COOL KIDS
#3: SKORTS
★★★★★★★
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
– Alan Watts
Incompletement is a word we made up. To us, it means allowing oneself to live and create in an ever-changing state of impermanence.
– SKORTS, Incompletement Album Statement
I had something written for this part yesterday. Something happened between now and then that already has me feeling different. Wild reminder. Anything can all change in a snap. But part of it still rings true – I loved yearbook in high school. I catch myself talking about it all the time. Like on Monday at Winson with a friend. We ran that shit. Senior ads, not editorial, the editorial girls would say. It was still half the book, ok. We made all the money, ok. All our dear minions. In the backroom. Giggling. InDesigning. Sipping tea. Meeting with moms. Taking fake ID photos for my fellow seniors in the back-back “photo studio.” Until my co-editor got chewed out. Still not sure why I didn’t. Oh, the glory days. Oh, to be complaining about an 8:50 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. schedule. Try a 24/7, young me. Still not sure which one of us has more fun … What I loved about it the most, and why I do journalism, is the satisfaction I still haven’t received. Nor will I ever see it. The nameless, faceless credit. The thought of my peers sitting around the fire during the holidays with grandchildren. A rebel daughter wanting to know more about her father. Dusting off the near-800-page book. Cracking it open. Idealizing the moments they weren’t alive to know. And those who were tapping into those sweet senses they’d long forgotten about. But never left. Words and pictures and pages and music. The few things we’ll always have. That matter.
SKORTS is
Alli Walls (vox/guitar)
Char Smith (guitar)
Emma Welch (bass)
Max Berdik (drums)
Newest release: Incompletement, debut album, October 31, 2025
★★★★★★★
Marisa Whitaker: Were y’all just in Rhode Island for a gig?
Char Smith: One gig, two days. We had a day off, and we did a lot of drinking on that day off.
Emma Welch: And seafood eating. We hiked, too. I happened to do it in high-heeled boots. I didn’t think ahead. And everyone knew we were a rock band.
CS: We were on the cliffs of Newport. Everyone else was wearing Patagonia shit. I was in my leather jacket. Emma’s in her high-heeled boots and a suit. Everyone was kind of laughing. We were dressed up nice for the hike.
Alli Walls: Five people were like, Are you guys a band? People used to hike that trail in dresses and high heels back then. We were back in the Gilded Age.
MW: Sounds like y’all were dressed appropriately.
EW: We had a vision of going into the fancy mansion. So there then came the outfits.
★★★★★★★
MW: Y’all only started in 2022, right?
EW: In 2021, we started rehearsing together, and in 2022, we played our first show.
MW: Y’all have done so much in such a short time. I saw y’all got the “hardest working band” award on Oh My Rockness last year.
CS: Whenever your show gets posted there, that’s a tally. Not all DIY shows get listed, but they’ve improved it. We just said yes to everything back then.
AW: Now we’re more selective in New York. We’re starting out fresh in other cities, sussing out those bands. Now we can call up all the wonderful bands we’ve met, ask to play shows together, and try and summon people from out of town. We have a little leverage now with our fan base here.
EW: We played almost a show a week in 2023 and 2024. Once you get into the rhythm, people know your band goes hard live. As we played more, we could guarantee bigger crowds. Suddenly, we realized people were coming who we didn’t know personally. We were starting to build a name for ourselves, connecting beyond our friends. That was a cool shift. Now we’re cultivating that, playing fewer but better shows, leaving more time to write and tour. Those years of constant shows helped us grow.
CS: It’s still what we love to do. We’re more selective now only because we want to stay excited. If we’re not debuting a new set, no need to play the same one again at Alphaville. We want to give people something new, not overplay it.
MW: I first heard about y’all because someone told me, They’re an incredible live band – you have to check them out. I saw you at Bowery, then again at the St. Patty’s Day show at Sony Hall, and at Silver Lining Lounge, when I booked you to open for The Molotovs. You’re known for your live shows around here. Even though you’re a newer band, you’ve risen fast, packing out big venues already. How does that reception feel?
CS: It’s flattering, but we take it with a grain of salt.
AW: We always check in with each other: How was the show for you? It’s so personal. It doesn’t really matter what’s thrown at us. Sometimes one of us feels off, and so we don’t even believe the good reception is true. Feels like an imposter. There’s a lot of that. We’re writing music that’s better than us. We practice the shit out of our songs because it’s beyond what we’re even capable of doing, in some ways. It’s so cool to grow into what you want out of music. We know we’re good because we’re getting returning crowds. They’re experiencing it with us, they’re feeling what we’re putting out there, and it’s being perceived well. But we know it only lasts as long as you keep doing what feels right and pushing yourself and staying in it for the music.
