Q&A: Isabel Dumaa Lets the Fantasy Take Over on “Reverie”
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
INSIDE ISABEL DUMAA’S REVERIE — What happens when you fall for someone's potential before you ever fully see the person in front of you? For indie pop artist Isabel Dumaa, that question becomes the starting point for “James Dean,” the latest dreamy single from her forthcoming EP Reverie. Drawing inspiration from the iconic imagery of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, Dumaa turns the idea of the Hollywood fantasy inward, exploring what it means to build an entire version of someone in your head — and then fall for it.
On Reverie, out October 23, Dumaa isn't shying away from the messier parts of being young and figuring yourself out. Love, heartbreak, projection and self-discovery all collide across the EP, with daydreaming serving as both an escape and a source of consequence. Rather than romanticizing those experiences from a distance, Dumaa allows herself to sit inside them, questioning where fantasy ends and reality begins.
Romanticization is central to Reverie, a project that finds Dumaa looking inward as much as she looks toward the relationships that have shaped her.
“So much of this EP is about relationships, but so much of it was about me being stuck in my head and the consequences of that and the benefits of that,” Dumaa reveals to Luna.
The title Reverie feels fitting for a body of work so deeply rooted in daydreaming. Dumaa's songs exist in a hazy space between fantasy and reality. Love, disappointment, and longing coexist throughout the project.
“These are uncomfortable emotions… but I do want to feel them because that’s a part of living,” Dumaa says. “I’m not in high school; I’m not in college. But I am still just a young woman encountering the world. And I think that I’m continuing to learn that.”
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 kind of atmosphere or emotional space do you aim to create for your listeners?
ISABEL: I think music is the most powerful thing on the planet. I love music. I'm such a big music fan, and that is why I do what I do. I know firsthand the feeling of listening to a song and being like, “Oh my gosh, that was exactly what I was feeling encapsulated and put into words.” That's why I just try to write songs from my heart the best way that I know how. I hope to be able to create that for other people, and let everyone know that you are not alone in what you are feeling. I love the world building that goes along with that, and just trying to create whatever this world that I have is. I clearly love very feminine-led things. I have two moms and a sister, so I just grew up around women. I love old and antique things, and building the world around my music and letting it just be this dreamscape that people can escape to.
LUNA: You’ve released “James Dean” as the next taste of Reverie. What can you tell us about the story behind the song? What initially inspired the title “James Dean,” and what does that reference represent within the song?
ISABEL: The thought process behind “James Dean” was I had wanted to write a song about the idea of falling in love with the full potential of someone, and then the reality of that's not who they are. I had been in this entanglement where there was so much love bombing. I was daydreaming a lot and found myself in my head a lot. I found myself getting ahead of myself, and then it was not the reality of the situation, and so that was the thought behind “James Dean.” I was having a session, and I had the line about daffodils because this guy had actually brought me daffodils and then I was talking about my love of Hollywood golden age movies. I had just watched an Audrey Hepburn movie the night before. My mom showed me Gentlemen Prefer Blondes when I was in elementary school, and that changed my entire life. The line, “If you were James and I was Marilyn,” just came out immediately.
LUNA: You are about to release your newest EP. What does the title Reverie mean to you and what did you feel compelled to explore this time around?
ISABEL: I have a list of words that I love, that I think are very beautiful words. I feel like I'm most impacted by the way that things make me feel, and so even I'll find myself in songs comparing two songs that sound nothing alike, but they make me feel the same way. “Reverie” was always a word that I had loved, and it meant daydream, and I thought that that was so beautiful. I feel like it reads beautifully, and the idea of daydreaming. My whole life has just been something that has been so core to my identity, and throughout this whole process, so much of this EP is about relationships, but so much of it was about me being stuck in my head and the consequences of that and the benefits of that.
I did not go into this process being like the album's going to be called Reverie, and now let's write all the songs to do it. The songs came to be. When I was trying to think of what to name the EP, I was just shuffling through all of my words and nothing was feeling right. I had “Reverie” all along. It was one of the original words that I had and ideas that I had for what I wanted the project to be. I just came back to it, and the second I was like “Reverie.”
LUNA: Across the EP, what did you learn about yourself that you maybe didn’t expect when you first started writing these songs?
ISABEL: I learned so much about myself throughout this process. I have grown so much as a person and as an artist over these past two years, and I think that's very intertwined. I realized how much I had lost my faith in myself and the way that was manifesting in relationships, but also making music. I think a lot of this was coming back to myself and learning to speak up for myself. And again, that manifested in making music, and that manifested in my life and in my relationships, personal relationships and work relationships.
