Been Stellar Sounds Like Now
Sam Slocum (vocals) and Skyler Knapp (guitar) grew up making music together in the Detroit, MI suburbs. The pair met Nico Brunstein (bass) in New York eight years ago and as the most recent addition, Gigi Giobbi (drums) completes Been Stellar. In late August, the four returned home from a European tour. Since then they’ve been in the band’s Bushwick studio writing a new album.
This summer was littered with singles following the 2024 release of Scream From New York, NY (via Dirty Hit). A post-punk, shoegazey album, it acted as an asseveration of how life felt in New York to Been Stellar. Balancing solemnity and hope with youthful excitement, the work’s voice was that of someone who feels deeply but refuses melodrama. Its contained emotion provokes a more natural ache than any feral outburst would - maybe because that dance between stoicism and susceptibility feels like the truth. Now that Been Stellar has sincerely turned over and rendered their home context, they’ve begun writing on a wider scope not only thematically, but also sonically.
Endless days down in the studio coupled with years on the road - including touring with Fontaines D.C. and opening for The 1975, Beabadoobee, Shame, and Interpol - have bonded the band. The ability to work alongside each other has made their long-term friendships even more unflinching. Like their music, together they hold a soft, but impenetrable countenance. It made me trust them to say what life sounds like now.
Somewhere between where they’ve been and where they’re going - office talked to Been Stellar about process, friendship, and what's coming.
Alice Mercy— How did Been Stellar form?
Skyler Knapp— Sam and I were making music together in high school, we made an album when we were seniors. Then we both got into NYU, so we came to New York and wanted to re-assemble a band. I signed us up for an NYU Facebook group. Someone was doing a DIY show and they were looking for people to play. I said “yeah my band will play,” but we didn’t have a band - it was just me and Sam. We needed a bassist, we needed drums. Nico just said “I have a bass,” not “I’m a bassist,” but that was good enough for us. After our record came out last year, two people left. We got back from the Fontaines D.C. tour and had a month before our first headline tour in Europe, so our goal was to find a drummer. I put up a Craigslist ad and didn’t get many bites. The bites I did get were wild - mostly 40 year-olds. By the grace of god right before leaving for tour, we found Gigi.
Gigi Giobbi— Because drummers are so hard to find, they can't usually commit to one project. I was on millions of sidequests. It was perfect timing, they were starting to be desperate for a drummer and I was craving actually being part of a band - a process.
SK— That’s what we needed - somebody who’s creative and talented, and also just cool - in the sense of… a good person. In a band, you’re only doing music for a small fraction of the time you’re spending together. The rest of the time you’re coexisting in a van or a hotel room, so meeting somebody you spiritually connect with is important. It felt like divine intervention to me.
AM— Where do you write music?
SK— Our friends were in a band called The Britanys. Sam and I really looked up to them when we moved to New York. To be a band and all share an apartment, have the studio there… it felt like the dream. Anyway, [The Britanys] gave it to us after they broke up. So we have an apartment in Bushwick. In the basement there’s a live room where we do all the writing, and a little control room where we’re able to record. That’s where we wrote all of the last album, that’s where we’re writing this album. We are going about it a little differently this time. We’re not writing everything down there because it’s a really dingy basement, it’s always hot down there.
GG— No windows…
Sam Slocum— No windows.
SK— We’ve been doing writing retreats. We did one in Belgium when we were there on tour. We did one in LA. We’ll rent out an Airbnb, bring all of our equipment, and use it as a studio.
AM— What does collaboration look like for you?
Nico Brunstein— Usually it starts with an idea one of us has and we’ll build off that. It’s nice having Gigi because before, Sam would be on the drums… or he wouldn’t be - it was fragmented. We were just working on the idea of a song that would never be finished until we had our drummer in town. Now, we’re finishing songs in real time.
SK— Sometimes someone brings in a fully written song and we don’t need to do much to it. Other times you’ll have what you think is something, but by playing it with other people, the end product doesn’t sound anything like the original riff. It’s interesting because that’s when there’s no one person who wrote the song and you can’t tell what it is that made the song. That’s what kind of feels like magic to me.