CS: It’s ok right now, but it needs to get a lot better; that’s my mentality always. It can always be better. That’s maybe more on a live level, but I don’t think we’ve written our best music yet.
AW: We’re ready to keep making it. We’re just happy people are happy with what we’re putting out there.
CS: I appreciate that people are into it, but we don’t relish in it at all. We’re always looking up. Always looking beyond.
AW: It’s nice to know that people like the shows that we feel bad about. That people are picking up something from it.
EW: And that’s what keeps us going, too. It’s so easy to get bogged down by seeing how hard it is to break through. I’m not even going to say in this era; it’s always been hard to be an artist and get to do it in a sustainable way. It will take all your money and all your time. Money and time are not infinite. But having those moments where we realize that people are receiving and being moved by our music gets us to that next day. We couldn’t keep going without all that. A while ago, it moved beyond; we’re just friends having a fun time playing shows. We have to keep coming back to that because that’s really important, and that’s how we started. There was a shifting point; oh, this is something that has legs. And we can take it somewhere. It’s for more than us now, which is really cool.
★★★★★★★
MW: Talk to me about being part of the local scene. I kind of hate that word.
CS: We should talk about, why do we hate that word?
MW: I guess I don’t hate it, it just feels cringy coming out of my mouth. I was reading about how, Alli, you came here to make music. Obviously, it’s a big music city, where things happen across all art forms. That’s exactly why I moved here, to do music journalism. I’m from Texas, and when I got here, I didn’t know this scene existed. I didn’t know I’d be hanging out with people my age, all making music and art on a local DIY level. I thought I’d be working at a commercial magazine. It’s been an honor to be part of this and around so many like-minded people. What’s happening here is beautiful, especially post-COVID; everyone’s feeling inspired again.
EW: I always think of “scene” as something historians talk about in retrospect – looking back at what was happening at that time. We’re living it. For me, community is the important word. When we were starting, that network was what got us to play shows. People heard about us through friends of friends. It’s people and spaces overlapping. In such an online world, being in real rooms matters. Bars where the bartenders’ also in a band playing at another bar next week. It’s this little micro-mushroom-network that encouraged us to keep playing. It feels so good to go to a show and see people you know, on stage or in the crowd.
AW: And how that ties into the photographers, videographers, publicists, even friends doing fashion – it’s all part of the scene. Everyone’s pushing creatively; helping where you can, getting paid a little where you can. The network is what you’re living in and need – it’s everything. You don’t have the money to push past it, so you gotta have it. When a good show pulls everyone out, you get to see your section of the scene, and it feels so nice. It’s like a homecoming. It’s a nice occasion when you get to see thirty or forty familiar people who are homies, who’ve all been around the same few years, still doing it. You’re like, hell yeah, we’re still here.
EW: ShowBrain is such a big part of that – meeting people through Ozzie, the volunteers, and the space he’s created. Many volunteers are musicians or photographers themselves. He knows so many people, books amazing lineups, and the shows are public. Tourists and people during lunch breaks stumble upon them and suddenly discover the scene.
MW: Some of my favorite bands play ShowBrain. He does such an amazing job.
AW: We live near Tompkins Square Park, so we see that whole community daily. Walking around, people recognize us. It’s this little hub.
★★★★★★★
MW: What’s that been like, becoming friends and bandmates at the same time?
CS: I think we know each other very well.
AW: We know each other’s digestive systems.
EW: The match of passion came first. And then the relationships came out of that, naturally. We met, clicked, and decided to take it seriously. That mutual respect came from everyone showing up and working hard. We all give a lot.
AW: We all get along in different ways. Even individually, we could’ve been friends outside the band. The respect that comes with when you see someone in love with music and creating the way they do, you admire that and bond through it and fall in love with that. You develop this shared language – physical, musical, unspoken. Like, what I look like from behind onstage. I don’t know that, but Max knows that. It’s all this beautiful, unspoken language that gets to be developed. And Emma and I were born opposite each other’s sisters.
EW: To explain that – I’m a May Gemini with a June Gemini sister, and Alli’s a June Gemini with a May Gemini sister.
MW: … I’m a June Gemini.
The girls: [Freak out]
EW: Anyway, it really feels like raising a child. We’ve had to go through all kinds of moments together – creative disagreements, emotional growth – and come out stronger. Getting on the road, finding our rhythm, keeping a sense of play – that’s all part of it.
CS: Going back to your point earlier – that’s why we’ve accomplished so much so fast. Every single member is on board. No one’s dragging their feet. You only move that quickly when everyone’s dedicated. It’s an intense thing to do. To get in a band and get going. This is your life. If it’s not, you’re not in the band. I have no interest in moving slow.
