FOXES Magazine Issue #7

MASTHEAD

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Julian de la Celle

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Tina de la Celle

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS Jon Rizzo

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Halfdan Venlov Zac Mahrouche Alexis Gross Joshua Spencer

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dan Pare

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SPECIAL THANKS James Parish @ Prescription PR Joanie Eaton @ Mexican Summer Ben Hathaway @ BHP Global Jamie Woolgar @ Rough Trade Records Greg Jakubik @ Shore Fire Mia Kirby @ InnerGame Mgmt

If you’re looking to collaborate with us on future content, reach out to us at info@foxesmagazine.com with any inquiries.

ICEAGE Denmark’s Post-Punk Revolutionaries

PHOTOGRAPHY HALFDAN VENLOV WORDS JULIAN DE LA CELLE

“W

ay the fuck out” in the outskirts of Copenhagen on a rainy Sunday evening, Elias Bender Rønnenfelt and I chat via Zoom just a few days after the release of Iceage’s new record Seek Shelter via Mexican Summer. It seems fitting, the theme of water being present in many of the album’s tracks. The Danish post-punkers fifth studio album seems to be a culmination of the band’s growth and bond over the last decade together. They’ve strayed away from their debut album New Brigade’s chaotic Neubauten noise style, replacing it with a controlled chaos that seems infused with more of a Sticky Fingers-era Stones, most notably on “Shelter Song”.

They’re a band that’s consistently getting better with each new record, but more than that they’re fine-tuning their sound which is and always has been uniquely their own.

Seek Shelter sees the addition of a fifth member, Casper Morilla Fernandez, and also marks the first time Iceage have brought in outside influence in the form of producer Peter Kember aka Sonic Boom, formerly of Spacemen 3. As much as it may seem like an album recorded during the pandemic, with many of the lyrics and the title seemingly predicting what was to come, the album was recorded in Lisbon at Namouche, an old radio studio, and finished in November of 2019.

Elias seems a far cry away from the man many journalists might have dreaded speaking to in the past.

The band were infamous for hating interviews and journalists in particular, but now fresh off a new record that feels like a new layer of the onion for the band, Elias himself seems more clear, kind and quite funny as we spoke with Elias about expression through songwriting, the band’s transformation from post-punk noise to Stones-like musicianship and the hopeful return to getting back to playing live, something Iceage have been known for since their inception. * * *

Have you been in Copenhagen pretty much this whole year, this whole pandemic time?

Yeah. I had a brief venture in the summer, back when the borders of Europe were sort of free to roam around and a second wave hadn’t hit yet, where we fucked about in France and in Germany. But ever since August, I haven’t been outside the city limits of Copenhagen.

How does it feel to have the record finally out in the world after sitting on it for so long?

It’s good, like it’s… exactly that, sitting on it, it feels like you’re a bit of a mother bird that’s been sitting on an egg ready to crack, and you’re fearing that it was going to rot underneath you.

Now it [feels] like you can let your arms go. The thing, or the entity, will live outside in the world and people can use it as they please. Then it’s not my responsibility anymore, in a sense… Oh shit, it just started raining.

Oh man, can you seek shelter?

I’m under a tiny, tiny bit of shelter here, so I’ll keep dry. Just about. There’s loud music going on inside and I don’t think we could conduct the interview in there.

When you finish a record, are you the type of person that wants to start on the next one right away, or do you usually take a breather between records?

Well, I feel like you put the finishing touches on an album, or whatever it is, and then you have a brief moment of trying to understand what you just did. And what you just did is kind of saturated in what you just felt, but you’ve been inside the process, you’ve been seeing it from a [certain] perspective, and it’s hard to have a clue of what you do as you’re doing it. So there is that brief, kind of relief of trying to understand “Okay, what did we just put out into the world?” And then you [feel] that until dissatisfaction kicks in or at least fear of dissatisfaction will kick in.

[It’s been] many, many months ago since I deleted this album off my computer just because I didn’t want it to be mine, or ours. At the time of release, I wanted to feel happy about it, so I had to distance myself from it because I know that that’s a pattern. It is only a matter of time before I grow dissatisfied with a product and, you know, that’s part of the spark which ignites whatever comes next. I thrive on dissatisfaction. In a sense, it would be a nightmare to be content with something you did. If I was truly content with something, then that wouldn’t be much of a reason to create, to keep going.

Well, that’s interesting because that’s sort of how I feel with a lot of your records. >>

>> Do you feel that’s just human growth or perhaps an instinctual need to make the new thing better than the last thing you created?

