Q&A: renforshort is a Nostalgic Pop-Powerhouse on New EP ‘a girl’s experience’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY SYDNEY LITTLE ☆
Photo by Christina Posztos
RENFORSHORT SPILLS THE COMPLEXITY OF GIRLHOOD — on her latest EP a girl’s experience, released on June 6. Through raw, authentic lyrics and nostalgic pop production, the Canadian singer captures the nuances of being a young woman in the modern age. She doesn’t claim to know everything about every girl’s experience. Instead, she lets fans in on some of her own experiences in the hopes that they’ll find aspects of theirs reflected in the lyrics.
While songs like “feeling good” and “pretend to like me” dive into themes of heartache and loneliness, the music pulls listeners onto the dance floor. This juxtaposition creates an EP that serves as the perfect soundtrack to the highs and lows of modern life. renforshort wants to be with listeners in their quiet, reflective moments as well as their high-energy nights surrounded by friends.
Read on for a glimpse into renforshort’s experiences of girlhood, her songwriting process, and her love of 2014 alt-pop.
Photo by Christina Posztos
LUNA: Can you share a bit more about the EP title a girl’s experience and what that means to you?
RENFORSHORT: It’s so broad! It’s my experience and my version of girlhood. Other people might identify with it, and they might not. I just want it to feel like a community for everybody of, “Hey, we're all just living a girl's experience, and it doesn't matter who we are.” It means nothing, but it also means everything to me.
LUNA: I love how you touched on the fact that we all have different experiences, but in that, we can still find common ground. Is that something that you’ve experienced more broadly with releasing music?
RENFORSHORT: Absolutely. I've realized as I've grown older that I've always felt so individual and so me. I think a lot of people feel that. At least when they’re younger, they feel like there's no one else like them, like no one else has done the things they have. And I think with the rise of social media and accessibility to other people's lives, you kind of realize that there are so many things that you do have in common with other people.
I think I will never think of myself as a completely unique being, but I do think that there are certain things, like the way that we perceive and live these shared events and experiences, that are different. We're all gonna have different experiences with these things by virtue of individualism.
LUNA: Your lyrics are very authentic and candid. Can you talk about your songwriting process?
RENFORSHORT: I try to write a bit every day. I think it's really important not to feel attached to certain songs and just write songs to have written them. I spent a lot of my life and my songwriting career writing every song like it was gold, and then feeling like, “Oh, I've already used this concept in a song that's never gonna come out. I can't ever use it again.” Which is so untrue and wrong!
I write down thoughts I have in my journal, and sometimes I bring them into the studio. Sometimes I'll just go into the studio or start an idea and literally just spit something out, and it will make sense. I’ll realize “These are the things that I've been thinking about. This is what has been on my mind.” And I wouldn't even realize if I didn't start writing.
I just spit things out, come up with chords, and then see if the song feels meaningful to me, in whatever way that might be. From there, I’ll decide if I want it to be produced or if I want to work on it a little more, and then just go from there. It’s nice not to have the pressure of being like, “Oh, this production is super cool, so it doesn't matter that these lyrics don't really make sense, or these melodies aren't as tight as I want them to be.” Instead, I take the bare bones of a song and build around what already exists.
LUNA: Who produced this project?
RENFORSHORT: I worked with Jeff Hazin. I've known Jeff since before I even started putting music out. We met when I was probably 15, and we’d meet and make music together every Sunday. We spent like three years doing that before we landed on a song that I felt like was my sound. He's been like a brother to me throughout a lot of my life. I definitely feel very lucky to have a connection with someone like that, someone who's taught me so many things about production, writing, and musicianship. He's so incredibly talented. I did basically this entire thing with him, and then I worked with another producer, David Pramik, for the song “pretend to like me.”
LUNA: Your EP clean hands dirty water came out just over a year ago. How have you evolved in the time between the two releases?
RENFORSHORT: I think the funny thing about these two releases is that they're so different. They're both spring releases, which is hilarious, because one feels like such a fall release and one feels like such a spring release.
Photo by Christina Posztos
LUNA: I'm curious which you think feels like a fall release and which feels like a spring release.
RENFORSHORT: I think clean hands dirty water feels like such a fall release to me, and then a girl’s experience feels more like spring and summer. It just has that vibe and energy. They’re very different projects.
On a girl’s experience, I'm still touching on topics that feel a little heavier, but I'm also writing songs that are a bit more mindless. That would have been the scariest thing for me to do when I was working on clean hands dirty water, to be like, “How can I write a song that you can just cruise and vibe to?” and not think so deeply about every single word and the overall meaning. I don't think I necessarily did that on clean hands dirty water, but I do think that this EP has an overall airiness and free feeling. It feels like putting your head out a car window and just cruising, even though I would never advise anyone to do that (laughs).
LUNA: You played a show in Toronto on June 13 to celebrate the release! How did you prepare for that?
RENFORSHORT: I covered “Closer” by Tegan and Sara, so I spent a really long time rehearsing and trying not to make it sound terrible. I was genuinely so excited for the show. The venue was truly my dream venue, so I was trying to be cool about it and breathe about it, and not be so annoying with Scott Pilgrim references about it. But I was very nervous. I don't normally get nervous for shows, but it felt very special to me. I played the whole new EP, which was really exciting. I feel incredibly lucky, so I kind of just accepted that this is my life, I’m not an impostor, and I’m here for a reason.
LUNA: I love that you did a cover. Can you share more about your musical influences?
RENFORSHORT: I always do a cover! It's so much fun. There are always people at a show who don't know the artist because they came as a plus-one or something like that. I think it's fun to engage with people in that way, and it's also just fun to reimagine somebody else's work, especially someone who's inspired you. “Closer” was such an inspiration for this EP, both sonically and in the overall vibe of it. I’ve loved that song forever, and I just wanted to pay homage to Tegan and Sara and that song, because I think it's a really special one. Plus, they’re also Canadian!
Marina was also super inspiring for me. When I was writing for this project, I wanted to capture the 2014 indie-pop sound. I wrote some of these songs over a year ago, so it’s crazy that the release has aligned with that sound having a resurgence. I've been manifesting it in my bones, posting on my mood boards, wishing for that sound to come back. That era of music was very inspirational for this project.
Photo by Christina Posztos
LUNA: I loved the music video for “feeling good!” I felt like it perfectly captured the high-energy and nostalgic vibes of the song. What was it like making the video?
RENFORSHORT: It was so much fun. My best friend lives in New York, so I stayed with her for a week, and we shot the video over three days. We shot all through the night. We did these super low-budget shoots. We’d sneak into bars and try to hide the camera and do all this crazy stuff. I felt incredibly awkward doing it.
We found this weird rave at an indoor soccer arena, and the Director of Photography knew somebody who was doing sound for it, so they let us film there. It was so fun and really embodied what that video was. I think if we had done it any other way, it would have been wrong. If we had a high budget and were building sets, it wouldn't have been right. I felt like I was right there. I was drinking real martinis. It made the video feel so genuine.
