Tell me a little more about how your Blue Note residency actually came about.
Well, I did a Tiny Desk a little over a year ago, and I remember as soon as we started rehearsing, my friend Aya, who was the harpist on the record, started playing “Raven.” I was listening to her solo at the top of Raven and I just locked in. I was like, “Oh, my God.” I had a visceral reaction to it. I have to say that when I’m writing songs, I do try to make them…not foolproof, I don’t know… flip-proof? I have to make up a term, but I want to make sure the song’s so good compositionally, that you could take it to any instrument and it will sound good. So that was one of the moments that made me feel really proud of the song. And I was like, “Oh, this can’t just be a Tiny Desk. We need to make this a moment!” And so I thought, how can we figure out a Blue Note moment for this? Because I’ve always had that in my head—at some point in my career, I have to do a Blue Note thing and maybe it needs to be recorded. So that was kind of how it came about. I always wanted it, and I just felt like this was the right moment, because I already knew what I’d be doing for the next record, and it felt like a good thing to happen in between, sonically.
I did feel that “flip-proof” quality when listening to the record—when I was listening to “All the Way Down,” in particular, I was struck by what a brilliant song it is, even outside of the production on the Hallucinogen EP. It feels like it could have been written in any era, in any genre, in any context. Was that versatility something you were always striving for in your songwriting?
I think so. One version of a song is only so diverse, is only so varied. It only has so many functions. And I think during the composition, the test of how strong it is, how rich it is, is like, “How many places can I take it?” The ultimate goal isn’t to arrive at a certain place. The ultimate goal is to just be like, “Wow.” It’s just the sense of wonder, I think, in a certain amount of familiarity—and then the context around the familiar thing, which is the voice, flipping completely, so that it’s like, I don’t know where I am. I remember Amel at the Blue Note doing Hole’s “Celebrity Skin,” and slowing it all the way down. It was just this jazzy bass moment. That left an indelible mark on my brain, because it was this experience where I was hearing the bass line, and I was like, “Wait, what is this song? What is this song?” She’s singing, “Don’t make me over…” and dragging it in this way that I was like, “Oh my God, I’m going to pull my hair out right now.” That is the excitement of live music for me: I know this, but I also don’t know this. Is she singing Hole? It took me and my friends out. It was so crazy. I think that’s always been so exhilarating for me—to experience music in a new way by finding the familiar thing and recontextualizing it completely. I’ve been addicted to that since I was really young, and it’s come out in so many different ways.
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