In Conversation With #231 - Kierst
Kierst has just shared her dreamy new EP ‘Thud’ - which is out now via Sad Club Records.
Kierst wrote the first song for the EP while living in a dorm in New York before relocating back home for the 2020 lockdown. Uninspired and buried under the weight of finding herself back in her teenage bedroom, she began to revisit her high-school record collection – tracing back over her love for shoegaze and dream pop. Revisiting such work, she became more inspired, recording the demos for Phone Call and for the EP’s opening track, Hollow Out, with nods to the likes of Grouper and Mazzy Star.
Finally back in New York, Kierst set out to finish the EP, recording the majority of the work in her apartment, often in the middle of the night. “I tracked vocals and guitar between the hours of 1am and 5am, when the streets were quietest outside my window,” she says of this time. “The silence made me overly conscious of my roommate and I think if you stripped most of the tracks down, you’d hear that in the performance.”
She took a moment to talk to us about how the EP came together.
Hey there Kierst - how are you? So your EP is out now - how does it feel to have it out there in the world?
Hey! I'm very well thanks. So crazy honestly - for a long time I really thought none of these tracks would see the daylight. I'm really impatient so when I got the masters back I was just like, "I never thought I'd get to this point! Let's drop it now..." but everyone was telling me to wait, and I'm glad I did - because now it's got a home over at Sad Club Records. More than anything it's just strange, having listened and made my partner, friends and family listen to these songs a million times over, I'd be so curious to know what it's like to hear these songs for the first time again.
It is called ‘Thud’ - what is the meaning behind that?
I was toying around with a bunch of names before the EP was even finished, because I knew the general tone I wanted for the project. But nothing really stuck, everything felt too long or over-expository. The whole project is about the pangs of loving and losing - how they both feel physically you know, like a really heavy thud in your chest. So I thought I just ought to call it that. It was short and sweet and I liked that, but also it just felt right.
Where was it recorded? Any behind the scenes stories from the creative process you are happy to share with us?
It was recorded in a few different spaces, mostly in my old apartment in the East Village, but the final vocal takes and strings were recorded in my current place. It's definitely my most collaborative project - I had my violist / violinist Antonio and Evan come over to track their parts and then I spliced them all up for each song. All of the piano was recorded by myself and my friend Sam at my sister's apartment, and the drums were tracked by my friends Greg and Jesse in a makeshift drum booth that was just this huge closet. We mixed the drums one night at Baby's All Right, where I used to work. It was just us three in these chairs we'd set up in the live room, drinking and blasting the songs while it was snowing outside. I really love and cherish all those instances of just simply creating music with my friends.
What are the key themes and influences on the EP?
The EP as a whole is focused on the nature of relationships and how to navigate them, or at least that's what I was trying to figure out while writing it. But I really was writing all these songs for myself. I think that was the catalyst for all of them, just like, seeing how far I could push myself compared to my old releases, you know, like - how can I take this to the next level? I never thought about how they'd be translated live, which I think allowed me a lot of experimentation with the layers and making the EP more atmospheric. It wasn't until I brought them to my band, that I was like, "Oh shit, how is this going to work with a 4-piece?" There's like twenty different parts to each song. But my bandmates are all such incredible musicians, I feel really lucky to play with them. They bring a whole new energy to the songs live - some of them in a way I never thought they could sound! And I think that's the best part of playing these tracks live, just seeing how many different forms they can exist in.
If the EP could be the soundtrack to any film - which one would it be and why?
Anything with Colin Farrell, I love him. It's kind of funny imagining any one of my songs in The Lobster or In Bruges. But seriously - this is a tough one. Maybe a Linklater film? I think it could also be the soundtrack to one that doesn't exist yet - I'd love to work on an original soundtrack for a film one day, even if it was just, like, music supervising. I love the idea of writing or finding songs that feel like movie moments.
Do you have a favorite lyric on the EP - if so, which one and why?
I'm partial to the lyrics in "Thud," mostly because of how quickly this song and the lyrics were written compared to the rest of the EP... I think it was all finished in a few days tops. I just think that song was ready to pour out as soon as I started writing it, and because of that there was no pretense or overthinking the lyrics and instrumentation - it was and is all very raw and unpolished in that way.
Now the EP is out there - what next?
We're playing an EP release show at Baby's All Right on November 21st with Dan English. He's one of my favorite musicians in New York right now, so I'm honored to share a stage with him. After that, I'm playing The Line of Best Fit's Five Day Forecast at the Lexington in London. That show is solo, but I think myself and the band will be sticking around for a few other dates around the UK... then it's back to playing around New York while working on the next project.
