The band consists of singer Amelia Meath (Mountain Man) and producer Nick Sanborn (Megafaun, Made of Oak). “Free,” the song itself, [is about] the fact that so much of love is about trying to figure out how you want to be perceived. Sylvan EssoFree LoveLoma Vista Coming out of Durham, North Carolina, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn formed Sylvan Esso in 2013 as a means for both artists to explore new musical terrains. The reflipping of that is so fun to me. September 27, 2017: The couple went to their first movie premiere together Instead, they’re Zooming from Durham today (Meath from their home, Sanborn from his car in a parking lot several miles away, en route back from their studio) and plotting their most DIY rollout since 2014. Sylvan Esso is about songs that are for rooms of people to be moving in and feeling those feelings together. “She's like, ‘Yeah, I think I'm in love. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. I am down. I want to hear it all the time. We have a super queer club called the Pinhook in the center of town, it's been here forever. If you were to describe your own singing voice, how would you do it? Free Love is the first album since Sylvan Esso founders Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn got married. Part of Sylvan Esso’s draw is just that — uncompromising pop music presented as pop music, but pop music that doesn’t talk down to its listeners. Sylvan Esso Married; What Now is the studio/Mixtape Album by artist/Rapper/DJ Sylvan Esso, and Album has highlight a Pop sound. Also, no one pays for music anymore, so I wanted to highlight that. “It's happened a couple of times where we'll be getting interviewed and I am only asked about what it's like to be in a relationship with my creative partner. It's something that you can't have with somebody that you haven't worked with for this long.”, Seven years into their creative partnership, Meath and Sanborn still find new joys in making music together. I think [the shame] was around not wanting to claim something that I wasn't 100% sure of. The duo, who blends folk melodies and electronic production, first broke out with their 2014 eponymous debut album, whose delicate songs tend to zoom in on one simple thing — a cup of coffee, … They look a lot like the tree spirits in Princess Mononoke.” There you have it…Sylvan Esso is derived from an iOS indie game released in 2011 (+ extra nerd points for the Princess Mononoke reference). Sylvan Esso is an American electronic pop duo from Durham, North Carolina, formed in 2013. Available now! My singing voice is the negative imprint of my insides, I feel like an actual wind instrument [when I do it]. Couples can get married on the First Avenue stage or dance floor in front of family and friends. Though she has hinted at her queerness by switching around pronouns in live performances and using merch to raise funds for LGBTQ+ organizations, she gradually came to the conclusion that coming out to the world could help her and her LGBTQ+ listeners. I realized [around this Pride month] that it could be quite useful [to come out], for me, and also for other people who are in a similar situation — particularly because bi-ness is so easily made invisible. Realizing that is one of the many stories behind their beautiful new album, Free Love, the third Sylvan Esso record. Now, I've totally stepped more into the role of producer, and we're actively co-producing in this totally new, really exciting way. Was it finished before the current pandemic hit? It's for everybody. Then we don't talk about my songs.”, She rolls her eyes and smiles. Singer who was originally a third of the group Mountain Man, then later became a member of Sylvan Esso with electronic music producer Nicholas Sanborn. Ad Choices, Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath Is Stepping Out Into the World, Again, Frank Ocean and Luca Guadagnino Worked on Music Video Together, Director Says, Listen to Chika’s New Song “My Power” From Netflix’s, Trans Trenderz Is the Revolutionary Record Label Spotlighting Black Trans Artists, 11 New Songs By Queer Artists You Need to Hear: Perfume Genius, Chris, Kehlani, More. “She was looking inward and trying to remember all the times when loving other people was incredibly easy. From the moment she met Meath and her group, “it was clear that we needed to spend a couple of years together,” Feist recalls. In July, the pop duo Sylvan Esso shared the first teaser video for their forthcoming album Free Love, featuring vocalist Amelia Meath bobbing in a vast body of water. That was the most exciting part of this record — all of the sudden recognizing that so much of the work that I've been doing for this whole time was being a producer. Success is in learning the other’s language and using it to grow. We named our band after them. Realizing that is one of the many stories behind their beautiful new album, Free Love, the third Sylvan Esso record. Sign up for our weekly newsletter here. Their third album, Free Love (out September 25), takes a somewhat different approach. It was released/out on 2017 in English dialect, by some Music Recording Company, as the follow-up to last studio/Mixtape Album. Success is never compromising for the sake of a win. (Sanborn is usually the “math-brained production wizard,” she says.) We caught up with Sylvan Esso via Zoom to find out about that tour, Sanborn’s newfound love of modular, and how a new studio has helped the pair - who have been married since 2016 - separate their home and creative lives. The duo also willingly offer multiple points of entry. With this, I just f---ing love it. Just about how it was such a formative moment for me [regarding] how much I love food and how similar it is to music — that you can imbibe love — and also slowly