AM— Is it hard to share a framework with three other people? Do you feel truly fed?
SK— I rely on the band to make an idea into something that’s Been Stellar. I always leave space, some preciousness, to be filled in by other people. It’s extremely hard because if you have something you’re proud of, you don’t want anyone to touch it. But you have to trust in the people you’re working with, that they’ll take it seriously, that they’re trying to make it better. It’s tough. It’s more mental than musical. You’re trying to put your ego aside at all times - that’s a muscle we’ve been training. The hardest part of our creative relationship over the past eight years has been getting to a point where we have that trust. It used to be frustrating. We’d be working on a song and someone would storm out of the room, that would happen all the time - which I understand… usually that someone is me or Sam.
SS— I just remember doing laps around the block wondering “did we lose it... can we still write music?”
GG— This is my first time being in a real band and writing songs. Which is crazy because I’ve been touring for three years. Before, I was playing someone else’s music. I play guitar and I have musical ideas, but I’m not nearly good enough - -
SK— - you wrote one of the best songs on the new album…
GG— I wrote the riff for it - but that’s the thing, I had this riff I liked, but if I didn't have three other creative outlets to kind of (laughs) shoot the shit with, then I’d just be eternally frustrated. I’d have this great thing that would sit there and slowly die.
AM— So making an album is more retroactive regarding the curatorial aspect of it?
SK— Yea totally, it’s super retroactive. You’re vomiting out ideas for a period of time and then rearranging them into something. What kind of always blows my mind is that it starts to do its own thing. You don’t really need to try, the album tells you what it wants to be - so you start listening to it instead of forcing it.
AM— I find it interesting that performing becomes an inherent part of music when you have a successful band. Do you resonate with performing as much as you do making music?
SS— It changes over time. When we started, we were so focused on playing live. When you’re playing in a scene, especially a college scene, that’s all it is really - performance. It wasn’t until Covid that we stopped focusing on the performance and started focusing on the composition. The songs got a lot better, naturally. I’m not playing an instrument for the majority of the show, so a lot of it is just a performance - how I’m presenting to a crowd of people. I’ve had my own journey with it - being confused about my place within that, what kind of performer I want to be, wanting to be authentic but also still wanting to push [myself], not being phony about it but also not being boring while [I’m] performing. It’s a really weird thing.
SK— I think they inform each other. It can also be a bad thing when you’re writing songs and get really (laughs) lost in the sauce. Being a band that’s making pop songs, which is ideally what we're trying to do in a way, make really good pop songs - it’s meant to be consumed live in front of people. In writing songs, you should always have performing in mind, how it will translate live, and then making that unique - but you also don’t want to just be a band that’s making party songs for people.
AM— How have you grown since making Scream From New York, NY?
SK— I still have the thing where you do something good and there’s a constant fear that you will never be able to do anything good again. I have it all the time and it’s terrifying. Because, you know, that does happen to people. The way we’ve been avoiding this so far is the volume of stuff we’re doing. We’re writing a song every single day.
SS— We went in to record the first record with 12 songs and we knew it was going to be a ten song album. Twelve songs kind of checked the box, but we 100% knew which two weren’t good enough. This time we’re going in with 20, 25 songs.
SK— Our first record was our New York record, it’s an album about New York. It was the best of this one thing we’re able to do - but we all had this itch to wonder what else it could be. Having new people like Gigi come on board opened up pockets of music that we wouldn’t have gotten into otherwise. This next record, we don’t want to be super tied to New York, it’s more of an America record.
AM— America record?
SK— It’s more about time than place. I’ll say that. It’s current time, extending past us writing songs together in New York - it makes sense to write in different places. I think we’ll record it before the end of the year, it will come out next year. It’s gonna be the best Been Stellar record. I mean that.
NB— Yeah, it’s all downhill after that.
SK— It’s definitely gonna be the best Been Stellar record so far. I’m really, really excited about it.
