Pillowinde was not always the six to ten member behemoth of a band that it is today. The group began humbly in Claire Ruiz’s bedroom as a way for her to kill time and learn how to write real songs during COVID. Claire had long wanted to start a band of her own and was finally feeling emboldened after hopping on bass for a few shows to help out her friend’s band Joyer. She used that time to herself to write Pillowinde’s Self-Titled debut LP, a scrappy but sturdy lofi psych rock record. Claire credits “Courtney”, her ode to how she wished she was more like Australian rocker Courtney Barnett, as the first proper rock song she wrote with a hook and a sense of pop song structure. While some of the songs make her wince looking back, Claire admits that a lot of the record has held up better than she might have expected.
As live music became possible once again she was encouraged by a friend to take Pillowinde on the road and started playing shows all around New Jersey, making many friends along the way. She met Chelsea Bentivegna at a show that Claire’s friend AJ and Chelsea’s future boyfriend Jordan were both playing. The two became fast friends, going to many a show in and around New Brunswick, leading to Chelsea joining Pillowinde right as Claire was releasing the band’s second record. Claire was getting more into Beck and music production and separated the sophomore record Jets to Brunswick into its rocking first half inspired by many of the bands they were playing with around NJ and a more electronic, producery back half that was inspired by the video game music of her youth and the chiptune inspired power pop of bands like Hey, Ily! The two were proud of the record upon release and wanted to play it live together. Chelsea had made a number of friends at Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of Art (Go Scarlet Knights) and floated the idea of doing a full blown orchestral version of the record live to really make the producery tracks pop. Claire was up for the challenge and divided the tracks into eight different sets of sheet music, including many instruments she did not play herself. The set ended up being so fun and successful that Claire and Chelsea wanted to bring that full band sound into whatever Pillowinde did next. They recruited several new band members to make that happen, including Julia Haviland on flute and keys, Kie Antone on guitar, and Harry Horowitz on trumpet, and got to work on the next record.
At the time Claire and Chelsea had a secret Bandcamp page of two dozen demos that they worked out with the new group to try and mold a series of them into an ablum. Claire had downloaded several video game soundfonts, including Donkey Kong Country 2 and Earthbound and was building songs on the keyboard with whatever goofy sounds she could find, layering tracks piece by piece. She’d use barks from one video game or meows from another as placeholders that the band would cover with their live instrumentation. “Furrywool” makes for a particularly good tone setter for the record as Claire modularly wrote each part of this song, leading to a sonic experience that mirrors the madness of playing a bunch of WarioWare minigames in a row. Claire sectioned out parts of the track and made each one its one unique piece, which Julia described as a series of musical exercises and which Claire described as a 15 car pileup. It is as eclectic and freewheeling a track I’ve heard in any genre in some time, fun and silly and inventive as all hell.
Some of the tracks, like the rockin “Naive is a Cruel Word”, feel akin to the garage rock of Jets to Brunswick’s first half. That track in particular became a personally significant song for several members of the band. Chelsea remarked that while she didn’t write the lyrics she felt their themes of the difficulty of maintaining friendship and the need to appreciate the present so deeply in a way that made her proud to play the song. The vast majority of the tracks however feel more like the chiptune and shoegaze infused power pop of their sophomore record’s second half. “Bunnily We Hop Along” is one such song. It is powered by an enchanting loop that Claire lifted from their Yamaha keyboard’s presets, using that as a base and building out the track layer by layer. Claire used a sound from Earthbound called “Tender” to build out a chorus with a digital dog’s bark that has been stuck in my head for weeks. It is unlike anything I have heard in ages, a love song that somehow feels as gushy and gooey as having a crush you just can’t contain, before Claire abouts face and declares into the mirror, “I will never love again”. It’s cute and catchy and absolutely captivating.
