Embracing Cringe with Frost Children
What’re your thoughts on the balance of persona and outward facing image with also being vulnerable, and earnest, and trying to capture something that is actually true to yourselves?
Lulu 一 I feel like my relationship with how serious and how goofy I am is a spectrum. It’s always a blank canvas for anything that we’re working on. So, by the end of a track, it will just be somewhere in that spectrum of goofy, and really emotional, and pits of my heart. I think it’s also really fluid now because I don’t really feel scared of being vulnerable when it’s just Angel and I writing together. And we’re already goofing around on any given beat anyway, so sometimes it’s a mixture of both. It all just kind of flows together in the moment.
Angel 一 I feel like Lulu and I approach writing as kind of character based. Not fully random characters that we’re thinking of, but they’re sort of exaggerated forms of ourselves. And we love to play with voices for those characters - like a baby voice, or an emo voice, or a growly, or bitchy sort of self-obsessed voice. And they’re all sides of ourselves. But I think the way that we intonate that as character versions of ourselves is something that we love to do. In “Harp & Pony” that character is this sort of an exaggerated version of me that’s just like, “I just want things. I want material things, and if you give them to me then I’ll be loyal to you.” You know, it's this pretty girl character that's just like, “give me jewels, and give me a harp and a pony.” And, you know, I don't outwardly feel that way about everything, but sometimes I'm like, “I just want stuff. Whoever can give it to me, you’re mine forever, and I’m yours forever.” And the way that it’s delivered in that song reflects that character that’s an exaggerated form of myself.
I feel like wanting attention doesn’t always come from a needy place. Listening to the song, it doesn't seem like a selfish or demanding thing. It's kind of just like, everyone deserves a lot of affection.
Angel 一 I think that's a good point. I think that the overall tone of the narrator in that song is trying to invite being gifted things because they're so cute and pretty. And it’s like, “how could you not give me stuff?” Rather than being like, “give me stuff.”
How’d the video come about?
Angel 一 We were going out to L.A. a couple months ago. Our friend Sarah Ritter, who’s made some videos for Blake and some other friends, she’s amazing - one of the best artists in L.A. right now. She assembled this crazy team of a DP, and props, and got a set. We were between “Fox Bop” and “Harp & Pony.” It just felt right for “Harp & Pony.” The ideas of the imagery; the props; the sort of magicalness.
Lulu 一 It was definitely the first time we just pulled up to it and they had a concept already, but it still felt like our music video and they were open to whatever we wanted to do. It was one of the most fun days ever. We just got to hold this epic sword in the mountains.
Angel 一 And bounce around the hills on this ranch in Malibu in these human-sized hamster balls. It was just pure joy. It matched the vibe of the song: fast, and cute, and contained - but fantasizing; wanting to conjure things. It makes me want to make more high-budget videos.
Lulu 一 For a while, it was just us filming each other. It was so DIY - just on our iPhone filming. The first couple videos neither of us are in the same shot at the same time because we were just passing the phone because we couldn’t film each other at the same time.
Angel 一 I’m excited to work on projects where we plan stuff. I’ve learned a lot through Blake and other people in New York of sitting down, and making plans to meet, and talk about shooting something or making something. And having a plan. And I think “Harp & Pony” is a really cool first offering of what we can do when we plan - when we try a little extra hard. And there’s a bunch of stuff that we’re working on right now that’s a ton of work. And also collaborating with people visually is something that we’re kind of new to.
Lulu 一 Also, going back to what we were just talking about with characters: we had a session actually the other day with this amazing artist. We were probably in here for ten hours, and made all these different ideas, and it was such a good combination of voices. We had so many different character voices throughout that night. At the end of the day, we were just listening back, and I was just like, “I don’t even know who’s who.”
Angel 一 Yeah. It sounds like there’s 10 people in the session or something.
Lulu 一 Yeah. It’s like when you see a voice actor at a comic con that’s doing those voices on stage and switching between them. I feel like it’s totally like that sometimes - where it’s different characters in the song just talking. Sometimes they’re true to something that we’re actually connecting with, or it’s just a fictional voice that we’re messing with.
Angel 一 Yeah. We’ve been obsessed with this video of a guy singing “Memories” by Maroon 5 in all the characters of Family Guy. And I didn’t really think about the connection between that and our art, but maybe it has to do something like that.
Lulu 一 If there’s any takeaway from this interview it’s to listen to that. Listen at double speed too.
