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divineknowing2021 · 3 years

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At its core, divine knowing is an exhibition about knowledge, power, and agency. It’s become a more common understanding that governments, institutions, and algorithms will manipulate the public with what information they frame as fact, fiction, or worthy of attention. Though I am early in researching this topic, I've only come across a minimal amount of mainstream discourse on how the initial threat limiting our scope of knowledge is a refusal to listen to ourselves.

In a world faced with so many threats - humans being violent toward each other, toward animals, toward the earth - it can be a bit unsettling to release the reins and allow ourselves to bear witness for a moment, as we slowly develop a deeper awareness of surrounding phenomena and happenings.

divine knowing includes works by formally trained and self-taught artists. A majority of the artists are bisexual, non-binary, or transgender. Regardless of degree-status, gender, or sexuality, these artists have tapped into the autonomous well of self-knowing. Their artworks speak to tactics for opening up to a more perceptive mode of being. They unravel dependencies on external sources for knowledge and what we might recognize, connect with, or achieve once we do.

The installation Femme Digitale by Sierra Bagish originates from a series she began in 2017 by converting photographs of women that were taken and distributed online without the subject’s consent into paintings. Her practice at the time was concerned with female abjection. Sourcing images found via simple keywords and phrases (e.g., passed out, passed out drunk) she swathes a mass-circulated canon of internet detritus that articulates and produces aggression towards women. With her paintings, she circumvents the images’ original framing mechanisms and subverts these proliferated images through a sincere and personal lens.

These paintings divulge the blurred space between idolatry and denigration these online photos occupy, asking whose desires these images fulfill and what their propagation reveals about the culture producing them. While Bagish's work contends with political motivations, she also remains keenly observant of form and the varying utilities of different media.

“I use the expressive potential of paint as a vehicle to intervene and challenge ideas about photography as a harbinger of the real and everyday.”

Chariot Birthday Wish is an artist and angel living in Brooklyn. They have seen The Matrix 28 times in 2 years and love horses. The tarot series included in divine knowing is their most intuitive project, something they revisit when unsure of what to work on next. The Major Arcana are composed of digital collages made from sourced images, the Minor Arcana are represented by short, poetic, interpretative texts about the cards. The series is played on shuffle, creating a unique reading for each viewer. This is a work in progress that will eventually finalize as a completed deck of digital collages available for purchase.

Chariot's work emerges from a constant consideration of apocalypse and connection. They reference technology in tandem with nature and a desire for unity. Underneath their work's surface conversation on beauty, care, and relationship exists an agenda to subtly evoke a conspiratorial anti-state mindset. Through a collective imagining of how good things could be and how good we want them to be, we might be able to reckon with how bad things are in contrast.

“I think about texting my friends from the middle of the woods...

Humans are a part of nature and we created these things. There's this Bjork quote where she says that "You can use pro tools and still be pagan." I'm really into the idea of using technology as a tool for divination and holy connection with nature. I imagine a scene; being in moss, it's absolute bliss, and then the connection of texting, sharing an image of moss with a friend, sharing that moment through cellular towers.”

The album "adding up" by thanks for coming is composed of songs Rachel Brown wrote during what they believe to be the most challenging year of their life. Rachel now looks back on this time in appreciation, recognizing they grew in ways they had never imagined. The entire year, they were committed to following their feelings to wherever it may lead.

“If I hadn't been open to following the almost indiscernible signs I was being sent, then I would have missed out on some of the most important moments in my life.”

Kimberly Consroe holds a Masters in Anthropology along with degrees in Archaeology, Literature, and History. She is currently a Research Analyst at the US Department of Commerce. Her artwork is a passionate escape from a hectic professional life and touches on themes of feminism and nature.

Her works begin as general ideas; their narrative complexity growing with the amount of time she invests in making each one. Her decoupage process starts with cutting hundreds, if not thousands, pieces of paper. The accumulation of clippings sourced from vintage and current-day magazines overlap to tell a story. In Domestication, Kimberly borrows submissive female figures from found images of Ryan Mcguinness's work and places them in a position of power.

“I believe intuition is associated with emotion and experience. It is wisdom and fear, empathy and outrage, distrust and familiarity. It is what we know before we know it. This relates to my artwork in that, from beginning to end, there is never one complete idea concerning the outcome: it is a personal journey. It emerges from an ephemeral narrative that coalesces into a definitive story.”

Anabelle DeClement is a photographer who primarily works with film and is interested in relationships as they exist within a frame. She is drawn to the mystery of the mundane. Intuition exists in her practice as a feeling of urgency and the decision to act on it --- a drive often used to describe street photography where the camera catches unexpected moments in an urban environment. Anabelle tends to photograph individuals with whom she has established personal relationships in a slow domestic setting. Her sense of urgency lies in capturing moments of peak intimacy, preserving a memory's informal beauty that otherwise may have been forgotten or overlooked.

Gla5 is a visual artist, poet, bookmaker, production designer, and educator. Play is at the center of their practice. Their process is an experimental one embracing impulse and adventure. Their compositions are informed by relationships among bodies of varying shapes, materials, and densities. Interests that come up in their work include a discernment between symbols and non-symbols, dream states, the portrayal of energy in action, and a fixation on forms such as cups, tables, and spoons.

“I generally think of my work as depicting a layer of life that exists underneath what we see in our everyday lives.”

Gladys Harlow is a sound-based performance artist, comedian, and activist who experiments with found objects, contact mics, textures, range, analog formats, present moments, and emotions. Through raw, avant-garbage performance art, they aim to breakdown societal barriers, abolish oppressive systems, and empower communities. Gladys was born in Queens, NY, raised in Miami, FL and has deep roots in Venezuela. Currently haunting in Philadelphia, PA, Gladys is a founding member of Sound Museum Collective. SMC holds space for reconstructing our relationships to sounds by creating a platform for women, nonbinary, and trans sound artists and engineers.

Street Rat is a visceral exploration of the mysteries of life. Attempting to bring heavy concepts to your reality, it is the eye on the ground that sees and translates all intersecting issues as they merge, explode, dissolve, and implode. Street Rat is Gladys Harlow's way of comprehending, coping, feeling, taking action, disrupting the status quo, and rebuilding our path.

All Power To The People originated as a recorded performance intended to demystify sound by revealing the tools, wires, and movements used to create it. All Power To The People evolved into an installation conceived specifically for this exhibition. The installation includes a theremin and oscillator built by Gladys, a tarot deck they made by hand, and books from the artist's personal collection, amongst other elements. Gladys has created a structure of comfort and exploration. They welcome all visitors of divine knowing to play with the instrument, flip freely through the books, and pull a tarot card to take home.

