Q&A: Sextile Unleashed: Punk Morals, Electronic Mayhem and the Art of Authenticity
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY CARLY LIGGETT ☆
Photos By Carly Liggett & Justin Labadie
IN AN INDUSTRY INCREASING GOVERNED BY THE ALGORITHM, SEXTILE REMAINS A DEFIANT, HIGH-ENERGY OUTLIER - a band that values 'punk morals' and the raw chaos of a live set over any fleeting trend. Born in the rain-slicked streets of Brooklyn a decade ago and fully realized under the relentless Los Angeles sun, the duo, comprised of Brady Keehn and Melissa Scaduto, has traded traditional guitar tropes for a world of sequencers, drum machines and raw, industrial joy. Their journey hasn't been a straight line; it's been a decade-long path through lineup changes, hiatuses and a collective shift toward sobriety, all of which have refined their focus into something remarkably potent.
Their latest record, yes, please., is a meticulously sequenced tribute to the "night out." It’s an album designed to mimic the arc of a party, from the initial meeting of friends to the peak-hour rages, and finally, the quiet, somber comedown. Currently tearing through the Psycho Warrior tour alongside Machine Girl, Sextile remains a band rooted in fierce punk morals and a refusal to be "bootlickers" for the algorithm.
We caught up with Brady and Melissa at Treefort Music Fest to talk about the influence of Primal Scream, the catharsis of their new track "Melt Kristi Noem," and why staying authentic is the only way to become a legend.
LUNA: Thank you so much for being here. For our readers who may not know you, would you mind introducing yourselves and explaining what Sextile is all about?
BRADY: My name is Brady. I'm in Sextile.
MELISSA: My name is Melissa. Some people call me Scaduto 'cause that's my last name. I'm in Sexile. What is Sextile all about? At this point, the band has evolved a lot, so our current placement in the world is definitely one of joy in dance music and loud bass.
BRADY: I would say high-energy-based music.
LUNA: You guys first connected in Brooklyn and are now based in LA. How did that transition shape not just your sound, but also how you approach making music?
BRADY: I think because moving to L.A., it gave us a lot more space, and maybe it's just 'cause the sun's out all the time, that you feel like you gotta get up, do something, work, and make sure that you're pushing your life forward in some way. 'Cause in New York, when it's raining and cold, you just stay inside or you're at a bar hanging out with friends. Anyways, I think it shaped our music because we were able to incorporate more instruments, sequencers, drum machines, and stuff. It really shifted toward a dancey, electronic-music-oriented project.
LUNA: You've gone through lineup, changes, a hiatus, and coming back together. What feels most different about the way you collaborate now compared to before 2019?
MELISSA: We had a lot of opinions from other people involved before that. They had different ideas of the type of music they wanted to make, but they didn't really write music. So it was a little more of a struggle. Obviously, we often have a difference of opinion about the music we wanna make, and sometimes we run into problems because of it. But I feel like Brady and I kind of move, um, together collectively by accident.
MELISSA: Sextile has evolved so much from that beginning. I mean, it was a decade ago when we started the band, and, from your previous question, when you asked about the influence between New York and LA, it's almost hard to say whether or not the city changed it as much as our age, sobriety. You know, various other things have sort of changed it as well. I think that within 10 years, anyone can change so much. So, as for the style of music you wanna make, there was only so much left to be said.
MELISSA: I felt like with guitar music, and when we would particularly pick up a guitar, 'cause I think there are current great guitar bands. I'm always impressed when someone can say something new with a guitar, or when someone like Cameron Winter comes out of the blue rocking something that sounds like a 70-year-old man. He somehow writes a banger of a track, you know, and does it with the instrumentation that he chooses. We couldn't find that, so we felt like all that was left to say something new was within electronic music.
LUNA: You guys have some pretty incredible visuals highlighting your sound. For example, your music videos, are you guys heavily involved in that side of the creative process? If so, what is your intention behind it?
MELISSA: Yes. When we make tracks, we definitely think about the music videos and any we've made in meetings with directors. It's always whatever vision that we have. There've only been a couple of times when the vision wasn't seen in the final product. I have a very strong opinion on aesthetics. I do all of our merch and the album covers, and things like that. What I think I want visually from it doesn't always come out the way we want it to. But I think with anybody, we're basically collaborating. Once you involve yourself with any other artist, whether it's a director, photographer, or whatever. People put their own spin on what you said that you wanted from it. So I'm curious which videos, in particular, you've seen and like.
LUNA: Ooh, “Crash”. I think “Crash” is great.
MELISSA: Yeah, the idea behind it was like a Happy Mondays video. I believe it's “Step On” when they're on the roof. We wanted something like that, which is why you see us in shots on the roof. And we made that with our friend John, who we've made three music videos with.
LUNA: What was the inspiration or event that led to creating your latest record? yes, please.
MELISSA: I feel like a lot of the inspiration from that album came from our live shows. I think when we saw how everyone would respond to the more dance-oriented stuff, it furthered the idea that we wanted to create something for everyone to, um, dance together and, like, rage together.
