CoSigns takes a monthly plunge into the world of music discovery, profiling five artists that you absolutely need to know about before everyone else does.
“Most of the musicians I know in NYC have serious record contracts, which is definitely not the case in any other city,” says Elizabeth Skadden of the buzzy, brain-rattling no wave quartet WALL. Her underlying point is twofold: Talent isn’t hard to come by in New York City, which also means it’s not easy for bands like hers to stand out from the crowd.
That’s why we’re excited to bring our local focus to New York for this month’s edition of CoSigns. We sent our team out to the five boroughs (and beyond) to dig up the city’s most promising young acts, and they returned with a list of artists that reflects New York’s reputation as the world’s wildest melting pot. The acts we’ve chosen to highlight — Sunflower Bean, Xenia Rubinos, Big Thief, LVL UP, and WALL — are by turns strange and brilliant, but they’re never anything less than original. In a city of more than eight million, that’s quite the accomplishment.
–Collin Brennan
Associate Editor
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Sunflower Bean
By Lior Phillips
Photo by Crista Simiriglia
When I get in touch with Sunflower Bean, they’re “someplace that starts with a G.” We narrow it down to a city in the Netherlands, the next stop on their tour after playing in Shanghai and Beijing. The New York trio don’t sound one bit overwhelmed by time zones or time lost, despite their youth.
There’s something crippling about the term “psych rock” plastered on an up-and-coming band, though the ability to tap into generations of explorative and confident inspiration fits Sunflower Bean perfectly. Beyond their physical travels, they’re also working toward the next step following their dreamy, yet muscular debut, Human Ceremony. After years of proving themselves in the crowded New York scene, vocalist Julia Cumming, drummer Jacob Faber, and guitarist Nick Kivlen are ready to grow even further into their own.
You’ve been touring all over the world lately, but is there any moment where you go, “OK, I think we need a little bit of perspective”? I’m sure a lot of people want to know how the touring is going, but I’m fascinated by the times between the touring. Like chatting to me now, or taking a break and having a coffee. People take those little moments for granted. Do you feel like you’ve had time to catch a breath?
Julia Cumming: You’re in this exceptional situation, but we still haven’t had that much time to relax. This morning we had a nice breakfast, and we all took long showers. You have to take what you can get and put a little effort into trying to see the cities that you’re in. That’s a constant thing. When you have the privilege of doing something you love as your job, you just have to balance it. Even sometimes when I’m about to perform, I find myself thinking about stupid stuff, like, if my outfit looks OK, or if I’d brushed my teeth that morning, even though I should be more in the moment. It’s always something to think about.
Do you feel like the performance becomes second nature? Do all those little peripheral things, like “Did I put deodorant on? Did I wash my underwear?”, pop up because touring and performing have become totally natural? Or do you still get up on the stage and get a little bit jarred because you’re sharing your personal lives and creativity with the world?
Jacob Faber: It’s a very strange life we lead, this touring. It’s weird when your mind wanders. In the middle of a song, my mind will go to some crazy thing, like, Oh, I hope the food will be good on our next flight. Sometimes playing a set, at least for me, is when my mind can wander and think about things in a weird space.
Cumming: Because you’re meditating into it, right?
Faber: Oh yeah, completely.
Cumming: Our set is also largely improvised, so I think because of that we’re never doing the same thing, and every time you see us it’s going to be a little different, which I think is fun.
Faber: Yeah, it makes it hard to form habits, which I think as human beings you want to do. I think as a touring band, it’s probably good that even though it might be easier sometimes, it keeps you on your toes and ready for the unexpected.
And you can create a world that you can improvise in. Do you ever feel like an impostor? What was happening when you thought, “OK, I can’t believe this is actually my life. I’ve just gone to Asia, I’m now in the Netherlands, I’m moving over to the next country tomorrow”?
Cumming: You have to make a lot of peace with things, especially with what we do … we’re not Justin Bieber.
You’re not!?
