Q&A: Horsepower Unveils New Single and Announces “Happiest Day of My Life” EP
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
HORSEPOWER TURNS INWARD — Charlotte Weinman, the creative force behind Horsepower, is entering a new chapter with her forthcoming EP, Happiest Day of My Life, out November 20. Alongside the announcement, Horsepower shares the EP’s latest single, “Do you think you can live without dying every day?” and reveals an upcoming headline show at Brooklyn’s Baby’s All Right.
On the new single, Horsepower confronts the difficulty of understanding her own behavior while feeling disconnected from her emotions. The track examines the uncertainty of distinguishing genuine enjoyment from emotional detachment as Horsepower captures the “spaced out overwhelm” she was experiencing.
“Who and where is the ‘me’ observing myself, and who and where is the ‘me’ I’m observing?” Horsepower asks, articulating the existential questions at the heart of the track.
“The truth for me right now is, the very question is a waste of time, and every second contains both vivid association and misty dissociation,” she says. “Presence is a drain I circle unendingly.”
Horsepower describes a shift away from the narrative precision that informed her earlier songwriting. While her first EP brought her closer to the specific events and emotional details behind each song, this new collection offered an opportunity to embrace uncertainty and allow meaning to emerge without spelling everything out.
“With my first EP, I was a lot closer to the story beat for beat in each song, and really concerned with conveying that accurately,” Horsepower says. “It was fun writing this EP, taking that pressure off and feeling like this thing we were talking about earlier of the gap between what is possible to say and what you've actually meant, taking some solace in that and saying a little bit less or being a little bit more opaque in my delivery.”
Through the forthcoming EP and its introspective lead single, Horsepower turns inward, and invites listeners into her world.
Arianna Shooshani
LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what inspires your artistic style and sound?
HORSEPOWER: I love a very heavy guitar sound. That always tends to be a north star of what I want to identify first — like the poles of the idea, often because it's just quietly in my head. It starts on that end of the spectrum, and then I try to push it to the other end. In my artistic process or sound, I'm interested in the urgency of thought and how accurately we can express ourselves given such limited tools as people like language and music.
LUNA: You just released your newest single “Do You Think You Can Live Without Dying Every Day?” What is the inspiration behind the track or the feeling that pushed this story to the surface?
HORSEPOWER: I was interested in capturing the spaced out overwhelm that I had been living in for a while. I had been feeling dissociated or dislocated from my life, and within that, unable to discern whether things were good or bad, or whether I was having a good time at all. It was only upon reflection of the day's itinerary in retrospect being like, that that went well, or that didn't go well, or I was offended by that, or I felt really comforted by that or whatever it was. That was the inciting thought.
Sonically, I was interested in that feeling of being fuzzed out and moving through the world through a film of something very thick and gooey, so that's where that drum sound came from. I really leaned heavy on the toms for this song to give it that army crawl towards the finish line feeling. It became really fun to arrange those guitar parts and find the right tone. To counterbalance that sleepiness, I wanted to have something really frenetic feeling in the guitar tone, especially in the chorus. It feels like there's a bubble that pops.
LUNA: “Do You Think You Can Live Without Dying Every Day?” is just a sneak peek into your upcoming EP Happiest Day of My Life. What themes or narratives did you set out to explore with this project? What can listeners expect from you in this new era of music?
HORSEPOWER: Happiest Day of My Life is the next closest thing to what I'm going for. I always like to joke with my brothers that the next song is going to be the one that's actually the first song. Thankfully this project has gotten more traction than I anticipated it getting at this point in its life, which is amazing, but also means I'm still figuring it out in front of maybe more people than I was anticipating. I think that this is more garage heavy at times and more trust in my ability to wander around to get to the focal point of an idea. I think it straddles. There's two songs that go heavier in the garage-grunge direction, and then two songs that meander a little bit more. I felt excited about that form moving into writing the record now and feeling like it could be anything. I don't feel limited by genre, which is great.
LUNA: Do you have a personal favorite song on Happiest Day of My Life — one that feels closest to your heart or most revealing of who Horsepower is right now?
