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indie rock

For the four devout Midwesterners that make up Minnesota indie pop-rock band Hippo Campus, touring through major cities like New York wasn’t always as comfortable as it is for them now more than 10 years into their careers — but they’ve always had their ways of coping.

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“I love coming here now,” 30-year-old guitarist Nathan Stocker tells Billboard backstage at the Bowery Ballroom in lower Manhattan, where he and his bandmates were hours away from performing an album-release show Tuesday (Sept. 24). “It used to scare me until I was well into the night, a couple beers deep, just chain smoking. And then it was like ‘Yeah, I love New York!’”

After years of heavy drinking on show nights, Stocker is sober now – and so is the rest of the band, for the most part. There’s still room for some balance; at one point in the show later that night, 29-year-old frontman Jake Luppen asks the crowd to send a shot of whisky to the stage, and when two arrive at the same time, he downs them both as 28-year-old bassist Zach Sutton shakes his head with gentle disapproval. But the quartet’s overall tamer approach to life on the road is just one of many things that’s different about the cult-favorite group in the age of their latest album, Flood, which dropped Sept. 20 via new label Psychic Hotline, having departed Grand Jury Records after their original record deal expired.

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Luppen and 29-year-old drummer Whistler Allen, for instance, both own homes back in their home state, and all four members are in committed relationships (Luppen got engaged over the summer). The group is far from the early 20-somethings who dropped Billboard 200-charting debut album Landmark in 2017 and slept on dirty van floors on tour, and even farther from the Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists classmates who first started releasing music together in 2013. Now all pushing 30, Hippo Campus is finally coming out on the other side of years of growing pains, spawned by the natural push and pull of four people who’ve been best friends, bandmates and business partners for more than a decade.

Early in the writing sessions for Flood, they started going to therapy as a group to help parse the big questions – around the same time as which Stocker quit drinking – and a lot of that introspection bleeds into the 13 tracks on the finished product. On the thrashing ode to anxiety “Paranoid,” Luppen sings, “I wanna give this life all that I havе in me,” and on optimistic album closer “I Got Time,” he muses, “If this is as good as it gets I’ll be more than fine.”

But even as they were each evolving in their personal lives, they found that it was difficult to let go of the songs they were making in the two-year period between their last album, 2022’s LP3, and now. On a self-designated mission to make the best Hippo Campus record ever, they got stuck in an endless loop — writing more than 100 songs, recording them over and over, and arranging multiple versions of their fourth album just to scrap them soon afterward. They thought they might’ve cracked it last summer while on the road, until Luppen declared to the rest of the group that, again, it simply wasn’t good enough.

Realizing they couldn’t keep going as they had been, Hippo Campus left Minnesota to record yet another version of the album, this time at Sonic Ranch Studios in Tornillo, Tex. They set a 10-day deadline and, with the help of producers Caleb Wright and Brad Cook — and using everyone from Phoenix to Big Thief, Tom Petty and the Red Hot Chili Peppers as reference points — forced themselves to record their parts simultaneously as they would on stage. No listening back to takes. No repeated attempts. Only forward motion.

The result was a set of existential, self-conscious tracks with the same luminous energy and unpredictable melodies Hippo is known for, reinvigorated by the ease with which the analog instrumentation they adhered to in the studio translates to the stage. As much was evident at their New York show Tuesday night, where they played Flood front to back for a palpably excited audience that was already screaming along to the words of songs that had come out just four days prior. At one point, Luppen stops singing to cough — he recovered from COVID-19 last week, but not before having to cancel the band’s scheduled hometown release shows — but their passionate fans have no trouble taking over lead vocals in his place on anthemic single “Everything at Once.”

With touring serving as their main source of income, the group will stay on the road through February, playing theaters and auditoriums across North America and the U.K. along with one festival show in Bangkok. And their fans will follow. One 22-year-old listener, Abby, was camped outside the 9:00 p.m. Bowery performance since the early afternoon to get as close as possible to the stage for what would be her 52nd Hippo Campus show; the next day, she said she’d be traveling to Washington, D.C. to catch her 53rd.

“It’s so rad,” Luppen says of their fans’ devotion. “It always surprises me that anyone would be down to do that for us. That’s a big reason why we keep going, you know? Those people really believe in it, and that allows us to believe in it.”

Below, Billboard catches up with Stocker and Sutton backstage before their show at the Bowery — followed by Luppen and Allen on Zoom the next day – about growing up, ditching bad habits and the messy beauty of starting over:

What were your initial reactions to Jake saying you needed to scrap years of work and start over on Flood?

Sutton: He was the first to verbalize an emotion we were all feeling. We had to be honest about where we were in the process and where we wanted to go from there. But there was a lot of arguing about what to throw away.

Stocker: Jake’s expression of that concern is valid … once that’s brought to our attention, it’s our job to attend to it. But also, it’s like, “God dammit dude — can’t we just say goodbye to this thing and move on?”

Allen: I remember listening to it and feeling excited for the songs, but deep down, I was like, ‘It just needs to get mixed right or something.’ Which tends to be an excuse for something else that’s lacking.

What was missing?

Luppen: It just didn’t sound like we were having fun playing music. We went into the record wanting to make the best Hippo Campus record ever. It immediately put a lot of pressure on the thing. The stakes were so high that, personally, I was stressed out the entire time — second-guessing songs, second-guessing the performances.

Sutton: We were too zoomed in. We’d been chasing these 100 songs for a year in a half. We were like, “We have lost the f–king plot.”

What needed to change for Flood to finally come together?

Allen: We were just so separated most of the time at home. It was rare at a certain point that we were all in the same room. At Sonic Ranch, we were all there — we had to be there. We had to make ourselves experience it, whether we wanted to or not.

Luppen: Hippo Campus, when it’s at its best, is us playing music together in a room. To make the best Hippo Campus record is to capture the feeling that our live shows capture. The best way to do that was to track all together at the same time.

Allen: Doing what we did at Sonic Ranch is proof that [recording live] is a crucial thing for us, to make ourselves be in an isolated space and just get s–t done. Otherwise, we just get too relaxed or comfortable or lazy.

Will fans ever hear those other 100 songs?

Sutton: I f–king hope so. Those are some of my favorite songs.

Stocker: The large majority of them, probably not.

Sutton: Once a song is considered so heavily and inevitably shelved, it’s hard to go back to that shelf. It’s shouldered with all the disagreements that we had about the song.

