Samira Winter has always had a gift for turning daydreams into soundtracks, but on ‘Adult Romantix’ she sharpens her focus.
Now touring in support of the record, Winter’s live performances extend the record into something tangible, charged, and alive with feeling.
We caught up with the Brazilian-born, now NY-based artist to step into the album’s glow and talk about heartbreak, transformation, and how ‘Adult Romantix’ captures the strange, beautiful tension between falling in love and letting go.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
Lucie Day (The Ugly Hug): This album is about a lot of different things – about leaving LA, about love, about walking away from something and how that’s good for you yet sad. I was really interested in the way in which you created kind of a mini movie out of all of these characters and all of this lore. How much of it is autobiographical versus fictionalized? Do you see yourself in these characters, or do they exist separate from you?
Samira Winter: I’d say in general with Winter, it is kind of an extension of me but it’s something beyond me. I do feel like with this album, there’s an interplay – even with the whole movie idea – of “what is fiction”? What’s stemming from a raw emotion or something that in my real life has happened, but then became something bigger through a song? Sometimes it’s just a very subtle thing that then gets expanded on. A lot of this album, I think, was a time capsule. I pulled a lot from the over a decade that I lived in LA. So there’s also a little bit of the fictional side too, I’d say, incorporating these people that I’ve met, these characters, this energy.
LD: Archetypes of people that you meet?
Samira Winter: There’s the LA “California slacker-stoner” character that’s a surfer, and this type of shoegaze that was very Californian. Years of just seeing bands and going to shows. I think it’s a mix of both, but I would say some of it is actually not biographical. Some of it is truly just incorporating different characters and playing them out.
LD: Pulling the parts that are you and the parts that play off of what is you and what’s not.
Samira Winter: Yeah, I would say it’s a very nuanced thing and it’s hard to really say this is this, and this is this, but I’d say it’s a mix of both and it’s kind of an interplay too. With the lore and the characters, when I was recording the album I had it as one of my goals to explore different voices. When the album finished – I used to have a harder time when I had to talk about the record or explain “What am I gonna write in my bio?What am I gonna tell people?” And so I preemptively, when this album finished, sat down in my house in Brazil over the holidays and wrote an essay. I wrote themes and motifs and a treatment of what a movie would be for the album. I just kind of kept writing and writing and writing, and that was a huge part of the process that ended up informing all of my decisions when it came to creating the visual world. And so in that essay I would be like, okay, there’s the friend group in “Misery”, there’s the couple from the album. It’s all these characters that all belong to this world. It feels really good to have been able to make that all happen in a visual sense as well.
LD: Love is clearly such a large presence within the record. Was that something you think that you were consciously experiencing during the making of the album? Or did making the album bring that to the surface? Did you set out to make a record that was so filled with love?
Samira Winter: I would say with the way I make records, I’m not really setting out. I’m very much subconsciously just making a lot of stuff over a long period of time. I like taking a couple of years to make an album and writing and recording at different times. I think for me it did kind of happen, but yeah. I went through a breakup, and then after the breakup had all sorts of nostalgic feelings. There’s definitely also a level of the album that is a bit darker. There is a doom to it.
LD: I know you’ve talked a lot about gothic influences on the record.
Samira Winter: There’s that side of it, but I think at the end of the day it just felt like when I was packing up and being a nomad I was capturing all the different feelings and things that were happening. When I started writing songs it was kind of as if it was a diary, so I think there’s a level to life experience that ends up inspiring me. But I definitely didn’t set out to make it about love. When we finished the record, I started piecing together the dots that connected and the throughline. I liked the idea of adult romantics and pondering these things because I grew up in the 90s. Watching so many rom-coms and having so many fantasies ingrained in my head and taking everything with a grain of salt. Being like: What is fantasy? How far can you go with a crush? What are these different bounds of the platonic and the romantic?
LD: The album does feel like there’s a light and a dark- falling in love while saying goodbye, leaving something behind to move forward. In that context, do you see the album more as a record about transition or about acceptance?
Samira Winter: I’d say it’s both.
LD: I know that’s a really hard question!
Samira Winter: I wrote it in a transitory state.
LD: So that colors it.
Samira Winter: Yeah, that definitely colored it. But I think in a way, finishing it and releasing it into the world led to an acceptance because I felt like after releasing this album I’d been fully able to close the door to the past of my LA life. I’m a believer that it’s important to release music that you feel really crazy about, and that you feel really excited about. It’s important to release it because it completes the cycle. I think releasing the actual album, you know how people say it’s not mine anymore? You release it to the ether. So I feel like I’ve been truly, truly able to let go.
LD: You’ve said that writing these songs and then thinking about performing them was scary, because they were so vulnerable and intense. Now that you’ve been actually performing them, how has that been?
Samira Winter: I think it’s been getting easier now. The very first practice where I had to play “Just Like A Flower”, I had so many butterflies in my stomach. With all the songs. We’ve been on tour for about two weeks now, I think now it’s just an excitement. And yeah, it’s been really fun to play the new songs.
LD: I love that line in “Just Like a Flower”: “all a girl could want is a girl friend”.
Samira Winter: I love that line too! It’s true, and it’s really not talked about enough. All of the songs that I’ve written that have a girl theme or a girl character like “Just Like A Flower”, “The Lonely Girl”, and “Sunday”, I still get chills when I play them. It just touches my soul. It hits in like a… I don’t know. I think it’s something that people can really identify with.
LD: Speaking of throughlines, Portuguese has always been a throughline in your work. Do you think that there are other things in addition to that that have stayed consistent through all the work that you’ve made and things that you find comfort within as anchors within the making of something new?
Samira Winter: Yeah, I think with Winter I’ve been able to explore different things and some of those things I’ve explored I’ve kept in my palette. I’d say a lot of the throughline is this girl character that’s an extension of me, and it’s like seeing the world through the lens of a dream language. I think there’s definitely a lot of the daydreamer archetype in Winter, of this act of trying to stay in touch with a sense of purity and a certain type of innocence. I’m always kind of in search of streamlining and perfecting the dream pop, shoegaze – I don’t want to add a ton of genres, but the language of Winter and finding the unique way that I can keep moving it forward.
LD: You’ve talked about all of these movies as your inspiration. Out of all the ones (10 Things I Hate About You, Kids, Gregg Araki films), what movie do you think that Winter as a character would fit the best in?
Samira Winter: The thing is, every record that is Winter is a slightly different character. I think I’ve really gotten better at honing in my concepts and finding that clarity. For ‘What Kind of Blue’, that character is this French girl named Juliet Blue. ‘Adult Romantix’ is this couple. There isn’t actually a movie that exists that’s perfectly ‘Adult Romantix’, which I guess makes sense because I created it. Yeah, that’s a cool thing for me to kind of chew on- where it fits in. If I had more resources, time, and money, I would make the movie. You never know- in 20 years, who knows what’s gonna happen? [The process] is really for me. It’s way more satisfying than it just being me. I love having this thing beyond myself as a muse, you know? When it becomes more than you in a project. I think art is beyond you. Maybe not at first, but it becomes its own being. I do think it’s like something in the ether that comes through you, and you are the filter.
