Isaac Dunbar Takes Our Pop Quiz
office gave Isaac an impromptu pop quiz where there are no wrong answers... except, of course, the wrong ones.
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office gave Isaac an impromptu pop quiz where there are no wrong answers... except, of course, the wrong ones.
The 12-track album features his latest single, “Therapist” (co-written and co-produced with Ethan Gruska[Phoebe Bridgers, Fiona Apple]), alongside his summertime anthems, “18” and “HONEST,” and heartfelt ballad, “Cry with you.”
On the album, Jeremy says, “‘CRUSHER’ is my response. I take back everything I said. It’s no longer about us, or me. It’s about you. During the writing process of this album, I became more myself than ever. It’s a more raw and confident me. I found new influences sonically, and I finally learned how to have fun making music again.
office sat down with the musician to talk about his latest album release, his inspiration, future plans, and more.
Check out the interview below.
How are you and how's your year been?
I'm good. Year's been okay. I've been working and keeping busy.
Nice, you’re releasing your sophomore album, CRUSHER on October 1st. Could you talk to me about how you conceptualized your vision for the album?
Yeah, I think a lot of it came from a place of, a lot of like reflecting on a prior relationship that in the past I had really sort of romanticized and softened. During the past year I had a lot of time to think and a lot of things came to light and it became an album about almost hating someone. It's very hateful, spiteful, resentful, but not really in a negative way, which is interesting. It's sort of this self-empowerment thing.
Sweet, I love that for you. This album feels very intimate 一 and it sounds like you’ve really tapped into yourself. What did the creative process behind this album look like and what do you want your listeners to feel when they’re listening to it?
So when I finished the album, I came up with the name CRUSHER. It has nothing to do with a romantic crush, It's more, crusher, meaning one who crushes, one who destroys and pulverizes. I was thinking a lot about what a crusher is in my mind and just playing around with the idea. A lot of the industrial aesthetic sort of comes from that and like I was looking up schematics of rock crushers and we went to a rock quarry just to see what the vibe was and , and it was just insane. It's a part of the world that you don't ever focus on 一 like, the rocks that made this building?
But yeah, they were just putting massive pieces of granite in this giant machine that was pulverizing it and then sorting it and spitting out on a conveyor belt into a giant pile of gravel. In my head it was like, okay, this is a machine that's systematically destroying and reorganizing this thing that's supposed to be unbreakable. It sort of became a metaphor in my mind for like somebody that's intentionally and methodically and systematically breaking somebody down and destroying them and fucking with them. So that's a lot of the metaphor of the album. It's like, how do you look at someone that's doing something like that? How do you engage with them? For me, it was less about that and more about how do I feel about this? Like, I resent this person and I feel empowered by my decision to not fuck with any of that.
Amazing. I love all of that. How is your writing process? Do you go to the studio and sit and write, or is it kind of happening as part of your day?
So I pretty much make everything myself and write and produce myself. But this time around, I collaborated with a lot of friends and a lot of the lyrics come from random things that I’ll jot down during the day and with the random guitar parts, I’ll figure out on my own as well. Then I sort of sit down on my computer alone or with a friend or two and just lay down the bass and immediately start writing and riffing. The song is built at the same time as it's being written, so it's being produced as it's being written. I'll usually come up with a draft really quickly and then spend weeks and months sort of dialing in the production. Sometimes I'll bring other people in when I feel like I can't completely do something the way that I want to.
How do you get into the mood to create the vibe that you want to convey to your listeners?
It’s really tapped into how I'm feeling at the moment. I will play an instrument or modify sounds or pull out a synth or find samples or voice memos or recordings that I've taken in the city or wherever. It's really just whatever I gravitate to and whatever makes me feel more of the way that I'm feeling in the moment. It sort of becomes like a landslide in the sense of when I do zero in on that feeling, I'm pulling in more things that are eliciting more of these feelings, sonically. It snowballs until you start feeling it more and then more ideas come up that you put in that then convey that even more. Then you put in something that changes the context of all of those feelings and the way you deliver certain lyrics make you feel a certain way. It becomes this journey of expression in one lane that is that initial feeling that was felt.