Cumming: I hate to tell you the truth! There’s this story I tell sometimes where our last big hometown show we did in New York City was at Bowery Ballroom, a legendary venue, and we had never headlined there. It sold out before the show, and all our friends and family were there. It was this really personal moment of “Yes! We’re doing something. We’ve made it in our own little personal way.” But then the next night we were getting paid a little more money than usual to play at a frat party at Dartmouth. So, we do this big show where we’re like, “Aww, we’re on top of our little world we made for ourselves,” and the next night we’re playing an ice-cold dead-of-winter frat house, a fight breaks out upstairs, and everyone goes up there to watch the fight, and I swear to god we played to not one single person. The next night … like six hours away. We’re still working our way up, so we don’t get a big head. Every great show is a gift, and every not so great show is a …
Faber: A really great gift.
Do you feel that while you’re touring and playing you figure out little nuances of what you were originally writing about? Or are you still figuring out what the hell you were thinking when you wrote them? I’m wondering if songs evolve.
Cumming: Something about Sunflower Bean is that it’s not a one-person band. It has a lot of our own styles and flavors, which I think is one of the reasons people call it so many different things because we’re all influenced by so many different things. Sometimes when you write a song and it goes out into the world, it doesn’t exactly belong to you anymore, and the world puts its own meaning on it. I think songs constantly change. And even sometimes when you make it, you don’t fully understand. Maybe it’s different for other people, but that’s what I find. You know what you’re going for and then you realize once it’s done what other people said it means to you, based on a time, or a feeling, and all these different things. I wouldn’t necessarily say that playing the songs live adds that dimension, but I think just as far as songwriting that’s something we’ve experienced.
And how covering certain songs would allow the music to take on a new life. I believe you have a covers EP coming out soon? I read an article the other day about how people think Trent Reznor did a cover of Johnny Cash’s “Hurt”, instead. Apparently, Reznor felt that it was invasive in the way Cash took that song, jumped inside of it, wrapped himself around it, and that was it. It became his. I feel like so many people take covers for granted, and it really is such a brilliant exchange for two artists or two bands. Were you nervous to cover songs that you found inspiring?
Cumming: The covers EP is interesting. There are very few of them being made, but I think it’s something for the fans and a little supplemental piece for the album. We made it when we had Rough Trade Album of the Month, and it was a little bonus CD that we recorded in our basement, actually. It’s a little special thing that shows a little bit more of who we are and our influences. It’s got “Life’s a Gas” by T. Rex, “Old World” by Jonathan Richman, “Shine a Light” by Spiritualized, and “Harvest Moon” by Neil Young, which is kind of out of left field. It was one of my favorite songs at the time.
Kivlen: Yeah, I mean there’s definitely the element of wanting to do a good job and make it a cover with some sort of purpose. We picked the songs basically just out of personal preference. We just picked songs that meant something to us instead of picking something that we wanted to radically have a vision of reforming.
Cumming: Yeah, I think with covers there’s a pressure. The EP is called From the Basement, and I think our stance was just, “This is us, this is Sunflower Bean covering their favorite songs, in their space where they write all their songs, in the space where they still practice.” Our home space.
Kivlen: Yeah, it’s not like we took “Harvest Moon” and did it as an industrial.
Cumming: That’s our next EP, just doing “Harvest Moon” a bunch of different ways.
Faber: We did songs that we knew we wouldn’t totally fuck up.
Kivlen: I have the opposite opinion. I think that nothing is too sacred. You can try your hand at anything. Who gives a fuck? People don’t have to listen to it. I don’t want to do anything that’s shit, but if you do one thing that people hate, it’s OK.
Cumming: I do agree with you. Rock music first and foremost is about going out there and doing it.
Yeah, but there’s something in that. Your music allows people to listen, interpret it, and then shove whatever their opinion of you is onto you. I just hate that people are just summing you up as psych rock, as I think there’s a grace to your music that supersedes it.
Kivlen: I’ve grown to hate the term psych rock. To us, psych rock sort of just means creativity. So if things aren’t a little weird or you haven’t heard it before, then what is it? There’s plenty of rock bands that play straight-ahead rock songs with power chords, and if something happens that’s just a little bit off the course, then it’s psych rock or prog rock. I think all music should be a little bit progressive.
