Horsegirl

On the occasion of the release of "Phonetics On And On", Horsegirl's long-awaited sophomore album, we had the pleasure of having a chat with drummer Gigi Reece, busy doing the laundry, asking her some curiosities about the change in sound undertaken by the group and the collaboration with Cate Le Bon, producer of the work. In the context of all this, unfortunately the time does not yet seem ripe to be able to see the trio on an Italian stage any time soon.

Hi Gigi, I'll break the ice by asking you how you are and how the wait for the release of "Phonetics On And On" is going.
Thanks for asking me, I'm just having a good day doing my laundry and the wait for “Phonetics on and on” has been kind of intense. I mean, it's a lot of doing some press, but really the world hasn't heard our record yet and we have sat with it for over a year now, so I'm really excited for everybody to hear it and for it to be accessible to anybody who wants to hear it.

“Versions Of Modern Performance” was more oriented towards sound in the noise area of Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo. In the new album, there is a preponderance of the slacker and pop influences. What led you to this change of pace?
I think that what led us there was our lives naturally changing, and those songs on our first record were really like a collection of everything we had done in our years of high school and our years as a high school band. I think that these songs were all written with the intention of making our second record, following this first one, and I think that it was really motivating to kind of have this final picture in mind.

Were you listening to anything in particular while composing the album?
Yes, I think that our music taste has expanded beyond what we were listening to in high school, which was really just a lot of like Nineties alternative rock and indie-rock, which obviously love that forever. I think that we explored, I mean personally, I got a lot more into time periods before then, like things from the Sixties and Seventies; I was listening to The Kinks, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan was big for all three of us, but then also kind of more like 2000s and 2010s indie-rock and kind of acknowledging, what has built the scene of indie-rock music that like we are now. Like we can't deny that we are a part of contemporary indie-rock, like we can make a record that sounds like Nineties music, but we're not releasing it in the Nineties. So I think that is all, we've all just had a broader scope on music than we did before, which was very concentrated to like particular scenes that we were obsessed with, so I think that that really influenced the way that we were approaching songs. 

Cate Le Bon produced your new album. How did you come to collaborate and what was it like working with her?
Cate was somebody we wanted to work with, like she was an ultimate dream of; if there could be anybody that could produce our record, we think Cate Le Bon would do a great job. We made a handful of demos, we were writing these songs, like working out the sounds for the record, and our manager suggested to us like: “Hey, what would you think about Cate Le Bon possibly producing your record?” And that was mind-blowing to us that it was even an option. And then we had a Zoom call with her, and she was really into our demos, and we clearly had very similar reference points of what we wanted to make.It was a beautiful collaborative process, and I think that we have never let somebody into our process in the way that we let her in. I think she has changed the way we will make music and record music and think about songwriting for the rest of our lives. Because Cate is just ultimately so inspiring and really knows what she's talking about when she's talking about music, she follows her intuitions in a way that is really inspiring.

Your songs have very simple lyrics, they sound like nursery rhymes based on everyday life and change. From that point of view, I'm curious about the genesis of a track like “Sport Meets Sound”.
Interesting. I mean, we definitely were trying to channel the beauty of a nursery rhyme and rudimentary songwriting, because songs and music are something that can connect anybody beyond language, even if a baby that can’t even speak and like you dance to a rhythm. We were studying and thinking about these childlike sounds, and I think that that's what led us to playing with a lot more clean guitars rather than like really noisy, distorted guitars. I think that “Sport Meets Sound” was the first song we wrote for this record, and the first song we started playing live for this record. And that was our first moment of saying: “Hey, what if we used a clean guitar?”. The chorus is catchy and the way that the song moves is really intuitive. I think that we were using that song in a way of trying to follow our intuitions: the guitar part shines here, and the bass part will like hold it down, or the drum part switches, and it is really fun to play also. It's like a rhythm we can really set ourselves in, and the propulsion of that song feels like it gets at those as the rudiments of how music can move you.

Talking about experimentation, I was struck by the sudden change of pace at the end of “Rock City”. How did this song come about?
That song was one of the first ones we demoed, so it was one of the first four songs we had written for the new album, and we had this idea of kind of just a “what if”, as the song right at the end switched and had got way more propulsive, just took you somewhere else for a second and then ended. Just to show, kind of prove a little bit of like a song can just in a moment's notice like drop everything it had before and have this really exciting moment even if it's just for a second. I think that we were really attracted to it, of playing that song live because that song has so much space in it and I think it really takes you through, like it's still dancey, but it is more of a laid-back song I feel like while it's still propulsive. That end moment kind of takes you into the true energy of where that's all coming from, and it is fun for us to have that moment right at the end, where people can get really excited about it, but then we take it right away.

“Julie” is probably one of your highlights in this work, and it's accompanied by a beautiful video by Daphne Awedish-Golan, which had a rather long animation process. How did this idea develop?
We feel like you said earlier about the nursery rhymes and everything. We were really inspired by childlike imagery, and I think that the way that Daphne's animations are feels like a really beautifully illustrated children's book; we were immediately drawn to the way that she animated. It felt really physical and tactile, like you could see the way she was drawing and all the textures in it. We wanted an animated video, like we think it's really cool when bands have animated videos, and it's nice for us to not be in every single one of them, so I think that it made sense with the song because it's such a meditative, droney song, and it was nice to just have sweet, very artistic and creative visuals that went with it. I feel like Daphne really channeled the loneliness and the meditation that is in that song.

Another peculiar theme of the album is love, and the last track “I Can't Stand To See You” ends with a note referring to thinking too sentimentally. Is the sense of nostalgia or the desire to look to the future stronger?
I think that they really play off of each other. I think that a sense of nostalgia has always been something that has motivated me and us as artists and musicians, because you create something and then as you age you can look back on it and it can really tell you exactly where you were at the moment you made it. But I also think that in order to have nostalgia, in order to create things, you have to be thinking about the future, and you create something so it can be seen in the future. And I think that with this record we did a lot of, in the lyrics and with the songwriting, we did a lot of introspective reflection and talking about our lives and the things that have happened. Like you said, reflecting on love, I think that with it comes the nostalgia of thinking about potential past romances, and then also seeing the ways that you take those feelings into your future, even if it isn't part of your life anymore.

Is there any artist or band you would like to collaborate with in the future?
That's a good question. I would have to talk to my bandmates, of course, but I think somebody that is making really interesting music right now is Cindy Lee. I love the collaborations she does, but I don't necessarily know if that would be a Horsegirl collaboration or not, but that's just one of my favorite people doing things right now.

I don't think you ever played in Italy, right?
No, we haven't, but we want to really badly.

When can we hear you live?
I don't know. We don't have plans to come to Italy yet, but I mean, we're going to Europe, we're playing Primavera Sound in Spain, which is obviously not the same, but it's around the same type of area. I hope we make it to Italy one day, because I also just really want to go there.

I think that’s all. Thanks for your time Gigi and good luck with your new album and the tour!
Thank you so much, have a good one!