I was in a session. I was writing for this project, and it was really early on in the process. I was talking to my friend about what had happened. I was showing some of the songs that I had made, and they were like, “Can I make a blunt observation? I think you're mitigating all of your feelings completely,” and I immediately was hit so strongly because I realized I had been minimizing everything as self preservation and as a way of protecting the people in my life, also even the ones who would hurt me, and not wanting to make a big deal out of anything. I wasn’t letting myself feel the intensity of things that had happened. That's not how emotions work. Feelings demand to be felt. So learning to open up and feel everything, and that's intense, and that's hard. Also learning to not hold everything so closely within myself. I do think that manifests in my life and in music of just saying how I feel and asking for help.
LUNA: What feels different about Reverie compared to your previous EP Just My Nature? Did you experiment more or take any risks with your songwriting, production or perspective? What did that look like?
ISABEL: Many more risks were taken with this project, which was awesome. This project, I think, has more of me in it. Music is an ever evolving thing, and someone's sound or who they are as an artist, I think, is something that will always change year by year in the same way that people change year by year. Not that I didn't take charge on my last project, but this was a project where I felt there are pieces of me in every single aspect of this, and I had the confidence to speak up more in the production room and mix in every single step with this process. Even the parts where I don't know my way around Pro Tools or anything, but making sure that everything that I was saying was getting translated. I experimented so much more, which was so fun. Two people can write the exact same song and make it completely differently. Just allowing myself to have fun and to try things. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't, and that's okay. I definitely had so much more fun creating this project. I think that also helps lead to a project that feels much more like it's completely my own. I feel very proud of it.
LUNA: Do you have a personal favorite song on Reverie — one that feels closest to your heart or most revealing of who Isabel is right now?
ISABEL: “Don't Stop Trying to Love Me” is my favorite. That was a song that I had been wanting to write for a very long time, and I just hadn't quite known how to do it. I find myself sometimes thinking about songs that feel so important to me, they feel so large that it's difficult to condense them to be able to put into a three-minute song. I had been trying for a really long time, and then it came out one day. I think it's my most personal song on the project, and is very much me baring my soul. It's a song that feels dearest to my heart, and I'm very very proud of that one. Because it was so personal and so important to me, it took the longest for us to do because it was so important for me to get every single aspect of it right and every single vocal performance to be exactly what I knew it needed to be and to feel what I was feeling present in every single aspect of the song.
LUNA: How do you hope listeners — especially your femme audience — can connect with or find power in this new era of music from you? What emotions or messages do you want to leave with them?
ISABEL: I hope that they can find solace. I, being a woman, make my music for anyone who wants to listen to it. But I'm making it for women, old and young, girls who are my age, anyone who's going through something similar. I hope that any woman who hears it is able to feel heard and understood, and/or welcomed into the world that I'm trying to make. I, at the end of the day, am trying to foster a sense of community and a group of people through the music that I am making.
LUNA: What is fueling your fire right now that’s pushing you into this new era of your career?
ISABEL: I've been going through growing pains. I feel like I have been going through all of the feelings of puberty within a month span, and I think that there are just so many things in my life that are beginning and ending, which is so exciting and so intense. I feel like these times are challenging and intense, but it prompts the most beautiful things. I've been very open to the world as of lately, and I feel like I have been struck by the inspiration arrow, and it's been heavy because everything that I've been looking at in life and in the world, and my music, good and bad, has just felt so so heavy in the most beautiful way possible. With the people in my life, with the music that I'm making, with everything, so I'm very excited to get back and keep making more music. I'm hopeful that I just get to keep doing this for the rest of my life.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?
ISABEL: Feeling so excited. This project has been two years in the making, so I'm just so excited to have it out and for everybody to hear it. With that also comes anxiety and a little bit of fear, and I love it and I'm proud of it. I do hope that other people like it. I'm playing some shows, which I'm so excited for. I'm playing three shows in LA, Chicago and New York, which are going to be the first headline shows that I've done for this project. I haven't really gotten to play since earlier in the year. Making music is one thing, but playing music, there is nothing like it. It is a drug that I just can't get enough of. I'm very excited to get to play shows and get to play all of this new music for everybody as well, so that's taken up the rest of my year. Getting started on all of the next projects to come as well.