Stocker: “You used to f–king hate this one, you want to release it now?” [Laughs.] All the songs we have in the back room collecting dust, those tear at us in a lot of different ways. Because they’re still ours.

What is Flood about for you personally?

Stocker: It’s a line of simple questioning: Am I good enough? Do I love you? Am I a phony?

Sutton: The motif seems like redefining where you are, especially as a group. This is our fourth record: Who are we now? Where do we want to go?

Luppen: Flood is like being naked in a lit room with a mirror held up to you, and being like, “Embrace this.” It’s a testament to all the things we need to be doing to take care of ourselves and live better. Now that we’re into our 30s, we wanted Flood to be the start of the music we make in those years, where you’re not driven by this youthful crazy energy.

How does touring look different for you as you get older?

Stocker: We usually cap it at three weeks now. It’s the longest we’ll go out without a break, just so we can maintain a level of sanity.

Allen: It’s chilled out so much. With [Nathan’s] new sobriety over the last couple of years, that was a big shift on the whole group. 2022 was the grand finale of what it used to be for us on the big LP3 tour. I just remember being at the end of that tour feeling f–king wiped. That was definitely a wakeup call.

Sutton: At our worst, we’d get up at noon, have a beer, then not eat anything until the show. You do what you think you’re supposed to do – “Oh, it’s a party!” — there was a culture that was set by all of us.

Luppen: It was like partying in a Midwestern way, where we’d just get wasted on the bus and watch Harry Potter.

Allen: Now everybody’s chilling, getting in their bus bunk by 11:00 p.m.

Why was sobriety important for the band?

Luppen: We were using alcohol, I think, to numb fatigue or nerves. I have the life that I’ve always dreamed of, and I want to be present and there for it, even if that means I’m riding the waves a little deeper on the ups and the downs. It’s better than just sleepwalking your way through life.

Stocker: With not drinking and having a newfound clarity within my personal life … I became obsessed with fulfilling this vision of myself that I had, which was, ‘If you are going to do this thing, you have to do it the best that you can.’ That meant showing up every day and writing a song if I could. I felt like I had to make up for lost time from being perpetually wasted for 10 years.

Other than sobriety, what did you need to discuss in band therapy?

Sutton: I couldn’t talk to anyone in the band without seeing all the f–king baggage. The biggest disagreement is defining what Hippo Campus is. We all have different answers about the music — mainly how the music’s made — and what the music’s saying.

Stocker: We needed to have conversations about how things had been and how not to go back there, because that was dark and harmful. It was really affirmative in, like, “Okay, yes, we’re still friends, we haven’t done anything to each other that’s irreparable damage or anything like that.” We can reestablish these healthy lines of communication so that, moving forward with this record as friends, individuals, human beings and business partners, we can do this in a healthy way.

Luppen: It was us paying to force ourselves to talk to each other. We all changed a lot over the pandemic in our personal lives, with our partners and everything. On top of that, we’ve been friends since we were 14. In a lot of ways, we were still communicating with each other like we were still in high school. Therapy allowed me to see everybody for where they’re at now.

Why did you change labels to Psychic Hotline when your deal with Grand Jury Records ended?

Luppen: We wanted to try something different this time around. We kind of shopped [Flood] around to a lot of different labels. We talked to majors, we talked to indies. Frankly, it was pretty disappointing. There were a lot of major labels that passed on it, which was confusing for us. We’ve spent 10 years working our asses off building a very organic, sustainable business.

Allen: We were told that they loved the record, but there’s just not enough “virality” in the band. It’s proof that they’re not interested in the actual success of a band, they’re just interested in the little spike in numbers that bring in royalties and syncs or whatever the f–k. Then as soon as that band doesn’t provide that same accidental moment, it’s all over.

Luppen: Psychic Hotline is run by our manager [Martin Anderson]. It was the option that allowed us the most freedom and cared the most about the project. It was clear they loved the music and they really understood us on a deep level. We were like, “Let’s just bet on ourselves like we’ve done our entire career and grassroots this motherf–ker.”

Stocker: Having the management side of things already taken care of and having them already be so close to us throughout that creative process, it made sense to bring them in on the label side as well.

What are your goals for the band? Are you actively trying to expand?

Sutton: It would be stupid to say, ‘Still not there yet.’ Like, this is it. To say I want anything more would be so ungrateful. I do always feel very competitive about being the best version of ourselves. I want to be in the same conversation as all the people that influenced me.

Allen: There are still some things we would like to do. We’ve never done a Tiny Desk, or some talk shows.

Stocker: We still have this idea that we want to be the biggest band in the world, but that is not something we’re interested in at the cost of our integrity and our friendships.

Luppen: It’s about preserving what we have at this point and not burning out. When I was younger, I was constantly trying to climb this hill that had no end. The biggest goal we could ever imagine was selling out Red Rocks [in Colorado] when we started the band, and we did that. Playing arenas … that doesn’t sound attractive to us. We’re happy with where we’re at. If more people come in, I’m always grateful for that.

I think there’s a record we have yet to make that really captures everything. We thought maybe it was going to be [Flood], and this one gets closer. But for me it’s about cracking a perfect Hippo record. Every Hippo record we’ve kind of had to learn to love.

But isn’t that kind of the same thought process that got you into the endless writing cycle with Flood?

Luppen: It’s a blessing and a curse. We’re always sort of hungry for something that’s just past what you’re capable of doing. But I do think that is a driving force of what makes Hippo rad. Maybe we’ll never make that record, or maybe we already made that record. Who the f–k knows?

You raise a good point, though. I’m gonna reflect on that.

In August 2022, Allison Crutchfield, an A&R executive at ANTI- Records, traveled to Asheville, N.C., on a mission to sign the rising singer-songwriter known as MJ Lenderman. By year’s end, Crutchfield succeeded — and had also joined his tight-knit circle of friends.
“I’ve never had a meeting with an artist where they’ve been like, ‘Just come over and we’ll have a barbecue, we’ll just drink beer and eat,’ ” recalls Crutchfield, who got to know Lenderman at the property where he was living with several others, including members of the ascendant alt-country group Wednesday.