figuring out that I was queer. It was also a process of having other people identify me as queer, and me being like, “No I can't do that because I'm in a heteronormative situation.” Then I slowly realized that me saying that I was bi could be true, and is true. The rest of the record is blistering, honest, and deeply funny; songs touch on success (“Slack Jaw”), the versions of ourselves we choose to put on display every day (“Just Dancing”), and an album by the short-lived Washington rock band The Microphones (“The Glow”). They were in Los Angeles mixing the album this spring when the pandemic hit, forcing them to fly home to North Carolina (“mostly because we went to the Silver Lake Whole Foods and were like, ‘Oh, f--k, we’ve got to get out of here’”) before things took a turn. “It makes me want to be a better partner and a better producer. Every queer person that I know was always very delicately talking about my queerness. Free Love seemed like a really fun, super cheeky thing to name the record. I've spent a lot of time trying to strip away affectation from the way I sing. 10 funny mockumentaries to remind us about the absurdity of life, Family-friendly Halloween films for boos big and small, How Sufjan Stevens made an upbeat album about the 'crisis of humanity', Yusuf/Cat Stevens breaks down every song on his seminal breakthrough, Wayne Coyne on near-death experiences, Ken Burns, and the Flaming Lips' new album American Head. It was the first time that I figured out that food was art, which was really exciting as a teeny little weirdo. ... Now married, the couple write more solidly as a unit. Even while talking to her through a screen, I could see her inclination to use flitting hand motions to punctuate her thoughts about the idea of “free love,” stepping into a producer role on the forthcoming album, and making pop music that has the power to unify. The apex of that intersection comes halfway through the album in the form of “Free,” a song the band says served as the key that unlocked the rest of Free Love. For a long time, I didn’t really want to come out. Stefanie Keenan / Getty Images. “Because, really, so often what we're doing is just describing the thing that the other has made.”, Though Sylvan Esso have danced around their opinions on traditional success in their music for nearly a decade now, both say Free Love comes closest to what they’ve been told success should feel like. She's part of the amazing experience I had with the food, maybe that's why I like her so much. That's why real love hurts so much, because you actually have to show who you are to somebody. (Sanborn is usually the “math-brained production wizard,” she says.) After you came out to your family and they didn’t affirm your bisexuality, how did you eventually come around to accepting it for yourself? It wasn't just the pop heads. But because so much of my role in producing is invisible labor, it's really hard to identify until you give yourself that permission. Were there moments from when you were younger that helped you realize you were queer? I felt, as someone who's in a heteronormative-looking relationship and a cis white lady, saying, "I'm bi too...” It didn't seem like that [kind of] voice was needed at the moment. Free Love, out Sept. 25 via Loma Vista, expands Sylvan Esso’s expertly laid groundwork across ten intricate songs. One of the things I adore so much about her is that she's endlessly, and in a positive way, curious about the world and every living thing in it.”. That is the true magical cultural spell. All rights reserved. Sylvan Esso has always been a duo, featuring the beats and electronics of Nick Sanborn and the voice of singer Amelia Meath. I'm so proud of it.”. Sylvan Esso recently released their third album Free Love, and on the next World Café, they share live performances of the new songs. A few years ago, solo artist Meath thought it would be fun to see what Sanborn would do with one of her songs, and now, as the duo Sylvan Esso, they have two successful albums, a near-constant tour schedule and a Grammy nomination. When the Canadian singer-songwriter Feist was booked to perform at Coachella in 2012, she knew two things: first, she needed a full orchestra, and second, she needed to bring Sylvan Esso … I got a lot of feedback from my family that unless I was fucking girls all the time, I was not queer enough. In it, there is a creature called a Sylvan Sprite. Singer who was originally a third of the group Mountain Man, then later became a member of Sylvan Esso with electronic music producer Nicholas Sanborn. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 1/1/20) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 1/1/20) and Your California Privacy Rights. Durham's a super wonderful queer space to be in. Offers may be subject to change without notice. It's something that I've been talking about with my closer group of friends for years. Also, we just like hanging out a lot. Meath, 32, and Sanborn, 37, first began working together in 2013, when the former asked the latter, under his Made of Oak project, to remix a Mountain Man song called “Play It Right.” The two realized their styles meshed better than one lone track could express, so they teamed up as Sylvan Esso. “I was really, really protective of the information for years and years, mostly out of a mixture of fear of the patriarchy,” Meath says. Then, everything else drops out and Meath sings: “So open wide/She’s coming out.”, When I talk to Meath a week after that clip is released, the singer tells me that the reference to “coming out” technically wasn’t about her or her sexuality. Also a member of the folk trio Mountain Man, Meath is the vocal powerhouse and lyrical mastermind of Sylvan Esso. I publicly came out at first when I was 14. Sylvan Esso's songs are really