Check out more photos of Winter live in Salt Lake City.
You can listen to Adult Romantix anywhere you find your music as well as on vinyl, CD and cassette via Winspear.
Edging is a Chicago based four piece comprised of self proclaimed “Landscaper Punks”, who make (Ugly Hug proclaimed), really fucking awesome music. Yesterday, they shared “Scam Likely”, the single the latest addition to a discography packed with overripe frustrations, charged vocals, animated riffs, and plenty of innuendos. The unapologetically explosive “Scam Likely” is a vibrant punk track that confronts late stage capitalism and the piggish mercenaries upholding unjust systems that are, well, a scam. Lines of “You take what you want”, and “you wish I wasn’t born”, and “suck up all the money”, are whacked with charged repetitions “scam likely” that beg to be sung along to. Luckily, there are plenty of opportunities for this, as Edging leaves for tour this week supporting Lambrini Girls.
Recently, our photographer David Williams took photos of Edging in Chicago. Listen to “Scam Likely” and check out the photoshoot below!
Chicago, known for their erratic springtime weather, strikes once again. At first, what was once a bright and radiant mid-seventies day, the kind people dream about during the winter hibernation months, flipped into a sub-fifties wind turbine masterpiece within an hour. The vicious Chicago wind pierces our flesh like a Ric Flair knife-edged chop during the interview. Andy PK, who records music as Red PK, sits atop a hill in historic Humboldt Park overlooking the iconic skyline. There’s a feeling of endless amounts of possibilities in his burgeoning musical career, as there are skyscrapers in the mammoth metropolis.
PK welcomes me with his naturally warm smile on this blustery April evening, wearing a navy blue collared shirt, light wash jeans, and white low-top sneakers. Their hair is mixtures of orange, pink, and red like a perfectly scooped order of sherbet ice cream from Margie’s Candies. PK is still on an adrenaline high from a few weeks prior, performing in three separate bands (Free Range, Hemlock, Red PK) on the same night at the tucked-away hole-in-the-wall bar known as The Empty Bottle.
PK is a staple in the Chicago indie music scene, known for his powerful yet silky smooth live performances where he frequently plays on either guitar, pedal steel, or even both for numerous bands such as Free Range, Hemlock, Tobacco City, and under his solo work Red Pk which are his core four bands. But, there’s more; they’re also a touring guitarist at times for Options, Soft Surface, and starting this summer, Squirrel Flower. In each separate iteration, PK naturally melds his skills to whatever each band’s specific requirements are. There’s a reason why bands want PK around, he can shred guitar with the best of them.
This year, with their musical career blooming like a cherry blossom in spring, they quit their day job as a marketer to fulfill their dream of being a full-time musician. “I quit my job ultimately because I had no time for myself. I was saying no to gigs I wanted to do because I was working my job. Even on tours, I was working from the van the entire time. I would be on conference calls, five minutes before soundcheck, trying to wrap it up real quick so I can get out there.” PK says softly.
The sensation of being spread too thin can be a crippling feeling for anyone. Now, since the weight of a 9-to-5 job has been lifted, PK is starting to get a better handle on the freelance musician lifestyle with the assistance of a shared Google calendar with every band’s schedule. Maturing into their craft, PK is better now at keeping track of all their gigs and communicating more effectively on their booking dates. Also, realizing how critical it is to carve out personal time for themselves is necessary. These days, it centers on watching NBA Playoff games with Free Range’s Sofia Jensen.
Even when there are fleeting moments of struggle popping up every so often when keeping track of their gig calendar, PK can refocus themselves. “In times when I feel overwhelmed, I take a step back and ask myself, “What am I stressed out about playing music with my friends? I feel honored to have a bunch of work come my way. Five years ago, I never would have guessed that I would even be doing this stuff.”
Five years ago was when PK moved from the West Chicagoland suburbs to the big city in hopes of finding himself. This was a trying time with the COVID lockdown combined with a sense of being directionless from a passionless job and a search for a community connection. They turned to learning a new instrument with the hopes of putting themselves out into the world. “I picked up the pedal steel guitar, I always thought it sounded beautiful,” PK says.
Shortly after venues started to open back up in 2021, PK received their big opportunity that they were waiting for. Their first break came when the manager of the “Cowboy Crooner” himself, Andrew Sa, reached out to see if PK could do spot duty on pedal steel for a show. PK had only been playing the pedal steel for three months until that point. “I knew I could do that. I worked my ass off playing those songs a million times at home. After that, with Andrew, people started hitting me up to play in their projects.” PK says.
Through the phenomenon of twangy folk music, there was a surging need for pedal steel players across the city. For the next two years living in Chicago, PK became the “pedal steel guy” around the indie scene. But through that moniker, other artists started to notice PK’s prolific talent with the guitar. “I love pedal steel, but the guitar feels like it’s an extension of my body,” PK says. The two-year slow burn of becoming a full-fledged Ax man finally started to get some heat.
For guidance on his career, PK leaned on the community they were starting to build with the help of one of their best friends, recording engineer/musician Seth Engel. Engel served as essentially PK’s musical version of Yoda, minus the inverted style of speaking. The wise beyond his years veteran presence showed them the ropes around the local scene and connected him with like-minded people that gave them a sense of home.
“My family birthday parties or Christmas, after dinner we would get the guitars and sing songs together.” Think something similar to The Osmonds’ Family, but a thousand times cooler. Music was instilled at an early age for PK. They received their first guitar at age three from their parents. At age eight, they officially got their first lessons.
“Everyone in my family plays music, so there was always a lot of music going on at home that was like, definitely really influential to me.” PK reminisces. Through PK’s formative years, their father, who also played slide guitar in a lot of bar bands, influenced their early musical taste from the likes of guitar hero icons Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan. You can hear some of those classic blues riffs by PK sprinkled every so often on their projects with Free Range and Hemlock.
April 10th, Red PK’s gameday of being on the bill three separate occasions is here. A lot of preparation was put into all the performances to make sure they went off without a hitch. “I was rehearsing all day, every day, sometimes even three times a day,” PK says. The night couldn’t have gone any better. They were stoically strumming away from the opening set to the closing. They were in total command, like Steven Seagal in an action flick. I don’t think there was anything PK couldn’t have done that night at the venue. If they had asked them to sell popcorn or even to go start slinging vodka martinis behind the bar, there was no doubt they wouldn’t be able to execute it perfectly.