Love all of that. The focus track from this album is “Deep end,” what feeling dominates you when you’re listening to this track?
It's the only song that I would consider to be a pandemic inspired song on the album, only because it's sort of the monotony of daily life. Like, not wanting to get outta bed and not wanting to do anything or feeling like you're driving yourself crazy and all the things that you do to sort of cope and feel better. It's framed in this really hopeful and celebratory tone and I’m honestly never doing these things on purpose. It just, it just feels right, that's the only way I can explain it. I end up juxtaposing lyrics with emotions in songs a lot of the time. For example, my song ‘comethru' sounds like the happiest song in the world, but the lyrics are super depressing and somewhat hopeful, but mostly depressing. I think ‘deep end’ is similar, It's literally like I'm going crazy. These little things that I do help me a little bit, but still not feeling great. It's just not my year and it's a really bouncy, sort of a bubbly chorus.
Your “MORE NOISE !!!!” tour is coming up on October 19th! How excited are you to finally return back to performing live? Are you nervous at all?
So excited! It's been a long time since I've actually been able to do a real show and I've only done one full US tour and that was in 2018. It was just the way my schedule worked out, I was ready to do a full world tour in April, a month after most of the US shut down. So I've been set back probably as far as I possibly could have been. So, I'm just super hyped to get back to it, and I've had just as much time to sort of think about where I want to take the live show and really work on it. So it'll just be that much better.
I guess my last question to you would be, what do you have planned for the rest of 2021? What can you tell us about your future projects?
So my album crusher is coming out on October 1st and I'm going on tour in the middle of October. I’m doing a full US run and currently working on a Europe tour, hopefully this spring and Asia and Australia after the summer, hopefully. Then festivals next summer, so we're really thinking very far ahead making up for lost time, but yeah, I'm just gonna plan on just touring and continuing making music and excited for it all.
Trickling into the mainstream in 2020 with his debut album “Salvador,” Bodega put pen to paper for the first time and unleashed an iteration of himself trapped in time, and the recesses of his mind that he felt needed to be expunged. And “Salvador” was born, an angsty, unruly examination of a dark time in Bodega’s past, ruminating on stories of toxic relationships, the suicide of a close friend, and Bodega’s struggle to come to terms with the tribulations of a moment in time.
In conversation with the version of himself first introduced to the world in “Salvador,” Bodega opens a window to a more recent self in “Romeo,” drawing the curtain on darkness, bringing with him, the light. “Romeo,” announced today for a November 12 drop-date alongside the release of its second single, “Angel on My Shoulder” is a re-introduction to Bodega (and a few quasi-alter-egos), as a sinner with the sentiment of a saint.
Check out our interview with the bringer of light below.
You’ve been on the music scene for a while. What were some of your early influences?
I’ve been making music as this name for like ten years now. Which is kind of nuts but I don't really feel like my career started until like 2016. I think my generation of people who are 29 now, we grew up on a lot of like Slipknot, Korn. A lot of heavier kinds of music and like trance. I can really see so much music now that’s influenced by both at the same time. I love that you’ll hear an edit and it’s like Tiësto mixed with Korn. It’s like okay, yeah, we’re the same person. I know exactly who you grew up on because I did too.
And I think it's really nice to see so much music starting to still get big because of TikTok. People are using these really old songs that I didn't know would have a resurgence. I mean even like garage and drum and bass it’s just like, awesome, are really popular again. And that's kind of nuts. Because it wasn't mainstream at the time. Well, garage was, but like, not really drum and bass. And now all of a sudden, it’s making its way into pop music. That's just super, super weird. I really, I really love that. That kind of gives me hope that in 20 years’ time, something I make today might have the chance to have new life.
To give new life to something from your past, I want to talk a bit about SS2015 which draws from iconic movies like Fallen Angels and Gummo. Is it a hope of yours to score a movie one day?
Yeah, that’s the goal, my goal. I really want to do a really good science fiction film. That would be fun.
What’s your favorite science fiction movie?
The Cell. Have you seen it?
I have not.