Xenia Rubinos
By Nina Corcoran
No city in America can claim to be a melting pot the way New York City can. It’s spilling over with natives and tourists, newborns and three-digit elders, and nearly every race in the world — granted, having eight million people makes diversity a bit easier. That active aversion to homogeneity makes for a music scene as vibrant as its people, but, unfortunately, it can divide itself into roped-off sections at times too, especially in Brooklyn. Xenia Rubinos actively challenges that.
The Greenpoint musician diversifies the traditional expectations of Latin music. With two albums under her belt, the latest of which is this year’s excellent Black Terry Cat, Rubinos blasts through genres, tugging on pop melodies while rhythm-heavy beats drive her music. Above it all, her voice slinks around, acting as a versatile instrument full of staccatos and smooth notes.
Born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, Rubinos holed up in Barnes & Noble to learn about music, the state’s limited culture preventing her from discovering the vast sea of sounds present. “It’s very oppressed, culturally,” she says over a quiet lunch in Brooklyn. “There’s just malls, like straight up. And even there you’re really oppressed because everyone looks the same, everyone wears the same thing.”
It wasn’t until she moved to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music that Rubinos began learning about ways of performing she hadn’t considered. From the wails of Charles Mingus to the peculiar sounds of Bjork, Rubinos found herself infatuated with musicians who broke away from the norm. She pushed boundaries on her debut LP, Magic Trix, in 2012, but it wasn’t until Black Terry Cat that she found her footing.
From the fuzzed-out bass of “Just Like I” to the flawless vocals of “Lonely Lover”, Xenia Rubinos is pushing her music to embody the spirit of New York City’s melting-pot culture, even if it took six straight months of work in the studio to get there. “I used to feel like recording was like going to the dentist. It’s like you have to do it, it’s really good for you, and at the end of it your teeth are clean, but I would dread it,” she explains. “But now I can’t wait to go back.”
Have you noticed over the course of your career that the type of people who listen to you represent the diversity within your music?
I was just talking with a friend the other day about that because he asked who my fans were. He thought they were all just random weirdos. I’m trying to visualize this audience that’s diverse in culture, in social scene, in age, and it’s starting to happen. At my release show here, I walked out and I was like, “Wait. This is that crowd!” Gay, straight, young, older, black, white, Latino, Asian — everybody was present and that felt really good. That doesn’t happen as much as you would think it does, at all, ever, anywhere, but even in New York where you think it’s diverse, that doesn’t really happen.
Can you think of a song on Black Terry Cat where you wanted to dive into a different sound?
“See Them” is one of my favorite songs on the record and is somewhat of a B-side. I wanted it to sound like a collage, like an adventure that would bring the listener through different parts. I was listening to Kanye at the time and Yeezus, thinking about maximalism. He over-imposes all this stuff that doesn’t belong there, where you’re listening to the song and all of the sudden everything stops and something completely unexpected happens, but makes sense even though it sounds completely unrelated. So in “See Them”, there are explosions that are so much louder than everything else and over-imposed on the whole mix.
I tried to vary my voices on “I Won’t Say”, too. It was speaking, not really rapping, but a fast pace to make it sound like different versions of me. I became my own hype girl [Laughs]. That was the first time I tried — like really tried — to be specific with my lyrics. It was still stream of consciousness, but I was rhyming to myself about being self-obsessed, a bit like selfie culture: What do I expect myself to look like and how do others see me? You get lost, ironically, in how you look at yourself.
What’s your stance on selfies?
It’s weird. I still don’t understand it. But I totally do it. I take selfies, I post selfies, I like looking at people’s faces. It’s cool to be able to create this archive, like this documentation of everything that you do at every moment, you kind of just flip through your Instagram and see all the stuff that you did that year or something and it’s kind of cool in a way, but you know, we’re also all putting up what we think is the best version of ourselves at all times. It’s a persona; it’s not really you, and I’ll never really know who you are and what you look like from your selfies. I won’t know much — I’ll know what you’re telling me, so it’s kind of like this fake reality. We’re all obsessed with this voyeuristic task of watching everybody doing what they do.
