It would be difficult for me to write about a Nara’s Room remix EP without referencing the feature I wrote on Nara Avakian earlier this year. We spoke about three months following the release of Glassy star; the 2024 record offering up a foundation for a more comprehensive conversation on the project’s ethos and ever-expanding nature. When discussing their songwriting, they enthused about their bandmates ability to contort or enhance music they wrote from a personal and sometimes even guarded place.
“They evolve the meaning and turn something that is very private and singular into something much more nuanced”, Nara told me in January – a quote I think back on each time I listen to Glassy was the sky.
Last month, Nara’s Room shared Glassy was the sky – a remix EP of Glassy star and the latest feat to stem from the project’s emphasis on the potential for art to evolve. It consists of seven tracks and features contributions from Sister., fantasy of a broken heart, Hausholding, good.will, Brendan Jones, and Shallowater.
“Sister., fantasy of a broken heart, Shallowater, and Hausholding are some of my favorite bands currently”, Nara explains, “good.will, aka Will Fisher, our Ambient Duty player, and Brendan , our drummer contributed as well to the EP which was special because I loved hearing their own interpretations of the songs outside of their roles in arranging them. Will wasn’t a part of the project when we recorded ‘Glassy star,’ so it was special to have him on too.”
Glassy was the sky houses two versions of “Glassy star”, the original record’s emotional closing track. On Glassy star, it takes a coarser form than the tracks that precede it, stripping down the fuzz and sonic eccentricities to end on a moment of uninhibited vulnerability. In doing so, “Glassy star” perfectly captures the moment between naivety and what comes next, as Nara sings “Nineteen’s a funny time to be, the world’s only just started.” These layered and complex feelings pour onto both renditions on Glassy was the sky, though both projects manage to do so in a way that feels authentic to their own sound.
“Sister. and Shallowater’s wildly different interpretations of ‘Glassy star’ only expanded the universe of the song and it was special to hear the way the raw emotions in the original were interpreted by them”, Nara says of both “Glassy star” versions.
Glassy was the sky also contains a version of “Teeth” by Hausholding that Nara deems “so freaky, in the best way”, an exhilarating fantasy of a broken heart rendition of ‘Grape juice’, and a version of ‘Holden’ by Brendan Jones that honors the tracks original ballad form. It ends with “Like ivory – duo version” ft. good.will, a track that Nara describes as an “epilogue of sorts”, adding, “hearing his rendition almost gave me closure.”
“I’m gonna go off topic for a second” Nara Avakian prefaces before pivoting into a story from their day at work at a school in Elmhurst, Queens. We had been discussing the impact of taking Nara’s Room outside of the physical parameters of ‘Nara’s Room’, and while they assure me the anecdote will circle back to that point, I am hardly worried. Avakian details an art class activity where they prompted students to complete a ten minute automatic drawing followed by a more intentional piece of art on the other side of the paper. “I saw the ways that their subconscious kind of came out. I mean, they’re all twelve, thirteen, so they’re not overtly thinking, but I could see the connections that were being made,” Avakian explains.
One student had drawn a Yin and Yang symbol during the brief ten minutes, explaining to Avakian it was an element of another lesson she had that day. For the second part of the assignment, she drew a chameleon, likely inspired by the cover of a textbook in the classroom. “Because she drew the chameleon in marker, when you flipped it over it bled through and it was perfectly symmetrical with the Yin and Yang symbol. I feel like that instance is how I perceive my own songwriting and performing, it’s my subconscious flowing out and it just ends up almost experimental. I bring it to the boys, and they process it in their own ways. They evolve the meaning and turn something that is very private to me and very singular into something that is so much more nuanced.”
Avakian is the front person of Nara’s Room, a Brooklyn Based band that boasts a grungy catalogue of tracks that fizz in your ears and yank at your chest. Their experimental sound glides over achey introspections like Vaseline, forming this healing liminal space where pain has to be felt, perhaps even danced to, before it can be truly let go. The deeply cathartic essence of Nara’s Room is one of the band’s biggest triumphs, though it was not necessarily intentional from conception. Avakian began Nara’s Room at a time they were still nurturing their own confidence as a musician, initially envisioning something along the lines of “Joni Mitchell, Tim Buckley singer- songwriter”. They found bandmates Ethan Nash and Brendan Jones after posting on Craigslist for ‘non men players’ who liked the Cranberries, Galaxie 500, and the Sundays. “Lo and behold, two of the most boyish of boys responded”, Avakian jokes before tenderly reflecting on the significance of Nash and Jones in their life, “They ended up becoming my chosen family.”