I don’t even remember the soundtrack. But it’s just such an underrated film. Not a lot of people have seen it. You’ll love it. I think everyone will love it.
So...Romeo. It feels like the album is quite romantic, does your romantic life feel like a tragedy or comedy?
It’s neither. Because I think if it was a tragedy that’s terrible. If it was a comedy, that would simultaneously be terrible, like look at my romantic life, it’s a joke that I need to get together. It’s supposed to be a romantic album, but it’s nothing to do with Shakespeare, the name is just so synonymous with romance now and is the only thing I think I could’ve called it. I also love having a name for an album.
Are the names personas in any way?
Well, the first one was me. The second one was kind of me. I guess they are personas of very boring aspects of me, so yeah.
How did your approach to Romeo differ from Salvador?
Yeah, so the first one was like the first time I'd ever written about myself and all this stuff that it's about happened to me maybe 2015, 2014 when I used to drink a lot. The moment I started to write about myself, there was this backed-up stuff from the past that kind of just happened to come up like, you know, friends killing themselves. All that really dark stuff that happened in my early 20s that wasn't really reflective of anything that has happened in the last five years. So, it became like an introduction to who I am, but it's also got a five-year delay to it. And I didn't really, I mean, I don't care honestly, ultimately, but sometimes I'd DMs from strangers like, “you’re just so toxic, I love it” which was way off the vibe of what I was trying to do.
And then this one was just completely trying to be like, romantic and healthy and really like, how I felt about my friends and family and loved ones for the last five years.
Tell me a bit about Luci, who you “introduced” on Instagram.
When the idea of Luci came about it really was not supposed to be an album thing. It was just that I had this idea for a photoshoot that I wanted to do of me with this woman made of light, and then I’ve spoken about this woman called Luci in two different songs [2 Strong and Mimi] over the last four years. It was always a reference to Lucifer. And I was talking about this shoot with Caroline [Polacheck] and she was like, oh you should call it Luci. And I was like...why did you say that? Because she probably did not listen to those specific songs and clock that, and she said that Lucifer is the bringer of light. And it was like well...that’s just perfect.
There are so many different names and representations of Lucifer in history. This one feels more like the Bringer of Light than it does the Devil or the Biblical idea of the devil. There’s no negativity in this. It’s Lucifer but it’s not like some toxic relationship, she’s very much, just light.
The lead singles off the album are “Only Seeing God When I Come” and “Angel on My Shoulder” is there a religious significance to the album for you?
That wasn’t intentional. I realized that throughout the whole album there are a good deal of references to angels and heaven I did not plan that...There's a lot coincidentally that lined up as sounding like my writing style a lot with Heaven and Hell. Yeah, they do definitely speak to each other, but I don't have any opinion on Heaven or Hell. I just think I love the word heaven, I don't know I just like it, and I really like those like Sodom and Gomorrah style paintings of like Hieronymus Bosch, is that how you say his name? Have you seen his paintings like the Garden of Earthly Delights?
I have, but I don’t know how to say his name.
I really just, I just love them. So I guess I draw from that style more than I do like any religious aspect.
Let’s talk about your Instagram...or rather, your meme account. How’d you start that?
Oh god. I’m just looking at it now. I can remember when I made that page because I was so excited about it. Because I made that at the beginning of the first lockdown. For the first two weeks, I was just researching— well not researching but just looking at other memes. I don’t know what to say about that page, it’s just been pretty fun. How’d you find that?
I do my research. I saw you repost something from it, and thought it was probably you behind the page.
I don’t know if people realize it’s me actually. Which is like, I don’t even care, like—
Do you want them to think it’s not you?
No, I do want them to think it’s me because I want the credit for being funny.
[Laughs]
On top of releasing another anthem, the duo announced their US tour which is currently sold out. They will be hitting New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Chicago. They will without a doubt have every person singing along word for word, on top of getting everyone to hit the clubs right after. “It’s my booty from the front / It’s my curves from the side / It’s my body and my waist / Twerking in the limelight,” sing the both of them and automatically get their listeners feeling right.
Watch the music video below.