AW: And willing to compromise because of the love of the band. Coming up against questions that break couples apart – financial stuff, emotional stuff. Getting to the bottom of why someone feels a certain way. Having to be there for people on a psychological level. Wanting to work through things because you love them and you want to keep going. Let’s work through this; let’s talk about it with love and kindness. This gigantic foursome of trying to get to a place where everyone feels good in whatever we’re doing.
★★★★★★★
MW: Why SKORTS?
Max Berdik: Next question. [Laughs]
EW: It’s really not that deep.
AW: Most things are that deep, but this isn’t.
EW: Early on, in our group chat, we were throwing things in, and Alli was the one who said, SKORTS. We made it all caps, plural; thought it looked cool. Our first show was under the name Baby Teeth because Alli had a necklace with her baby teeth. We needed something for the poster. SKORTS was already floating around, and we even asked the crowd that night, and went with it. It looked good on a marquee – cool word, funny sound. The two-in-one is kind of cool.
AW: The freedom it allows girls to have. I think about being in gym class, or something, being a little rambunctious dirt child …
[Laughs]
EW: Rambunctious dirt child might be our next band name.
AW: Maybe I’m in the dirt pile, and I’m in a split, and I’m in the first grade, and they still need to identify me as a girl …
CS: And she’s in a skort!
AW: She’s in a skort!
MW: Y’all should sell skorts as merch.
EW: We decided early on that it’s either all skorts all the time or we never touch it. We decided on never. It’s cute, sometimes our friends will wear skorts to our shows.
AW: It’s like Limp Bizkit. We don’t need to touch the name or go deep. Looking back, maybe we should’ve invented a new word, because I don’t like taking words that exist, like when words are taken for businesses or start-ups. But I don’t think we’re tarnishing it; if anything, we’re lifting it up.
EW: Sometimes people type “Skortz” with a “z,” and that’s absolutely not who we are. Or “The Skortz.” SKORTS with an “s,” all caps; that’s it.
★★★★★★★
MW: I watched the “Cyclops Girlfriend” and “Eat Your Heart Out” videos. Both are so goofy and fun. When I first saw you live, you had this epic, mysterious vibe. But those videos show your silly side, and I love that. Talk to me about that duality.
CS: What is your perception of it?
MW: It was refreshing. I had this idea of you as serious and mystical, which some bands commit to fully. That’s reflective in the “Burden” video. But seeing that humor and lightness in the other videos made you even more interesting. Even the album has that softer side, with songs like “Lace” and “Anyone.” I love those songs.
EW: Thanks for listening.
MW: It’s what I love to do. But that was my first impression of your aesthetic.
CS: Our marketing is hard to define. Emma said it best in another interview. We don’t really know how to market ourselves. We’re in a state of flux. One side of the coin is heavy and serious, but the other is light, playful, and funny.
MW: I can see now, that funny side, sitting down with y’all.
CS: We all have a sense of humor. We’re not an “art band” in the pretentious way.
AW: We are an art band, but don’t want to hide any parts of ourselves. All of them are good parts. The humor is a relief, and you need that. It runs deep in all of us. We’re too goofy to suppress it. It would be a crime not to have that be a part of what we’re doing here, and I don’t think we could hide it.
CS: We’re still figuring out how to blend the two. When we talk about marketing ourselves, it’s been tough because our songs are big and epic, but we’re a bunch of goofy individuals behind them.
AW: I don’t even have an issue with it. There’s not a marketing problem with it. The less we market ourselves, the better; it doesn’t serve us to try and put us in a beautiful, little, branded box because that’s not what we are.
CS: I’m curious how it’s coming across to the outsider.
MW: I agree with you. For example, Fleetwood Mac. Some of my favorite music is early Fleetwood, when they started as a blues band with Peter Green. Pre-Stevie, even pre-Christine. All those early albums are very different, from Future Games and Then Play On to Kiln House and Pious Bird of Good Omen. It wasn’t until Stevie and Lindsay came to the forefront that the Fleetwood Mac aesthetic and package that we all know today came to be. The one we immediately think of and associate with the name and band. It took time and eras to get there. Some bands try too hard to be a consistent package right away. On the other hand, I most recently interviewed Laveda, and they just dropped their third album. Every one of their albums is a different genre. It’s sick. In that same sick way, y’all are being yourselves. You don’t chase trends or social-media polish. That authenticity shines through. You’re an amazing live band, and that’s why people come to see you live. Honestly, I can’t even assign you a genre, and that’s a compliment.