BRADY: Yeah. It was this feeling we wanted to capture: when you were at a party, a song might come on, and if you were having a conversation with somebody, you would stop that conversation, and everybody would just start singing along and vibing with that song. So the music and some of the songs, like “Freak Eyes”, were made specifically to try to evoke that type of energy or memory, if you will. So it's a vast number of things, but like Melissa was saying, the idea was just to get people to move to music that we thought would be cool to dance to.
LUNA: Was there a specific intention behind the sequencing of yes, please?
BRADY: Yes, there was a specific intention behind the sequencing of Yes, please. It was supposed to be, almost like a night out. You meet up with your friends, then you go to a party, then the afters, and then you have the comedown of coming back home, that type of vibe.
MELISSA: Yeah. We were heavily influenced at one point by Primal Scream’s album Screamadelica. I don’t know if you've listened to that record in full, but it's very much like a night out with your friends, taking ecstasy and the come-down vibe that comes after, and the after-party as well. So we really intentionally thought about the track listing and how we wanted it to align. It was also because of our last record, Push. We had a track listing idea, and the label had another; we just decided to go with what the label wanted. And I think that record is all over the place.
BRADY: There are lots of comments on the gram about it.
MELISSA: My gut feeling was right, like, no, we shouldn't do what other people wanted, but I was just trying to be easy. At that point, we were done with that album, so we just let it slide. When it came to "yes, please,” we were fighting for whatever track listing we wanted. And there were some songs that we left off the album that, in retrospect, we've opened up some of those demos, and I'm like, damn, it would've fit better here. But the last song on Yes, please. Is a very big come-down song. It doesn't even sound like the rest of our stuff.
LUNA: “Soggy Newports”! That’s a great song.
MELISSA: Oh, thank you. I actually wrote that song before I even met Brady. I wrote it as a country song while I was in a wheelchair after a pretty bad accident and living in a nursing home on Roosevelt Island in New York. So the song is about that nursing home. The lyrics that I think a lot of people don't pay attention to were written at a time when I thought it was funny, but in retrospect, it's actually quite sad. Because all that stuff is very real. And it was because I found a pack of Newports in the bathroom, covered in urine. And I was like, should I smoke these or not? 'cause I was living hard and I was very young to be in that situation. The song has so much meaning to me, so I'm glad you've listened to it.
LUNA: Thank you for sharing that. You guys just started the Psycho Warrior tour with Machine Girl. What are you most excited about, uh, being on the road again?
MELISSA: Well, their audience is amazing. I just like wanna say that it's really inspiring to see Machine Girl. To watch them has actually been really inspiring because they're so harsh. But then they have a cover of the Pal Saints' "Kinky Love," which I don't know if you guys are familiar with. It's an early-four-a-d early nineties song that's super lush, shoegazy, and beautiful, and it's really amazing that they put that moment into their really aggressive set. And their audience is so pumped and full of love, and they're mainly teenagers. It gives me hope that the kids are all right. They've also just been so accommodating.
BRADY: Their whole crew is really amazing.
MELISSA: We've toured with a lot of bands, and they definitely have the most punk morals and keep it the most real of any band of that size that I've seen in a way. So much respect for them. I'm most excited to be playing for their audience.
BRADY: We're also trying out two new songs, which I'm really excited about. We've been playing them, and it seems to be really connecting and hitting. As a matter of fact, everybody says that one of our newest songs is their favorite of the set now.
MELISSA: When we wrote it, I was like, we gotta play this on the Machine Girl tour, it's called Melt Kristi Noem. We wrote it the day that Alex Prety was killed, and it was just so upsetting, I couldn't get off my phone with just this woman bullshitting us and anyone buying into it. I couldn't believe it. I was so angry, so we wrote this really angry track, and it is one way to channel all this darkness we can't control because we're not politicians and we're not billionaires, but at least we can all get involved with music.
LUNA: Do you guys have any pre or post-show rituals?
MELISSA: It’s a lot of stretching, so much stretching. We jam to a few songs that are always our go-tos.
BRADY: Three 6 Mafia. We just blast music really hard. Sometimes I drink a shit ton of energy drinks. We'll do push-ups, stretches, then post-show cigs or a joint or something, and a towel and water like immediately, 'cause we're so sweaty after that.
MELISSA: That pretty much hits the spot. It's just like, I was just gonna say the three songs that we listen to to get pumped up are always Banned from the Roxy by Crass, Two Months Off by the Underworld, and Sister Ray from the Velvet Underground.
LUNA: As Sextile continues to evolve, what feels most important for you to protect and hold onto in your creative process?
MELISSA: It always goes back to the punk morals and identity in a way. Sometimes I wonder if it shoots us in the foot, but the music business is really fucked up. I feel like, as we continue to grow as a band, I always wanna keep a sense of authenticity and never bow down or be a bootlicker.
BRADY: We want to keep making the music we want to hear in the world. You know, not like making music for other people, making music for the industry, or making music that we know is gonna work for the Spotify algorithm. It's like what Melissa was saying, “trends are fleeting.” We want to stay genuine, that’s the most important thing, and I think every artist should hold onto that.
MELISSA: I think people like Lou Reed stayed authentic, and this is why he's become a legend and somebody that we hold to such a high regard. Because if you think about the Velvet Underground, they are like the punkiest band of all time. Imagine being like, we wear leather, we shoot meth, and we are making weird noise music, and it's like the mid sixties, and you're not a hippie. It's pretty wild.