Phoebe Hart is an experimental animator and filmmaker. A majority of her work is centered around mental illness and the line between dreams and reality. Merry Go Round is a sculptural zoetrope that changes in shape and color as it spins. Its form is inspired by nature and its color by the circus. The video’s sound was produced by Hayden Waggener. It consists of reverbing chimes which are in rhythm with the stop animation’s movement; both oscillate seamlessly between serene and anxious states.

“I often don't plan the sculptures or objects I am fabricating, there is a vague image in my mind, and my hands take care of the rest. I find that sometimes overthinking is what can get me and other artists stuck. If I just abandon my judgments and ego, I can really let go and create work that feels like it came inherently from me.”

Powerviolets is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Violet Hetson who is currently based in New York. After experiencing several false starts while bouncing coast to coast, recording and performing with several lineups, Hetson has finally released her debut album. ~No Boys~ namesake is a sarcastic sign she hung on her suburban CT teenage bedroom door. Violet Hetson grew up primarily listening to punk and hardcore. She parses elements of these genres with influences from bands such as X and Suburban Lawns. ~No Boys~ takes a softer, melodic approach to Hetson's punk roots. Powerviolets' music is linear, unconventional, dark, and airy with a sense of humor.

Mary Hunt is a fiber artist specializing in chain stitch embroidery. This traditional form of embroidery uses vintage machinery and thick thread to create fibrous art and embellishments. They use an approach called "thread painting," which requires each stitch to be hand guided by the turn of a knob underneath the table while the speed of movement is controlled by a foot pedal. Chainstitch works can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 200 hours, encouraging a slow and thoughtful process. Mary uses a Cornely A machine, made in Paris more than 100 years ago.

“I think we are sent messages and guidance constantly. Our intuition is simply our ability to clear the path for those messages. The largest obstacles on my artistic path are usually self-imposed negative thoughts. I simply do things to take care of my spiritual well-being, first and foremost, and the rest follows. If I can trust the universe, trust the process, then I am much more likely to listen to the messages sent my way.”

Jes the Jem is a multi-media artist working with acrylic, watercolor, mold clay, and whatever else she can get her hands on. She uses vivid color to bring joy into the lives of those who view her art. Jes the Jem has experienced a great deal of pain in her life. Through that unique displeasure, she has been gifted a nuanced perspective. She aims to energize the present while paying homage to the past events that shape us. In her art, her life, and her interpersonal relationships, Jes the Jem appreciates the gift of all of life's experiences.

“The pursuit of happiness and understanding is instinct.”

Pamela Kivi pieces together visual scraps she has saved over the years, choosing to fuse them at whatever present moment she sees fit. Her work reflects on creative mania, fleeting emotions, and memories. Pamela's collages are a compilation of unexpected elements that include: old notebooks, cut-outs, text messages or Facebook message conversations, nostalgic cellphone photos, and visual materials she has chosen to hold onto. She prints out, cuts up, scans, edits, repeats. Pamela's artistic practice is deeply personal. It is a submittal to the process of dusting things off until a reflection can be seen, all enacted without an attachment to the end result.

“I rely on intuition and whatever state of mind I am in to whisk me away. In life, I often confuse intuition with anxiety- when it comes to creative work, I can decipher the two.”

Through sobriety, Kendall Kolenik's focus has shifted toward self-discovery and shedding old adaptive patterns, a process that led her to a passion for helping others heal themselves too. In autumn, she will begin her Masters in Social Work at Columbia University.

“I love how when I'm painting my self-doubt becomes so apparent. Painting shows me exactly where my doubt lies, which guides me towards overriding it. When I paint something and lean into doubt, I don't like what comes out. When I take note of the resistance and go with my gut more freely, I love it. This reminds me of my yoga practice. What you practice on the mat is a metaphor for how you show up in life. By breathing through the uncomfortable poses on the mat, you learn to breathe through challenging life moments.

I think we all grow up learning to numb and edit ourselves. We are taught not to trust our feelings; we are told to look outside ourselves for answers when we already have a perfectly good compass within. Painting is an archway back to that for me - rediscovering self-reliance and faith in my first instinct. When I'm creating these rainbow squares, sometimes I move so fast it's like something else is carrying me. I sort of leave myself and enter a trance. Like how you don't have to tell the heart to beat or the lungs to breathe - thinking goes away and I can get so close to my knowing that I become it. I love how art allows me to access my love for ambiguity, interpretation, and an interpretation that feels closer to Truth. I find no greater purpose than guiding people back to safety and reconnecting them with themselves. The most important thing to ever happen in my life was when I stopped trying to deny my reality - listening to your intuition can be like a freefall - no one but you can ever know or tell you - it is a deep trust without any outside proof.”

Lucille Loffredo is a music school dropout, Jewish trans lesbian, and veterinary assistant doing her best to make sure each day is better than the last. Lucille tries to find the music rather than make it. She lets it tell her what it wants to do and what it wants to be. The Wandering EP was in part written as a way to come out to herself. She asks all listeners to please be gentle.

“Change will come, and it will be good. You are who you think you are, no matter how far it seems.”

Whitney Lorenze generally works without reference, making thick, graphic pictures with precise forms conceived almost entirely from her imagination. Images like a slowly rolling car crackling out of a driveway, afternoon sun rays shining through a cloud of humidity, or headlights throwing a lined shadow across a black bedroom inspire her.

“As it concerns my own practice and the creation of artworks generally, I would define intuition as the ability to succumb to some primal creative impulse. Of course, this implies also the ability to resist the temptations of producing a calculated or contrived output.”

Ellie Mesa began teaching herself to paint at the age of 15, exploring landscapes and portraiture. Her work has evolved into a style of painting influenced by surrealism where teddy bears will morph into demons and vice versa. Her work speaks to cuteness, the grotesque, and mystical beings. The painting "Kali" is an homage to the Hindu goddess of creation, destruction, life and death. This was Ellie's first painting after becoming sober and is an expression of the aforementioned forces in her own life. Through meditations on Kali, Elli has been able to find beauty in the cycle of love and loss.

“To me, intuition means doing the thing that feels right whether or not it's what you want it to be. When I'm painting or making a sculpture, I give myself the freedom to follow what feels right, even if that means starting over or changing it completely. I allow the piece to present itself to me instead of forcing something that doesn't want to be.”

Mari Ogihara is a sculptor exploring duality, resilience, beauty, and serenity as experienced through the female gaze. Her work is informed by the duality of womanhood and the contradictions of femininity. In particular, the multitude of roles we inhabit as friend, lover, sister, and mother and their complex associations to the feminine perspective.

