Fashion Club is the moniker of Los Angeles-based artist Pascal Stevenson, who began writing songs for the project in the back of a van while on tour with Moaning. In addition to being a founding member of the group, Stevenson has been part of the city’s DIY scene for over a decade, clocking time in bands including Girlpool, SASAMI, and Cherry Glazerr. It wasn’t until early 2019, about a year after getting sober, that Stevenson was able to write lyrics to those songs, which would become her debut album, 2022’s Scrutiny. As captivating and complex as the record is, by the time it came out, Stevenson had transitioned, and she wanted to make an album that would better embody not just her feminity but a greater emotional and musical range.
Self-produced but featuring remarkable guest appearances from Perfume Genius, Julie Byrne, and Jay Som, Fashion Club’s new LP, A Love You Cannot Shake – out Friday – finds Stevenson tangling in the relationship between experimental and pop music, tenderness and confusion, current and past selves, self-growth and systemic inequality – dialogues that seem beyond language but remain ceaseless and transformative. “I found comfort in the lie,” she sings on ‘Ice Age’, but you’d be forgiven for hearing the word “light” instead – after all, that’s exactly what pours in halfway through many of the album’s songs. The light, Stevenson suggests, is never too far from the darkness. But to get from a lie to the truth – uncomfortable, soothing, radiant, and undeniable – takes one hell of a leap. A Love You Cannot Shake isn’t just the sound of Fashion Club making it and breaking through, but reveling in every facet of its breathless, uncompromising expression.
We caught up with Fashion Club for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about her approach going into A Love You Cannot Shake, choosing the right collaborators, her relationship with her voice, and more.
When you went into making A Love You Cannot Shake, how intentional were you about adopting a different approach from Scrutiny and reflecting on how things had changed for you?
With Scrutiny, I had this idea of how a record I made would sound and the things I could and couldn’t do, how to fit all the pieces of what I liked together. But I guess it didn’t feel like a whole representation of what I wanted to make. With writing this record, I wasn’t thinking about what other people expected at all. I was just thinking about what I wanted to make and hear, which is one of the reasons it’s been easier for me to live with the record in the time since it’s been done. I set out to make a record that I wanted to hear, and it worked to a degree because I do like listening to it. But I think that’s the biggest thing – not limiting myself by genre or instrumentation. Not trying to make something that is reserved in any way, and just making this big, dramatic – melodramatic – record because that’s what I like.
You’ve said that one of the things that held you back from making this kind of record before was that you felt like you lacked the musical vocabulary. How much of that had to do with the technical side of producing and arranging, and how much was tied to developing a musical language that felt like your own, or that allowed space for that melodrama? Was it both things?
Definitely both things. I think the second one strikes a little truer in the writing process. That was the big one initially. It was writing over and over again, writing a bunch of songs, rewriting a bunch of songs, and just figuring out how to synergize these aspects of all of this different stuff that I like – these aspects of electronic music that I like, and these aspects of indie rock and alternative rock that I still like. Revisiting stuff that I hadn’t listened to in a while and opening myself up to a lot of wider range of music. And then, a huge part of that was honestly getting more comfortable singing, like finding registers that were more comfortable for me, and writing simpler – writing just on the acoustic guitar with simple chords, so that I left more room for a real vocal melody. Whereas on the first record I would write the whole song, and then be like, “Alright, let me try and fit vocals into this.” And so, on this record, even if I had something that was a little bit pre-produced and pre-arranged that I knew I wanted to be a part of a song, I would kind of take it back to the acoustic guitar and write lyrics and just write super simply, and then take out anything that I needed to fit the vocal melody in.
And then later, once everything was kind of written and going into the computer, it was definitely a learning curve from a technical aspect as well. Because there’s a lot of stuff on this record that is really heavy and intense in these ways that I didn’t necessarily have experience with production-wise, or I had to a degree, but not as much as I necessarily needed. So there were moments where I would be mixing songs, like I would be producing ‘Forget’ or ‘Deny’, and literally going on YouTube and watching tutorials of dubstep producers talking about how they handle bass. These two types of music are not similar, but they have what I need – I listen to these songs and they’re hitting in the way that I want this one to hit, so, like, what are they doing? And I’ll do the same with people who produce folk music and talk about recording vocals and guitar and piano. I think that’s another thing of removing a limitation, is just being like: I am not making dubstep, but the way that they handle this insane low end is useful for me, or the way that big-room EDM producers handle low end is useful to what I’m trying to accomplish here. Because you listen to that stuff, and whether you like it or not, it is euphoric. It is huge, and it’s euphoric, and it works. It’s effectively communicating what it’s trying to communicate.