Do you think there’s a difference between a picture of yourself in general versus a selfie?
Yeah, for sure, because the picture is how someone else saw you, and a selfie is how you wanna see yourself. We all see each other in different ways. I’ll never know how you see me, and you’ll never know how I see you, you know? The eyes that we look with are totally different.
What about control on the stage? How does that, or a lack thereof, change your performance?
Things are gonna go wrong. If things don’t go wrong, then your set may be lacking adventure. Try to keep a lightness about you, because it’s all about your perspective and where your brain is, where you’re at, where your thinking is, where your soul is at. If you drag yourself — and obviously I’m speaking from experience here — then that interrupts your progress and interrupts what you’re going to do next. I learned a lot from going on tour and opening for a lot of bands, getting to witness how other people deal with problems on the road. I opened for Battles, and basically their whole vibe is like, “Shit’s gonna go wrong pretty much every night,” because what they’re doing is a very high-risk situation. During the first song of the set, Ian — the guitarist and keyboardist — saw that his keyboard stopped working, and he was just cool as a cucumber about it. He just sort of played the line on another instrument. Having grace like that is something I’m working on. Shit’s gonna happen, so you gotta just keep moving.
Big Thief
By Mandy Freebairn
Photo by Nina Corcoran
When I spoke to Big Thief’s songwriter and guitarist Adrianne Lenker, she and her bandmates had just returned from a hiking trip through the mountains of northern Italy. This may be their first venture across the Atlantic, but the members of Big Thief are no strangers to travel. The Brooklyn indie rockers have kept busy since the release of their debut album, Masterpiece, following up a spring tour with Yuck with a smattering of shows and festival appearances. “I’ve started thinking of being on the road as being home for now,” Lenker reflects.
Lenker acknowledges that the album’s title may come across as self-aggrandizing, but if Big Thief is looking to create a true masterpiece, their debut is certainly a step in the right direction. Masterpiece is a delicate balance of raw vulnerability and thoughtful reflection, vacillating between the electric guitar catharsis of “Real Love” and quieter songs like “Randy”, whose soft melodies spotlight the narrative lyrics.
Some of this is obviously influenced by Lenker’s solo work, as well as a series of collaborations she did with guitarist Buck Meek (also a member of Big Thief). In these earlier projects, Meek’s gentle vocal harmonies and twin acoustic guitars underscore Lenker’s ever-poetic lyrics. The songs are beautiful, but they lack a sonic edge to complement the emotional intensity of their subject matter. Lenker and Meek found this element in Big Thief, with the addition of bassist Max Oleartchik and drummer James Krivchenia. The result is a fuller and more diverse sound that sets Big Thief apart from their coffee-shop counterparts. Now, when Lenker sings, “Real love makes your lungs black,” a thumping drum and electric guitar help punctuate her declaration.
If Masterpiece is any indication, there’s a lot in store for Big Thief in both the near and distant future. Some of it may be uncomfortable, like saying goodbye to their van, Bonnie (“She’s an old lady … we retired her”). Most of it, however, will likely resemble their music: adventurous, emotionally charged, and always getting better.
You’ve been all over the country this summer and are now embarking on your first European tour. Do you think the shift to more frequent touring will affect your songwriting?
In the past, I’ve found it a lot easier to write when I’m in one place for a long period of time. I like to be alone. But I’m finding that I’ve been learning how to adapt to writing on the road. It’s kind of intuitive to me since I’m around people all the time. I think probably the writing is being affected by everything all the time. Definitely travelling often affects it, and just the people we meet along the way. And I’m not sure if the style itself is evolving because of being on the road, but I don’t know. I’m sure everything plays into it.
You mentioned your songwriting process being kind of solitary, but the album seems fairly biographical at times — there are songs about specific people, a song called “Humans”, a baby’s voice at the end of the song “Interstate”. Can you talk a bit about the experiences that drove this theme?
