by Jonah Evans (@jonahinthesnow)
Izzy Hagerup, who makes music under the name Prewn, released a new album earlier this month on Exploding In Sound Records. A Hampshire College graduate originally from Glen Ellyn, IL, she spent years in the Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts, before recently relocating to Los Angeles. The ebb and flow of bands in the Pioneer Valley has given the area a reputation for musical fecundity. When I lived there I learned that Dinosaur Jr. is from the area, even once spotting them casually playing on the lawn of the Amherst Common. They just set up with no stage, kind of under a tree, and in the grass. They just felt like playing. It wasn’t a crazy crowd, and I don’t even know if they promoted it. I feel like in that moment, they reflected a large part of the attitude of artists in the Valley; they wanted to just play, and fueling that obsession was an essential proclivity to exist. That’s what Prewn’s sophomore album System feels like to me.
There are no grades at Hampshire College and students are instead given narrative evaluations, an experience that is only a small part of who Hagerup is, but it’s prevalent in her work that she has no bar to reach that clarifies a definitive assessment of value. She’s not reaching for a bar, but she is reaching for something. She’s reaching for a sensation, a thing that she can’t shake out of her head, an obsession with the shape of music, of her music, of just the right note that clicks the right emotion or feel in her body and soul. It’s something that can’t really be measured, or that even wants to be measured. Maybe it’s more of a feeling that wants to exist through expression. In this sense, we have System, a creation where someone reached way down into their soul or center or guts or whatever, grabbed it all, put it on a table and said, “This is me. This is what I feel like saying and being right now.”
photo credit: Harry Wohl
Jonah Evans: Congratulations on the record. It's really awesome, a journey to listen to. How are you feeling about the album release and it being out in the world?
Izzy Hagerup: It's pretty surreal. It's like all these songs were just like experiments and demos that I never planned on releasing, so it feels hard to wrap my head around the fact that these things made in the dead of night, so personal, are really getting out there. So it feels good. It feels good to let them go. But I have to not think about it most of the time 'cause it's vulnerable, but it feels exciting. But I'm also like, I don't know. It's strange. It's happening and it's outta my hands at this point, so I'm like, okay,
JE: Peace. See you later.
IH: Yeah. It will clear up some space for new, the new. I'm always going through some form of writer's block, but I was like maybe the release will make room. Maybe it will get me more psyched out and more aware of being perceived and that won't help.
JE: Can you tell me a little bit about the place or places you grew up and how you grew into your relationship with music?
IH: Yeah. I grew up in suburbia in Chicago. It's called Glen Ellyn. It's a fine town, it's suburbia. I started playing cello when I was in second grade, and my mom was kinda like, you gotta play until like eighth grade. I was like, whatever, this is stupid, I don't wanna lug this big cello everywhere. I was late to orchestra every morning. I didn't really feel like I fit into the classical world, and wasn't good at practicing, but I stuck with it till eighth grade, and then I was like, okay, I'm gonna play guitar now.
I had a pretty rough period, I don't really know why, in my freshman year of high school, and I stopped going to school. It was a whole thing. That's when I got into playing guitar just for fun. My dad was a musician my whole life, growing up, just more on his own. So that was around me, but I abandoned the cello. Got into guitar and then I moved to Northern California because I got shipped out there 'cause my mom was like, I don't know what to do with you.
JE: You were causing havoc or something?
IH: I think I was just like so depressed and not getting better, and I think I was probably causing some havoc. I was always the easy child, but something picked in at that time. It's a blur, just being a bad girl, and I think, yeah, I moved in with my aunt in Northern California for a couple of years.
I was playing guitar more, and I took some guitar lessons. I wrote one song in high school, but I was definitely not taking music seriously, like something I would ever do. I'm getting used to that idea now, but it was a surprise. Then I moved to Western Mass for school. I went to Hampshire College. I worked on it more, and then I was in my first band called Blood Mobile with my friend Tuna, and that was my first experience tapping into a DIY scene.
