by Taylor Ruckle (@TaylorRuckle)
In the supremely silly video for “Blah” by Birthday Ass, vocalist Priya Carlberg dons a tiara and delivers her solo--that is, a babbling stream of nonsense syllables--like a royal proclamation. While drummer Jonathan Starks plays along to the electronic drum break on a log, Carlberg pretends to read from a slowly-unfurling scroll, then finally gathers it up and chucks it at the camera with both hands.
Birthday Ass formed at the New England Conservatory when Carlberg recruited Starks along with trumpeter Alex Quinn, alto saxophonist Raef Sengupta, guitarist Andres Abenante, and bassist Dan Raney. With their academic backgrounds in jazz and contemporary classical music, they all know full well how to read the music, but also when to throw the score out the window and improvise.
That, and they don’t mind taking a little Silly String to the face. The inherent wackiness has been part of the band since their 2018 debut record, Baby Syndrome, and they only up the ante on the follow-up, Head of the Household, featuring more songs about buildings and food. Well, mostly food, but also death. Really, it’s about explosive vocal jazz and brassy, cacophonous indie rock, tagged on Bandcamp as “skronky,” which is a word--look it up. You won’t be sorry.
Head of the Household is out now on Ramp Local. After the release, Carlberg spoke to Post-Trash about the rough draft key-smashes that wound up shaping the track list, about the way the band’s live energy has shaped up over the years, and about that most classic of shapeable foodstuffs, Jell-O.
We're well over a year into pandemic life. How are you holding up?
It varies so much, and I've been all over the place. Like, when the pandemic started, I was still in my last semester of the master's program at NEC, so it was kind of a jolt moving home after six years of being at school, then living with my parents for four months in New York, and then in October, moving to Finland. So it's been a lot also happening in my life, and then the world is falling apart. [laughs] It's been hard to keep two feet on the ground, for sure, but I'm trying my best.
Why Finland?
So, I'm half-Finnish. I was born, actually, in Finland, and all of my dad's family is here. It was kind of a spontaneous decision in the fall--I was living at home, and then I realized there's no way with no job I can afford New York or Boston prices. I have the citizenship, and I've always kind of wanted to live here and be closer to my family. It almost feels like I don't even know them because I've never lived here, so I bought a one-way ticket, and I've been here since then trying to adjust. It definitely feels like a temporary move. It was the pandemic that sparked it, but a lot of really good things have come out of it.
Tell me about that--what's it been like moving at a time like this and settling in there?
In November, it was quite a shock because Finland has had some of the lowest corona cases and deaths in all of Europe. There are only five million people in this country, and it's quite spread apart, so even the cities aren't so densely populated. When I first got here in November, everything was up and running. It didn't feel like a pandemic, and I got to perform three times and start two bands here, so I had this renewed inspiration after having not performed since February or something. I probably jinxed it, because then in December [laughs] the cases started getting bad, performances stopped, and it was more or less like a lockdown.
I wouldn't compare it to the lockdown that I experienced in New York, but you were pretty limited to what you could do. That was hard, especially in the winter, because I'm new here; everyone's keeping to a small bubble of their close friends, and I'm here not knowing anyone. It's been up and down, but I'm still grateful that I'm here during the pandemic, and I've been spending a lot of time with my grandpa. He's 95, and I've never had a close relationship with any of my family here. Been taking care of him, and now slowly starting to play sessions, and hoping for the best for the summer.
When did Birthday Ass form, and how did all of you start performing together?
We started my junior year at NEC, and we started because I was studying with this accordionist, improviser, composer Ted Reichman. He was one of the most inspirational teachers I've ever had. It was at a point in my life, like, age 19, 20, where I was so self-conscious of sharing my music, and so self-conscious of what people would think, and Ted was a huge catalyst. He helped me form Birthday Ass, in a way. Like, he helped me come up with the people in school that would suit the music, and then I just wrote two songs--two of the songs that were on our old album, "The Puter" and "My Crisis." We played our first session doing those two songs, did a few coachings with Ted, and it kicked off from there.