The group channels the B52’s and Talking Heads in equal measure in the rollicking “Stabber” where Julia’s keys and Harry’s trumpet really shine. The following track “You Are So Cold To Me!” meanwhile had been sitting in the group’s demo folder for some time before Claire decided to build out the slower beginning into a full rollicking smash of a track. Harry’s trumpet playing again shines here, giving the track a regal and proper feeling that plays well with the sampled bleeps and bloops. The gang’s favorite tracks however seemed to be the twin closers “Stupid Baby” and “The Quitter”, a track so complicated that Kie credits it both for making him a better guitarist and for giving him a recurring thumb blister. The tracks feel like the band leaving it all out on stage, as the track whimpers to a close like it’s all the energy the band can muster after the journey they took you on.
Pine!Pine!Pine! Is as fun, inventive, and freewheeling a record I have heard in some time and represents a major step up for Pillowinde sonically. They aren’t just kids trying to learn how to write songs and play together. The record is as cohesive, artful, and adventurous as any record released last year, even cracking GSC’s 2024 Album of the Year list. Pillowinde was somehow able to meld their online influenced sounds like shoegaze and chiptune with the sounds and feelings from the emo bands they are friends with with offline into a completely unique amalgamation. The group has felt that love, as Claire cheekily remarked that people who have no reason to be nice to her are being nice about this record. This record has also helped the band make it out of the New Jersey basements that raised them, as remarkably their top five most played cities on Spotify are all international cities. With this record the group feels like they’ve found their people and their sound; They have a clear vision for who Pillowinde is that they plan on taking into the next album. The gang feels inspired by the response to take another crack at several of the songs that were left on the cutting room floor this time around, including a band wide favorite “Mango Pepsi”. They also hope to make the process even more collaborative on their next record, with Claire sketching an outline of a song and the band members each filling in their section. If it is anything like Pine!Pine!Pine! then it’ll be unlike anything else I’ve ever heard before.
GSC: What are your names, your preferred pronouns, and what do you do in the band Pillowinde?
Claire: My name is Claire, and I started Pillowinde. She/her. I’m the songwriter for the most part, and I play guitar, keyboards, singing, and studio stuff.
Kie: I’m Kie. I go by any pronouns, and I play guitar and sometimes sing.
Julia: I’m Julia. She/her, I play flute and keys and I sing.
Chelsea: I’m Chelsea. They/ she, I play bass and scream sometimes.
GSC: Very nice to meet all of you. Are you all from New Jersey? Did you know each other growing up or did you meet later in life?
Claire: I started Pillowinde as a solo project in 2021. I had a friend in New Brunswick who wanted to play my music live with me and I started the band with him. Then eventually I met a ton of people by playing local shows in New Brunswick and around New Jersey. I met Chelsea at a show in Kearney at Jimmy’s. I met Julia at a show in Woodbridge, and I met Kie at one of our own shows at the Meatlocker in Montclair.
GSC: What are some of your earliest music memories, like, who was playing music around the house? What were they playing? What first got you interested in music?
Claire: I was a really crazy little kid who loved Queen and the Beatles. I really gravitated to the music my Dad was into. I would memorize all the lyrics and all the songs. I have a memory of going into kindergarten and all the other kids were singing nursery songs and I was belting “We Will Rock You”. My teacher even asked my Mom what the deal was, which is funny.
Kie: My Mom is a huge Deadhead, and my dad really liked Sublime and Chicago. Those are the only three bands I really remember being into other than The Beatles, who were huge for us because of the Q104.3 12 o’clock Beatles block and Breakfast with the Beatles on Sundays. I got into ska when I was in middle school, and I only listened to Pearl Jam when I was in high school and thought I was better than everybody. Now I listen to everything except for country music. Though we may have a Fortnite country song on the next record.
Julia: My Mom listened to a lot of The Beatles, like everyone else’s mom I guess. A lot of America, a lot of Simon and Garfunkel, that kind of thing. I have a lot of music teachers in my family and now I’m a music teacher myself. So when I went to college I got really weird because I was studying music, and I think I’m just healing from that as a music appreciator. Like Kie said I listen to everything now because I was so weird about music for so long.
