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| Live at MOMA 2, 11/5/23 |
I first encountered Nashville's Total Wife at a last minute show on a Sunday in early November, pictured above. After sets from Drexel Emo up and comers Hotel Breakfast and their tourmates/act with almost the same lineup Rig B, and before an electronic set from TAGABOW's Douglas Dulgarian. Between all of that, they distinguished themselves with a distinctly electronic approach to shoegaze, utilizing multiple samplers, as well as a comical amount of guitar pedals. About a month later, after their most recent album In/Out had entrenched itself in my regular listening, I decided to interview about it, as well as the goings on in Nashville.
What are your names, pronouns, and what do you do in Total Wife?
Ash: I'm Ash, I use she or they, and I sing, I write some lyrics, and I'll write some songs in Total Wife to
Luna: I'm Luna, she/they, I write, produce, and play the recordings
How did the project start?
Ash: It was probably around 10 years ago when we met. We both were in between projects, and we wanted to start making music together
Luna: Yeah, probably like 10 years ago
Where did the band name come from?
Luna: So, that's a (pause) weird thing. Long story, we were super young, and some friends that Ash played with had a band together, and then it dissolved and two of them went off and started a band called Total Life. And then Ash and another friend found me, and they were pissed, and decided to call it Total Wife. And then, I guess, Ash and I just kept making music, and kept the name because we couldn't think of anything else
WC: Yeah, that's fair
Luna: It's funny 'cause one of the people from that band that ditched Ash is in our band now, so it all comes back
Ash: And there's no more Total Life, either, so no competition
WC: You won
What's your songwriting process like?
Ash: It really depends on the song. 'Cause sometimes, I have some lyrics that I, like, start to work with, and put chords to. And then I hand them off to Luna, and she'll fully produce it, and we'll record. Or Luna has her own processes as well, which she can explain
Luna: Yeah. I don't know, I just try to let one sound that I'm thinking about working on carry me, or I'm excited about trying some kind of process, and then I let that turn into a song. I feel like I wasn't very good at writing chords until recently, and that's been easier since having a full band. 'Cause we weren't a full band for a really long time, so the process was just kind of: "have as much fun recording and producing as possible." And it's still definitely that, but now I want to write stuff that we can all play as a band
Ash: And since we've been playing as a band, we've been doing a lot more improvising in the live set, which is leading us to hopefully writing as a band
In/Out is a lot more electronic than your previous albums, what inspired the change?
Luna: There's not a lot of electronic-y stuff on A Blip, that's true. I feel like I just figured out how to make more electronic songs that made me happy. I also let go of feeling like I needed everything to be recorded out of the box, 'cause I'm, like, really broke, and I can't afford nice gear and stuff. I ended up having to admit I have Pro Tools, and that's like, what I use to make music, kind of lean into that. And I feel like its getting more in that direction, too. I have been trying to write more, like, breakcore tracks for years, but I hated them until recently (laughs)
WC: Do you do the breakcore production with a sampler or in a DAW?
Luna: Definitely in a DAW, I feel like that was what was holding me back so much was wanting it to be all hardware stuff. And then I had to realize, like, just to chop shit up collage style in a DAW. And I feel like I don't even do it the easiest way, like I know Ableton is so much easier and stuff, but Pro Tools is just like, I've always been using that, so that's all I've been doing
WC: Pro Tools is a pretty wild DAW to produce breakcore in* (all laugh)
Luna: That's what I've been told. I was talking to Jack from Full Body (2) and he was like "what do you mean" (laughs)
How do you go about getting the super processed guitar tones on In/Out? Is it more based in pedals or electronic processing?
Luna: Its definitely mostly post stuff, like I don't use a lot of pedals on the recording, its mostly a lot of re-amping of the guitars. I like to use one guitar track, and then send it out an amp over and over, and get different sounds. And then combine all those tracks together and make one big sound, vs pedals always felt hard for me to come up with something that felt like it was my own sound. But yeah, as much post production stuff as possible, for sure.
Ash: I feel like some of the pedals came from trying to replicate how the recording sounded
Luna: Yeah, that's true
Ash: So like, the recordings, the tonality came first, and then, you can't re-amp for live sets, so you have to figure something else out
Luna: It's hard to get people to be in your band, so one guitar player, you need a bunch of pedals, or like, multiple amps, which is what we've been doing
What's your favorite moment on the album?
