Q&A: SKORTS Channel Live Energy into Their Explosive Debut ‘Incompletement’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Photo Credit: Jackilyn Cooper
AT SKORTS’ FIRST SHOW, AN AMP EXPLODED — a chaotic, ear-splitting moment that could’ve ended the night before it began. Instead, it became the spark. Call it a freak accident or a sign from the universe, but from that chaos was born a band that refused to arrive quietly. Since then, SKORTS have carved their place in New York City’s live scene with an energy that’s impossible to ignore. Now, with their debut album Incompletement, they’re bottling that electricity into a record that feels just as alive as the night they first plugged in.
Incompletement embodies the group’s philosophy. “To us, it means allowing oneself to live and create in an ever-changing state of impermanence,” they share.
Across the record, longtime fans will recognize several tracks that have become live staples. But Incompletement also ventures into uncharted emotional terrain, including two never-before-performed songs that reveal a softer, more reflective side of SKORTS. These moments of tenderness round out the record, adding emotional depth to the band’s signature intensity.
The result is an album that feels alive — pulsing with the unpredictable electricity of a SKORTS show but refined just enough to echo through larger rooms. It’s polished yet unpretentious, confident yet curious, a sonic document of a band learning to embrace their own contradictions.
With Incompletement, SKORTS are embracing their evolution. Because if the band’s explosive first gig taught them anything, it’s that sometimes, the most powerful beginnings come from the mess.
Photo Credit: Nico Malvaldi
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 inspires your artistic style and sound?
CHAR: We all come from different influences, which is fun. We all met a little bit later in life, relative to some bands who have been together for a very long time, but we have very similar influences.
ALLI: I feel like visually, I loved the photographer Tim Walker when I was little. My sister and I were obsessed with his imagery. I feel like that really leans into the kind of visuals we're trying to create.
EMMA: One I always go to lately is the band Fimon in Chicago, and we as a band have got to see them live together, which is a nice group to connect over, because they have a lot of really beautiful harmony focus in their songs, which I'm always really drawn to music that has that. They also rock really hard and are really, really seasoned performers. One of them is an experimental violinist.
ALLI: I remember going to see the David Bowie at the museum exhibit, and he's another artist where everything he does is really intentional and speaks to me.
CHAR: I'm deeply, deeply influenced by a lot of music and it's just how far back do you want to go? I'm always listening to Queens of the Stone Age. That's a common one that I'm always finding inspiration from, and it's probably the biggest one right now. The Cameron Winter album that came out is really moving, and it's cool to see an album like that do so well, and it's inspiring. We're constantly face-to-face with this doom that the consumer is so turned off to anything but then an album like that comes out, and it grabs everyone and taps into some sort of Zeitgeist. I think good art will always shine through. The times are what they are, but that album's a perfect example of being so imperfect and raw, and there's nothing commercial about it, yet it's a masterpiece, and I think that's why it is getting the recognition.
LUNA: What kind of atmosphere or emotional space do you aim to create for your listeners?
CHAR: A big ambiance.
ALLI: Trying to really swallow the listener and have them engaged in it. I don't feel like it's very passive listening music, but I wanted to invoke whatever kind of feelings they're leaning into in the moment, letting themselves feel vulnerable in that. I feel like you can pull a lot of different stories out of each song. There's a lot of love and relationship themes and feminine rage that's in there, so I want them to feel empowered and to create in their own life, and to walk away remembering whatever feeling they had made them feel something, even if they don't like it.
EMMA: There's both melody and heart in there. We want something that rocks, it goes hard, but there's pathos in there for introspection and they can walk away feeling whatever they need to feel.
LUNA: You have released your debut record Incompletement and a huge congratulations is in order! The album feels like a culmination of the energy your fans have experienced at your live shows. What is the inspiration behind the project and what themes and emotions do you explore?
ALLI: It’s our first body of work. It's all the songs that we wrote together and put our hearts into. It's what everybody in the crowd hears when they go to a Skorts show. We were trying to capture that live show energy and I feel like letting ourselves release it into the world has been accepting the idea that it may not feel complete. There is that tie to the the album title, where it's a healthy place to live in that area is to create and release and to keep creating, knowing that it'll just be all these different iterations of your same big manifesto, whatever you're trying to say in the world before you die, it's never going to feel complete. There's that feeling of letting it live as it is. We're excited to finally get it out there. We've got so much more music that we're ready to get recorded.
LUNA: “Burden” opens the record with such emotional force. Why did you choose to have “Burden” be the introduction to the project?
CHAR: There's a lot of flipping and flopping on that wasn't really going to be the intro to the project. The track list was tough, and there were other contenders for a while. It felt like “Burden” has a lot of captivating elements to it that I think at first listen, you think it's not super easy to identify what maybe the genre is or what this band is going to sound like. I don't think really any of the tracks on the record all sound much alike at all. I'd say that is a good thing. I think our sound and our songs are ever changing. They aren't just like here's the one guitar part, here's the other guitar part. I think it's because even though our songs are like that, it's not the same guitar sound and same guitar. I think it's because all the influences are different. “Burden” is captivating in a way that is a little bit like, you know, I don't think you hear that song and go, ‘they’re a new rock band.’