At the time, Lenderman had just released his breakthrough album, Boat Songs, a collection of detailed vignettes set to fuzzed-out country-rock riffs, on independent label Dear Life Records. And the 25-year-old hasn’t slowed down since: In late 2023, Lenderman made his ANTI- debut with his acclaimed live album Live and Loose!; in early 2024, he hit the road with Wednesday, for which he sings and plays guitar; and in March, Waxahatchee (fronted by Crutchfield’s twin sister, Katie) released her lauded album Tigers Blood, for which she invited Lenderman into her small creative circle. Lenderman made his Billboard chart debut, on Adult Alternative Airplay, with his feature on that set’s aching lead single, “Right Back to It,” and performed it alongside Waxahatchee on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

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As Lenderman’s profile grew, he was assembling Manning Fireworks, which is set for release Sept. 6 and his first studio album for ANTI-. “It was kind of strange,” he says when reflecting on the whirlwind that accompanied becoming one of indie rock’s most heralded new artists. “I guess it was more of an obstacle of making the new record — just trying to figure out how to not think about that and make a record like I would before.”

For Lenderman, that wasn’t so long ago. A child of music lovers — “My dad was a Deadhead,” he says, detailing the Derek Trucks and Gov’t Mule shows he saw as a kid growing up in Asheville — Lenderman began playing guitar in early grade school and eventually gravitated toward indie and punk music as a teenager playing in bands around his hometown. Soon he began recording, and the pandemic afforded him more time to complete 2021’s Ghost of Your Guitar Solo and, eventually, Boat Songs.

When Lenderman’s manager, Rusty Sutton, passed along a Boat Songs promo to Crutchfield, she knew she had to sign him “probably 10 seconds” into its opening song. “In a medium like indie rock,” she explains, “where there really is only so much you can do, for someone to do something where they’re honoring the tradition of this type of music but to do it in a way that does totally feel refreshing and like something that we haven’t heard, it’s really exciting.”

Lenderman is heavily influenced by Neil Young — “I can trace back most bands that I like to Neil,” he says, citing the rock legend’s scuzzy mid-’70s phase — and he also counts Drive-By Truckers, Dinosaur Jr. and Will Oldham as key touchstones. But his music has connected with younger audiences thanks to its modern sensibility and the way it careens from absurdist humor to deep, sometimes dark, profundity. (One new song, “Wristwatch,” is an ode to loneliness where the narrator notes that he’s “got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome.”)

“Obviously, my real life is going to bleed through a little bit, but I try to keep it more from a third-person perspective,” he says. “I feel like that opens more possibilities — and it’s kind of more fun writing fiction.”

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For Manning Fireworks, recorded whenever he could find time between tours, Lenderman followed a familiar approach, reuniting with producer Alex Farrar at Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studios, where he has recorded tracks several times before. But the album, which expands Lenderman’s country-rock creative palette without losing its signature wit or intimacy, is far from a redux.

“I want my records to be dynamic,” Lenderman says. “For a while, I was trying to maybe take it up a notch and go louder or faster or something — and then that just really wasn’t where I was at. So I decided to go in the opposite direction and make it more acoustic and quieter.”

On Manning Fireworks, Lenderman does a bit of both. The music has never sounded richer, with fiddle and brass bolstering his guitar, but he also explores the flip side, like on album closer “Bark at the Sun,” which ends Manning Fireworks with a ­multiminute noise outro driven by “bass clarinet abuse drone.” While Lenderman “couldn’t tell you why” he made the creative choice — “it just felt right to me” — it’s indicative of his growth. “There’s a level of confidence coming from [him] at this point that feels different from Boat Songs,” Crutchfield says. “This is a person who is unbelievably talented and now understands how to wield that.”

Not that the eternally nonchalant Lenderman would ever describe his intuitive choices so grandly. 

This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.

In a 2022 interview with Publishers Weekly, Colin Meloy talked about discovering author Stephen King in the sixth grade — writing that inspired his own work as a novelist of such young adult books as the Wildwood and The Stars Did Wander Darkling. Not counting the 33 1/3 series book he wrote on The Replacements‘ Let It Be album in 2004, Meloy’s literary career began in earnest in 2011, by which time he’d already established himself as the Stephen King of indie rock.

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As the frontman and principal songwriter of The Decemberists, Meloy is a prolific crafter of songs that are as lyrically rich as their music — contemporary issues expressed through ancient history and freighted with dark storylines and black humor. He doesn’t write about vampires and killer dogs or cars — wicked mortals and the luckless are his forté — but like King’s stories, Meloy’s songs connect and captivate with authentic humanity, even when something sinister is afoot. He makes bad behavior sound really good.

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That certainly holds true for The Decemberists’ new double album, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again — the band’s first release in six years, as well as the first on their own label, YABB — which drops June 14. Meloy says it’s their best album, and he may be right. Certainly, it’s their best double album — a fat-free collection of songs that, like Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, takes creative and sonic chances and yet flows as cohesive, immensely enjoyable and often profound song cycle.

The Decemberists ‘As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again’

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The Portland, Ore. Band’s last album, 2018’s I’ll Be Your Girl was largely a provocative reaction to the 2016 presidential election, epitomized by the brilliant, searing single, ‘Severed.” But, as Meloy explains now, singing those angry songs during the tour that followed left him exhausted.  

As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again is an irreverent musical revival of sorts — an attempt to muck out the political and cultural sludge we’ve slogged through for close to 10 years now — perhaps so that we are prepared for a second dose. The jaunty gallows humor of the album’s opener, “Burial Ground” sets the tone with Meloy singing, “This world’s all wrong, so let’s go where we belong. Pack up the stereo, meet at the burial ground.”

As it does on so many Decemberists’ albums, death looms, but on “The Reapers” and “The Black Maria” it’s inevitable, not personal.  We are all doomed, Meloy seems to be saying, so why not really live while we can. “Long White Veil” puts the listener to that test. It’s a song about a woman who dies on her wedding night, with a pedal steel and guitar sound that dares you not to dance.

The album closes with a stone-cold masterpiece, “Joan in the Garden,” which was sparked by Meloy’s reading of The Book of Joan, Lidia Yuknavitch’s science-fiction riff on the story of Joan of Arc and his subsequent immersion in the history and lore of the martyr and early feminist. A prog-rock track with massive fuzzy guitars, bombastic drums, chimes and careening synths, “Joan in the Garden” clocks in at more than 19 minutes and includes an instrumental interlude that sounds like supernal electricity punctuated by muffled voices and the THX audio company’s sonic logo. (Could that also be a nod to OMD’s “Joan of Arc” at the song’s beginning?)