It was more like silly, I wanna die rock, some type of music, but yeah. Then over time I got more familiar and close to the people in the music scene, and realized I could make my own band. It's been like a very slow burn of hesitantly, starting to take music more seriously and face all the things that are scary about it like being seen in that way.
JE: I think we were there at the same time. I keep telling people, I don't know what it was about that Hadley, Northampton, Amherst music scene, but it was so incredibly rich, and it was so good. Can you tell me about your relationship to that music scene when you were there?
IH: Yeah, that was like really the first, my first experience of being in a music scene. It was very exciting. I was in college, I think my first year is when I joined Blood Mobile and we started playing shows in the dirty basements and it was all exciting and thrilling for me and I was like, what? Everyone's just like making this happen on their own for the love of music and community and no one was making them do it. It was really cool to see how a bunch of young people just make this world and that's definitely why I stayed there for nine years. I stayed for the music. It like ended up like really being like community. It is just like the sweetest. Every show I'm like, “here's the same people and we're all here for the same reason I guess”. It was very much like a social scene, but also, obviously, about the music. But yeah, definitely has had a large influence on where I am now and how I've gone about music. It was just really exciting and sweet to see what happens when people who give a shit about music. Did you go to a lot of shows?
JE: Yeah, Taxidermists, Oroboro, Carinae, Tundrastomper, and all that stuff.
IH: Oh yeah. Sal from the Taxidermists started Prewn with me. He was my boyfriend at the time, and he was a big force for a huge fuel. I'm pretty apathetic a lot of the time, but he was very like, “We're gonna do this. We're gonna book these shows. Let's practice” and I was like okay. I think because we were in a relationship we were close enough to be really honest, and it takes a lot for me to be comfortable with someone to give direction or just to work musically together. He really taught me how to create with somebody, 'cause I was comfortable enough with him to be like, “no, don't do that” or we could just be real with each other. I learned so much from him and have to thank him a lot for starting this band. I wrote the music before the band formed, but he really helped fuel and take it to the world.
JE: That's cool. I've been finding often that there's a person or two who push someone to be like, “Hey, you like doing this and I think you're good, and I just think you should do it.” So it always helps to have a person or two to push you to do that thing. Validating in a positive way.
IH: Yeah. I definitely needed that. It's so easy to be like, what? Like I think this is good, but I don't know. It's scary. Yeah. Oh yeah.
JE: So you solely wrote and recorded System, the album during stretches of bedroom sessions. When did you know you were recording an album, and how did you commit to the idea of creating an album?
IH: Yeah. It actually was after the fact that I decided that this was gonna be an album. I was just looking through [the songs], and I was like, that's so many pieces in the air. What do I have now? I do want let things go, so I can have more emotional mental space for the new. I was looking through all my songs that I hadn't really taken seriously as stuff that could go out. Then I made a collection that got narrower and narrower of these songs, and I'm like, it'd be cool to redo these in some way, but I don't think there's a way that I could do them like this again. I like them like this. They just became this bundle of songs. I kind of make sense of most things and my songs after the fact. When I'm writing, I'm often like, “I don't know.” Then afterwards I'm like, “Ohhh, I see, I can connect these dots and I'm gonna run with it.” So I see now after making what the album is I see the connection and that came from different sides and faces of the same experience I was having, which I think is just a reflection of being in my mid-twenties and fucking making mistakes and learning from them and being childish and being wise and getting wiser and making mistakes again and struggling and feeling lost. I think it's a reflection of my experience. Becoming an adult or something [laughs].
JE: [laughs] Does that feel too cliché to say that?
IH: I guess, it definitely is cliché, but it’s also just my version of what that is in a way. It’s learning what it means to grow up and realizing that part of that is that you never really grow up, and you're always gonna be stuck with yourself and you're probably gonna have the same recurring struggles and habits and ways that you're fucked up and coming to terms with “oh fuck!” how to put the work in and what you need to do. It's just grappling with life.