ALLI: That song was so tough to play live too. It's really strangely bizarre to hold it all the way through and to carry it out perfectly, and I feel like we're finally getting there with it.
LUNA: What is your favorite song from Incompletement and why do you love it? Is there a certain lyric or message that stands out to you the most?
ALLI: “I Won’t Be The One” because it has such a nice build to it, and it's very powerful. I think just the recording, it was a great take. It's one of those times where you really feel like you got to get that song out the way you want it, and it came through and the vision was captured. Sometimes you don't feel that way completely, and it's impossible to always feel that way. But this one, I always feel like it's a job well done.
CHAR: I have the same answer. I think between it being a little more discovered in the studio and we realized it in the studio, I think that's a big reason why it's a standout for me. I think the studio version is better than any live version we had ever done. And a lot of that is due to the drumming on it by Max. We really captured the perfect feeling.
EMMA: It’s hard because this one's been out for a while, but I think “R4DR4M” stays my favorite because whenever I hear it, someone happens to put it on against my will, and I remember the recording process and hearing the big bridge and Alli’s voice go up is really cool. The song I'm most excited for people to hear is “Lace,” because it's totally something we've never played. It's a totally different side of us. It came out of such a playful demoing night in the studio together. I'm just so excited to share this. It always gives me this cheeky smile whenever I listen to it.
LUNA: What excites you most about this new chapter in your career and what are you hoping listeners can take away from this new era?
CHAR: It feels like an old era at this point.
EMMA: We're going to go to Europe, which is a very exciting new era. It's going to be the first time we've played outside of the states. We haven't even hit the West Coast yet. We're going to Europe, which feels crazy, and we haven't toured that long together yet. It's going to be our longest tour. Our most hardcore, almost every day we're playing. It's going to be right after the record comes out, and we're going to be able to sell our physical music to people for the first time. It hasn't quite started yet, but I feel like that is going to be the start of whatever this next era is for us, and it's going to be getting to play that much together and just meet all these new people in these new places and hand them our physical music that we finally put out is going to be awesome. We're very excited about that.
ALLI: Germany is going to love us.
CHAR: I'm just excited for it to be out so it can be out of our hands and into everyone else's hands. I want everyone else to be in on it, with us.
ALLI: We want to have a foundation of who we are. This is our collection. We're so excited to be able to be really ready to just be like, this is us. This, this has been us. This has been us since we've started and and then I feel like we can really get cooking. It'll also open doors for us to be able to find that next space where we can record and really get a little bit more proactive, working on more music and getting it captured for the next rotation of the band. I feel like we're really trying to utilize all the tools. We're trying to be a little bit more present online, even though the band is reluctant. We're very in person. We like the reality that our bodies are in even though numbers are weirdly important to everybody now. I feel like that's a part of where we're at, trying to open the doors in different countries and get out and see people in different states. We have a van. That feels like a big part of our next chapter. We're mobile.
We're also all such young musicians, so we're really growing with it all — growing vocally, really stretching our vocals, getting comfortable doing that night after night and remembering that there are no rules. Art is meant to be enjoyed, and we need to always remember that as pressure gets applied and people are showing interest, and our time is becoming limited, it’s really remembering what the point is for us to continue to make art.
CHAR: And to keep making millions of dollars.
LUNA: How are you planning on celebrating the album release?
ALLI: I'm going to be dressed up. We'll be trick or treating, wreaking havoc. The veil will be thin. The ghosts will be listening. It'll be beautiful. I'm going to call my mom. There'll be champagne.
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?
CHAR: I'm feeling great and feeling like we're in a good spot. We've worked hard to get to that spot. We just released this record and are going on tour. That's the dream, one way or another, like whether the record gets received well or not, I'm super proud of the record. It's the greatest body of work I've ever been a part of. I'm just dying to share it and I'm lucky to be in a band with super great people. We got a great body of music coming out.
ALLI: I'm feeling terrible and great all at the same time every day, so that's just the way I live by.
EMMA: I feel like there's been a lot of burnout. I feel like we've really been sizing up, which is really exciting, but it's been a little hard to play catch up and make sure we're still in contact with all the stuff Alli's talking about. It's always nice to have those reminders and to get in the van with each other and get on the road and play shows, especially now that we're going on the road so much more. We're playing shows that are reminiscent of our first shows in New York, in new cities. Bigger shows in New York, while playing like smaller shows out of town, and keeping that cyclical, flowing feeling. It's one of the most special things I've been a part of creating. I'm ready to give birth for sure. Labor's been intense.
Photo Credit: Nico Malvaldi
