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Thundercat

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Thundercat’s New Album Is A Balm For Troubled Times

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Created during a period of personal upheaval and released in global uncertainty, the bass virtuoso's new album, 'It Is What It Is,' is a sonic salve for us all
Sarah Gooding
GRAMMYs
Apr 3, 2020 - 7:53 am

Stephen Bruner, A.K.A. Thundercat, is sprawled on his stomach on a large bed in a hotel room in the Lower East Side, just like a cat. Khruangbin plays softly on speakers in the background, and a video game is paused on a TV mounted to the wall. A pair of brown fluffy cat ears lay on the nightstand. 

It’s mid-February, and Bruner—like most of us at that time—is blissfully unaware of the global catastrophe that’s about to strike. But the Angeleno has always created through crisis—he’s probably doing it right now. 

Bruner's fourth and latest studio album, It Is What It Is (out Friday via Brainfeeder), reflects on various personal turmoils involving love and loss. His latest single, “Fair Chance” (featuring Ty Dolla $ign and Lil B), was written in ode to his friend and frequent collaborator, Mac Miller, after the artist’s untimely death in 2018. “Them Changes,” Bruner’s biggest hit to date (from his critically acclaimed album Drunk), is also about heartbreak, albeit the romantic kind. "Nobody move, there’s blood on the floor," he sings ominously over a swampy, slowly descending bassline.  

As one of the most in-demand bass players in the world, Bruner is cherished for his vision and versatility, collaborating with everyone from Kendrick Lamar (with whom he won a GRAMMY for “These Walls”), Flying Lotus (with whom he’s made numerous award-winning albums), Erykah Badu, Travis Scott and many more. In a sea of session musicians, he’s carved a niche as an innovative artist in his own right, building songs from intricate, otherworldly basslines. 

"It always starts with the bass," Bruner says, gazing through a curtain of bleached dreadlocks, his silver facial piercings glinting in the sun. Bruner’s songwriting approach is intuitive, verging on spiritual, and requires only three things: his bass, his computer and his beloved cat Tron. "That’s the way the music gets created, with the idea that it will show itself when the time comes. I try not to overstep that and just let it form how it does."

This approach has seen him become the conductor of galaxies of sound, fusing jazz, funk, soul, R&B and hip-hop to create a futuristic new style. Through his dense and impossibly funky new songs come feelings of warmth, optimism and possibility, regardless of lyrical content. 

On initial reading, the album’s title It Is What It Is signals apathy and resignation, which feels out of step with the album’s bright and bubbly songs, but Bruner says those five words provide possibility too. "Even when it feels like there are moments you can’t do things… There are moments that you can try to move towards something, but at the same time it’s not meant for you to figure out," he says. “Like, let’s say a meteor does crash into Earth, which is looking like it’s gonna happen!" he laughs. "It’s like, what are you gonna do? Try and turn the Earth faster? Like, ‘It looks like it’s gonna crash in the middle of Africa! Okay everybody, move outta the way!’" he laughs. "No. Some things are just bigger than you."

Bruner didn’t yet know the catastrophic events that would unfold not long after this conversation. But his sentiments are timely: we never know what’s around the corner, and we must be okay with that. "The truth is, saying ‘It is what it is’ is a comforting thing that’s like, what are you gonna do?" he continues. "Trying to be okay, sometimes that’s all you can hold onto."

This is where comedy comes in handy. If the cat ears on his nightstand didn't already give it away, Bruner has a surreal sense of humor. It permeates his entire being and everything he does, from his Adult Swim-like comedic music videos to the colorful costumes he wears onstage. Like a grinning anime prince, surrounded by suitcases overflowing with vibrant colorful clothing, he cracks jokes while contemplating mortality. His Dragon Ball Z-embellished durag—the namesake of his recent silly, sexy single, "Dragonball Durag," is "around here somewhere," he says, gesturing at the piles. 

Bruner is pragmatic even in humor, knowing that you can’t have comedy without tragedy. It Is What It Is balances both, but the most affecting moments come from the saddest ones. Lyrically, "Fair Chance" is deeply touching, while musically it continues the soft, slow-drip of emotion that made his 2017 song "Show You The Way" (with yacht rock pioneers Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins) so alluring. 