A celebratory feel was in the air the entire night. Free Range celebrated their terrific indie folk record Lost & Found, Hemlock celebrated their year-and-a-half journey touring, and of course, Red Pk’s five-year journey of not only becoming who they were always meant to be, but also doing it with the community and friends that they now love like family. “In a lot of ways, nothing’s changed. The vibe of my friendships is similar to that of being with my family; we get together and hang out, play guitar, and sing. I’ve felt such a sense of community, and I’ve made some of my best friends through the music scene. I cherish so many parts of that.”
So, what’s next on the horizon for Red PK? “I have my first solo record coming out this year. It feels like a culmination of a lot of firsts for me, so I’m excited to get that out there.” They currently have only two songs listed on their audio streaming pages, but that’s sure to change rapidly. PK promises to have some alternative folk elements, but also some power pop that will surely get people buzzing. They mentioned their affinity for the Y2k pop juggernauts Sugar Ray and having a desire to be in a similar ethos to them. The album sounds extremely promising, and they are looking forward to it being out in the world.
Finding one’s place in life is a grueling journey. Many people try to find the meaning of our existence and what they want out of life, but to no avail. The number of the actual amount of people living out their dreams is so minuscule that it can be frightening to think about. But there’s always hope behind that door. No matter your age or living situation, if someone puts the work in, they can find their purpose. There is a genuine beauty when a person finds that reason for being. Red PK has found that reason. This is a new beginning, just like a flower in bloom.
You can listen to Red PK’s previously released two song EP and other collaborations out everywhere now. Red is currently on tour with Free Range and is gearing up to play guitar in Squirrel Flower this summer.
“What’s really interesting, too, is listening to new music that makes you feel nostalgic or sentimental, even though it’s your first time listening to it.” By this point in our conversation, us being the only occupants in Lizard’s Liquid Lounge on that Friday afternoon, I had turned my recorder on and off three or four times as I sat with Sabreen – misleading myself to believe that I was comfortable with an endpoint in our interview. “I’ve been coming across so many songs lately that have been making me feel like, ‘wow, I know this—I feel like this has been a part of my life before’, even though I know it’s my first time listening to it. I hope somebody will come across a song of mine and feel that way towards it.”
Over the past few years, Sabreen Alfadel has been writing and performing under the moniker Girly Pants, a project that has become a known facet within the diy show circuit in Chicago. Growing up in Amman, Jordan, Sabreen began a YouTube channel to post videos of cover songs, either ones she loved or as gifts for people she cared for, that she would mostly learn by ear in her bedroom. Once enduring a complete cultural shift when she moved to Chicago after high school, Alfadel began to double down when it came to writing her own songs, as well as pushing herself to perform more frequently throughout the city. After the release of her debut EP Nurture in 2024, Girly Pants now has a steady band, consisting of Carter Ward (guitar), Drew Emerson (bass) and newest addition of Luigi De Col (drums).
As Alfadel continues to write, discussing new avenues she would like to take her process, there is a clear understanding of how far she has come. Girly Pants isn’t a project that sifts through the fragments for bits of nostalgia because it’s comforting or expected, but rather embraces a documentation that is interchangeable with Alfadel’s growth as a musician and as an individual. Rearing the old videos she posted from high school, covering emo songs and rocking a Teegan and Sara inspired haircut, it has become something to be cherished in her eyes. And as we closed out our tabs at Lizard’s, it was clear that Sabreen knows that there was no rush to put an emphasis on any ending, because there is always going to be something to look back on.
We recently got to sit down with Alfadel to discuss Girly Pants, embracing the past, developing a creative language amongst her band and a horrifying experience in the ocean.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
Shea Roney: So I want to start our conversation ten years back to when you began your YouTube channel of cover videos when you were about 17. When did you begin playing music and what were your initial intentions behind these videos? What were the initial reactions to these videos?
Sabreen Alfadel: I was a big sports girl growing up — big track and field person — but I always loved music. My older sister would show me so much cool music. “Doll Parts” by Hole was one of the first songs she taught me how to play and it was such a rush — being able to play a song that you love is a high that I have chased since. I can’t even explain it. It’s one thing to really love a song, but it’s another when you can actually play it. So I quit track and broke my parents’ heart.
I didn’t really have any intentions with my YouTube channel. When I moved to Chicago from Jordan after high school, I was super lonely and homesick, so I was trying to spend the time doing something that mattered to me and that made me happy. I have these memories of being in my apartment learning all these songs and posting them on YouTube. Not because I thought they would blow up, but, one song I posted, I woke up one day and it had all these comments and views, I was shocked — it felt cool that people cared, or were at least interested. I was able to formulate an online community that eventually transitioned to an in-person community. I went to so many shows, met more people and got involved in the music scene. I really love learning songs and I’m really grateful to be playing lead guitar for Carter’s [Ward] band, for example. I love his music. It’s cool, let’s learn more songs, you know?
It’s as simple as that.
It’s as simple as that.
Asyou talk about building this online community, when did it start to become a part of your life in Chicago? When did it feel like Girly Pants was a manageable thing that you created and could utilize?
Honestly, my birthday shows were a huge part of it. The first birthday show I did was a Weezer cover show, and it’s been a tradition ever since. We’ve done a Coldplay cover show, and then it was a Pixies cover show, and this year it’s going to be something else. At first it used to be a private show for people in my life, and we’d pack my friend’s garage with all these friends. And then it transitioned to a more public event. I want to see how long I can keep this tradition going, just giving homage to playing covers.
As much as I do love covering songs, I feel like sometimes my identity gets lost in that. People care a little bit more about the fact that I can cover songs well versus write my own music. So sometimes it’s easy to get muddled with that, but I don’t want anyone to dictate whether I still cover songs or not. I’m not doing it for anyone but myself. I enjoy it and it’s a growing experience for me.
You do have the receipts to show for it. When did you begin to pivot towards writing your own music?
I think when I was meeting a lot of musicians that I admired – we would jam and they’d ask, ‘do you have your own music?’ And I’d have to say, ‘not yet, no.’ I found myself constantly saying ‘I’m working on it’. I genuinely was, but imposter syndrome is such a disease. Especially playing with people you look up to. I’ve always had voice memos on voice memos on voice memos, a Mount Everest piling up, so I slowly started picking at them. As I was meeting more musicians, I was feeling more like, ‘I want to show you that I don’t only cover songs. I have my own ideas too’.
So, as you’re stockpiling ideas, was there anything that you found you were embracing more when it came to your own writing?
Something I really, really love is jamming to a song. I love to sing, but I really love to step back and jam with the band. Sometimes a chord progression is too good, and I don’t want it to die super fast. I want it to linger, I want people to sit with it. I’m working on new music, and I’m hoping to incorporate that a little more. It’s fun to see a band on stage feeling connected with an instrumental part of a song. Sometimes when I sing, I’m focused on the lyrics too much, and it takes me out of it because I’m multitasking. That’s kind of why I find myself closing my eyes most of the time when I’m singing. Genuinely, if you go on my YouTube page and look at all my thumbnails, it’s all me with my eyes closed. Photos that any photographer takes of me are never interesting because it’s just me with my eyes closed [laughs]. I can’t help it. But it’s nice to have those moments with a crowd where we’re all sitting on a feeling together. It’s a special experience.
