It’s been a wild ride for New York-via-Chicago bandmates and best friends Nora Cheng, Penelope Lowenstein, and Gigi Reece. Under the guise of Horsegirl, the trio have spent the last half-decade or so reenergizing the sounds of early 90s indie rock, while also finding time to expand their core operatic sonics through a series of broader musical palettes and the distillation of their shared melodic affections. Their debut album, 2022’s Versions of Modern Performance, was a collection of wiry, eager songs that spoke to their youthful spontaneity and their desire to reshape indie rock in their own image — while their forthcoming record, Phonetics On and On, is a stranger breed of rhythmic nomenclature.
Produced by Cate Le Bon, the band’s new album takes them further into the pop avenues that lay mostly buried beneath blurred distortion on their debut. In its own way, Phonetics On and On is a dance record – though a wild and unconventional one – and it demands various bodily movements. Brighter and clearer than its predecessor, it maintains the band’s DIY ethos but isn’t afraid to let some of that inner radiance come through. You can hear the joy of collaboration and experimental synthesis in each track, the end result of three people deeply comfortable revealing their vulnerabilities and musical expertise in each other’s presence. Their willingness to deviate from a proven formula is a testament to their personal camaraderie and the trust they have in their relationship with Le Bon.
I recently had the chance to ask the band some questions, and their responses offer an illuminating look at the origins and the processes of creating Phonetics On and On. We talk about their personal history with Flying Nun Records, how they approached the broader musical implications of the new album, and what they do to make touring managable. Check out our conversation below.
Beats Per Minute (Joshua Pickard): I’m old, relatively — I started high school the same year that Guided By Voices released Alien Lanes, Yo La Tengo shared Eletr-O-Pura, and Pavement unleashed Wowee Zowee. Those sounds became a part of my DNA. In my mind, your sound isn’t a throwback; I’d say it’s a reclamation of those particular sounds. Was there a particular record or moment that influenced the band’s musical direction?
Horsegirl: We love those records! As teenagers we were drawn to the raw energy and creative guitar playing on Daydream Nation and the scrappiness and DIY sensibility of New Zealand’s Flying Nun label. Our musical interests have since drifted from that era, but those bands and DIY scenes remain dear to us as our teenage entry-point into underground guitar music.
What those 90s bands had in common, besides a knack for wiry guitarwork, was an understanding of pop melodies, even when placed in acerbic surroundings. Your new record possesses this same awareness. How did you approach the merging of pop sensibilities with the rockier textures of your previous work?
On our first record we were propelled by youthful energy and, like you said, crazy playing. We still love the playful and intuitive playing of those bands. On Phonetics On and On, we wanted to capture the playful and propulsive energy of noisy music using clean guitar tones and pop song structure. We wanted to harness space and emptiness in the same playful way that we used noise as teenagers. For us, there was something very attractive about the elegance of clean guitar tones and classic song structure. We loved the challenge of translating our songwriting with these new constraints.
I’m aware of the band’s fondest for 80s and 90s Flying Nun bands. One of my favorite deep dive memories is hearing the Dunedin Double compilation for the first time some years ago. What’s your go-to Flying Nuns album —and why?
Daddy’s Highway by the Bats is pop perfection. Some of the stuff on the early Tall Dwarfs EPs were also super influential. We were really inspired by the minimal percussion on songs like “All My Hollowness to You” and “Crush”… I imagine he’s just banging on a table and clapping and the rawness of it is very touching. Also, Compilation by The Clean is an all-timer. “Point That Thing Somewhere Else” was my first Flying Nun track.
What was the process for recruiting Cate Le Bon as producer? Were you just fans of her work, or was there another connection that put you in each other’s orbits?
Years ago in an interview somebody asked us who we’d want to work with if we could work with anyone and we said Cate Le Bon— we never saw that as a real possibility! After we recorded some demos, our manager suggested it. That was something we thought would have been presumptuous to propose ourselves, but of course we had wanted that! We reached out to her and everything serendipitously fell into place.
You recorded the new album at The Loft in Chicago and your previous one was recorded at Electrical Audio. How would you compare the experiences and atmospheres of both studios?
Electrical Audio, just visually, looked more like a conventional studio. The Loft had this home-like vibe that made it feel very cozy and facilitated the energy of hunkering-down in the studio for a couple weeks to get something done. We had family-style lunches every day. Both studios are legendary for good reason.
When the band made the move to New York City in 2022, the environment was obviously different than what you’d experienced before in terms of writing music together. What was the most immediate effect on your collaborations with this relocation?
Just taking a moment to live life together! After a crazy first summer on tour, the three of us took a pause and focused on school and setting up our lives together in a new city. So much development and life experience comes between the years of 18 and 21. The pause was very important for us to settle in, but it also is probably a big reason that our second record feels so separate from the first.
Early in your career, you released a cover of “History Lesson — Part II” by Minutemen. Are there any covers you especially like to sneak in to live performances?
We used to cover “As We Go Up, We Go Down” by Guided By Voices, but haven’t done that in a while. At smaller DIY shows, we’ve covered some stuff by The Cure and “First of All” by Japanther.
I’m curious as to how “Sea Life Sandwich Boy” came into existence. As the first song that the band wrote together, what did that initial process look like? Did someone take the lead or were ideas bounced around between you until something took hold?
Penelope and Nora had never written a song before and had recently become friends. We were sheepish at first, and the whole process was painstakingly slow… we probably spent a whole month working on just that first song. From the beginning, though, we had established an extremely collaborative writing process. We would play our guitar parts together, both sing random melodies over it, and piece-by-piece figure out what worked and what didn’t.
Phonetics On and On incorporates a host of new instruments and expresses itself through more nuanced and lush arrangements. Did you intentionally set out to broaden the band’s sonic palette or was that simply a result of the musical interplay as the recording sessions progressed?
We knew we wanted to experiment with the band’s sound. We had glockenspiel and a bunch of percussion instruments on our demos and knew we wanted minimal arrangements and clean guitar tones, but the final instruments and parts on the album were discovered through experimentation. There’s violin, gamelan tiles, a Japanese synth used for poetry readings… it was a lot of fun!
Lastly, are there any specific games that you play or things that you do together to help make the touring life feel a bit more bearable?
We play a very competitive game called “My Cows” where we try to gain the most cows and kill everyone else’s cows. We also keep track of the road/restaurant/store etc. signs people mindlessly read out loud.
Phonetics On and On is due tomorrow via Matador. You can pre-order the album here. Follow the band on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
