Tommy Cash Dropped a New Single, but Who Really Gives a Shit?

Meg— Where did you make the majority of your music? How did you end up in New York doing music?

Comet— I just randomly came here because I hated living in LA. I was born in London, moved to Florida as a child, moved to LA. I finished high school in LA and started a band there. Then I quit the band, then started a solo project that is accidentally becoming a band again. But most of the last project I recorded alone in my room.

And now you’re in the studio here working on?

An EP. A long EP.

How’d the band come into play?

When I first got here and got booked for a show I was like okay I can just do it with my guitar and vocals. But I always like having a band and I found some people and ended up liking them and now they’re playing shows with me and recording with me.

What was your first show here?

Onos at the Brooklyn Monarch.

Is it difficult to release music or be ready to play it publicly? How do you get to the point where you’re ready to take it there?

I’ve always been end goal minded. When I write a song the whole time I’m thinking what the video would look like or what a cover would look like. Its always my goal to put stuff out… like I found one of my friends who’s a producer and she said she’d love to produce something for someone else. So we met at her house in Burbank. I cobbled my band together and I already had an album written so we put together this really awfully produced album, that I feel now is unlistenable. But thats some peoples favorite work from me, the first album.

Well you always hold that up in the future, like look how raw I used to be. You mention how intertwined visuals and sound are for you. I personally feel like your vibe is Jamie Bochart meets Courtney Love.

Yes.

Are your look and sound references the same?

I feel like they are kind of different. Actually on my unreleased, new stuff they are from the same place, but when I’m thinking of visual references they’re a lot more movie based and things I see and from the internet. Growing up in Florida, I think about having a small town aesthetic, running through the woods-vibe. Which is not super grunge, and not very inner city.

I think a lot of people who grow up outside of cities have a very isolated experience. But when we think of the OG grunge scene we get imagery from when these people had all come together, started bands, and were having a moment in the Pacific Northwest or whatever. But the music still sounds sort of lonely. What are your biggest musical references?

There’s so many. But obviously Hole is a big one. Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of The Sundays, Emilíana Torrini. Which I feel like you can’t hear sonically, but lyrically… Also Sonic Youth , always. And I’ve been inspired but just like friends lately. What everyone’s been doing in the scene. There’s an interesting kind of Nu grunge.

New York really needed instruments again.. Its time for the return of the band… Guys are always doing it but its boring and no ones paying attention. All of a sudden all these girls have come in and its making it exciting to go to shows again. Who are some people you really like in New York right now?

I love Taraneh, Thoom, my friend Nussy Andrews who played a show with us in Ridgewood. She’s an amazing pianist and makes this music thats really intense.. She makes songs that pierce right through you. Its sort of Fiona Apple, Nina SImone, i don't know just something I never see at live shows.

I have a feeling in two years everyone will be ripping it all off.

For the song “Winona”, the video is perfect.

The song is a love song. But for the video, thats lame. I wanted the video to be about girl best friends.

So much of the experience of love is girls talking about it with each other.

Exactly. And I feel like the song is kind of ambiguous in terms of what kind of love its about. I filmed it with my friend Ruby Bryant. It was a cloudy day in Los Angeles. Ruby had a camcorder and my friend Jo Barajas filmed us in the back of her boyfriends old car.

Its very Tumblr, soft grunge grayscale.

Yeah, all of us grew up on that, so lets just create new that.

Teenage dreams achieved in our twenties. On “Beauty Marks”, you talk about wanting to be a little girl, starving and sick, beauty and pain. Especially in girl rock, there’s a lot of referencing girlhood lyrically and even visually. Especially in the 90s. What do you that's about?

Obviously I have a different perspective. Just seeing girls grow up around me, and then having that experience as an adult, later on. There is such a pull in society to be small, and diminish yourself as a woman. To be younger and smaller and cuter and thinner and whatever. And that line “ I long to be a little girl” is also a line about me longing for what I didn’t have as a girl. And missing that in a way, but also the current social pull to be that.

What is your ideal show? Be shallow.

I’ve played a lot of shows. I want shows where my friends are in the greenroom, everyone is dressed really cute, I have girls in the front, and their boyfriends at the merch booth buying things. For my EP release, I have a lot of visuals of wing removal and fallen angels bla bla bla whatever. For the release show I want to be almost naked, surrounded in feathers, and chained to the drums.

Tell me more about the upcoming EP.

For the release show I want my friends on the EP to perform. Lucy Loone and Taraneh are both on the new EP. The EP is called Two Winged. It will probably come out this summer. It's a journey through lost innocence. Accepting it and wrything over that realization. Overall accepting it but…

But you suffer.

But you suffer. It's the suffering through it. It's funny. Like the last song sounds really sad. But to me it's always been a happy song. Because it's kind of about accepting the way things are.

I feel like guys are always asking why women want to listen to sad music. And i'm like, you do not get it. 

Exactly. Even my mom is always like “you should make happier music you’ll be more popular and make more money if you make popular music." But every artist I listen to doesn’t make happy music. For me all that stuff is the only way to let it go. I'm a big let go-er.

Live through this. A lot of your vocals are growly and have a lot of tension. But you have such a lovely voice. Were you educated musically?

I come from a very musical family. Growing up I quit guitar, quit vocal lessons, quit dance. My parents were both ballerinas so I had a very musical surrounding. Me and my sister both make music and have always been singers.

Music education drop out. Grunge.

Exactly. Even my mom is always like “you should make happier music you’ll be more popular and make more money if you make popular music." But every artist I listen to doesn’t make happy music. For me all that stuff is the only way to let it go. I'm a big let go-er.

Live through this. A lot of your vocals are growly and have a lot of tension. But you have such a lovely voice. Were you educated musically?

I come from a very musical family. Growing up I quit guitar, quit vocal lessons, quit dance. My parents were both ballerinas so I had a very musical surrounding. Me and my sister both make music and have always been singers.

Music education drop out. Grunge.

Tell me about how your wrote your new single “Dirty.”

I wrote “Dirty” because I was angry. I wanted something loud and agressive that I would’ve stomped my feet to during class. The song is about a pledge to imperfection: to always stay dirty and never get clean, whatever that means.

How did you write and record it?

“Dirty” has taken many forms, originally as an LA bedroom demo, which is still where Lucy’s vocals are ripped from. She recorded them super stoned in like two takes. The final version was recorded in the East Village in a studio that Grant (Lepping), my bassist, works at. He co-produced the single as well.

What state were you in when you wrote it? 

In limbo. I had lost my job, a modeling contract, a boyfriend and I was totally like what the fuck is going on with my life. 2 months before I said fuck it and moved to NYC.

Is there a video?

Yes! My friend Patrick Hartley shot one for me while I was in LA. We shot it in Joshua Tree and it was directed by me and Jo Barajas.

Anything you want to add?

Listen to the single and the EP bla bla bla. Carry more things made of paper with you, books, notepad, cash, and if you’re a girl who wants to get into music please play drums or run sound we need more of you.

Listen to Comet here.