Chelsea: No one really was too into music in my family. My Dad loved the Beatles. We used to play a lot of Beatles Rock Band or Guitar Hero. That was a big thing in my house. My sister would play drums, I would play guitar, and my Dad would sing. He also tried to convince us that he was the guy doing the head spins in the Beastie Boys music video. I didn’t really get into music properly till high school.
GSC: Do you guys remember when you first knew that you wanted to make music yourselves?
Claire: When I was a kid my Dad used to print out compilation CDs of different band’s discographies. He would make covers with little icons for each album cover, I’d study them for hours. Eventually I made a fake band of my own, ever since I was six I wanted to have a discography. Then in high school I got my first recording interface and a little keyboard and I got my first guitar. I basically taught myself how to write music painstakingly slowly by myself in my room. Throughout all of high school I would come home and go on the computer and try to figure out how to make things sound interesting together. I didn’t start thinking that it was possible I could have my own band until way later when I started playing bass for my friend Nick in this band called Joyer. He had me substitute bass for him, and I got to play the Meatlocker and see all these different venues. I realized that anybody can make a band, it was just a matter of finding people that would want to do it with.
Chelsea: Mine wasn’t as heartfelt. In 2019 my friends were in a punk band called Dumpweed, iykyk. Their bassist was going away on another band’s tour and my friend was like you need to come over right now and learn all the songs because we have three shows coming up and we don’t have a bassist. I said that’s a little crazy, I don’t know how to play at all. He said okay, well, then you’re going to come over every day and we’ll learn it. So I learned maybe eight songs in two weeks, it was so fun.
GSC: Talk about a Baptism by fire.
Julia: When I was a little kid I used to write a lot of songs. I didn’t really know how to write them down but I would write them. I always knew I wanted to perform, and I’ve always really loved performing. I focused on that a lot when I was younger, in high school and in college. For whatever reason after being a little kid I stopped thinking I could make my own music, I was just doing musical performances. During COVID I started noodling around more. My friend Mel and I would jam together. We started a band, and then I met Pillowinde through that band. Like what Claire said, I never realized you could just start a band until I found people who I fucked with enough to bare my soul to them and show them my music.
GSC: Love that.
Kie: When I was a kid my mom used to force me and my siblings to play Rock Band when we had guests over to entertain them. We’d put the karaoke machine on and dance and honestly that was the start of it all. I was really good at Guitar Hero and I wanted to learn how to actually do this IRL. My mom got me a guitar teacher and then I got fired as a client because I’d never practiced. My sister then started to get good at guitar. I was like, I need to be better than my sister so I taught myself how to play. I tried starting bands so many times in middle school and high school but I never knew anybody that gave enough of a shit to actually start a band with.
Claire: So often you’d invite someone over and we’d jam for five minutes. Then they’d be like let’s go play video games.
Kie: Eventually I started teaching myself other instruments because I had the time. I learned how to play drums and bass and eventually joined a band as a drummer. We played around for about a year until I realized I’m really not a drummer. I wanted to do something else. Then Claire tagged me in a post on accident, and I followed her because I had seen them at the Meatlocker the week before. Then Claire made a post about looking for a drummer.
Claire: Yeah, I came and I auditioned you.
Kie: I came with my sticks. The first song that I tried to learn was “Stupid Baby” and I could not keep up. Eventually Claire was like, do you play guitar? I was like, yeah. So we just kind of switched and you liked how it sounded.
Claire: You knew some jazz chords so I was like, we can make this work. We’ve been going through drummers forever and I’ve given up on trying to find somebody super permanent.
GSC: We’ve covered some of it but how did you get into the NJ DIY scene and ultimately all connect?
Claire: New Brunswick is essentially the NJ DIY Mecca now and forever. There’s always been a lot of indie bands, especially emo bands, that have played there. 30% of the bands that we’ve played with over the past few years have been emo bands. I met all these people through playing live shows. I met Chelsea at a show that my other friend AJ was playing. Chelsea went to see her now boyfriend, Jordan, who’s in a band called Final Resting Pose. Jordan also used to be in a band called Goose Ranger with Madison from Ogbert the Nerd. Julia, I met at a show we played together that Jordan booked.