Ash: For me, in the song Rest when the end section comes in, like, the wall of noise, after it had been really chill the whole time. It like it's switching to on, and I really like how it feels
Luna: I feel like moments on the album that excite me more have to do with finally figuring out processes. I feel like I like A8 a lot because I finally figured out how to just, say fuck it and use Pro Tools to make a song out of samples. All the breakcore stuff is just guitars and classic breaks, so to finally figure out a route for me that had enough limitations, but enough stuff to make it feel like my own thing.
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| The Total Wives: Ash, Luna, and Eno |
What was the first and last track you completed for the album?
Ash: The First one done was probably Without, we didn't finish finish it, but songwriting wise it was kind of a bridge from the older stuff into the newer stuff. It was originally gonna be on the previous album-
Luna: Oh my god, that's true!
Ash:-but it took us a while to finish it because we had kind of moved along on to different... and it had to be reworked a lot to feel good. That was maybe the first and the last in some ways
Luna: Originally Heatwave was gonna be the start of it too, and that was right around the same time as those songs. That's not on the album, but it was the first one done of that chunk of songs, and then we just put it out as an EP. I feel like the last songs that took us a while to tie up were Rest and Without
Whats the scene like in Nashville?
Ash: It's really cool, honestly, and we're both transplants, and we came here for the scene, which is kinda special in my eyes. We basically came and visited a couple times, and our friends know us, and they brought us to a live show every single night both times that we visited. And we were sold, because we were living in Boston, and it felt inaccessible to us. The Nashville scene is... Its a very flourishing DIY scene despite there being a lot of industry influence, which is cool because I feel like a lot of other scenes where there's some music industry prescence, the DIY scene kind of gets pushed under the rug. But here the community really supports DIY music at a core level, like we have a lot of medium capacity venues that are kept alive by people who love listening to music in Nashville
Luna: It's weird 'cause its like, such a meta scene because its music city or whatever, so there's huge industry shit and that feels so seperate from the DIY because it has to live on its own. But still, its crazy because everybody in every audience is a musician, or has something to do with music. So it feels meta and not like any other scene because of it
What's the best show you've ever played?
Luna: Thinking about this last tour we did, DC was cool because we had never played there, and we played in a mexican restaurant, but it was set up by this cool festival called Zapateo. It was weird because it was in a restaurant, but there was, like, so many people there. I like the shows that are DIY in that way, where it's like set up in some random space, but everyone's super hyped and turns up anyway, those are always really fun
Ash: We got to play with Avey Tare recently, and he's a back bone influence
Luna: Yeah, we used to listen to tons of Animal Collective in college. That was cool 'cause that was a crazy moment. And that was our biggest show for sure, so that was cool for that, but it felt like a weird dream. So its not that I didn't have fun, I just like, felt crazy
What's your go to pre set meal?
Ash: Something light, we've made that mistake before. Often it ends up being pizza I think
Luna: Yeah sadly it ends up being pizza or Cookout and I mostly feel terrible
Ash: Especially on tour, there's not a lot of workaround, its very hard to avoid
Luna: Filet Mignon (Ash laughs)*
I'm out of questions, do you have anything else you want to plug?
Luna: Celltower is our guitar players project, and that shit's fucking crazy
Ash: Thomas Luminoso, Zook, Melaina Kol, Make Yourself At Home. Those are all our buds, not all the ones who exist, but those are really closely related projects.
Luna: When I start listing off people, I'm like "oh no, I'm gonna miss people" so lets just stop
Ash: We Know we missed people
WC: This is the inexhaustive list
Luna: This is the inexhaustive list, exactly. There's hella crazy music in Nashville for sure
Ash: There's so much cool music in Nashville, its not just country music, its something worth checking out
Luna: Oh, and, we have an album almost done
While you wait the for the new album, you can find Total Wife's music at:
Footnotes
"Wild DAW to produce breakcore in*" Pro Tools is the industry standard in DAWs, not because it's the best, but because it's the first. In my tenure as a Sound Recording Technology major, I never attempted to chop breaks in it, but the idea of trying to makes my teeth itch.
"Filet Mignon*" I don't know why artists I interview keep joking about eating expensive steaks before shows.
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