It’s a cathartic, carburetor-clearing banger that brings the album full circle. The last lines of the song’s last verse serve as the album’s title, and a mantra that, in light of these times, could be inspirational or delusional: “As it ever was, so it will be again.”

The title of the album reminds me of that Karl Marx quote, “History repeats itself. First is tragedy, second is farce.”These days we seem to be living through a combination of the two. Any thoughts on that?

Is that Karl Marx or Groucho Marx? I’m familiar with that quote. I didn’t know that was Karl Marx. That was not on my mind. “As it ever was, so it will be again” is the last line of “Joan in the Garden,” which is a triumphal moment, but I also think it’s about returning and about permanence or how we perceive permanence. I think there’s a lot of things to unpack at that.

I interpreted the cover art as a return in the way that nature returned during the pandemic.

There is something about that. I think there is a return to nature, to simplicity — to a kind of idyllic world that exists in our imagination. And it’s a little skewed. To go back isn’t always the best way forward.

“Joan in the Garden” is an epic song.  Have you ever seen Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc?

I have.

That song would make a great soundtrack to the movie.

“Joan in the Garden” came out of a weird period in my life. Starting in 2017, I became super fascinated with the story of Joan of Arc after reading Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Book of Joan, which recasts her story in this weird, bizarre, future world. After I read that I was like, “What is the real story of Joan of Arc?” So, I went back and read another novel. I read a biography, and I certainly watched that film. It’s absolutely beautiful — all those close-ups of her [actress Renée Jeanne Falconetti].

A movie director once told me that the burning-at-the-stake scenes got a little too realistic.

I read that, too. I think some of that was real emotion. Real tears that were brought out in her. Real fear.

Is there anything you’ve read or watched recently that resonated with you?

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. It won the Booker Prize. That book is phenomenal. I also read The Bee Sting by another Irish writer named Paul Murray that I really loved. Stuff I’m watching — I really love Ripley, the Netflix adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley with Andrew Scott. And then we just watched the season finale of Shogun. I thought they did such a good job with that series.

The songs on As It Ever Was are not the first laced with dark happenings and black humor. But I feel like the album alludes to death and mortality more than on past records. Do you agree?

Maybe. I’d have to look. I think with every Decemberists record, somebody makes a crack about how many people die in a Decemberists record. I don’t know that the death count in this one is that high. I leave that up to our capable fans. I think there’s a lot of meditations about death and dying and mortality — maybe more than there are actual deaths.

Where do these meditations come from?

Oh gosh, I guess it’s not often far from my mind. It’s a universal thing. It’s something that we all share — birth and death. I feel like I’m drawn back to it time and time again.

I’m guessing you had finished the album by the time the wars in Ukraine and on the Gaza strip and Donald Trump’s numerous trials began. Did the political climate in America factor into your songwriting at all?

Our last record was shot through with resentment and reaction to the 2016 election and living under a Trump presidency, and I came out the other end of touring behind that record so exhausted from all the vitriol that I was spewing [in those songs]. So, while we’re clearly not out from underneath Trumpism, I need to move on from that and being angry about that.  But it does show up. The song “America Made Me” is a reflection on my experience with Americanism in 2024, and the brand we have on us as Americans. But beyond that, I don’t know. I mean certainly you could read “Joan in the Garden” as an anti-authoritarian song. But beyond that I’m not sure that I spent much time dwelling on politics.

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I’ve read that the song “William Fitzwilliam’ has a connection to John Prine?

It’s sort of me writing a John Prine song. Right when the lockdown happened, I was reading Hilary Mantel’s book The Mirror and the Light, which is the third in her Wolf Hall series about the Court of Henry VIII. At the same time, I was reading about all the stuff that was happening in lockdown and John Prine died. I went back and listened to these John Prine records and even learned a John Prine song for this streaming tribute thing. I had Hilary Mantel and John Prine on the brain, and they just collided into this song “William Fitzwilliam.”

The press release for the album says you consider As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again The Decemberists’ best album. Can you give me a sense of why you feel that way?

In so many ways, it’s a culmination of everything that we’ve tried to do from the beginning of our career. I think it hits every note. Probably some of that is my own bias of it being fresh new music. I did have a moment in the studios where listening through, I thought, “This the best thing that we’ve done.” I think the structure is there from song one to song 13. Other people can argue with that. I’m probably the worst expert to give you that kind of summation, so why not just shoot my mouth off about it.

I find it interesting there have been such a proliferation of double albums recently: Taylor Swift, Travis Scott, Morgan Wallen and now The Decemberists. Is it that people were so cooped up during the pandemic that they have a lot they need to express?  

That’s part of it. Also, we’ve never really done a proper 70-minute double record, and I feel like this is our time to do it. I had regrets that What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World wasn’t a double record. Weirdly, we kind of split the difference with that record. It should have been a very short record or a very long record. In my head, it exists as a double record.

There’s always the anniversary edition.

As far as double records out in the world today, I do think there’s lots of people putting lots of music out. It’s easier to record and there’s less constraints, but I grew up loving certain double records and the big swings they make. I think of Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk and Zen Arcade by Husker Du. Some of the classic double records.

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You talk about the exhaustion that resulted from the Your Girl/Your Ghost World Tour.  Did you ever consider walking away from the music business?

I feel that way between every record. At every stage in my career, I’ve had this longing to just chuck it all in. I think that’s my own weird hangup. I’m a private person. I’m a reserved person. I tussle so much with how I’m perceived and receiving criticism and constantly putting myself out there in this way and being drawn to that over time it’s just so challenging. I continue like a moth to a flame. I come back. I can only hope that each time that flame burns a little brighter and it gets a little hotter. At least maybe I’m making better work for all that anguish.

This is your first album on your own label. Why start one now?

We were done with Capitol, and the major label world has changed so much. We were always outliers as a major label band. The people call us a quintessential indie rock band and I would be like, “But we’re not, actually.” I feel like we managed to make it work at Capitol, and for whatever reason they kept us around even though they were more and more geared towards making pop records. By no means is there bad blood or anything. Working with Capitol was surprisingly great. But at this point in our career, we don’t need a major label behind us anymore. We have our fan base, and there are more and more channels available to independent artists making their own work. It has changed so much since we signed to Capitol in, whatever, 2005, that it didn’t make sense to go back to a major label. It felt like if ever there was a time to take this under our own control, it was now.