Taking that experience of, I guess we can call it being in the zone, jamming with a band — do you bring songs just in ideas and then jam them out to see which way you could take them, or are they more fully flesh out?
This recent song that I wrote, it was really authentic how that one came about. I was in the practice space with my drummer, and we were talking while I was noodling. I played a progression and then I kept playing it while we were talking. He jumped in with drums and then we did that progression for a few minutes. I recorded it on my phone, took that progression home and expanded on it. So, it’s a mixture of feeling a progression together and seeing what we can add to it, or me bringing my song ideas. For my EP, it was definitely like, ‘here are the songs, learn them’. But I’m excited to do more and jam authentically and see if we can expand on an idea. I think this new song is my first five- or six-minute song, so it’s kind of nice to be a Phish band now [laughs].
I can imagine that you guys have kind of developed a language between each other, which has got to be a lot of trust within the group.
It is a lot of trust, and it’s such a different experience than my EP, which was a collaborative endeavor in a different way. I didn’t have a band at that point, so I recorded all the guitars and sent the demos out to friends who live in different cities. They sent drum and bass stems back and forth and we made it happen. I love collaborating, but sometimes I get nervous about committing to a specific way of doing things. There’s a multitude of ways to do something, and it’s exciting to keep things fresh. So I guess my new exciting thing is finally having a band together. I don’t want to compare any of the new songs that we come up with to the EP and that process — even though that was a special process in itself, and I’m really proud that I was able to achieve that — but it shows that there are so many ways to do it. Why limit yourself?
When you released the EP, how was the reception in the community? Was Girly Pants defined yet, or were people like, ‘oh, shit, that’s the girl from YouTube’ or ‘she’s the one who throws those epic birthday parties?’
I was playing as girly pants for solo shows, which is still very special to me. As much as I love playing with the band, initially I started playing guitar by myself in my room in front of a camera. And even to this day, when I come up with ideas, the first thing I reach for is my acoustic guitar. It’s been fun jamming with my electric guitar, but my instinctual reach is for my acoustic. Playing those solo shows still has a special place in my heart. There’s something really vulnerable about sharing a space with people who are just watching you and your guitar, and there’s no distraction. It’s nerve-wracking, but it’s really fun, and I find it really exciting still. So yes, Girly Pants was defined to some extent, but not officially until the debut EP. That was something that I could refer people to, so it’s not like they’re watching me play solo shows and then I disappear into the abyss, you know? I feel like YouTube people were really surprised, especially when I released that music video for my song “Ocean.” That made me feel like I can definitely keep doing this and I never want to stop.
I guess, in the context of where you began performing by yourself in your room to video, there was a built-in audience in a sense. When it came to actually performing live, were there any connections within these separate places for you as a performer? Was it a challenge to shift?
It’s different for sure. When I play in front of my camera, if I mess up, I can restart it. Live, you notice when you mess up more than anybody else will. Nobody really can tell, but it’s such a learning experience in itself, being in a situation where this is the experience I’m going to give you, whether I give you a perfect first take or not. Having eyes on you is… different. I feel like I can’t bring myself to look at anybody when I perform, which also is why I close my eyes sometimes. But I’ve gotten to the point now where I’m more comfortable, and sometimes it’s nice to peer out into the crowd and see people smiling.
After your debut EP, you filmed a music video for your song “Ocean” while visiting California, as well as going back home to Amman. Can you tell me about that experience and what that meant to you at that point in your life, now as a certified songwriter.
Put in that I rolled my eyes just there [laughs].
Oh, I definitely will.
“Ocean” came so naturally, honestly. And that was a newer song on my EP. It actually was a result of me almost drowning in California – it didn’t finish the job [laughs]. My best friend, whom I went to high school with in Jordan, lives in California, and I visit her often. On one of my recent visits, we were swimming, and I thought I knew the ocean pretty well – I never think twice before going in, but I really got my ass served to me. I got pulled under by a wave and was finding trouble reaching the surface. Every time I kind of reached the surface, I got pushed back down by another wave, and it felt like wave after wave. I couldn’t find my footing, I was choking, and it was really horrifying. I felt betrayed by the ocean.
Because you were friends.
We were friends. I thought we were. [laughs] Just a backstabber. But I remember getting out of the ocean completely rattled. I went up to my friend, and I was like, ‘so I almost drowned.’ And she laughed. Her first reaction was that she thought I was joking…
Because you’re such a jokester?
Put in there, another eye roll [laughs].
Jesus Christ [laughs]!
It was a learning experience for me. So, I traveled back to Chicago and the song came really easily. And then I went back to California again and we planned a whole music video. We filmed all the scenes of me by the ocean in an hour and a half or something, and my friend asked, ‘okay, you want to do the drowning shots?’ I was like, ‘you realize that the song is about me drowning, right? I’m not going to do that’ [laughs]. Then we wanted to add some more footage to it, and we happened to be in Jordan around the same time, so we walked around Jordan taking shots to see what we could add to it. It was just friends hanging out. I was really, really happy with how that video turned out, and I’m so grateful to my friends for lending their talents in editing and shooting it. It was such a gift. A gift of friendship and betrayal. The full circle.
It’s almost biblical.
Yeah, it kind of covers all grounds of life, if you think about it. It’s not about the ocean. It’s about life [laughs].
I guess in the grand scheme of it all, now having your own music out in the world, are you able to watch your old videos and see growth both musically and personally?
It is cool to see the progression. I’m such a sentimental person, sometimes maybe a little too sentimental. I tend to live in the past a little more than I do in the future. I’m a very emotional person, let’s put it that way – it’s nice to have another source for nostalgia, and to have video evidence of different chapters in my life. It’s almost like a tattoo, except I don’t have to see it on my body ever.
I’m excited to continue growing musically, and it’s mind blowing to actually see my guitar playing improve. I have like nine songs that I’m hoping to put into an album eventually. It’s both exciting but daunting because remember what I said about commitment? It’s a sick, sick circle. I’m so ready to release an album though. I feel like this EP has been such a nice, simple introduction for people, and I’m pumped to dive into a new process for my next release.
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You can listen to the debut EP Nurture by Girly Pants out everywhere now. You can also catch Sabreen playing lead guitar for Carter Ward.
