“Anything To Make It Loud” is my entire brain and my entire heart. I’ve never felt so honest in my writing, and I’m so glad I get to share it with whoever may listen. These songs explore my thoughts on intimacy, domesticity, femininity, queerness, and growing up. The themes came unintentionally, I just write about what I’m feeling and what I’m pensive about, so from October 2020 to July 2022, I was thinking a lot about motherhood and love and becoming an adult.

In “All Silk & Satin,” I play into the scariness of wanting something so bad that you’d do anything for it. This is true for both my love and for my music, I want so badly to be seen and heard. Being able to sing the lyric “put it on me, put it in me, anything to make it loud” with an orchestra,
electric guitar, drums, and horns behind me was so beautiful because it was such an ugly thought to begin with, but I got to make it into art.

Similarly on “Laundry,” with the lyric “does it sit in your
drawer? / you love me, but did you love her more?” and on “Peace & Quiet” with the lyric “I’ll interrupt your sleep, check if you’re still in love with me.” These are thoughts I had that scared me, and putting them into these songs is a release, it’s an exhale.

The record ends with that articulation of the ugly thoughts with the lyric “I’ll stay quiet and small, for you I’d do anything at all,” a total juxtaposition to the title.

“Vintage Lingerie” and “Clothesline” go in depth on my desire (and lack thereof) to be a mother as a lesbian, and the obligation I feel to be a caretaker as a woman.

“Manarola” was my take on independence, on finding love elsewhere from romance. “Internal Dialogue” was like writing a letter to myself, thinking about who I was and who I wanted to be, and trying to put my anxieties into music.

“If My Body Could Speak” was a really special song to write because it was a song I’d always wanted to have, a beautiful, soft, classic love song that just happens to be about sex between two women.

I think overall, the lyrics of this record are the things I was scared to say out loud but I needed to, just in case someone else out there has the same ugly thoughts. I want to make the ugly beautiful, I want the ugly to sparkle. The sonic atmosphere ofthis record combines all the things I love most. There’s folk elements in the guitar, banjo and mandolin. There’s jazz in the horns and felted piano. There’s classical in the string arrangements and vocal harmonies. This sound would not have been possible without the collaborations. I feel so lucky to have worked with the incredible players on the record. It’s so special to have artists I admire bring their talent to the songs I wrote to even better express the emotions.

Because so much of the record is about my experience as a woman, it was important to me to work with female musicians: Elizabeth Goodfellow on drums, Kaela Seltzer on saxophone, Chloe Swindler on trumpet, Allee Futterer on upright bass, Kaylee Stenberg on guitar/bass, and Lulu Scully on vocals brought so much beauty with their playing and I am so grateful.

Working so closely with Gregory Allison, I also feel that he understood my vision so well and was able to execute it with the string arrangements beautifully. Similarly with Evan Chambers, who in post-production helped make the record sound as dreamy and sparkly as I always dreamed it would.

It was always my dream to be able to bring the songs I wrote just my voice and guitar or piano to a studio and add strings, horns, and everything else on top, and this record does exactly that.