It’s been a hell of a year for US indie duo Boyish – made up of singer India Shore and guitarist Claire Altendahl – since the release of their latest EP ‘My Friend Mica’ in May last year. From multiple support slots, festival appearances and even a New Year’s Eve gig in the Big Apple, to their first ever tour in the UK and their debut headline tour awaiting. We recently caught up with the two friends in Brighton to chat about all things new music, their move to Los Angeles, their ideas on Marmite and feeling like a Barbie in the City of Angels.
GEM: What has life been like for you since the release of your EP ‘My Friend Mica’?
India: What’s happened? We were on tour when we dropped the EP, with Remo Drive, which was our first tour ever. And then we spent the summer in New York, but in August we moved to Los Angeles. We played a couple of festivals in the summer, which were really fun, and started writing our new EP at the end of the year and have been working on it for most of this year. We’ve recently dropped some new music and now we’ve been on this tour with Rachel Chinouriri. And there’s some more new music coming very soon.
GEM : How do you feel about ‘My Friend Mica’ now looking back at it?
Claire: It holds such a special place in my heart, it’s all about the end of that time period in New York and saying goodbye to all our friends too. It’s been really scary to enter a new era in such a short amount of time. I feel like I had a really hard time letting go, probably because of the move. But we’ve been doing a lot of fun writing new music, honestly, it’s been really cool to get back into it after we took a little bit of a break after touring and the move. We’re collaborating with new people for the first time ever, really. So that’s been really fun for the new stuff.
GEM: How has it been to enter this new era of your career in Los Angeles?
Claire: When we moved to LA, it was, “Okay, we’re actually going to do this”. There was no other safety net because New York had so many of our friends and family there, so it was really comfortable and safe. But we got to see what the scene is in LA and it would’ve been stupid if we didn’t check it out. But I feel like we’ve both been feeling the effects of losing that safety net and we kind of all spiralled. I think that changed our music a lot and things got a lot darker and a lot heavier in a way, same with our visuals. We wanted to hit the ground running that way.
GEM: Why LA?
India: Our manager Nicole got a job out there and we had sort of been contemplating it anyway. Like, every person making indie music is there, and we felt like to grow in a substantial way, maybe this is one of the ways to do it. But the main reason was that we felt very comfortable, so maybe it was time to push ourselves out of our comfort zone a little bit.
GEM: Has your process changed in any way since your move?
India: Every project we’ve ever released, we’ve produced ourselves, which I love. But now there’s a lot of pressure to collaborate and work with producers. We’re very curious and want to see what it’s like to work with other people, and it’s definitely a learning experience. I think with our first couple of sessions, we came extremely unprepared. It feels a bit like speed-dating, you just sit in a room and see if you can make something. But this is the first time we’ve ever worked with other people. And when it goes well, it’s actually amazing. Someone brings something to the table that you could have never thought of on your own, which has been a huge learning experience for me because I’ve been such a control freak about our music for our whole career so far.
GEM: Does that mean there’s another EP in the works?
Claire: Yeah, there’s hopefully one more EP and then an album coming up. We’ve basically been working on both at the same time, seeing what will work for an EP, what wouldn’t necessarily work and what would be best for an album.
India: It’s really interesting because an EP is a selection of your best song, you put your best foot forward. But an album gives you a little more room to experiment and sort of be like, “Here’s my slow, sad song”, you know?
GEM: How has the tour in the UK been for you?
Claire: This was my first time ever in the UK and out of North America. We landed in Bristol at like seven in the morning, and as we were coming down, I saw these fields of sheep frolicking around. I could’ve cried, it was so beautiful. We’ve tried some weird food choices, like Marmite, which was a tough one.
India: I really like how things in the UK feel more environmentally friendly. There’s a lot of public transportation, the cars seem to be smaller, and they’re not like gas guzzlers. And even, this is so dumb, but the toilets have two different flush options. And also, the power switches. It feels like someone cares.
GEM: I know you’ve got your first headline tour coming up in the US. And I have to ask, why is it called ‘Bimbos On Tour’?
Claire: When we go on tour, we get like, empty brain. Literally, we tried to get from Canada back into the US on our last tour and absolutely flunked at Border Patrol. They were asking us which one of us was Claire and India was like, “It’s me”. And I’m sweating like, then who am I? You know? So that’s why it’s ‘Bimbos On Tour’. We just lose every brain cell.
GEM: What’s the story behind your new song ‘Is This A Breakdown, Baby’?
India: I think we manifested that one. It started off as a joke because it’s such a stupid chorus. And then while we were trying to finish it, we actually had a full-on breakdown. So, it literally just came to be true. It was the craziest experience I’ve ever had finishing a song. But yeah, the idea was, how do we turn this into something like fun and poppy, so it doesn’t feel so serious. And that was our best attempt. I mean, the song is great. But it nearly broke us.
GEM: Is the track ‘Girls Are Mean’ about external pressure on young girls?
India: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t think we wrote it with that in mind that, like, oh, society expects us to look a certain way. You’re not the first person to have said that at all.
Claire: I think the “I feel so pretty and plastic and worthless” came from one of our, who got a convertible first thing when they moved to LA. And I had to drive it home one night and I was on the LA freeway, and thought, “This feels so fake. I don’t feel alive. I just feel like a Barbie”. I was like, “What am I doing here?” I guess that song is a lot about LA and just dealing with change and feeling like you’re always wrong in a way. It started as a bunch of lyrics on the notes app and then literally wrote itself over the course of a couple of little by little.
GEM: Is that your usual process of writing a song?
Claire: It’s interesting because I find so many times when I’m writing musically, my mind isn’t there lyrically. And I have to be in one mindset or the other. It used to never really be like that for me. But I feel like lyrically, we’ve gotten a lot stronger over the years. And then it split. When I first started writing songs, I would always think about the complete song and the melodies, but I just write down whatever intense thoughts I have and pair it up later. But I really struggle with running courses. I love to write verses, but India is really good at writing choruses. I’ll go into a full spiral about how to say specific things, and then India will come in like, “Why don’t you just say this?” and it always nails it perfectly.
GEM: Have you had any songs that have had a specific impact on you while you were making them?
Claire: This new EP we’re working on has been the most of that for me. I feel like we go a lot into dealing with people with addiction in their lives, and that I think has really brought up a lot of my shit. Some of these have been hard to work on in that way and have gotten me into a really dark place. But this is the first time I’ve been able to process things.
India: I think it makes things really heavy in a way that I don’t know if we always want to go in that direction. We’re always trying to balance this heaviness and lightness and it’s both fun and difficult.
Claire: I think ‘Legs’ would be one now that is hard to play live because it’s about leaving New York. It’s about leaving the people you love and whenever I play that one live, I just feel it. I miss home, I miss those people.
GEM: When you release a song like that, is it a cathartic experience?
Claire: It’s weird. I feel like when we first release something, I hate it. Because I’ve listened to it so much, especially when we’re recording and producing it ourselves. It always makes me go, “shit, shit, it’s shit”. Like, I fucking hate it. And then about six months later, they come around again and take up such a special place in my heart, like with ‘My Friend Mica’. I feel like that’s happening with this EP, like when we released ‘Girls Are Mean’, and when I listen to it now, I still feel everything we’ve put into it.
GEM: Do you listen to your own music once it’s out in the world?
India: I like to go back to it because it feels like a scrapbook of the past five years of our lives since we started releasing music as Boyish. It’s really sweet to see everything we’ve accomplished and how far we’ve come. How much life has changed in so many ways from this music that we hadn’t even put out back then did for us. I love it.
Written by Laura Weingrill
GEM Magazine 