aggressive, no one really talks about them that way. He's just really supportive. She made her television debut with Sylvan Esso on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on July 9, 2014. “It feels like MySpace again,” Meath says. Elliot messaged Emma and the rest is history, with the … At first, I would write lyrics and melody, and he would do production. “That being said,” she adds. “Free Love shows us embracing the complexity of being human, with pop music that doesn't undercut how complicated being a person is,” he adds. Sylvan Esso is composed of producer Nick Sanborn and vocalist Amelia Meath. The goal is trying to talk about truly intimate things, but I chose two different routes. Then, in between their first and second album, they got married — something the pair are only now comfortable discussing in public. “It's the best thing we've ever made,” Meath says. They’ve released two albums together, with “What Now” earning a … Maybe I like girls.". All of those were represented in it, and it's such a poke. Sylvan Esso: Amelia Meath on life on the road Amelia Meath ditched hipster Brooklyn to move to Durham, which is just one of the things that have helped her musical project with Nick Sanborn to thrive Soon after, she told her boss that she had plans to record songs with the musician Nick Sanborn, who she had first met when she was 22. Where does your love of dance music — or music to dance to — originate from? For them, right now, success is in the small things. “Every other time I've finished a record, I'm not interested in hearing it again. When you say that queer people came up to you, because of your music, what kinds of things were they saying or expressing? may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. In it, she gazes at the camera and keeps herself afloat while singing the words to the record’s intro track, “What If.” Her lithe voice, processed through a vocoder, sounds eerily calming as glitchy electronic noises swell into a crescendo around her words. The married couple Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn make up Sylvan Esso. I went back in [the closet]. “It was this sort of instantaneous respect, and it felt reciprocal.”, But the partnership didn’t last long. Prune had this matchbook that had a pin-up [model] on the front of it, and I kept it like a little creep and put it in my wallet to be like, “I love food, and also I really like this lady. 100%, I do. We're going to break through,’” Sanborn says. “She’s like a perpetual motion machine,” Sanborn says of Meath. “There are certain themes that the band has been dancing around for the six years that we've been putting out records,” Meath says. That's when it spans everybody and it's just undeniable. Sometimes it ends partnerships, sometimes it fuels them. And they reveal why they were reluctant in the past to discuss being “a married … Portner called it a "movement film," and it featured the two dancing to the song "Slack Jaw" by Sylvan Esso. Success is building upon an expanding legacy. Then, I moved to Durham [around age 24]. That’s certainly true of Meath, who, at 31, is ready to talk about her queer identity for the first time to the press. Elliot Page and Emma Portner started dating after meeting on Instagram in 2017 and got married about six months later.. Entertainment Weekly may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Before Fame. Sylvan Esso was born out of the same kind of adventurous collaboration. As I was singing around the house as I was growing up [in Cambridge, Massachusetts], whenever I would try to put on a different style of singing, my mom would yell from the kitchen, "Use your own voice!" Both Sylvan Esso albums have cracked the Top 40 of the Billboard 200 sales chart, with last year’s “What Now” reaching No. Because you're married to your bandmate, can you talk to me about your conversations with him about queerness? “Free Love is the first realization of a thing we've been shooting at for a long time, which is for Sylvan Esso to not feel like two people,” Sanborn says. “I remember her being like, ‘It's sort of electronic music and he's going to make beats and I'm going to sing and it's going to be massive and amazing.’ She just had a big grin on her face, overflowing with ideas. So [there’s] just a bunch of little cute baby queers coming up and being like, "We named our pet bunny Sylvan.”. They beckon to fans who want to dance, and they warmly embrace folk devotees looking for contemplative and nuanced songwriting that doesn’t pander. Put me in a thong, let me do a hit! Get the best of what's queer. [We wanted] it to feel like it was one expression. ... She had posted a video to a song by Sylvan Esso and, when the band shared the video, it immediately caught the Inception actor's eye. through a video call from her home in Durham, North Carolina, where she lives with her husband and fellow-Sylvan Esso bandmate Nick Sanborn. To us, there's always this fear that the next step from where we're at now is one where you have to reduce it a little bit further, and we're just not interested in that. “It was like, ‘Oh no, this is bad.’”, Free Love was meant to accompany a massive tour, spanning multiple festival appearances (including Bonnaroo’s legendary SuperJam) that would’ve put the record’s most intimate moments into the hands of hundreds of thousands. Married couple and musical duo Sylvan Esso released their third album, "Free Love," Sept. 25. New album Free Love out 9/25/2020 on Loma Vista Recordings. Their latest project, WITH, leans into their alternative side. Sylvan Esso aren’t devotees of subwoofer smashers; they have plenty of skittish and downtempo tracks in their repertoire. “So it's obviously, on our tiny little scale, a huge bummer that all of that went away.”, But both agree there’s an unexpected upside to being forced to scale things down. “They're sad songs that sound really happy.”