Q&A: Rosemother and Their Long Awaited Album, ‘It's Beautiful In Here’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY CHLOE GONZALES ☆
Photo by Jake Romine
“We updated our computer overnight and it crashed our entire hard drive… it was so heartbreaking. But honestly it did work out, because now the tracks are way better than we could have even imagined." After losing their entire album, rather than giving up, Rosemother continued to create an album that held up to their standards. The band has finalized a 12-piece LP, indie mixed with bedroom pop visuals and whiffs of electronics.
“I kept feeling this huge pressure to constantly be like, ‘new music, new music,’ just to have something to give to people. But at the end of the day, I’m just proud of what we made—and if people are willing to wait, that’s so sick.”
The Luna Collective had the pleasure to talk to Rosemother about their recent album, It’s Beautiful in Here, and more.
Photo by Jake Romine
LUNA: You guys just released your third album, It’s Beautiful In Here, congrats! I heard through the grapevine that you guys lost your tracks, and I was wondering if you could recollect the initial feelings of losing that album to being on the other side of it.
HALEY: We worked on the album for two to three years and basically had it ready. We were so excited and announced it.
JAKE: We finished a lot of the mixes for the original and then I can’t remember what caused it, something with our hard drive.
HALEY: We updated our computer overnight and it crashed our entire hard drive. And then when we went back to work on the album, the project files were literally all the way back to years ago. It was so heartbreaking.
JAKE: We were kind of burnt out. We wrote it and tracked it all ourselves, produced it, arranged it, mixed it ourselves too. Doing all of that is just tiring. It was just extremely demoralizing, and we didn’t really know what we wanted to do. It was either redo the last year’s worth of work on the current projects that are the ones that got rolled back, or we just start over and re-record everything.
HALEY: During that whole time, we were performing this album. So naturally it progresses and it gets more evolved and you find better parts.
JAKE: So we were like, “Well, it would be nice to include all the new stuff. Maybe we’ll just re-record it, fuck it.” And then we did.
HALEY: So we spent another two years re-recording.
JAKE: The reason for re-recording it too was that we had learned a lot about production, recording, and mixing during the process of creating the first version. So we were like, “If we just redo it now, we’ll be able to make a lot better of a product.
HALEY: So honestly it did work out, because now the tracks are way better than we could have even imagined. If we were to compare them, it’s just like night and day.
LUNA: That’s amazing. And were you guys scared of your fans' reactions since you announced it before you realized it was lost?
HALEY: I think I really stress myself out too much over not giving people the music, because they were already seeing this at shows. I kept feeling this huge pressure to constantly be like, “new music new music,” just to have something to give to them. So we recorded a quick little track last year just to give our fans something. But I think it’s cool to see now, because there’s new fans that weren’t waiting years for the album, and they’re all stoked for us. And then there’s people who were waiting, and they’re like, “I’m so glad I could finally listen to this.” So at the end of the day, I’m just proud of what we made and it’s like if people are willing to wait that's so sick. I think Jake constantly was a calming presence, being like, “Let’s just give it time. We’re gonna eventually get it out.”
JAKE: I didn’t necessarily feel scared about people’s reactions, because I feel like the people who do fuck with us are always super sweet and supportive. I was just more disappointed in the fact that we couldn’t give them something. I wasn’t providing something for people which I feel like is just a weird construct I’ve created in my head about music that I have to be making something, but I don’t think any artist really needs to do anything.
LUNA: I also wanted to talk a little bit about the album art. I really like it, it was fun to identify what y’all did on Photoshop. I really like the clashing, very contrast highlights, the mixing of the photos kind of melding into one another especially due to the nature of the lyrics. I wanted to know the inspiration behind the album art, and who made it?
JAKE: I actually made the art for the album.
HALEY: And he did the edit.
JAKE: I took the photos for a photoshoot, last minute, because we needed to get something done for it.
COURTNEY: It’s PM, they’re like in the kitchen doing a whole backdrop, little lighting.
JAKE: I feel like we had gotten so distracted by everything else with the album, that we had been putting off the cover. And then it was like, crunch time, we’re like, “Oh sh*t, we got to make something.” So we rushed a quick photoshoot and spent a few days trying to figure out an edit. But that was the one that ended up sticking.