Julia: Our band and my guitarist kinda knew Chelsea’s now boyfriend because they were Cliffside Park people. We posted a video of us harmonizing a Momma’s and The Pappa’s cover and Jordan asked if we could play a show with Madison and Pillowinde and that’s how I met everyone.
Claire: Kie’s band at the time was supposed to play that Meatlocker show too which really woulda been wild.
Kie: There really is no music scene by me in Central Jersey unless you go to Asbury Park. I got really lucky, because I planned on going to that Meatlocker show, and then our set got canceled. I was like, my girlfriend goes to school in Montclair, so I think I’m gonna go anyway. If I didn’t go that night, we probably wouldn’t be talking now. I really found you all at the right time too looking back.
Julia: Very serendipitous.
GSC: Moving into the band’s discography proper, what was life like when you were writing and recording the debut self titled record? What were your goals then and how does it sound looking back?
Claire: So for context, Chelsea joined right around when the second album was coming together. The first album was, for the most part, all me. The drums on half of the tracks are Nick from Joyer, but for the most part that was all just me. That was a product of COVID, pretty much, as I slowly wrote an album while going to school. I was going to school for film in the City of New York and it seemed impossible to have a real band. I was, at the time, really into King Gizzard and Mac DeMarco, indie psych stuff. That first album is totally different for sure, I was more so trying to be a psych band. I was also finding myself as a songwriter. Looking back at some of those songs, I’m like, ahhhhh but there’s definitely some good stuff on it for sure. Some of them still listens. One of them’s a straight up slow core track called like “Fantajoyeaux” that one gets listens every day for whatever reason.
GSC: One track I love off that is “Courtney” I am a big fan of the song’s namesake Courtney Barnett as well. How did that come together?
Claire: It’s actually a trans thing, that track. I felt at the time I wish I could be her as a trans woman. She’s a cool lesbian who plays rocking guitar and writes really kickass songs. That was probably the first song that I wrote where I was like, I wrote a pop song finally. “San Soleil” and “Cheerios”, those were more genre pieces, whereas “Courtney” was my first proper garage rock song with a pop formula to it and whatnot.
GSC: I love your second record Jets to Brunswick. What inspired that record? What was life like then?
Claire: I wrote that album coming into the New Brunswick scene. I was listening to Jets to Brazil, but I was hanging out with a ton of different rock bands like Toads who made me want to record a more rocking record, but at the same time I wanted to do more poppy stuff. So the second half of the album is more of a producer Beck-ish kind of thing which is more like what the third album is. Meanwhile the first half is rock song, rock song, rock song, rock song, because I wanted to be able to play those songs live. You can’t do these crazy orchestrated songs live too easily.
GSC: Love that. Do you guys have a favorite track off of that tape? Or, like, one that you’re particularly proud of?
Chelsea: “beckon the windy pillows” is such a work of art.
Claire: That was Guitar Fight From Fooly Cooly inspired.
Kie: “Darshan’s Fumes” is up there, I just love the chord changes. The song, “Jets to Brunswick” itself too.
GSC: My favorite too!
Chelsea: “Yury’s Lipstick” too.
GSC: Is Yury a real person?
Claire: The lyrics are super personal and upfront on that record. That song, “Yury’s Lipstick” is literally about when I borrowed my friend Yuri’s lipstick and forgot to give it back. It started off as an Of Montreal kind of song, but then it just shifted into a ska song.
GSC: Probably nicer to get the song than the lipstick back.
Claire: Yury loved that song I’m pretty sure. Once I realized people loved it when you wrote about them it made me want to write songs about my friends.
Chelsea: When you play someone’s song live too they freak out or get embarrassed, that is always so fun to watch.
