It's Women's History Month, so we're showing some serious love from home to our favorite female artists. Pass the time at your casa, and share it with your cat, your plant and your friends on FaceTime.
Savannah and Brandon Hudson are siblings, best friends, and the sparkly pair at the helm of LA’s spunky alt-pop duo Between Friends. Their debut album, I Love My Girl, She’s My Boy, out today, is more than just a collection of tracks; it's a chronicle of love, loss, self-discovery, and the complexities of relationships.
We called up the duo ahead of their release to get down to the nitty-gritty of all that went into their very first longform record. From capturing raw moments in the studio to the evolution of their perspectives on love, the two artists share the personal experiences that shaped their music. Savannah and Brandon impart wisdom on how to navigate the very real trials of love and relationships in our technology-driven age where the hyperreal and simulation often overwhelms genuine connection.
Let’s start with what’s been going on with you two the last couple of years.
Brandon Hudson– Savannah and I have both been helpless lovers. We've fallen into new romantic situations very often, since we were like 16. But it never really translated over to our work. There was always this separation between our lives and the people that we would date– and the stories we told in our music. It's never been directly like, "Oh this happened to me in my relationship and I'm gonna fucking write about it."
We were always making up stories for songs and that was always really fun. Musically, with Between Friends, we're very fortunate to live in this world that we've created for ourselves where there isn't really a limit or a box that we’re sort of pinned in. If you listen to our discography, we go all over the place.
Savannah Hudson– In a way, that's been a blessing in disguise because with this album we felt like we can really do anything. "We’ve done a mixtape, we’ve done an EP, we’ve done another EP, and they’re all drastically different, so what’s next?" This album was an open field to play in and that's when we decided to start writing about what was actually happening in our lives.
BH– But also, since we started Between Friends, we've been terrified of the idea of making our first album. We never wanted to do it and have it be incorrect.
SH– It was a terrifying leap. The stars aligned, our writing aligned, and it was in that moment of our first session where we looked at each other and said, “This is the album. We're making an album.” And then every session, we’d just say that back and forth to each other. There were no plans on doing it until we made “Bruise” and a couple other songs.
BH– Sav and I kind of looked at each other and said, “Wait, I feel like the subject matter has revealed something that we haven't done yet.” At first, we both felt super unsure, which is what made us realize this was the album. Because if we made something that we were comfortable with, I don’t know if it would have ended up being our album. This entire process, we both felt suspended in deep water, unable to touch the bottom and going for it.
I feel like the best things emerge from that feeling of uncertainty. What were some of the experiences that arose during the album’s creation?
SH– We filmed pretty much the entire process of us making the album on our co-producer Luca’s laptop.
BH– We have like 16 hours of footage. The other day she came over and we took a moment to acknowledge and look through the footage and we kept looking at each other being like, “I blacked out when we made this.” It was like we took everything inside of us and put it on the table. When we started making the album last July, I was getting out of a pretty toxic situation.
SH– It was bad. His feelings became the focal point, and I was there to help get them out, saying, “We’re going to take all of these feelings and write them down.”
BH– I'm super grateful for the process. Rewatching the videos, you could see what we were going through– it was almost like therapy in a way. I was getting out of something unhealthy, Savannah was getting out of a situation that was pretty toxic for her as well.
Did your perspective on love and relationships shift since finalizing the album?
BH– Since completing this album, I'm a completely different person when it comes to love and relationships.
SH– I was just telling him yesterday that we've grown up so much with this album. It felt cathartic to release all of that. I feel like we’re clearer-headed with our intentions now.
BH– We’ve been working on this project for over a year now. We started the album last July and when we finished the process, when we got everything off our chests, we moved houses, I got a new computer. We left all of these things behind.
SH– It wasn’t even intentional– it was like the universe. The album took so much out of us that we wanted a fresh start. We’re not going to do that with every album, but after making this record, the timing was right on a lot of life decisions. It was very impactful for us.
Do you believe in fate?
BH– I mean totally, I even believe in relationship karma.
