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GRAMMYs

Hayley Williams

Photo by Lindsey Byrnes

News
Hayley Williams On Going Solo & Trusting Her Body hayley-williams-going-solo-alanis-morissette-trusting-her-intuition

Hayley Williams On Going Solo, Alanis Morissette & Trusting Her Intuition

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To coincide with the release of her solo debut, 'Petals For Armor,' the Paramore performer spoke with the Recording Academy about learning to trust her body’s intuition, trying to make friends in adulthood and establishing boundaries on social media
Nina Corcoran
GRAMMYs
May 8, 2020 - 9:00 am

These days, nothing is going as expected, especially for Hayley Williams. The GRAMMY-winning Paramore frontperson is stuck at home in Nashville tending to a house full of plants, her bright-eyed dog Alf and the near-weekly release of singles from her debut solo album, Petals For Armor. With quarantine lockdown intensifying her already isolated headspace, Williams has ample time to stress about the release of a record she never planned to make in the first place. 

When talking about it over a weekday phone call, she sighs and laughs simultaneously. "Weird times," she says. "Today I’m PMS-ing, but I’m fine. It’s fine. It’s totally fine!" Usually a string of reassurances like that would strike as self-deprecating or tongue-in-cheek. For her, right now, it actually reads as honesty.

For starters, Williams has nothing to hide anymore. After concluding a string of tours in support of Paramore's synthpop full-length After Laughter and divorcing her longtime partner, she returned home only to discover it was time to address her struggles with depression and anxiety more formally. At the suggestion of her therapist, she began penning songs as a form of musical journaling. The results were passionate and transparent, the type of tracks where raw energy pulses through them, and Williams realized she had unintentionally created a set of songs worth sharing. Her bandmates suggested she turn it into a proper solo album. As an artist who was signed to a major label at age 14 where she established she would only record music with her friends as a proper band, not as a teenage pop star, the idea felt inconceivable—every song she had written for the past 15 years had been released through Paramore, save for one-off collaborations—until she decided to wing it and see what happened. When you’re Hayley Williams, an unintentional origin story can result in a pop album as creatively diverse and empathetically rewarding as this one.

To coincide with the release of Petals For Armor today, Williams spoke with the Recording Academy about learning to trust her body’s intuition, trying to make friends in adulthood and establishing boundaries on social media.

Petals For Armor opens with a pretty spot-on assessment that "Rage is a quiet thing," which reappears later in the album as well. In cultural conversations, rage is always addressed as a physical, visible, loud thing and never as something discrete or hidden. Looking back, do you remember the first time you felt truly overwhelmed with anger?

Oh, wow. Goodness. How deep do we want to get? I think I felt it in a few different iterations from a really young age. As you get older, you learn how to articulate some of those feelings in new ways. For me in my early years, I isolated a lot, I was very confused about my parents' divocre, and I was also confused about my mom’s second marriage and the abuse that happened there. I wasn’t a witness to it as much as I felt it. It was an uncomfortable time in life. For me, the way anger manifested was like heat in my body, almost like a blackout where I wouldn't remember the last few moments. You sort of dissociate in a way that doesn’t feel all that weird until you get older and, in hindsight, realize your body was trying to tell you something.

Absolutely. For whatever reason, I seemed to grow up without ever getting really angry. I would get upset or frustrated, of course, and certainly would debate with friends or family. But I never felt genuinely angry until I was in my mid-20s and experienced that full-force realization of, "Oh wow, women experience so many horrible things that men thankfully don't have to go through, and we’re just supposed to deal with it, to keep up with everyone else despite having unique setbacks." It’s weird to realize how long you’ve been carrying a silent rage before it finally boils over.

Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. In a way, I wish there would’ve been a way for me to understand what it was that was happening in my body and in my brain. But at the same time, you have to wonder, you know, our bodies are so intelligent and maybe they were protecting you and I from something we just weren’t ready to feel, in whatever ways that looked like for each of us. Now that I’m older, and now that you’re older, you recognize it. Hopefully that has taught us something that helps us move forward and grow. Some days I feel like I haven’t learned sh*t though.

While listening to this album, I’ve been thinking a lot about artists who sing about their anger or depression, especially in the '90s with Fiona Apple and Alanis Morissette, and how it defined their career almost to the point of redirecting their own narrative. For a lot of women I know, seeing that resulted in this impulse to be like, "No, I'm not like them. I’m a tomboy. I don’t let my emotions consume me." What those musicians were getting at, though, is ultimately how their personal experiences funnel into a larger desire for reparative justice and long-overdue equality. 

Thankfully people have a lot more space and empathy and understanding now for these types of things. People like Fiona Apple or Alanis Morissette—and the thing about Alanis is she had such a massive moment in the ‘90s that was defining for women in rock music and alternative music—were suddenly accepted and then immediately were pushed away. That momentary acceptance that we all had culturally for someone like Alanis Morissette definitely faded into this fear of hysterical women. Our anger can so easily be misconstrued as hysterical. It’s as simple or as insidious as someone being like, "Well, are you about to be on your period?" And you know, that doesn’t have to be offensive because, yeah, sometimes I am about to be on my period and I want to rip your face off. But other times, we've let that become the reason that women shouldn't be taken seriously when it comes to our emotions. Your point is so, so valid. They were talking about so much beyond anger. Anger is just the cap, it’s just the surface of so many meltier, slimier feelings that are harder to explain—and that’s why anger is our go-to. It’s covering insecurities and other feelings that can be tough to explain. 

How would you define your rage here? And do you feel like you're being heard now that you've shared some of it through this album?

Oof. I think there are still mornings I wake up where I’m a little nervous about certain things that I mention on the album. Today, the single "Dead Horse" is coming out and I woke up excited because it’s something new I get to release into the world like a child, you know? But I’m very nervous because you’re not in control of other people's perceptions, ever. It doesn’t matter what you do; you just can’t. You can only speak honestly about your experiences and choose whether or not you’re going to magnify that and let the world in. For me, it’s so second nature because I’ve been putting albums out for so long now—you know, this is what I do, this is how I get the full-circle experience of healing and expression—but it has been intense and wonderful to feel that I am basically serving justice for my own self in my own way. It’s very individualized and very, very personal. The things I’m talking about on the first EP have a lot to do with the generational trauma and abuse that was in my family for multiple generations. I wasn’t aware of it so much as I could hear it, like a low hum in the background, until I was able to name it and ask my mom direct questions about these things she’s experienced that basically every woman on her side of the family has experienced. 

I feel a sense of relief and I’m proud of that, but it comes with knowing that not everyone will understand this when listening to the album. Like yesterday, I posted a very passive-aggressive thing that allowed me to find humor in the fact that there are a lot of men on the internet who try to mansplain how to put out an album when they’ve probably never even made an album in their life. You get polarized responses. You get people who are cheering you on and then you get, "Oh man, she’s a man-hater now." And honestly? Yeah! Maybe both! Maybe I’m all of it and every shade in between. That’s the problem with any type of public domain. You're allowing other people to define you and you're also kind-of having to consent to it. I can’t direct it, but I’m certainly still in it and I want to be expressing myself in these ways. 

