Q&A + Video Premiere: Paper Lady Embraces Fate With New Single, “Static”
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY SYDNEY TATE ☆
Photography Credit: Renee Newman
AN UNCOINCIDENTAL CONSEQUENCE OF VIRTUOSITY — Paper Lady’s upcoming full length studio album, Idle Fate, delivers fortune almost endlessly. It is music ascribed for those with heavy thoughts and any chance of running wild with them, delivered with a terrific glamour.
Their newest single, “Static,” provided something charmed while we wait. Check out the accompanying video filmed, edited, and directed by Melanie Drew Chambers, and read more to hear bout the band’s affliction for shades of purple, their choice cartoon characters, and respect for the world around us.
Photography Credit: Renee Newman
LUNA: Do you remember the first piece of art that you ever made?
ALLI: The first piece of art I remember was drawing a self-portrait in kindergarten or something where I drew myself really tall and big.
ROWAN: Art projects with my mom, but I feel like a specific one I remember was when I was four. We were in art class, and I was really obsessed with Pokemon cards and I wanted all the EX cards. I made a bunch of fake Pokemon cards with construction paper that I cut up and was drawing on them and trying to tell my friends that they were real ones.
ALEX: The most concrete one I can remember is starting piano lessons at six, so I would say piano at six years old.
ALLI: When I was in preschool, I started a band with my two lady friends, and we called ourselves the Candy Hearts.
LUNA: That’s genius.
ALLI: It was a girl power band.
LUNA: What is everyone's relationship to nature?
ROWAN: I really love nature. It makes me feel happy to be in. I used to go camping with my uncle who passed away. We'd always go camping or hiking or skiing whenever I saw him, so it really makes me feel at home, and makes me feel close to him.
ALLI: I consider myself an agnostic person, and when I’m in nature, specifically being alone in nature, whether it be in the woods or near the ocean, that’s when I can feel that there's something else, or something big. That's when I feel the most connected to something spiritual, when I'm in nature. When I'm writing lyrics or poetry, it feels easiest to explain emotion through things that I see in nature, I think because of that connection.
ALEX: Hiking in nature is very healing towards the brain, when you’re hiking with people or by yourself, there's always moments where you're silent and so many thoughts are going through your brain. It feels like a good “clean house” activity, and it helps with mental health a lot. Breathing fresh air…it feels right. It feels correct.
ALLI: There’s the Japanese idea of forest baths, where you don’t read anything or do anything other than be present around trees, and I like that. It's considered a form of cleansing or something. I identify with that.
ROWAN: I can't be in nature too long because I miss the micro plastics.
ALEX: And the electronics.
LUNA: I would like you all to agree on three colors that best represent Idle Fate.
ALLI: A very pale, pinkish purple, or a deep indigo color maybe. Or the green that leaves turn when it’s been winter for a long time, like the first Spring leaf.
ROWAN: I feel like Indigo and pale purple are so close together-
ALLI: It's different.
ROWAN: I would say lavender, black, and white, even though they're not colors, and I know that they're shades.
ALEX: Obviously the number one color is a shade of purple.
ALLI: Maybe those three then, with black and white.
LUNA: Do we prefer hardcover or paperback books?
ALLI & ROWAN: Paperback.
ROWAN: 100% paperback, it's just so much more comfortable.
ALLI: It's easier to toss in my bag.
ROWAN: Yeah, hardcovers are heavy. You can’t hold it in one hand and drink something while you're doing it. There’s no advantage other than it's more durable, I guess.
ALLI: I like on paperbacks when the cover starts to curl.
ALEX: The paperback curl is nice, but I also really like the structure of hardcovers. I always have. You know The Diary of a Wimpy Kid books? Holding that in one hand, it's not going anywhere.
ROWAN: A nice bound book is really beautiful looking, but for practical usage, every time I have a hardcover, I feel like they always want to close, so I find myself getting frustrated.
ALEX: Paperback for efficiency.
ALLI: Paperback with an exposed spine is the most beautiful.
ROWAN: Hardcover for displaying my Diary of a Wimpy Kid in the foyer.
LUNA: For the “Static” video, there’s this black and white footage throughout. Did you pull that from something specific?
ALLI: It was shot, edited, and directed by Melanie Drew Chambers. I think she’s done this in her other work where she’s pulled from old public archive footage. I’m not actually sure where that was from, but we talked about it being the floral stuff and I think she went back through old Paper Lady videos for the “Static” one.
We tried to draw inspiration from the video for our song “Absentee,” that’s all found footage like that. There’s a similar clip, and I think she maybe drew inspiration from that. We also drew from the video that we did for “EVE,” with the motif of the apples. She’s a crazy talented person though.
LUNA: I loved the video! If you had to listen to one song from your album for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
ROWAN: For me it would be “You Are The Sun,” because it's very calming and meditative. It kind of feels like one of those sound baths, and if I had to dial it down to one thing, I probably need calming music more than I need chaotic music to keep me sane. [To ALLI and Alex] You can't say the same one as me.
ALLI: I would choose “Silt” honestly. It’s a hype song that makes me feel energized to do sh*t. That’s an energy that I'd want when I go to listen to music, to feel hyped up.
ALEX: I would pick “Static” because the sections are very different from each other. It'll always stay interesting.