EW: Those two videos reflect those two songs – “Eat Your Heart Out” is playful and colorful; “Burden” is darker and epic. We’re not consciously chasing genres; it’s all unified through Alli’s voice and the textures it carries. The directors reached out wanting to work with us, and we let each song dictate the visuals. When we explained the “Eat Your Heart Out” concept, it started as a joke. We thought, wouldn’t it be funny if it were a workout video?
AW: We had movement with it whenever we were playing it. We felt compelled to move in a way that was athletic enough to be aerobic. My mom taught aerobics. And it was crazy watching the movie The Substance. They were inspired by the “Pump It Up” video by Deanne Berry. She’s a world-class aerobics instructor. I hope they gave her credit. That’s the music video I worked out to during COVID.
EW: Alli and I choreographed the video together. We took a lot of moves from that video.
★★★★★★★
MW: I know of bands in town that mirror something that’s been done before, be it Sonic Youth or The Strokes, which is cool. You can be great musicians and make great music, but it’s the vein of something that already exists. I don’t know of another band in town doing what y’all are doing. You’re uniquely yourselves. You stick to what you want to do.
CS: That’s very nice of you to say. I don’t think we view it like we’re reinventing the wheel, but you put it very well. We’re unique to ourselves, and not asking anything, from what genre we are or to what song we’re trying to write.
AW: We’re focused on the song being good.
CS: If it sounds like a metal song, it sounds like a metal song. If it sounds like a Fleetwood Mac song, it sounds like a Fleetwood Mac song.
AW: We’re very focused on one song at a time. And give it what it needs. It has its own band. We’re like, let’s come together and figure this one out. It’s a crazy lil recipe. But we’re just trying to have fun. I always want to take it somewhere big. I always want it to feel worthwhile, even if that might mean it’s somewhere like “Lace,” that softer side. It has to hit you somewhere in your feels.
EW: It has to feel meaningful. Meaning has always been really important.
AW: We even have little beachside songs. We’ve got songs that let you relax. They gotta be on an EP of their own. Vacation SKORTS. Some for rom-com movies, they totally exist. They need to get picked up for some rom-com.
MB: Just you all wait.
EW: That’s always felt really promising. I’ve heard people talk about writing music for themselves and questioning what kind of music it is. That’s a scary thing, when the not knowing has only pushed us more forward. It’s cool, we don’t know what’s happening, but these notes are coming to us.
AW: It’s so freeing. Never pigeonhole. We’re confused too.
★★★★★★★
MW: You made this album over a long period of time, whenever you could get into the studio. Some of the songs on it you’ve been playing for years. How did it come to be? How did you sequence it? What was the intention at the beginning versus during the making of the album?
CS: Fuck, that’s a heavy question.
AW: The album encompasses who we have been and who we are. We wanted a collection of everything we’ve created up to this point so that when you look it up, you can listen from start to finish and think, This is what they’ve made. We don’t want to do it the same way again. Now we know what not to do and how to be more efficient. It felt like pulling teeth at the end, and we had a team of people around us telling us to wait. We thought, Everyone’s gonna forget about us. They’re gonna be confused. But there’s no right or wrong way to do it. We keep telling ourselves that. It’s just art. Just wait another day – there’ll be more art.
EW: When it started feeling like something real, something with legs, we thought, We should have an album. Some songs, like “Steal the Night,” we played at our first show ever. That song deserved to be on the album, even though it was part of our early days. The album marks our first few years as a band. Some songs were there from the beginning, others came later, like “Lace” and “Anyone.” This is the bookmark. We wanted to honor all the songs so far before moving on to the next ones. We’ve had the album recorded and mastered for a while, it just took time to get the ducks in a row.
AW: We wanted people to be able to look back on these songs. I like collections of things. My mom did a great job archiving my early life, with photos and memories. That’s what we’re doing here: creating a collection of what we were. No one else decides how we do that. We don’t have a big team; every decision is ours, and every one is a new one. We’re taking time to put our little baby out into the world on the nicest little tricycle. We waited so long. Now we have people who actually want to have our backs for this first album. Waiting, in the end, made it stronger.
MW: And it comes out on Friday (Halloween).
CS: About goddamn time.
★★★★★★★
MW: What’s the significance of the cover?
AW: The duality, the Gemini … Shells have always been a huge part of my life, now all of ours together.
MW: Where are you from?
AW: Florida.
MW: I noticed that you were selling shell necklaces as merch at the Silver show.
AW: Yes. Pearls are in, always. I actually had a few sex dreams about fucking a shell.
