Q&A: Coming Face to Face With His Emotions, Comfort Club Discusses His New Single “Two Kids in a Trench Coat”
LA-BASED ARTIST — Comfort Club wants his music to be what you listen to when you get your heart broken. The soft rock king is a master of, in his own words, writing “sad songs with a happy face.” The singer-songwriter is a revivalist of the 2010s’ John Mayer era of soft rock, with a contemporary twist reminiscent of Del Water Gap.
An exceptional lyricist, Comfort Club frequently explores feelings of loneliness and low self-esteem in a way that is accessible and familiar. Listening to his music feels like having a cathartic chat with an old friend. His recent work uses music as a therapeutic process for unpacking uncomfortable emotions, and the relatability of his work is its greatest strength.
The artist got vulnerable with Luna, discussing his latest single, “Two Kids in a Trench Coat,” off his forthcoming album. His most intimate, emotion-filled project to date, the LP was written on the heels of a painful breakup. Through confronting and digesting all the poignant emotions he experienced at the time, Comfort Club creates the most raw, honest version of his music his listeners have heard yet.
Read on to dive into the artist’s inner world and learn about the story behind his latest project.
LUNA: Tell me about your journey with music — how did you get started?
COMFORT CLUB: I started when I was 16 or 17, but I had always had an affinity for music. I went to a John Mayer concert in 2013, and that set the trajectory for what I wanted to do after I saw someone do it on stage. [It was] what I'd been trying to find my whole life. I had grown up playing hockey and I had just quit that, so I was kind of in an identity crisis, and [music] just came in and fit perfectly. I started playing guitar a lot when I was 17, and then when I was in college I started trying to write songs, trying to figure out who I am and what I'm doing. I started Comfort Club when I finished college in 2019 and never looked back.
LUNA: Where did the name Comfort Club come from?
COMFORT CLUB: I had always wanted to have an entity that wasn't my birth given name, because I felt like it was way easier to connect with; I wanted to create a web of something. I came up with the word “comfort” because I felt like it fit me and … my personality, and then I slapped the word “club” on the end of it and it felt really good. I felt like I got really lucky with the naming process.
LUNA: You mentioned John Mayer, but do you have any other kind of significant musical influences?
COMFORT CLUB: Once I started actually trying to write and produce, I got into Alexander 23 and Jeremy Zucker. Recently it's been Valley, The 1975, and Pinegrove. The band Dizzy was also super influential to my music. When I first started doing production I was listening to them a lot, and I was blown away with what they were doing. They were a huge influence on me and kind of the reason that I started producing rather than just writing with a guitar.
LUNA: What genre do you identify most with, and how would you describe your music sonically?
COMFORT CLUB: I feel like that's been something I've been really trying to put my finger on for a while, and I feel like I keep coming back to indie soft rock. I feel like I don't necessarily fit in the indie-rock bucket, and I don't feel like I 100% fit in the indie-pop bucket. I feel like there's this indie soft rock thing reminiscent of the early 2000s — like John Mayer, Third Eye Blind, The Goo Goo Dolls, those kinds of bands. I feel like there's kind of a resurgence of that right now, and it's not overly popular so I feel like it's kind of cool to try to be one of the first people to claim indie soft rock.
LUNA: Do you identify within the bedroom pop sphere at all?
COMFORT CLUB: I think a little bit — I do feel like bedroom pop has sort of come and gone. I don't know a ton of people who are identifying as bedroom pop right now. I feel like that was the Clairo era, and I think that was a cool sound, but I don't know many people who feel like they're making bedroom pop these days. I could be way off-base on that, but I feel like everyone's throwing the word “indie” in front of everything instead of “bedroom” now.
LUNA: Your music seems to be very centered around lyricism. What is your songwriting process like? What are your lyrical inspirations?
COMFORT CLUB: Totally, lyrics definitely are the most important thing to me. I kind of only think in analogies now — I think it just comes down to trying to be able to comprehend the world and put things in boxes. I love thinking in analogies, and that's kind of how I've been approaching songwriting too. I've always had a knack for trying to come up with a song title that I've never heard before and isn't super generic. I'm always looking for weird titles or weird analogies.
So you can say, “Oh, that is a love song, but I've never thought of it that way.” That's kind of where my lyricism comes from, is trying to be just a little bit more creative. I think that comes down to our society being very individualistic and trying to like, “I'm one of a kind over here.”
LUNA: Speaking of, tell me about your latest single, “Two Kids in a Trench Coat.”