“Intuition is an innate, immediate reaction to an experience. While making art, I try to balance intuition, logic, and craftsmanship.”

All Of Me Is War by Ames Valaitis addresses the subconscious rifts society initiates between women, estranging them from each other and themselves.

“It is an unspoken, quick, and quiet battle within me as the feeling of intuition purely, and when I am making a drawing. I am immediately drawn to poses and subject matter that reflect the emotion inside myself, whether it is loud or under the surface. If a line or figure doesn't move me, after working on it for a few minutes, I get rid of it. If something looks right to me immediately, I keep it; nurture it. I try to let go of my vision, let my instinct take hold. I mirror this in my life as I get older, choosing who and what to put my energy into. The feeling is rarely wrong; I'd say we all know inherently when it is time to continue or tap out.”

Chardel Williams is a self-taught artist currently living in Bridgeport. Her biggest inspiration is her birthplace of Jamaica. Chardel views painting as a method for blocking out chaos. Her attraction to the medium springs from its coalescence of freedom, meditative qualities, and the connection it engenders. rears.

“Intuition for me is going where my art flows. I implement it in my practice by simply creating space and time to listen. There are times when what I'm painting is done in everyone else's eyes, but I just keep picking at it. Sometimes I would stop painting a piece and go months without touching it. Then, out of nowhere, be obsessed with finishing. I used to get frustrated with that process, but now I go with it. I stopped calling it a block and just flow with it. I listen because my work talks.”

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shemakesmusic-uk · 4 years

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After releasing her film Black Is King as a Disney+ exclusive a few weeks ago, Beyoncé has shared the visual 'Brown Skin Girl' on YouTube. Featuring SAINt JHN, WizKid, and daughter Blue Ivy, the clip features appearances by former bandmate Kelly Rowland, Noami Campell, Lupita Nyong’o, and more. The video coincided with a special message the star shared with Good Morning America. "It was so important to me in 'Brown Skin Girl' that we represented all different shades of brown," Beyoncé said of the video, crediting director Jenn Nkiru with the concept. "It was important that we are all in this together and we're all celebrating each other." [via The FADER]

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Eivør releases a new single and video, ‘Let It Come’, the latest lifted from her forthcoming album Segl. The transportive new clip - filmed in Iceland - is a prequel to the video for previous single release ‘Sleep On It’, which Eivør released last month. Both videos are directed by Einar Egils and feature actor Tómas Lemarquis (Blade Runner 2049, X-Men: Apocalypse). Speaking about ‘Let It Come’, Eivør says; "It’s one of those songs that took many shapes before it reached its final destination and I guess the opening line pretty much explains it all: “Sometimes I overthink the most simple things”. This song is a follow up to my previous single 'Sleep On It' - whilst that was about insomnia and making difficult choices, 'Let It Come' is about coming out at the other end of this struggle, embracing the uncertainties you might find yourself in and finding the courage to believe that something good will come your way." Of the interplay between the two music videos he has created for Eivør, director Einar Eglis adds; "'Let It Come' is a prequel to the end of the world that was portrayed in the ‘Sleep On It’ video. Eivør has been stuck in a loop of uncertainty for years, until she sees a vision that will end everything as we know it, and she is the key towards redemption. She must face these facts and embrace the golden idol she is to become."

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The gentle, hypnotic sway of 'god's chariots' is central to MaryLou Mayniel's first full-length project Galore. Her catalogue of experimental electronica is impressive whichever way you look at it. Creating everything from video game soundtracks to an EP sampling the likes of Miley Cyrus and Carly Rae Jepsen to vast instrumental odysseys and empowering pop anthems, Mayniel can turn her hand to almost anything. 'god's chariots' is at the helm of the singer-songwriter's latest drop of new music. “It’s a fantasy, a place you’re in to escape reality, but it’s also about being so lonely that you kind of lose your mind,” explains Manyiel. A fragment of her forthcoming debut full-length project 'god's chariots' is just one piece of the ever-expanding story which Oklou shares on Galore. With additional tracks 'nightmare' and 'rosebud', also out n ow, we get to piece more of Galore's narrative of emotional rebirth together. Already an illuminating experience with its first six songs out in the world, soon you'll be able to witness Manyiel's first masterpiece in all its glory when the rest of the project is released next month. [via Line Of Best Fit]

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Madeline Kenney has shared the visual for her Sucker's Lunch album track 'Cut the Real'. 'Cut the Real' is one of the most lyrically confrontational tracks on Kenney's new album Sucker's Lunch. Kenney has unveiled the accompanying self-directed visual filmed in Oakland that sees her dressed in a Rococo style suit and makeup, giving a heartfelt performance of the song's fierce lyrics. Madeline Kenney: "I wrote 'Cut the Real' when I was feeling particularly insane / depressed /"out of my mind" as I was starting a new relationship. I really struggle with self confidence and found myself spiraling out into deep holes of self-loathing -- even though I knew what was going on I couldn't stop that cycle. The concept was inspired by the aesthetic choices in recent Aldous Harding videos as well as old Annie Lennox videos. I wanted to put on a gender-neutral Rococo outfit and just really allow myself to ham it up, and occupy that same spinning-out headspace as I was in while writing the song." [via Line Of Best Fit]

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Four years after she released her solo debut Slugger, Speedy Ortiz leader Sadie Dupuis is getting ready to release Haunted Painting, the second album released under her Sad13 alias. The album comes out next month, and now we get another new song, and it’s got a pretty great music video attached. The new Sad13 track is called 'Hysterical,' and it’s a zippy synthpop track with layered lyrics: “I wanna see you disappear and laugh like I don’t need permission.” In a press release, Dupuis says that the song is about “unfunny comedians [who] love to argue that ‘PC culture’ destroys comedy.” Dupuis plays almost all the instruments herself. The video, directed by Kate Banford and Jamie Loftus, features Dupuis alongside comedy-world mainstays like Loftus, Mitra Jouhari, and Demi Adejuyigbe. Like the new horror movie Host, the whole thing takes place on a computer screen, and it’s all about what happens when a ghost shows up in a Zoom party and kills everyone. [via Stereogum]