Do you have a theater background, or anything like that, in terms of characters? Or can you think of a time when that might have started to become important to you, or why you might resonate with that?
Angel 一 I don't have any theater background. We both went to the same high school, and it was very sports centered at the school. There wasn't really much in the arts, music, theater, or visual arts. And I was just so scared to be like a theater kid - like, labeled as that. So, I didn't really engage in proper theater actually ever, a single time.
Lulu 一 I was in the pit band for theater all throughout high school. I was the drummer backstage. So, I met the theater kids, but I wasn’t a theater kid.
Angel 一 I feel like we like explored theater in different ways growing up. And at the age where I would have started engaging with theater, I became really embarrassed easily. I didn't want to take risks. We talk about this a lot. We missed out on a lot of key high school experiences because our school was kind of horrible. It makes everything so fresh now, and I like exploring new things. It's like exploring things for the first time, and adds to a goofiness and silliness.
Lulu 一 With the characters and the theatrical-ness of it, I think it's because like we grew up together, and just consumed so much content - of movies, cartoons, and music. Every kind of music; every different scene, and subscene, of exploring music together. We have that to reference at any given moment. And we can go into all these things together because we can read each other so well.
Angel 一 Yeah. I think a lot of it is early YouTube content creators that feel niche, maybe - like this guy “MysteryGuitarMan,” who would splice up playing different notes together visually, and it’d be a symphony of guitars. People like that were who we connected to growing up. I never really did the theater thing though. I kind of want to do acting though, at some point. Living in New York there’s so many friends of friends that are making films and stuff.
You mentioned that you used to be easily embarrassed in the past. How do you feel like you got to the point of feeling comfortable being more uninhibited and expressive?
Lulu 一 There’s definitely a hump that we both equally had to get over in college. We went to college in different cities, but at the same time we were working on music on our own, and we were both in dorms. I feel like a lot of people have that experience of sinking into your shell, and not wanting anyone else to hear you. I was kind of in that for a while. I would just wait till all my roommates were gone. Even in high school, I’d wait till my parents would go out, or go in the basement. I think when covid first hit, and we both moved back to St. Louis, we didn’t really have any friends to hang out with, so we were just always together downstairs. We were just kind of going insane, and I think that’s when it started for me. I was just like, “I’m going to stop trying to be so serious around people when I’m trying to really make this whimsical stuff.” I think that’s when it flipped.
Angel 一 Yeah, I think what I realized is there’s nothing really to lose by going over the top - by playing a little bit too many shows, or going a little bit too loud, or overperforming on stage, or doing too much. It’s more excusable than being lackluster and blank. To me, I’m making a career as an artist - I’d rather just go all out. Also, I think us being siblings, there’s a comfort level between us. And kind of no risks. I could say an idea for a lyric that’s the dumbest fucking thing that’s ever been said ever, and I don’t have to worry about Lulu being like, “I don’t know about Angel… that song fucking sucked.”
Lulu 一 It’s dope to be cringed out. That’s another thing: embracing your cringe. If you think about it, it’s honestly so zen. Because you are doing the things that you’re doing wholeheartedly, and then it’s up to everyone else to react to that. You can at least walk away from whatever you do knowing that you did it wholly, and you can’t go down from there. For example, when I was staying at the dorms, I would just scream really loudly right before I was starting to record, just so I would freak out everyone around me through the walls. To just be like, “alright, I can’t get any crazier than that. I already told y’all I’m crazy.” I learned that from my friend John.
Angel 一 Embracing cringe is in. Seeing your mind, and experiencing your inner self. That’s what meditation is. Everyone’s cringe.
Lulu 一 That’s a really good mantra. “The zen of cringe.”
To me, it sort of reads similarly to “radical honesty.” When people express themselves in that way, it obviously makes other people be like, “oh yeah, that’s what everyone wants to do, and what the impulse is, but you just conceal it.” I feel like the more you offer vulnerability, the more it opens up space for that, or influences more of it.
Angel 一 I have a good example of that. Season 3, episode 3 of SpongeBob. “Just One Bite,” it’s called. And it’s where Squidward admits that he’s never tried a Krabby Patty. So, SpongeBob gets him to try one, and he becomes obsessed with it. But that lowers him down to the masses. You know, everyone likes Krabby Patties, and he’s like, “now so do I.” But he can’t admit it to himself. He can’t admit it to the world. And that would be cringe. He would be one with the people that he used to cringe at. And in the end, it’s like he finds that being radically honest and being like I love Krabby Patties is the most self-actualizing thing.