"Me and Ty were both very close to Mac, and it [Mac’s death] brought us together even more," Bruner says, his tone immediately shifting to become more serious. "For a lot of the artist community in general, but especially the ones that were very close to Mac, it made us very cognizant of each other and the shit that we go through. You know… There was one moment after Mac died where Ty was looking at 15, 20 years in prison, and it broke my heart. I was like, 'No way. Not like this,'" he shakes his head.  

"But even more than that, me and Ty would always connect with each other through music. I’ve played on many Ty records, and he's also a bass player, and his dad's also a musician. We grew up real similar. He's real hood. I’m one of those guys that’s from the hood, but was always more of a weirdo," he laughs, the mischievous glint in his eye coming back. "The sh*t he be singing about… he says the sh*t that’ll get you in trouble!" he laughs again. "But, in this moment, it was somber for both of us—and Lil B. He was definitely a close friend of Mac too."

Bruner sent the song to Lil B to record his verse remotely after he'd been in the studio with Ty Dolla $ign. "Being there when Ty recorded it [his verse], I could see it was gut-wrenching for him," Bruner recalls. "And when he finished his verse, I got all teary-eyed, because I could hear Mac in his lyrics. So I think that it’s a magical song in the sense that we get to say goodbye to Mac."

In a way, It Is What It Is does shrug off life's cruelties as a matter of survival. Bruner has adopted this common mantra as a coping mechanism. But more powerful than that is the message of unity and empowerment that comes through in his album's first single, "Black Qualls." Not only is it buoyed by another fantastically funky bassline, but it also unites generations: funk pioneer Steve Arrington and the Internet’s Steve Lacy share vocal duties with Bruner. The chorus offers a new, much more fitting affirmation for the uncertain times we all find ourselves in: "No more livin' in fear."

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Haux

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Haux Unpacks A Fraught Family History On His Debut, 'Violence In A Quiet Mind'

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The Massachusetts-based soft-pop performer opens up to GRAMMY.com about recording his debut album and the process of letting other people in on his journey
Gabriel Aikins
GRAMMYs
Jul 15, 2020 - 8:10 am

A debut album is a big deal for an artist. Even in the era of streaming singles and EPs, a full-length debut can serve as an artistic introduction to a bigger audience than they’ve previously had. For Woodson Black, his debut carries even more personal significance. Violence In a Quiet Mind (out July 17), Black’s first record under his performance moniker Haux, is the detailed, often painful story of his family.

Black, a Massachusetts native, was raised by a combination of his mother, sisters and aunts as the family struggled through many crises. Addiction runs through many generations of the family, and the strain on the relationships in the family and the deaths they endured greatly affected Black. Listening to Violence In a Quiet Mind, every aspect of the album points to the emotional processing he's had to go through, from the sadness in his delicate falsetto to the haunting piano lines. Album track "Eight" finds Black most explicitly recalling a death in the family, but even tracks like "Heavy" that convey more general reminiscing have a hefty emotional weight even as synths gently move the track along.

The recording process for the album took Black on a journey both emotional and physical (much of the work on the record happened in Scotland), and the internal processing and growth he went through makes Violence In a Quiet Mind a powerful experience for both fans and creator. Black chatted with GRAMMY.com over FaceTime (no phone calls, as he jokes the entire area around his Massachusetts studio is "a big drop zone") about revealing so much about himself on his debut, letting other people in on his journey and how this album has allowed him to move forward.

Not only is your debut album coming out, but it's a very personal one about your family. How does it feel that people other than you are going to hear this album?

It’s kind of scary. I feel like I was just talking about this the other day—that I’ve kinda gotten over the fear of telling my story, or this part of it. Once you start getting these stories out and these songs out it becomes easier in a way to share it because you’ve done the internal work yourself to get to a place where you can do it. And I think it’s just been great to see responses from people. It definitely gives me a lot more confidence that other people can relate to the stories and the personal things I’m sharing. I’ve always been a private person so it’s nice to get that positive affirmation [and] feedback. Otherwise I’d just be scared to death all the time.

I do think it’s a very scary thing to share that much of yourself. Did you know from the start that this is what you wanted your debut album to be about?