GSC: The new album Pine!Pine!Pine! felt like a sonic evolution from what was hinted at in the back half of Jets to Brunswick. I love how you leaned into the more chiptune inspired bedroom pop which reminded me of bands like Hey, ILY! and the 80s style pop that reminded me of the B52’s. What were your sonic and personal inspirations as you were putting together this record? What did you hope to accomplish?
Claire: I was working a lot with varispeed which is basically pitch shifting my vocals, because I’ve always wanted my voice to be higher, I guess. I was tired of doing straight up rock songs, and I wanted to do something that pushed my comfort zone a bit. I was listening to Of Montreal again, I was listening to, Hey, Ily! for sure, actually a lot. I was trying to write more hook based songs and use my samples more. I had downloaded the Donkey Kong Country 2 sound font, the Earthbound sound font, the Undertale and Super Mario 64 sound fonts. Those sounds were very inspiring.
Chelsea: What song did you write first?
Claire: “Stupid Baby” I was trying to write it for a solo project originally. A few months after finishing Jets to Brunswick I was trying to write again, and toyed with the idea of an electronic side project. I was working with breakbeat, and was hanging out with my friend AJ, who has a project called Daddy’s Closet, which is break core, breakbeat-y, pop music. I was like let’s mix these emo seven chords with breakbeats. That’s how “Stupid Baby” and “The Quitter” came about. A little emo, chiptune, and shoegaze.
GSC: Was there anything about the music in those games that drew you to them in particular?
Claire: Back when DK Country was coming out the song composers had these limited palettes they were able to make such amazing music out of, like “Aquatic Ambience” from Donkey Kong Country. I’d start a song by using solely the instruments from one game and then add guitar and make it into a rock song with both of those things.
Chelsea: I remember after Jets to Brunswick I said guys would be crazy if we did an orchestra set. I had made friends who were all at Mason Gross at Rutgers. I asked if they could play cello and clarinet and violin and whatnot, I think it was 10 of us in total. It went crazy, and I think that doing that set really made us want to bring that whole massive band into this record.
Claire: Getting all those songs into eight different sets of sheet music was such an undertaking but that set could not have gone better, it really was a big inspiration for the next album. I ended up writing more on the keyboard and writing out multiple parts and understanding the scale of these songs better. For example, “Intensity/Melodrama” has a lot of different layers and was inspired by having to put that show on, for sure.
GSC: I love the opener, “Last Kiss, I Promise”. How did that track come together? How did you know it was the album opener?
Claire: That was probably the last song we wrote for the album. I wrote that in May or June I believe.
Julia: It was in June because it was already pool time. That lady yelled at me at the beach on Juneteenth and we worked on it that day.
GSC:I was also at the beach on Juneteenth last year! Nobody was yelling at me, luckily.
Claire: Writing it I just started with a riff, and was like this sounds cool. I wrote it on the guitar and then was like let’s use the Undertale soundfont for the later part. I pretty much wrote the riff, and then came up with the chords and then was like let’s make this really silly. I wanted a really short and sweet song that covered the themes of the whole record sonically and emotionally. Like I love Julia’s parts in that song which were relatively later additions.
Julia: Our duet!
GSC: How do you approach a flute solo? Are you freestyling that?
Julia: Claire wrote everything and then we, or at least I, will put my little touches on it from there.
Claire: I wrote the majority of the parts. Ori, who’s in Final Resting Pose, wrote the drum parts for “Naive” and “Stupid Baby” and “The Quitter”. The hope is next album I’ll come up with premises but we’ll all contribute.
Julia: Claire is writing for an instrument she doesn’t play, so I will take her work and contort it to make it properly melodic for the song or more what she’s looking for.
Claire: Yeah. Sometimes I write unwieldy parts, for sure.
Julia: No, it’s so fun! I feel like I hated my instrument because of college, and this band is such a great outlet for playing with my instrument and thinking about what makes a song work.
GSC: “Furrywool” is another eclectic track, such a fun one. How did that come together?