SH– That’s why we try to be kind all the time, focus on our vision and our goals, and keep people that match those expectations close.
BH– It’s fun for us to finally talk about this project because it's just been our little secret for a year.
Fourteen valuable lessons on love from BETWEEN FRIENDS:
Stalker (Don’t stalk your ex on the internet)
SH– Stalker is about unhealthy obsessions and online relationships.
BH– And we wanted to dramatize the idea by making it feel like a slasher film.
SH– Sometimes the internet can be that hostile. It can feel like you’re actually in danger in how people can see everything you do.
BH– We knew it was the first song for the project. I’m so sick of people starting an album with some ambient intro. Some floaty thing that leads you into the first song. I didn’t want that. I wanted to shock people.
SH– Oh yeah, I've never screamed into a microphone before and we did that for like six hours when making this.
BH– We were listening to a lot of doo-wop. Doo-wop is what comes to mind when Sav and I think about love and relationships, so we were listening to that all the time. For the first draft of the album, I had these doo-wop samples from records that we love and they flow seamlessly into the next song. We wanted it to feel like listening to a love radio station playing those sexy hits and shit.
I had all of that tied together, but we couldn’t clear any of the samples because, you know, it’s the first album. We’re not on a Kanye West budget. But that was the biggest blessing in disguise. We ended up spending a day making our own samples, sort of like our own doo-wop station, paying homage to something we’ve always associated with love and relationships, especially because of our parents. We grew up listening to so much music with them, I thought it was necessary for the album.
Bruise (Don’t chase after love)
BH– "Bruise" is physically chasing after someone and continuously trying to get something that they can’t offer me in such a light-hearted way. Word of advice, don't do that! We were listening to a lot of ‘90s, early 2000s bands, which became the inspiration for that track.
Haircut (Don’t alter your appearance for someone else)
BH– I remember a really emotional day in the studio when we were working on the song “Haircut” and agreed that it was a beautiful song about being the best for someone, but the more I thought about it, I was like, “Wait, you’re in a toxic relationship. You’re talking about changing yourself for somebody.”
SH– At first, I thought it was the sweetest song and was excited to show the person I was dating at the time. But everyone I played the song to was like, “Yo, this is not a love song.”
BH– When Bakar hopped on the song, it added a new perspective and transformed it completely. Sav and him just went back and forth, basically singing a love song to each other, which is awesome. When it came to us, the process was super cathartic. Getting it out there was almost like a release.
Lotto (You never know what you’re going to get)
SH– “Lotto” is about being in a relationship that’s really inconsistent, littered with ups and downs. One day it’s so good, the next, you don’t know where you stand. It’s similar to “Bruise” where you’re seeking something from someone who’s incapable of giving you what you need.
Sorry (There’s two sides to every story)
SH– We were listening through voicemails from our exes when making the album and for this song, we tried to put ourselves in the shoes of someone listening to an angry voicemail and not knowing what else to say other than like, ‘Uh… sorry?’
BH– That whole, ‘I hope you’re OK, bye’ thing is really such a gen-z way to end that.
BH– I thought the funniest part was scoring this aggressive voicemail over this soft instrumental. There’s something so ironic about it.
What’s Up (Fuck it!)
SH– The transition from “Sorry” to “What’s Up” is kind of like ‘fuck it.’ You end this voicemail and you’re like, “Alright, I’m going to do this because I feel happy right now.” It’s definitely one of the high points of the record– because it is such a happy song.
BH– It’s about really wanting someone.
SH– It’s a lot like a new beginning– meeting someone that you really fuck with and just wanting to talk to them, so you hit them up to see what they’re doing. It’s like, we’re finally feeling good after being stalked, being bruised, cutting our fucking hair. This is cool. This is nice.
BH– When starting something new after a toxic situation, there’s always those lingering feelings, asking yourself, “Am I repeating the same cycles? Is this actually different?” I think that’s something you can hear in “What’s Up,” that lingering obsession that you should probably leave behind.
