Tomberlin's Conscious Projections

Her new EP, Projections, which is produced by Alex G and his bandmate Sam Acchione, unravels intimate mundanities and champions nature as the ultimate refuge. 

office spoke with Tomberlin about her new EP, quarantine realizations, and the less obvious effects of displacement.

We’ve both moved a lot in our lives. Which sucks, but moving has encouraged me to connect with nature, because it’s always a constant. No matter where I go, I can wander deep in the woods, or somewhere quiet, and breathe. Your music—and your new EP, in particular—provides that same feeling. Do you have any spots in nature that are sacred to you?

Definitely, nature has always been a respite for me. The woods are most healing, and bodies of water too. No matter if it's a river, lake, ocean or even a pond, being around water centers something in my brain that nothing else can. And there's an energy in the woods that you just can't replicate any other way.

What did the title “Projections” come from?

It came to me while I was walking in the woods and dwelling on what this collection of songs means. I realized that I'm only able to tell my perspective, and my songs try to understand others’ perspectives, but ultimately, when I'm writing a song, all I'm able to do is express how I feel and how something was shared with me in a moment in time, even though it may have felt different to someone else. We project our own reality onto other people’s experiences to try to relate, but all I can really offer is my own perspective. Titles are really hard for me though, because I don't want anything to take away from the song. Sometimes bad song titles or dumb band names keep me from being able to engage with the music, so I'm super aware of that to the point where I’m releasing songs like “Untitled 1” and “Untitled 2,” like on my first recond.

That’s interesting because one of the most compelling parts of your music for me is in fact the language. Like on “Floor,” you say, “We filled the space with quiet breath.” I love that line because you literally use words, the very absence of a lull, to describe and invoke a lull.

I've always been a real observer, and acutely aware of energy and space, which I think comes with moving, or being displaced, and having to relearn lots of things. There was no getting used to anything. There was only change. So really small details, people, and silence are things that I'm always ruminating on. It's just how I absorb space and information.

Speaking of absorbing space, I want to learn more about how you made this project with Alex and Sam. Did anything from your recording environment seep into the EP?

There’s some literal background noise that we kept in, but that’s also just Alex's way of recording. We recorded it in his apartment in Philadelphia, so there are sirens, car noises, doors being opened, and cooking sounds if you listen close enough. Those are the literal things that seeped through, and I decided not to get that stuff out in mixing, because it added warmth and a marking of time. Those sounds might not be noticeable to other people, but I hear them and remember what was going on, and that's fun to me.

Alex had just gotten a new microphone, and we used it for all of the instruments, and my vocals. We were literally figuring out how to use it while recording this EP. It was very classic Alex. We were in the second bedroom, which was by the living room, and Molly would be coming in and out while teaching violin lessons in the other room. It was winter, so we would spend all day in that room, and only come out to make food, and order food, and watch shitty TV.

That sounds like a classic Philly winter. You cover “Natural Light” by Casiotone For The Painfully Alone for the last song on your EP. How did that come about?

I heard that song this year, and my version is basically an iPhone voice recording that my friend Ryan Hemsworth helped me produce out. I recorded the guitar and vocals into the Voice Memos app on my iPhone, and then I asked Ryan if he could add some Grouper-y, warbly bass and some shimmery things. He knew what I was saying because we had done some stuff together before. Then I recorded separate harmonies, also into Voice Memos, and had him layer it together. 

Do you feel you were prepared for quarantine?

Yes and no. I was supposed to do SXSW and the Soccer Mommy tour, and I was really looking forward to those things. The last show I played with Alex G was on November 30th. So between then and March—when COVID hit—was the longest amount of time off I've had. I thought I had done a lot of work resetting during that time, but I realized I hadn't actually tapped into a lot of things, and I really needed more time and space to process the past few years of my life. So now I feel a lot more stable and at peace in my own body, and just as a person.

Even though quarantine has obviously been really hard, and COVID has been destructive to every kind of life form, there’s still something to be said for having a forced pause for our entire country. There are things we’ve been distracting ourselves from, things that need to be tended to. Quarantine has ended up being a lot more work than rest, but it’s been good work that provided rest. 

Now that you're dropping a project into a world without live concerts and tours, has the release process felt different for you?

I feel differently, but I’m hopeful that people will actually listen to this project all the way through, now that we all have a lot less on our plates in the way of distraction. I'm such a full album listener, but obviously the music industry is like a video game where it's not about the work, and it's just about celebrity. I want to keep that away from myself as much as possible. Like, I don't want stans. I'm a human being that has the capability to make mistakes. So I don't want anyone to be like “I have undevoted love for you,” when I'm like, you don't even know me. I just hope [the pandemic] resets the way people process music overall. And maybe at shows people will shut the fuck up when music is being played. People will realize that this is a gift. I grew up having to drive two hours to a show and two hours back because I lived in the middle of nowhere. And I hope this helps people realize that music is something that needs to be invested in. Musicians shouldn’t have to try to live off touring and merch sales. We should be able to make money off of our actual work and not have to sign it away for a certain amount of time. I’ve just been thinking a lot about music consumption, art in general, and the music economy. So yes, I do feel differently this time around.