“Is there anything that came into this shop that you had to turn away because it was too fucked up?”, Chaepter asked the employee behind the desk of Chicago’s Woolly Mammoth Antiques and Oddities, the location we chose to photograph in – and one that left us grotesquely curious as to the collectables for sale. The taxidermied cow named “Meatball the Freak”, John Wayne Gacey original paintings, an old, preserved chicken nugget or a gun holster made from a squirrel, there was humor in both the disbelief and surrealism of it all that just barley cut the tension of how dark some of this stuff really was. “Hmmm,” she says, taking the time to give us an answer that would leave us satisfied in our inquiry. “I mean, people will bring in murder memorabilia all the time, stuff used in murders and crimes. But it feels weird putting monetary value to those kinds of things, so we often just trade for it.”
Chaepter Negro is a Chicago-based artist who performs under his first name, marking ground in his own unique and challenging ways with engaging and tactful sounds. Chaepter grew up in Central Illinois, rearing a large Irish-Catholic Midwest upbringing to show for it, where he was first exposed to music through classical training in cello and piano. But with the release of 2024’s Naked Era, a bold, brutalist post-punk album riddled with acute punctuation, searing guitar tones and strict melodic orders that carved out a new vision for the project and a trajectory that Chaepter and co. have fully launched into. Accompanying him are players John Golden on drums, Ayethaw Tun on bass, who have played with Chaepter for years, as well as the newest addition of Shane Morris on lead guitar.
Today, Chaepter shares a new EP called Empire Anthems, a brief and poignant collection of songs that areunwilling to mince words directed towards the fearful, and rather stupid, timeline that we are currently residing. Although gripping tightly to our being, blending punk antiquity and rage against the system with the absolute fear of what is unfolding in front of our own eyes, Empire Anthems plays out with urgency and condemnation, of course, but the purpose of its creation is a remnant of preservation. The kind of preservation you get from making art with the people you care about. The kind of preservation you get from engaging with and looking out for the community that you are a part of. The kind of self-preservation you get when you choose what has monetary value in your life, no matter how fucked up it is. Chaepter isn’t searching for fix-all answers here, but rather ways in which we can all push back when the things that matter the most are exploited.
We recently spent the day with Chaepter, first taking photos in the Woolly Mammoth before we got to discuss Empire Anthems, having creative freedom in community and suffering from choice-poison.
This interview as been edited for length and clarity.
Shea Roney: So, you have an EP coming out soon called Empire Anthems.
Chaepter: Yes, we’re doing this EP with Pleasure Tapes. Honestly, it was kind of weird, the past year we’ve been touring the Naked Era record, and then I’ve been writing this other album and we just spent the last four months rehearsing and recording it – different from the EP. I just had a bunch of songs that didn’t really fit that, so we just spent a couple days in our practice space pushing through these songs. It’s like what would be the B-sides of an album or something, but we’re going to release it first while we search for a home for the bigger record.
SR: This EP is a continuation of that raw and bold sound that Naked Era fully embraced. As you venture more into this genre, exploring the techniques and sounds, what did you gravitate towards when fleshing out these songs?
C: I think for me it was just writing on guitar, and in this way, electric guitar. At the end of the day, I used to always write songs on piano, so I was always writing songs like that. It wasn’t until a couple years ago that I started structuring songs on guitar, and then also experimenting with pedals and stuff. I’ve always been doing quieter stuff, a lot of folk songs and stuff like that, but for whatever reason, it just kind of felt right to be part of a band. I’ve been in other bands, but I think what kind of led to that shift is I really like playing like this, where we can get loud and get aggressive, but also have those soft moments and have the dynamics, which we really try to do.
SR: Wanting to play louder, did you feel like you knew how to go into it, or was there trial and error?
C: Oh, definitely trial and error. I don’t actually even know guitar chords. I’ve just been doing my own tunings and my own chords, and just writing songs that way. I don’t know a C chord. I don’t know any of that shit. Everything’s been self-taught with guitar, and I think that’s been kind of nice because it’s forced me to do things a little differently. We were joking about that, because me and the band were at a show last night, and we were looking back at old videos of us playing and were like, ‘what the hell were we doing? What the fuck was that?’ [laughs] When I first started playing frontman and then playing guitar at the same time, I had just never done that, so it was a lot of trial and error, but we’re starting to kind of get to know each other a bit.
SR: When you bring a song to the group, how do you translate it to them? If you’re not referring to old music theory and stuff like that?
C: It really depends. We’re more collaborative now than when we first started. The Chaepter project was just kind of a solo project, and then I had friends that were playing with me, and we’ve gone through some iterations. But now we’re pretty much locked in as a band, and there’s a lot more collaboration. So I’ll bring in a song idea, and sometimes I’ll have a bass part written, sometimes not, sometimes I’ll have half of it. It’s just things like that. Oftentimes we’ll just do it as a three-piece. We’ll start fleshing it out, and my drummer, John, writes all his drum parts and helps with structuring. Unless we’re collaborating with someone who’s doing lead, we keep it pretty open. Sometimes I’ll come in with a song and it’s pretty much all done. Sometimes I’ll just have a riff, and we’ll see where that goes. It’s just been really good for my brain, and just us as a unit to push and pull.
SR: Do you feel like this freedom in your abilities, and lack of quote-unquote musical structure, has helped you explore and start writing in different ways?
C: Yeah, for guitar music at least. I was raised playing classically on cello and piano since I was six. I have that experience in theory and stuff, but in terms of guitar, just not knowing what I’m doing has been honestly really cool. Anytime I kind of figure something out, it feels very fresh to me, or naive in a way that I feel comfortable in. I would naturally play this way for whatever reason as opposed to feeling like I have to do something because someone taught me since I was a little kid to do it like that.
SR: So now as you gear up to release Empire Anthems, referring to these songs as almost B-sides to an album, was there a connective tissue or theme that runs throughout them all?
C: They were kind of just existing in their own kind of space. I’m also working on another record, too, so I’ve kind of had three or four records, or at least collections of songs, working off in different places. These songs were just in their own sort of world – its own darker kind of space. I was in a weird spot post-album. Whenever I’m done making a record, I get a little depressed, so I was just kind of thinking a lot about the relevance and utility of making art in a fading empire that we are currently residing in, and how that intersects with our cultural identity, and this idea of ‘Empire Anthems’ being these cultural signifiers that kind of lulls us into complacency and reaffirms the dominant American culture and rationalizes irrational American terror. You know, you turn on the radio and some pop song that’s making you not really think about something, but allowing you to continue to sleepwalk through life. How does art exist in that kind of way? These anthems just keep pulling you back into the Matrix or wherever the fuck we’re in [laughs].
SR: Yeah, I was very intrigued by the word ‘anthem’ in the title, because there is such a notable heaviness to the word. But also repeating the word ‘signifier’, can you talk about these songs as signifiers and this plane that you created?