SH– And it seems like we do but even after that track, we still fall into something fucked up.
Gross (“This is about you”)
SH– “Gross” is the culmination of those feelings. It’s a personally addressed message.
BH– It’s the only time in the album when we are speaking directly to whatever situation we were in.
SH– I remember the day that we wrote that, Brandon just kept playing the guitar on loop, and I was like “I wanna write something like this.” So I just started singing as if I was talking directly to my ex, or the person I was dating at the time. It’s the kind of song you listen to and by the end, are like, “Fuck– this is about me.” There's something scary about that personally addressed sort of note.
Redlight (Your ex might’ve moved on too)
SH– This was one of the first days we worked with our co-producer, Luca. She and I were already at the studio and Brandon came in late – disheveled, super pale, and weird-looking. So obviously we’re asking “What the fuck just happened?” And he was like, “I saw her. I saw her on the way to the studio and she was with somebody else. They knew I was at the stoplight and they didn’t even fucking look at me.” He had just gotten out of a big relationship two weeks before, so as friends, we were in that healing process with him. I looked at him and said, “I am writing this. I am fucking writing this.” That was a very emotional day for him. It was fun to challenge myself as a writer too, because I was like, “I know how you’re feeling and I know that it’s too much to talk about right now, but I can do it.”
BH– And the coolest thing about this song is that we did it with Touchdown – a fucking generational voice – I love him so much. Our day in the studio was so spectacular, you know? We align so well because we’re all these new kids on the block – we make great art.
BH– It’s really fun because his perspective is from the opposite end, which I think is so cool. It completes the story for me.
SH– Touchdown’s saying that the invasiveness of seeing someone around is not OK. When we got in the studio with him, we had already written a second verse. So I printed out the lyrics and gave them to him and was liie, “You can do whatever you want with this. This is the story, get to know it and get to know the feeling.” But he was like, “Oh, I got it. I’m gonna take it in this direction and give depth to different sides and complete the story.” At the end he’s saying, “You can erase it, you can erase me if that’s what you’d like. I’d rather not exist, I’d rather you not exist. I think this person isn’t around anymore.”
Smiley (There’s always a new beginning)
BH– Smiley is about new beginnings– something new.
SH– There’s nothing about that song that has anything other than the innocence and healthiness of caring about somebody for the first time.
BH– Based on the lyrics, you can kind of tell that we’re singing about somebody that we’ve known and somebody that’s our friend.
SH– And you can tell by the sort of playfulness and the innocence of noticing little details about somebody. You’re there with these blossoming feelings, where you’re uncertain whether you’re in love with someone or if you just care about them. It’s so many different feelings and I love it coming after “Redlight”, because you have these low points…
BH– And then Smiley’s like this. That’s why we like the radio changes at the beginning. It's like you're switching it off and now you're in this new atmosphere of goodness. And it feels great in it. It's named "Smiley" for a reason, right.
SH– I love that it comes before "Self-destruct" because I feel like every time you get a new beginning, it always ends with you fucking it up. It's an interesting contrast to “Self-destruct”.
Self-destruct (Deal with your insecurities but also, be kind to yourself)
SH– Self-destruct was my most emotional day in the studio. It’s because those new emotions of happiness and good feelings were budding, and I was like, “I’m gonna fuck it up.” That’s the thing to know about Self-destruct– it’s not over in that song. That’s you going home and being so self-critical and over-analyzing every move that you've made and every mistake that you've made in the past. It’s you being afraid of transmitting all of that into a new thing, but also not trusting yourself to like having a clear head. I find something good and I'm like, “I'm just gonna walk away, I'm just gonna walk away from this because I'm terrified of it.” That’s definitely the power ballad of our lives. I cried a lot making it. It feels like maybe a lot of people will listen to it and be like, “I’ve been there.”
BH– You can’t start these new chapters, unless you’re really clear– or else you’re gonna be running on empty hence the next track.