Do you own your masters prior to this album?

No. Those are all Capitol’s or Kill Rock Stars’. In time we will own masters, but the deal with the devil that you make is that you give up your masters.

I find it interesting that you write young adult fiction and songs that, from my perspective, are created for people with much more life experience, and a healthy sense of mortality. How do these two creative engines coexist?

I don’t think they’re too far off from one another. The stuff that I write or at least the stuff that I am drawn to as far as books for kids is darker, and I think so much of children’s literature up until kind of recently was always a little dark. Folk tales and fairytales are as much about warning kids about the darkness and evil in the world and death as they are about imparting any kind of moral lesson. And so, I feel like that’s the mode that I worked in in the books, and then similarly I feel like that’s also part of what I write in the songs, too.

Your novel Wildwood is going to be a film and you’re writing the soundtrack?

I’m contributing songs to it. There’s a composer writing the soundtrack, the cinematic music for it. But I have been asked to contribute a couple of songs and then maybe one for the end credits. Who knows. With these things, you never know what’s going to survive.

Will you perform the songs solo or with The Decemberists?  

We might be doing a song for the end credits. But the songs that I wrote will be sung by the actors; the characters in the movie. There’s just a couple of them.

You are also working on a musical theater project. Are you able to talk about it?

I can’t really talk about it in detail. Right now, it’s still in a gestational phase. But I feel like it’s something that I’ve been devoting a whole lot of songwriting time to over the last three years and, in some ways, I think really helped and informed the songs that I was writing for the band.

Kevin Parker of Tame Impala has sold his complete song catalog to Sony Music Publishing. The deal expands Parker’s longstanding relationship with SMP, which has published him since 2009, and includes all of his works released as Tame Impala as well as his writing credits for other songs, including his contributions to Dua Lipa‘s new album Radical Optimism, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 this week.

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Parker has also expanded his publishing deal with Sony to include the administration of the full catalog as well as future works.

The Australian mutli-hyphenate musician has made an indelible impact on music since he began his psychedelic rock band in 2008. Through the project, Parker has released four albums — InnerSpeaker (2010), Lonerism (2012),Currents (2015) and The Slow Rush (2020) — all of which were solely written, produced, recorded and mixed by Parker.

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Along with Tame Impala, Parker has also written and produced for a number of top acts, including Travis Scott, Dua Lipa, Mick Jagger, Kendrick Lamar, SZA, The Gorillaz, Mark Ronson, The Weeknd, Lady Gaga, Kid Cudi, Flaming Lips, A$AP Rocky, Lil Yachty, Don Toliver, Daft Punk, Miguel, and Australian children’s group The Wiggles. Rihanna also covered his Tame Impala-released single “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” (which she retitled “Same Ol’ Mistakes”) on her acclaimed 2016 album ANTI.

Parker says of the deal: “The idea of passing on ownership of my songs is one that I don’t think about very lightly, at all. They are the fruit of my blood, sweat and creativity over all the years I’ve been a recording artist and songwriter so far. I have a lot of love and trust for the Sony publishing family and have only had great experiences with Damian Trotter and the rest of the gang worldwide. I don’t think my songs could be in any safer hands than Sony’s, and I’m excited for the future and happy I can keep working with them on whatever the future brings…”

“I have always admired Kevin Parker and I believe he is one of the most versatile songwriters of our time,” says Jon Platt, chairman and CEO of SMP. “Kevin has built a catalog of songs with incredible range and enduring power, and he has always stayed true to his vision. It is a privilege to represent his music, and we are committed to broadening his legacy of success.”

Damian Trotter, managing director of Australia for Sony Music Publishing said: “Kevin is a singular talent whose creativity and dedication to his art has enthralled fans and artists since he arrived on the music scene. Having worked with Kevin since before the release of the first Tame Impala album, it has been thrilling to witness his rise to success worldwide, which is so well deserved. We are proud and humbled to be taking custodianship of this iconic catalogue of songs and to be continuing our relationship with Kevin in this exciting phase of his music making career.”

The Project
Blondshell arrived April 7 on Partisan via Knitting Factory. and included the artist’s 2022 debut single “Olympus.”

The Origin

Sabrina Teitelbaum wanted to be a singer since she was a kid growing up in Manhattan. In 2015, she moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California’s Popular Music Program, and eventually launched a solo pop project called Baum. But it wasn’t until she wrote the broody and slow-burning “Olympus” that her career clicked, and Blondshell was born. Producer Yves Rothman encouraged her to write more songs in the same raw and rock-inspired style, which she recalls felt “intimidating” at first. But the songs, most of which make up Blondshell, tumbled out quickly. “It was just obvious to me that this stuff was more who I am,” she says now.

The Sound

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Teitelbaum was raised on rock greats like The Rolling Stones and is a big fan of The National (she says the band’s black-and-white album art for Trouble Will Find Me inspired her own debut cover). At the same time, having grown up in the 2000s, she was listening to pop icons like Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson, Gwen Stefani, “and all these people who had higher belting ranges,” she recalls — adding that for a long time, she thought that she had to sing that way, too. 

It took a song like the confessional “Sepsis,” one of her favorite songs to perform live, to make her rethink that approach. “It’s just in a good place for my voice,” she says of the track. “And when I started writing the album, particularly with ‘Sepsis,’ I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t have to do that. I’m just gonna sing in the most comfortable part of my voice.’ It’s fun to sing that one because it’s just easy.”

The Record

Blondshell had a “relaxing celebration” when her album arrived, performing at Amoeba on release night and heading to the beach the following day. Blondshell debuted at No. 88 on Billboard’s Top Current Album Sales chart, becoming her first entry on any tally. Of signing with an indie label, she says “I didn’t wanna press that button that was like, ‘This is exactly who I’m gonna be for the rest of my career.’ I really wanted the freedom to change that up … I’ve been thinking about, ‘What did I bring in as references for this album?’ And it was a lot of 90s guitar driven music. I am always gonna have that as a reference, because that’s the music that I love.”

The Breakthrough

Though Blondshell only debuted in 2022, the artist says getting to this point – where in recent months she’s played her favorite venue The Fonda and made her late night television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon – has required years of work: “First [it was], ‘How do I even get on Spotify? How do I meet producers and how do I go to sessions?’ Just years of step-by-step. And then, ‘What do I wanna sound like as a performer? What do I want my show to look like?’