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When Cross Record’s Emily Cross and Dan Duszynski teamed up with Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg to form Loma, it seemed like it might be one-off endeavor. But then last month we got news that they’d be following their 2017 debut with a new album, Don’t Shy Away. Along with the announcement, they shared a stunning new track called 'Ocotillo'. Today, they’re back with another one. The latest preview of Don’t Shy Away arrives in the form of 'Half Silences,' which the band shared an earlier iteration of last year. 'Half Silences' was the first song we recorded for Don’t Shy Away, and we kept tinkering with it after we soft-released an early version last year,” Meiburg explained in a statement. “When you start making a record, you don’t know which songs will make the cut — but this one always seemed to belong, and we wanted to give the final mix (and its DIY video) a proper debut. People have asked if the fireworks are CGI. They aren’t.” 'Ocotillo' was an almost foreboding song, cresting into horn arrangements that teetered on the brink of chaos. In comparison, 'Half Silences' is a dreamier and hazier composition. But in either form, Loma are making some gorgeous, otherworldly music. [via Stereogum]

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Back in June, the Bristol songwriter Fenne Lily announced her sophomore album, BREACH. So far we’ve heard advance singles 'Alapathy' and 'Berlin,' and today she’s back with another one. Lily’s latest is called 'Solipsism.' Here’s what she had to say about it: "A lot of situations make me uncomfortable — some parties, most dates, every time I’m stoned in the supermarket. 'Solipsism' is a song about being comfortable with being uncomfortable and the freedom that comes with that. If you feel weird for long enough it becomes normal, and feeling anything is better than feeling nothing. I wanted this video to be a reflection of the scary thought that I’ll have to live with myself forever. It’s surreal to realize you’ll never live apart from someone you sometimes hate. Dad, if you’re reading this you killed it as shopper number 2." The song comes with a video directed by Tom Clover with the non-profit Film Co. “I asked Fenne what products she wanted to be and then worked backwards from there with the illustrators,” Clover explained. “Most of the references came from Asian Supermarket packaging — they are way more interesting. The most important thing was making sure that it reflected upon Fenne’s personality — there’s a bunch of details you might miss on the first watch!” [via Stereogum]

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About two weeks ago Oceanator shared 'Heartbeat,' the third and final single from their upcoming full length debut, Things I Never Said and now it has a video. The highly anticipated album via Plastic Miracles captures Elise Okusami’s songwriting at it’s best, a strong effort that sits between pop, rock, fuzzy punk, and alternative radio gold. The video, directed by David Combs and Ben Epstein, is every bit as delightful as the song itself, opening with the same magnetic energy as we find Okusami seemingly lost and looking for companionship. She finds it eventually in the form of herself, quite literally, as she joins herself at a bus stop, and then again in a field, with ten of more copies, al rocking out, all enjoying each other’s company. There’s a brilliant barbershop quartet moment, cool animation, and enough smiles to keep you going throughout your day. Speaking about the song, Okusami shared: “This song is loosely about having a crush, and both the grounding feeling and the anxiety that feeling brings. We recorded it all together like a live performance, and then I went back and added the lead guitars and the vocals. Guitar and vocals by me, bass Eva Lawitts (they), drums Aaron Silberstein (he)." [via Post Trash]

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Ontario-based project Falcon Jane – the moniker for primary songwriter of the group, Sara May – have released their soaring new single, ‘The Other Moon’ via Pittsburgh-based label, Darling Recordings – you can watch the new video that comes co-directed by May and Dominique van Olm above. ‘The Other Moon’, which is lifted from a larger body of material set to come from Sara May further down the line, finds the artist exploring deeply sentimental and personal themes, from death to memory, and the miscommunication that can take place between generations. May has a penchant for unpacking these emotions in succinct and comprehensible forms, making something so personal and idiosyncratic to her feel so familiar to the rest of us. Much of May’s forthcoming work found its source of inspiration in early 2019 when her songwriting synched up with a string of deaths that occurred in her immediate family; ‘The Other Moon’ pays a touching testament to her Nonna with May lacing the track’s stark honesty with swooning guitar and her enchanting vocal palette, a sound that co-director, van Olm visualized as May’s DIY journey through space. Speaking about the new track, May says: “‘The Other Moon’ is a letter and tribute to my late Nonna whose death inspired me to start recording this album. Despite being from two completely different generations, and speaking two different languages, my Nonna and I had a very special connection. We understood each other and cared about each other, even if we couldn’t find the words to express it. My Nonna would always cheekily joke about her own death, and through her broken English, she claimed that when she died she’d be going to “The Other Moon”. This song is not a story about a happy-go-lucky relationship between grandmother and granddaughter,” May continues. “It accurately depicts the contrasting dynamic of a very loving friendship mixed with a lifelong trauma-ridden miscommunication. The big hole in my heart, the black cloud over our love. This song feels like the message I always wanted to send to her; pushing through the darkness to find the deep love we shared and continue to share now.”

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Baby Queen has released her third track 'Medicine' with a fab new video. The follow-up to ‘Buzzkill', it arrives ahead of her debut EP later this year. "It's about a tangle of mental health and navigating your way through this world,” Bella says of the song, “whilst being so unhappy and equally disillusioned with the cyber landscape that we are forced to live inside, and the different ways people might numb themselves, or try to find a place where they can exist in amongst all of this fucking chaos." [via Dork]

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Oklahoma-born, LA-based electro-pop songstress Mothica has released her debut album Blue Hour, accompanied by the official music video for her single 'VICES.' The album was written over the course of a few months, starting with one of the worst moments of Mothica’s life: a psych ward stay for self-harm and ends with a song about never wanting to feel the “crash” of drugs ever again. “Following that incident, I sought therapy and wrote lyrics detailing my journey into sobriety. I am now 13 months sober at the time of writing this, and have never been in a better place emotionally.” With her new album Blue Hour, she chronicles her deep struggle with addiction + mental health and the process of getting sober. “Someone told me that every artist has their ‘getting sober album’ eventually,” she explains. “I find it ironic that my debut album is my ‘getting sober’ album, because I think that’s indicative of how quickly I was forced to grow up."

