Konigsberg says she is used to staying home when not on tour—if she’s not out playing a show or catching a set at one of the community-oriented New York venues she’s partial to, like Bushwick’s Flowers for All Occasions. In quarantine, she and Ivry-Block, who are roommates, have been working on yet another new pop-focused project—with five impressively-realized releases to their name since April—called Forever. It feels like yet another extension of the resourcefulness and strong sense of camaraderie that exists in most of Konigsberg’s musical projects. “The music I make is extremely personal,” she says, “But the most exciting thing about making music in New York is my community, and that grows.”
When I was performing with Of Montreal on tour, a very common comment from people was: “Your band’s whole vibe is such a relief right now.” I think that has to do with my friends in my band and how we’re all positive people. On tour we were promoting Bernie Sanders. We had a volunteer signup sheet and we were collecting donations. Everyone in my band wants a better future and they’re not giving up. Sometimes when I’m feeling sad I just think about how I have that family. I’m going to cry. [laughs]
Palberta’s music is pretty avant-garde, almost surreal, but the music you make solo is very clear. What about pop music fascinates you at this point?
When I write a really catchy, well-crafted hook, it’s so exhilarating. I’m proud that I can do it and I want to get better and better. It’s not to take away from people who are making crazy noise music, but clear ideas are extremely therapeutic and extremely affecting.
One of my favorite songs you’ve written is “7 Smile” from the 2018 EP
4-picture tear. What does that song mean to you?
That EP is the most meaningful thing I’ve ever released because it was so cathartic. I knew I was lucky to be where I was in my life: I was a musician, I was able to play shows and write music and do everything I had wanted. But there was a hole in me. The first verse of that song is about being really happy and positive about my relationship or myself. The second verse is like the evil side of the song. It’s a devil-angel thing: I should be happy, but I’m devastatingly lost.
Your solo song “Summer in the City” is kind of an anthem for right now. I think we would all feel really lucky for summer in the city.
That song is about being awestruck with something, someone, a situation. It’s wanting something so much that you forget your thoughts—it makes you so nervous, but joyous, and you’re thinking so hard while you’re talking that you forget what you’re talking about. “Summer in the City” is something that is joyous for me.
With Palberta, the music sounds so collaborative—how would you describe the internal logic of that band?
That’s what happens with best friends: you develop your own language. We have this way of creating together that is really special, and I don’t think it’s very common. It’s a completely equal, three-part musical relationship where we all write in the same room. It’s chaotic, crazy, out of control, and then all of a sudden there’s a song. With Palberta, there’s really no logic. And it’s changed all of our lives so much. I got two best friends and I got to experience really cool things, like playing with Bikini Kill and creating in a way that is unusual.
How has being in such a highly collaborative band informed your solo songwriting, or emboldened you?
The truth is, I’ve been writing songs forever, but I wasn’t mentally ready to go out on my own until now. I struggle with mental health and I’ve been working on it for my whole life. My confidence levels were so low that I needed these two other girls to lift me up and make this really sick music with me to really feel ready.
RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo
HTML:
3.2
| Encoding:
UTF-8
| Version:
0.7.4