Speaking of "Dead Horse," you’re digging deep into your past experiences on this album in a very transparent way. I've always thought one of the most common tragedies of life is when people feel locked into an unfit relationship, whether that relationship is emotionally abusive, mentally draining, or just profoundly boring. It sounds like your marriage was disillusioning at best, but you tried to make it fruitful despite that. What were some of the signs that you knew your relationship was no longer the right fit? One time my friend said the moment they realized they weren't in love anymore was when they no longer enjoyed their partner's scent. 

Yeah, that’s so real. That's very animal isn’t it? That's such a real thing though. That’s a great place to start any response that I might have to say about this. Our bodies do not lie. I don’t know if it’s cultural, but over time, who we are in the present day is very disconnected from our bodies. We're so cut off from our animal instinct. I do think there’s something to the fact that people who have been close to one another and there’s something pleasing about the other person’s scent is so… I mean, I think the only reason it even feels awkward or silly to talk about is because we’re so disconnected from our bodies. That is, for me, what I noticed for years. Things weren’t right. There wasn’t a congruence with my mind, my heart, my spirit, and my body. That’s not to say that I’m some evolved, perfectly balanced human right now, because I’m not, but I can check in now and slow down and ask, "What does this mean to me? How do I really feel about this and not deny obvious truths?" My stomach just hurt all of the time. It hurt all of the time. I don’t know how else to put it. I didn’t feel comfortable yet I also felt like I was owed some sense of normalcy and also I owed it to my family or the world. I tried to create that by settling for something that ultimately did not feel right. 

It’s heartbreaking to think that we do this, though. I’m from the South and there’s this whole idea of what the church says is right and wrong, and how we view marriage through a religious lense. I don’t subscribe to that. I don’t really think you can adhere to all of those rules and be a healthy person and a good person. Look, I believe love is hard. Love is a choice that we continue to make. I’ve been married to Paramore since I was 13 and it’s been a f**king hell of a rollercoaster, but I'm in it and I reap the emotional benefits of the commitment that I've made. I know it’s possible to stick it out in relationships. My grandparents have been together for 55 years. I see it in the world and I know that it’s real, but I didn’t have it and I tried to force it to be that.

In a New York Times interview, you said you were "scared of losing access to [your] sadness" at one point. What is it about that vacancy that feels alarming? 

I’m not making a blanket statement about everybody, but for me, for my personality, for my identity, I actually enjoy romantic, tragic beauty. I find a lot of comfort in stories like that, in twisted narratives, and it adds meaning and depth for me in a world that, if everything were perfect and sunny, would be so boring and disenchanting to me. Everything would be too shiny. I really wanted to treat my depression and take it seriously. I was fine going to therapy, but when it came time to consider medication, that was my one and only hesitation. I get through this life by writing and expressing. So much of that comes from the dissonance that I feel. What happens if this medication numbs it all? I’ve heard friends talk about that with ADD medications or depression medications. For creatives, that’s a really valid concern. There’s the argument that you don’t have to be sad to make art. I guess I believe that, but I do feel like I have to be able to access all of my emotions to live. So far, what I'm taking makes me feel like I do still get depressed, but the difference is that it no longer feels like my identity is the depression. I don’t feel stuck to the bed like I don’t want to get up anymore. It’s some weird in-between. I'm still trying to figure it out, but I’m thankful that I went for it and decided to start acting on it.  

Oftentimes you hear people say the hardest part of dealing with any problem is realizing that it's a problem in the first place, but I think the hardest part is realizing that you need help dismantling it, that it’s unrealistic to do it on your own. Based on previous lyrics, you've always been open about grappling with depression. So what changed? What helped you realize that checking in to a therapy retreat for your depression was worth trying?

Oh boy. Ooof. 

We can skip this if you want! 

No, it’s okay! These are actually the conversations I like to have, it’s just that normally I’m having them in my bed on the phone with a friend or my mom. I think I’m good to answer this. So, when we came home from After Laughter, life was a lot better than it had been before After Laughter—or at least seemingly so. I had been busy for years: touring, hanging out with my friends every night onstage, hanging out with them backstage, doing cool sh*t like going to a Broadway show and seeing Japan. Life was very sensational. Then you come home. 

I missed home so bad, but I got here and it was quiet and still and there wasn’t a schedule, no dates in the distant future. It was pretty sobering. Suddenly I had no company but my own, unless I wanted to be a freak and go out every night as if I'm in my early 20s. I just realized that I needed to handle some sh*t. I needed to figure out my dog and if I was going to be able to take care of him full-time now that I’m not touring 75 percent of the time. I needed to hunker down more in my house and try to make whatever necessary adjustments to it to make it liveable on the regular. But I also wanted to be in a relationship. I wanted to be able to date, to be able to experience partnership, and to do that in a healthy way—but I was so far from healthy that I kept sabotaging any good opportunity for any relationship, really. That's one of the first lyrics I wrote for the record, actually. In "Why We Ever," I talk about me trying to sabotage this great relationship. It’s me being like, "Okay, I’m ready to move forward into my adult, human woman life. I’m not going to make the same mistakes I made before, blah, blah, blah," but then I became hypervigilant and had to go back to the beginning to figure out why. That was what did it. I realized my depression spills out onto anyone I care about. It’s not just about me in the back of a bunk crying after a show. It’s real life, and if I want to take part in it and be someone’s partner, then I have to take responsibility for myself.

Gosh, that was a long answer. Sorry. I think it’s because I’ve not really talked about this and it’s kinda hard.

Oh, it’s such a long process to understand yourself, nevermind to explain it all to someone else. Are there any exercises or phrases from therapy that have since stuck with you? 

I did a type of therapy called EMDR, which I still am not sure if it’s something a lot of people are aware of or if it’s obscure. But I’m now a year and a half into it, off and on. It’s not something you should do all of the time because it’s heavy. It helped me to go back into memories that, as an adult, I probably perceive a lot differently than I experienced them as a child. It’s about being able to comfort yourself and protect yourself. That’s where the line in "Simmer" comes from: "Nothing cuts like a mother." My mom, by the way, is a fantastic, strong, insanely independent woman. She’s been through so much sh*t and she’s come out of it so strong. But at a certain point, we all have to learn to mother ourselves. That was one of the biggest lessons for me: She can’t always give me every security that I need. She was dealing with her own sh*t, not that it was my fault or even her own. That’s just how life goes. We need to learn how to self-soothe. In a lot of ways, I’m still learning how to do that. The basic sense of what that feels like is at least a little more comfortable for me now. I’ve been able to work through some traumatic sh*t because of it. 

Petals For Armor is divided into three sections, and you can hear the musical and lyrical shifts as each third starts. It almost sounds like different mindsets of the healing process. Was that intentional? 

It wasn’t intentional, but I do think it’s because healing from any sort of trauma, addiction, or whatever is universal. It’s like how writing about love will resonate with so many different types of people’s experiences with love because it’s a universal thing we all experience. I didn't intend on it while writing, but I did know that I was going to seperate it. I could feel how songs from early on in the songwriting process felt darker and aesthetically belonged together. In a lot of ways, I know it’s dumb to answer any question like this in an interview, but it just happened. It felt like it was supposed to happen. Whether it was me writing with Joey [Howard], Paramore’s touring bassist who’s an incredible talent, or in the studio with Taylor [York], things just came up that felt right. I knew they were right when they happened. I just had to get out of the way to keep the space clear for that. 

