Q&A: Sub*T Fully Step into Their Sound on Debut Album ‘How My Own Voice Sounds’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Elise Bergmann
SUB*T FIND THEIR OWN FREQUENCY — Sub*T’s debut full-length How My Own Voice Sounds (out May 1) arrives with the clarity of a band that has spent years refining their songs and fully stepping into their voice. The New York duo’s first album is the result of seven years of writing, touring and revising.
“We’ve spent a long time with a lot of these songs,” the band says. “We never really sat down with the intention of writing an album from the ground up, we’ve just been building our catalog for years.”
That slow build gives How My Own Voice Sounds its cohesion. The ten tracks feel fully formed and reflect a process of refinement that prioritizes space where songs are allowed to settle into themselves before being finalized.
Following their 2024 EP Spring Skin, produced by Aron Kobayashi Ritch of Momma, Sub*T expand their palette while staying rooted in the sounds that first shaped them: classic alt-rock, grunge and indie rock.
At the heart of the album is a guiding question that also serves as its title. “How does my own voice sound?” the band explains. “Not in a literal way. We know that much. But how do I want to use it, what do I want to say, how do I want to express all the details of my life so that I can recognize the sound of my own voice and understand myself? This album represents all the ways you can answer that to ultimately hear yourself as you really are.”
Bennett and Alcantara write independently, but their songs often reach their final form only when filtered through each other’s voice. A song may originate with one writer, but its emotional impact is often completed by the other’s interpretation.
“I just feel like she can transform it in a way I couldn’t by myself,” Alcantara says of Bennett. “And when I hear it through her voice, I hear it in a different way. It’s almost like I gain confidence. Like, the lyrics can be great, but if it doesn’t make you feel the magic, it’s not ready.”
By the time How My Own Voice Sounds reaches its final moments, its central question has not been answered so much as deepened. What does a voice sound like when it finally recognizes itself? For Sub*T, the answer is not singular or static. It is the sound of two artists listening closely enough to each other that they begin to hear themselves more clearly in the process.
Elise Bergmann
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?
GRACE: I would say that sound-wise, when we first started, we were just really inspired by 90s rock music, like Hole, Veruca Salt and Liz Phair, but also more underground bands like Tiger Trap, Plum Tree and That Dog, and so I think that was really inspiring for us when we were first starting — just that fun, 90s rock music that is all led by women.
LUNA: You are about to release your debut album How My Own Voice Sounds next month and huge congratulations! What emotional or thematic ground did you feel compelled to explore for your debut?
JADE: I think that there are more than a few that we could bring up here, but I think a big one that comes up is identity and confidence. That is where we got the album title, How My Own Voice Sounds. I think that all the time that we've spent getting to the place that we are now putting a full length album out has been figuring out what it feels like to be a band, and not only what my voice sounds like and what Grace's voice sounds like, but also what our voices are together. What our themes grew to be as a band, it was just making music because we wanted to. We didn't set out initially to make this be our first album, but the collection of songs really ended up feeling that way.
GRACE: I feel like it's really about self discovery and trying to learn how to understand your own emotions. I think songwriting, for sure, is the way that we do that. But there's really wide ranging topics that we're covering in the songs — like friendships, self worth, relationships — even songs about our hometowns and things like growing up. There's songs about losing people and then trying to figure out who you are yourself. The core of every song is really how do I just deal with all of this? I think that we were trying to make the sounds of the albums really diverse, because you're not going to handle every situation or every emotion the same way. We wanted to figure out the meaning of each song and how we could portray that in the music too.
LUNA: The idea of “voice” here feels both literal and metaphorical. How do you think your individual voices differ, and where do they overlap?
JADE: I think that's interesting, because one thing that we always knew was part of the Sub*T identity from the beginning was that we would both be singing and writing. I think that's something that is really special, because everyone has a different sound, and everyone has a different makeup of what makes a band and what makes a body of music. Grace and I, just being two girls that really wanted to express ourselves, we wanted to make sure that you could hear that through the music. I think that you can tell. I don't know if it's easy for anyone else, but obviously for us, we would think it would be obvious to know who's singing at a certain time, because literally, our voice does have differences. We're both having that journey throughout the record. One thing we've talked about is singing words that you wrote yourself, or whether there are a couple opportunities where Grace gets to sing words that I've written, and vice versa. I think it's always fun to have moments like that as well when we're both having a voice in this project. That repeats itself in this way as well. Even if Grace is writing a song, and she's the initial writer of the song about her hometown, or anything like that, we like to think that the other's voice can echo that. Even when I hear the lyrics that she writes, I can take on this whole new understanding or lend any strengthening emotion there. I think that's been really nice in the process of writing and recording this album, and learning how to perform it. We can do all these things in the studio, but then we have to build everything around that once we're done.
LUNA: I would love to touch more on the creative process behind How My Own Voice Sounds. What did a typical songwriting and recording session look like?