C: The idea of art as a cultural signifier in general, being something that in music’s case, if you’re living in a certain culture, you’re going to produce certain cultural products that reaffirm what it means to live in American culture, which is this blood-sucking empire that’s on its last legs. How dominant art might be shifting, just to keep the dream alive even though it’s not there anymore, that’s just what I was thinking about. Art is obviously what I’m doing, it’s my life, and sometimes it’s the most important thing in the world to me. And other times, I gotta focus on my family. It’s this sort of oscillation back and forth of being a ‘god-like’ thing in my life pulling me towards something, but also something I’m just doing. It can feel kind of silly just writing songs in the state it is right now, but it is deeply important at the same time. I guess that’s all things.
SR: I would argue it’s always important, especially with all that comes with it, especially community, which is something that you are very vocal on. This was huge for you with Naked Era and that press, you’re very keen on giving your surroundings voice and appreciation. Thank you. What bits of this relation and respect for your surroundings sticks with you when making art?
C: I feel like in my brain, what comes out is pretty much a debris, just kind of an after. So if making art is a fabric, it’s that community that comes with it that I think matters the most. It’s kind of reflexive – it’s a mirror. So if you’re involved in a really active art scene, you’re inherently going to be injecting that into what you’re making. Whether you’re doing it explicitly or tacitly, it’s always going to be part of it. That’s something my band and I try to focus on, that process and journey mattering more than the song that comes out of it. Because at the end of the day, as artists and creatives, that’s what you have. Once you let that song go, it’s out there, but you have that journey with you forever. So inserting yourself in something and allowing yourself to be part of a scene or some sort of artistic collective fabric is the best part of doing all this shit. I spent so many years of my life making songs alone in a bedroom. It was fine, but you get out what you put in. There’s nothing wrong with writing in an isolated manner at all, but nowadays, I’ve been feeling so good about being around other people that are making stuff, and part of this greater thing.
SR: Even to the stories you tell in your songs, there is this level of presence and characterization regardless of if it’s told from your eyes or not. There is always this presence. So when it comes to dealing with conflicting imagery, you know, with this failing empire, what kind of emotions went in and came out of these songs in the process?
C: Yeah, I mean, post-album with these songs, I felt like I was just steering a ship in the dark, into the fog. It’s getting foggier and it’s very confusing – I get overstimulated. I was kind of in that space where I was just like, ‘what the fuck am I doing?’ Not in any way that’s rooted in that much reality, but I was getting very existential. I think that’s where these leftover songs and how they kind of form into this EP. It’s a weird thing, once you’ve given life to a new project. For me, it’s kind of an obsession. I’m obsessed with something for a long time, and then you finally put it to tape, and then, ‘dang, here it is’. That’s kind of the headspace I was in putting this record together. And then, you know, watching all the systems around us degrade at an even more accelerated rate than they have been doing so previously – there’s a lot going on to say the least. And again, it can seem so silly to be writing a little song, but it’s serious. And I think being able to balance both is important.
SR: Sorry, are you blinded? This window is brutal.
C: I am cooking. Part 2 on the bench out there?
*change of scenery
SR: I can’t remember what we were talking about
C: I was saying anything I needed to. I was in survival mode [laughs].
SR: [laughs] How long have you lived in the city for?
C: Since October of 2019. I moved here after I was in Madison for a little bit after college working and then moved here. Then COVID happened.
SR: Hell yeah. You have described your project in the terms of Midwest Gothic, which I really appreciate having lived here all my life. I feel like in a way that really helps make this Empire Anthems a little bit more credible, growing up in the heart of America with a big classic big family. Looking at the world you grew up in and then the world you are in now, does that live in these songs at all?
C: I feel like everyone who grows up in the Midwest has this sense of space because we are just in this plane. When I’m writing songs, I do try to channel that a lot. I grew up in Central Illinois in the country. It was really lovely being able to grow up around nature and be exposed to animals and having that big family, but there is sort of a Midwest existentialism, I guess I will call it, that feeling of living sort of nowhere all the time. Illinois in particular, and what happened to this state and what it looks like now with industrial agriculture and losing the prairie, is something I’m always thinking about and trying to channel into the music. There’s a big history of lost connection to our land here in Illinois and the Midwest in general because of industrial agriculture and what that’s done to farming communities. There’s a lot of ruins around here. You can go over to Michigan, or go to Gary, Indiana you know, an hour from here, and see with your own eyes what that looks like when people just get left behind. I was thinking about that a lot with these songs, just that expansiveness that we’re looking across. We can see everything in front of us in the Midwest.
SR: Did you find any hope buried within these songs? Or are we.. are we pre-hope?
C: [laughs] I feel like these were probably my least hopeful in a minute. These songs were kind of like a shot, you know, these five songs, just like an injection. I don’t know what’s going to happen after the injection. Whereas with a full record, I feel like I tend to be able to have emotional arcs with them and I’ve never been a huge fan of writing EPs. I’ve always felt I’ve struggled with encapsulating a full concept in them that I can do in a record. But that’s why I kind of view it as a shot, it’s just one big injection. There’s maybe not the catharsis that a full record has.
SR: I mean, to call back to before we were recording, we were talking about exposure therapy, and it’s kind of ripping off the bandaid in all aspects. Do you find yourself taking too much on at times?
C: These songs, and just a lot of the music I have been kind of consuming as of late, fall into that sort of ‘rattle ya a little bit’ category. Not in one particular sort of ideology, but just like this idea of like, things are not right per se, and if you’re feeling like something’s off, that’s not probably innate to just you, you know, it’s a fully human thing. It’s like, if you’re ill, you’re mentally ill because of this or, you know, the sort of individualized blame that it’s really easy for us to go into and to sink into that shame, you’ve got to give yourself a little bit of grace, you know? Recognize that to some degree we’re doing what we can, don’t be so hard on yourself. Maybe it’s growing up with Catholic guilt, I find myself doing so much, and I’m trying to be better about it. I don’t think we should have to be able to keep up with everything that’s going on, especially, in terms of new technology and productivism and feeling like we have to be this well-oiled, perfect little production machine as a human. It’s like, ‘nah, man, this shit is so confusing’. It’s hard to keep up and it’s not normal for the human brain to have all this fucking stupidness all the time
SR: What constitutes a break for you?
C: Oh, I’m so bad at trying to just chill out. I have a lot of family stuff that’s always going on. Eight siblings, very dysfunctional, and trying to balance that with making money and doing music, booking tours and doing this music thing, it’s just so much work. I love it, it’s an obsession, but it’s a lot of unpaid work, so it’s hard to do and balance a job. I’m reading more, which has been good. I deleted Instagram from my phone last week, I was like, ‘this shouldn’t be that big of a deal’, but it was. It’s really difficult because I use it to book tours, so I’ll message a band, and then like an hour later, I’m like watching fucking videos of AI squids being cleaned off. That’s why I deleted my Instagram. I saw this AI video of someone washing off a giant squid in a boat and I couldn’t tell if it was real or not. I was like, ‘this is fucked up. I got to get rid of this’. I was sleeping better and when I wake up, I felt just a little bit better about how much time I’m spending consuming things that don’t affect me. Obviously, we’re veering towards absurdism, but at some point, I just need to disconnect and be like, ‘okay, I’ve got friends in front of me, family, people I love that I talk to and talk back to me’. I also got rid of streaming, which has been fine, but I don’t have a lot of money to buy records so I’ve been doing YouTube and bandcamp and buying friends stuff that I really, really love.