After Laughter was such a colorful, buoyant musical shift for Paramore. Did that album act as a creative springboard and loosen your creative expectations for Petals For Armor? There’s such a wide range between the lovely Radiohead-like production of "Simmer" and a club-ready song like "Sugar On The Rim."

Yeah, the way Paramore has moved has been so half-hazard. Whatever we felt like, we followed it. We didn’t really let outside opinions dictate where we should go in our career. It would have felt very inauthentic to follow Riot with another scene-sounding emo album. We weren’t even that band by the time the last single came out. I remember us struggling about getting popular off a song like "Misery Business" while already looking and being different people by the time "That's What You Get" came out. That’s how we've moved through everything. By the time we got to After Laughter, we were so overdue for a shakeup and to feel out on a limb again. I was so proud of it and it felt so liberating to talk about these things. I don’t even think I was aware that I was writing about my depression until afterwards when speaking about the songs, because at the time of writing I didn’t know I was depressed. It created incredible conversations that challenged me to heal—some of that happened very publicly and some of that happened over champagne in a hotel room with Zac [Farro], Taylor, and I crying about sh*t that’s ancient history. That album was a massive gift to each of us as individuals and as a band.

Petals For Armor almost plays out like an exercise in self-love: from learning to admit your troubles, to breaking them down, to recognizing your strengths, to expressing gratitude. Out of all the songs, which one are you most proud of? 

Goodness. It’s hard to pick a baby. I think that today it would be different than tomorrow and tomorrow would be different than the next day. But if I’m answering for today, I would say a song called "Crystal Clear," which is the last song on the album. It was very accidental. I had been begging, begging Taylor for music that came from him first. That’s typically how we write Paramore songs, but that’s not how we wrote a lot of songs on Petals, even the songs written by the both of us didn’t start in that way. So I had been begging, like, "Hey, let’s do the ol’ razzle dazzle! We’ve been doing the whole ‘me’ thing and now I want to hear you!" I wanted to hear what he had been feeling like in hopes that it would take me somewhere new. He showed me the beginning of "Crystal Clear"—at that point, all he had was the beginning of it and it had a lot of Phil Collins drumming to it. We wound up finishing the whole song that day. Not every song is a gift that is that smooth and simple, but it felt so right. I loved what I learned from writing it. I loved the lyrics because I was able to tie in some references from After Laughter that have to do with love and bring people up to speed with how I’m viewing it today, which is that I feel afraid, but I’m diving into it again anyway. I’m proud of it and scared of it, but I love that song. There is a special guest on it, but it’s very personal and I don’t know if he’s someone who's ever had a song on the radio or anything, but I’ll be able to talk about it more when we get closer to its release. 

Reading through other interviews, it sounds like there was some very reasonable fear about going solo—not the act of making music outside of the band, but by releasing these songs publicly not as a band. What helped you realize it's okay to release solo material? 

It was two conversations. One was a conversation that had happened so long before we had even come off the road touring behind After Laughter. We were making the "Rose-Colored Boy" music video and our manager took us out to dinner. It was a really emotional conversation. Taylor’s family had just lost a loved one. We were in the middle of an album cycle that was deeply personal to us. There were a lot of good things happening, and I think when good things and growth are happening, there’s lots of growing pains. We were trying to make sense of how we could be in this wonderful moment in our career and this beautiful moment in our friendships but also could feel sad. The truth is we were tired as f**k, which is not a big deal if you really think about it—of course we were tired, we had been playing music since we were 13. But Taylor mentioned to us, "I really think it’s time, when we wrap up After Laughter, to take some real time off. Not to throw away what we’ve done and what we’re doing now, but to give ourselves space and to find ourselves outside of Paramore." What if we just want to relate to each other as people? What if we want to know what it’s like to go to another country but not be on tour, just go see it, just to go walk around? Not to walk around and then return to soundcheck depressed, or be in London for five hours for a photoshoot and then leave? What if we just want to find ourselves outside of the band as adults? What if I want to learn how to cook something? Little did we know we would be stuck at home. [Laughs.] But I really felt every word he was saying because we had a conversation two years prior about me wanting to quit the band, before we wrote After Laughter. He said, "Look, we can stop or we can keep going, but I’ll support you either way. If we decide to keep going, we can look out for one another in a better way than we have in the past." So I made good on that promise and really backed him up and Zac did as well. He was right. It was time for us to go home for a little while and trust that we would know when it was the right time to make another Paramore record. 

All that said, fast forwarding to whenever I started making this record, I knew that this did not belong to Paramore. I really wanted to make good on my word that we all deserved time away from it. When I realized I was writing more than I thought, there were two options: sit on this stuff to see if it would work for a Paramore record eventually, or I can ask for help now and see how I feel when I’m done. By the fourth or fifth song, it was obvious that this was an expression that was necessary. Taylor really encouraged me to release it as an official project. When I told Zac about it, he said the same thing. I just saw his text the other day while scrolling through pictures because I took a screenshot of it for myself. He was like, "Dude, you've got this. You gotta do this." Taylor was the one who told me I needed to tell our manager so I could have that support system ready to go too. He kept reminding me that it was real. I would deny it and he would say it was real because I had already written the songs. And he was right!

Such good friends! That’s how you know, such genuine support.

Right? They’re the best! It’s been a really good time for us. Not only did Taylor produce it and he grew so much just as a musician. He became such a force and I don’t think I fully realized all that he could do. And Zac is absolutely killing it. He moved to L.A., he started a record label, he’s producing his own albums. Everyone is really flourishing. It’s a sign. It’s that thing we were talking about earlier. You feel something in your body and you can either listen to it or ignore it. I think we’re seeing what happens when we really listen to our guts and respect one another. Now we’re all having this really special moment. It won’t last forever, but it will definitely have a lasting impact on who we are. 

Petals For Armor is peppered with all these nice friendship moments, too, thanks to cameos from Paramore members and friends like Boygenius. It feels like receiving a big, communal hug. Were those organic to weave in?

Yeah, totally! The only contributions that I think people would qualify as a feature are the Boygenius song and the guitar player of my favorite band, mewithoutYou, his name’s Mike Weiss, he played on "Creepin'." There was no reason to seek out a feature-heavy record. I feel like we’re inundated with them. That’s fine for people who feel like they thrive creatively in that setup, but I don’t think I do. I thrive with people in my intimate circle of friends. Every now and then, if it feels like it came about natural and feels right, I’ll have an opportunity to collaborate with a new friend or someone I look up to. I really like how this one came about. I ran into Julien [Baker] at another friend’s show in Nashville. She was hanging with Lucy [Dacus]. Phoebe [Bridgers] was meant to come in the next day because they were working on… something. Maybe they were each working on separate things. But that was so kismet. It turned out mewithoutYou were playing a show in Nashville which we planned on going to anyway, but when I realized what that could mean I realized I had to ask Mike if he could stop by the studio. I think it happened in one day where everyone was in town. We did all those tracks—Mike’s guitar and the girls’ vocals—in one day because they all hung out together in the studio. It feels natural because these parts are from friends or people I already know.

Since taking a break from touring, it seems like you've been investing lots of time in cultivating and nurturing friendships, old and new. I recently moved to a new city and work from home, and it’s surprised me how hard it is. There's not really a guide for how to make friends in adulthood, especially when you're not someone who holes up at bars. What's been the hardest part of that process for you?