Absolutely not. [Laughs.] Not at all. I think in many ways stuff that we avoid ends up coming back and recycling over and over again until we actually look at it. And I think a lot of the music I’ve made has revolved around my childhood and a lot of these themes and experiences I’ve had, even the stuff in the music that came before this album. I think this album was the first time I actually started taking ownership of the stories and started telling the truth behind them. It is incredibly personal and it’s scary to share that much, but at the same time it is empowering in a way and it allows a bigger conversation to happen in my family and with fans. It's been good.

In that case, at what point during this whole process of putting together a debut album did you realize or decide "this is going to be an album about my family"?

It was like I knew what the songs were about, I just never really wanted to unpack them in the way that I have now. I wrote most of the songs for the album in the span of a month the winter before last, and they all came out really quickly and I was thinking a lot about my family at the time. I didn’t necessarily want to write about it, but it felt like the only thing that I could really write about, just purely there was nothing else I could put the pen to the pad about. At that point, I was definitely scared to dive in and tell the stories of the songs, so I just focused on making the songs themselves and avoiding the messaging behind them. Once I went to Scotland and recorded the album, I was like, "Oh shit, I have to actually tell the stories behind these songs." At that point, with some nudging from family and my manager I started to dig into the songs a little bit more and unearth what I was trying to say. That's when I got into everything and started really processing it and dealing with it, because music has always been something I used as a way of coping about talking about things that were uncomfortable to do otherwise. It was basically like therapy. [Laughs.]

When you were writing this material, was this a "lyrics first, music later" kind of album?

I always end up writing some kind of musical instrumental piece and then the lyrics come with that. Most of the time it was me on guitar or piano and messing around, and then I would just start humming and words just basically come up through that. It's mainly the music first, but the lyrics are definitely once I get an idea of what I'm mumbling, then things start to take shape and I can build the structure upon that. Because I do it that way it ends up being very ethereal at times and almost like a dream state, like a stream of consciousness. I think that’s how we remember things too, little bits and pieces of a time and a place and how it felt or how it smelled.

With the sound on the album, you can very much tell that it started on a guitar or piano, and then you have the programming and the synths on top of that. How do you balance those two components around this emotional message so it doesn’t get overpowered?

I worked with [producer] Thomas Bartlett and he did most of the synths on the record, pretty much all of them minus some of the ones at the beginning. He is incredibly delicate and I think he knows exactly when to highlight something or dial it back, and so a lot of that came from him. My go-to is always just keeping things minimalist and clean, so I was always pushing for things to have an atmosphere but not for that to overpower the message of what’s being said because all the music I've loved growing up always has such a clear vocal at the center of it. [It's] something you can follow no matter what is going on in the background. I’m looking forward to messing with that in the future.

I know the team working on this album wasn’t huge, but what was it like letting these new people into your mental space as you processed and wrote this album?

Honestly, it was hard. There were certain times when I really struggled with it. I've always done all the production and the writing, the artwork, everything myself. I think that’s part of something I’m working on, it’s part of a coping mechanism. But at the same time, when I was given the opportunity to work with more people, it took me a minute to trust them. But once I trusted them, it was so natural and things on the album are so much better for it because they added their own magic to it. In the future, it’s something I would love to get into more, collaboration that is, and it’s obviously a little difficult now to be in the same room with other people, but hopefully that changes.

Now that the album is done and almost out, what are you going to take from this process either personally or musically for future projects?

There’s so much that I processed through not only the writing of this album, but also the way I have been talking about it. Telling stories and everything with more honesty, I think that is unavoidable in my future music now. I feel like I just have a certain level of honesty even within myself that I can’t really avoid. It’s been a really long and good process and really healthy, but I’m definitely happy to be writing music about the present as opposed to writing music about my 12-year-old self.

