Amaya Songs Download

[Pablo Tatts]

Songsof Abundance, Psalms of Grief is their concise and direct debut full-length album, funded by Creative Scotland and will be co-released on the 7th April by the band and La Rubia Producciones, followed by a debut live performance at the prestigious Roadburn Festival in Tilburg. Adriana Ciccone caught up with Amaya and Scott to talk about the new album, the process and much more.

E&D: When I last interviewed you back in 2021, I had asked you about the album that was in the works and you mentioned that it was important for the three of you to be in the same space when creating and writing for the album, as you were all living in different cities at the time. What was it like when you finally were together in one room?

Scott: The majority of tracks were written while I was living in Dresden, which is where Stefan also lives. We would meet at our rehearsal space and play together and whenever we heard something we were inspired by we would develop it into a complete track and then send it to Amaya. Amaya would then write vocals/lyrics to any of the tracks that she found inspiring. There was never a discussion about which of the songs Amaya should work on, it was purely down to what she would find inspiring.

E&D: Your debut full-length album, Songs of Abundance, Psalms of Grief will be co-released on the 7th of April by the band and La Rubia Producciones. It was also funded by Creative Scotland, an organization that supports the arts, screen and creative industries across all parts of Scotland on behalf of everyone who lives, works or visits there and distributes funding from the Scottish Government and The National Lottery. I read that the Scottish community is very important to the band. Can you tell us about that connection and why it is important to you?

Amaya: I find that working with others in a way which is right for all parts takes a lot of time and is very subject to luck and compatibility, so DIY is often the best and most efficient way to proceed until you find your dream creative partner. I also really believe in doing things with intent and dedication. Especially in the arts where a project can benefit from this multidisciplinary aspect, and allow the creator to feed in with audio, video, objects and performance. I like being very involved with the work and almost inhabiting it.

One thing that no one really tells you about becoming a musician is that you will live in the past; you\u2019ll write a song and work on it for months, it won\u2019t get released for months after that, and then by the time you\u2019re touring the record those months have turned to years. The emotional space you inhabit when you\u2019re writing is necessarily ephemeral, too intense to be sustained. The songs take on different meanings, little beings animated by a life you give them but cannot control.

\u201CI\u2019m such a different person now,\u201D Chloe says when I ask her how her emotionally heavy debut record Defamator is feeling these days, \u201CWhen I wrote all these songs I was in so much pain.\u201D While anger pervades almost every track, the album also delves into self-reflection and sometimes regret. Its sonic palette is unrelentingly dark, pairing playful elements like toy pianos and xylophones with painful subject matter to the effect of a lullaby in a horror movie.

She brings up a line from the Lucy Dacus song \u201CNight Shift\u201D: \u201CIn five years I hope these songs feel like covers / Dedicated to new lovers.\u201D Chloe is in a happy relationship now, with the guitarist of her band. \u201CHe has to listen to me play all these songs about people who were horrible to me,\u201D she laughs\u2014another layer of complicated emotion piled on the project. \u201CI\u2019ve become desensitized to it.\u201D She pauses, then says, \u201CBut those songs have all been heavy at times.\u201D

The confluence of the pandemic, starting therapy, and confronting a negative pattern of relationships forced Chloe to process years of emotion and memory. \u201CWhen I wrote those songs, I had no idea how I wanted them to sound. I just needed to purge my inner thoughts,\u201D she explains. She brought the demos to producer Jonny Bell, who she characterizes as a \u201Cstone cold\u201D man, stoic and honest. She describes a moment early on in their collaborative relationship when she was tracking vocals for \u201CGod Is Dead\u201D in his studio and got choked up after a few takes. That session, she told him the stories that inspired each song on the album, and after she finished, he didn\u2019t speak at all for a few moments. \u201CHe finally said, \u2018Maybe one more take,\u2019 and we went right back to recording,\u201D she remembers, \u201CWe ended up redoing a lot of the previously recorded vocals after that, when I knew him better and was more comfortable.\u201D One of those vocals is the track on \u201CGod Is Dead\u201D of Chloe crying, buried imperceptibly in the mix if it is in there at all, that he insisted on capturing. \u201CHe knows what he\u2019s doing,\u201D she shrugs.