[Laughs]
AW: It was extremely realistic. Yeah, I was fucking the shell. Then, in the same week, a client gave me a bunch of shells. And then I met this artist prophet who paints esoteric images, like of eagles, naked bodies, shells, pyramids. He gave me his card. It had a shell between a man and a woman. He said the shell is the change, the vessel, and the eagle is revolution. And I thought, yeah, that makes sense. The change.
MW: This all happened in one week?
AW: Yeah, it was a tight span. I was really into pearls, too.
EW: June. Gemini. Pearl!
MW: It’s a beautiful story. Who made the album art?
EW: A friend of mine, Celina Carney. She makes incredible clothes, art, and designs. We work together as house painters. She has so many artistic skills, and graphic design is one of them. I was almost afraid to ask her because she’s one of those people who gives 1,000% to everything, and I didn’t want to overload her. But we reached a point where we knew she was the one. She and Alli hadn’t met much before, but I knew their aesthetics aligned. They’re both very considerate people who really have a lot of connection to the aesthetics they’re into. We wanted something collage-like. Early versions were busy, but she gave us so many ideas. We pared it down to focus on the core elements. Alli was the one who said, I want us to be naked in a pearl.
AW: Clothes never make sense. They never have. Especially in photography, I’ve always thought the body is beautiful. We wanted to look like polished pearls, so we painted our bodies pearlescent white. We could’ve used Photoshop, but we were like, No, we’re gonna do this. We were going to do it in a shell, but it ended up being a dragon jade bowl shaped like a shell. The colors spoke to us. Around that same time, my friend had a dream where I was a dragon. So it all tied together. Jade gives good fortune, so it’s good to have it on the album.
EW: And Alli’s a jeweler. An insanely talented jeweler who knows all about the power of stones.
MW: A beadsmith. I want some jewelry.
EW: Celina also hand-drew the logo and typography. She gave us ten versions. She’s an exquisite artist.
★★★★★★★
“Burden”
MW: None of the recent articles I came across really talked about the album’s songs. Let’s fix that. Let’s go track by track. I’ll give you my two cents, and you can tell me the stories. So, number one – “Burden.” I read that you almost scrapped it. It’s the opener and has a video. I dig it. Why almost scrap it? And throughout the album, I noticed a lot of lyrical repetition. Lots of proclamations, fewer questions.
CS: “Burden” just got pushed down the queue. We had other songs we understood better.
EW: It was weird live. We put it on SoundCloud. It felt done until we started recording it again.
AW: Teddy, our producer, saved it. He said, This is weird, it’s cool, and we can work with this. I was like, This one’s hard for me to play. It’s a bizarre song. It’s hard to keep in tune live. I had to figure out tricky ways to make it work. Because of that, it got put on the back burner. But Teddy saw what made it special, and we leaned into it.
EW: Recording it with him added this new dancey energy. This new bubbling we were excited about.
AW: Yeah, and the harmonies really came alive. I had such a fun day with the harmonies. They were always there. They made the old recording cool, too. It lived in a bizarre world, which made it very precious to us.
MW: The lyrics – stone, glass, wax – what do they mean?
AW: It’s the visual world in my brain when I was writing it. I was seeing it and saying it – I saw faces under water; eyes beneath my feet. I know that’s really weird to say. I was experimenting with guitar, trying to play better by doing less. That song was really doing it for me. I was doing it in drop C, and everything sounds better for me in drop C. I was feeling like I was pushing things away. Having the heaviness of “burden” around was the formulation for getting it out. The visual world in my brain happens first, then I form words that fit. I mumble until the vowels feel right. How can I make this make sense, and use creative language to seal the story together? The goal is to make it sound good. Can it inspire you to see something too? It’s almost obvious when we start writing something what it’s about. Just sometimes the lyrics aren’t there yet. So I think, how do we get it there?
MW: Did the majority of these songs start with music or lyrics?
AW: I collect words that sound good. I write lists I keep for later, but the song usually arrives musically first. The melody is more important to us for writing. Then we fit words that match the vibe. Lyrics seal the story, fill in the gaps. The story’s told even before words exist. I do what I can to push it the rest of the way without getting too distracted with it; too much fluff, too much dependence on something, maybe a word that feels too common in my vocabulary. I want to stretch myself, get creative with it. Not being scared of those words that are my favorites, but also wanting to introduce something new.
★★★★★★★
“Bodies”
MW: It’s a fan favorite. I love the single cover art. I read that it started with your riff, Char. It was your warm-up riff.
CS: I wrote the main, intro riff. Alli had the vocal melody for the chorus. We just transposed the chords to fit that riff. The vulnerability in the lyrics comes from Alli. The riff sounds like a synth; it was always meant to sound like a synth. A lot of people think it’s bass, but it’s guitar put through a filter pedal, put through a fuzz pedal, and then you get through a synth.