GRACE: We write a lot of our songs by ourselves. Actually, usually if I sing most of the song, or if Jade is singing most of the song, we are the only ones that wrote it. Even the rhythm guitar part, or the structure, we do our own thing, and then once we feel that it's at a point where we're comfortable sharing it, or we like where it's going, then I'll send the song to Jade. It's a very individual process. Still, even though we are a band, and we usually have the song pretty much down already when we go into the studio to record it, we don't add much within that. If anything, it's adding harmonies or cool vocal layers or feedback. It's always been like that because we started the band when we lived on opposite sides of the country, so that's how we started writing music alone, and I think that even now it would be really, really scary if me and Jade sat down in a room and we were like, ‘Okay, write a song.’ I don't think we could do that. It's a very personal thing, but luckily, we really trust each other's creative instincts. I can write a song and I know that Jade will like it and have ideas and add to it.
JADE: I think it's one of the most exciting days in the band's history, when one of us gets to bring a song to the other. I can pretty much remember every single time that's happened, because it's a really exciting feeling.
LUNA: How did stepping into a full-length format change your approach compared to your 2024 EP Spring Skin? Did you take any risks or experiment with any new creative approaches this time around?
JADE: One thing that we did in the process of preparing to record these songs was that we actually had them separated into like two different categories, and one of them was the moodier darker side, and one was the power pop type of bolder sounding songs. I think that actually creating those two categories made us really see that we had the components for an album. It was really fun to mess with all the different tones in the studio and different elements of a long outro or transition between songs, and even doing more adventurous types of vocals on different outros, and adding certain sonic themes into songs. I think that it was really fun making 10 tracks at once. We did all of these in the studio consistently over two weeks, and then we did another week or two. It felt like a really immersive process, and I think that was our first time really having that experience.
LUNA: Do you have a personal favorite song on How My Own Voice Sounds — one that feels closest to your heart or most revealing of who Sub*T is right now?
GRACE: My favorite song on the album is “Overcomplicate,” which is the first song and was the first single we made. I think that my answer to the part of the question about which song shows where we're at most I think would be the “Sister Species” songs number one, the two sided song one and two, because it's really vulnerable and neither of those songs have a verse, chorus structure. It's just spewing thoughts out, and that was the emotional core of the album for us, and why we put it right in the middle, because it's like closing the first chapter of the album. The second song opens up the second half. The first one is really in your face. There's an attitude. It's like complaining, but also feeling confident, but also questioning everything you're doing. The second part is why am I feeling that way? Let's get underneath that. The songs after that are about our childhood and about our family. There was an intentional structure to the album. I think that those two songs, it really all revolves around that.
JADE: I think that those are really good answers that I agree with. I think also when listening to the album, I would also say “Wide Load” feels really special because it has the album title lyrically in it. I just think of “Overcomplicate” and then “Sister Species” one and two. “Overcomplicate” starts the album, “Sister Species” are in the middle, and then ending on “Wide Load” has that album ending feel. We also had a lot of fun recording that, and we got to do a little bit of exploration in the studio.
Elise Bergmann
LUNA: How do you hope listeners — especially your femme audience — can connect with or find power in this new era of music from you? What emotions or messages do you want to leave with them?
GRACE: Something that I always really love to hear from people, especially if we're doing an interview with somebody, or even if it's a close friend talking about the music, is that they really can feel our friendship shine through in the collaboration and in the music. I feel like that's what we set out to do. I hope that women can listen to it and feel like they have people to lean on and can relate to the emotions. Because, of course, we are two women writing the song, so hopefully other women, especially in music, could listen to it and completely relate. I think that the friendship aspect is something that I really like. Every time somebody says that I really feel like it's heartwarming.
LUNA: Now that you’ve arrived at this sense of “your own voice,” where do you feel your sound is headed next?
GRACE: I feel like the songs that I've just been writing since we recorded this album are going back to the sounds that we really liked when we first started making music. We've gone through this whole exploration of sounds, and I'm just feeling drawn to the stuff that we were doing at the Star Room. We had no idea how to write a song or what we were doing, but it'll hopefully continue to evolve.
JADE: I think the only thing I'm confident about is that we love guitars. We love the drums. I love pop music. Whatever it is, we hope that it's fun, emotional, but also introspective at the same time, and whatever way we can capture that reflects all of our influences, I think it would never be anything surprising in that way. You can pretty much feel confident that we would be making something that sounds entirely like us.
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?
JADE: I’m feeling good. Spring in New York is great. I think that the push to get the album out has been so much work in a fun way. Working regular jobs, but also practicing so much with our band, we've been working really hard to get the songs ready to be played live. I think it's just a really exciting feeling to have the album coming out, because it also flew by somehow.
GRACE: We have an album release show on May 9 at Elsewhere in Brooklyn.
Elise Bergmann