Well, I think both, but human growth for sure. I don’t even know if you can call it growth. It’s more just that life goes on. It takes you places, and you’re set with a new array of joys or of problems that you have to deal with. My mind is very much geared in a way that whatever shit I go through, it wants to make it into song format because it’s the only way I know how to make the clutter that is life into something tangible that sort of makes sense. Often I find that you start writing without any clear trajectory of where you wanted to go, you end up writing because you need to know where you’re at.

Does it feel like therapy in a way, to get your thoughts out onto paper?

Ahh… I’ve never been to therapy, but I’m sure if I did, there would be a few things to unpack there, but I don’t have enough experience with therapy to speak on that kind of thing.

There are so many really beautifully written lyrics on this record that feel perhaps a little deeper than past records, a bit more raw to your actual life. Does it sometimes feel strange to open yourself up in such a public way?

Well, yes and no. I think songs are a special thing and if any real life has emerged into a song than that’s more like an ode than it is putting yourself out there or exploiting your personal life, it’s actually kind of a tribute.

Did you find it difficult when you started songwriting? Has it been something that has gotten progressively easier for you or are there always kind of moments of difficulty or writer’s block?

It’s never really gotten easier, but you do become more aware, I would say. I’ve done a fair few albums, and you sense a circle. First you head into it with no sense of understanding of what you’re doing whatsoever. And then you see this pattern that actually these songs, these albums become a sort of summary of what led up to that. Even things that weren’t clear in your mind that you were about to reveal, it gets in there, it all gets in there. In a sense, it’s like making soup out of your life and then once you cooked a good bowl of soup you have to go...

...scavenge for ingredients again.

Why bring in a producer this time, Peter Kember, whereas you hadn’t in the past?

It was just that we were about to record this album, and we were trying to figure out the where’s and why’s and how’s and all that. In the past, we’ve been quite non-interested in bringing in outside forces because we never needed any hot shot producer to come in and tell us what to do or have an overall vision with this thing that you sweat and you bleed for, and then you get one shot of heading into the studio and then it’s going to be forever. So all that shit that you worked for there’s only one chance before it becomes somewhat eternal. Bringing out external influence, that just seemed like kind of a mad gamble.

But, Peter, he had said in an interview that he wanted to work with us, and we were huge fans of Spaceman 3, since we were teenagers. His sonic thumbprint seemed like something that could be interesting or lend itself nicely to what we were doing. I was quite nervous heading into the studio with him because I didn’t know if I was going to like the guy. I admire the guy, but I didn’t know if we were going to get along, or if we were going to have an uphill battle with the whole thing or that it would be sort of natural and the latter proved to be true. I think he knew not to go in and take the position of a captain, but rather just like a peer among the ship and just lent his being to the process and everything kind of fell naturally, like he was just another mind that was there to contribute.

“Vendetta” is such a different song than anything that you guys have put out before. It’s become quickly one of my favorite songs, especially driving around L.A. Do you have any particular memories of recording that song or writing that song that stick out?

I mean, not so much besides the fact that I had been lent my little sister’s keyboard, this plastic toy, and it had one of those built-in rhythms that was called “Dance Music Number 1” or whatever. You can change the tempos, and so I took the dance beat down and that became the sketch for the song. I wanted to write a song called “Vendetta”, and then I kind of worked backwards from there. Growing up in Copenhagen or traveling the world or whatever... >>

“ ItIt is only a matter

of of time time before before II grow grow dissatisfied dissatisfied with a product product and... and... that’s that’s part part of of the the spark spark which which ignites ignites whatever whatever comes comes next. next. II thrive thrive on on dissatisfaction. dissatisfaction.

”

Elias Bender Rønnenfelt

>> ...it just seems like, and perhaps this has to do with the kind of people that we are, I don’t know, but it seems like you’re never that far away from crime. I just wanted to speak on the notion of crime and I find it to be interesting to melt this baggy sort of groove that was somewhat danceable with this rarely spoken about notion that that crime is an omnipotent thing.

The video is great too. I actually wasn’t familiar with Zlatko Burić.

You never watched The Punisher?

No, I never have.

You should watch it if you want to know what crime life was like in Copenhagen in the late 90s, going into the first decade of the 2000s. That’s a pretty accurate depiction. We’re bringing him back again as an angel in our next video.

Speaking of, does the city of Copenhagen ever inspire you to write music?

I mean, subconsciously so, perhaps, but I don’t know. The last 10 years of my life has been a whirlwind of being on the move. It’s not until Covid that I actually have really substantially been here.