AW: The song’s about me and Char, and how he denied me coming into his apartment. I couldn’t convince Char to let me into his apartment to fuck him.
CS: I just wanted to write a riff.
[Laughs]
AW: It was the beginning of a love interest.
MW: Wait, are y’all dating? You rejected her?
CS: Yeah. That’s right, ladies.
[Laughs]
AW: I was less scared about dating a bandmate. Because I’ve made mistakes in the past. [Laughs] My mom said, When you move to New York, you keep things business.
CS: I know better. Alli doesn’t.
AW: Not in this lifetime. [Laughs.] I like to play it risque by dating my bandmate. But now it’s pretty foolproof. We’re solid.
EW: Mom and dad! Stop embarrassing me! I have to deal with this all the time.
MB: How long did you guys hide it from Emma?
AW: We never did. You were away, and I told you.
EW: I was away.
CS: Emma’s out of town for the weekend.
[Laughs.]
EW: Alli kept me abreast.
AW: I always did. I can’t keep a secret for my life.
CS: Do we really wanna tell people that’s what the song is about?
AW: What do you mean? It is. It’s my lyrics. It’s our song. And the lyrics are about you.
MW: I can send y’all anything you want me to cut later. I’m very transparent.
AW: Same. That’s why I’m like, Sure, I don’t care!
CS: I want everyone to think “Bodies” is about them.
EW: Yeah, actually, “Bodies” is about you, listeners.
AW: This is the one song that I can say was written with that in mind, for me. It’s for couples all over the world. Use it as your ringtone for your own relationships.
EW: It’s that vulnerability of letting someone in.
AW: Yas! It’s those beginning feelings of not knowing how much you can ask for from someone. It’s wanting more emotional …
EW: It’s wanting to be more than just being bodies in the bed together. It’s all in the lyrics.
AW: They’re for anybody.
EW: They’re pretty clear, and people can connect to them. Alli’s very good at transmuting feeling into word and melody. … I have a cool vantage point. I contribute to the songs in a lot of ways, but there’s so much of it that I’m not a part of, that I get to be a listener too. Whenever I listen to “Bodies” and “R4DR4M,” they still give me chills. Seeing the melody and the lyrics that Allie puts to these songs always really moves me.
AW: She’s like a hawk. She flies above us all.
EW: I’m inside, outside. I’m a Gemini. Hahaha.
★★★★★★★
“R4DR4M”
MW: I wrote down, funny enough, before I realized y’all have covered Heart in a show before, that the song gives Heart. It has a little ’80s, a little groove to it. And I have bad hearing, so I couldn’t make it out, but there’s a part in it where you’re talking. What are you saying?
AW: You’re not supposed to know.
CS: It’s supposed to be an Audible.
EW: It’s a secret.
CS: You had a poem.
EW: We read a bunch of different shit. We even said some shit in French because we had this section of the song that live is always …
CS: A dance break.
EW: And then Teddy was like, No, it has to have something. We tried guitar solos, viola, and vocal parts, and we weren’t all collectively feeling happy with it. Towards the end, someone had the idea …
EW: It was me! One of my favorite songs ever is “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” by Elvis Presley. And there’s this part where it breaks down, and he just starts monologuing. I had the idea: what if there’s a monologue there? We didn’t have particular words that were important, so we read a bunch of stuff that night, and then Teddy worked with it. That’s a testament to how fun it is working with Teddy. He has very strong convictions about what he thinks is right and wrong, but he’s also like, You tell me if I’m wrong. These are your songs.
MW: I love those flares in songs. I always reference SZA’s Ctrl and how she included all those little voicemail messages throughout.
EW: That was a special thing of doing recorded stuff for the first time, or a full album. We went back and forth on even if that last song would be in there, or if that transition would be in there. It felt really, really special to keep that in there.
MW: Going back to what you said earlier, Alli, you have a vision in your head of what the song is. A movie. I so relate to that. I’ll listen to songs and make up a movie scene in my head. You said that for “R4DR4M,” the visual for you was Davey Jones.
AW: Davey Jones! It’s a weird, dead world whenever we go into the chorus.
CS: Like a ship in the middle of a desert.
AW: It felt like a strange liminal space where there’s no day and night, no water or land. It had so many feelings of where the mind goes when you’re in a state of, I must escape a situation. That feeling of, when you see a lot of exes and that massive decision of, What was that catalyst to make me break from that; that person, that thing? Where did I need to go to get out of there?
