INTERVIEW: A Conversation with Cherry Glazerr's Clementine Creevy
Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy dives into a dense wall of guitar, her hand contorted into a complex augmented position she refers to as the “Psychic Temple Chord.” Thus beings “That’s Not My Real Life,” the fourth track of the band’s third full-length album, Stuffed & Ready.
Though Stuffed & Ready sonically occupies the same universe as the band’s sophomore record, Apocalipstick, there’s a new sense of maturity. With song titles like “Stupid Fish” and “Wasted Nun” it’s clear the band hasn’t lost its playful sense of humor, but Creevy’s lyrics betray an introspective vulnerability that indicates she might be taking things a little more seriously than she’s previously let on. Instrumentally the album is futuristic but not sterile, maintaining a hold on Creevy’s guitar-rock sensibilities but revealing newfound depth.
The Creevy of Haxel Princess pining for her DIY crush is long gone; on Stuffed & Ready Creevy exudes defiant power. “Don’t hold my hand / don’t be my man,” she cries over a doomsday backdrop on “Daddi,” her delivery more apt to incite battle than reject an unwanted advance.
On the London leg of her most recent tour, Creevy shared her thoughts with Hooligan on dealing with isolation through creation.
You recently released your third album, Stuffed & Ready—tell me a little about the record.
The record is a lot about power structures and my internal struggle with power. A lot of it is sort of honest self-reflection; in a lot of ways it’s probably my most lyrically raw and honest material.
Why did you shift more towards introspective writing?
I think it was more sub-perceptual than anything—it wasn’t really a decision that I made more so that it was just a natural shift, a progression in my making of things. I think in our current social-political climate, I sort of felt the need to speak rationally and be around a lot of rational types of thinking, and so I wanted to sort of move away from obfuscation, which I used to hide behind in a lot of ways.
On the album, you talk a lot about spending time alone. You’ve been playing music and touring since you were 19—is that the cause of the isolation you’re referring to?
No, I wouldn’t say its related to touring, because touring is actually quite a shared experience—you’re constantly with people. I think it’s more of something internal, sort of a state of being that I carry with me all the time, when I’m on tour and when I’m not on tour. I don’t know, it’s just something that I have, I struggle with loneliness even when I have a lot of people around me who love me.
That’s interesting. Did this contribute to the changes between your previous record, Apocalipstick, and Stuffed & Ready?
I don’t know, I think it’s just more of a natural evolution of the music more than anything. I’m always ingesting so much music, that I feel like stylistically I’m inspired by different things at different points in time. When I wrote the first album, I was listening to a lot of garage rock, and that’s why I was writing the types of melodic tendencies that I had for that record, and on Apocalipstick I was listening to a lot of more prog; I wanted to maximalize things a bit more. I started to listen to more contemporary music for this record, and for some reason it came out the way it did. Nobody writes anything else, it’s only me
You released Apocalipstick the day after Trump’s inauguration—were the songs on Stuffed & Ready written directly after, in the wake of the change in presidency?
No, I think again, my writing is kind of more subperceptual than I’d like to admit. I think we as art makers are more a product of our society than we are affecting our society. That being said, I’d like to think that the music that I make does create a type of sharing within the world.
I spent a lot of time thinking about what success means to me and why I do what I do, and I’ve started to realize my definition of success is making music, the act of making it. And I think the reason for that is because it’s a way to not be silenced. It’s a way to be able to share something beautiful in the world with people.
When you say you’re not being silenced, do you mean politically, or your personal voice?
I think it’s both, because it’s of course my personal voice mostly, but I’m a part of a system that is itself based on a power structure in which women are marginalized, so I think a lot of who I am is because of this power structure that I live within.
Where does the title Stuffed & Ready come from?
It’s this idea that came to me—what’s most important to me is having a name that is fun to say. There’s no grand meaning with it, but there is an idea behind “stuffed and ready,” the idea that when you’re stuffed you feel incapacitated to do anything except lie on the couch, and this idea of stuffed and ready is feeling ill equipped on how to proceed but getting up and doing it anyways, because if you’re sitting around waiting for perfection you’re never going to get it. It’s always a waste of time rather than just working and creating and living your life.
So now that the album is out in the world, what’s next? You played the singer in a band, Glitterish, on the show Transparent—is there any more acting in your future?
Actually, I just did a little thing that I’m very excited about. I can’t talk about it but it is going to be out in the world soon—it is another Jill Soloway production, and I’m very excited.