JE: I saw that the first part of “System,” the song, you wrote while you were in Japan, and then also, many moons ago, you went to Ticuantepe, Nicaragua to teach at a nonprofit involving dance, art and music. How do you think some ideas, theories, sounds, and or cultures impacted your approach to the music that you make today?
IH: Oh, hmm, good question. I’m generally not very conscious of what's influencing me, but it's good to think about. I did that and I've traveled a good amount. I did a gap between high school and college and traveled in Asia alone for nine months and then I went to Chile to study abroad. I like to throw myself into some country and be alone. It's really exciting at first and then I know that I like to set myself up to be really like, “you gotta figure it out.” Like “now you're here, you can't go back, so what are you gonna do?” Going to Nicaragua, my sister was there and I was working for a nonprofit. This guy Jean who ran it is a tattoo artist and he is constantly traveling the world and I think he was one of the first people who opened my mind to how free you can make your life in this world and how you don't have to live in the box that we think we have to.
I experienced that more too. I traveled in India during my gap year and met so many people that really expanded my idea of what life can be and how you can approach this absurdity that it is. I think it's hard to say, but I definitely feel like at least that Asia trip, it was beautiful and exciting, but I also had to deal with a lot of sitting with myself and being lonely and scared and really stuck inside and anxious. But then, eventually getting to the other side of making communities everywhere I went and feeling really loved and in love with everyone.
I keep thinking at this point in my life, I've gone through all that, but I still am the same. It's just that reality of dancing between feeling so scared and anxious and alone and young and unequipped, and then feeling really secure. I'm just like, “Oh, that is just life,” getting a little more comfortable with that discomfort.
JE: You're not at a point where like you've figured it all out.
IH: Yeah, and I'm realizing you never really do, but you can get a little closer each time, and it's up to us to be putting the work in, you can grow and stuff, but this discomfort and intensity is just like that. The sooner you come to terms with that, it's not so terrifying when you're feeling terrified.
JE: This reminds me of “Don't Be Scared,” where there’s thunder and glass, like the title of the song, but it's fucking terrifying. The song feels like you're in the center of a storm, but you gotta put your boots on, walk forward, and also things are chaotic. I just imagine a person in the center of a storm, walking through all the chaos. But you're still moving forward and not stopping.
IH: Yeah, I think that was me grappling a little with that reality like the void and the darkness. It's always gonna be there. You get into it or pretend it's not there, but it's there, like it or not. You could learn something from it and embrace it, because life is suffering, okay! The Buddhist said it the best [laughs].
JE: [laughs] So you're saying part of us should embrace that fear and the chaos that surrounds us in a way.
IH: I think so. The higher the high, the lower the low, it's like the more open you can be to the darkness, I think maybe the more light can get in too. You gotta open yourself up to both or else you're gonna be stuck, crammed up in a little surface level.
JE: I love that. I don't know if I've thought about it like that, but that's really cool. It comes through in the music too, like both of those ends, the hope and the disgustingness of it all.
IH: Yeah. I hope the hope is there because I feel like a lot of my music is very dark, but I like to weave in a little bit of it; it's not all [doom and gloom], there's still hope.
JE: How important is it, was it for you to record mostly alone? Though you've said that you might wanna go into a studio in the future. But for this record, you pretty much recorded all by yourself.
IH: Yeah. One of the most rewarding times when I get into the zone and I’m creating a song or writing something like that is simply the highest high for me. It just feels so good. I think I'm just at a point in my life where accessing that place and that level of freedom and creativity is just something I can only really do alone. It's something I'm working on, and I think it's the same way I operate, just in general.
I'm gonna close up a little bit with other people. I think with my first album, I also did that all alone. I think I had more of a pride of I did this album myself! Now this album I'm at a point where I see so much value in being able to collaborate and work with people and give up a little bit of control. That now is a scary challenge I would like to take on. I get very attached to demos and I just do feel like there's an energy in them that I often find really difficult to recreate. 'Cause when you're recording something, there's just the magic to it that when you're trying to recreate, it always loses something for me, but I really wanna get to the point where I can recreate something and feel like it's gaining something. That also takes practice and getting comfortable with giving up control and working with other people creatively.