I don’t know if the feeling of walking in the streets of Copenhagen really inspires anything, but you have human connection and everything that goes with it that might bleed into the songs and I think if I had grown up in some other city somewhere else, here’s no chance of things having happened the way they did. So we’re shaped by Copenhagen, for sure, but I can’t speak to how exactly.

You guys have such an electric, unpredictable live presence, it must be so strange to have not played live for so long, especially having a new record out.

We played two shows in Copenhagen, but it was one third of the capacity and people sitting down and stuff. The fact that that was the first show was a bit odd. Like if you were treading into familiar waters, but you didn’t know how to swim anymore. Then the second show was quite glorious, it was like, “OK, that that’s why we did it in the first place.” Coming back out of the second quarantine and only returning to half measures is definitely better than nothing, of course. But it’s not like the grand release that you had hoped for.

Was there ever another path for you aside from music? Had you ever thought of doing anything else?

No, like, prior to the band exploding, I was a high school dropout. I had nothing to aspire to. I always hated school and I didn’t even aspire to be a musician, really. You could say that I just completely stumbled into it. I think that music was one of the few things that could be a vehicle in Copenhagen at the time to create some commotion and to express yourself and create community. Nobody else was really making music that spoke to us, not in Denmark, not anywhere. It’s like when no one is giving you anything that really feels like it reverberates with you, you’re forced to create it yourself, in a sense. We had no ambition with it. We wanted it to be something that could create a ruckus amongst our immediate underground circles in Copenhagen, but I had no idea what Pitchfork or the music industry or anything was, I wasn’t interested in that. So when we could suddenly tour the world, and we started getting attention, it wasn’t a world that we searched for. I found that songwriting was the only thing that makes sense out of life. The only thing to be, at least most of the time, seemingly providing you with your real sense of purpose and a real sense of survival. So I guess I was lucky that I fell into this.

OUTER stella overdrive London’s last ray of concious sunshine

PHOTOGRAPHY ZAC MAHROUCHE WORDS DAN PARE

M

y wizened critics’ heart contorted with cynicism upon hearing the news of Outer Stella Overdrive’s existence. A band featuring Raff Law and Rudy Albarn?

Was there really a need in this world for another group elevated to false heights by the tendrils of nepotism? Upon listening, however, I soon realised the reason so many hold such intense distrust of music writers like myself.

Blending the chaotic rollicking of an early Libertines with a humour-flecked Britpop pulse, the band are disarmingly brilliant in their commitment to high-octane anthems created first to make you move, but then to make you think. What strikes is the fevered energy of the group - as with their music, the interview took on almost shambolic form, with band members riffing and bouncing off one another as their individual personalities melt into a collective consciousness.

Having released their debut EP Clout & Self Doubt earlier this year to fervent response, the band have been holed away in the depths of London, navigating restructured acoustic writing formulas and non-existent rehearsal time to craft their next offering. If their first was the sound of a band experimenting and finding their feet in the world, the rough diamond nature of the group seems to be in the process of polishing. They are a band with big ambitions and bigger tunes - and in a world like this, a world of post-punk monologuing and math-y self-indulgence, we all need a dose of the conscious sunshine offered by OSO to keep the hatred away.

We caught up with Raff, Rudy, Kelvin, and Amin to discuss finding their sound, aesthetic sensibility, and the importance of not taking yourself too seriously. * * *

There’s a sense of innocent joy to your tunes that’s almost Britpop-reminiscent, and quite refreshing given the state of the world at the moment. Is that something you consciously tried to do? Or just the natural form your work took?

RAFF: I wouldn’t say that’s something we set out to do, we’ve been on quite a journey in the two years we’ve been a four-piece. In my late teens or early twenties I loved the heavier rock and grunge, and I wanted to write angry music - but I’ve realised that I’m actually just a happy person, and now I just want to make music that people can vibe to, and there is that innocence. We’re not trying to be cool or controversial, just have fun.

Having said that, it is a balance between having these really upbeat, energetic songs, but also being on more meaningful ground lyrically.

KELVIN: At the end of the day we’re just trying to make good music and not overthink it. I completely agree with what Raff says, we’re loving guys and want to put that in our music, but it’s just whatever comes to us, we love the journey and the development so the music is always going to evolve. We’ve found our sound, and stuff has clicked - we now have the freedom to go outside the box and experiment a bit more without watching people around us. It’s not like we don’t appreciate the stuff around us, we just want to bring it to the forefront, get people excited about bands again, revamp the whole energy.

Looking at your music videos and cover artwork, you have quite a consistent aesthetic to it all. How important is the visual and stylistic side to your work?