Running on Empty (Give your brain a break)
BH– Running on empty is the palate cleanser of the album. I liked the album when we were finishing it, it felt like it was all there. But I remember listening to it and being like, “We need something small that feels like we’re at a restaurant and they’re bringing out this little cleanser sort of thing.” I remember we had been in the studio every day from like noon to 2 or 3 am, and we were exhausted. We had all these emotions that we were spilling all day, and by the time you get all of that shit off your chest, you feel like this ugly puddle. We just needed a break from what we were working on, so we just started playing around. We had to remind ourselves why we love it.
SH– And it’s healthy to give your brain a break and just be on low battery. It's ok to have a low battery like that.
BH– So it's funny, “Running on Empty” is literally us talking to ourselves and reminding ourselves like we're alright. Everything's cool, all good. We had so much fun doing it that it literally gave us that rush of dopamine that we needed to get through the last half of the album emotionally. And I think that as a listener, as much as albums may feel like a bunch of songs put together, this one is one where you can tell it’s chronological, and that there's a reason why everything is where it is. That that song is there to sort of just kind of pick up so that we can get through.
Sloppy Stella (Don’t date the same girl as your homie)
BH– That was our good friend that we both had a kind of romantic thing with.
SH– She didn’t know which one I was– I’m super straight. It was just like, “Whoa, what’s going on?” And then, in the next moment, he was telling me the same thing, and I was too afraid to tell him that similar things happened to me, because I wasn’t down for it but he was, so I was like, “Cool.”
BH– So we named her Sloppy.
SH– She went for the sibs. Don’t date the same girls as your homie!
BH– It sounds so strange, but she didn’t know which one was which.
That's so weird.
BB (It’s ok to think about somebody even if you know it wasn’t right)
BH– It’s about wanting to try again.
SH– Knowing that something is destined for failure. It’s like, when you end a relationship, you know that it was good that you ended it, but you're still reminiscing on that person because they were a big part of your life. It’s like saying, “I’d be fine just going back to that night we broke up, just so I could see you crying, because I don’t even remember seeing it.”
BH– It’s about reminiscing on this person that was in your life and is no longer there, and making it a hopeless romantic type situation. I have a voice memo at the end of that song, and it’s our parents talking about their life together and the ups and downs of everything. At the end of the song, my dad’s saying, “Life is all about the decisions you make, especially when you’re with your partner– it’s about the decisions you made together. And my mom goes, “I like all the decisions that we made.” It’s about longing for something that wasn’t correct.
SH– It should be ok to let go. It’s ok to still think about somebody even though you know you’ll never get back together, even though you know it wasn’t right. Basically, it’s like, “I’m still thinking about you and if you wanted to try it, I could maybe consider it, but I probably shouldn't. But I would be down to just see you again.” There’s this back and forth of knowing that something isn’t for you, but still wanting it.
I Love My Girl, She’s My Boy (Someone always has your back)
BH– That song is about us.
SH– We’ve never really written a song about our story– it’s a fun story. I kind of surprised Brandon with what I was writing. He didn’t know what I was saying until we both had our headphones on. We clicked record and I had written all of these different paragraphs about our journey and how we got here. I felt like we just constantly were like, “We’re gonna try this, we’re gonna do this. Let’s do it.” We go for things together, even if only one of us wants it.
BH– There's so much in it that’s so real with what's happened in our lives. Back in the day, our dad had this storage room for all of his old stuff, and we would steal shit. We stole old iPods and USBs, we’d burn songs on the CDs and shit. Savannah’s really talking a lot about our childhood, but then it leads to talking about the album.
SH– A long time ago, we were playing pool with an ex and his friends, and I was on his team and everyone was doubting my pool skills, and I just popped the ball in the pocket and he was like, “Damn, I love my girl. She’s my boy.”
BH– I remember I looked at him and said, “We’re gonna name our first album that one day.” We kept it in our notes forever, but the time felt right. I think it’s cool we’ve been through a lot on our journey of this career. It’s not easy to do this, how we do it. We make our shit and we shoot our things and we create our things and in the shouts in the chorus, you can hear our desperation, it’s saying, “We’re not gonna give up. This is what we do.”