The band fosters an extremely pliable approach to creativity, allowing them to harvest depth from anything. As Avakian reflected on the subsconscious driven exercises of their middle school art class, I thought of a track off Glassy Star that is somewhat centered around a bottle of juice. Recalled amidst the anguish of a parasitic relationship, “Grape Juice” is a standout example of the band’s knack for achieving emotional complexity without a need for explicit articulation. When I asked if the song was based on reality, if perhaps a decayed bodega beverage was a means to reach something darker buried in Avakian’s mind, I tried to resist posing the question in an overtly personal way. In retrospect, I think the times I have dropped what I was doing to vehemently sing along to the agonizing delivery of “a moldy bottle of Welch’s juice, I left in my closet, I forgot to drink” has less to do with me than it does the band’s ability to inject pathos into, well, anything. This dexterity wields songs that beg to be weathered by the relationship of a listener; as the stories told by Nara’s Room are meant to be felt more than understood.
Avakian explains that while the moldy grape juice story was true, it was initially someone else’s, one told via Spongebob voice filter on Instagram Reels. “At the time, I was friends with someone who was the classic case of just taking advantage of a friendship. The moldy bottle of Welch’s juice line came up, and I hate that this is the reference, but I guess it goes to show that you can find that value in anything,” Avakian explains, “I was scrolling through Instagram Reels, I don’t know if you know this guy but he tells these stories through the autotune SpongeBob filter, he has a beard, whatever. He came up, and I don’t watch everything, but for some reason I was just in a mood where I was just kind of rotting, and he talked about this story where his mom wouldn’t let him drink grape juice, so he ended up grabbing a bottle from the fridge and hiding it in his closet. He forgot about it, and then it got moldy, and that kind of just stuck with me. It was not something where I saw the reel and was like, I need to make that into a song, but I took it into my subconscious and it just kind of flowed out and really defining the mood and feelings of the song”
That Reel was just one of the many fragments of life that shaped Glassy Star, mingling in the record alongside a line delivered by Laura Dern in Blue Velvet, a copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard, a vinyl of Fleetwood Mac’s Live Ivory and a light up horse display in a bar in Bed-Stuy. Avakian often refers to these collaged references as “fixations”, though in the context of Nara’s Room, their purpose is ultimately a catalyst for stubborn emotional excavations. The band often knits their individual focuses into one, this creative symbiosis bridging Nash’s fascination with the New York City Transit System’s most elusive train and a poem Avakian wrote on a receipt at a comic shop in LA seven years prior on “Waiting for the z”.
There is also value in the intent behind what they choose to integrate into their art. The approach is deeply unpretentious, focused on exploring the notions that resonate regardless of their cultural weight. “That’s how I process what a fixation meant to me”, Avakian explains on their trust in their own subconscious, and how they rely on music to unravel it. Amongst the slivers of life and media that braided into Nara’s Room, an emphasis on the 2000’s holds a prominent slot in the band’s identity. Glassy Star odes heavily to the cultural landscape of the band’s formative years, the album’s visuals rich with contrast between aesthetics associated with innocence and lyrics that navigate the darker realities of growing up.
“I have this relationship with my childhood, where growing up I genuinely believed that every element in the early 2000’s would be that way forever. Like the idyllic world of a Disney Channel original movie. In my music, or at least with Glassy Star, it’s one of the dimensions. There’s so many. One of them is reconciling with growing up and change”, Avakian reflects on their focus on 2000’s media, “It’s my way of kind of returning back to the room in many ways, returning back to these things that are so foundational to who I am that don’t necessarily have a place in this world anymore.”
Their manipulation of nostalgia becomes particularly powerful in the music video for “Holden”, a standout track that purges identity uncertainties over buoyant guitar and hypnotic reverb. Avakian used various cameras for the video, which features a stop motion animation inspired by Nickolodeon’s Action League Now, and a visual narrative that unfolds in and out of a vintage television set. It exists somewhere between familiarity and fabrication, envisioning an uncanny realm that possibly cautions against stretching naivete into adulthood, though like most aspects of Nara’s Room, it leans into the abstract, holding more emphasis on emotion than rationality.