COMFORT CLUB: I was going through a breakup and I was starting to think about the bigger picture of relationships and myself in them. I feel like I have this tendency to be very afraid of losing people which I think comes from trying to cope with low self esteem. When you have moments of weakness, you kind of resort back to your inner child; you just feel scared and you want to feel safe. Usually you find comfort in the person you're with and get through scary times of feeling alone by being together, but then overdoing being together. So that's where I came up with the concept for the song, of being two scared kids that are trying to pretend like we're adults. We're taking solace in each other and trying to just pretend like we're bigger than we are because the world is scary and we're afraid of being alone.
LUNA: I heard that you also have an album that's due out later this year! Are these themes of heartbreak and inner child present on the rest of the album?
COMFORT CLUB: Yeah, it does definitely find its way in there. I feel like [my breakup] was the first time that I went through something that really shook me to my core, and I started looking at the bigger picture of who I am. Where's my place in the world? What's happening around me? How did I end up here? It's definitely dramatic to say that — everyone goes through breakups, and I don't want to pretend that’s the biggest bomb that you can get dropped on in your life. But I started thinking about my inner child and who I am and why things happen to me, and I feel like a lot of it does come back to childhood.
I've always had this fear of abandonment and not wanting to be alone, so I started writing songs about that feeling. It's a really good experience to write a whole project around something like that because it's so personal.
LUNA: Did writing this album feel almost like a therapeutic practice?
COMFORT CLUB: 100%. I wrote some of the songs in the room that I'm in right now, and I can picture writing songs while crying, because I was having these emotions that I'd never processed before. I was in a place where I kind of hit rock bottom, and I didn't have a choice but to be honest with myself once I started writing about how I actually felt. I had never really done that as an artist — I'd always taken more of a narrative approach of coming up with a story and telling that. When you're actually talking about things that happened to you, it's a crazy roller-coaster of emotions. To answer your question, it was very therapeutic, because I felt like I was actually face to face with my emotions.
LUNA: When you're writing, do you have a target audience in mind?
COMFORT CLUB: I think so. I think first and foremost, my first audience is myself, because if I'm not interested in what I'm doing or if I don't think it's good, then that's never going to translate. Beyond that, I feel like the audience that I'm trying to go for is people who are really awake to their emotions and people who are either prone to getting hurt or have been hurt in the past and want to dig into that.
Whenever you feel like going down that road, you can listen to this song or this album and you can travel through those emotions. I think I want to be one of those artists that people [listen to] when they get their heart broken. I've always been part of the group that makes sad songs with a happy face. The lyrics are usually pretty sad or emotionally charged, but the music is catchy or up tempo. It's fun to have that juxtaposition.
LUNA: Do you have any prominent motifs that you keep coming back to in your work?
COMFORT CLUB: I feel like I do normally come back to the fear of abandonment or loneliness, or feeling hurt. I think that also goes into some psychology that I have to figure out at some point, from always creating narratives that the world is out to get you or this person's trying to hurt me. It’s a terrible emotion to feel, but I think it's really good for writing. I think that just goes to show what my worldview is like. I feel like I've been hurt enough times that I kind of look at the world that way, and I think a lot of people feel that way. We're human beings, and we do hurt each other.
LUNA: Do you have a favorite song that you've written?
COMFORT CLUB: I know it's cliche to say the most recent one, but I think “Two Kids in a Trench Coat“ is one of my favorite songs because it flows really nicely. I feel like lyrically I really did what I set out to do. I definitely had to revisit writing it and throw some stuff away and come back to it. I think the hard fought songs are the ones that end up being my favorites.
LUNA: Do you have any goals for your music going forward this next year?
COMFORT CLUB: Definitely. First and foremost, putting an album out is something I've always wanted to do for as long as I've been making music — I've always had the aspiration of having a cohesive project. This set of circumstances and experiences and just the timing that I was at in my life all came pretty organically. Writing an album was a very addicting process, and it's something that I want to do again because I had so much fun doing it, even though it was very difficult. Getting it out into the world is a huge thing, and I will be so proud of myself when that finally happens.
I also want to play more shows. I’ve played a handful of shows and I always have a good time doing it. I want to get more reach, I want to play all over the place. So that's a huge goal — I would love to get an opening slot for a tour. Another huge goal would be getting a song in a TV show or movie.
LUNA: To start out the year, people have been posting their “ins and outs” for 2024. What are your ins and outs this year?
COMFORT CLUB: Ins: something that I'm trying to do more of that I haven't done a lot are cold water plunges or ice baths. I think that's been in for the last couple of years, I'm definitely not early on that. For outs, I've always had this thing where I feel like we need to stop judging people when they yawn. I feel like we need to finally come around that yawning is not a disrespectful thing. It's just the fact that we're all exhausted collectively as a society. So no yawn shaming in 2024.