You mentioned becoming comfortable with your own voice. Was there also an element of pushing your voice in ways that were maybe uncomfortable at first, but ultimately useful or expressive?
I think the first thing was getting into a range that felt comfortable to move around in. There’s moments where I’m pushing it to the upper limit, but not in a way that felt like it was breaking. I’m not a super-trained singer, I haven’t even been singing for that long in the grand scheme of things, on my own music, so I think part of that pushing was practice more than anything. It was the same thing that would happen if you’re trying to force yourself to learn something difficult on guitar or piano. Once I was writing these songs that felt in a range where I was more comfortable to play around in, that’s where I could kind of purposely break my voice in these ways that felt true to the emotion of the songs, or let it feel weak in moments when it needed to feel weak and more powerful in moments where it needed to feel more powerful.
On the first record, I’m singing so low – even when it came time to play those songs live, I was like, “Some of these songs are too low for me to sing.” [laughs] I don’t know why I was singing like this. I should have just changed the key of the song. There’s no room to have any dynamic when your entire focus is like, “Alright, let me get into this voice and try to stay in tune.” But when it’s a little bit easier to sing, in a range that’s more appropriate, it’s easier to have dynamics within the vocals.
There were plenty of contributors to Scrutiny, but the collaborations on A Love You Cannot Shake seem to be more about sharing in the guests’ musical language as opposed to them just contributing to the record. Do you feel like you took away something specific from their vocabulary that became integral to the songs?
I picked all of those collaborators because I felt that they would connect with the songs that I was having them on for whatever reason. I don’t want anybody to work on something they don’t feel passionately connected to, so I think just having them work on something that felt close to them garnered performances from each of them that felt really lived-in. And then, the more I live with the songs, for sure there’s something to be taken away, whether from recording with them or just listening to the songs and understanding how they approach certain things. I listen to ‘Forget’, and it’s so interesting to watch Mike, who I think has this really deep understanding of how to convey things emotionally with his voice, utilize that on this song. I do think listening to that is like getting a lesson. It’s so effective, and obviously, it’s a big part of what he does.
Did it affect you in a specific way that you can describe?
I think it’s affecting how I perform the songs, for sure. Right now, I’ve been performing with the backing tracks of the performers because I don’t want to lose them – I’m so attached to them now. But it’s interesting, because when I play a song like ‘Forget’, I’m singing to Mike’s vocal a bit. I have them pretty low, but I can still hear them. Because he sang to my vocal for the recording, now it’s this funny thing where I’m singing to his vocal live. And there are parts where I lean into the brokenness of it, or bring it down dynamically in certain parts to kind of match what he’s doing. In the chorus of that song, I always want to go high because I’m like, “Oh, it sounds so good.” With that song specifically, that’s how it’s playing out right now.
I’m curious if you enforce a routine when it comes to writing songs. Part of the reason I’m asking is that some of the songs seem to start with the image of you waking up, and I wonder if the time of day literally plays into your writing process.
That’s interesting. I mean, I wake up early, that is just a thing. But I’m not good with routine, unfortunately. I am pretty scattered when it comes to that stuff. I’m bad at enforcing any type of work schedule when it comes to working on music. I do it a lot, but at what time of the day it’s gonna happen, it’s totally random. There would be maybe a week where I would wake up every day, especially when mixing,and I’d be like, “Okay, I have to mix today all day for this week.” But a lot of the time, it’s just when I have time, or when motivation strikes and I just have to grab onto that and try to ride it for a few hours or six hours, however long I can stay feeling motivated. But I’m not type A. I’m not making schedules. I’m so bad at that stuff. [laughs] I’m trying to get better. But I think the beginning thing that you’re picking up on is more just trying to have these songs have some kind of evolution or movements. So a lot of them do have a beginning, so to speak, a middle and an end. And inevitably, some of those are the beginning of the day, the beginning of a cycle of a certain part of your life.
It definitely works on both of those levels. I found it interesting that on some of the more upbeat songs on the record, like ‘Confusion’ and ‘One Day’, there’s almost an internal dialogue between the hopeful and cynical parts of yourself. I wonder if you feel like that comes from a personal struggle or more of a musical one in terms of writing a straightforwardly happy song.
