I read that you handle a lot of the work that comes with being musicians yourselves: making your own artwork, music videos, recording your own music. Do you ever get overwhelmed? If so, how do you deal with that?
Luna: If I ever feel stressed about something I’m making or it’s not fun in that moment, I’ll just let myself stop and go work on something else. It sounds wrong but the more I have to work on the less overwhelmed I’ll get, like if I ever feel stuck on a recording, I can go print tapes, make visual art or help with someone else’s project to clear my head. I also have a problem where I’ll have YouTube videos or like Twin Peaks just playing in the background while I'm mixing/recording or whatever it is. I think it helps me focus ‘cause I’ll end up disappearing days working on stuff that way, just letting myself get lost in a soup of active distraction. Truthfully, when I was younger, I heard Basquiat would watch TV while painting, so I must’ve just ran with that.
Ash: Of course, it can be stressful to manage everything, but my overwhelm often comes from the state of the world, or making ends meet, rather than any of that stuff. I love making; world-building, infinite reflective pools of ideas. We are working within financial limitations and time constraints, always. But we do have a huge community of people supporting us. They help keep me focused and grounded!
Talk to us about the title of your new album, come back down. What, or where, are you coming back down from?
Ash: It holds a few different meanings for me. In a sense, the abstract world of creating can completely absorb me, in another, I have a tendency to daydream—either way it feels like an intense high to come back down from. It’s kind of a bittersweet feeling to return to reality. On the one hand it feels good to be aware of what’s going on around me, reflect and process and keep my feet on the ground, but at the same time I’m constantly at odds with my own escapism—there’s a grey area, I feel overly aware of this dichotomy of like, wistful, hopeful, idealistic child-self propelling me, and this grounded, stable, even wary sense of realism holding me accountable.
Luna: What goes up must come down.
What have you been reading lately? Anything that has been inspiring your approach to songwriting/lyrics?
Ash: While I was writing lyrics on come back down, we were starting to tour more, which is really when I get the most time to read. I read The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende, and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Magical realism and the way that symbols and metaphors are like metaphysical symbols is super inspiring to me. Sean [Celltower, drummer in total wife] lent me Patti Smith’s autobiography, which was a cool book to read while traveling, that and beat poetry is really inspiring to read or listen to—Kerouac or Ginsberg.
How did you link up with Julia’s War? How do you feel like you fit on that label?
Luna: About two-and-a-half years ago, I started playing in Melaina Kol, who I think had been on Julia’s War since around when Doug started the label. We did a joint tour together in 2023, which was also the first time I had ever been on tour. Doug booked us a few of those shows and, since then, has always been super helpful whenever we come up through Philly, whether it’s setting it all up, housing us or whatever. Super grateful for that. It also meant a lot that he hyped us up when we asked if he might want to put out a record.
This is our seventh full-length after just completely unannounced drops for years under this project name. We usually have another album almost done by the time we release another, and I think by this point it felt like we should maybe chill for a second instead of randomly uploading it to Distrokid as soon as it was mastered. Julia’s War has been putting out an insane variety of experimental music for years now and I love how they’ve cultivated a unique world from the ground up. We’ve always been focused on experimentation, hyper mixed-media and world-building so it felt like a perfect fit.