First of all, I really feel you on the new town and having the kind of work situation where you’re not regularly meeting new people at. For me, moving to Nashville during my divorce, I didn’t really have any other way to be other than incredibly vulnerable. I didn’t have any energy to fake it or be animated. A lot of times when I’m out in public, I’m an introvert, but I really care about making people comfortable. I go out of my way to make others comfortable because I was the kid who was always uncomfortable growing up. That makes people think I’m extroverted, but really I just don’t want other people to suffer by feeling the anxieties that I feel. All of a sudden around my divorce, I lost the energy to act that way. If somebody asked me how I was doing, they better buckle in, because I was going to tell them how I was doing and I didn’t give a sh*t if we were in public. I don’t recommend this for everyone, but I met some of my closest friends in adulthood in that way. I was at a party at Zac’s house for someone’s birthday. His wife and I got to talking when I met her that night. We were in a corner of Zac’s house just, like, meeting each other for the first time and asking each other questions. It turned out we had both been through similar divorces, both had been in similar living situations after, and it was like, sh*t, I don’t have to go out of my way to make people comfortable. I just need to rest in this moment and trust that if I'm meant to find new people, then I’ll find them or they will find me. All I need to do is own my story and be present for it.

You’ve established a relatively healthy relationship with your fans on Twitter and Instagram while still making yourself available, whether it’s sharing memes of yourself or embracing accidental typos. You also know when and how to take a break from social media, which is equally important. Do you have any advice for artists who are struggling to find the right balance between the two? 

Oh man. Social media is so hard. It’s not going to get any easier either; it’s only gonna get harder. That’s where I’ve had to implement those lessons of listening to myself, to that very small voice that’s generally wiser than I am. I get to a breaking point where it either turns into anxiety or some type of jadedness where I need to forget my phone exists and only talk to people I know in real life. If it’s advice for other artists, I would say, we’re taught to believe that if it’s not out there it doesn’t exist, but you definitely still exist. Even if you’re not posting some probably bullsh*t thing, you definitely still exist. I have to remind myself that all the time. I exist far more in real life than I do on my phone. We’re just accustomed to seeing people through a screen now but that doesn't mean it’s a reality. 

Tori Amos On Maintaining Faith, Vision & Conviction In Troubled Times

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Becca Mancari

Photo by Zac Farro

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Becca Mancari On Collaborating With Zac Farro, Fishing With Brittany Howard & How A Series Of Threatening Letters Gave Her A Perfect Pop Song

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The Nashville-based songwriter discusses her friendships with Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Zac Farro and explains how grief played a role in shaping her latest album, 'The Greatest Part'
Nick Fulton
GRAMMYs
Jun 18, 2020 - 9:13 am

When Becca Mancari moved to Nashville eight years ago, she got a job at a taco shop and set herself a goal to meet as many female musicians as she could. Little did she know, the two would go hand-in-hand. "I had no idea what the deal was with Mas Tacos, but if you live in Nashville, you know of this place," she explains on the phone from her home recording studio. "I walked in and the owner—Teresa Mason is her name, she’s the most vibrant, strongest woman I’ve ever met—she’s talking to me and serving people at the same time, and there was just this energy that I felt. So I got thrown into that and oh my god, I met so many people there."

Alynda Segarra (of Hurray For The Riff Raff), Jack White, Dan Auerbach and country music legend Gillian Welch are just some of the famous names Mancari served tacos to. Segarra, Julian Baker and Paramore’s Hayley Williams, are now among her closest friends—though it’s Alabama Shakes' Brittany Howard who Mancari is most entwined with. Together, along with singer/songwriter Jesse Lafser, they perform in the folk-rock band Bermuda Triangle, and in March before the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone to stay-in-place, they had plans to go on the road together (they have rescheduled the tour for September).

The friendship is also notable because on their latest albums, Jaime and The Greatest Part, both Howard and Mancari examine the duality of being queer, mixed-race woman in America. For Mancari, who is Italian/Puerto Rican, this includes singing about her Christian fundamentalist upbringing, receiving threatening letters in the mail from a religious fanatic and learning to grieve and forgive her oppressors—and herself. Along with Hayley Williams’ recent debut solo album Petals For Armor, it completes a trifecta of emotionally vulnerable albums by three of Nashville’s most audacious pop stars.  

Mancari’s directness gives her songwriting gravity, but when she first started writing The Greatest Part (out June 26 via Captured Tracks) she wasn’t sure if she had the fortitude to be so forthright. She credits Paramore drummer Zac Farro (who produced the album) for igniting the spark she needed to lean in and share the types of raw, emotionally charged memories that punctuate her songs. "Hunter," "I’m Sorry" and "Stay With Me" all showcase this robustness, but the lyric that is most potent is also decidedly intimate. At the beginning of "First Time," which is Mancari’s personal coming out story, she sings, "I remember the first time my dad didn’t hug me back." The exact moment belongs to Mancari, but the memory it clings to is shared by millions of queer-identifying people throughout the world. The song's warm tones are like a cathartic cocoon, and it’s already had an impact on fans. When Mancari played it live for the first time she had a number of people approach her afterwards to say they saw themselves in the song, and to thank her. "It’s not all of my story, but it’s something I realize now that I have to do," she says of recognizing her power. "There is nothing else I can say, other than that I needed an artist like me when I was young."

Mancari recently spoke with the Recording Academy about the power of pop music, understanding her own internalized whiteness, fly fishing with Brittany Howard and finding forgiveness on her new album The Greatest Part.

The overarching theme on your new album is finding your way to forgiveness—to forgive yourself, your own body, your family and the church. Do you think writing these songs was part of a grieving process that inevitably had to happen for you?

Yes, that’s exactly it. These songs came to me in a way that I can’t describe other than that sometimes songs are given to you. I feel like that is what happened. And I have to give so much credit to my partner in this, Zac Farro, who produced the record with me. I could feel his energy, too; he was on fire. Everytime we would go in I kept coming back with these songs, and I kept trying to not truly go there, I kept saying, I don’t know if I can truly tell this story. But at the same time I said I can’t keep living like this, I have to tell the truth, no matter how hard it’s going to be. And all the people that listen to this who are also coming from backgrounds where they’re afraid to be free, I feel like this is for them, too.

Your relationship with Zac is something I wanted to touch on a little later, but let’s jump to it now. Can you tell me about the role he played in shaping this album?

We’ve been friends for about seven years and he always saw something in me that I wasn’t able to fully see yet. I think he just said, "Listen, I love the record you did before, but that’s not really where you come from, is it?" And I said, "No, I grew up listening to shoegaze music and The Beatles, not Johnny Cash." Nashville is a very country-driven city, which is incredible, but it’s just not something I grew up on, and he said, "me neither," even though he’s from Nashville.

So I think as we started working together there was this moment of clarity. He comes at it with the ears of a drummer, that’s his first instrument, so I think he just shifted the rhythm of the songs. I have a tendency to want to write these sad, emotionally driven songs, but I didn’t realize the power of his drums, they’re so emotional. If you listen to the record, I think the drums are one of the most interesting parts. Our whole process was to see how much we could do together first, without bringing in anyone else—just him and I in his home studio playing instruments that we don’t even normally play. And you can feel that on the record, it does sound like two people having fun together, even though we address hard stories about my life.

