May Rio's "French Bath"

I originally knew of May through a mutual — Blake (Blaketheman1000). She was featured on “Blake 2”, and also on The Dare’s “Girls” and Frost Children’s “Wonderland”. Beyond her collaborations on other people’s projects, her own second full-length release French Bath - following the debut East Bammer in June 2021 - comes out this week. Co-produced with Tony 1 of the duo Tony or Tony, there’s also live instrumentation from Simon Hanes of Tredici Bacci, Greg Rutkin of Customer, Syl DuBenion of Standing on the Corner, and Dougie Poole. 

My conversation with May was refreshingly candid – a quality I always appreciate, and one that resonates in her new music.

Just to go over the background details — you're from Austin, you went to art school, and got into music during college?

Near the end of college, there was this pawnshop in Providence, and I bought this acoustic Yamaha guitar. Didn't know how to play it all, but just as a challenge to myself, I was like, “all right, I'm going to write a song.” And I wrote a really simple song - A, D, C. I just kind of knew at that point, this is what I want to do - but then it felt like it was too late to begin. I do think this is changing, but I think so much of music is such a youth oriented industry, and especially women are supposed to look young, and be young. Also, I think growing up in Texas, I had a lot of honestly weird ideas about women that I had to unlearn, and I'm glad to have unlearned them, but there were a lot of internalized things holding me back with that. 

Can you talk more about the emotional space that you were in making this new album. Where were you at in your life?

I had been in a band for a minute called Poppies. Basically, right after I moved to New York, after I graduated, I started a band straight away. So, Poppies was the first real thing - real project - I'd ever had. I'm very proud of that project, but it was very difficult. I recorded the last solo record Easy Bammer, and before I put it out, I ended up leaving the band. Those two things weren't related, but that was just the timeline. With this second album, I had already left the band when I started working on it. That felt really big for me, and was a really hard thing to do, but also very liberating. This album, compared to the last one especially, just feels a lot more grown up to me. And I've always done this thing, which I'm not getting rid of, but I will often sort of maybe veil things in poetry a little bit. I read this quote a long time ago that really struck me, and it's just talking about poetry, and how good poetry is just a transfer of energy. You don't necessarily have to comprehend literally everything, and that was cool for me. But I do think you can hide behind that sometimes. I feel like on more of these songs, I say things a bit simpler. It definitely isn’t the same space throughout the album, but a lot of it does feel more reflective. But then there's other songs that I just kind of write to amuse myself. 

What do you mean by amuse yourself?

One example is with “Mr. Horny Puke Man”... What inspired it is, a few years ago, my friend had a birthday party, and he made everyone negronis, and one of our other friends puked on the train after. And, so, like that, you know? And I love this friend - it’s making fun of him more than I would in real life. 

I read in a previous interview you described the first album as a release for you. What has this one felt like?

I do feel like it's something that I just kind of did instead of thinking about it. I just did it really quickly - I wrote the songs really quickly; recorded them really quickly. The whole thing was done so soon - it was crazy. At the time I started this project, my main thing was still the band. I think I just needed a really big burst to sort of rocket myself into this other place. I feel like with this second album, I could maybe sit a bit more comfortably in that place - and sit still in it. With this album, I spent more time writing it; I spent more time making it. There's more layers of production. More live players were brought in. The actual writing of the songs themselves - not all of them, but definitely some of them - felt kind of like self-medicating, and self-soothing. “Aspartame” and “Self Service” are the ones that I'm thinking of. All of my songs I just write alone, and when I'm writing them I'm always just writing them for me.

Let's talk about the phrase "french bath" — why that title? (Defined to me as “the deceptively luxurious act of dousing oneself in cologne to disguise an unsavory stench”)

I liked that title because, first of all, I think it sounds really elegant, but then you realize what it is, and it’s kind of nasty too. I also think that's one thing that I find interesting about perfume anyway — I'm going to fuck this up a little bit, but something like — the most successful perfumes have an element of rotteness in them too. Anything that's too sweet is going to be kind of disgusting. I always like things that have layers to the meaning, and you can sort of interpret differently depending on the mood you're in.

I’m going to go through each song on the album, and if you can either give an explanation, or whatever you want to say. So, the first one is “Need You Like”. 

So, initially, I had dummy lyrics for that song, and one of the only lines I had was actually in reverse. Instead of it being, “you went to bat for me,” it was “I went to bat for you.” And then I had a conversation with Blake where I was like, “I'm stuck with writing. I don't know what to do.” And he was like, “You should write an evil song.” And then I was thinking about how I love country, and there’s definitely a collection of classic country songs that are written from this psycho perspective. I've always thought that was really funny, so that's what I did. I was like, “Okay, I'm going to write an evil song,” and I flipped that lyric, and then and then it just came really easily. 

“Monkey Do”.

That was actually originally over a different chord progression, and it did sound a bit more country. It was over three chords instead of four. That’s one of the ones that's from my lived experiences with an ex. 

“NYC UMTs”. 

So, a UMT is an unemployed model type. I think I probably heard one person say it once, and I was like, “that's so funny.” That song is definitely a joke song - it’s really funny to me. I know some people who are sort of like that, but I definitely took this idea and ran with it, and projected hard, and made it more of a fantasy thing.

“Cursed Fortuna”. 

That one's a bit more heady, but one of my favorite books is called A Confederacy of Dunces, and the main character is a very exaggerated person. But he's obsessed with this idea of fortuna, and how the wheel is always taking you up, and then bringing you back down. And that's where that came from.

“Dollars”.

That's just kind of a little song about my family and money and how broke I am.

“Getaway”.

That was when COVID was still a thing, but I think that was the only point of COVID that I was actually struggling with because there was so much snow here. I was not leaving my apartment for days at a time. I was like, “this is really not good for me.” So, I went back to Austin to just sort of escape the winter. Literally the day I flew in, this storm happened, and I got to my parents house, and right away lost power. I wrote that song during those few days, and made a demo. The weather following you around is the inspiration.

I guess we already talked about “Mr. Horny Puke Man”. So, what's next? “Aspartame”. 

Yeah, “Aspartame” is my baby. I will say I feel like “Aspartame” is probably one of my biggest achievements. I'm very proud of that song. I wrote that in a day, which is always cool when that happens. It's definitely sad, but it also is angry, and feels empowering to me. I think I just kind of reached a point with this person where I was like, “You know what? I'm sick of this kind of shit. I told you I was sick of it, and I'm not going to deal with it anymore.” 

“Self Service”.

“Aspartame” and “Self Service” kind of feel like an A-side/B-side. I do feel like those are sort of part of the same coin. “Aspartame” is like my “fuck you, I'm done with this bullshit” song. “Self-Service” is just kind of self-soothing - being gentle with myself.

And then the last song — “I’m Not Crazy”.

That song, I knew that we both had really strong feelings for each other, and I'm like, "Why the fuck are we not doing this then? We both cried the last time we saw each other. We both told each other that we feel like soulmates. Why are we not doing this,” you know?