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FKA twigs has always made incredible music videos, and 'sad day' ranks right up there with her best. For this clip, twigs worked with the director Hiro Murai, one of the best music-video directors to emerge in the last decade. Murai has mostly moved on from music videos in recent years. Instead, he’s directed episodes of Atlanta and Barry, two of the best shows on TV, as well as Donald Glover’s Amazon short film Guava Island and the forthcoming apocalyptic miniseries Station Eleven. The 'sad day' video is Murai’s first clip since he made the instantly iconic 'This Is America' with Donald Glover in 2018. I don’t want to give away much of the 'sad day' video, which starts out in a dingy takeout spot and transforms into a surreal dream-logic head trip. But you should know that twigs only made this video after spending three years studying martial arts at the Shaolin Wushu Center, and you can tell. A dancer named Teake, who twigs discovered via social media, co-stars. [via Stereogum]

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The latest of Silly Boy Blue's ongoing build is 'Hi, It's Me Again,' a song she describes as the "too long text I didn't want to send at 3 AM to my ex." Like the rumination behind a loaded, emotional message to a former lover, she adds that it took months to assemble the words in her head but only one night to write out the lyrics. "I needed to write a song about this, because it's a very special place between the hate and the void during a breakup." With an almost lullaby melody, the spacey tune slowly builds into the ultimate warning: "You'll be the one I always haunt," Silly Boy Blue sings, her voice beautifully layered and atmospheric. All her thoughts throughout the song are interlaced with the relatable, somewhat insecure backpedal, "I'm sorry," capturing the headspace "just before resilience," as she describes. It's "when you start to understand the breakup, but you still have so many questions popping in your head." In the 'Hi, It's Me Again' video, Silly Boy Blue says she "needed to show the different parts" of her identity. "Some of them are masculine, some of them are feminine, some of them seem confident, some seem shy, some seem to suffocate, some stand proudly." Much like the nuanced feelings during a breakup, she expresses without binaries — and especially through fashion, as she opens the clip in only an oversized men's button-down. Scenes in the new visual roll by like memories or fleeting emotions, ranging from subdued drama to full on meltdowns. At one point, she's shown with a plastic bag pulled over her head to capture the most extreme feelings of dread, juxtaposed against a more innocent shot of Silly Boy Blue in all white with two lone tear drops fixated on her cheek. The artist also loaded in "important" references to her favorite movies, from the Titanic's necklace to The Rocky Horror Picture Show's big mouth. [via PAPER]

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Dream Nails have released a video for their new single, 'This Is The Summer'. It's a song from their new Tarek Musa of Spring King-produced, self-titled record out now via Alcopop!. “[It's] a song about how our climate is breaking down irreversibly,” says singer Janey Starling. “Colonial capitalism, waged by UK governments and corporations for centuries, has ravaged our earth. “We need to be urgently fighting for migrant rights so the UK welcomes climate refugees displaced by countries hit by extreme weather. We must demand transparency from oil companies who relentlessly put profit before people, even as the world burns." Guitarist Anya Pearson adds: “We wrote ‘This Is The Summer’ in the heatwave of 2018, recorded it in another heatwave in 2019 and now we are releasing it in yet another heatwave! Our video for the track shows how the current pandemic, white supremacy and climate change are not separate issues but interlinked. The song is about the brazen complacency of getting drunk and catching a tan in the park while the world burns.” [via Dork]

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BBC Sound Of 2020 winner Celeste has shared her new single 'Little Runaway'. Out now, the single is about a crisis of faith, and features a towering vocal from the London artist. A song about succumbing to the depths before emerging renewed, 'Little Runaway' began as a jazz sample, before taking on a life of its own. Celeste says... “‘Little Runaway’ is a song about losing your faith, even if just momentarily, and seeking answers from spirits and ghosts as nothing seems to make sense on this planet. My favourite line in the song is ‘good news I could use some’ – I believe everyone has a guardian angel, a protector, and this is me talking to mine.” “The verses actually started as this saxophone sample we were playing around with and eventually it transformed into the melody. I always play the sax back in my head even though it’s not in the song.” 'Little Runaway' features an innovative music video, steered by Celeste’s frequent collaborator Sophie Jones. [via Clash]

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Anna Sofia released a brand new music video for her song 'Don’t Play Pretend'. 'Don’t Play Pretend' is from her latest EP Broken Perfection. Over a million streams into her career, Anna Sofia sings this song about her own life. She might not be perfect. She might make mistakes. All that said, at least she doesn’t pretend to be something she’s not. Sofia said she doesn’t have a message. “It’s just real life,” she said. “One day, I hope to fill stadiums all over the world. I want to have fans everywhere and have some way of helping them or guiding them through my music. My confidence comes from being myself and connecting with people.” [via The 360 Mag]

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Last year, the K-pop group BLACKPINK made big moves in America with their Kill This Love EP, becoming the highest-charting women-led Korean act on both the Billboard 200 and the Hot 100 (with its title track). They also played Coachella. Earlier this year, they had a guest feature on Lady Gaga’s Chromatica with ‘Sour Candy,’ a single that matched their previous chart record at #33. They’re releasing a new album in a couple months, which was led off by ‘How You Like That’ in June. Now, they’re putting out another song from it, a collaboration with Selena Gomez called ‘Ice Cream.’ The food angle of the track is appropriate for Gomez, who has most recently been in the headlines for her new HBO Max cooking show. [via Stereogum]

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Tel-Aviv based artist Noga Erez shares the next in a series of game-changing singles leading into her mysterious second album (details yet to be announced). 'You So Done' and its striking accompanying video are out now via City Slang. Following the sparkling sass of 'VIEWS' and the irresistibly upbeat lockdown anthem 'NO news on TV', Noga Erez and her collaborative partner Ori Rousso's latest offering 'You So Done' has been highly anticipated online since appearing on NBC's Good Girls earlier this year. It sees Erez shift from outward looking political themes to personal soul-searching, opening up for a stirring track about rejection, toxic and emotionally violent relationships, and ones own inner violence. Along with the track she has shared a moving statement, saying: "At some point, exactly one year ago, I started flashing back to one of the darkest times in my life. I was young, incredibly confused and lonely... There was a moment during this period where I was actually so weak, insecure and in need of love that I was not able to step out of what I know now to be an emotionally abusive relationship." She concludes: "It really, truly means the world to me to give this song to you. I hope this story can help some of you to realise that you are not alone. And I really do hope to make it clear that even the darkest places are not impossible to free yourself from. They are eventually an opportunity to learn, grow and to become a stronger person." Erez has created a reputation for the captivating videos that accompany her songs, and this latest video sees her step it up a level yet again. Her third collaboration with Tel Aviv-based director Indy Hait sees Erez as a puppet in a dystopian future, being violently flung to-and-fro by an unknown captor. "The video for 'You So Done' was a big risk taker for me" she comments. "Usually, I have an idea or I work with a director on an idea together. Since this was my third video with Indy Hait, I decided to let him do his thing. He offered up an idea that included a robot and I immediately hated it. I was just not able to imagine how it wouldn't come off as a science fiction video and felt it wasn't my style. But after talking and tearing the idea apart, I realised that this is a truly meaningful character. The robot in this video is actually not the violent character. Its job was to portray the act of violence through transferring the moves from an unseen character and helping them come alive visually. The video uses muscle memory as the 'engine' to that violent dance act, and muscle memory is something that fascinates me. Eventually this video is far from being science fiction, it is my most personal video to date."