. They're one and the same to me. Meath and Sanborn began working on Free Love in early 2019, two months after wrapping their tour in support of their critically acclaimed sophomore effort. Instead of going for straight doom-and-gloom this time, Meath began to reflect on all the different times and ways she had loved others. She formed Sylvan Esso with Nick Sanborn after meeting him in Milwaukee at the Cactus Club. “In everything you write, there are so many different layers to the truth,” she tells them. 32. The pair also talks about why it’s good for them to fight when working together on new material. The goal is to make songs that touch parts of people's being that haven't been touched before, to write truly original songs about things that people have sort of heard about but then point [out] a new thing. She first came out as bisexual to her family at age 14, and again to her close friends in her mid-20s. Realizing that is one of the many stories behind their beautiful new album, Free Love, the third Sylvan Esso record. Unlike so many other art forms, everybody feels the right to have an opinion about music, which is what drew me to it in the first place. “There is an amazing game called Sword and Sworcery. What would you say makes you and Nick a good team? Also “free love,” the phrase, is so gross. Meath is also a fabulous dancer, and movement continues to be a crucial aspect of her self-expression. Every now and then, there's an amazing record that does it, like Taylor Swift's 1989, where everybody decided it was good. “It feels like what it used to be like when I would book Mountain Man shows by cold-calling venues.”, Free Love is somehow prescient and nostalgic in the same breath. Lia Clay. Yes. A few short years later, I was side stage at [Bon Iver’s festival] Eaux Claires watching her and Nick headline, watching thousands of people singing every word.”, In a pandemic-free world, Meath and Sanborn — the musical duo now beloved as Sylvan Esso — would soon be trotting out their third album, Free Love, to massive festival crowds around the world. “Every day, we would look out the window and see less and less traffic,” Meath says. But those looking to dig deeper will find Meath’s tongue-twisting choruses (“Sainted halo, underworld goth vibes/You'll do fine/For tonight,” Meath sings on “Ferris Wheel”), which walk hand-in-hand with Sanborn’s vibrant, supportive production. “What Amelia was doing was reacting to this increasingly tense world around us,” Sanborn says. For Nick Sanborn and Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso, the friction is essential to what makes their creative collaboration tick. From Sylvan Esso through What Now. So many queer people were seeking me out for years, for the music that I'm making. Success is making one of the year’s most resonant, warm, necessary albums. It’s almost creepy how prevalent those themes are in the world now.”. After touring through the summer and fall of 2019, Meath and Sanborn began working on their third album. I think it might be because we're a male and female duo, with female vocals so everyone assumes it's a soothing thing or whatever. In a year full of conflict and struggle, a proclamation of the strength and limitlessness of love is just what society needs. “The growth that we're actually interested in is just being a better band,” Sanborn says. As a semi-public figure, the more I give myself the power to say how I feel and think, the more I can hopefully open the door of others thinking, "I like that girl, she likes girls, too. It's fucking not. Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn make up the electronic-folk duo known as Sylvan Esso, which pays a visit to The Mill and Mine in Knoxville on Friday. My singing voice is so personal in that it is exactly who I am, and there's a certain ringing vulnerability in that. The duo’s self-titled 2014 debut paired Meath’s “secretive, intimate” songwriting with Sanborn’s propulsive and sticky production, and they were soon selling out clubs around the country and booking major festivals like Bonnaroo, Firefly, and Austin City Limits. As I was hanging out there more and more, going to shows and hanging out with all my pals there, I kind of realized [I was bi]. It’s also for people to get together, it's a true community builder and unifier. I think some sort of shame spiral happened. The first time I got to go to Prune, the restaurant, I was nine or 10. Straight people don't do that.". I don't know.” [laughs] I got to write to [the owner] Gabrielle Hamilton about that, recently, after her beautiful article [about closing the restaurant]. At first glance, their songs could seem straightforward, with recurring themes of love, intimacy, friendship, solitude, and breaking conventions. “She’s able to point out when I'm succeeding and when I'm failing in a way that doesn't ever feel like a put down or hyperbole,” Sanborn says. “You plan out in your mind like, ‘Oh, this is going to be it. October 4, 2020. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Elliot married Emma Porter two years ago Credit: GETTY IMAGES. this link is to an external site that may or may not meet accessibility guidelines. “It became this guiding idea [that she was] acknowledging the anxiety of the present while also reflecting on all different forms that love has taken in her life,” Sanborn tells me over the phone later. © 2020 Condé Nast. “It's still such a challenging and exciting thing to make intrinsically fun, catchy music that reaches towards deeper truths that aren't lizard brain.”. How cool it is that we've made these weird songs and they resonated with that many people?
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