Written by Joy Freeman | Photo Courtesy of palefire

In true DIY fashion, my interview with palefire hits a connection snag on Zoom five minutes in. From a bedroom in Denton, Texas, Jacqui Torres re-materializes on my screen. “The best part of DIY is that it comes from real people,” she enthuses. There is an art to the imperfection here. 

Torres’ debut LP as palefire, full heart, big empty eyes, is entirely self-made, apart from a mix /master and drums from her partner, Echo Goza. I shouldn’t be surprised when she tells me the stunning strings are played in-house too. She’s a classically trained cellist. 

After twelve years of playing and time spent in Boston studying the instrument professionally, she shares, “When I write a song, I hear it before I even start playing anything. So I definitely just heard the strings.” Elliott Smith’s XO is cited as a primary influence.

The intimacy in palefire shines through from the intro track, the lo-fi “hello world!!!!” It sounds like a phone call with a friend, an invitation into the whimsical vulnerability of the record. This recording is a departure from her previous two singles, a lean into a slightly poppier sound and a splicing down of 7-8 minute demos into digestible snippets. 

When I tell her that the scope of the album leans from Clairo-reminiscent to Kimya Dawson, she laughs. Elliott Smith stands out as a focal inspiration yet again. “Within the last two weeks of writing the album, I was listening to a lot of more twee indie pop people. Touch Girl Apple Blossom, Brittle Stars, The Sundays.” Torres leans into this aesthetic, designing her own album cover with pastel color palettes and light-leaked photos. 

Songs like “Sweet as a yankee” play into Torres’ home state. Her response to my mention of Texas is initially a hesitant, “bleh.” Then, she pivots. “I feel like being in Texas motivates me musically. As I’m writing and as I’m recording or playing shows, I’m just like, ‘Okay, I just need to finish this, and then maybe I’ll get booked on a tour, and I can get out of here’…but I’ll probably stay here forever. I love my friends.” 

“My Peace” is another favorite of hers, and her most vulnerable on the album. “I definitely just wanted to paint a certain scene or ambiance of cuteness, but also, kinda sad and sweet. Bittersweet.”

I ask how she honed her production skills independently after leaving school as a classical musician. 

“I dropped out, and I was like, ‘Okay, let’s rebuild this foundation. Why do I do music in the first place?’ And I got to talk to a lot of my friends, and a lot of them were producers. I got into Logic, and I made my first song. It’s still on SoundCloud. I don’t know how to freaking get into that account and take it down,” she jokes. After she met Echo playing lead guitar for his band, she learned how to mix. “You can make something catchy. You can make something heartfelt. You can make something simple. You could use a four-track. I feel like depending on the atmosphere I wanna create, I can just do it now. It is so nice to have that artistic liberation, you know, not just with the songwriting, but with the production.”

Initially, palefire was a shoegaze project, but after a few months Torres decided to pivot.

“Everything will always be changing, but everything will always be me, because I am the person who writes and produces it.”

Full heart, big empty eyes is available now on bandcamp. The album will be available on all streaming on July 13th.