KELVIN: It’s important because we want our fans and our people to come to our shows and feel part of a family, part of the movement. A lot of people will go to shows on their own, and if they see other people dressed like them jumping about, they’ll feel included and get involved. We want to show people our world, our vibe, and make everyone happy, y’know?

RAFF: I think nowadays visuals are so important, with people’s depleting attention spans you really need to grab them. It’s hard! We’ve spoken before about the image and aesthetic we want to get out we’re all quite creative and strong-minded, so we all bring something different that really works together. As much as the aesthetic has been thought through to an extent, we do want to keep it quite natural and let the music talk for itself, with the visual side of things more an opportunity to get our individual personalities across. With a lot of my favourite bands, there have always been individual personalities that you can relate to in different ways. We all listen to each other and keep it honest and open if something is shit or amazing.

RUDY: We’re all unique, but I think we fit in really well together, with enough similarities that give it a consistent vibe even though we’re different.

Raff, Rudy - there’s obviously some arts and performance pedigree to your family. This... >>

“

My surname is my surname, and I’m never going to be able to change that, but rather than letting it be a burden or letting it bother me, I just focus on making the music I want and letting it speak for itself.

Raff Law

”

>> ...can be a bit of a double-edged sword in some respects - how do you navigate that? Do you consciously try to stay away from the more nepotistic sides of the industry?

RAFF: Obviously from a young age, people have always commented, I’m always aware of my family.

But credit to them, they’ve brought me up to focus on hard work and getting what you want. I have three great bandmates, and we all work really hard to get what we want. My surname is my surname, and I’m never going to be able to change that, but rather than letting it be a burden or letting it bother me, I just focus on making the music I want and letting it speak for itself. Some people are going to have an issue, some people won’t care, but in life, you can’t listen to everyone - I have enough faith in the boys and what we create that I don’t let it bother me too much, even though there is always going to be added weight of expectation.

RUDY: That’s Outer Stella, baby. We let our music, intentions, and personality speak for themselves, we just work hard and make sure we earn it in a respectable way. As long as you have the right intentions, it doesn’t matter.

Let’s talk Clout & Self Doubt. Can you tell us a bit about the process of creating the EP, and any particular themes and inspirations to it?

KELVIN: The name for the album came to my head in the studio just because of how social media goes.

What runs a lot of people’s minds is doing things for clout and showing off online, but also trying to be like others, trying to compare themselves to others.

We’re just observers, shining a light on our experience and letting you into our world.

RAFF: That constant cry of like: ‘Am I good looking enough, am I cool enough?’ It’s sad to see it completely take over people’s confidence, and their insecurities expand because of social media. The themes came on their own because that album is sort of the best of the first two years of the band - there was a lot of experimentation, and when the next project comes out you’ll hopefully be able to see a progression.

AMIN: I feel it charts the progression of our lives from teenagers to the adults we are today. It was just saying goodbye to the worries we went through over the last three years, growing together and now closing the door on that, and looking forward to the two new projects we have in the pipeline.

I know you guys have been involved in a few different musical ventures prior to this. What made you form OSO? KELVIN: We all fell into each other’s lives. When you’re a musician, you’re going to naturally go towards other musicians, because you’re all going to be in that world. I met Raff, we clocked we were into the same type of music, started writing together, clocked we were writing good shit together, got Rudy involved, and then got Amin involved and everything fell into place.

RUDY: It was just one day - it all clicked at a rehearsal and that was it, takeoff.

RAFF: We all had other bands or projects before. My previous band broke up a few years ago and in that period of time I was writing a lot, but I felt quite lost on my own - I’ve never been one of those people that wants to do it alone. That feeling of being in a room with everyone on the same level, and bouncing ideas off one another, swapping ideas, having a laugh, is what music is to me. Going back to bringing guitar music to the forefront, it amazed me how few people actually played instruments. I did a music production course in Clapham to try and meet some like-minded people, but everyone was making techno - I couldn’t find people anywhere, and then it all came at once.

KELVIN: We built this on love and trust, and the same vision. Before we’d all done other stuff, and the music never stops, but this was something we were all looking for deep down. It’s surprisingly difficult in this day and age to find people who can all get in a room and jam together. The modern stuff is great, but you can’t forget about the roots. It’s all been very organic.

You’ve spoken in other interviews about London being in the band’s DNA. What is it about the city that speaks to what you create?

