Q&A: Lone Fir Cemetery Turns A New Leaf On Latest Single, “bless yr heart”
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY CHLOE GONZALES ☆
“It’s interesting, because when you listen to the song, you’re really hearing me come to this realization in real time.” – Miles of Lone Fir Cemetery answers on the epiphany of creating his latest single, “bless yr heart.” Based in Los Angeles, Miles Cottrill has been powering through Lone Fir Cemetery since his freshman year of high school. Recently, the band has transitioned into a solo project, opening up many freedoms for the project’s direction. “bless yr heart” aches on the pains of letting go and moving onto a new chapter, filled with glitches and the stuttering of the steps one takes to leave. The folktronica waltz turned to distortion takes a perspective that one can relate to on burnout.
Luna had the pleasure to interview Miles on his new era and direction for Lone Fir Cemetery.
LUNA: How are you?
MILES: I’m doing good! It’s been a sleepy day for sure. It’s cloudy as well.
LUNA: Lone Fir Cemetery has been a band for multiple years, but is now transitioning into a solo project. What’s the hardest part about letting go?
MILES: This project started in 2019 when I was a freshman in high school and it’s become such a big part of my life. I’ve always loved this idea of being in a band and the shared collaboration and aspects of creating together. It’s something that’s very scary to let go of and I’m almost hesitant to call it a solo project at all because I hate the idea of Lone Fir Cemetery being synonymous with Miles Cottrill. They’re not the same thing. There’s too many people that have poured themselves into this project up until now for it to be only me, and I don’t want to erase that history.
LUNA: How has the transition to a group dynamic to yourself been? From being in the studio to building a song, what’s changed?
MILES: Even beforehand, I would write all the songs and bring them to the group when they were pretty much formally done and then everyone would write their parts. But now I can create and finish a song on a whim where I used to spend months working on one song and then have to wait for the process of everybody learning it and writing their parts. But now, I can just sit down in my dorm room after a class and just see what comes out. Maybe I like what happens or something special will happen that I connect with.
LUNA: Do you ever feel like it’s ever a detriment not getting anybody’s input? Or do you feel like it’s pretty cool being like, “Oh, I can just do whatever I want.”
MILES: At this point, after it’s been around six years of it being a very collaborative project, I’m very excited to be able to just pour all of myself into it and not have to really answer to anyone but myself. But I do think that there is something really special about letting other people breathe some of themselves into your own work and kind of recontextualizing something that is so personal to you, bringing their own lived experiences into it.
LUNA: I wanted to talk about your upcoming single, “bless yr heart,” as it touches on burnout and turning a new leaf. Would you consider creating this song an epiphany of some sort?
MILES: In February, I woke up at my friend’s house the morning after a show with my electronic rap band 4dollar and nobody was awake yet. There was a guitar on the porch and I decided to learn how to play “Big Ol’ Bird” by Fat, Evil Children. And then shortly after, the voice memo for the idea that became “bless yr heart” was born, which is probably why it’s a waltz. And then I freestyle all the lyrics. There’s a way in which your true feelings spew out of you when you’re in that trance, like a songwriting state. And it revealed to me how unhappy I was with the current state of Lone Fir Cemetery; I wasn’t having fun anymore and the project had become kind of a low priority for everyone else that was in it, including myself. So it’s interesting, because when you listen to the song, you’re really hearing me come to this realization in real time.
LUNA: How have you dealt with burnout?
MILES: I feel like the burnout was largely coming from a shared sense within the band of not feeling as invested in it anymore. But what’s really driving me right now and what drives me most of the time is just this feeling of being terrified of dying and not saying what I want to say before it’s too late. There’s a lot I want to say, and there’s a great well of art inside of me waiting to be actualized. So in that sense, I’m excited that Lone Fir Cemetery is a solo project, so that I can start releasing music as if I may die any second.
LUNA: Previous records that you’ve released, have been very conceptual, with fictional characters and created worlds. With the introspection that you’ve been doing, will your upcoming music be less conceptual and more real-world based?
MILES: I’ve always found it easier, on a personal level, to sing about fictional characters because for a long time I was very scared of vulnerability. But now I feel like I’m finally coming to a place of being comfortable being very vulnerable in a more upfront kind of way. I think a large part of what I love about art and making it is building worlds and creating fictional realities within it. So I don’t think that will go away. It may come in a different form, but I don’t think it will go away.
LUNA: Sonically, “bless yr heart” has notes of glitchcore and electronic, especially towards the beginning. I’m interested in the direction that you’re going in sonically, because originally Lone Fir Cemetery started as an emo band.
MILES: The beginning of Lone Fir Cemetery started very much as this emo, shoegaze influenced band. That’s what we set out to make and that’s what the people in the band signed up to do. But now, with this newfound freedom, I can take inspiration from a wide variety of things, because I feel like I’m very inspired by everything. I’m a person that’s very sympathetic to media. Now I feel like I don’t want to pay attention to what sonic elements I’m trying to emulate, but more so whatever I’m inspired by at a given moment, whether it’s as little as a random Instagram Reel or such. I’ve been listening to a lot of underground rap music, so I feel like that’s coming through the most to me right now, but everything that I’ve written up until now has been emo music. That will always be part of the genes of the music.
LUNA: Underground rap is a great genre to bring up, because that genre itself has been going through a lot of evolution throughout the years. There’s a lot of hyperpop and electronic influences in the genre now, as seen with artists like Lucy Bedroque. It’s cool to see the genre you’re presenting is already something that’s evolving alongside yourself.
LUNA: What aesthetics and visuals do you want to present with this new era?
MILES: I’ve been making lots of random videos, very inspired by ‘90s point and click games. I want to make videos that aren’t necessarily music videos, but that add to the world of Lone Fir Cemetery as an artistic project. I definitely want the videos and visuals that I make from now on to be tied into the art as much as it is to the music.
LUNA: A multimedia project, rather than just strictly the music, I love that. What else can we expect next from Lone Fir Cemetery?
MILES: I’m creating more now than ever in my life and like you said, I want it to be more than just a musical project. In terms of music, I want to adopt more of that underground rap mentality of making a lot of stuff and just having fun. Like this is the first time I’m doing all the mixing, mastering, and recording by myself in my room and trying to find it within myself to be okay and like the flaws of my lack of technical skills. Just release a lot more, make a lot more art, and have fun!
