was able to speak up to New York.

Wasner: For a day. I flew up that morning at like 5 a.m. We did all the tracking in a day and I flew it back to North Carolina that evening.

Stack: They’re really pro. In this regard, so they probably would have been okay. But it's just like, Jenn and I really felt like we wanted to have one of us who wrote the music and who was really familiar with the arrangements there to put fires out.

"No Place" with lyrics like "We live in a place/That is no place/Afraid of getting sick" feel incredibly appropriate for this era.

Wasner: These songs are all about like isolation and alienation. You know, these are things that I was thinking about long before the age of the quarantine. It's weird, and we weren't expecting it to be. We certainly weren't expecting it to be as timely as it is, and I'm horrified that it is. When I said about trying to conceptualize this whole thing, it was sort of the initial idea, which actually didn't end up making the record because it's an older song that sort of branching off of a song from our last record called "My Signal," which had sort of a strange little string arrangement. And it was about this sort of contemporary phenomenon of having people that you love and feel close to spread out over such great distances, which is something that only the ability to travel and move through the world, the way we do now, has even made possible. And so, I had this initial idea of trying to sort of write a suite of music based off of that concept. But, sitting down and trying to think about, okay, I'm writing this music, and I want it to feel universal and I want it to feel like it's coming for me, but I also want it to be less autobiographical than a lot of the things that I've made in the past and trying to think of some things that might actually apply to the voices of the young adults singing it. Again, just sort of thinking about how strange it must be to be coming of age in the present moment with so much alienation and isolation and so much of these sort of fundamental developmental experiences happening in non-real spaces. So, that was kind of the kind of thinking that started me down the path themes, but I had no idea how I had no idea what was coming for us.

it's interesting because in my notes, I wrote the phrase "musical pre-cognition." But the way you're describing it sounds like you're picking on a thread that already existed.

Stack: It's not a new epidemic. The epidemic has just like cemented some games that already were there.

Wasner: Side note, I will say from experience, musical precognition is real. And weird. It's really f**ked up. And it's happening a lot with one of the songs I've been writing or working on of late, where I go back, and I'm like, I couldn't have known but also, holy shit!

Stack: That happens to me too and I think it's largely that when you're writing from a sort of stream of consciousness place, you don't always feel like you need to assign meaning, but the meaning is coming from somewhere and that happens to me very often where I realised what a song was about, after having written that after the fact. It's just how the brain works that's a word. It's such a wild thing in them you obscure these things from ourselves.

What does the concept of "no horizon" mean to you?

Wasner: That's a fragment of a line from the song "Spitting Image." And that song is specifically about brain overload. It's about trying to take in an infinite amount of information into a finite frame, and how that can be paralysing. And the idea of no horizon is actually kind of playing off of what I've been told can contribute to motion sickness which is sort of like the brain or the eye not being able to see things upon perspective. And then it doesn't understand where it is in space at a given moment. And so, like I've been told you know if you're in a car and you're carsick, can you see the horizon? Can you give your brain some context for where it is in space? Because if you can't, then you might expect, where it's this sort of feeling of queasiness can be derived. So, I don't know if that's true, if that's science! But it's cool metaphor, so I don't really care. But that was sort of the general premise of that song was the loss of perspective. And you know that that perspective can manifest in a number of ways, but just sort of the inability to, with that sense of detachment, to be able to sort of figure out where, where your existence should be.

How are you handling not being able to see the horizon in 2020?

Wasner: Isn't that the lesson right now? You know that's something that I feel like people have been kind of whispering in my ear for the past decade.

Stack: I'm just eating lot of Oreos, personally.

Wasner: In some ways, it feels like I'm being put in this very intentional time-out kind of space. Because, as someone who's very anxious, I've learned to gravitate towards trying to control my surroundings, and some of that control manifests in an over-dependence on planning and trying to create conceptual future so that I know exactly how things are going to play out so that I can eliminate chance, and eliminate the possibility of being hurt. And it's never been more obvious as that isn’t possible. That doesn't work, it can't work. And my reliance on it was a real crutch. It was working for a while until I got away with it. But as soon as I hit a point where I could no longer see or control what my future was going to be, I absolutely f**king crumbled, and I realised how little work that I've done around being able to sit with uncertainty. And how, in many ways, the real work of like learning to manage and mitigate my feelings of anxiety or fear of the future, it's not going to come from controlling the uncontrollable. It's going to be coming from learning how to sit with a certainty and the discomfort that it creates.

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