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disappearingground · 5 years

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Jenny Lewis is following the magic

The Line of Best Fit March 20, 2019

Major life upheavals led to Jenny Lewis’ first solo album in five years but Josh Slater-Williams finds her embracing the stranger things the universe throws at her

Words by Josh Slater-Williams

“People always want to know what, why, how, when. I don't know. Which? Who? Whom! Whomst!”

Jenny Lewis has told me she doesn’t have a problem talking about new record, On the Line but there’s a certain reticence to divulging much about intent or any unifying connection between the thumping, lush ballads she’s assembled. It sounds like even she won’t know what the songs are about for a while.

“I don't even really consciously write songs,” Lewis says of whether the meaning of her music is clear by the time it’s recorded and released into the world. “I believe in the magic in a way, so I'm not sure how they begin. I'm not even sure how I finish them, but I tend to understand them years later. I don't understand this new album yet because I haven't toured it. Of course, you have an intuitive sense, but I can't really tell you exactly what it's about.”

Under the Blacklight - the final record she made as part of Rilo Kiley - is perhaps the one case of knowing what an album was about before taking it on tour. “Under the Blacklight is a concept album in a lot of ways,” she says. “That was really the first time that I wrote from a character perspective or I leaned on that a little bit. But again, I'm not sure where this stuff's coming from.”

Lewis’ relationship to her former band’s music has changed over the years, from ignoring it almost entirely at shows - bar maybe one song in an encore - to seemingly embracing it with gusto. I’ve seen her in concert on three occasions since Rilo Kiley toured for the last time in 2008, and the last of those shows, at The Art School in Glasgow in 2014 in support of The Voyager, saw Rilo Kiley tracks comprise roughly a quarter of the setlist.

“For years, I didn't really dig into the back catalogue,” Lewis says. “The first time I played a Rilo Kiley song without Rilo Kiley was when I was sitting in with Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band and he asked if I would play ‘Portions for Foxes’; Conor's always this incredible guide in a way. I hadn't really gone there before, but once I opened that door, it just opened the floodgates to the past. So now, I can go back and choose songs and some of them feel good. Some of them feel inappropriate. Or not inappropriate, more just really youthful in a way that doesn't suit me now. But it's surprising, which songs feel relevant. We’ve been doing a version of “Portions for Foxes”, a slowed down version that I've renamed “Bad News”. And that's been feeling really good.”

In a 2016 interview Lewis discussed her tendency to compartmentalise eras of her career describing herself as “not really one for nostalgia”; something of an ironic statement in light of the fact she was speaking in support of a tenth anniversary tour of solo debut Rabbit Fur Coat. A few years prior, she also participated in an anniversary tour for The Postal Service’s Give Up, having provided backup vocals for that platinum-selling collaboration between Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello that was a poster child for early aughts American indie music. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the first Rilo Kiley EP, an initially self-titled release later re-pressed as The Initial Friend EP.

I wonder if this inspires any particularly strong feelings for her? Apparently not. “It’s interesting to acknowledge the past,” she says. “And all the songs fit into the puzzle,” that puzzle presumably being the overarching story of Jenny Lewis. “But that was then, this is now. Can’t go back.”

When Lewis does acknowledge her past work in her music or the surrounding visual material, it tends to be focused on her acting career - which lasted from her early childhood to roughly around when Rilo Kiley started recording. Bar the odd cameo – including a spot in Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray’s Netflix special, A Very Murray Christmas – Lewis’ acting credits are mostly relegated to the ‘80s and ‘90s. She paid homage to some of her more recognisable family film credits and TV guest spots in a self-directed video for The Voyager’s “She Not Me”, wherein various celebrity pals were brought on board to re-enact moments from much-loved US sitcom The Golden Girls and cult comedy Troop Beverly Hills.

Saturday Night Live-alum Vanessa Bayer was one of those celeb friends, and reappeared for a livestream listening party of On The Line that also featured the likes of St. Vincent, Jeff Goldblum, Jason Schwartzman, Beck, Danielle Haim and comedian Tim Heidecker. The three-hour “telethon” of music, comedy and interviews raised funds for the LA Downtown Women’s Center and Lewis describes the event as “kind of a disaster in the best way.” It opened with a rendition of “The Frug” from the first Rilo Kiley EP, somewhat contradicting her reticence to return to the earliest Rilo Kiley material - although the song was admittedly performed by a barbershop quartet rather than by Lewis herself. “That was the director's idea,” she clarifies, “because that song is nowhere… it's just not in my consciousness right now. But it was really fun to open the show with that. Even though the refrain is, ‘I cannot fall in love / I cannot fall in love / I cannot fall in love’, which is a weird way to start off a live stream.”

"Sharing about addiction and mental health can hopefully provide a little insight or comfort for others going through it. And it's not taboo. It's okay to talk about it and it's not the whole story. It's part of the story."

“But I can fall in love,” she assures me with timid delivery, but a wry smile. “I hadn’t then [at the time of the EP], but it’s happened since, if anyone’s wondering.” I tell her I’ve gathered the likelihood of that from the multitude of songs since that have suggested as much. I would also assume her 12-year relationship with fellow singer/songwriter Johnathan Rice may have involved some degree of love; the two reportedly mutually parted ways after the release of The Voyager.

“I’m not in love currently, but I have been in love. Once… twice. Maybe twice.”

Lewis breaks into laughter here, which happens quite a few times in a conversation that proves surprisingly prone to detours into bizarre comedy tangents. Perhaps it’s a welcome change from some of the other interviews she’s already done as part of this album’s promotion cycle. A few days before we speak, Rolling Stone publish an interview where Lewis talks openly about her troubled childhood and late mother’s history of addiction that she’s never really spoken of in public before, and a recent Mojo interview is also candid in this area too. There have been many lyrical allusions in the past, but these interviews certainly clarify the distinction between memoir and fiction in some of her songs.

Her mother’s passing in 2017 played a big part in Lewis feeling open to speak about that backstory definitively. “I now have mixed feelings about sharing that honestly,” she tells me, “even though I've spilled the beans, you can't put the worms back in the can. I guess I waited to exploit her from beyond the grave, so I would imagine someone will do the same to me.”

“I'm understanding why I feel compelled to share that,” she says. “And I think that it's part of the healing process. Not that it's anyone's business but my own and my family's business. But for me, sharing about addiction and mental health can hopefully provide a little insight or comfort for others going through it. And it's not taboo. It's okay to talk about it and it's not the whole story. It's part of the story.”