Read More: Soko Explores Her Feelings

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[From left]: Bartees Strange, Anjimile and Jordana Nye. Photos courtesy of Julia Leiby, Maren Celest & Grand Jury Music

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Bartees Strange, Anjimile & More On What It's Like To Release A Debut Album In A Pandemic

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A variety of rising artists sit down to discuss the unusual and inopportune circumstances of releasing a debut record during COVID, and what it takes to make the best of an impossible situation
Mike Hilleary
GRAMMYs
Oct 27, 2020 - 1:36 pm

Video-chatting through her phone, Wichita-based singer/songwriter Jordana Nye shows me a tattoo she recently got on her right forearm. Written in small red ink is a single word: "numb." "I feel like I've just been kind of numb throughout the whole thing—like my tattoo," she says. Laughing at herself, almost as an aside, she quickly adds, "The decisions you make when you're in quarantine."

The "whole thing" Nye is referencing is of course the increasingly fragile state of the music industry as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a global health crisis that has in just a few short months forced the closure of concert venues across the country, the cancelation of festivals and tours, and manifested an overwhelming sense of uncertainty for the untold number of musical artists that make recording and performing songs their livelihood. While established, high-profile acts such as Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga, and BTS are fully capable of releasing a new album in the middle of a volatile and complicated environment and experience little to no impact on their financial bottom line and cultural cachet, those like Nye, who only just made her first steps into the industry with the release of her debut album Classical Notions of Happiness in March, are finding themselves mentally and professionally hobbled at the exact moment they are trying to introduce themselves to the greater music listening community.

In addition to Nye (who has followed Classical Notions of Happiness with the EP Something to Say and has a second EP … To You scheduled for release in December), a variety of rising artists, including Christian Lee Hutson (Beginners), Anjimile (Giver Taker), Bartees Strange's Bartees Cox Jr. (Live Forever), and Nation of Language frontman Ian Devaney (introduction, Prescence) all sat down to discuss the unusual and inopportune circumstances of releasing a debut record during COVID, and what it takes to make the best of an impossible situation.

The Initial Shock

Jordana Nye: I kind of went through like the worst depression. I mean, you just gotta keep swimming. It's hard to sometimes. But you get medicine, get therapy, talk about stuff. That's what I did, and it helped a lot. I couldn't even do anything for maybe three months straight. It was the worst.

Ian Devaney: It was kind of disbelief, especially when I realized how long it would go on and I realized what that would do to small and mid-sized venues. I was like, even when we do come back from this, the landscape is just gonna be so totally different. What does this mean as far as these businesses as independent hubs in the community? But my brain also just zoomed out to the corporate consolidation of touring above the D.I.Y. level basically. Are the only people who are going to be able to keep their venues open the ones who aren't as artist-friendly?

Bartees Cox Jr.: After we released my EP Say Goodbye to Pretty Boy, it was crazy. We got invited to play this WNYC soundcheck live show thing on March 12. And then we also had a show in New York on March 13. And this was when the shit was really going down in New York. And we were there, we played the thing, and we were all like, "Dang, this looks like it's gonna get really serious." And then after the EP came out, my team and I were like, "Well, do we just not do anything for a year and a half? We have momentum now. We should just ride this and keep writing." And that was just it, let's just follow the wave. It's working right now. So why why stop, you know?

Read More: Anjimile Opens Up On 'Giver Taker,' Sobriety, Identifying As Trans & More

The Road Is Closed

Christian Lee Hutson: Just from my perspective, the thing that seems to help debut artists the most is supporting other artists on tour, and that element has been completely taken out of the picture. Having your name tied to whatever the act is you're opening for and getting a chance to be in front of new people that might not have heard you on whatever streaming playlist, that aspect is probably the most damaging.

Ian Devaney: I've always been someone who feels like Nation of Language captures more people through the live show. And so when it became clear that we weren't going to be touring for a long time, I was like, "Oh, I guess we're doomed. I guess we'll put these things out and maybe some people listen to them, and then it will just fade away and we'll get on with the next thing and wait. But I was very shocked and flattered that the record started doing much better than I ever thought. That was very exciting. I feel very grateful for that.

Bartees Cox Jr.: I'm glad that we put Live Forever out now, instead of right at the beginning of the pandemic, because I don't think people knew what the f**k was going on in March. I saw some bands, put some records out that were really good in February and January who had huge tours booked all summer. I feel like this really hit them in the chest. That just takes so much like gas and energy out of you.