Claire: That song I wrote as a text message, I just wrote it in chunks. I wrote the text message out first, and then I was like, okay, I’m gonna modularly write each part of this song. So that’s why it’s kind of mathy, because I went piece by piece. I sectioned out each part and did a different thing to create a 15 car pileup. The funny thing is it’s all in C so it’s actually the most simple song of all time, even with all these different time changes and different instruments and styles.
Kie: I hated learning how to play this one.
Julia: It’s like a series of musical exercises written for different various purposes all glued together. Like we have the scale part now we have some nice arpeggiation.
Chelsea: I was just watching Photo Booth clips of us learning to play that from when I was learning and they are horrendous, we’ve come a long way.
Claire: I was definitely inspired by Frank Zappa and Ween with the pitch shifting.
GSC: It is so unwieldy in a way that makes it a great tone setter for the record.
Claire: Right! Like the next song “Naive is a Cruel Word” and it are so different you can’t compare them. Though Chelsea’s boyfriend said it sounds like the Drake and Josh theme.
GSC: To be fair that is also a capital B Banger.
Claire: That one I was going for REM or Of Montreal, but I can deal with Drake Bell I guess.
Chelsea: The song makes me tear up a little because it’s so true. I know it was personal to Claire, but I’m sure almost everybody has felt that way. I feel lucky that I get to play that song, because I have felt like I was crazy in the exact way it is described.
Claire: Just wanting what you have now to not end, or what you used to have to not have ended. We have to come to terms with life isn’t finite, and you won’t have all your exact friends forever, and you have to deal with that and enjoy people while you have them.
Chelsea: Making and keeping friends is so important and yet very difficult. Growing up, I was so annoying and I didn’t know. I felt like I lost friends 24/7 because I had no idea how to keep them.
Julia: The single cover is a collage Claire made of all her friends. To me, it’s like a reflection song. I think about who I was friends with and who I was then, and then see them together with the people I am friends with now, and I guess just reflect on how I’ve been lucky to have the people I’ve had when I’ve had them in my life.
Kie: It’s so much fun to play, people in my life love that track.
Claire: Kie did the solo on the spot for that track too and he went so hard on it. We had the Donkey Kong sounds like doing the solo originally, and Kie really made it that kind of Pavement-esque garage rock jam.
Kie: I am not naturally a soloist or lead guitar either, I never did that but now I can, so thank you for getting me out of my comfort zone. I am a bit musically illiterate so I needed to make sure what I was doing made sense, and then I had everyone clear out the room so I could do it solo. But it really is nice to hear the kind words about it, I wasn’t sure how it would go.
GSC: “Bunnily We Hop Along” … into the next question. The pinwheel you use as the driving sound on “Bunnily” is hypnotic, this might be my favorite track on the record. I love the barking sample especially as well. How did that song come about?
Chelsea: Before we added the flute it was cat meows with the barks and I wasn’t sure I liked it but it’s really grown on me over time.
Claire: The main riff came from literally the first preset on this cheap Yamaha keyboard I bought. It has an arpeggio setting, and I played it I think G major seven, and it just came up with this really cool sound, I guess to me at the time. So I took it and put it into MIDI, and that inspired another video game sound writing session, pretty much. I was using the Earthbound sounds and that sound was called “Tender” but from the Earthbound that was ported to the Game Boy Advance funnily enough. So it started with that melody, then I added big guitars to make it shoegazey and built it out layer by layer.
Chelsea: I like the solo a lot in that song.
Claire: To write that solo I slowed it down and then sped it back up, so that’s why the vocals are also pitched up. That one, I always felt like it sounded almost like Bach, it’s very classical.
Julia: It’s the dotted 816s for me.
Claire: I find that when I’m writing on the keyboard, I end up using a lot of chord changes and melodies that sound classical because I’m thinking and writing in key.
GSC: “Stabber” has great energy and reminds me of the B52’s. How did that one come together?