For this album, the songs were written and gathered over the course of maybe three years, from just after moving to New York up until we recorded it a year ago. Naturally, there are relationships and things that made their way into my subconscious and my psyche over those years, and most of the songs were just ways of processing what everything meant. “Randy,” for instance, is not necessarily about someone named Randy. It’s a lot broader. That song started out being written from a dog’s perspective. I was looking into the lonely whimpering eyes of a dog that I was living with, and I was thinking what it would feel like to coexist with people that don’t speak your language and to never be able to say anything… But as I was writing, it grew past that. It was just the seed that started the whole song, and then it could be about being trapped in your own mind, or being physically trapped.
The album is called Masterpiece. What’s an album you’d consider a masterpiece?
One Quiet Night by Pat Metheny. Tusk by Fleetwood Mac. The name Masterpiece, though, it sounds bold. When I was choosing the name for the album, I definitely knew that some people would take it as kind of a conceited decision. But if you listen to the song “Masterpiece”, it’s meant to be eventually grasped that it’s not meaning masterpiece in the sense that you might take it. It’s in a different sense, like the song. Because there’s a long way to go, I hope, as a band from here. This is just a starting point.
What’s one thing you want listeners to take away from Masterpiece?
I want the listeners to know that I care about them, I guess. And that I hope it means something; that it somehow makes them feel a little less alone.
LVL UP
By David Sackllah
Photo by Shawn Brackbill
LVL UP is ready to make some noise. The Brooklyn-based indie rock quartet have built a devout following after years of stellar EPs led to Hoodwink’d, their 2014 breakthrough album. Hoodwink’d revealed a band with a clear appreciation for indie rock history, echoing the atmospheric lo-fi of Microphones and Sebadoh and even going as far as name-checking Silver Jews on highlight “I Feel Extra Natural”. While they’ve explored different sides of indie rock before, on their upcoming Sub Pop debut, Return to Love, they’ve finally let it rip.
On lead single “Pain”, LVL UP excises demons in a cathartic composition that envisions vengeance for a victim of abuse. Guitarist Mike Caridi’s songwriting is personal but not too specific. “I will watch from my widow, painting reveries of his pain,” he calmly states, before directing the vitriol directly towards the abuser: “I hope you grow old and never find love.” Those last three words repeat for a full minute as thundering guitars erupt in an unhinged display of force.
The band’s versatility is due in part to the fact that Caridi, guitarist Dave Benton, and bassist Nick Corbo all take turns writing songs, weaving disparate styles into one cohesive sound that seems to run the gauntlet of ‘90s indie rock influences. Songs like “The Closing Door” explode with Mascis-sounding guitar solos, while single “Hidden Driver” readily recalls the melodies of Jeff Mangum. The band have a penchant for dry wit, but they’ve shifted to a sense of sentimentality and appreciation for the natural and spiritual. Awe-invoking images of rivers, ridges, and clouds pervade the record.
By turning up the amps and sharply executing a more raucous style, LVL UP have set themselves apart in the current climate of indie rock. It may have taken years for the group to steadily grow into the sprawling ambition of Return to Love, but that workmanlike drive has paid off.
Did you go into Return to Love with the intention of making a heavier-sounding, sprawling album?
Nick Corbo: It was more of a person-by-person basis as far as the songwriting goes, and anything that happens across songwriters is kind of a coincidence. It’s a product of being around each other and sharing the same influences. I don’t remember the exact moment, but a couple of years ago everyone started using more pedals. Mike got a fuzz pedal, then Dave got a fuzz pedal, then I did, and we realized we had the opportunity to make these sounds. It started organically, and then we realized we had that sound palette at our disposal, and at least personally, I think we all really like it. A lot of the music we listen to is super fuzzy and distorted. I’ve been listening to a lot of heavy doom metal, which sounds so fun to make. I’m obviously not in a doom band, and I’m probably not ever going to be in a doom band, but it’s fun to experiment with that and see how you can incorporate it into your own sound.
Certain moments recall recent albums by The Men or Milk Music, bands that filter influences from older eras through a modern lens. What specifically were you listening to that may have influenced Return to Love?
Mike Caridi: I was listening to a lot of our friends’ bands at the time. I was listening to a lot of Frankie Cosmos, Ovlov, and other contemporary bands. I was also listening to Benji by Sun Kil Moon a lot. Nick, what were you listening to?