But I now see how that's such a beautiful way to let something blossom, even more. I'm just also very attached to how good it feels to be completely alone and like time disappears and everything's happening just very intuitively, and it just feels like one of my favorite things ever to do.
JE: It feels like you're happy you did those first two records all by yourself, pretty much. But it feels like, as an artist, you feel yourself pushing up to expanding, to start playing and creating with other people a little bit more. Like you're bubbling up to it very naturally, even.
IH: Yeah. I've had to take my time with it, but, feeling just about ready.
JE: You've said that you think a large continuity of the songs lies in the amateur quality of them; you're a sucker for imperfect recording. What do you like about the idea of imperfection?
IH: For some of the PR stuff I had, I just turned it in late, but I worked on it this morning. I had to collect a lot of songs that influenced this album. I was like, “I dunnooo,” and then I did it. There's a lot of songs in that playlist that I put together that are like, I dunno, it just hits! It’s hard for me to put into words, but I've just always been drawn to some [music] that just feels, like I love the rawness of it and less ego. It's more this is what it is and it just captures a feeling more so than a perfection. I recently got into Peter Ivers and it felt very validating too, I read some quote related to demos having this like quality and vibe that you just can't always capture again. I love a happy accident like that, there's something so charming and human about it, something's a little off. Life is not some clean, perfect thing. I like when rawness shows up in music 'cause I feel closer to it or something,
JE: Are there any pop music guilty pleasures that you have?
IH: For sure. Let's see. Yeah, I feel like I don't listen to pop music too much. Honestly, I have been getting a lot of Chappell Roan songs. When I was like a kid, when I was eight, Christina Aguilera was my shit and No Doubt. I would pretend I was in the music video in my room and be dancing. Way too sexy. They were it for me. I can get down with it. I feel like I'm at a point now where I'm digging the clean, simple. I'm getting more into it. Now that I've gotten all my imperfect stuff out there and been like, look, I fuck with this. I'm ready to play it with the clean thing. I'm intrigued by it now a little bit.
JE: So you're gonna make a completely clean, perfect record?
IH: Maybe. No, but just for my version of that maybe.
JE: Sure. I wanted to know what are some of the instruments that you used for this record?
IH: I think this one in particular, I was using a MIDI keyboard a lot, and I have a synth, a Corg synth that I got half off. A lot of the instruments in [the record] were more like, okay, what's in the room and what do I have to use? That's what they became. I think I used a lot of synth-bass 'cause that was just feeling good. I think the bass I had kept not being, the intonation was not quite right. So I was like, “This is what I have.” That ended up being somewhat of an integral vibe in the whole album and I just love it. There's definitely more electronic drums in there, too.
JE: Yeah, string instruments?
IH: Oh yeah. Yes. I appreciate the cello again. I can't believe how I didn't see that when I was younger, but I think it's 'cause I was going the classical route. Now I've learned how to really just improvise with cello and yeah, so most of the songs I'm like, I can't help but want to put some strings on there. Cello definitely has been big in there.
Jonah: Were there certain instruments that you found yourself really attracted to during the recording of any of these songs?
IH: I would say definitely like synth-bass and the organ, the wonky organ-midi-garage-band thing was hard not to wanna put that in everything now and then. And definitely the cello. A lot of it is just I can't help it. It just feels like candy. It feels too good to put on it. So I have to. I think a lot of songs on this album, I was like, “Can I put this out?” because a lot of them don't really stray from one chord progression, a handful of them don't. I've been like “but you have to do A, B, C! You can't just do A, A, A!” But that's just what they are.
JE: I noticed a couple of those, almost like metronome beats, and a couple of the songs come in and then they go out. But the way you decided this was gonna be an album, it seems everything's where it's meant to be and it all sounds awesome.