HALEY: It’s funny, our original idea was a swan and more ethereal. But once he presented this to me, I was like, “This makes so much sense,” because it’s so 2000s indie rock vibes. It’s different from what we’ve done before. And the high contrast is what really got me, like this is gonna catch my eye.
JAKE: The idea that I had for it was – like a lot of our other stuff way pretty cutesy and more of a mellow aesthetic, and I feel like with the new album it’s a bit more serious and grown up and I just wanted to make something a little more harsh and something that was more thought-provoking.
LUNA: I feel like listening to your previous work, like you said, it was ethereal and bedroom pop and now it’s turning more indie and feels a bit more dynamic. It’s not as mellow.
HALEY: All of our older work, I think it’s cute and everything but I was just finding my sounds and creating in my bedroom. So this album, now that we had a really nice live band, we wanted it to be [a different] sound. And [Jake] really pushed me to make it more serious and we all just evolved as writers.
JAKE: A lot of the idea behind our first album’s production was our live band at that time but we didn’t know anything about recording, so we kind of just put out whatever we could, [through] GarageBand. And then the next album, it was just Haley and me, and we were like, “All right, let’s do something more pop.” We tried to do more electronic stuff and try to make the arrangements more clear and with this album we’re like, “Why don’t we try to meld the two and combine all that we learned throughout both?”
LUNA: I think you said earlier, Courtney, you wrote, but did you all write?
HALEY: Throughout the years, it depends on the project. wWe first started singing with Courtney back in 2018, and we wrote a little EP together and then I moved to LA with Jake and we wrote an album together. And then once I came back, [Courtney] rejoined the band and she’s been writing on this album. So we all write together, especially for this album.
LUNA: So how were you guys able to combine your writing? Was it song by song?
JAKE: I think we all individually wrote from a first-person perspective and/or diary-esque. Most of the time Haley would start the songs and then we would come in and be like, “Why don’t you change this word?” or “What if we took the line in this direction?”
HALEY: It’s cool, because we’re so close, I feel like we go through similar experiences.
LUNA: I also wanted to touch on your music video for “Guess I Don’t Feel Bad.” We talked about aesthetics, and this has more bedroom pop vibes. How does it feel to go back to that aesthetic?
HALEY: Yeah, I think we wanted to mix the ideas because I think there are some more harder rock, indie rock and then there’s some crazy reverb, like whimsical vibe. So I think it’s fun for us to mix that and I feel like that specific song called for that.
JAKE: That was one of the main ones that was more bedroom pop, dreamy type. When we make videos, we kind of go off of the vibe of the song, whatever would feel right imagery-wise tied to whatever emotion the song is alluding to and then we’ll just make the video off of whatever visual concept.
LUNA: It was so pretty, I loved it, like the kaleidoscope moment and the dreamy filter. Who made those star hats?
HALEY: Courtney and I made them. We had the visual and then we’re like, we really want to do some big paper mache moment. And then I was thinking like an entire moon but Jake was like, “That’s gonna take forever.” Courtney and I, for months, were working on it after work and it was just so fun. We built everything.
JAKE: You guys took like the exact amount of time that you had to do this.
HALEY: Yeah everything for this album visually, was on a really, really, intense time constraint because once the album was done I was like, “I’m scheduling the release show.”
LUNA: You need those deadlines though to make things happen.
HALEY: Yeah, it actually helped, because we just made it. We just filmed it in our apartment in one day. It actually does kind of help to put those constraints on you sometimes, because I feel like we made a cool piece of art.
LUNA: You also have your first headlining tour coming up. How are you guys feeling about that? What are you most excited about?
COURTNEY: It doesn’t feel real.
HALEY: I’m excited for LA because we haven’t played there yet. That’s crazy, just to think we’ve been a band for this long and just haven’t played there. I’m really excited to meet all the people, and play a bunch of music for a whole month.
LUNA: I also really thought the flyer was so cute. Who did that?
HALEY: I did that!
LUNA: I thought it was a cute vibe – almost like you see in the movies in like high school and its like battle of the bands and they slap it on a surface and say, “Come to this show,” and walk away.
Photo by Jake Romine