Was it a project where you started off knowing what kind of music you wanted to make?
No, I would never take credit for that because everyone in the band has such a unique sound and style. I wrote parts, and I didn't know what it would sound like, honestly. Like, the sound of the band formed just by bringing these six people together. It wasn't like I had a really specific direction I wanted to go into. I just knew that these were improvisers and musicians I trusted and loved and admired, and I was excited to see where they would take it.
What do you remember about the first rehearsal session?
So, all of the five band members were really close friends of mine before the session, but they didn't all know each other. Some of us are a bit shy, like, if you're not comfortable in the situation, so I remember the first session being quite tame and quiet. [laughs] We were all getting to know each other because we're all in different years at the school, so not everyone had crossed paths with one another. But yeah, the tameness changed pretty quickly.
I was going to say, I think "tame" and "quiet" are pretty far down the list of words I would use to describe what the band sounds like.
Now that we know each other so well, I would still say that a lot of us are on the more reserved side, which you wouldn't really expect [laughs] from the music, maybe. When we're together, we're loud because we amp each other up, but just in general, I wouldn't say that any of us are, like, loudmouths.
You talk about the way you all brought different styles into what the band ended up becoming, and so for you--I know you have a background in jazz and forms like that. Tell me about your own style when you sing for Birthday Ass. How did you develop that?
That's a hard question because I feel like I don't think of my voice being certain styles in certain contexts. It's kind of just the way my voice has developed as a whole and different influences in having that kind of improv background. It's always been my priority to try to make my voice feel as unique as possible, and it started when--my mom is also a singer, so we would sing together at home. She's a jazz singer, and we would listen to Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, all these incredible vocalists, and kind of pick apart what we love about them and what we want to bring to our voice. I think that I've always had that mindset of taking different aspects of different music rather than modeling it off of one specific thing, if that makes sense, and I don't feel like I sing differently in Birthday Ass than I do in a jazz quartet, or than I do in contemporary classical music, you know?
The first Birthday Ass record, Baby Syndrome, came out in 2018. When did you start working on the songs for Head of the Household?
Yeah, that's an interesting question because we've functioned in an interesting way as a band. We've had really intense months where we rehearse weekly--maybe it's not that intense to rehearse weekly, but in school, it feels intense--and then a few months where we haven't played at all, and that was even in the period between Baby Syndrome and the recording of Head of the Household. I feel like we didn't really start rehearsing for the album until we decided we wanted to record a second album, so it must've been just four, six months before the recording that we started rehearsing that material. I remember "Blah" and "Buckle My Shoe" were the last two that we had, and we started rehearsing those maybe a week or two before the recording. We still looked at the music for some of them because it wasn't like we had drilled the pieces before--so it's hard to say because our work ethic is really strange.
I think it's also, in music school, usually people just function with deadlines, so if we have a deadline on this recording, then we get our shit together, but without that, we were kind of just playing shows with the old music and not really thinking about new material. I mean, we definitely want to record another album after this, but we have absolutely no material, and what will happen is probably we'll book a recording date, and then I'll write parts. [laughs]
So tell me then about that decision to make a second album. When did you know that, and how did you conceive of the next thing after the debut?
I think that what happened was that we decided to make a second album when we were no longer proud of the first. I remember feeling like, "Mmm, this is not really us anymore. This is not really an album I would gladly share with my friends and with people," you know? I think I could say the same for all the bandmates. Our sound had changed so much, and we had grown tighter as a band, and as people, that we kind of felt like, "Okay, now this is like the second chapter of the evolution of Birthday Ass."
What, to you, is different about it? What were the elements that you noticed after the first album that you wanted to make sure you could share?
I think the main thing is the energy is lacking a lot in the first album, and I feel pretty good about the way it is in the second. In the first, we didn't have that kind of synergy and didn't really feel like we could interpret the music fully. Like, we were still interpreting it, of course--we're all improvisers--but it didn't feel like it really went to that next level. It didn't feel fully developed, I would say. You never feel fully developed as a band, but the development was very different in the second album.