“I was getting kind of scared the last couple years because I was like, ‘I don’t know what I would do in a long term kind of way if it wasn’t music,’” she recalls. “I think people put so much pressure on musicians, especially women, to know exactly who you are as an artist at such a young age, and to find success and all these ideas — like, ‘If you’re not having success by the time you’re like 25, then it’s not gonna happen.’ All these messages that got sent while I was growing up were kind of freaking me out for a period of time.” 

The moment that started to shift, she says, was when she played her first show as Blondshell last summer: “That felt like a big moment, because I put ‘Olympus’ out and I think people hadn’t heard that kind of music [from me]. Some of my friends hadn’t heard it, people I had worked with. And then I got to be like, ‘See, I’ve been working really hard at this thing and getting this live show ready,’ and I got to show people.”

The Future

Blondshell is already excited for her next album, on which she wants to be more experimental, while still rooted in rock. She cites PJ Harvey as an artist who’s released successful but “weirder, progressively” indie-rock albums over the course of her career. “I wanna just play around with different structures and stuff like that,” she says.

She’s also taking note of who she believes to be stellar vocalists. “I feel like there’s a lot of artists right now that are really good live,” she says. “That’s the thing I’m looking at in other artists who are ahead of me or further along in their career.” She mentions Ethel Cain and Willow in particular, whose Coachella performances she keeps seeing clips of online. She also mentions a superstar she has been inspired by since she was a kid: Miley Cyrus. “I love her,” says Blondshell. “I was just watching videos of her singing yesterday and it takes so much work to sound that good and to be that consistent.”

The Piece of Advice Every New Indie Artist Needs to Hear

“While you’re in the process of making the music, don’t think about how you’re gonna put it out. Don’t bring the business parts of it into the actual writing. I would say leave those elements – and also leave your expectations about whether or not people will connect to it – outside.”

The Indie Artist/Band You’re Currently Obsessed With

“I like Wednesday a lot. Listen to ‘Formula One.’”

The Most Exciting Thing In Music Right Now

“I see a lot of singer-songwriters making indie feel more mainstream right now. And I think guitar music becoming popular again is sort of part of that. I also feel like it’s kind of like, indie sleaze is back. I think people are craving that energy. But I don’t know, I just feel like there’s more space for different kinds of music to be popular on a more mainstream level right now.

But more importantly, there being more room for other types of music than just three genres. And [knowing] your references can be very different. I think people might be surprised that I absolutely love Miley Cyrus. There’s a lot of very indie artists who love her. I saw her on the street once, I had my sister’s dog and she said, ‘Can I say “hi” to the dog?’ And I was like, ‘You’re Miley Cyrus.’ I was with my family and my dad was like, ‘Who is that? You’re blushing.’ I was like, ‘Are you f–king serious? It’s Miley Cyrus, and yeah, I’m blushing. You don’t have to call me out.’ It was kind of iconic of him, actually.”

On release night for The Record, the celebrated debut album from supergroup boygenius, the band can hardly contain their excitement. “I”m so f–king stoked,” says Phoebe Bridgers. 

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Julien Baker adds that though she’s a bit overstimulated, “I’m trying to let it be bliss.” She then speaks to Bridgers directly, excitedly telling her of the text messages she’s received from former bandmates The Star Killers — alerting her how it was 10 years ago to the day that they released their first DIY record on a small Memphis label. 

“Are you f–king kidding me?” replies Bridgers, with a cartoonish gasp.

“I almost started crying because it’s been 10 years of me trying to make music with friends and people who care about me, and it’s cool to still be doing it,” continues Baker. “I don’t want it to be a glory-esque, ‘We made it!’ type thing — it’s more complex of a feeling than that. It’s that I still love this in the same way that I did at that moment.” 

It’s that exact love — for their craft and one another — that unites boygenius. It informed much of the supertrio’s widely acclaimed 2018 self-titled debut EP and is undoubtably what threads its first full-length together. “I hope that the ethos of our band and relationship is infectious to people,” says Bridgers. “And just seeing that it pays off when you make offerings to each other,” adds Lucy Dacus, saying that part of the magic of this band is that as three musicians with thriving solo careers, they each want to carve out the time to make music together.

And when they do, the results are unmatched by any of them solo. The Record (released March 31 on Interscope) debuts at No. 4 on this week’s Billboard 200 (dated April 15), the highest-charting entry on the tally for any of the members. It also enters at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Vinyl Albums chart, with the format accounting for 67% of the album’s overall first-week units.

“We were told, if we were lucky, maybe we were going to break top 10. And then it was, actually, maybe we could break top five. And the fact that it’s [No. 4] is cool,” says Dacus, noting that Bridgers was the one to tell them during band practice. “We celebrated by playing the songs.”

Ahead, the band will keep the celebration going with a Coachella set and tour that, according to Dacus, is “at a scale none of us have done before” — and that Baker can only tease as “rock and roll.” 

Below, Bridgers, Baker and Dacus discuss the joy of uncomplicated love and why everyone – not least of all themselves — are so obsessed with boygenius.

The fandom surrounding this band is palpable. What do you think drives it?

Lucy: I think since a lot of the boygenius fans are fans of the three of us they have been following along separately and maybe understand that we had to carve out the time for this. I think people know this is a rarity and that there’s no guarantee that it’ll continue. Like, we will continue to be boygenius and be friends, but we also will get back to our own things. So I think people have this awareness that to be present with it now is really to be existing in a moment. We demand presence from each other and I think our fans feel very present with the work and that is a feeling that feels harder to come by as you get older — not to be a Boomer.

You previously talked about some nerves over who was going to bring up becoming a band again. Between then and now, did any anxieties ever creep in?

Dacus: We’ve been holding the idea of this for two and half years — of course there’s been anxiety around it. We’re all people that experience anxiety. But even despite hiccups, I think overall I would still say that it’s been smooth sailing. Because we all still like each other, we all still like the thing.

Bridgers: We got a bad review that made it seem because we have a great relationship with each other, there is no complexity to it. What a way to live. There’s more complexity in this relationship than any relationship in my life. 

Dacus: I have a hard time talking about it to other people.

Baker: Totally. 

Dacus: Because people can’t relate.