The world won’t know the full story and we don’t have the right to it, I say. “But you have a right to whatever I share,” she points out. “And then it's part of the consciousness. I guess I don't want to hurt people even if they're gone. But it is my story and it is a big part of why I’m a writer.”

If Lewis herself won’t necessarily know what the new album is ‘about’ for some time, insobriety, addiction and self-medication stick out as recurring topics throughout her lyrics for On the Line. Various combinations of drink and drugs are called out by name, not least on “Red Bull & Hennessy”, while the refrain of “Little White Dove” plays with the homophone of ‘heroine’ and ‘heroin’.

Topics of sexuality have always been a thread through Lewis’ music, even dating back to the earliest days of Rilo Kiley, but with On the Line they seem particularly pronounced; often intertwining with nods to addiction and self-medication. Album opener “Heads Gonna Roll” starts with wondering “Why you stopped getting high” and closes with the suggestion that “A little bit of hooking up is good for the soul.”

“I guess it's all the same thing if you're using it in that way,” Lewis says when I ask if sex falls under the banner of self-medication in the lyrics. “But I don't necessarily think it's an unhealthy relationship with sex that I'm talking about on this album. I think it’s just an ability to articulate and use it to punctuate a moment. Like at the end of the song “Dogwood”, I didn't know what the lyric was going to be. And I was in the studio, just trying out a couple of options and then I landed on, “There's nothing we can do but screw.” That seems like a good way to end a song.”

“No subject is off limits,” Lewis continues. “Sex has always been a theme in my music.” She pauses. “And let’s hope it will always be a theme in my music! Fingers crossed.”

“Dogwood” is her favourite song on the album by a landslide: “That’s my most proud vocal performance,” she tells me. I’m personally drawn to “Taffy”, a ballad with a noticeably different rhythm to the rest of On the Line. It also happens to feature one of the album’s more attention-raising lyrics: “Nudie pics / I do not regret it / I knew that you were gone / I did so freely / I wanted you to see me off that throne you put me on.”

“Taffy was a poem that I wrote on the back of a barf bag on an airplane,” Lewis tells me, then reassuring me that the bag was unused, fresh and clean. “That was words first and then I sat down at the piano and figured out how to fit them into the puzzle. You can tell it’s a poem. That one almost didn't end up on the record. I sent it to a friend of mine who I consult with every time I make a record, as far as order goes, and there was some discussion of cutting one of the ballads. But then I thought, well, this is a record of mostly ballads. Why cut one now, we've already gone down that path. Again, you can't put the worms back in the can.”

“Beck is such a meticulous listener and producer. There's no stone left unturned...down to the last step in mastering. I'm not alone and he's thought of everything.”

Another major consultant for On the Line was Beck, who previously collaborated with Lewis on The Voyager highlight “Just One of the Guys”. He produced and played on multiple tracks on the new album. Lewis tells me she feels an affinity with him as someone who also plays with genre and personas between records. “We both grew up in Los Angeles and we remember a different kind of LA and share a lot of the same tastes in music. And I have just been a fan of his for so long; aesthetically, especially. I made demos on my GarageBand on my phone and sent them to him and he was immediately like, okay, we can do this. I am so happy with the way “Just One of the Guys” turned out and when I play it live, his arrangement really holds up. It's so thoughtful.

“He's such a meticulous listener and producer. There's no stone left unturned. I don't have to worry. Whereas with some of my other collaborators, I have to finish the heavy lifting. Or where I question: 'Is this finished?' No, it's not finished yet. I have to get it done on my own. But with Beck, down to the last step in mastering. I'm not alone and he's thought of everything.”

We don’t mention him by name but the “heavy lifting” undoubtably alludes to Ryan Adams, who reportedly left before finishing his production work on both The Voyager and On the Line. Following the recent allegations of sexual misconduct against Adams, Lewis tweeted a statement of support for the accusers.

A collaborator Lewis is happy to discuss is Ringo Starr, who plays drums on “Heads Gonna Roll” and “Red Bull & Hennessy”. The Beatles are mentioned in a lyric on album closer “Rabbit Hole”, though Lewis tells me there’s another nod to the band on the track “Party Clown”: “I was a beetle floating in a bottle of red.” Lewis says, “And in my mind, after that, I say to myself, I was Ringo.”

How exactly does one get a former Beatle to play on their record? Lewis still isn’t sure. “Again, magic. May I redirect you to the magic of life and when things are truly serendipitous. It felt like a glitch in the simulation when we were in a room with Ringo. How did I end up here? I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but it happened. Why? Why? It’s crazy. I've met some cool musicians over the years, but that was tippity top.”

If there’s a major running theme to my conversation with Lewis, it’s this idea of happy chances surrounding On the Line, from the collaborators and recording to, as I’ll later find out, the look of the album and, as she’ll later find out, a surprise connection in the promotion of it. Considering a lot of the record’s material appears rooted in her breakup and mother’s passing, that maybe wasn’t applicable to the initial inception of the lyrics. But the strange fortuity even extended to her LA home almost becoming a set for a major movie production while the album was being made.

“There was a knock at my door one day about a year ago,” Lewis tells me, “and it was the location scout for Quentin Tarantino, just randomly on my street. And, he was like, “Hey, do you mind if we come in and take pictures for Quentin? We’re looking for a location for the [Charles] Manson movie.””

Tarantino’s 1969-set Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, starring Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Al Pacino and the late Luke Perry, is due for release this summer. “I was like, “Come right in, photograph my house!” It didn't work out, which is probably for the better because to have a murder scene in your bedroom is probably not a good idea, but that would have been the coolest thing that ever happened. I'm such a deep movie nerd.”

Being an LA native, I wonder if Lewis still gets starstruck at all at this point in her life. “Not by musicians,” she says. “I think if I were to meet Bob Dylan, that would probably be the exception. But maybe not, I don't know. I feel very comfortable among our people. I met Bill Clinton once and I wasn't nervous at all, and I asked, “Is it okay if I take a picture of you?” Because he's a musician.”

As someone 14 years her junior (Lewis is 43), I tell her my only reference for Bill Clinton being a musician is a moment of him playing a saxophone in the opening credits of the ‘90s Warner Bros. cartoon series Animaniacs. “The best show,” she says. “Did you see Daffy Duck on my live special?” Lewis being signed to Warner Bros Records is presumably how someone in a Daffy Duck costume was among the guests in her telethon. “Daffy was such a dick. They’re rebranding Daffy for the millennials, where Daffy’s vaping. And they were trying to pitch me on a sort of a co-branding opportunity for myself and Daffy. He's gonna come out on tour with me, Bez-style. Daffy’s my Bez.”