KELVIN: Everything that we go through is part of London living, and I guess if we didn’t grow up here then we wouldn’t be who we are today, and probably wouldn’t have even met and formed the band together. A lot of it comes out naturally, with us growing up in London we’re gonna talk about different shit to what someone growing up in New York is talking about because we’re all exposed to different struggles. We don’t want to just make ‘London music’, we want to go international, and touch on stuff that affects everyone.

RAFF: London is our upbringing, our home.

When you go through your teens and start going to different parts - I grew up in North London, and I remember being 12 or 13 and ending up at a mate’s house in South or East and it’s like ‘Woah, this is new’. What’s great is that there’s such a variety of atmosphere, people, architecture, music, culture, it’s a melting pot. That’s embedded in our DNA because we all met through the city. It’s hometown, whenever I see a situation or see something going on, I’m always thinking about how to make it into music - especially me and Kelvin writing the lyrics, we don’t try and overthink, but we consider the messages we put out, shining a light on the things we care about and want to voice - a lot of that comes from the city. Like Kelvin says, it’s different to someone who’s grown up in New York, but at the same time there are those universal struggles everywhere, so it’s about finding a balance.

On the subject of London, you’ve spoken before about feeling like the London guitar scene is pretty dead at the moment. Do you still feel this way?

RAFF: I would say that there’s been a really exciting surge of punk attitude, in the math rock scene of South London especially, and I really love and respect a lot of bands involved in that. When you go into the underground scene, there’s always gonna be people that love and follow that sort of music, but I think what’s missing is that real general love for going to see bands live, and that community around going to shows. Saying that isn’t taking away from guitar bands or whatever, but I think there’s definitely room for a powerhouse band who are able to speak up on important issues but who also don’t take themselves too seriously. It’s all about having fun and letting go, and us four really do this because we enjoy it, it’s never come from a concept of trying to get somewhere. We’ve now obviously got expectations in that respect, but it does just come from a shared passion and enjoyment.

KELVIN: We also want to share the fun we have with everyone. We love performing and being on stage, and we want to bring that enjoyment to the people that come to watch us.

RAFF: Life’s too short, and when everyone gets together and has a great time, it’s the best. We’ve seen over the last two years what an impact not...

... having that connection with people can have, and... lost a good friend a year ago, and another two years ago, so everything we do is for them. We speak out for people struggling with mental health, and I just want to make people happy with my music, try and uplift them.

What does the rest of the year hold for the band?

KELVIN: We’ve got our first proper, non socially-distanced headline show back at the O2 Islington on September 9th, some exciting stuff next year as well. We’re always writing, trying to get 1000 songs, 100,000 songs down.

RAFF: We’re at the point now of just trying to take the next step up - we’ve got bits in the pipeline we can’t talk about just yet, but until stuff opens up we’re just gonna be writing and rehearsing, waiting in the pocket until we explode.

SURFBORT YOUR FAVORITE NEIGHBORHOOD WEIRDOS PHOTOGRAPHY ALEXIS GROSS WORDS JULIAN DE LA CELLE

F

or those that don’t know, what is a Surfbort? “Fucking in the bathtub with your lover, says our queen Beyonce,” is the response frontwoman Dani Miller gives us when asked for the origin of the band’s name. The New York City-born punk band, now relocated to Los Angeles, have always been a group to promote embracing everyone’s inner weirdo and have been itching to break free of the shackles of the Covid induced lockdown, screaming in as many faces as possible.

The line-up has changed since the before times and now includes Matt Picola (an original member back in 2014) and friend Nick Arnold. “Shout out to David Head,” says Miller. “We miss him and enjoyed our time together.” Even though the lockdown kept us all inside, Surfbort were hard at work on new music, and a live show from the group is exactly what we need after being cooped up in our homes for over a year.

For Surfbort, the only thing that really matters is having fun and being themselves. It’s the band’s originality and honesty that have kept them going for so long and it’s what’s kept their audience so loyal.

Even with Gucci campaigns and other fashion editorial work behind her, Dani Miller is still as kind and real as she was when the band first started.

I caught up with with Dani to discuss self-love, her perception of the music industry, and what’s to come for the band in the coming months. * * *

What was it exactly that got you into music and fronting your own band?

My angst, my trauma, just existing in this fucked up world! Also getting off super hard drugs at twenty-one I was looking for a way to get high still and screaming at the top of my lungs really did it for me. A message to anyone reading and wanting to start a band: Do it!

How do you feel New York City shaped you as a musician, and even as a person?

Living in trash dungeons, going to warehouse shows, living off dollar pizza… working all day, and staying up all night was fricken insane! For a twenty-one-year-old it made me have a lot to scream about and it kept me alive and raging.

How do you feel your perception of the music industry has changed since you started out?