Your first record, Good Woman, has more of a country feel to it, whereas this one is undeniably more of an indie-pop record. Is that because you thought pop music would be a better vehicle to relay the types of emotions you wanted to express on this record?

I was always a fringe kid, not a cool kid, I was a musician and was hanging out with punks, wearing band T-shirts and going to shows. So when I used to think of pop, I just didn’t have the knowledge to understand what it meant, or to understand the power of pop music. But you know, I think I did digest a lot of pop music while I was making this record. As I was writing I was trying to understand what makes an earworm, what makes something powerful, that lasts. I listened to a lot of Lady Gaga during this process, because I was like, "What makes her music stick in your brain?" I wanted to understand that. So I don’t think I could have done anything else, and I don’t think I want to do anything else.

Hayley Williams has taken a similar path to you, going from making rock music with Paramore to making pop music on her new album Petals For Armor—and I don’t think a lot of people would necessarily have expected that from her. But when you mature as a person, suddenly you can appreciate a much broader range of musical influences. Is that how you felt?

That’s a great point of reference. I was talking to her the other day and I told her, "Hayley, this new music, I can’t stop listening to it. You really hit it." She’s matured, she’s become who she is, and I’m really glad to see that happen for her. And I see her fans just saying, "OK, that’s not what we expected, but let's go there." That’s powerful. That’s being a real artist. Artists change, they don’t stay the same.

I want to ask about the song "Hunter," which is about a series of threatening letters you’ve been receiving from someone you went to church with when you were younger. How long have you been receiving the letters for?

I got one last week. It’s been almost seven years now since it started, and it had been after a long break between me knowing him. I was 15 the last time I saw him. I got a letter right before I was supposed to go into the studio with Zac—this is in the very beginning, we hadn’t even decided to do a record together yet—and it was one of those songs that wrote itself immediately, I just sat down and wrote it. I do love the fact that he gave me a great song. How you use things in your life is everything, right?

You describe the person in the song as saying, "I am the prophet. I am the savior." Is that how they describe themselves in the letters?       

No, that’s me understanding the background of where it comes from. This is not the only person who has done this in my life, a lot of people have wanted to say you belong to us, you have to be this way, we need you to be this other person. And you know, I just refuse to do that, I refuse to belong to a group of people.

In the video for "First Time," your younger self is played by eight-year-old Tigerlily Tashian (daughter of Daniel Tashian, who won a GRAMMY for his production work on Kacey Musgraves' Golden Hour). Is that how old you were when you started to feel different to some of the other kids you were around?

I think I was five when I had my first crush—and I remember her name, I just hadn't learned the language for it yet. It wasn’t until I was 17 that I knew the words for it. I was at a public college and it was the first time I was around different ways of thought. I read this book about Virginia Wolfe and I was like, "Oh my god, that’s me, I’m just like that." I remember in the movie The Hours—Nicole Kidman plays Virginia Wolfe and Juliane Moore is in it—I remember [seeing] the scene where Juliane Moore kisses this woman, and I was like, "Oh yeah, that’s what I need to be doing, too."

You are part Puerto Rican, but you’ve said that because of the way you were raised, you had to spend some time getting to understand your own "internalized whiteness." How did you go about doing that, and what did you learn about yourself during that process?

It would be impossible for me to answer without honestly saying I am still processing this. I know that for my mom it was easier for us to assimilate into being white, but I believe she was just trying to protect us. I am ready to ask myself the hard questions, and also to be kind to myself as I find my way out of what "white" America has done to colonize all of our minds with white supremacy. This is a layered conversation, and again it's difficult for me to answer, but I know for me I am looking at myself in the mirror, asking myself the questions, and listening to others. I know that we can't change the world without looking into our own hearts and changing within first.

I understand that you love to go fishing, which some people might find surprising, since it's not a common hobby for a musician to have. What type of fishing do you do, and do you feel like the solitary nature of fishing helps with your music?

It definitely helps me not be so wound up, which is good for my manager. It was a Brittany [Howard] thing—it’s something that she got into first—and she loves it so much that when we started Bermuda Triangle she was like, "Listen, I’m booking us a trip and we’re gonna go and fly fish." So that’s the fishing I enjoy the most. It’s a really beautiful sport and it was created by a woman, so I love that. She booked us a trip on the Caney Fork River (in Lancaster, Tenn.) and we learned to fly fish and wrote some of the first Bermuda Triangle songs there. At night, after fishing all day, we would come into the tackle room and drink and play songs. But it’s something you really have to invest in, it’s certainly not a cheap sport, so now we’ve just been doing some catch and release fishing, we’ve been going up to this lake outside of Nashville.

Hayley Williams On Going Solo, Alanis Morissette & Trusting Her Intuition

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Slow Pulp

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Slow Pulp Find Serenity

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The Madison-born, Chicago-based shoegazey quartet open up about the trying events that led up to recording their tranquil debut album, 'Moveys'
Danielle Chelosky
GRAMMYs
Oct 7, 2020 - 11:31 am

Slow Pulp aren’t sure how to sonically categorize themselves, so they jokingly offer: "cow rock," "slowcore" and "not emo, but emotional." They’ve been labeled as shoegaze before, but they think the reason for that is: "We’ve put out such a little amount of music that people don’t know what to call it yet."

The group is based in Chicago, but the four of them are from Wisconsin. Three of the members—Alexander Leeds (bass), Theodore Mathews (drums) and Henry Stoehr (guitar)—have been playing together since sixth grade, and Emily Massey (vocals/guitar) joined in 2017. Moveys is their debut album, arriving via Winspear on Oct. 9.

Moveys follows a crazy series of events involving a depressive episode, a diagnosis and a car crash, but the record glows with an aura of serenity and weightlessness. It’s different from their past material; it’s more focused and cohesive. It’s naturally packed with inside jokes, eccentric sound effects, infectious indie rock riffs and sprawling folk ballads. Read our chat with the band about the making of Moveys.

While all of you were working on this album, Emily, you got diagnosed with Lyme Disease and Chronic Mono and then your parents were involved in a crash. Could you take me through this timeline?

Massey: Where do we begin?! Last year we all lived together and we were touring a lot and trying to write music. I was experiencing a lot of fatigue. I was sleeping most days and feeling really depressed and confused about my health. My motivation level was really low and my [self-esteem] was really low. I was in a big time period of questioning whether or not I was capable of being in a band and writing. When we started writing a lot of the songs on this record, I started feeling a little bit better in terms of my mental health and desire to get better. I went to the doctor in the fall of 2019 right before we were going on some other tours. I got my diagnosis. It was really validating in a lot of ways because it was another piece of my health that was causing my fatigue and my anxiety and getting sick a lot. That’s kind of when we really started writing the record—after that diagnosis.