LUNA: When was the last time that you felt uninspired?
ROWAN: Right after we finished mixing the album and everything. Every time we finish a project, I have this feeling of, “Oh, I need to come up with stuff,” but I just put so much energy into this thing that I have nothing left in me. We finished [the album], and I was trying to write, and it was just like, now what? I don't have anything. So three months ago, to be honest, I was tapped out.
ALLI: Yeah, it was the same for me. After we finished mixing we went through some lineup changes and it was a hard time in general. I lost a bit of confidence in myself creatively and I had to really put some time into being alone and finding that again. Around the time we released “Silt” I felt really energized, like I had reset in a good way. We just recently wrote a new song and that felt really good. We’re settling into a really nice place now, the three of us.
ALEX: I’ll have to agree with Rowan's point. When we were all putting in our notes for all the mixes and slowly reducing the things that needed to be done. You do so much of that work all at once, and then you want to get away from it as far as possible for a second. That was a big push.
ROWAN: Whenever we shift from a project, I always say I'm not gonna touch anything musical for a while. A couple days, at least.
ALLI: I think it’s necessary to get perspective on the thing that you just made, and be able to take a step back from it, come back to it, and look at it a bit more objectively. You’re so right there in it, it’s all that you're thinking about for a year. For us, practicing twice a week, going into the studio once a week for a year. That’s all that we were doing, so it’s nice to get time away and then be able to look at it and be proud of what you’ve done and feel happy with it.
Photography Credit: Sydney Tate
LUNA: What cartoon character would you choose to represent yourself?
ROWAN: I love that question.
ALEX: For me, I would probably say Spongebob. He’s pretty goofy and always happy and I resonate with that a lot.
ROWAN: Maybe Billy from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. He never knows what the f*ck is going on and that's so real.
ALLI: I would probably be Sam from Totally Spies. She has long red hair, so that’s something, but she’s also solving the problems and saying “This is what we should do next.” She’s a team player chilling with her ladies and solving crime.
LUNA: Have you been obsessed with any albums recently?
ALLI: It's one of my favorite albums, but it's one that I always come back to and I feel like more recently, I'm having a renaissance of my love for it. The album Loved by Cranes. It’s so inspiring to me.
The album itself has a lot of range and it’s this crazy, kind of gothic, but also dreamy album. Different songs on it inspire me at different times. I really like the songs “Lilies” and “Pale Blue Sky.” Cranes is just awesome. They’re an awesome band to me.
ROWAN: I’m fighting between a couple. Dogsbody by Model/Actriz is such an inspiring album to me. The way they approach their instruments, vocals included, is so different and fresh. I never knew you could play guitar like that and every time it blows me alway. Every time I listen to that album it surprises me again.
ALEX: One album I've been loving for months is Post Malone's country album, F1 Trillion. [group laughs] I know it's more poppy, but the production on it is just so good. And I love slide guitar, you know? I’ve been addicted for months now.
LUNA: I feel no judgment, I just was not expecting you to say that.
ROWAN: Alex listens to everything.
LUNA: I was wondering if you abide at all by astrological phases when you're planning things for the band.
ALLI: I have in the past. I manage the band and I think with this release, I’ve been trying to be more technical about it than I’ve been in the past, so I haven’t been paying as much attention to it.
In the past, it was a lot of releasing songs on full moons, because that's when you're supposed to celebrate what you've done and reap the rewards of hard work. When we were shooting the album cover with Renee and our friend Maddie Haley, who did all the florals for all of the single covers and the album cover, we were at this crazy place. Castle Rock, or Island, or something like that. It's North of Boston, but it was this little private beach park with this huge boulder and all these little cliffs leading down to the beach.
It’s a small black sand beach, and we went up on the boulder after shooting there all day. We went up onto the boulder for the final shot for the album when the sun set, and when we got up there, we looked up amd realized that it was a full moon. We hadn't even thought of that or planned it or anything, but it felt very special that it happened. It was an accident, but it felt like it wasn’t an accident.
ALEX: And you can see the full moon in the “Static” cover art. It was perfect.
ALLI: It was so special. We were all climbing around in the dark passing around one flashlight and then we actually got a moment where we’re looking up at the moon like, holy sh*t. We just enjoyed it for a minute.
ALEX: It was also just huge. When it’s closer to the horizon like that and it’s more yellow.
ALLI: Shining over the water and stuff, too.
LUNA: This sounds so epic.
ALLI: I wish we could bottle that feeling or experience and show it to people, but it's special for us.
LUNA: What kind of person do you want to hear “Static?”
ALLI: A lot of Paper Lady music is for the overthinkers. Anybody that's in their head, or in their feelings or is going through a difficult time. I hope that anybody that is having a hard time emotionally can identify with it.
It’s basically about the feeling of fear of being forgotten by somebody. Not necessarily even in a romantic way, but I think whoever can identify with that, maybe anyone that's going through a friendship difficulty or romantic difficulty can hear it and feel held by it in a way.
LUNA: Is there anything else you wanted to add?
ALLI: The next single, “Joe Modern” is out April 11. Idle Fate, the album is out on May 9, and we're going to be touring it for a lot of June.
Photography Credit: Sydney Tate