In the beginning, I didn’t even know what the music industry was, I didn’t know the business side of things at all. I just enjoyed screaming with friends and dancing in the pit. I still don’t really know what the gargoyles of the music industry are up to, but being a true freakin weirdo definitely doesn’t fit into the music industry’s aesthetic. We have never had a huge press budget or deep connection in the scene or famous musician family members guiding us so it has been a trip figuring it out. Luckily people like Blondie, L7, X, and our old manager Nasa at Cult Records have really guided us and kept us going regardless of what the “industry” is up to.

You’ve always been someone who pushes for body positivity and self-love, and I think it’s one of the major things that resonates with fans. Had you always felt that way about yourself or was there a turning point where you realized it was a much healthier way to live and be happy?

Yeah, well, I don’t try to push it per se, but all types of bodies are worthy as fuck and the whole self-love thing just stems from waking up in the morning and realizing whatever I wake up with is what I’m working with so I might as well enjoy it and celebrate it. It’s been a long process of finding myself and loving myself and it’s a life long continual practice. I hated myself when I was younger when people would yell I have small tits or gap teeth or I’m an ugly ginger on the playground… I thought God made me wrong.

Even now I wake up some mornings and I’m like what the hell is this meat sack! But once you start discovering who you are what makes you comfy and happy just go in that direction. Honestly, the more I get in touch with gender fluidity the happier I am. And a trick if you wake up hating yourself is to write a gratitude list and stare at the sky knowing damn well you’re just a fairy in a trash world and you’re worthy for just existing.

What would you tell fans of yours who struggle with being happy with their bodies or their appearance? >>

>> You are valid as you. Fuck the haters, fuck the demon inside your head. You are allowed to have days of feeling weird. Body dysmorphia is super real, but just know the way you are is perfectly you.

Who cares about being traditionally hot? I get off on being myself and if it’s perceived as ugly or not, I don’t really care.

Have you guys been working on new music? I noticed a couple of new members.

Oh my god, yes! We have been working our asses off during the apocalypse!! For the new line-up, we added Matt Picola, who was actually an original Surfbort member, back into the band on guitar! He is who I started the band with in 2014 and Nick Arnold who we have been friends with for years and has always been a part of the Surfbort crew! Shout out to David Head! We miss him and enjoyed our time together. Sean Powell and Alex Kilgore are still holding it down hard!

Do you have a specific process each time when it comes to songwriting?

Well, personally, I just write words and, if I have any beats, I use my mouth. Sean will bring in fire songs and melodies then I’ll learn them or add different words or we will all get together in the space and everyone will jam and I just freestyle until I get something. It’s all just commentary on this weird-ass world.

Who do you see as being your top 5 inspirations when it comes to style and lifestyle?

Rihanna is dope and powerful.

Dolly Parton is the ultimate dream.

Poly Styrene really got the plot and was so badass.

Juliette Lewis forever! Her style is what my brain always tries to imitate with love.

Wendy O. Willians was the sickest style icon ever.

And for a bonus round, Alessandro Michele has really shown me what style is all about.

Did you pick up any new hobbies or skills in lockdown?

Well Besides music I paint, skate, blade, cook, write, act, photograph, and laugh! Oh, and when the photo labs closed during lockdown I learned how to develop my own film!

How pumped are you to finally play live again, hopefully very soon?

I’m soooo thrilled!!! Live shows are everything!!

The fact they have been illegal for a year has been devastating! We have some rogue summer shows coming up we will announce soon and I’m looking forward to when we can tour America and Europe and the world again soon! I just really wanna dance and scream with friends again. See ya out there, Bort gang!

You are are valid valid as as you. you. Fuck Fuck the the haters, haters, fuck fuck “ You the the demon demon inside inside your your head. head. You You are are

allowed allowed to to have have days days of of feeling feeling weird. weird. Body Body dysmorphia dysmorphia is is super super real, real, but but just just know know the the way way you you are are is is perfectly perfectly you. you.

Dani Miller

”

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THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO NATALIE BERGMAN PHOTOGRAPHY JOSHUA SPENCER WORDS JULIAN DE LA CELLE

GROOMING JON LIECKFELT SPECIAL THANKS TO CHASE COHL *

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Dress by Vanessa Cocchiaro Boots by PSKaufman Jewelry by David Yurman & Tapley

Suit by Walter Van Beirendonck Blouse by Celine

“I’

ve never put religion in my music the way I have on Mercy,” says Bergman.

“I’ve always had a strong faith, but I think that this album is very explicitly about my own journey through death and grief and finding something bigger to believe in.”