I started getting a lot of tools to take care of myself and then my parents got into a car accident on March 1 of 2020. My mom broke her neck and my dad fractured his neck, so they both had pretty serious injuries and were in the hospital for a while. I came back to Madison, Wisconsin, to take care of them. Then, a couple weeks later, COVID hit. I remember I came back to visit Chicago for a day and that’s when it really dawned on me how serious it was. I asked the boys—Henry, Teddy and Alex—if they wanted to hang out and they were all like, Um… I don’t think we should do that. That’s a bad idea because of coronavirus. And I was like, Oh, yeah, that’s a real thing. The next day my mom was in the rehab hospital terminal and I couldn’t even see her for three weeks because they wouldn’t let anybody in. That was really crazy and I ended up getting stuck in Madison partly because of COVID and my parents needed a full-time care taker. There was no one else to do it, except for me and my sister. Because of coronavirus, we couldn’t have family friends coming over or anything like that. It was a really strange time to be dealing with all of these things in what felt like an isolated and lonely way. There’s just a lot going on—drama with family friends. It was a very difficult time. We finished a lot of the record during that time [laughs]. It was kind of a whirlwind.

But my dad is a musician and he engineered my vocals on the album. In a way, working on the record was a nice reprieve from being a care taker and dealing with grief. Weird juxtaposition finishing a record and writing about being emotional and sad and dealing with a lot of difficult things but also using it as a thing to help me through it.

Was it nostalgic to be back in Madison, Wisconsin?

Massey: It was a nice time to be there, I think. I hadn’t been there in a while, and I think after this time I have a new appreciation for it—for the city. I grew up there and before I moved to Chicago I lived there my whole life. My parents actually are moving away from there this fall, so it was my last time being in Madison as a home base. My mom put it in an interesting way—since my sister and I moved out of the house, it’s was the last time that we would really spend time as a family like this, unless the pandemic gets worse and everything fails and I don’t have any money and I have to go back [laughs]. Which is highly likely, but it is an interesting time to reflect. I’ve been in Madison during tough times and I’ve found it to be a very healing place. There’s a lot of lakes and it’s really beautiful to walk around. That helped me a lot.

How does mental health tie into the record?

Massey: When we started writing this record, I was at a low point within my own mental health. I was having a really difficult time explaining it or communicating about it especially to my bandmates. I was—for a while—unable to write. I was really self-conscious about writing and was very self-deprecating all of the time. That’s difficult when you’re a musician because you have to believe in what you’re making, and I wasn’t in a space to do that.

Mental health isn’t something where you wake up and you’re like, "I’m better and good!" It’s something that comes and goes, at least from my own experience. Throughout this record, I was learning a lot about myself, about my body with my diagnosis, about myself as an artist, about myself as a human who was growing. It was at the forefront of my mind, and lyrically it came out. For me, it was a way to understand it. I was having trouble understanding how it manifested in myself. It’s a weird position to be in when you’re a performing or touring musician and you feel so against yourself. I felt like I hated myself and was being [disingenuous] to people watching me, like I was pretending and putting on a facade of being confident and like I knew what I was doing. I needed to step back, and I’m still figuring it out. I don’t have the answers at all. I feel lucky to have gotten out of the place that I was in, but the pandemic and all of the other stuff doesn’t make it easy to continue on the right track [laughs]. It’s a process of figuring out how to care for yourself in the best way. I think this record helped me do that, or at least move forward in doing that.

The press release says the title Moveys is an inside joke. What’s it about?

Massey: [Laughs.] It’s kind of funny that they called it an inside joke. Henry had written the last song on the record, "Movey," and I thought it was funny. I liked the word a lot. A lot of the songs also started with names that were related to movie titles. Like, "Whispers (In The Outfield)"—Henry, correct me if I’m wrong—but that’s related to Field of Dreams.

Stoehr: It was actually Rookie of the Year. [Laughs.]

Massey: And we had another song that started out with the title "Evan Almighty." Just random things. For "Track," at one point, we had talked about The Wild Thornberrys Movie as an inspiration. And the way that we communicate about music is very visual. Sometimes Henry will try to be talking about a song and he’ll set up an entire scene to describe it rather than I want it to sound like this. So, I think in that way it’s an interesting tie-in to the title. I also have a history with dance; I used to be a ballet dancer, and I’m a ballet teacher outside of being a musician. That plays into it. We’re just connected to the word in many ways. Movement in terms of health and mental health. I think Alex said something earlier about motion and movement within yourself and your growth being transient and that changing.

There’s a bunch of weird noises and bits throughout the record. Where did these come from?

Stoehr: The sound in "Idaho" is from Teddy and I recording at the same time. I had done this delay effect with guitar pedals, and it was just in the scratch take and I left it in there. For most of the other sounds, we branched out and did some different textures and song environments. I found this keyboard in an alley when we started recording it and it has a lot of cool sounds on it.

Where did the piano instrumental on "Whispers (In The Outfield)" come from?

Stoehr: I had just been playing more piano in between working on the other songs and recording. I had this chord progression going and I’d been fine-tuning it over the course of writing and recording the album. It was one of the last ones that we figured out. I was thinking about this one song that I recently found from this baseball movie used to watch when I was a kid, and I didn’t realize I was thinking about it necessarily at the time. I think I was trying to capture this big baseball energy but in a nice piano song. [Laughs.] I couldn’t play it exactly how I was imagining it, because I don’t play all that much piano. And Emily’s dad is a professional piano player so I sent him a video of me just playing the chords and then we talked and he sent back a couple versions of him playing it. He shredded it.

Massey: He knocked it out of the ballpark.

Shamir Talks New Self-Titled Album, DMing With Mandy Moore & Being The Change He Wants To See

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Will Butler

Photo courtesy of Will Butler

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Nostalgic For A Different Future: Arcade Fire's Will Butler On How His New Solo Album Finds Healing In Community

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Butler talks to GRAMMY.com about his sophomore effort 'Generations,' how it fits in with an upcoming Arcade Fire album and the healing power of community
Lior Phillips
GRAMMYs
Sep 29, 2020 - 9:17 am

When Arcade Fire released their very first single, it came with a B-side that hit very close to home to brothers Win and Will Butler: a recording of a song called "My Buddy," credited to their grandfather, Alvino Rey. In fact, several generations of musicians line their family tree. While those historic echoes provide joy and solace for younger brother Will, the world tipping into pandemic and protests over racial injustice reinforced life’s darker cycles. On Butler’s second solo album, Generations (due Sept. 25 via Merge), he explores the ways in which we come together in community both because of and in spite of those ripples.

The video for early single "Surrender" represents that duality perfectly. The clip opens with studio footage of Butler’s band recording the jangly anthem, complete with call-and-response vocals and gospel falsetto. But much like 2020, things devolve quickly, with closed captioning-style subtitles mourning the deaths of Black men and women killed by police, calling for sweeping political change, and insisting on prison reform. Though written long ago, the album holds a special ability to tap into something boundless and timeless while simultaneously feeling entrenched in the tragic pain of the present.

Butler spoke with GRAMMY.com about the album’s similarities to Fyodor Dostoevsky, the ways in which songs take on new meaning over time, how Generations fits in with an upcoming Arcade Fire album and the healing power of community.

Did you have any hesitation about releasing the album in the midst of the pandemic?

I'm sad to not tour it. If I could wait four weeks and then tour the record... but that's not going to happen. It's actually kind of a good time to put out music. It feels morally good! People want music, so let's put out music. I've experienced that, where people put things out and it feels generous.

It truly does. You've compared this album to a novel and your debut before this to a collection of short stories. Is there a particular novelist that you feel would be in tune with your work? Do you take inspiration from fiction in that way?