HORSEPOWER: “Hide,” which is the last song on the EP, and it'll be the last song to come out. I wrote a very small, almost embarrassing singer-songwriterly verse, where I say she's in her bag. I feel proud of the ability to trust an idea and not throw it away for not looking the way that I think a good song looks from the jump. From taking off that pressure, I could follow it to the edge of where it was walking, and I feel like it became something pretty broad spanning in terms of what kind of a song it is. We also had a lot of fun making that song because my favorite part of recording is doing all of these nonsensical vocal layers without much of a plan. I felt like the element of surprise and urgency that keeps me attached to music felt like it could be centrally featured in the making of that song.
LUNA: Have you taken any risks or experimented more, whether that’s lyrically, emotionally or sonically, with Happiest Day of My Life compared to your previous Horsepower EP and what does that look like?
HORSEPOWER: Lyrically, the EP is a lot less dense than the first EP. With my first EP, I was a lot closer to the story beat for beat in each song, and really concerned with conveying that accurately. It was fun writing this EP, taking that pressure off and feeling like this thing we were talking about earlier of the gap between what is possible to say and what you've actually meant, taking some solace in that and saying a little bit less or being a little bit more opaque in my delivery. Lyrically, I think that's a risk.
Sonically, we recorded this really quickly after SXSW, so we were all really tired and recorded it at my parents' house. I was thinking that I'll save money on the recording by recording it at home, and then whatever money I have to put towards it, I can put towards the mix, which meant that we recorded these songs in March, and they're not coming out until now, because we've tinkered so much with them. I feel like I'm now understanding just what goes into a mix. We got great takes, and I feel like I deepened my understanding of the songs throughout the mixing process, which changed or informed the mix, which was a great process. It felt like writing again.
LUNA: What is fueling your fire right now that’s pushing you into this new era of your career?
HORSEPOWER: There is this artist Hana Stretton, who my brother just put me onto, and she's got two records out, and does a lot of ambient noise. It paints a very full picture of the environment, and I'm always interested in capturing a room in a song, but this has really challenged my expectation of what makes recorded material, so I've been really loving listening to that.
I've been rereading Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector, because I think she captures really well something that I was going for on this EP. I'm excited to keep whittling at this idea that when you do something that might be considered evil, it brings you closer to your humanity. There's this quote from the book, where she says, “Evil is my true calling. How else am I able to breathe freely?” Which I thought was a really funny thought and very true in terms of acting surprisingly or out of convention. I've been loving riding my bike. My brother Ben and I have a new schedule of writing and recording together, where we'll write a song and then it is up for grabs for both of us, and it's how do we justify it within the artistic voice of Bones or Horsepower, which is helping me to articulate to myself what the artistic voice of horsepower even is.
LUNA: You're celebrating the EP with a headline show at Baby's All Right. What are you most excited to bring into the live setting with these new songs?
HORSEPOWER: We used a lot of piano on this EP in surprising ways at times, and then not surprising ways at other times. I feel excited to play live with the piano. That's not something that we usually do, and looking back on the first EP, I've been having a lot of fun just by myself rearranging some things. I feel excited to revisit some of those with the full band in a way that keeps them feeling accurate to what I'm trying to say with this project. We tried the other day this version of “Excalibur” that just threw out the time signature. It was a success in that it opened my eyes to new things about the song, and I feel excited to keep playing with that. I don't think I can say who the opener is yet, but I'm over the moon about it. They're my favorite band right now, so I feel excited about that.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the upcoming year look like that you would like to share with Luna?
HORSEPOWER: I'm feeling good right now. I'm looking ahead to recording a lot this fall and winter, and I feel really excited and a little daunted about what's to come. I find that the last couple times I've made a plan about what a collection of songs is going to be about, or what the central theme's going to be. I'm working now with this very expectationless mood. I'm trying not to have a thesis statement until the very end, so it provides for these aimless or unstructured writing periods with myself. I think that's going to be a nice respite from the rest of my heavily scheduled service working life. The number one thing I want to say about the rest of this year is that I'm seeing my favorite band of all time, which is Life Without Buildings. They're doing their first show in 25 years in London, and I got tickets a year ago because they were $30. My brother Ben and I are going. We will be going in November, and I am ready to be completely moved by that show. They are such a special band. I always feel challenged as a writer by them. I wouldn't say stylistically that I'm writing music similar to them because I consider them truly untouchable, but I'm excited to take some inspiration from there and come home and write my ass off.
