Hi hi! It’s that time of month again. We’re super stoked to be intro’ing Slow Pulp to Chicago Haze’s readers. Slow Pulp was one of the acts I was really hoping to cover at SXSW this year…til it got canceled! Interviewing the band about their debut album was a pretty good experience, too. Fingers crossed I get to catch them at a show sometime in 2021! I hope you enjoy the post.
Name: Slow Pulp, comprised of Alexander Leeds (bass), Emily Massey (vocals/guitar), Theodore Mathews (drums), Henry Stoehr (guitar)
Hometown: Madison, Wisconsin
Genre: Indie Rock
For Fans Of: Phoebe Bridgers, Soccer Mommy
Why You Should Care: You ever feel the need to turn on Avril Lavigne’s 2002 debut album, Let Go, just to reminisce on the feelings of angst you once had as a preteen just to feel something? No? Just me? Looking for a new album to get moody to during the midwestern winters when the sun sets at 4:30PM? I think you’ve found it. Slow Pulp knows this feeling all too well, growing up in Wisconsin and now setting up shop in Chicago. Their debut album, Moveys, dropped this past October. The album arrives after two EPs, released in 2017 and 2019.
The four band members have been friends their entire lives, primarily working on their Moveys while on tour with Alex G in 2019. A few massive life events happened to a couple of the band members during the initial phases of recording, which ultimately led to the band scrapping a lot of the material. It didn’t help that this bled into the early months of COVID, which led to the band recording a lot of the album apart from each other in isolation, according to an interview in Winspear.
Learn more about the band in our Q&A with Emily below!
Chicago Haze: You’ve all known each other since you were little kids. How does this long standing relationship affect the way you create music?
Emily: So much of being in a band is about committing to each other with our time, where we live/move, and making decisions together in general. We’ve made a lot of big life decisions with each other over the years, and having a deep trust in each other has kept us making music together for so long.
Chicago Haze: I’ve read that the recording process for this album has been all over the place because of COVID. What has it been like releasing your debut album during such a weird time in history?
Emily: This is our first time releasing a full length album and doing a proper press cycle for it. So we are in kind of a unique situation where we don’t necessarily have a past experience to draw from. It has been really nice though, being able to see people interacting with the record. A lot of people have been incredibly kind about it, which feels great. We would have obviously loved to tour on this record, but we are just trying to focus on the things we can control like making new music!
Chicago Haze: Your band formed in Madison, Wisconsin but has grown strong roots in Chicago. What is your favorite thing about the city’s music scene? And as a fellow Chicagoan I have to ask, what local venue would you want to perform at the most?
Emily: The parts of the scene that we have experienced so far have been absolutely wonderful. Seems like a really supportive and collaborative community, full of geniuses! I think we all feel like there is so much more to learn and see within the Chicago music scene. We’ve only really lived here a couple of years, one of which was spent touring outside of Chicago and one spent in a pandemic. We haven’t interacted with the music community as much as we would like! But we admire and are inspired by so many artists here.
Chicago Haze: Who are your musical influences, past and present?
Slow Pulp: We all have so many different ones! For this record we were all inspired by Fleetwood Mac a lot. Stevie Nicks for me is a huge deal haha. Other artists that we have talked about a lot as a group include: Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, Liz Phair, My Bloody Valentine and Coldplay.
Chicago Haze: If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be and why?
Emily: We would love to work with Butch Vig, we love his production style. He makes everything sound so big. And for Spike Jones to direct a music video.
What other musicians should Chicago Haze’s readers have on their radar?
Emily: Some of our favorite artists right now are Tomberlin, Ruins, Tasha, Girl K, V.V Lightbody, Disq, Milly, Sitcom and Momma.
Chicago Haze: What do you hope current and new fans of Slow Pulp gain from listening to Moveys?
Emily: I don’t think we ever want to dictate a listener’s experience with our music. I do know that this album helped me to get through a lot of really difficult things that I was going through. If it does that for others, then I feel like I’ve done my job.
Follow Slow Pulp on Spotify, Twitter, and Instagram.
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