Ian Devaney: We were three shows into a tour, when they were like, "OK, everyone has to go home." It wasn't just disbelief that a dangerous thing was happening, but disbelief from the whiplash of the fact that we were about to be on the road for a month. But now, I'm back in my apartment. There was confusion and then, yeah, just real sadness of not knowing when I'm gonna get to do this again.

Christian Lee Hutson: Doing my first real headline tour, that was supposed to happen. I was supposed to on it right now, actually. In June I was also going to tour with one of my favorite bands, The Magnetic Fields. I was excited to spend a month with them. Those are two things I feel like, "Oh, man, those would have been cool." And hopefully, in a world where we're safer, those things can still happen.

Read More: Bartees Strange On 'Live Forever' & Why "It Shouldn't Be Weird To See Black Rock Bands"

Ian Devaney: I was really looking forward to playing the Seattle show on our canceled tour. KEXP seemed like the first radio station that consistently was reaching out to us and playing us on a regular basis, and we kind of developed a close relationship with them. And to me they've always been sort of one of the gatekeepers of like, "Oh, I'm in this level now. KEXP knows about my band." And so, them just being excited for us to come and us getting the sense that people just driving around in their cars during the day were hearing our music—and that being such a strange thing to wrap our heads around—it felt like we were gonna show up and be like, "We've arrived."

Jordana Nye: I was going on my first tour. I felt unprepared. I was also really nervous. And then when the COVID stuff started, there was a surreal moment where I was like, "What? I was just about to do something that could impact my life in such a big way and now it's gone." I was told there was gonna be hotels.

Christian Lee Hutson: Not touring is a huge change in my life in general. I've been touring with other people or just on my own for the last 11 years in my life. So to not do it at the one time I've finally released an album and not be doing it feels hilarious.

Bartees Cox Jr.: I keep telling myself, "It's just delayed. You will get to play the record for years. It will always exist." It won't be the same, but I also think when shows open up, people are gonna be really hyped to go to shows. The bottom line is, it'll be okay. Again, I have no choice. It's hard to like dwell on that. I knew that would be the case, before I put it out.

Fiscal Feasibility

Anjimile: I would describe it as not an ideal time, but I also have never monetized like my music career in a major way. It's not like, "Oh, no, all this money I usually make is gone!" [Laughs.]

Christian Lee Hutson: My wife and I are both living on unemployment and savings right now and just kind of hold on as long as we can, just hoping that touring can come back before we're in a crippling amount of debt.

Ian Devaney: The unemployment insurance is currently supporting me. When we left for tour the restaurant I was working at I said, "I understand if you won't have a space to me when I get back," but they were like, "We I think we'll be able to work the schedule," and I thought, "Perfect." But then the reason we came back was because everything was shutting down. And so I got an email suggesting we should all file for an appointment, and we'll see what happens.

Jordana Nye: At least I have my job back in Wichita. I work at a brewing company called Norton's. They're super involved in live music and it's a great place. I was like a barback during the summer. And now I'm a dishwasher. It's humbling.

Team Building and Content Alternatives

Bartees Cox Jr.: I just feel sometimes [as a new artist] you're the only one that knows that you have something special, and you just gotta build around it. And then all of a sudden people just show up around you. You have a team and you have a plan. But you got to make the first step.

Anjimile: It definitely changed the scope and nature of the promotional cycle. When it became apparent that touring was not happening I was like, "OK, so I guess we'll have to get creative and do other things to generate and maintain interest in this record."

Christian Lee Hutson: I think everyone was just flying by the seat of their pants, like, "We'll do the best that we can do and we're just gonna do everything that we can as we think of it." Those were really the kind of conversations that were had. The funny thing about all of this is all you can do is throw your hands up and just do it, surrender yourself to it. And I feel like everyone has a label and Phoebe and me and my management, everyone has been pretty good at just being like, "Alright, we're just gonna roll with it."

Anjimile: I'm also working on building a team. I now have a booking agent. And I'm talking with managers for the first time and that's super exciting. I'm doing all these behind the scenes team building stuff.

Ian Devaney: We've actually, in the middle of the pandemic, gotten booking agents. And they were like, "This is weird, but we an tell people about the band for when things open back up. We can get your name into circulation of who's being considered for what." You can get the sense that they are ready to just throw us intensely on the road, and we are ready to do that as well.