Natalie Bergman, who you may recognize as one half of duo Wild Belle, found herself facing the sudden death of her father and stepmother back in 2019, right before walking on the stage of Radio City Music Hall in New York. Of course, the tour was canceled and Bergman retreated into herself. “It’s untethering to have no parents,” states Bergman. “I felt like I had no identity for the first six months after he passed. I was just like, there’s no way I’m going to exist on this planet. So, I got sober and that was really helpful for my writing. It was crucial for this album because I needed clarity and I needed to actually process what was going on.”

With loss comes reflection and self-discovery and having to navigate the world in a very different way. A few months after her father’s passing, Bergman spent seven days in a monastery in the Chama Valley in New Mexico. Seven days of silence, prayer, and mourning.

“I got a lot from the monks,” recalls Bergman. “I got a lot from God. It was a spiritual experience. It teaches you how to listen when you spend that much time in silence. You really have to listen to things that are beyond you. It’s such a simple concept. But I feel like people aren’t very good at listening nowadays.”

We sit down with Natalie a few weeks after her debut solo record, Mercy via Third Man Records, has been released, blending the old sounds of gospel hymns with a soulful rendition of modern loss and recovery. * * *

JULIAN DE LA CELLE: What was your inception into music? You told me before that you grew up in quite a musical household.

There was definitely a lot of music. Both of my parents were musical people and artists in their own right. My mother was a writer, and she played a lot of folk tunes on guitar. And she also played piano, I learned how to play piano from her because she was playing Gershwin.. and jazz standards. There was music in my house all the time, and so it was encouraged. I feel like a lot of...

...people, when they’re growing up, don’t always have that experience. Parents are like, “You have to go in the garage,” or something, “Play over there, don’t play in the house.” It was a super creative environment to live in. My dad also had his collection of folk songs that he would play on the guitar, and sometimes he would make up his own lyrics to a Bob Dylan song.

JULIAN: That sounds so fun. Did you have a lot of gatherings of people at your house?

Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of funny that the record I just put out is the first time I’ve put out a body of work that’s faith-based. Now I’m thinking about all these things in my childhood, like my parents.

We grew up going to the church, and we had a cool collection of friends that also went to church with us. We’d have them come over, and we’d play music with them. It wasn’t like we were just singing about Jesus all the time. I had pretty progressive parents. They weren’t ever trying to assert their biblical laws upon their children or anything. We weren’t going to be condemned by them or by God. It was a very supportive, loving household and I feel like because I had the sort of comfort and freedom of expression, I was allowed to get experimental with music. I’ve been writing since I was 10 years old.

JULIAN: And you make music with your brother, Elliot, right? It must be nice to work creatively with family like we do.

Yeah, I need my family. My mom died of brain cancer when I was 16. And when that happened, it was a pretty slow demise, because she was fighting and she was so alive. My dad was working all the time and so my brother was kind of like, “Okay, let me take you under my wing and why don’t you come on the road with me?”

So, I left school for a little while and I went on tour with him, just playing percussion. I had this family on the road. I got a taste for that when I was 16. I was kind of like, “Okay, well, maybe this is my life.” Like, maybe I want to be on the road for the rest of my life. Of course, tour is not as glamorous as it seems, but it’s the job. I like the act of moving from city to city.

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TINA DE LA CELLE: And you’re a musician.

So being around other musicians, you’re around all these like-minded people. That does feel very much like a family.

It’s your tribe. I’ve played in a band with my brother for the last ten years called Wild Belle, and it’s been my livelihood. I have such a great family with that music. But now I have this solo project and, it’s like, I didn’t reinvent myself, but I do feel like an entirely different person after losing my dad.

I found that the album that I just put out, the songs kind of wrote themselves in a way. I wrote them out of necessity. They were sweet little gifts; the fact that music kind of found its way back into my life. I was able to actually make something beautiful with the tragedy, and I’m very thankful for that.

TINA: That’s the beautiful part of music, it can literally just save you.

It really can. And I’ve never witnessed it as powerfully as during this time, and I’m seeing what it does through other people as well. It’s just connecting with them on a different level, and I’m getting so many beautiful emails and letters.

Everybody’s lost something they’ve loved. This record is about a broken heart. And they’re relatable songs. I’ve seen how music can heal people. It healed me writing these songs.

TINA: Those banners you made are beautiful.

How did you get inspired to make them?

