Norwegian artist Tuvaband has just released her second album, ‘Growing Pains and Pleasures’. We caught up with her to find out a little more about the record, her influences, and her plans for the rest of the year.
Describing the sound of ‘Growing Pains and Pleasures’, Tuvaband says that while it doesn’t fall within a specific genre, she’s “very much into the sound of guitars and synths from shoegaze and other rock genres”.
“I like the production to sound homemade, and not like it was done by a very professional producer who is also producing tons of other albums”, she continues, saying “I want my music to sound unpolished. Some of the songs have instruments sounds like they were recorded under water. Or at least that’s what I tried to make them sound like”.
Speaking about the lyrics within the record, Tuvaband says “I think I didn’t have much input from the outside world and society around me. As I had been very isolated for a longer time before I wrote the lyrics. I had just started to try to get more out of the house and be more social. And I felt very overwhelmed”.
“The last songs on the album were the last ones I wrote the lyrics for. At that time I realized that I had to look further away from my own mind and be a little less self absorbed in my daily life”, she says noting that the final tracks were written about the environment, politics, and the people surrounding her.
Her influences mostly encompass Danger Mouse, Sparkle Horse, and Kurt Vile, with Tuvaband saying “I think it changes from year to year which other artists and albums I get inspired by. This might also be why each of my albums sound different from each other”.
“I think I will always evolve from album to album as I learn while I make the music, because I try something new for each album. And new inspirations leads to me having to learn new stuff”, she continues.
“Even if I started in a small scale to try out my music with a drum machine when working on my last album, it was first with this new one that I really got into programming drums and using it to “arrange” the drums exactly how I wanted them”, Tuvaband says, “on this new album, programming drums was a super important “tool” for me in the creation of each song. The expansion of my guitar pedals was also crucial for how I wrote the new album”.
“Right now I’m making another album, and I recently started programming harpe, horns, flute and cello”.
Tuvaband received a Norwegian Grammy nomination for her 2019 album, ‘I Entered The Void’. Speaking about this, she says: “As my kind of music is not the most popular and mainstream music, it was such a nice feeling to get acknowledged through the nomination. Cause when you don’t get a lot of press, you still get some kind of stamp saying that this is good, when being nominated for this”.
As for her plans for the rest of the year, Tuvaband intends to finish the album she’s currently working on. “Later I will think of the visual concepts for it”, she says.
“Maybe thinking more about a live concept; hopefully playing live eventually. If everything goes according to my plan, I will also spend the rest of the year just being more of a rock star”.
LDOI 