Baker: It’s stupid to have people not be willing to perceive that people can love each other uncomplicatedly, like it must be untrue. 

Bridgers: It must be Oasis or fake. And Oasis is fake, that fighting was fake. 

Baker: And getting back to the writing, so much of the record is in conversation with each other.

Bridgers: But we’re so f–king spoiled. The reviews have been amazing. We worked really hard and it’s great.

Dacus: I love to stretch my humility with you guys. 

Bridgers: I have no humility about this band. I’m just like, “Yeah it’s tight,” or f–k off.

Dacus: Maybe we are annoying. 

Baker: We are. 

Bridgers: Fuck yeah.

Phoebe you’re now a label boss with your Dead Oceans imprint Saddest Factory. When you were taking label meetings for Boygenius, did you ever consider signing the band?

Bridgers: I think we all wanted a new experience. And also it’s very important that we’re equals — so it’d be weird to have an extra line — which is why we didn’t even sign to any of our labels that we’re signed to. And it has been a f–king treat to be having a first experience with these dudes.

How did you celebrate the release?

Dacus: We [went] to Sound City where we recorded the EP, and we haven’t been back there together since then, and [we listened] to the record in full with a couple people who worked on it and just got in our feels.

The Record sold especially well on vinyl. Why was it important to have the format available on release date?

Dacus: We know that our fans are excitable people, like us. And so having it available when it came out, just felt like a momentous occasion. And I’m a vinyl person too. I think we all have favorite record stores. So we try to do stuff to keep those alive when we can.

During the writing process, was there a specific lyric or song you were all especially excited to share with one another?

Baker: I’m trying to think of a song that I didn’t want to send y’all… 

Dacus: I do remember showing “Leonard Cohen” to Phoebe and Julien and Phoebe just like, making this face like, “F–k you.” 

Bridgers: Like, “Hey, I wrote you a song,” and it’s just a f–king roast. 

Baker: You getting dragged. 

Dacus: I’m sorry. I literally call Phoebe an idiot in the song. 

Bridgers: You’re making eye contact with me being like, [singing] “You are an idiot.”

What’s the most tattooable lyric on the album?

Bridgers: Oh my god.

Dacus: “I wanna be happy.” 

Baker: I was gonna say that.

Bridgers: That’s tight, that’s hella tight. I think that is going to be the climax of the record, and it being the last huge moment that happens. Just the arch of the album, with the singles, and then ending there at the revisiting of our EP — I don’t know, it makes me emotional as f–k. 

Baker: It makes me emotional, because it’s you revisiting unhealthy thoughts [and] being coaxed into potential and awareness of possibility for being happy. 

Dacus: My girlie exhibiting growth.

Bright Eyes fans who missed last year’s first-in-a-decade tour of Conor Oberst and his bandmates Mike Mogis and Nathaniel Walcott will get a second chance at seeing the trio this Friday, when tickets go on sale for eight new Bright Eyes shows at small venues across the Midwest and South as he tours ahead of his performance at the Corona Capital festival in Guadalajara, May 21.

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Demand for the brief tour is expected to be high as Oberst and crew follow up last year’s extensive U.S. and European tour in support of their 2020 record Down In The Weeds, Where The World Once Was, which debuted at No. 36 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

While the 2022 tour generally received positive reviews from fans — including a July performance at LA Greek’s Theatre that music writer Jeff Miller described as “moving with confidence, playing with heart, and still foraging his woe-is-me persona in a wholly relatable way” — the tour did struggle midway through, with Oberst even walking off stage during a May gig in Houston.

But Oberst and the band were able to iron out the issues and close 2022 with a kinetic and powerful set at the Corona Capital festival inside Mexico City’s sprawling Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. From opening his set with anxious and frenzied rendition of his 2020 album opening “Dance and Song” to taking the guitar for a shaking and exhausting ride through “Old Soul Song,” Bright Eyes crew delivered a set that went as close to the edge of Oberst’s discontent as anyone dare venture.

Starting May 10, the 42-year-old Omaha native and his bandmates will perform at the famed Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, First Avenue in Minneapolis and the brand-new Salt Shed in Chicago on May 12, before heading south for a second chance in Houston where he will once again perform at the city’s famed White Oak Music Hall, almost exactly one year from the anniversary of the cancelled 2022 gig. It’s an audacious move, and while his camp is cautious not to overhype his return, it’s encouraging for many to see him face the past on his own terms.

Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Central. Purchase tickets here.  

BRIGHT EYES 2023 TOUR DATES

May 10 – Milwaukee, WI – Pabst Theater

May 11 – Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue

May 12 – Chicago, IL – Salt Shed

May 13 – Columbia, MO – Rose Park

May 14 – Tulsa, OK – Cain’s Ballroom*

May 15 – Little Rock, AK – The Hall

May 17 – San Antonio, TX – Aztec Theater

May 18 – Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall

May 21 – Guadalajara, MX – Corona Capital Guadalajara

Bright Eyes Spring 2023 Tour Dates

THE ALBUM
Heavy Heavy, out Friday (Feb. 3) on Ninja Tune

THE ORIGIN

Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and Graham ‘G’ Hastings formed Young Fathers in a nightclub in Scotland, and after a series of false starts, including a stint as a “psychedelic boy band,” they honed in their sound on Tape One and Tape Two, a pair of mixtapes recorded with producer Tim London that established them as the kind of band to rap over the “Be My Baby” beat. After winning the Scottish Album of the Year award with Tape Two, they released their debut album, DEAD, in 2014. That year, the album beat out projects from critically beloved acts like FKA Twigs and Damon Albarn to win the Mercury Prize. 

From there, the band just kept working, putting out the lower-fi but even more ambitious pop record White Men Are Black Men Too in 2015. After the release of 2018’s relatively streamlined Cocoa Sugar, the pandemic forced a break from touring and recording, but the downtime proved invigorating for the band.

THE SOUND

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Ask Young Fathers what they sound like, and they’re happy to call what they make pop music. There are soaring hooks and efficient song structures. It feels organic while listening, but try describing their sound and it gets a lot more complicated: it’s too intricate to be lo-fi, too raw to be hi-fi, too poppy to be “alternative hip-hop,” too harsh for easy listening. The most frequent comparison is TV on the Radio, but that doesn’t quite work, because Young Fathers aren’t really a rock band, either. 