In terms of trends, how do you navigate the trendiness of certain music, versus just being focused on what you naturally want to make?
Lulu 一 I feel like it’s all cosplay whenever we embrace or engage in any of that. We’re DJing in Times Square later today. And I’m like, “that’s cosplay.”
Angel 一 I think it’s about keeping the beginners mindset. Being able to operate within a scene. As much as people are like, “that place is too sceney, this gig is too sceney” - music is community. Community is what makes life dope. So, I love to engage in the scene, but there definitely is a point where that can overshadow the music. Not becoming too swept up in the details, or the gossips, or the drama, or the trends. And not trying to label the trends too much. I think when you pay too much attention to what you don’t want to make, I think that gets you too much in a place where you don’t want to make a mistake, or you want to stay in your lane, and not make a mistake. I’d rather make a song that’s extremely zeitgeisty, and not offering anything new, rather than not make anything at all.
What were your separate experiences with music before you decided to work together?
Angel 一 We started producing probably around the same time. Our older brother taught us FL Studio. Started making beats. I was actually just listening to them yesterday because they’re still on Soundcloud. And I was like, “damn, I had ideas.”
Lulu 一 Angel was making club music. And I was making future bass dubstep. We had our own little things.
Angel 一 We kind of started there. Lulu was getting really good at dubstep production and that world. I was exploring other things. I started making trap and lo-fi hip-hop at one point. And then I came to New York [for college], and I was like, “actually, fuck all of that.” I was like, “I want to be in a band.” Like, “rock music is the future. Playing instruments.” You know? And then I was in a band literally up until the pandemic started, and then going back home to Lulu, and revisiting all of those different genres that I experimented with, I was like, “wait, you can do it all.” You don’t have to choose one thing. It’s a ridiculous thing to think about now, when I was like, “I have to be this one thing forever.” It’s like, “no, you don’t.”
Lulu 一 We have our community here that we all support each other, and help each other, and are part of it together, but we all let each other do our own thing. We can kind of go in between different styles, and play different crowds, while also being in the same scene. It’s a lot more and freeing and open.
Angel 一 That’s what’s so cool about the New York music scene. If you go to a show, you can fully expect every artist to sound really different. I think that’s really cool, and doesn’t really happen in a lot of places.
How would you describe “Frost Children” in your own words?
Lulu 一 I think Frost Children is a documentation of the way Angel and I bond.
Angel 一 Frost Children I would describe as breathing and pure expression.
Is there anything else you want to mention?
Lulu - The next year’s going to be a lot of stuff.
Angel - Yeah. Just a lifetime of exploration. And breathing; and expression in its many forms; and community in its many forms. Online, in person. This is all we do, so a lot of stuff is going to happen. We have so many plans, and hopefully it’ll all be bigger than music too and the way that we express things will grow from music to ways that haven’t even been ways for us to express things before.
Oh, I also wanted you to talk more about meditation.
Angel 一 Everything I do is related to it. I’ve been meditating for many years now. Our mom is a therapist, so she sort of put me on the track of mindfulness when I was a teenager. Every morning I go up on the roof - I sit and zazen for 10 minutes. Just breathing. And just kind of coming to oneness. I’m not trying to attain anything, but meditation is the expression of oneness, and seeing yourself. And some days you don’t feel great after meditation. Some days you feel amazing after, but it’s all part of the practice. And I think it’s given me laser focus, and big picture. I read this book called Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryū Suzuki. He’s a buddhist monk from the 60’s. He wrote about the single minded way of one railway track with even, parallel tracks. They don’t get bigger; they don’t get narrower. Your life is just even - going down the railway track. And the scenery around you on the train changes over the course of your life, but it’s an eternal track that never stops. It’s been going forever. You’re on it right now. And meditation is just about keeping that track straight, but at the same time zen is an oxymoron, where the more you talk about it, and the more you read about it, and the more you think… in the end, it’s a pure experience with all encompassing, impossible to describe, oneness. Making an intention to experience that every morning has a dramatic effect. And when I go to bed - after I’ve plugged my phone in, turned the lights off, with my head on the pillow - I think of five things I’m grateful for. It’s a really nice way to end the day.
- Director & Editor - Sarah Ritter
- Director of Photography - Patrick Hartley
- Producer - Ella Glabicki
- B Camera - Julianne Carroll
- Movement Director/BTS - Maya Umemoto Gorman
- End Title - Ashlynn Tierney
- Clothing is from Hollywood Gifts and Patrick Hartley