★★★★★★★
“Eat Your Heart Out”
MW: You said it was about incels dating AI bots and the weaponization of fear. That’s loaded. And this is the song that says incompletement. I thought this one was pretty poppy. This song is leaning more ’90s, has more of those proclamations, assertions, which I love about your songwriting. This is how it is, and this is how I’m gonna run with it.
AW: I was on the plane, and it hit me: It’s about the bots. I’m on a flight from Florida, and I thought of that terrifying AI friend ad thing on the subway, where people are going to start befriending or sexualizing them. All these incels will finally get their woman; it’ll be these AI robots. It’s a disgusting vision of the future. You’re just a woman, walking through life, and you run into dudes where you’re like, that’s an incel, fuck that guy. And then you’re like, they’re gonna get a really good bot.
CS: The best bot ever, and they don’t even deserve it.
AW: This is my hate song. It’s a little sassy flare. I’m trying to embody that: Eat your heart out, boy, have whatever piece you want of me. I am just a robot. Even the vocals go up to a fun, girlier, playful place. We had no problem pushing it forward and making it into a hyperspeed, or whatever. We had to change the key. We thought it was way too slow.
CS: It’s actually sped a step-and-a-half up.
EW: We wanted to do choreography with it, and knew it should be faster. And it felt true to the song that it would be that uncanny place of its really recorded, but slightly artificial. It’s in a key you can’t even really tune to. It’s slightly off.
AW: And that’s where we got the name of the album. We’re talking about the AI, referencing himself: She was made for incompletement.
EW: I thought you had said incompletement. But you really said incomplete men. I was going to type up the lyrics when we were working on the music video to give to the dancers, because they were going to sing along and stuff. Then it had the red squiggle line under it. When we talked about it, we thought incompletement was cooler, and then we learned that it wasn’t actually a real word.
CS: Incomplete men was a working lyric at the time: She was made for incomplete men.
EW: I thought it was so on the nose, incomplete men. Incompletement was cool. It talks to both parties.
CS: They’re interchangeable, incomplete men versus incompletement.
AW: One is directed towards the guy, but then the other one is, the woman is incomplete, or the bot is incomplete, and then also the man is not complete by engaging with that. We were just thinking about the word and how beautiful that idea is, being in the state of incomplete. That is the state of art, and how it should remain. There will never be the song that ends art or the picture that ends art. Art is to go forever, and that feels right. It lets us be free to put this album out, and to keep making it. To embrace flux and change, and knowing that you are becoming, and that you’re never in your final form.
MW: I read y’all had said, to live and create in an ever-changing state of impermanence. Then I Googled impermanence, the state or fact of lasting for only a limited period of time. At first, I thought it was pretty bold that you were making up your own word. But these days, people are making up words all the time.
AW: We’re just recycling. It would serve us to keep making up new words.
CS: We’re also naming something. We’re not putting a word to something.
EW: It should be a word.
★★★★★★★
“Steal The Night”
MW: Is that the oldest one?
CS: It’s not the oldest one, but it’s one of the oldest.
EW: We played it at the first show.
AW: I had met you, Char, around Christmas. That was “Steal The Night” time. Char made it way better. It finally got its legs.
CS: That was one of the most serendipitous. Alli had it structurally; it was probably like 99% there, and it was just about tightening up the bolts on it.
MW: I read that it took three drummers in three rehearsal spaces to get it to reflect the dark theme.
AW: We needed it to hit.
EW: It’s always been the headbanger at the shows.
CS: It’s a heavy song, and you can’t do heavy if you’re not tight. The drums are the number one thing. We had our very first drummer try it, and it wasn’t it. And then I tried drumming on it, and everyone else was convinced of it, but I was like, It’s not as good as it can be. Then we had another Max, who drummed on some of the other songs on the record, try it. We’d been working with him; he’d been bringing so much to the drum parts of these songs. Everything else was recorded, though, and he played to the recorded part, whereas everything else came with me or Max playing drums, and then everyone adding to it. So that one was reverse-engineered, but with Max’s performance, we were like, Alright, that’s much better. We can go forward with that.
EW: He’s a killer. Total pro. He recorded with us on the album and really brought so many of these songs to life. But we were in the time of looking for a new, permanent drummer, and then we met new Max.
CS: And I play drums on the record, too.
★★★★★★★
“Lace”
MW: I love your softer side. You’ve never played it live. And this idea, about the rats, I took away from it that even rats deserve love and care.
AW: When the rats take over the city, dress them all in lace.
MW: I love the rats. I don’t like when I have to deal with them, though.
CS: How often do you have to deal with the rats?
MW: I was recently walking on the street with a friend, and one scampered over my foot.
AW: Did you punt it?