I made ten banners and I was anticipating having a gallery show. Whenever I make things I’m like, “Okay, now who should I give this to.” There were a couple of musicians who really liked these banners. One of them, Maggie Rogers, she’s an indie darling. She’s super beautiful and intelligent and warm-hearted. And she reached out to me on the internet, and was like, “I love these.” I had never met her before. And so I had her over and I made her fish soup for dinner. We had a nice time. And I was like, I just need to give her the banner. That felt nice to just share something with somebody who loved what I made.

Do you know Sister Corita? She was a nun in the 1960s. She was super creative and was the art teacher at this high school called Immaculate Heart.

She was a radical nun. She was fighting for black rights, for gay rights. She was making all of these propaganda silk screens. She ended up getting on the cover of TIME Magazine and LIFE Magazine with her artwork, and she did these beautiful, vibrant, colorful block print pieces. She’s been very inspiring to me. The Sister Corita Foundation reached out to me, which is just so funny. What you put out into the world, you realize you will get that back. If you’re promoting love, and you’re trying to spread a good message, chances are the people you’re attracted to will come around. The Sister Corita Foundation were like, “We love your work and maybe we can collaborate with you.” I don’t know what that would look like, but we’re talking about doing something.

JULIAN: You spent some time at a monastery, find that so interesting. What drew you to spend time there and how much time did you spend there?

A week. Seven days in silence. In New Mexico in the Chama Valley, 60 miles down a dirt road. The monastery is made of beautiful clay, and you’re on red dirt paths. It’s super isolated. You have a little room with a twin cot, and a desk and you go to the chapel, seven times a day starting at 4:30 in the morning, when there’s no light, there’s still the moon in the sky. It was kind of a harrowing experience. I went in the middle of winter, and it was freezing. And I’m walking alone. It’s a seven-minute walk to the abbey every single morning. It was scary and lonely.

The first day I was there I was like, “I don’t know why I’m doing this.” But at that time, it was three months after I lost my dad and I basically felt like I couldn’t get any more alone in the world. I needed to go and spend some time in a holy place.

I’m fascinated by the practice of religion and the dedication and the discipline behind it. I had so many questions about death and so I went to this isolated place. I don’t know if you’ve read any of the Bible, but, any time Jesus was devastated, or when he lost John the Baptist, his best friend, he withdrew to an isolated place and prayed for weeks. He mourned and he prayed, and, you know, I thought, “Okay, if that’s one of the coolest dudes did, I’m probably gonna have to do this too!” I’m going to mourn and I’m going to ask some questions.

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JULIAN: So then how long after that did you start actually writing the songs for the record?

It was there that I gained clarity. I realized that I was going to write some kind of gospel tunes or hymns. I was reading the Bible and there’s so much beautiful poetry in the language, especially in the Psalms. I already have some of it in me just from my upbringing.

So, I kind of came back recalibrated, started writing the music, it took me about three months, I think, to write the bulk of the album, and then, you know, an additional three months to get it recorded and mixed.

I played all the instruments on it. I did everything by myself this time. And I’ve always sort of leaned on my brother as a collaborator, and it was empowering, in a way, to do this on my own.

JULIAN: How did the connection to Third Man Records play into things?

Warren Defever, who’s the head mastering engineer, he’s an old friend of mine, he lives in Detroit. He was kind of my mentor. When I was writing these songs, I needed some perspective. It’s such a personal body of work, I wasn’t really trying to invite a lot of interpreters in. Warren, he’s a cool, soulful dude, a musician.” He’s old school. And so I told him I was thinking about writing a loosely inspired gospel album, and he was like, “Fucking rad.” I was like, “Okay, cool. I’m gonna send you a couple of songs.” So, then for the first month, I was writing, I was kind of sending him these songs and he thought they were pretty cool and unusual, no one was really doing this music in a cool way. Once I got about fifteen songs together, I felt I had an album and I asked Warren what the best songs were. He said he was going to take it to Third Man and let them know that this record is something they don’t want to miss out on. They listened to it and Ben Swank was like, “We ain’t afraid of Jesus!” They were super sensitive about the subject matter of the album, and they were respectful about it. It was just immediately the right fit for me. I’ve never had a label as wonderful as they are. It’s nice to have a home for these songs. I didn’t really know where they were going to live. I wrote them out of necessity and now it’s really speaking to people and it’s doing its job.

“

ItIt teaches teaches you you how how to to listen listen when when you you spend spend that that much much time time in in silence. silence.

You You really really have have to to listen listen to to things things that that are are beyond beyond you. you. It’s It’s such such aa simple simple concept. concept. But But II feel feel like like people people aren’t aren’t very very good good at at listening listening nowadays. nowadays.

Natalie Bergman

”

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