This sense of ambiguity is a driving force at their live shows. Creating the songs offers the band a means to make sense of their own minds, but through sharing them the music transcends the personal nature of a notes app entry or media fascination. The meaning becomes something entirely new, as their songs knock on the door of someone else’s emotional ruminations. “When you watch something of David Lynch’s, it’s not meant to be overtly understood, but rather experienced and felt,” Avakian reflects on preforming, “I think when I bring something out of the room, I only hope that people can enter this other space with me, and we can all kind of experience and feel something ourselves.”
You can listen to Glassy Star out on all platforms now. You can also order a cassette tape via Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. Nara also creates videos under the name foggy cow. Check it out here!
Written by Manon Bushong | Featured Photo by Mamie Heldman
Every Wednesday, the ugly hug shares a playlist personally curated by an artist/band that we have been enjoying. This week, we have a collection of songs put together by Brooklyn-based group Nara’s Room.
Through the deliberation of sifting noise and strong lyrical intuitions, Nara’s Room has always circulated around the production of dreams and the reverie towards real life environments that front-person Nara Avakian so vividly samples from the day to day. Gearing up for their new EP, Glassy star, Nara’s Room has become a standout group here at the ugly hug, leaving your soul crunched and your ears tender, but in no way deterred by the experimental spirit and sincerity of the artists at hand.
About the playlist, Nara shared;
This is essentially what is playing in my room when people are over, or when I’m in the passenger seat of the car. The songs I added to the playlist are songs that have stuck with me for a long time. My bandmates Brendan and Ethan and our producer James added some songs too because they inspired the sound of the record as much as I did. I asked them to add songs that they found themselves referencing when we were writing and recording. Stuff they’d play in their rooms that made them want to pick up their instruments.
Glassy star is set to be released this Friday October 18 via Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. Nara’s Room will be playing an EP release show at Baby’s All Right on November 4th along with Mtn. Laurel label mates Sister. as well as Told Slant. Get tickets here.
Written by Shea Roney | Cyanotype by mamie heldman
Nara’s Room, the Brooklyn trio fronted by Nara Avakian, has shared two new singles “Holden” and “Waiting for the z” today as a precursor to their upcoming album, Glassy star out 10/18 via Mtn. Laurel Recording Co. Through the deliberation of sifting noise and strong lyrical intuitions, Nara’s Room has always circulated around the production of dreams and the reverie towards real life environments. With arrangement help from Ethan Nash and Brendan Jones and production by James Duncan, Nara’s Room return heavy handed, pushing the sonic boundaries of what we deem is possible while simultaneously defining their placement in an ever shifting world.
Gradually, “Holden” spirals into being through a rhythmic doom loop; constructed by the scrunchy mechanical noises and the unease that the sonic structure so easily brings out. It isn’t long before the industrial tones and gothic reverb open to a wave of jangly instrumentals, reminiscent of 80s pop and shoegaze classics, but with the trio’s own unique touches strung about. “How can we dream in a world we’re persistently being pushed out of?” Avakian asks in a statement about the song. As the chorus is emboldened by the distorted depths of the track, the band articulates every texture and sonic idea within, filling the void with individual voices as Avakian tries to define intense feelings of alienation and belonging.
In the same vein, “Waiting for the z”, lives in the balance between brutality and faith, trapped within its own confined and isolated space. With a brief spoken word piece, Avakian recites, “She led me out the door, “I can help you, it’s time to let go / Forgot what face I have on today, the clouds can tell you so,” over an eerie combination of pounding drums and a hollow bass that meanders with patience. As Avakian takes a pause, the shy words are soon succumbed to the sonic revisions of glitchy guitars and thrashing concussive drums, leaving your soul crunched and your ears tender, but in no way deterred by the experimental spirit and sincerity of the band at hand.
Each song is also accompanied by a music video made by Avakian, who has been specializing in VHS-type recordings under the project Foggy Cow. You can watch the new music videos below. Glassy star, out October 18 via Mtn. Laurel Recording Co., will have a limited tape run, which you can preorder now.
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