We didn't play a single show, I don't think, before the recording of the first album, so that was just like we were recording for fun. We weren't really a band yet, playing shows in Boston or anything, so after we were playing regular shows, our stage presence and our energy was starting to develop and form, so it just felt like a natural thing to do. And I guess it was exactly two years between the recordings.
You mentioned that "Blah" was one of the last songs that you wrote--that's the album opener, and it strikes me as a track that showcases a lot of different elements of what Birthday Ass does. It opens up with the whole band going. There's a section that's just horns, there's a section that's just you and the drums. What can you tell me about writing that song?
These things are so difficult because I feel like it's kind of random which ones become more of a hit than others. I feel like "Blah" is the biggest hit, or like, the strongest opener, the most eye-catching track, but I can't explain why. [laughs] It just happened that way. And yeah, I think it just naturally was showcasing most of the different things that we do on the album in a three-minute track, so it felt like that modeled our sound the best. I don't know why I don't really remember vividly writing anything--where I am or what I was feeling. I'm not really that kind of composer.
In that case, what about the vocals on that track? There's that section where you really go off on a tear with the improvisation. You know, in the video, you represent it as reading from a scroll. Do you remember performing that in the studio?
Yeah, that was really funny because we were recording at this studio where there was no isolation booth. We decided that we did wanna isolate the vocals for a clearer sound, so I was actually singing it in the same room that the engineers were in. I was alone, and there were no windows, so I couldn't see the band, and the band was in their own booth all together. [laughs] I just remember while I was singing that solo with John, the drummer, I was like, "What the hell do these engineers think of me?" They're hearing no music, but just, "Blah blah blah blah blah blah." [laughs] It was a funny dynamic, not even being able to physically connect with anyone except, yeah, being with the engineers.
What's funny is, I don't think we've ever performed "Blah” live, because we recorded the album May 2019, and then--we haven't played a gig in a really long time. I don't know if we actually have played a gig since that spring period, and then the pandemic hit. A lot of those songs have just been recorded in the studio and never been performed, so I'm interested to see how it turns out to perform all of these songs live as well. Like, I don't have that kind of idea of how that would go, but I'm sure it'd be fun as hell. [laughs]
In some ways, Birthday Ass is a very technical project, but also there's so much silliness and so much fun. I'm curious, where does that come from, and how do those elements kind of come into balance?
I've seen this trend a lot, I think, in conservatories and academia, where it's like we're all trained really well and go through this schooling and this really intense conservatory training, but at the same time, there's a bit of rebellion against that. I think when you blend those two, there's a little bit of, "Oh, I know my instrument well, but fuck you, school!" I don't know how to explain it, but I've noticed it's quite common in music school. Also, there's the aspect of, all of us value humor in music and entertainment. To have that aspect makes it more fun to perform, and you can tell the audience is having more fun. It gives this special energy you couldn't get without some sort of silliness and humor and just being crazy a bit. But yeah, I would say a lot of it is from school.
You've gotta blow off steam after being so intense about things.
Yeah, that's what it feels like. It's like we take ourselves so seriously musically, but also we want so badly not to take ourselves so seriously and just goof off with our instruments.
Your lyrics also have that kind of a dynamic to them. There's a lot of lyrics about food, and about things that don't typically feel like the hallmarks of serious singer/songwriter material, you know what I mean?
Yeah! I would definitely say that I'm not a singer/songwriter in the sense where I don't really ever prioritize the lyrics, which is kind of bad to say, but it's always the last thing I write, and often I just write it like stream of consciousness--whatever comes to my mind in that moment without putting much thought. I think it can also be a bit of a flaw of mine, where I don't really want to open up some serious feeling or emotion, because maybe I'm scared, I don't know. [laughs] Or I don't want to feel vulnerable.
I didn't even realize that so much of the music's about food until someone pointed that out. I think it's just, like, "Oh, yeah. It's a daily necessity. There's nothing serious about this. Just gonna write a song about Jell-O, I don't know, or this Indian ice cream called malai." [laughs] Right now, I'm trying to prioritize lyrics a little bit more in my writing because I've never done it, and it's always an afterthought, which is not the most amazing, to the point where they often don't even make sense. On purpose, but yeah.