SR: How has that been? Did it bring out anything with your relationship to listening or something?
C: I’m trying to find a balance with music because we’ve kind of been conditioned to view it all as free. Even as someone who makes stuff, I grew up with CDs – I first fell in love with music with CDs; buying CDs, getting CDs from the library, burning them, getting them from friends – it was a little more precious back then at least. I got streaming in 2018, and whether you think about it explicitly or not, it does reshape how we interact with and appreciate art, you know? I’ve just been trying to make some small changes where it’ll force me to go a little slower with stuff. Because otherwise I can be kind of overstimulating myself. Something I always think about is choice. I think historically, humans aren’t actually that good with choice, which is why I think the capitalist idea of choice in terms of products and things you consume is like a mirage. We’re good at looking back and rationalizing stuff, but when I have all these choices in front of me, I just get choice-poison – I just don’t know what to do. So I feel like limiting myself a little bit and being like, ‘okay, I can listen to this today’. I remember one summer driving my mom’s car, she had a Feist CD, and you know, I was like, ‘I don’t know what this is’, but I fell in love with it. For that whole summer, that’s the only CD I had in the car, and every song I got to love.
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You can listen to Empire Anthems out everywhere now via Pleasure Tapes. Chaepter will be playing an EP release show this Thursday 3/20 at Empty Bliss in Chicago and then will embark on a short tour working their way out east. Look for dates and cities here.
“The thing is, part of the reason why I picked bowling as an activity that I was going to get into is because you look like an absolute fool if you are having a bad day and start crying out on the fucking bowling alley that looks like it is 1994,” Park says, wavering between the need for a joke and a contempt for understanding. “It’s just too goofy to be visibly upset here. Especially alone. You cannot do that. So, it does kind of force a cheeriness into you.”
Victoria Park is a Chicago-based songwriter, who for the past few years has been performing under the moniker Pictoria Vark. With just a slight shift in the nomenclature, there is a differentiation there that even Park herself has set out to understand since the project’s initial founding. Now gearing up for her sophomore record Nothing Sticks via Get Better Records out on March 21st, this album has been a part of a longtime-coming-esque journey. After going through life changes and embarking on a tour that lasted 150 days, Park’s demeanor became ill fitted, relying on the ability to be present when she knew she couldn’t be.
Nothing Sticks is as vivid as it needs to be, rearing an earnest delivery that dares to challenge the fronts that become habit to us all. But where Nothing Sticks becomes most poignant is in Park’s focus in her own sense of self through her experience within the music industry, navigating the relentless expectations and learning how easy it is to lose yourself along the way. But in the end, Park has proven herself to be emboldened by it, embracing a rigorous, empathetic and more in-depth approach to writing these songs. And as they trickle out with each single, rearing with sincere melodies and indie rock bliss that PV and co. have brought to life, there is a sentiment built around momentary lapses of reflection that Park makes so vulnerable and engaging throughout.
We recently took to the Waveland Bowling Lanes on a below freezing day in Chicago to talk with Park about balancing expectations, breaking habits and the making of Nothing Sticks.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity purposes.
Shea Roney: I am very intrigued about this 150 days of touring, and this is kind of where the generalized theme of the record came from. What was that experience like and what sticks with you now as you have taken time off?
Pictoria Vark: I was enjoying being on tour for that long, but it was also because I was running away from myself and my life. I didn’t want to confront the lack I felt at my home because I didn’t have the time to put energy into making it feel like home, to building friends and making it a real place I wanted to be. And so, instead, I would be like, ‘okay, when am I going back on tour?’ I just kept running away, being like, ‘I want to be here as little as possible.’ I haven’t really toured that much where it felt like I was running towards something. And I think the toughest part of walking away from that, or what the album is about, is when you spend time developing experiences when you spend time and money, the experience comes and goes. It just becomes a memory. So, it was just me kind of building memories and not anything material with it. I’m kind of just taking away the memories, and sometimes I call looking back on that time as “remembering the horrors” [laughs]. Which is partially me being dramatic about it and partially kind of real. Other people have different horrors they remember in their life, just like, ‘oh, that was a fucked up time’, and when you’re looking back on it, that’s remembering the horrors. So, because I have “the horrors” to remember, I’ve been trying to help my friends who are just starting to tour for the first time or want to know more about that to impart that wisdom so that they don’t crash and burn in the same way I did. I also didn’t have a lot of people at that time that I could talk to about these experiences because I didn’t have a lot of peers that were doing that much or were touring to that degree at all. So, it’s nice to be able to be that for other people, or try to be.
SR: You have mentioned in the past that there is a Victoria Park and there is a Pictoria Vark. Where do you draw the line between these two and has one taught the other anything?
PV: I think with the second record, something that I was thinking about is that I have these opportunities to be on stage, to share my music and some people will listen to it. Rather than think about the songs that I’m writing as like, I need this diary, I need to put my demons somewhere on a page and then I share that, but more like, if you were on a microphone in front of an audience of people, what would you want to say? What is the thing that I actually want to share with other people? What is something that I think is a useful message or something? So, it was made kind of intentionally and I think that’s something anybody can do or think about. All those crazy YouTube interviews of just like, ‘we’re just talking to ordinary people’ – that’s kind of like the same thing as that. If you were stopped on the street, what would you say?
With Victoria and Pictoria, I’m trying to do a better job at drawing a line between the two. Online, it’s honestly been really tough because I feel like I am only really using my social media to promote my music. And then it becomes a skewed image of like, ‘wow, you’re really busy’ or like, ‘how’s the music stuff?’ People don’t really know what’s going on in my personal life. One thing I am trying to do for the new record is have a stage costume so that it’s like when I’m on stage, I am in my persona, and then when I take that off, that’s like a different person – to create more of that delineation in a physical realm.
SR: Wow, that’s a great idea! What do you have in mind for the stage costume?
PV: Okay, early drafts, I wore these angel wings at Outset and I kind of want to keep sticking with them for the new record. It’s both a play on the like the halo effect, which is kind of a type of bias that I think happens to a lot of musicians. It’s like you literally put them on a pedestal. So I think that’s funny, angel wings, halo effect, yeah. And also because I love Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders. What if I was just like an angel on earth? That sounds so fun and it’s also, you know, kind of about forever.
SR: You say that these are just better songs in many aspects from writing and recording than your previous release. What did you find yourself focusing on more this time around? Anything out of your comfort zone?
