Q&A: Angelsaur Lean into the Pain on ‘The Girls Are Stressed’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY CLAIRE DUNHAM ☆
Photo by Chris Yellen
STANDING ON THE BRINK OF HEARTBREAK, ANGELSAUR DELIVERS A MASTERCLASS IN LUSH INSTRUMENTATION AND EXPERIMENTAL PRODUCTION — The Los Angeles-based duo’s sophomore album, The Girls Are Stressed, comes less than two years after their first full-length release, but the growth Logan McQuade and Jonah Feingold underwent in the interim radiates on every song.
After meeting at USC’s Thornton School of Music, McQuade and Feingold later reconnected on tour with King Princess (McQuade is still her bassist). Drawing on their experience as backing musicians, McQuade and Feingold lace each song on the record with intricate riffs, shifting dynamics, and addictive hooks. Gritty guitars meet otherworldly synthesizers to create a transcendent fusion of electronic-alternative sound.
Writing the album while mourning the loss of a long-term relationship, McQuade’s lyrics draw on themes of self-reflection, isolation, and identity. Together, McQuade and Feingold redefine themselves with The Girls Are Stressed, both as musicians and people.
The duo sat down with Luna to discuss their new music, creative inspirations, and bringing the record to life for their album release show.
LUNA: I want to start at the beginning. You all went to school together at USC. Can you tell me about the birth of your project, Angelsaur? When did you first start writing music together?
MCQUADE: We met at USC, but we didn't become friends or realize that we wanted to be in a band together until we were on tour playing for King Princess. Jonah was her guitar player, and I still play bass for her. We would always share hotel rooms, so we started writing from the road on our days off. We realized that we both wanted to be in a band, and we had a lot of chemistry in terms of just being creative together and bouncing ideas off of each other. When we got back from that first tour we started writing. I do remember very distinctly the first day that we sat down and tried to do it. We had low focus and our guitars, and we were like, “Okay, let's try.” We had a lot of fun with it, and the rest is history, man.
FEINGOLD: Exactly.
LUNA: Very cool. In that first session, did you meet eye to eye on most things? Did you share a lot of the same influences?
MCQUADE: I totally remember the first thing we tried. It was that Tame Impala riff.
FEINGOLD: Yeah. I can't remember what it sounds like, but we were trying to do it.
MCQUADE: We're pretty creatively aligned. I mean, we grew up on the same music. I would say we were both big “classic rockers” in our infancy of discovering music. And I love working with Jonah, because he's such an amazing guitar player and musician. It's very nice that I can write a chord progression or something, and I can just be like, “Okay, Jonah, how do we make this more interesting or more musical?” I really enjoy our creative dynamic, and it's always been pretty good. I mean, sometimes we have thoughts about how to do things differently, just in terms of creative decisions.
FEINGOLD: Yeah. How could we not?
MCQUADE: But I would say the creative partnership has always been very healthy and good.
LUNA: I want to talk a bit about the new album, The Girls Are Stressed. I had a chance to listen to it. It is fantastic! Congrats! A lot of the record revolves around change and evolution. How do you feel going into this release compared to your debut album?
MCQUADE: I feel a lot better. I think on our first record, we were just stabbing at stuff in the dark. We knew the music that we liked, and we knew the sounds and instruments that were compelling to us. But we were definitely still establishing the sound we wanted to have and the musical world we wanted to live in. On the second record, I think that sound is a lot more realized, and the whole creative concept behind it is a lot more realized. And I would say emotionally, we've both lived quite a bit of life since the first record. Our first record is called Children Disguised As Adults, and I think we really felt that way. For this second record, I'd say we both feel more realized as people. I wrote this record at the end of a relationship that was very important. We were together for almost eight years and broke up a couple of months ago. A lot of this record is, lyrically, just me reflecting on how important that relationship was in my life and how much identity I drew from that relationship. Now that I'm on the other side of it, moving through it, it's so interesting to go back and listen to all the lyrics I was writing.
LUNA: Does tapping into those emotions and that state of reflection come easily to you, or was it hard to get into that mindset to write these songs?
MCQUADE: That's the only way I can write: from a point of reflection. And that's how I like to process things I'm going through; I’ll sit down and write about it. It's the only way that I know how to write lyrics.
LUNA: The album has such a strong throughline, both lyrically and sonically. Did you have an idea, going into the writing process, for a mood that you wanted to evoke, or did that come to you later?
MCQUADE: For a couple of songs on this record, I came up with the name of the song before the song was even written. Like “Choke Chain,” in particular, I remember it so distinctly. I was walking in Indio, and I thought, “Damn. It would be sick if there was a hard rock song called ‘Choke Chain,’” and then I was like, “Oh, we should write that.” Also, the title track, “The Girls Are Stressed,” was a song even before our first record came out. We tried to finish it for the first record, but we couldn't crack the code. But with all the songs that we were making and the songs that we were writing, it became clear that “The Girls Are Stressed” was the world that we were building, and that really did inform a lot of the decisions that we made.
LUNA: There is also such a strong visual aesthetic associated with this release. The cover art and the painting of you two are both super cool. Was that something you also had in mind going into the album?