Corbo: I feel like I’m going to show my hand, but I was listening to so much Mount Eerie, and I think it’s pretty apparent in the record. That led to listening to other Pacific Northwest bands. I’ve been listening to a lot of Wolves in the Throne Room, which is super metal, but also atmospheric. I was listening to a ton of Alex G, wanting to make something like that. “Five Men on the Ridge” is a pretty good example of what I’m talking about, where it was so clearly a Mount Eerie/Microphones-inspired type of situation that goes directly into something that I think sounds like Alex G, as well. It’s important for us to mix and match stuff.
There’s a big focus on spirituality throughout the record, as well as nature and the outdoors. What’s your fascination with that earthy approach to songwriting?
Caridi: A lot of the nature imagery does come from listening to a lot of bands that talk about this, like how Mount Eerie or Microphones are really nature-centric projects. But also, Nick and I grew up in very rural parts of the country where we were constantly surrounded by nature, and those experiences have been reflected in our music.
Corbo: I don’t want to speak for others, but I’m really interested in fantasy. Especially in Japanese fantasy, there is a nature-centric, kind of spiritual theme going on. There’s a focus on some sort of mystery that you don’t fully understand, something else beyond you. It’s not necessarily any sort of religious thing, but there is this feeling of something more than you that you can’t comprehend. There’s something powerful about those images, being out in the middle of nowhere. It comes from traveling a lot, too, and seeing different landscapes. We live in the city, and there’s this idea of being in some massive naturescape that speaks to me much more than an urban environment.
WALL
By Sonia Vavra
Photo by James Andrew Ridle
Raised by hippies in Texas, WALL bassist Elizabeth Skadden spent much of her early life pursuing artistic endeavors. “I rolled around through four different cities working in film, art, TV, and music and having weird experiences,” she recalls. “I went to Auschwitz with The Flaming Lips once, unexpectedly.” She ended up in Berlin for a while before moving to New York City and forming WALL. “I had felt so isolated and sad without a music community,” she remembers of those Berlin years. “I just wanted to be in a band again and work collectively.”
Skadden eventually got together with drummer Vanessa Gomez, who joined WALL with a completely blank slate. “I didn’t really know how to play drums when we started,” she admits, “so that was step one for me.”
Together with guitarist Vince McClelland and vocalist Sam York, they have created an awe-inspiring example of how New York’s modern punk scene has not only stuck to its roots, but added new layers to them. Punk music has always been about going against the norm, but WALL have taken it a step beyond that, merging their diverse backgrounds to create a musical experience all their own.
As a modern punk band living in a city with such a rich history in punk music, do you think you follow the same anti-mainstream motives that fueled the punk movement back in the day?
Elizabeth Skadden: I’m probably more influenced by the no wave scene from NYC: Suicide, DNA, Ut, and Come On. This music was truly difficult while a lot of ‘77 punk still retains guitar solos and other ’70s trappings. In general, women didn’t have a big part in ‘77 punk in NYC and were pretty sexualized, which turned me off a bit. I think I always gravitated more to music from Europe from this time. Bands like Lilliput, The Slits, Fuzzbox, and Malaria included more women who were sometimes true freaks. These bands taught me that all bets were off.
Vanessa Gomez: What I’ve always gained from punk music growing up was the urge to just be myself. Punk music encouraged me to figure out who I am, to embrace that person, and to never be afraid to express myself. I guess that could include expression against the mainstream and conformity when it negatively affects society. But for me, punk culture has had a deeper, more positive effect throughout my life. It’s where I found my identity, passion, confidence, and courage at an early formative age.
Vince McClelland: When you get in the room to write, you rarely think about what has come before you, historically. There is a character of NY that is always present when writing in NY, I think. You can only be influenced by your surroundings. Seeing a guy jam two fingers down his throat and barf into a trash can as you step off the A train is about as typical a day as it gets for me. So there is something to be said, maybe, about this city’s influence on the music [more] than the other way around.
