Do you have a direction in mind for the new album?
I’d like to experiment more with my roots in music—so more jazz, more experimental, maybe pull away from the electronic thing and find a balance between the recording and live shows. I want the live shows to be at the heart of this record. Since I come from a jazz background, I love playing live in a free way—I like not knowing what’s going to happen next. But everyone’s playing to backing tracks these days and I find it quite limiting. The only way I’ll survive the shows for the second album is if we play everything live without a backing track. My favorite songs are the ones you can bend to respond to your audience. I feel like that’s when magic is made.
Your boyfriend is a filmmaker. Do you ever collaborate?
It’s great being with someone creative. He made a documentary when I did the first album. It’s very vulnerable—I cry my eyes out in it. When I was first doing music, I felt like the identity part of it is so important and the visuals are so important. But as a woman, I didn’t want it to be all about my face; I wanted it to be about the music. So I created these cold, minimal visuals because I felt like that way people would just listen to the music. But it’s not a true depiction of my character—I’m actually quite loud and bubbly. And I’ve slowly been trying to let my audience know me, so it’s good that he can film me and we can collaborate, because it allows people to see the true me.
People are primarily visual consumers these days. What’s your take on this?
It’s a shame—the emphasis on visuals has taken over in a lot of things. Sometimes I feel like music is a backing track to the visuals and not the other way around. I don’t think people take the time to really listen to stuff anymore, but my dream is just for people to listen to my album front to back.