SH– It’s an homage to the whole album. That song is the finish line, and we’re looking back at what we had done, being like, “We tried it and we did it.”
BH– We felt that it’s ok to try. We tried. This song is literally about falling down, getting back up, figuring it out, and trying again. More often than not we’re scraping our knees. Using the band band aids.
It makes me think about how whenever we're obsessed with someone or really need this romantic love, we forget all the different types of love we have around us.
BH– It’s like, you have your best friend everywhere. I love my girl. She’s my boy. It’s our little moment of talking about our shit.
SH– It’s closing the book for sure.
Stream the new album below:
Richman was recently signed to ISO Supremacy x PULSE Music Group; a joint record label founded by Brent Faiyaz. The two are on tour together with U.S. and Europe dates until November. Watch the video below.
HARMONY wears TOP by POSTER GIRL, SHOES by POSTER GIRL, JEWELRY by ALEXIS BITTAR
With tracks like "Shoplifting From Nike" and "Good Things Take Time," she deftly embraces the infectious lilt of pop sensibility while plumbing the depths of vulnerability hidden beneath the surface. Her music videos, dripping with excess and extravagance, challenge the facade of effortless perfection that often dominates the realm of social media, offering a refreshing glimpse of authenticity. There's a thematic thread that weaves from the tracks on Girlpool's last album, Forgiveness, to songs like "Dystopia Girl" and "Angel Kisses," all exploring the journey of connecting with oneself in new and sincere ways.
From the enigmatic oeuvre of David Lynch, which illuminates the subtleties of the feminine experience, to the unvarnished exploration of self that accompanies shedding negative habits and perceptions, Harmony's influences are as varied as they are profound. Her lyrics, like keys, unlock invisible trap doors along the boulevards of Hollywood; perhaps, if you tilt your head just right, you might be fortunate enough to see the world through her eyes, even if just for a fleeting verse.
It's a moment suffused with relief, a culmination of time and dedication, and the keen realization that this music is meant to be shared.
TOP: HARMONY wears DRESS by ZOE GUSTAVIA ANNA WHALEN, SHOES by ACNE STUDIOS, JEWELRY by ALEXIS BITTAR
BOTTOM: HARMONY wears BODYSUIT by NGUYEN INC., SHOES by PRADA, JEWELRY by ALEXIS BITTAR
What was the definitive moment that led you here, about to release your first EP as “Harmony” not Harmony Tividad or Girlpool?
Well I've been working on solo music for years and some of these songs were recorded close to when we were recording and finishing the last record as Girlpool so they've been kind of cooking in the oven for a while. I had been eager to, but I just didn’t have the infrastructure to create it in a meaningful and intentional way until recently. I feel so relieved because I’ve wanted to put out this music for a long time, and right now feels like the perfect culmination of time and things aligning to allow this to be.
Is it empowering to work under your own imprint for the first time?
It’s so great. I mean, I love making songs and I love when things like the lyrics are outlandish and even some of the lyrics are outlandish so it's really nice being able to put out exactly what I want.
I could imagine. It must be so nice to not have an outside force basically filtering what you create. At what point did you write the opening track “Angel Kisses”? And what followed after?
So that one was written right around September, like between August and October of 2021, then I recorded it with my friend Oscar in December of 2021. I still have some weird, funky demos of it actually. So it was almost fully realized then, which was a long time ago, now. Then the last track “Dystopia Girl” was started around the same time and I finished it in February 2022. “Good Things Take Time” was written in January 2022. I wrote “Shoplifting From Nike” like five months ago, and “I Am So Lucky And Nothing Can Stop Me” in January of this year. I feel like it’s hard putting music out because there are other songs I have in the works that aren’t quite ready yet, but these five feel most realized and good to me right now.
The tracklist is so nicely balanced.