IH: My process is once I've written it, and then [if] I'm still awake, I can't help but get so obsessed and so excited about the song that I listen to it until everything sounds like exactly as I want it to sound and my ears hurt and I hate the song, at that point 'cause I've listened to it so much.
JE: So it sounds like that obsession allows you to really hammer the songs out. 'Cause sometimes it could be easy to give up on a song and eh, whatever. But you got so obsessed and were so into it that you loved the song so hard.
IH: Yeah, I just wanna hold on to the making of it as long as I can. So I get really into the mixing. It’s kind of a process that isn't working for me very well 'cause my ears literally hurt for a week 'cause I'm just blasting it, and I don't care 'cause in the moment I'm like, “I wanna hear it again, and I wanna make it right.”
JE: It worked for the album, maybe not for your ears. How do you go about writing your lyrics? Is it similar to how you approach music? More of an organic way or then do you revise them?
Izzy: Lyrics are definitely one of the hardest parts. It's the most rewarding too ‘cause I feel like I'll often write music and then sing to it and make words out of gibberish and then take it from there and somehow it seems to magically work out that that gibberish lends itself to oh, very on point with something I didn't even know I was trying to say. It's just discovery that you make in the process and I learn a lot about what I am going through and what I'm feeling just through this. I'm just doing this for fun, but through that process of free association and stuff, but it's hard. The lyrics are really hard, but some of the songs really wrote themselves pretty quickly. I feel like “Don't Be Scared” was a big one that like was just coming from a place I knew exactly what I was writing about and I was feeling pretty intense, emotionally and [I was] really using it cathartically to write.
Some of the songs like “Cavity” and “Dirty Dog” were more like gibberish and free association, and I kept it that way. So it was more about just like the feeling. But yeah, normally I'll catch onto something, and usually that is triggered by something I'm dealing with, some emotion I'm working through. Then I just have to keep playing it and keep following that thought and holding onto it and try and have the patience to stick with it as long as I can. 'Cause once I abandon the process who knows when I'll be able to get back into that feeling. Just like, how many words can we get out?! How deep can we go?! Then I guess, revising it from there. It's such a puzzle, like a mind fuck puzzle, but when you get there… It's such a love-hate relationship with the lyrical side of things.
JE: Yeah. I think you have a really awesome way of allowing yourself to obsess through wanting to make your ears bleed, to allowing yourself for free association, like experiencing the songs through both intuition and intentionality, and emotion at the same time. You're attacking in a lot of different ways. It's very thorough. Did you know that the last song would be the last song?
IH: No. I didn't know the song order until mixing it, and that definitely came as a choice I made on the later side of things, but at this point, I'm like, absolutely. It made sense to me just 'cause it felt like through all the places that the album goes and the perspectives and everything, it felt like this is the one that's the most reflecting on maybe what's underneath a lot of the other material, of just this is what is spinning you out. Here's the void, here's what's behind.
I feel my own shit, but also this darkness and this void feels like a big fuel behind the systems in place in this world, and the greed and the power and the systems of oppression that are very much at play right now. It's this never-ending hunger for more and more. But it's all this avoidance of this void that we all have because we're on a spinning planet with no idea what the fuck is going on, and it's dark and terrifying so it feels like a way to have a more bird's eye perspective of what's really going on some level.
JE: What is something or some things that you're excited about moving forward with your music?
IH: I just moved to LA and I'm gonna make a band out here somehow, eventually. I'm very excited for that process. I think I'm getting a Europe tour booked for April, so I'm really excited to see what it's like to put this album into a live band. I wanna tour and play more, and I have been on a bit of a hiatus with that with moving out here, and a great time to start from zero, but excited for that. I'm excited to be ready to really trust other people and collaborate with people and step away from my ego a little bit more, too. I want to share in the process more. So I feel like more ready for that. I'm excited to see what happens when I get through this writer's block, 'cause it's fucking annoying.