EW: I’ve had that happen one time.
AW: I actually punted one once.
EW: That line, as Alli was saying earlier, about how sounds and stuff come to her first, was based on what she was gibberishing. When we were demoing that song out, we lobbed a few ideas, and then with that one, we were all like, Yeah.
AW: I had written that lyric in Denver. When the rats take over the city, I always wanted to say that line, but I never imagined it would be, dress them all in lace, that would follow.
EW: We’ve talked before about there being grotesqueness and beauty on top of it; the bodiness of life and the beauty of life being side by side. That line has that.
AW: And reveling in that. You have to be twirling when shit’s on fire.
CS: To me, that’s what it means. When it gets really bad, you gotta smile. That lyric should be left extremely ambiguous. Let everyone else decipher their own meaning for it. Whether it’s political or literal rats.
MW: I viewed them as transplants or men. When the rats come into the city, be nice to them. Or no matter how mad I want to be at a guy, I’m gonna show them kindness.
AW: It’s a beautiful sentiment. I really like that one.
MB: Find your way to look at something ugly and appreciate it. It’s pretty now.
MW: I love that song. I would love to hear it live.
AW: I crave to sing it. It’s a shame not to.
CS: There will be a day we sing it live.
AW: We should do it pretty soon.
MW: I’ll be there.
★★★★★★★
“Dizzy”
MW: This non-traditional structure. I love this mischievous side. I wrote down the word hunting in my notes. You were out to kill with this one.
AW: This one is the indulgence in the bad part of you. This is me, bitch. And we’re gonna burn. And I’ve decided that’s okay, because that’s me, baby. It’s such an asshole side. That’s just the spirit of the song: This house is on fire. We say bitch, we say lie. I like to say bitch. It’s welcoming in the hellish parts of you, and inviting it in to play, in not exactly the best way, but in the way it happens.
CS: It’s a nice side of the album, to have that on there.
AW: It spirals out into a whimsical moment. And now we’re going elsewhere; now we’re in a bad bedtime story.
MW: That part feels like you’re summoning something. Like a seance. Putting a pentagram on the ground. With the podcast I work for, we went to a music festival this summer, and my boss interviewed the lead singer from Mannequin Pussy, Marisa. She was talking about how there’s nothing wrong with letting out that other side of you; there’s nothing wrong with anger. People tell you not to hide your feelings, so why would you hide those feelings? They’re just as valid as the rest of them.
CS: That’s how I feel.
AW: When pushing out all those feelings, especially when you direct those dark feelings to art and music, that’s where people can sit and take it in and be like, This isn’t harming anybody by doing this, and you’re getting that rage out. I’m not at a gas station ripping someone’s head off; I’m on stage, and people are seeing this as a performance. To have an outlet is a privilege, and I hope that everyone can find theirs. Those dark sides, you should greet and love them, definitely as much as you are trying to love the good sides, because it does not come without those. It feels good to have a song that’s as spastic as those sides feel, because when you’re making those decisions, it’s coming out as erratic feelings.
CS: It’s frantic.
★★★★★★★
“I Won’t Be The One”
MW: This one reminds me of Torture and The Desert Spiders.
CS: This is one of the first songs we ever wrote. It was another one that took the studio refinement to get it in a place, and getting a drummer who could make it happen live.
MW: This one’s my favorite.
AW: It’s one of those melodies that whenever it came to me, just strumming on the guitar, it had so many feels. It was so easy. There’s something about it that feels so good.
CS: It’s four chords the whole song.
MW: I love that it’s the second-to-last track. It’s a hard B-side.
CS: I think it will be the favorite. I’ve been saying that for a long time. It’s my favorite. It was serendipitous how it all came together – Alli wrote it back in Denver, the chords, and then when recording it, it was two vocal takes, and that was it. It’s got a lot of heart. The fact that you can have an almost seven-minute song with four chords the whole song, and it grips you that much, is a testament to the power of it. I wish we were putting more focus on that song.
★★★★★★★
“Anyone”
MW: Slow, sooting, glittering. I love this idea that the people you meet, you might’ve met before.
AW: It’s seeing yourself in everything, and seeing everybody in you. That feeling of swapping faces and bodies, and we could be any of them. Seeing that oneness in everyone around you, it can be really beautiful. Everlasting. There is no death. Cyclical. That feeling of coming back. Reincarnation is the thought. We don’t talk about it, but we all definitely know we’re coming back.
MW: I think so.
MB: Does that mean you ever left?
AW: I always felt like I was talking about the funeral for the first lyrics, and then that sent the song on its way. This beautiful send-off, realization that you are everyone, everyone is you.
★★★★★★★