Bartees Cox Jr.: Will Yip, who runs memory music, was just like, "This thing is super fresh. It's good no matter what. You got to just trust us." I was the most apprehensive because no one's ever cared about my music or anything I've ever done. So I was like, "Well, OK, if this is what you think, I trust you guys." And they were all just so passionate about it and they just worked so f**king hard. My publicist Jamie and manager Tim, they just really pushed the record really, really hard. Teams are so important. I didn't know how important they were until really this year, how much how much it helps to have a label and a manager and a publicist that love you and love your record, and are going to put in extra hours and go the extra mile. That was the difference-maker. I think that's why it didn't matter what was happening around us because yes, it's an election year, yes the world was literally ending, yeah there's a pandemic. But this record is f**king good. And it's not the first time a great record has come out when things are really bad.

Anjimile: I got hit up by a U.K. booking agency first, and they were like, "Hey, obviously, there's no touring happening right now, but we love your sound and we're looking into the future to see where you would fit in certain clubs, and we just want you on the team." The same thing happened with my new U.S. booking agent. She was like, "We've been following you for a couple years, seen your name everywhere. Booking doesn't really exists, but I want to work with you and get you on the team and we can talk about slowly building what a live Anjimile thing looks like."

Ian Devaney: I think part of it is letting fans know that we're not stopping. It often helps me emotionally invest in a band if I can believe that the band is really in it to keep moving. I don't know if that makes sense. People will email us or reach out through Bandcamp and things like that. And it's always just really nice to hear people's stories of how they've enjoyed the record.

Jordana Nye: My team taught me to just try to keep working and keep busy until we get a sense of what the hell is going to happen—and just release music because it's really all you can do. Anything you can do, you just have to do it.

Anjimile: I think the main idea for me is just galvanizing and continually engaging my social media presence. My social media numbers have climbed substantially as a result of this release, which is exciting. And not to sound like a f**king music industry business guy, but content is helpful, and so I'm just trying to create chill content without losing my mind. We're about to have a contest. We've got a video coming out. Hopefully people can sit at home and watch. I want to try and create content that folks can engage with at home. Part of our merch is boxers. We were like, "What about hats?" "Well, nobody's gonna see the hat." "What about fanny packs?" "Nobody's going anywhere." "OK. Boxers. People will be at home wearing them." We're just trying to be as creative as possible.

Jordana Nye: I've got some music video stuff in the works. There's a new one coming out that was filmed in my home of Wichita for "I Guess This is Life," and my best friend is in it with me. It's very, very sweet. And I can't wait for it to be out. But I'm also shooting a music video out here in L.A. for the track "Reason." It’s going to feature me walking an invisible dog on a leash. I'm f**king excited for that. I can't wait.

Ian Devaney: Our manager has been really kind of fantastic and diligent. In his mind there's still people who don't know the record. And so just because it came out in May, doesn't mean we're not going to keep working it as though everyone knows it, because they don't.

Mental Health Whiplash

Christian Lee Hutson: It's like, for debut artists, what do you have to compare it to?

Bartees Cox Jr.: I almost feel like more people are listening to music now than they were before, like really listening through albums, and really interacting with them.

Christian Lee Hutson: I think it would make me crazy to sit around and just be like, "Damn it, I spent all this time on this and of course when my record comes out, this is what happens." I mean, I'm actually kind of encouraged by the response to the album just in general, because I feel like it's such a weird time for music to come out and I'm happy that anyone has found it at all considering it's come out in the most turbulent year in recent memory. That aspect I feel positive about, like it was weirdly worth it, even though I'm not doing all of the things that I thought I would be doing a year ago.

Bartees Cox Jr.: I mean I've never had fans like I do now, and I'm doing all this during a pandemic.

Ian Devaney: In a strange way, I'm glad we're putting music out now. I feel like we are, as much as anyone can, engaging with the madness and sort of being defiant in the face of the madness and not giving up on trying to be creative and trying to dream big about what we can do in the future.

