“I started working on Girly in spring of this year. I made the first track, “Lady,” and the last track, “Closing the dragon,” on the same day and knew immediately they’d be sorta the bookends for the album. With those two tracks set, one of my next steps to fill in the gaps was to finish “Citrus,” which had been in the works for about a year, through various demos. (One version was released on the Z Tapes Spring 2018 compilation) I switched the tuning to standard and re-recorded everything and programmed some new drums. A lot of the percussion samples I used for Girly were just one shot samples of like claps and me hitting stuff which I recorded to tape and then edited and arranged to make all the beats. I spent the summer working on the songs and obsessing over them. I was walking dogs for people quite a bit during this time and I fondly remember this one day when I was walking with a yellow lab and listening to an early version of “June bug interlude (feat. Jack)” on repeat. Times like that were actually a special part of my process. Girly was finished in September and Conor Ellis mastered it.
I knew from the beginning I wanted to have the album released on cassette tapes, and deadplant records was down to do it. I’m hyped to work with them, the tapes are gonna look so sweet too. The cover photo was taken by my pal, Adrian. A bunch of us went to visit New York over the summer and that photo of me was taken in our airbnb when the sun was going down and we were all getting lit and what have you. My gf, Charlynn, helped me with the j card design by writing the tracklist and stuff on her ipad. Her handwriting is so pretty. Ashley (who did the cover art for my last EP) found the perfect picture of a frog to use for the inner j card, too. Having a frog somewhere on there was an absolute must for me.
Girly is a special project to me because it has everything I like about my music and then some. I’ve become more open to collaborating, and asking for help. It can be really fun to let your friends be part of your super personal, weird, cathartic process. I hope people like listening to it. <3″ – Heart Eyes