Remembering that a sequel to the Looney Tunes movie Space Jam has reportedly been greenlit, I express horror that an onscreen vaping Daffy could soon be a real possibility. “Wow,” she says, “Space Jam. What a movie.” This would rank rather high on a list of quotes I wouldn’t have expected to get from this interview.

We spend a minute or so wondering who else among the Looney Tunes would probably vape. “Is Taz too fast to vape? Maybe Porky Pig. No, no, not Porky Pig. He’s a little uptight, Porky Pig. Daffy’s cool because he doesn't know he's the way that he is. And he thinks he's like Bugs Bunny. He thinks he's Bugs. I think Bugs might vape. I could see Bugs vaping. I don't condone vaping, by the way. I don't think you should smoke anything that smells like cotton candy. I wouldn't vape if I were you. I feel like we don't know. We just don't know. There's a giant question mark on vaping, in general.” We conclude that Foghorn Leghorn would vape.

"I have the most incredible friends who are very patient and loving and are always there for a late-night Facetime session if I need them. When you're in a relationship, it's harder to maintain those friendships."

Be it with Daffy Duck or Beck, Ringo Starr, producer Shawn Everett and others, Lewis tells me a love of collaboration is one of the things she’s learned from making On the Line. “I just followed the songs and I pull from the people that I'm hanging around that inevitably become my collaborators because I can't not play music. I have a problem. If you come over to my house, it's just an immediate jam.”

That said, she doesn’t think she needs to rely on people. “I believe now that I can go anywhere with my songs and work with anyone and make something that makes me happy. I tend to get caught in the process of making a record where I want more from someone, or I want more of their time or more of their energy, and I feel like it's them and not me. But really, they're my songs and maybe it's less about who I choose to work with. It's easier to deflect, especially in the room with someone who's an artist in their own right. I can like feeling small and in the background when I'm creating in that way, as there's less pressure, but sometimes you’ve got to just step up and be yourself.”

“Autonomy, that’s been the key thing learned,” she continues. “I've connected with my female friends over the last couple of years and I've made a lot of new female friends, and that has really been one of the best things that's come out of being single in the world and autonomous. I have the most incredible friends who are very patient and loving and are always there for a late-night Facetime session if I need them. And there are three of us who live in Los Angeles, where we are just communicating constantly with each other. When you're in a relationship, it's harder to maintain those friendships.”

To quote one of Lewis’ own lyrics for Rilo Kiley’s “Breakin’ Up”, it feels good to be free.

One of Lewis’ longtime friends is photographer and director Autumn de Wilde, who shoots for all of her solo projects and also shot the material for Rilo Kiley’s Under the Blacklight back in 2007. “Once I finish the music, I send it to her and then we start brainstorming and we come up with a colour palette and a concept. We never really know until we know. Like how the songs find me, I think that visual component also finds me. We prepare to get there, but we never know what the actual cover is going to be.”

This time around, constructing the visual component involved a couple more instances of that serendipity we’ve already talked about. If you were to place the two covers of The Voyager and On the Line next to each other, you’d be forgiven for thinking the latter was an outtake from a shoot for the former. The outfit’s not the same, but the crop of Lewis’ upper frame, with her head missing, is almost identical. But, according to Lewis, this was another happy accident that revealed something about the new record, conceptually: “Autumn just did a quick Polaroid with that crop, testing the light, and it fell to the floor and I saw it and I knew that was the cover. At that point, I realised they're bookends, The Voyager and On the Line.”

The front cover of On the Line features Lewis in an outfit she describes as something that her mother would have worn in the late ‘70s in Las Vegas. For a deluxe edition of the vinyl version of the record, the cover unfolds to a poster-size image of Lewis in the full outfit, head and lower half intact from merging that original Polaroid crop with a full-length outtake. “That [deluxe] cover is a reference to an Isaac Hayes record, Black Moses,” she tells me. “And the outfit that I'm wearing on the back of the record, with me on a horse, is one of Isaac Hayes's stage costumes that my friend gave to me right before the photo shoot. Just randomly. And so, there's this deep Isaac Hayes connection that was unintentional. Again, why? I have no idea why.”

"Instagram has been really the first social media that I've engaged in personally...but I do feel like it's a very dangerous world to be in and the less I engage, the happier I am. It's really fucked up on there. It's bad."

There are many meanings behind the album’s title, she tells me: “I think it will be relevant for people to think about what it means to them. It's such a dumb thing to say ‘relevant.’ I don't know what's relevant to people, but we spend our lives communicating via text and it's really hard to detect tone. I mean there are so many meanings here, but really just waiting around for someone to change or come back and they're not going to do either.

“Taffy” features one of the most overt nods to our relationship with devices, with a snapshot of infidelity glimpsed through looking through someone else’s phone: “I wanted to please you / My dress was see-through / as I looked through your phone / I am such a coward / but how could you send her flowers?"

“Instagram has been really the first social media that I've engaged in personally,” she says. “I started it as an artistic outlet for weird, abstract short films during The Postal Service reunion tour. It really was a personal creative outlet that then became like a social network. And then of course, putting out albums, there's expectation to fold in a promotional aspect. So, I use it mostly for that, the creative thing being first, and then the promotional stuff. It’s hard to navigate without feeling super cheesy, especially when all your friends are looking at everything that you post. But I do feel like it's a very dangerous world to be in and the less I engage, the happier I am. It's really fucked up on there. It's bad.”

In light of the social media discussion, I can’t help but bring up an interaction of sorts that we had via Twitter once before. In the run-up to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in autumn 2015, having just learned of the name of Adam Driver’s antagonist character, I tweeted: ‘Is Jenny Lewis still the frontwoman of Kylo Ren?’

I didn’t tag in Lewis’ Twitter handle for this dumb joke, but a few hours later, I discovered she’d somehow seen it and retweeted it, and my notifications went wild, with fans and famous folk alike chiming in with reactions and replies.

“Oh, that was you?!” she asks without a second’s pause after I simply quote the tweet, before mentioning what happened around it. “I remember that because I've never seen Star Wars. And I thought, who is Kylo Ren?”

I tell her it was a funny experience to suddenly be getting notifications of likes, for either my tweet or the creative fan-art replies, from such accounts as Warner Bros. Records and actor Brie Larson.

“Daffy Duck is on your case now… vaping,” she says of the Warner appreciation. “But isn't it weird that we have that connection and I didn't know that was you until you told me, but I remember it distinctly?” To quote her own earlier musings: may I redirect you to the magic of life. |

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