In the songs for this record, is there a lyric that stands out to you in particular as one that you said in the moment, and then realized later, "That doesn't really make any sense."
Yeah, like, "Jello" makes absolutely no sense. "My head spins 'round the yellow food, spoon and fork inside, I die / oozing sugary glue / I can't even conquer you." I'm just rhyming "you" and "glue." [laughs] "Splashing cries, choking sighs." Really, absolute nonsense. I mean, "Plubbage Blubbage" is made-up words. "Dreaming of a gold grass / winter is trash." I was probably just in a basement like, "Fuck the snow. Fuck this cold." It's whatever I was feeling in that exact moment, nothing more than that.
To my memory, I've never gone back and changed the lyrics either, so it's just kind of like, "That's it." And often, I remember writing it on a time constraint--like, having rehearsal in an hour. "Oh, shit, I need to write the lyrics." Writing lyrics, rehearsing those lyrics, and then you're not going to change them anymore. "K Helap," the last piece? It was just a button mash on the computer. [laughs] I was running to rehearsal and I button-mashed the computer, and it just said "K Helap." I told them, "Oh, don't worry. I'm gonna change it." And they were like, "No, it's fine. Just keep it."
I have to ask you about that song too, I made a note because there's a part where it sounds like you're fake sneezing. Is that true?
Fake sneezing? I could be doing all sorts of things.
There's a part where it sounds like you're saying "achoo, achoo," but--I don't know.
Oh! Maybe it's "with you?"
Could be. Could be!
I might be trying to say words, but it probably doesn't sound like words. [laughs] I think I was improvising the lyrics from the first 30 seconds of the song. Yeah, "Empty and blue when I'm with you." I think I'm singing "with you."
The lyrics aren't on the Bandcamp, so as I'm listening, I'm just jotting down what I think I'm hearing, and there's times where you'll start a word that sounds like one word, and by the end of the word, it sounds like a different word, which is awesome.
Yeah, I think my favorite kind of improvising is just taking the lyrics and going crazy. That was from--I was also in a band with the trumpeter and saxophonist called Ox Ox. We were a band at the school, and we did a version of Annette Peacock's "I'm the One," and I think that was one of the most fun I've ever had performing. This was kind of inspired by that because the end of that piece is this looped vamp section where I can go as crazy as I want with these words, and I think I drew a bit from that in "K Helap." It sounds stupid even just saying "K Helap." What was I thinking? Nothing. [laughs]
I wanted to ask about improvisation in the music too, because it's referenced in the bio that you do the composition and bring it to the band. I'm curious about how, in the making of this album, you saw things change from what you wrote to what the band ended up playing.
It changes and evolves quite a bit. I write whatever lines I'm thinking, and I do write for all of the instruments other than drums--I let John do whatever he wants [laughs] because I'm lazy and I don't want to write a drum part, and whatever John comes up with is better than I could ever think of. So I do write all the sections, but then we'll spend, like, an hour workshopping it, and band members will be like, "Oh, what if we try this?" And we experiment with it. "Oh, what if we don't play this note? What if we go from this section to this section?" All of the arranging, not in terms of the instruments, but in terms of the form, we do together just by experimenting, and I think it works best that way to feed off each other's ideas. A lot transforms and a lot is built in collaborative process, so I never want it to seem like I take credit for all of the music, if that makes sense.
You talk about the process of making this album as trying to make something that you could feel good about putting out into the world. How has it been since this record came out, putting it in front of people?
I felt like I've been patient, because we recorded it in 2019, and we were originally going to self-release it in May of 2020, exactly a year after recording it. But then in April, Ramp Local contacted, and they were like, "What if we put it out?" And of course, that's what we wanted to do, so it was another year of waiting. I already wanna record a new record. [laughs] I'm of course really proud of it, and we all are, but it's already been two years since we worked towards this, so I'm ready to keep going.
