Q&A: Pickle Darling Creates an Ode to the Little Things on New LP ‘Laundromat’
WALKING DOWN THE STREET WITH HEADPHONES IN — typing on a laptop in a local coffee shop, making awkward eye contact with a fellow patron of the laundromat. Just a few moments in life that, despite utter monotony, under the right circumstances can feel extraordinary. Beautiful not because of any big sense of pressure, but because of the minute details of the ever-changing world around us. These instances, despite often being written off and immediately forgotten, are some of the most lovely that we encounter on Earth. On their latest record, Laundromat, Pickle Darling creates a beautiful ode to these moments.
Combining the electronic sound of their first record with the more acoustic sound of their second, Pickle Darling, the artistic alias of musician Lukas Mayo, finds harmony in this third album. With a quiet, calming vocal opening the album, Mayo invites listeners into their world of beautiful minutiae. Combined throughout the record with acoustic guitar and ukulele, the homemade feeling of Laundromat adds to its overall charm. The songs are quiet and unassuming, only increasing the emotional impact of the album as each song connects to another aspect of daily life.
It’s no mistake that the record feels like the soundtrack to the indie movie that is life on Earth. Interested in the structure of stories, Mayo intentionally searches for that structure while creating music. The feeling that Laundromat is the soundtrack to a lovely short film that no one has ever seen is the result of that intentional story structure. They want to be the soundtrack to your life.
Interviews interpolated through the songs “Kinds of Love” and “More Kinds of Love” are highlights of the album. Bringing the love between Mayo and their friends to the forefront on a record all about the best moments of life, listeners are reminded that the best moments in life are the ones that are shared.
Luna got the chance to sit down with Pickle Darling and talk about the album. Read the interview below as Mayo shares the process of creating Laundromat, inspirations, and what the band hopes listeners take away from the album.
LUNA: First, I just want to say congratulations about the new album — it’s lovely.
MAYO: Thank you.
LUNA: How long have you been working on it?
MAYO: I think I started it back in 2021, but I trashed it multiple times on the way. I had moments where I would think, “I’m just going to scrap this and then come back to it.” And then I finished it about halfway through last year.
LUNA: It being your third album, did this happen last time? Is that different from how developing the albums has gone in the past?
MAYO: I think because I felt my second album was a bit more ambitious than my first album, with the new one, I tried to make something that felt like my very first EP. A lot looser and less high-concept — just more about these initial catchy ideas that make me feel excited. Not missing the initial spark of each song. I wanted it to feel more homemade.
LUNA: I noticed that! You can definitely hear more of the acoustic guitar on this record. Was that part of that same intention?
MAYO: I always have a type of album in mind that I try and make, and fail. So for my second album, I was trying to make my version of an epic prog rock space album, and obviously it doesn't sound like that. But so with the new album, I was listening to a lot of outsider folk music and a lot of British folk revival music, like Vashti Bunyan and all of them. So I wanted to make my version of that. It still ended up being quite electronic, but for me, I wanted it to feel like a folk album.
LUNA: I think that is definitely there. I also read that you take inspiration from material other than music, like movies, books, and essays. What were your inspirations from those going into this record?
MAYO: Yeah, I was reading some Lydia Davis books, and some of her short stories are literally two sentences long. She just toys with that a lot, and I kind of had that approach. Because the story is so short, the title is an essential part of it. So I wanted to write really concise songs that kind of hint at a story but don't really explain too much of it, or something that just sounds phonetically interesting, then drawing some meaning out of that.
I also think of film a lot, in terms of structure. I'm not super excited about a lot of songwriting structures, like verse, chorus, and stuff like that. I think if you're a musician, you can learn a lot just by looking at different mediums and seeing how they structure things.
LUNA: I think that’s really true. I want to connect that to what you said about the title being an essential part of the story. The album really highlights the small connections that we find in day-to-day life. Was that a theme you found along the way, or was that part of the structure going in?
MAYO: I think when I started the album, I was thinking about wanting to make something that felt more domestic and felt more like what music is in our day-to-day life. Instead of this thing that's like… The journey of a song is like, you write and record a song, and then you put it on an album, then it goes through the press, then goes through the machine of the music industry and is sold, and you try and get it [on] playlist[s] and stuff. It feels quite separate from what a song feels like in my own life, if that makes sense, where I'll just be walking around the house just singing songs to myself, or we sing songs to remember things.
I think a lot about the kind of personal utility of a song, because there's just a very pure version of what a song is. Like the song “Happy Birthday.” It's like, no one's selling that song; it's not a hit single. But it's also like a song that everyone has, everyone owns. So I think I just wanted to write songs that felt like that.
LUNA: I get what you're saying. You want something that maybe doesn't have to be commercially perfect, but it's in people's lives. That's music.
MAYO: Yeah, that’s what I was going for in the album.
LUNA: Okay, pivoting away a bit. I also wanted to talk about the music video for “Head Terrarium.” It’s amazing. It reminded me of super handmade shorts we used to watch when I went to film school.
MAYO: So my friend Martin Sagadin, they’re quite a prolific filmmaker, and they've been a friend for a long time. They make music videos for kind of everyone in New Zealand, and I just really trust them with whatever they make. For this one, because of COVID and stuff, we couldn't be together in person. So he was just like, “Oh man, I have some ideas.” So I said, “Just make whatever you want.” That's what happened — I didn't know anything about the video until Martin showed me the finished thing. And I was like, “Oh my god, this is perfect.”
LUNA: That is so cool! The idea to have the video of your mouth was so clever. The visuals for this album are so great; I love the cover for it as well. Did you have a design in mind for that?
MAYO: That was my friend Heather Marigold — she's done all my album covers and stuff. My friend Thomas Barrett does the design stuff. And, because I was reading a lot about William Morris at the time and he talks a lot about only having something in your house if it's useful or beautiful … I wanted to make sure that the album is at least just a beautiful object in the house. Then I was looking at a lot of folk art and home art, the sort of art that people have that is kind of kitschy. That's a really useful version of art that isn't necessarily seen as … good or high art or anything, but it is. It's quite a domestic version of that.
LUNA: Okay so final question: Since this is your third album, you have people who have been with you for a while, and you are still finding new listeners. Is there a message you hope fans get from your music journey so far?
MAYO: Actually, I think all my music from the start has been me embracing flaws. When I did my first EP, I didn't know how to really produce music, and I didn't really know how to sing. So I think the whole project of Pickle Darling has been about learning in public, how to make music. I don't know if there's a message in that, but I feel like that's something that I hope people take away from my music.
Stumbling in public and making stuff that isn't perfect but is you is really important. I think I'm a lot more interested in stuff that is flawed but very personal, as opposed to people [who] have to get everything perfect before putting it out… And I think it's often like… I know it's kind of cliche … [but] its imperfections … make it really interesting. So yeah, that's kind of my main ethic in all of my music, and that's, I hope, something that other people can draw from.
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