It’s definitely personal. I honestly would write a totally straightforward happy song if I felt that way. [laughs] I feel happy a lot, but there’s two sides to all of it. I’m writing songs that are reflecting how I feel on a day-to-day basis, and I think that struggle is a big part of it. I wanted the record to be indicative of a growth that I have felt for the past few years, which is towards happiness and towards acceptance. But I think it would be dishonest to not include the difficult or uncomfortable parts of that. So I think that’s what a lot of that is. To your point, dynamics were really important to me on this record, and in songs like ‘Confusion’ and ‘One Day’ that have more traditional band instrumentation, it’s a little bit harder to build that huge dynamic that you have on something like ‘Forget’. So I think the way that I set out to do that was through the lyrics. I was like, if the song is going to just rock the whole way through, I need to at least have this big dynamic shift lyrically. Because they’re conveying the same thing – I write those big dynamic shifts into things like ‘Forget’ or ‘Enough’ because I’m trying to convey an emotion. I don’t just do it to have it be like, “Surprise!” Those are purposeful in just the same way that the lyrics are.
With songs like ‘Forget’, ‘Enough’, and also ‘Ghost’, you inject this sense of hope that feels immense and revelatory. The final lines of ‘Enough’ – you say it’s not supposed to come as just a surprise, but if you pay attention to the lyrics, it’s a real emotional jolt. Do feel like you surprise yourself when you reach that place in a song?
I feel like I surprise myself whenever I’m able to write something that feels narratively interesting. [laughs] Whenever I write a lyric where I’m like, “That’s good,” I feel surprised. It’s less and less that I feel surprised; it’s becoming more and more purposeful. But it’s a lot of whittling – I write fast, but I whittle for a long time. The songs are so constructed, and the emotions that I’m trying to convey, to me at least, are really complex and really uncomfortable, so it takes a minute to get the exact right wording. With a lot of these songs, it’s not like, “Oh, I’ve written this, and now I’ve unlocked something that I wasn’t thinking about. It’s not like I’m unearthing repressed emotions or something, really. I think I’m writing about something that is so real to me and so deeply felt that the “aha” moment is finally getting the right words to properly convey something I know I’ve been feeling. And that I know other people feel as well.
Was there a moment of precise articulation that stands out to you as being impactful during the making of the record?
Yeah, I think the lyric in ‘Deny’ that the title is from – I think that’s why I named it that. I was reading through the lyrics, and that was one that, when I wrote it it stuck with me, and every time I sing it, I really feel it so deeply. I think it conveys so well this feeling of reaching all your life for something and finally being able to feel a bit of an acceptance, or warmth, or love. And realizing for the first time that what is real to you and what you have is better than some ideal you’ve been reaching for your entire life. It’s this statement of acceptance that I’ve needed for a really long time and that just feels really true to me. It’s just one that when I sing it or when I hear it, I’m like, I feel that way.
Given that the record starts with the words “Anger is an illness,” it feels like a defiant act to land on this line as the titular one – to really focus on the love, which permeates the record, but not necessarily in this accepting or unshakable way.
Totally. I named it that because I wanted people to focus on where the songs end up –narratively, where things end up instead of where they’ve started. Kind of like focusing on the present instead of focusing on the past, I guess, if we’re taking that as the narrative of some of these songs. Which I think it is, for me at least.
What made you decide to end the record with ‘Deify’? Was it a complicated choice?
I think it was a musical choice. I would say a bit narrative, but I think there’s a lot of songs that narratively could have ended the record. That one felt appropriate because it is this raging song – there’s so much intensity, and then it breaks into probably one of the more delicate moments on the record. I wanted to leave people on this huge anger breaking into this message of acceptance. There’s a couple of songs that have a similar arc, but that’s how I view that last kind of 30 seconds or whatever of that song. Change, praise – you’re never gonna get it exactly how you want it. You kind of just have to work with what you have.
The album represents the cyclical nature of these emotions, but also the way they end up bleeding into each other. I like the idea of anger “breaking into” acceptance as an example of this.
Anger, acceptance; depression, acceptance; love, hate: all of this stuff is very cyclical, and accepting that one of them is part of the other is, to me, really an uncomfortable truth. I think that’s a big part of what I wanted to get at with a lot of these songs, that uncomfortable feeling of trying to work through hate, trying to work through anger, but knowing that it’s shaping the love that you have and the acceptance that you have – it’s shaping who you are just as much as those other, more positive feelings are. You can’t necessarily forget it, because you’re just going to end up in the same place. It’s this really uncomfortable thing of trying to live with it, and just knowing that when you’re living in one place, you’re never too far from the other. When you’re living in acceptance, you’re never too far from anger and hate and fear and regret, all of this stuff. I think that can be really scary, but then, vice versa, when you’re living in anger, fear, regret, knowing you’re never too far from euphoric happiness, this total acceptance – that can be really comforting. It’s just trying to balance the two of them.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Fashion Club’s A Love You Cannot Shake is out October 25 via Felte Records.
Source: Our Culture – ourculturemag.com