What were you doing before WALL, and do you think that’s helped form your places not only as members in the band, but also as a punk band today?
Skadden: I had a band called Finally Punk for four years, made music videos, and toured with the band No Age doing live visuals for their shows. I exposed myself to artists and art of all backgrounds and levels, so I now have a pretty clear vision of what I’m creating and a good understanding of how people work together to create. This seeking of the unknown leads me to continually try to break the expected when creating music with WALL.
Gomez: WALL is my first band. I’ve always hoped that my rudimentary drumming skills and lack of music theory knowledge would bring a unique perspective to this project that allows us to think outside the box. And help us explore beyond the confines of what has been traditionally learned and widely practiced ad nauseam. I [also] work as a studio manager for a photographer by day. There are definitely useful tools that I’ve gained from my professional life that have carried over into my musical career. For instance, I love managing the band calendar, answering emails, budgeting, making a plan, etc. I’ve always been the band’s administrative assistant, and I have loved every minute of those moments. Who says punks can’t be well-organized, efficient communicators?
Obviously women have played a large part in punk history; having the band consist of mostly women, do you feel as though you’re playing tribute to that, or even that you’re adding to the narrative that’s been playing out since then?
Skadden: It seems like maybe it’s no longer revolutionary to have a band that’s all women or mostly women, which is a big positive shift in our culture. I’ve lived my life as a 24/7 Bechdel test, and it’s great to be able to be more interested in the world around me as it starts to line up with my need to hear from women at least half as much as I hear from men. WALL is just more fuel to this fourth-wave feminist movement we are in, and I’m happy to take part. Bring on Hillary!
Gomez: My favorite bands usually consist of mostly women in their lineup. But I don’t think I was consciously choosing to make WALL predominantly women. It just happened that way. Kathleen Hanna and the women of Stereolab saved my life as a teenager. I’d like to think everything I do in my musical career is a homage to them and all female musicians who came before me. Because for 15 years, I wanted to play drums. And although I knew I could … a part of me was afraid to say it out loud. I’m embarrassed to admit, but I worried that people wouldn’t take me seriously because of my gender and my petite physique. It’s because of Bikini Kill, The Raincoats, Suzi Quatro, Stereolab, Suzy Quintanilla, many others … that I felt comfortable enough to give it a shot.
McClelland: When we make songs, there’s certainly an aspect of what this group or that group do. At the end of the day, the battle is an internal one and what we’re saying is important to us as people first. Of course, it’s easy to say that being a guy, but I think we just try to please ourselves first. There’s not really any drive to make female-oriented music any more than a band of dudes sets out to make dude music. You just want to connect with someone or anyone!
What’s your next goal for the band?
Skadden: Just to finish the LP. It’s been a loooooooong trip.
Gomez: I think we’re all pretty wiped out from all the positive and exciting attention we’ve experienced so early on as a new band. After a jam-packed year of playing live shows nonstop … we’re definitely taking a big step back to focus on finishing our first LP. We’ve been playing these songs for a year now and can’t wait to finally share them with the world beyond NYC. It’ll be released on Wharf Cat Records. Keep an eye out for more details when a release date is announced soon. And from there, who knows. Maybe I’ll finally learn how to count music.
Do you think that being in New York City, one of the biggest cities in the music industry, influences your music in any ways?
Skadden: I wonder if NYC influencing the sound of music might have been more true pre-internet, when each city was its own island … Most of the musicians I know in NYC have serious record contracts, which is definitely not the case in any other city in the US. There’s a real reach for bands here as New York spits its culture to the rest of the universe.
Gomez: NYC is oftentimes a gritty, jarring whirlwind of a city. Most of my senses get overstimulated and/or offended at some point during each day. I definitely do think that comes through in the aesthetic of our music. But I’m not sure how intentional that has always been on our part. The struggle of living here is sometimes the subject matter for our lyrics. And so maybe in a way, this band has been a sort of therapy for dealing with our daily lives here. But hey, anything worth doing is hard. “The hard is what makes it great.” A little Tom Hanks quote for y’all.
McClelland: Yes. The main performer, I think, in all of our music is the city. How could it not be?