Whatever their sound is, it’s dense – taking elements from various musical genres and cultures, less as a manner of pastiche than what the band members are thinking and feeling at that particular time. While Heavy Heavy is some of their most purely joyful work to date, Hastings doesn’t view that as a deliberate decision. 

“We’re not trying to make concept albums,” he explains. “We’re not trying to make anything other than what’s based on the spontaneity that happens when we’re together.”

THE RECORD

Heavy Heavy was named for that aforementioned density: as with previous records, it’s still fairly minimal, but this time what’s there is blown out. The project finds the trio, this time working without their mentor Tim London, honing even further on their sound, which is a mood of simultaneous celebration and paranoia. 

On “Drum,” lyrics like “Feel the beat of the drum and go numb/have fun,” co-exist with the lines “They’re gonna get you either way/whether you cry about today or die another day.” Even the sequencing of the album feels like you’re with the band in the studio as they dart between ideas: “Tell Somebody” gradually builds into a sense of euphoric, heavily saturated desperation, right before the unexpected jazz piano on “Geronimo” provides a serene comedown. Meanwhile, there’s a gospel rave-up on “Sink or Swim,” a 6/8 stomp on “I Saw” and the delightfully bizarre, bouzouki-led “Ululation,” where Bankole’s sister, Tapiwa Mambo, takes the lead and vents in Shona. 

The last song, “Be Your Lady,” is everything that makes Young Fathers unique in one three-minute blast, alternating between a soulful piano ballad and erratic drum breaks (created by a literal drum machine accident while recording), as the band members take turns shouting, “Can I take 10 pounds worth of loving out of the bank, please?” in different accents. It’s almost zany in its audaciousness, but winds up a loving tribute to Bankole’s different identities as a Black Scottish man. “I switch back and forth in different accents [in conversation] because ] I’ve been able to spend time in Nigeria and the United States. So it’s all a mishmash of that and being born in Scotland.” 

THE FUTURE

Bankole admits that “Be Your Lady” is the most challenging new song to pull off in rehearsals: “The drum machine is not really syncopated or in time, and you can’t really catch it!” The trio is planning on bringing their intense live show across Europe in April, including the Roundhouse in London. There are also several songs from the sessions that didn’t make the record – not due to their quality, but because they didn’t fit in the sequencing – so there might even be more music in the pipeline.

THEIR FAVORITE PIECE OF GEAR

Hastings: “EMS Vocoder 2000 are transcendent keyboards.” When asked about real-life synthesizers versus software synths, he continues: “I have them, but usually the whole thing has already been made by things that you can touch. The whole premise is anybody can hit anything in the studio and for soft synths it’s not really the same because it’s more fiddly.”

THE ARTIST THAT THEY THINK NEEDS MORE ATTENTION

Hastings: “I’ve heard the new music that Law Holt has done that’s not out yet, and it’s one of the most radical-sounding things I’ve heard ever. Callum Easter is also a great musician and has great pop albums that have this dark side to it, but they’re still these beautiful pop songs.”

THE THING THAT THEY THINK NEEDS TO CHANGE IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

Hastings: “There should be more creatives. People who are not artists should wake up every morning, look in the f–king mirror, and say ‘I am not an artist’ a hundred times.”

Bankole: “If you work with creative people, it doesn’t automatically make you a creative [person].”

Hastings: “And if you’re not an artist, don’t try to be the artist, and f–king listen to them.”

THE PIECE OF ADVICE THEY BELIEVE EVERY NEW INDIE ARTIST NEEDS TO HEAR:

Hastings: “Being able to describe yourself. ‘Cause the industry is not about to understand you in any f–king way. You have to be able to be precise and even when you are that precise, it still won’t f–king connect. But at least it can convey something.”

Bankole: “I think it’s important to be match-ready, but there is a real thing of over-rehearsing, to the point where you are blocking yourself from being spontaneous, and having room to wiggle about within the moments in the different environment every time.”

You may know Phoebe Bridgers for tracks like “Kyoto,” “Moon Song” and “Motion Sickness” or her best new artist Grammy nomination, but the 28-year-old indie-pop darling is much more than a musician. Bridgers has been using her platform to speak out against injustices, and she’s staying vocal as Teen Vogue‘s October cover star.

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Bridgers chatted with Teen Vogue news & politics editor Lexi Mcmenamin on a variety of topics, including abortion rights and LGBTQ+ visibility in rock and pop.

Phoebe Bridgers is Teen Vogue’s October cover star.

Chloe Horseman/Teen Vogue

As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and with the rise of female and genderqueer artists in rock such as Mitski and Pom Pom Squad, Bridgers said it’s sad that the community has been forced to identify with white boys for decades.

“I think it shows you how desperate we’ve all been for any f—ing representation,” Bridgers told Teen Vogue. “I also think at the heart of it, it’s just wanting to be understood.”

Phoebe Bridgers is Teen Vogue’s October cover star.

Chloe Horseman/Teen Vogue

As far as who has access to abortion, Bridgers believes white middle-class and upper-class people are always going to have access to reproductive-health resources, whether it’s flying to another state or family assistance.

“It’s just so much harder for the people that it was already hard for, so I like the organizations that are making life easier for those people,” she said.

Phoebe Bridgers is Teen Vogue’s October cover star.

Chloe Horseman/Teen Vogue

In her interview with Teen Vogue, Bridgers notes that women shouldn’t let anyone freak them out about abortion “because unless you’re doing it in an unsafe way, there are resources for you if you’re trying to get one — and you should f—ing have one for whatever reason,” she continued. “It’s super safe. Shout-out to Planned Parenthood. I was very held during it.”

Bridgers, who has been open about her own abortion story, also discussed the experience with The Guardian ahead of her appearance at Glastonbury in June. The artist said she didn’t give much thought before posting on social media about her experience at Planned Parenthood, adding that her decision to have an abortion was not an emotional one. “I wasn’t f—ing emotional at all,” she told The Guardian. “Hormonally crazy! But I don’t think you should assign ‘it tore me up’ to me. No! I don’t think about it as a baby, of course not.”

Bridgers was inspired to first share her story via social media after Politico leaked the Supreme Court’s draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade. “I had an abortion in October of last year while I was on tour,” Bridgers tweeted. “I went to Planned Parenthood, where they gave me the abortion pill. It was easy. Everyone deserves that kind of access.”

Read the full story on Teen Vogue.