MCQUADE: Definitely. It started as a logistical decision, because when we released our first record, we had both worked in music for a long time. But we had never made an album, so there was a bit of a learning curve. We made the record, and then we put the first song out without even having the artwork for the second single made. So it was always a huge time crunch, and we were like, “Okay. How can we not do this the second time?” Then I came up with the idea of having a visual representation of the album where everything is represented. We had the record, and it wasn't finished, but we knew what it was going to be. And the record is so dense and sparkly, it feels like a painting. It feels like an immersive experience. So I thought about what this record would look like put on a page, and it felt like the aftermath of a crazy dinner party. We had so much fun with that painting. I conceptualized it, and we found this really amazing painter. Her name is Danielle Close. She's from Austin, Texas. I sent her the idea, and it was an eight month-long process of creating different comps. She drew it all out on the iPad first, and every song on the record is reflected in the painting. We also thought it would be cool if each single that came off the record was a zoomed-in moment from the painting, so when we released them they would be like puzzle pieces. Then people listening to the music would hopefully notice that it's all from the same image. We had a lot of fun with it. Then we found an animator to animate the painting, so all the stuff on our socials is all animated from the painting. We just wanted to build a really cohesive world with the record, and that was the most creative, fun way we could do it.
LUNA: Are there any influences outside of music, like fine artists, literature, or movies, that you turn to when you are songwriting? Were there any other kinds of media that you drew inspiration from for this album?
MCQUADE: Good question. You don't really consume any media.
FEINGOLD: In the future, I'm looking forward to observing more art mediums because right now, I'm just all about music. I don't really know too much about the fine art world, but I respect it.
MCQUADE: I love movies. I watch a lot of movies, but there wasn’t one in particular that I watched. Funnily enough, I did watch a lot of skateboarding videos. I think skating is f*cking sick, and when I was making “Choke Chain,” I was like, “Damn. It would be sick if somebody put together an edit to this song.” Also, I was cooking and cheffing too. I think the three mediums that you have to dedicate your whole life to are: music, skateboarding, and cooking.
Also, something that's funny about the painting: while I was pulling references for it, I put together this whole mood board, and a lot of the inspiration was Renaissance paintings and Romantic era garden scenes. We sent it to the painter, and she was like, “Hey, I love all these references, but just so you know, the people who made these paintings lived in little shacks in the Italian countryside during the 1600s and worked on these paintings for like eight to 10 years.” I was like “Okay. Maybe I should adjust my expectations a little bit.”
LUNA: Is it a physical painting? Have you seen it in person?
MCQUADE: I haven't seen it in person yet. It's in Texas, and I've been too afraid to have her ship it. I'm going to Austin in October to play ACL with King Princess, and I think I'm going to pick it up then. Also, the portrait of the two of us was painted by Yves Decamps from Belgium, and that's a physical painting too. He actually was a big influence for me because I found his stuff a long time ago. He's just this weird, abstract portrait artist, and I was like, “That's so cool. I would love to have our faces interpreted by him.” We had that done pretty early on, so it informed the world-building of the record too.
LUNA: So, looking ahead, you all have your album release show on August 14. Is there a specific song from the new record that you're most excited to play live?
MCQUADE: What would you say?
FEINGOLD: It's a hard decision. They're all great. They all deserve love.
MCQUADE: There are a couple of songs that we've never played live. We haven't played “u & me” live yet, which I think will be interesting. This record is more production-heavy than our first record, so there's been a bit of figuring out how we're going to play it live. Luckily, our drummer, Antoine, is a really successful MD. His job is to bring records to life on stage. I've also been MD-ing recently. We're having a lot of fun with it. We played the album closer “Around You” once, and it was so much fun. I feel like that's the song on the record where I could just sit down with an acoustic guitar and play it. I would say, maybe “Around You” is my answer to that question. What would you say?
FEINGOLD: “Hiding Star” will be fun because I just play one part and then chill out because I don't have anything else to play. So I’m just there for the vibes. Just kidding, I’m there for the music and the vibes. It's all related.
MCQUADE: I think we’re excited to play all of them, but the title track, “The Girls Are Stressed,” is also really fun to play.
LUNA: Because there is so much production on the album, has it been stressful trying to develop a live version, or are you excited about the challenge?
MCQUADE: I would say we are excited about the challenge. We both came up as live players and have played some really fun, cool music live. It's definitely one of my favorite things to figure out how to do. We just love this record so much, and it's exciting to get to do it in front of people and have it just sound like the record, but on stage. We normally play as a four-piece, but for the album release show, we brought another person on. So there's gonna be five people and more instruments on stage than we've ever had before. We're gonna do a lot of MIDI syncing, so we can have synths arpeggiating in time with everything. And we’re gonna try and make it as lush as possible.
LUNA: You all have been hard at work with the album release, but looking ahead, is there anything in particular that fans can expect in the near future?
FEINGOLD: We have got to have some more shows.
MCQUADE: Definitely. We've been trying to string together a little West Coast run after the album release. I think, honestly, we're also excited to start making music again. We recorded a bulk of this record last summer. Then it took us a long time to mix it because we mixed the whole thing in Atmos. But in the last couple of days, I started a song I'm very excited about. I was even thinking maybe we could make it a little bonus track moment, if we could do it. We're also trying to play as much as possible.
LUNA: Thank you so much for speaking with me. I appreciate it. Good luck with the album release show. I'll be on the lookout for videos from the performance.
Illustration by Ivan Campos