Anjimile: It feels surreal, but at the same time I've released music locally in Boston over the years. And nothing has ever come of that. And so releasing an album nationally with a label, I think my expectations were actually pretty low. Usually when I put out music nobody cares, you know? Why should they really care? And this time some people cared, and I was like, "Holy f**k." Even that that was beyond my expectations. And so I don't know, I'm just kind of trying to go with it. Because even though things feel weird, and at times, unfair and strange I don't know what is going to happen in the next three months, six months, nine months, right? I'm just cautiously cautiously optimistic about what will happen next. Because I do think that so far, things have actually happened right on time. Even though shit is really weird right now, and I don't know what's going to happen next, maybe something positive in my career will occur. Who knows?

Bartees Cox Jr.: I was talking to a friend about this. You look at these areas in music, or in America, like Vietnam War era music or these other big social phenomenon and the music that came from it, I think that one day people will look back on this quarantine pandemic era and think, "All these records came out during this weird ass time are interesting because of it."

What Comes Next

Bartees Cox Jr.: I was thinking that bigger artists that need bigger studios are gonna kind of be hamstrung by this where more D.I.Y. people can just be like, "Yeah, I'll write another record."

Jordana Nye: Going on tour, getting experienced would have helped my career a lot in way. But working on new music is also helping it.

Ian Devaney: For Nation of Language, we're planning on putting out a seven inch either like, December or January. So we've been working on two songs, as well as songs for the second record.

Anjimile: At this point, in the year, I have a lot of songs written, some which I think might be good. And so I'm just stacking up demos at the moment, trying to make sure I have like the juiciest tunes available.

Jordana Nye: I'm still just making music and content, and it kind of tells me that I can pretty much do anything that I set my mind to, which is comforting, especially in dire times when I feel like I'm not doing anything at all, and I feel like I'm a loser. People are digging the new stuff so I'm super excited for that, and makes me want to do more with different genres and just play around with them.

Bartees Cox Jr.: I'm gonna really take my time. I put out two records this year. I don't feel like I gotta like, hustle. I just gonna just keep working try to make some money and hold it down.

Christian Lee Hutson: I'm honestly just writing a lot and I am recording a lot of stuff at home. Early on in quarantine, I was just like, "Alright, in order to tell the days apart, I'm gonna record a different cover song for fun every day." So I did that for a while until I got bored of that. And now I'm just demoing and recording new stuff. It's the only thing I really know how to do. And I'm grateful that there's a lot of time to do it. Something I noticed observing other friends' album cycles in the pre-COVID world is the amount of time that they had to actually write and follow up their debuts is actually pretty slim, which I feel like I have a lot of time to accomplish that.

Capturing Los Angeles' COVID-Closed Venues

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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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Ambré

Ambré

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Quarantine Diaries: Ambré Is Making Music, Enjoying New Orleans & Playing Video Games With Her Brother

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"You gotta figure out new ways to live life, and it's making me a better person. As messed up as the circumstances are, you can always find the good," Ambré says her video diary
GRAMMYs
Sep 29, 2020 - 12:58 pm

As the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic continues to rock the music industry, GRAMMY.com reached out to a few musicians to see how they were spending their days indoors. Today, New Orleans-born alt R&B singer/songwriter Ambré shares her video Quarantine Diary.

Alt R&B singer/songwriter Ambré met producer Erick Bardales in 2014 and began making music with him when she was just 17. In 2015, she released her first mixtape, Wanderlust, which was produced by Bardales. That same year, the "american beauty" singer gained recognition for her first collab with Kehlani in 2015, a cover of Drake's "Preach."

She's also collabed with the Glitch Mob, TOKiMONSTA, Keys N Krates and Ryan Hemsworth, and co-written music on H.E.R.'s GRAMMY-winning self-titled mixtape. After signing to Roc Nation in 2019, she released her major label debut project, the Pulp EP, in November 2019, followed by Pulp (Director's Cut) this past July 31.

Quarantine Diaries: Ambré

In the latest episode of GRAMMY.com's Quarantine Diaries series (watch above), the "fubu" singer brings us along for a productive day working on music and enjoying good company (her brother and Bardales) and good food while staying in her hometown of New Orleans.

"You gotta figure out new ways to live life, and it's making me a better person. As messed up as the circumstances are, you can always find the good," Ambré says in the video.

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