I’m so happy with it. I feel like my personal mantra, and what the EP is about, examines the absurdity of being a person and having to balance the conflicting emotions that come with that. Sometimes I have a great deal of confidence in myself and other times I can feel extremely fragile and vulnerable, like I have no idea what’s going to happen next, and I think that I’m really interested in writing music about the space between those two things and how they coexist. The older I get, the more secure I become, but the amount of time that I spend uncertain is probably almost the same as when I was younger.
That’s such a great point and I feel like it’s more complicated now with social media as there can be such a dissonance between how someone feels online and real life. Someone can be so confident when interacting with people in person, but insecure about what they post, and vice versa.
How have you navigated that while fostering a new identity outside of your role in Girlpool?
Girlpool was so formative for both Avery and I, and like, literally taught us how to have certainty in our work because we started it so young that like, I don't think either of us ever thought, ‘We are serious artists.’ We were just friends having fun and writing and making things and it was what we love to do and still love to do. However, the older I got, the more my trauma became clear to me so what inspired me and made me feel validated, started to shift. I started to realize like, I had all these qualms with Los Angeles, with how I felt about myself growing up, about beauty and femininity and like belonging in that way.
I started to see work that was camp and over the top – I’ve always loved theater – and reached a point where I understood how all my interests intersected. I’m super interested in theatrics and vulnerability through performance and over-performance. There’s a rawness to things being oversaturated that feels honest and is fun to play around with.
Are there any influences that come to mind?
David Lynch's work and how he processes and plays with the feminine experience, which made me realize how there's so many amazing ways to play with femininity and not feel like a victim of it and that’s been really healing with me. “Dystopia Girl” really reckons with this ideal femininity that feels inaccessible, because it just doesn’t exist.
You make me think about "Dragging My Life Into a Dream" on your last project as Girlpool.
Well Avery wrote that one so I wouldn't say that it exactly defines my narrative, but "Faultline", which is also on that record feels connected to “Angel Kisses” in a way. “Faultline” explores themes of wanting to break out of patterns, being unable to and reckoning with that self-awareness and accepting yourself, but it’s also about becoming bigger than the path you’ve created for yourself to follow. And then the overarching element of “Angel Kisses” is wanting love from another, but at its core, it's about the dream of a life where you choose yourself and in that it's natural for someone else to choose you as well.
HARMONY wears BODYSUIT by NGUYEN INC., SHOES by PRADA, JEWELRY by ALEXIS BITTAR
I feel like it’s only recently I realized how influential our self-perception is. Do you feel tuned into a new frequency as you navigate this pop chapter of your sound?
I feel like the pain and struggle that I've experienced and the mental processes and issues that I experienced as a young adult has evolved into an immense feeling of gratitude, empathy and appreciation for myself. It doesn’t mean that those feelings aren’t present anymore, but I’m not as critical of myself for my actions, I’ve come into myself in a way where the things that I’ve experienced are starting to make more sense and that does seem to come through in the music I’m making now. I used to have some really negative habits that I’ve broken out of for the most part. When I was younger I used substances in a way that are ineffective for making your life better and realizing that put me in such a better place.
How does it feel knowing that in ten days the project is finally out?
Oh, I don't know. It's so crazy honestly because I feel like I have been so fixated on the deadlines that I’ve had to meet that I haven’t had a second to actually process that we’re right at the very end, but when you phrase it like that, I just feel so relieved honestly.
The two songs that we led with are the most different from anything else I’ve done, like the three others have a similar energy to other things I’ve put out so I like that the opening to this project has been saturated and over the top because that's a more vulnerable side of myself that I haven't like played with or given light to. Putting out “Shoplifting from Nike” was extremely vulnerable for some reason, because I revealed parts of myself that I hadn’t shed or talked about in songs before.
You mentioned that the “Dystopia Girl” music video drops the same day, are you excited about that too?
So excited! The set design was super cool. Every wall, including the floor and ceiling, were covered in the album cover and other pictures of me – we even made this huge cut out of myself. I wanted to capture the feeling that people get when they see pictures of themselves and feel like they’re distorted or unfathomable in some way.