Claire: “Stabber” I started writing years ago. I just had the riff, it’s a seven shape. It started in 2022 but it was very simple back, almost like a Foo Fighter song. Then at the end of 2023 I was working with all these drum machines and video gaming sounds, and I decided to bring it back. Originally it was for my solo project but Chelsea begged me to use it for Pillowinde. It was also influenced by Talking Heads.
Chelsea: We call back to Jets to Brunswick too, which I like.
Claire: Yes, the whole second verse is a reference to Jets. I spent a lot of time sitting with that song, adding different parts to it. When Harry and Julia entered into the fold, we realized Harry could double parts on trumpet which brought the song up to another level.
GSC: “You Are So Cold to Me” Is a real ripper. More rock leaning than producery. What inspired that track? How did that one come about?
Claire: That one was also a video game song at first, I started writing it on a piano. It’s very Beatles, and I sat with it for a while.
Chelsea: When did you write this?
Claire: That song I wrote in like November of 23 also. Most of these songs came from the second half of 2023 and that one I sat with for a long time. We had a secret Bandcamp page with 24 songs that we were considering for the album, and that one was one of them. Then five months later we came back to it because I came up with the bridge. I was listening to Big Star and Teenage Fan Club a lot, power pop. I wrote that bridge for another song and then was like this is actually in the same key. So se went what if we just take that intro section and make it a power pop song?
GSC: Outside of the tracks we’ve already talked about, do you guys have a favorite on the record?
Chelsea: My favorite is probably “Last Kiss” or “You’re So Cold to Me” . Those are the most fun. Those have the most interesting, weird bass parts.
Julia: Favorite to play is “Last Kiss” or “Stabber”. That one is insane for me, I have to switch like 10 times, and it’s just very entertaining for me to perform. Favorite to listen to right now, “Stupid Baby”, it’s on my going to work playlist. I would also say “Furrywooll” because it is just really enjoyable.
Kie: My personal favorite is “Stupid Baby” and “The Quitter” just because that was my first song that I ever played with Pillowinde. I love when we play it live.
Julia: When we get there it’s like “We did it guys!”
Claire: We play the album in order.
Kie: It’s so fun. I always get the same blister in the same part of my thumb when we do that gallop thing. When Claire first showed me it I was like, how the hell am I even supposed to do this? I can’t move my hands that fast! If it weren’t for this song I wouldn’t be as good as I am playing guitar today. I’m way better at changing chords now.
Chelsea: I am definitely a better bassist because of the band.
Julia: Honestly I am a way worse flute player. *All Laugh*
Claire: I think I’m most proud of “Intensity/Melodrama”. That song is the most complicated. I took everything I learned from orchestrating the previous album for that live show, and I used it to write something that to me feels Brian Wilson-y. It’s a pop song with super sad and ugly chords that work because they’re ugly. I felt really happy to have something that was a little left field for this album that also still sounds like Pillowinde. It feels like a real piece of art.
GSC: How’s the reception to the record been so far, and have you felt like already inspired to write new songs, or is it the kind of thing where you’re sitting with this one?
Claire: I’m really happy. It seems like a lot of people that I don’t know are even enjoying it. Pillowinde is a really small band, like we’re not famous or anything. The majority of the people that are listening historically have been people that I know. I love when friends and family are really proud of our music but I was really happy with this album that people that I don’t know at all who have no reason to be nice to me are being nice to me about it. I’m really happy also that more people have listened to it than the last record. In the same way that the second half of Jets to Brunswick was a transition I’m hoping that this album into the next album is a transition period into something even greater.
Chelsea: I do love this album, but we had a lot of songs that were going to be on the album that we couldn’t fit, couldn’t finish, or we couldn’t get quite right. I really really want to finish some of those. The next album in my head is heavier, at least a lot of songs that were originally on the album that didn’t make it are heavier. I feel like we’ve all grown as musicians where we’d have a lot of fun completing these songs together.
Claire: We have way more heads now thank God.
Chelsea: Yea me and Claire couldn’t finish those on our own.