And yeah, it's felt really great to finally release it. It's just kind of sad that we're not able to perform it for a while, but I know eventually it'll happen. It's not the biggest problem in the world. No, it's been really positive, and really amazing working with Jake at Ramp Local, doing all of these things that I wouldn't even think of doing. If we had self-released it, I don't think anyone would have heard it, other than our parents and friends [laughs] so I'm really grateful for the way this has turned out.
Tell me about what you've been up to since you moved--you mentioned you started a couple bands up there.
Yeah, so right when I got here, I had one friend that I met at Banff, this jazz improvisation workshop, a few years ago, and he hooked me up with a bunch of people here. A week after I moved, he was like, "You wanna play a gig of your tunes? Like, write stuff for it?" And I was like, "Yes, of course!" So he put together more or less a jazz quartet, and we performed. Then corona hit, and then we kind of didn't meet, but we were applying for grants because the Finnish grant system is incredible. You can get grants for, like, any creative project, so we got a grant to record an album. We're recording here in Finland in August, an album of my music, so now we've started regularly rehearsing for it. Right now, we're called Hopscotch, but I'm not really sure if that's what we're going to be called. Nothing is really set in stone.
I also started playing with a really wonderful singer here, Selma Savolainen. She's a really inspiring, creative singer, and we've been kind of writing songs for each other and playing synths. She has some electronics as well, so it's just two voices and whatever instruments we have. [laughs] We’re putting together a set of 30, 40 minutes of music where it intertwines song and improvisation. We've yet to perform, of course, but working on that as well. Those are the two main performance-based projects I have here in Helsinki.
One thing I saw on your website is that when you moved there, you founded an improvisation series. Can you tell me about how that got started?
Yeah, so it hasn't really started yet, but the idea is there, and we're ready as soon as corona allows. It's this series called Estoton, which in Finnish means limitless, and I partnered with this wonderful designer and producer of events here in Finland, who I met at one of my gigs. She really liked the idea and decided that she wanted to collaborate and help me with the logistical and marketing sides of things. I'm kind of the creative director, leading the sessions and being the host.
When I got here, I realized that Helsinki has a really small scene, and there was really no space to go just play with people and meet people. I needed something like that, so I just said, "What the heck? Maybe I can just start something small here." It's basically to build a stronger community in the improv scene, but also, it's always been hard for me to be a woman in such a male-dominated world, so it also serves as a space for people like me and people who have not felt like they could fit in. Hopefully a comfortable space, and hopefully also comfortable because I as a woman am leading it. I'm hoping that it develops into something like that, where the people that feel like they've always been on the outskirts or left out, like I have often, feel like they can come together.
Obviously it hasn't started yet--maybe it's hard to tell right now, but I'm curious what insight you have into how you cultivate that environment.
We plan to do outreach and scout out people that are maybe not male-identifying and white so that it already creates a more diverse balance of people. Also, we're doing it at this place called QUERQ, which is a queer-friendly space here in Helsinki, so the setting of it and the building that's hosting it already has that kind of environment--accepting and friendly for anyone. That's another thing, and then adopting codes of conduct and respect. For example, the We Have Voice Code of Conduct, we can paste on the walls and make sure we're enforcing a really safe space.
I'm no expert in these things, but these are a few steps that would make me feel comfortable, just drawing from my experience and stuff that I wish had happened in certain situations. I'm really excited to see what happens with it and hoping that it can be kind of a regular weekly session or something--have a crowd and build some sort of community, so we'll see what happens.
What's the plan for Birthday Ass, with you in Finland?
I'm only temporarily here in Finland; Birthday Ass is my priority in a lot of ways, so as soon as we start to get shows, I'll do what I need to do. I'll come back to New York, hopefully do a tour with them. I'm flexible right now--very flexible [laughs] so I'll be in Finland till at least the end of the summer, but then I don't really have much of a plan, which is scary, but exciting.
Favorite flavor of Jell-O?
Strawberry? I mean, it's funny that I even wrote a song about Jell-O 'cause I don't really like Jell-O. [laughs] But usually I like anything in Strawberry flavor. That's usually my go-to, or vanilla, but there's no vanilla Jell-O, I don't think.