The funny thing about the song is that the opening line is, ‘I've got nothing but love’ and then you see a room full of pictures of me, like, there’s something so wrong and disturbing about it, but that dissonance is what makes it the right thing I think. Just because there’s this pop sensibility to something doesn’t mean that there’s not an underbelly of self-consciousness and confusion, which was fun to play with.
Totally. I’m so excited to see it. I feel like it’s going to be insane.
I was just reading this book – a self-help book of course because I love those, like I literally read them for fun. But it explored the idea that no one is ever thinking about you the same amount that you're thinking about you, which with the internet and influencer culture and all this different shit, is so funny because we’re almost encouraged to be self-obsessed because it is more beneficial to your well-being. Like if you’re trying to do anything in the arts, your internet shit is extremely consuming and I think it’s silly and important to play with that because the neuroses of the images that we create is so real, and I know a lot of people who are very plagued by these images like I once was.
The images on social media evolve into more of a performance of effortlessness every day, like now what gets the most likes are photos that seem randomly taken as if they aren’t posed but they actually are. It’s so absurd.
That’s so true, it’s so interesting.
I love that there’s this over-performance to the music videos for “Shoplifting From Nike” and “Good Things Take Time” that contradicts that performance of effortlessness people have become so accustomed to. It’s very early 2000s, which is also very nostalgic.
Yeah exactly, it’s so camp. I’m just a theater loving ho who is always thinking about what it means to be alive, but I also just want to have a good time. I think there’s a seriousness and levity to it all, simultaneously. It’s been really nice to work on this and start to think about what’s next on the horizon, like I have a lot of songs that are already recorded so I’m excited to focus on figuring out which ones are going to become the next moment.
HARMONY wears JACKET + SKIRT by HEAVEN by MARC JACOBS, SHOES by POSTER GIRL, and JEWELRY by ALEXIS BITTAR
How long did it take to feel good about these five songs? And were they always in the same order?
I know that order is important, but I’m such a weird ho when it comes to that. It’s not super intuitive to me honestly so the order for this one was just kind of in the works and I had people helping me. I can get down with the details, but I’m more of a big-picture driven person anyway. When something hits for me, that’s what gets me into writing and creating melodies.
That makes sense. What was it like being in New York and being able to shoot things while you were here?
It was so fun to be there for a reason, like I’ve lived in New York before and it can honestly be so overstimulating and hard to find a direction, but because I was there working, and meeting so many good-hearted beautiful people through the projects I did, I had such an amazing time. I left saying that I didn’t want to leave and I was there for only six days. Everyone was so sweet. It was beautiful.
Did the trip feel fated in a way?
Yeah totally. I mean the trip felt so right, like I fully believe in alignments and that if you can take signals from the world around you, you can figure out if you’re positioning yourself in the right place, because sometimes things will work out even when you don’t expect them to and that’s when you know you’re on the right path. I definitely feel like this is 100% where I need to be.
There’s also this self-consciousness that’s coming with it, which feels healthy and like a necessary part of being a creative person that Avery and I didn’t get to experience much as part of Girlpool because we were a part of something outside of ourselves to attach to that didn’t necessarily represent us directly. So doing that has been healing, yes, but it’s also been so scary because it’s something I’ve never done before.
Almost like you didn’t expect the water to be so deep when you jumped in but you’re just kind of coasting now.
Exactly and it’s so cool. I'm glad that there's this emotional and spiritual element for me because I didn't expect to feel those feelings at all and it’s shown me that there’s so much more that comes with sharing these new parts of myself through music and I’m just eager to go deeper and see what will come of it. There’s something about living in your absolute that’s so liberating and terrifying and cool, to move in your power even though you’re afraid. I encourage everyone to try it. There's a very high element of feeling alive in that.
HARMONY wears TOP by NOAH KANTROWITZ, SKIRT by SANDY LIANG, BOOTS by FIDAN NOVRUZOVA, JEWELRY by ALEXIS BITTAR