PV: Yeah, I really wanted to push myself as a songwriter to make my craft better, to make stronger choruses or make stuff with more than three chords. When we got to the studio, the biggest challenge was working on a lot of the vocals, because we didn’t do a ton of vocal takes and there was like a whole eight hour day where it’s like Brad and I were just running through vocals and just being like, ‘oh, did we like how I said this word better?’ So by the end of that day, we were so fried. But overall, the studio time went really smoothly I think because we had so much preparation going into it. We were making really complex demos. I felt so bad, I was asking so much of Gavin and Tori because in my head I was like, ‘we don’t have time to like mess up.’ But I think it was like that initial thought and working out that way allowed us to have a smoother experience in the studio. It set a precedent, if I work with these same people for the next record, we can keep things a little bit more relaxed. I don’t really know how much we expected to go wrong, you know, but it was really exciting. It was just so many more people and so fun to watch it happen. There were some times where it’s like Brad and Gavin and Tori were just kind of like cooking and I was like, ‘I’m here’ [laughs]. It was really cool to just let them take the reins a little bit. My main job is assembling the task force.
SR: Do you think next time you will be more comfortable?
PV: Yeah, next time I want to leave it just more open, you know? Like maybe we don’t have to make the demos quite as intense, we can play or leave a little more room in the studio to figure things out. Finding a good balance of preparation and being open to improvising.
SR: And because everything was so tense with time and the demos, do you feel like there’s some parts of the recording process that you really wish you could have focused more on?
PV: Honestly, no, I think the time crunch felt really good, because it made us not overthink things. And we didn’t. We didn’t have time to redo things, we just had to let it live as is. And even if there’s a vocal performance or two that I would like to have done another take, it’s almost nice to think that that’s just room for improvement for next time.
SR: So at the point of this conversation, you only have two singles out. But you just wrote a really nice piece in your substack about balancing expectations, especially about the singles. You crowdsourced friends about which songs should be singles and there were some different ideas. When it comes to songs that are so personal to you, what does that balance of expectations look like as you go forward?
PV: It’s not easy [laughs]. I don’t think I do a great job at it. In all honesty, if you talk to some of my closest friends, I’ve driven them nuts over the last year just by going through the same kind of thought circles I can’t get out of. I think what I struggle with is the uncertainty rather than if something were to perform badly. I just don’t really handle not knowing in a lot of areas of my life, for various different reasons. It’s like more than being in this gray space where anything could happen and only like one thing will. It makes me crazy, makes me unwell – just in terms of like, I don’t know what my life will look like in three months, six months. I think the singles, weirdly, when I polled people on what song should be singles, I was not expecting “I Pushed It Down” to be the number two one that people would pick after “Make Me A Sword”. But to have that reflected by the Spotify algorithm is super weird. This reflects a taste of people, whatever it is. I thought that was really weird and interesting.
SR: One of the major themes of this album is understanding that nothing lasts forever. What did it mean to you, when talking about the fleeting implications of life, to come to this conclusion? Although bleak, did it offer any clarification or justification to you?
PV: I think it was the result of causing myself so much suffering by trying to keep things together in my life. Before this 150 days was started, I was dumped for going on tour for too long. And then four days later, I was on the road for three months. I had centered so much of my life around him unknowingly – it was part of the reason I decided to stay in Iowa an extra year, which became two years and didn’t move to Chicago sooner. And then with different bands or friendships, when there’s those falling outs, it left a really big emotional mark. I think in writing this record, it’s helped me be like, ‘okay, if this person doesn’t want to be friends with me or doesn’t want to repair things, that’s kind of not my problem. That’s not mine to hold.’ I can see that as an opportunity for more space for something else to come in, and I think that reframe has been really, really helpful because of the amount of like, almost a scarcity mindset of, if I want this thing and this thing feels good, it has to stay. I have to be the one to force it to stick in my life.
SR: Has this changed the choices you make when it comes to both your career or personal life?
PV: You know the meme of like, ‘I did X,Y, and Z and all I got was this t-shirt?’ That is kind of what going on tour felt like – I don’t know what happened. It’s like that thing happened, it was a blip in my life, and you know, now I wake up and I go to work and I still make music. I have a hard time not being able to make a clear and straightforward narrative from it. And so I think the ‘nothing sticks’ ethos is to try to enjoy the present as much as possible. Have the memories, but to not expect life to follow in a logical way like X,Y, and Z and be ok with things slowing down or ending because they eventually will. I don’t know if that’s a good answer for that question, but that’s what I got. I think with music, it’s made me change my approach, like, if this thing is going to cost time and money and energy to do, what are the things that I actually want to do in it? Because playing to 20 people, 100 miles away from home is like, I’ve done that, you know, I’ve done that enough now where I don’t feel like that’s an additive experience. So everything that I want to do moving forward, I want to feel really purposeful and really meaningful during the process of doing it, so that the end result doesn’t quite matter.
SR: So the last song, We’re Musicians, reminds me of a theory you were workshopping last time we talked, about good outcomes and bad outcomes. Being a musician, stuck in this almost stuck on this thin line, can you find yourself reflected in that theory?
PV: Oh my god [laughs]. Okay, well, if we’re gonna get super real with this, the big tour that I got asked to do a few years ago, that is like getting what you want and it wasn’t a bad outcome. It’s getting exactly what you want, but it’s like, not what you think it is. It is in some ways the monkey’s paw. Like, you get everything you ask for, but then it’s not what you thought it was gonna be at all.
graph made by Victoria Park
SR: What are you most excited for in regards to this album finally being out?
PV: Just to have it out. Yeah. Just to make it exist. Like, of course there’s things I want from it, but I know that’s not a guarantee. I think it’s something that I’ve been harping on in my mind of like, Oh, if X, Y, and Z doesn’t happen, then what happens? It’s like, I don’t know. You wake up. You go to work, I don’t know. That’s what happens. You make more music.. But I am really proud of this record and I think I’m just gonna let it speak for itself the best I can. As hard as that is for me.
SR: I mean, look how far you’ve come. Just earlier in this conversation you were like, I’m so scared of not knowing X, Y, and Z.
PV: The thing is, I am going to leave this question and then go back to my house and be like, ‘I’m scared of X, Y, and Z’ [laughs]. This is what I mean when I’m writing these songs as Pictoria – I would like to be this way. And by pretending that I am this way, that is me trying to be closer to that. The thing is like, part of the reason why I picked bowling as an activity that I was going to get into is because you look like an absolute fool if you are having a bad day and start crying out on the fucking bowling alley that looks like it is 1994. It’s just too goofy to be visibly upset here. Especially alone. You cannot do that. So it does kind of force a cheeriness into you.
See more photos of Pictoria Vark here.
Nothing Sticks is set to be released Friday March 21st via Get Better Records. You can pre-order the album now as well as vinyl or cassette tapes.
the ugly hug 