It's not Dostoevsky. [Laughs.] But it is weirdly more inspired by Dostoevsky than it ought to be. It's the tumult of the 19th century, the next stage of the industrial revolution and the gearing up of socialism and anarchism. It feels related to the pre-revolutionary thing happening in Russia. [Laughs.] It's not a one-to-one comparison by any means, but it’s just the deeply human things happening in a context of the whirlwind.

Was there an experience that led you to the feeling that it was the right time to deliver such a politically driven album?

Partly, I went to grad school for public policy. I explicitly went as an artist wanting to know what's happening and why it's happening. I started the fall of 2016, which was a very bizarre time to be at a policy school. But I had a course with a professor named Leah Wright Rigueur, a young-ish professor, a Black woman, a historian. The course was essentially about race and riot in America. And since it was a policy school, the second-to-last week on the syllabus was talking about Hillary Clinton and the last week was talking about Donald Trump. It was a history class, but in an applied technical school, so it's like, "What are we doing with this history?"

We read the post-riot reports of Chicago in 1919 and the post-riot reports of the '60s, the Kerner Commission and after the Watts riots, and we read the DOJ reports after Ferguson and after Baltimore and Freddie Gray. And then Donald Trump got elected at the end of the semester. This course really trained my eyes at this moment of time, just being in that state of thinking about what's going on and why it's happening.

Right, and the album's title feels like it encapsulates not only the history that you were learning at the time but also your personal and familial ancestry.

Yes, very much so. My mom's a musician, and her parents were musicians. My grandmother grew up in a family band driving across the American West with her parents before there were even roads in the desert. Her dad got arrested a bunch of times for vagrancy or for not paying off loans. There's something very beautiful about being in the tradition of generations of musicians. That's a positive thing in this world. It's no coincidence that I'm a musician. There are, however, many more poisonous things that are also not coincidental that are rooted in both personal and political history. All of political history in America has been geared towards making each generation of my family's life better insofar as they're white men. It's been very good to my family, but that is as much of an undeniable generational heritage as music, which is this beautiful and faultless and glorious thing.

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Do you see that musical tradition in your family as storytelling?

It's never been explicitly storytelling, though that is part of it. It's more about building community or building a society through entertainment. Entertainment is almost too light a word. My grandfather and grandmother did all these broadcasts during World War II, and some of it's jingoistic, some of it's incredibly moving, some of it's just dance music for people who don't want to think about the war for a minute. It's all these emotions, but still with this aim of trying to get us all in it together–which in a war context is fraught. But there's that element of always trying to make a family, make a community, learning how to bind us all together.

That reminds me of the call and response vocals you've got throughout the record. It has an especially gospel-y feeling on "Close My Eyes," which is such a clever way to paint a song about surrendering to something bigger than yourself, that communal feeling. What was the impetus for that narrative voice?

Part of it is just rooted in Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. [Laughs.] Years ago, someone mailed us the complete Motown singles on CD, just every single starting from day one. Even though there’s some garbage mixed in there, it just feels so human with those gang vocals and great singers that sometimes they just pulled off the street. You get the sense of humanity. Having backing vocals be so integral instead of just having my voice layered feels like having a community and feels very natural. It's hard for me to not just rely on that every third or fourth song. [Laughs.] It just feels like that's how it should be.

Those multi-part harmonies must be especially potent live in a room. Do you write in a way where you’re already picturing these songs live?

We played almost every one of these songs live before we recorded them. My solo band played "Surrender" live on the Policy tour for years. But even before we went into the studio last summer, I booked a weekend of shows. We did the Merge 30th Anniversary festival just to have us feel it live and have that communication. And then we went down to the basement to try to iron it out.

Speaking of "Surrender," that song took on an entire new life in the video. It starts out with videos of your band in the studio, but then quickly and powerfully gets replaced with messages mourning the deaths of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor and emphasizing the need for prison reform. You never know what life a song will have when you’re writing it.

That song is very nostalgic in a certain way. It’s looking towards the past, but not wishing to be in the past. It's wishing that we were in a different present because we had already chosen a different past. So when I was editing the video, I started it as a "making of" video. But the footage is from January of this year—five, six months old. There's this feeling of nostalgia, but also 2019 was not good enough to look back at. [Laughs.] 2019 was also horrible.

It's not like I want to go back to 2019. I want to play music with people. I want to be having fun with my friends. I want to be making a record. But I don't want it to be 2019. I'm nostalgic for a different future. And as I'm editing the video, there have been six weeks of protests of people trying to build something, and it just felt crazy to not acknowledge that. It was what people were focused on, at least the people around me.

Do you feel like you'll be infusing more overt social and political commentary into your music going ahead?

I think so. It's important that it's organic. It's part of the world I live in, part of my family and my friendships. Before the coronavirus hit, I was very much looking forward to touring and had vague plans to do town hall meetings and discussions. It felt like a rich time to do that around America, and around the world. I'm sad to not get to do that, but I think it will happen someday.

You produced the album yourself in your basement, so were you writing with the production choices already in mind or were you writing while in the studio?

I had the band come down and record for a week. And at the end of that first week, we had seven or eight songs that could be real. Some of them were clear. Some of them are simpler, like "Surrender." Others were trying to figure out where they would go. "I Don't Know What I Don’t Know" was more trial and error, trying something crazy. We'd turn everything off for two days and then come back to it and try something else. You try to be surprised by it.

I love revision. Well, I don't love it. I hate it. [Laughs.] I love the process of editing, of making a version of something and then finding something that's either better or worse. It's fun when you work with an editor that you trust, but when you're just doing it yourself, you drive yourself batty after some time. But I still love versioning it until it makes sense.

It feels like you're not too precious. You just want to service the song at the end of the day.

Yeah. I try to not be precious. I feel like the songs mostly came out with a fresh spirit. I didn't massage any of them too much. I'm very conversational in how I think of the world. Nothing is the final statement. You say something and then someone says something else and then you say something. And you have to finish what you're saying in order to hear what the other person says. So if that means putting it out into the world without rounding everything off, to me that feels right.

The record begins and ends on the same burning synth tone, like history ready to go around the loop again. What does that synth tone represent for you?

Not to get too mystical, but there's something about the bass that is so embodied. There's something about a really powerful bass that is fundamental, something that just gets to the core. I wanted that core to feel a little uneasy. It's not like the hit at the end of "A Day in the Life" where it’s this clear conclusion. It's a little bit gnarly. It's a little bit not in the right key for the song. It’s something disturbing at the very core of everything.

What has writing and producing this record taught you about yourself?

I found that while I still prize quickness and thoughtfulness and conversational life, this record took longer and took more effort than Policy. It was way less casual. It was not casual in a very good way. I realized this shouldn't be a casual undertaking—even though it can have lightness and humor and breezy elements. Even then, the whole undertaking can still be serious and grounded. It can even be quick without being casual. In the past, I've fallen into thinking, "Just do something first before you think about it too hard." But this was a reminder that you can do something more thoroughly.

Were you writing these songs while working on the next Arcade Fire album? Speaking about intention, how do you compartmentalize those two sides of your creativity?

Yeah, Arcade Fire is always very cyclical. We record for a year and a half, we tour for a year and a half, and then we're off for a year and a half. I was very conscious to do this in a moment when I wasn't distracted by something else. I wanted to focus on this.