Claire: There’s definitely times where we ran out of inspiration for songs that I am excited to see the team take a stab at. “You Cut My Waveform” for starters.
Chelsea: And “Mango Pepsi”.
GSC: I remember seeing “Mango Pepsi” in a tracklist on your Facebook collages.
Claire: We have been working on that one since the end of 2022, a really long time. That one’s an emo song, pretty much.
Chelsea: That’s my favorite song that you’ve ever written. That’s “Everything You Could Have Done Wrong, You’ve Done Wrong” which will hopefully also come out eventually.
GSC: What is something outside of music that brings you guys joy, that might surprise people?
Julia: My cats! They bring me so much joy.
Claire: For a while it was Tacoria also.
Julia: Oh yeah, the Taqueria brussels sprout burrito. And for when it was Dr Pepper too but I’m over Dr Pepper right now.
Chelsea: Yea me too. I haven’t had any soda since 2025 started.
Kie: That’s your dry January.
Julia: I guess teaching too. Teaching other people music and seeing them become self-sufficient in their own music making makes me so happy.
Kie: I feel like my biggest defining thing outside of music is that I work out so much. I’m a huge exercise freak. I’m a personal trainer outside of this, and I’ll literally come into practice and be like, Oh, I just did legs and they’re killing me!
Claire: Kie every time we have a show at night is like “Yea, I did a quick marathon this morning.”
Kie: That was one bi-athalon actually, and it was before a show at The Clownhouse in New Brunswick. I was so gassed. The only thing I had eaten prior to the show was… there’s these things you can get to put in your running waistband called “Goo” its caffeine in sludge form. I was like I got out of the lake, I gotta drink a Goo. I got off my bike, time to eat a Goo. Because caffeine just suppresses your appetite, I didn’t eat anything all day other than Goo. I am also a big movie guy but not a big “film” guy if that makes sense.
Claire: Kie and I have very different Letterboxd.
Kie: Joe’s Apartment for example is a five star movie, where I don’t always connect with more mainstream stuff I guess.
Chelsea: I’m still in school. I’m a skincare professional and I am now in college for science and sociology. All I’ve been talking about for the past three days is my human cadaver lab coming up that I’m very excited to start.
GSC: Go Scarlet Knights, baby.
Chelsea: Fuck no.
GSC: Ugh nooo I love looove Rutgers athletics. I am praying the basketball team turns it around, Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper are studs.
Chelsea: I’ve never been very spirited. My family had season tickets to Rutgers football funnily enough, I loved the tailgate and then I’d be on my phone for the game. I love the human body and human anatomy though, it’s a legit joy studying it. What about you Claire?
Claire: My friends bring me so much joy personally, I feel very lucky to be surrounded by these people.
Chelsea: She says as she scrolls through my Facebook for some reason.
Claire: I was looking for one post in particular but you have some good posts so I got distracted.
GSC: Who are some of your favorite bands that more people should be checking out?
Claire: I think locally. Final Resting Pose, Chelsea’s boyfriends band.
Chelsea: They’re so good.
Claire: Marty, I’m Afraid rocks, I’m producing that album. That’s Julia’s and Harry’s band, they rock. Polyester Hall is Kie’s band, and that’s like a surf pop band. There’s this really cool shoegaze band called Lying Season. There’s Prettier Now, who we’ve played a bunch of shows with. They’re a really good shoegaze band.
Chelsea: I’ve been listening to Hot Hot Heat. Pretty Girls Make Graves are sick. Slant and Mall Goth both rule.
Claire: Mall Goth is a cool band so that we’ve had a good friendship with, they’re from upstate. Doug Gallo mixed our album too, and did a fantastic job. He’s a local mixer/producer and he has his own great band called Get Lost who do shoegaze.
Kie: Danello The Sad Surfer too. He’s a really great songwriter and definitely deserves more praise.
Claire: My friend who mixed the last album, his producery group Daddy’s Closet rocks, I play guitar for them. Super Jack is another group that kicks ass, I also play guitar for them.