When Chloe was finishing the Defamator demos and looking for a producer, she was not on a label and did not have a manager. \u201CI was totally on my own, sending out a hundred emails a day,\u201D she says, \u201CYou get rejected almost as many times; you\u2019re always getting a no.\u201D Taxi Gauche Records, a boutique indie label based in Switzerland, ended up releasing the album. She loves her team there: \u201CI\u2019m lucky that the people that have said yes are really in my corner and really want to help me.\u201D

Chloe was raised by two professional musicians in Southern California who discouraged her from pursuing music professionally. \u201CThey were probably right,\u201D she laughs, \u201CBut it only made me more determined for music to be more than a hobby.\u201D She does not openly share her music with them, if only because the lyrics are private but discernible. When she dropped out of school to work on music full time, they were surprisingly excited for her. \u201CThey\u2019ve always been really great,\u201D she says, \u201CTo this day they\u2019re my biggest supporters.\u201D

Chloe is a working musician with a day job that pays the bills on top of shows, photoshoots, and interviews. \u201CI have to figure out how to make music not feel like a chore,\u201D she says, immediately sounding weary, \u201CIf you were to tell me two years ago about all of the opportunities I\u2019ve had in the last month, I would be so excited, but I\u2019m working all the time and I\u2019m tired.\u201D Chloe is still her own manager, and she comes home after a full day to answer emails even if she doesn\u2019t have an event. Many musicians can relate, basically working two jobs because of the unfavorable financial landscape of music. If she can, she says she will probably go on a European tour, where she is doing the most press and getting the most response to the project. It might be expensive, but it might also kick start her career.

Some of Chloe\u2019s strongest influences are from other media, namely movies and books. \u201CIf I see something that I like it really sticks with me,\u201D she says, \u201CIt\u2019s like I\u2019m collecting images.\u201D I tell her that I\u2019ve noticed her visuals for the record are a very close visual analog to the sonic image of the album, a translation of sorts. \u201CI\u2019ve always gravitated towards things that were slightly disturbing,\u201D she says of the themes of her art, \u201CI incorporated that into my music.\u201D She mentions David Lynch, a clear reference in the visual concept of Defamator.

One of the songs on the record is called \u201CThere Will Be Blood\u201D, a callback to the 2007 Paul Thomas Anderson film of the same name. \u201CI\u2019m bleeding,\u201D she sings over and over again, finally adding, \u201CFor you.\u201D There are more oblique allusions sprinkled throughout the record, a media guide for the perceptive listener. Religious imagery is a major theme, in an Ethel Cain, First Reformed kind of way. The richness of her references bolsters the highly personal material: \u201CI was a child, he was a man / Hope to God we never meet again.\u201D

The last words on Defamator are \u201CSomehow I\u2019m still not over it'', but it doesn\u2019t feel like Chloe is facing backwards. Her sights are set on performing this material in a new context, with a band that she loves instead of in the isolation of her quarantine bedroom. \u201CThat time in my life is so monumental to who I am now,\u201D she tells me. As much as it took for her to write it, Defamator gave Chloe something too: \u201CI wouldn\u2019t have had the opportunities that I\u2019ve had if I hadn\u2019t written those songs and processed those feelings. Now it\u2019s a piece of art that I\u2019m proud of.\u201D

Good Looks was the first band I sought out to interview without a prior connection or a specific angle for Record Store, just because I liked their music so much. They put out some of my favorite singles of this year before I spoke with frontman Tyler Jordan in May, and have since released a truly excellent sophomore record, Lived Here For A While (2024).

Tyler is a measured, thoughtful person. His answers to my questions come after silent consideration, and on my little laptop screen I can see him thinking, thinking. Cursory searching indicates that he mostly takes the Good Looks interviews alone, and often acts as their sole PR representative. He seems to take this role seriously, indicating carefully when he speaks for himself and when he speaks for the band. He corrects me kindly when I bake incorrect assumptions into the questions, and is attentive to their specificity and scope, asking for clarification before he answers.

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