I'm still figuring it all out. Right now I'm making a video for the song "Close My Eyes." I have children, two-year-old twins and an eight-year-old, so the spring was just complete family time—net positive, but total chaos. [Laughs.]

On 'Transmissions,' Beverly Glenn-Copeland Looks Back On A Long And Varied Musical Life

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Sad13

 

Photo by Natalie Piserchio

News
Sad13 On The Ghosts & Gear In 'Haunted Painting' sad13-details-ghosts-and-gear-behind-haunted-painting

Sad13 Details The Ghosts And Gear Behind 'Haunted Painting'

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Ahead of her second solo album, the Speedy Ortiz frontwoman talks to GRAMMY.com about her "most maximal" work to date, drawing influence from David Berman—and sampling Elliott Smith's broken microwave
Zack Ruskin
GRAMMYs
Sep 27, 2020 - 4:00 am

For Sadie Dupuis, Franz von Stuck’s portrait of the dancer Saharet was a face that launched a thousand plans.

While the painting, which Dupuis saw one evening at Seattle's Frye Art Gallery, immediately gave the artist the name for her second solo album, the rest of the work would fall to her. Fortunately, as the creative center behind the Boston indie rock outfit Speedy Ortiz, Dupuis is well-versed in the D.I.Y. musician’s life.

While 2016’s Slugger contrasted with Speedy’s sound as a more pop-forward vehicle for Dupuis, Haunted Painting (out Sept. 25) takes the project to another level entirely. As Sad13, Dupuis has already proven it’s possible to write a feel-good bop about consent in "Get A Yes," so perhaps it shouldn’t come as a shock that "WTD?" manages to blend shimmering synths with a message decrying eco-fascism.

Yet it isn’t one standout but the quality of the album as a whole that solidifies Haunted Painting as one of Dupuis’ most significant releases to date.

From the mischievous and prescient "Ghost (Of A Good Time)" to the sweeping, contemplative "Take Care," this record finds Dupuis working towards what she’s previously described as her "most maximal" work yet. In part, Dupuis credits her mode of songwriting to the late David Berman, whom she noted was a master of walking the line between bouncy and bleak.

"I think that with both Silver Jews and Purple Mountains," Dupuis said, "as well as in his poetry; David Berman rode that line really, really well. Some of his saddest work is also his absolute funniest. As a guiding figure for me in my writing, I'm always trying to be conscious of that line. If a song feels like heavy subject matter, I'm trying to bring levity where it's possible, because I think the art that I admire most tries to strike that balance."

Striking a balance is nothing new for the 32-year-old, who in addition to touring relentlessly prior to onset of COVID, also runs her own music label, Wax Nine, as well as a poetry journal of the same name.

Though she may have a lot more time on her hands these days, last summer, Dupuis found herself booking local studio time during off-days from touring with Speedy to get her next solo project done. Never one to arrive unprepared, she also wrote every song on her new album specifically for each studio's gear list.

Prior to a session at San Francisco's Tiny Telephone, for instance, Dupuis wanted to be sure she could make full use of the studio’s legendary synthesizer collection.

"They have one of the more insane vintage synth collections of any studio I've worked in," she said. "My first instinct is piano, but I'm not good at it and I haven't reliably played it since I was a little kid. I knew there were all of these expensive synths at Tiny Telephone that I wanted to get on the record, so in the time leading up to being there, it was me just sitting at home with a little tiny practice keyboard, trying to be able to play those parts correctly."

Commitment to vision is another thing Dupuis takes quite seriously.

After hosting a panel for Sonos focused on women in audio engineering, Dupuis went through her own album credits and realized that she was the only woman credited as a producer on her work.

"I had this awareness of all these awesome engineers," she explained, "but I hadn't worked with any of them, so that was part of the reason for me wanting to hire strictly women on this project."

As a result, Dupuis worked with only female audio engineers on Haunted Painting—eight in total—including Emily Lazar, Sarah Tudzin and Lily Wen. The latter of the three was actually once under the care of Dupuis when the artist worked as a summer camp counselor. Last year, the two joined forces at Figure 8 in Brooklyn to work on new Sad13 tracks featuring woodwinds and strings.

At Elliott Smith’s New Monkey studio, Dupuis teamed with Tudzin—who records and releases music as illuminati hotties—to figure out a way to sample Smith's microwave as means of incorporating his spirit into the recordings.

"When we were at New Monkey tracking ‘Oops...!’ and ‘Good Grief,’” Tudzin recalled, "we were perpetually in search of any instrument or sound that was unmistakably Elliott. There are a lot of beautiful instruments and pieces of gear there that belonged to him, and after pestering the staff about the story of the studio, we learned that even the furniture and decorations were his, including an essentially non-functioning microwave that no one wanted to get rid of."

Read More: He's Gonna Make It All OK: An Oral History Of Elliott Smith's Darkly Beautiful Self-Titled Album

The two joked about sampling the decrepit appliance before actually deciding to give it a shot. The final result, pitched as a synth, can be heard in the melody that ends "Good Grief."

The ways in which the experience of creating Haunted Painting are reflected in the finished product don’t end there.

Upon arriving at La La Land (an analog-only studio in Louisville) following a gig in Chicago, Dupuis discovered a block party borrowing power from the building had caused a fire to start. As a result, she altered some of her lyrics for her sessions there to refer to smoke. At Tiny Telephone, a broken harpsichord required Dupuis and engineer Maryam Qudus to "layer chains and ping pong balls on piano strings" to create a worthy substitute.

In one key area, however, Dupuis opted to cede control. Though she has done her own artwork for all her releases to date, she tasked the design of Haunted Painting’s cover to her mother.

"My mom, for most of my life, was a portrait painter," Dupuis explained, "but she stopped doing it as her main work after her car was hit by another car maybe a decade ago. She has chronic pain from that, so it's difficult for her to do portraiture, which is so detailed and time-intensive. She does plenty of other kinds of art, but she hadn't done a portrait in like a decade. The fact that she was even able to do this one, let alone that it looks so incredible, after 10 years away, is amazing. I think the world of my mom. She's a really cool artist and I probably wouldn't be doing any of this stuff if I hadn't had her as an example of someone doing creative work, so it's really nice to have her involved."

From sampling Elliott Smith’s microwave to teaching herself how to compose for strings and woodwinds (again), Dupuis’ emphasis on Sad13 as a project solely of her own creation is undercut only by a seemingly inextinguishable desire to give back.

Be it writing artist bios for projects from Tudzin and Qudus as they worked with her in the studio or also finding the time to put together a heartfelt compilation honoring the late Adam Schlesinger earlier this year, Dupuis has often used any focus on herself as an opportunity to refract attention onto those she cherishes.

This time, however, the spotlight shines solely on her, and with good reason. In trying to summarizing all the countless elements that came together to create Haunted Painting, Dupuis once more turns to von Stuck, the painter who started on her on this project.

"One of the cool things about him," she recalled, "is that he would build the frames himself and that he considered the frame as part of the artwork. As someone who likes to play all of the instruments and use production as part of the song itself, I can relate to a perspective of wanting the whole thing to be one product."

Molly Tuttle & Producer Tony Berg Discuss the Cross-Country Making Of Her New Covers Album

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