[Transcript edited for clarity]

Absent Sounds: To start off, we're always pretty interested in hearing what artists are currently into or listening to — whether that's music, books, movies, anything. What's been helping you keep on keeping on lately?

Liz: That's a good question. I like cooking and food podcasts — I know that's not related to music, but sometimes it helps me understand things a little more, because I'll go off into sociology or the history of something. And mostly I'm just trying to find music. Today I read a Bandcamp article on punk bands from Pittsburgh in the seventies, bands I'd probably missed. I try to learn one new thing every day — sometimes from a podcast, sometimes from a book — and somehow it all filters into music. That sounds weird, but it actually does.

Absent Sounds: That's interesting — I actually saw that article too, because there's a band I know, Short Fictions, who were featured in it, and then they emailed me about it. It's always interesting how things piece together, back to stuff you already like.

Liz: Yeah, I kind of want to go to Pittsburgh sometime soon — I was thinking about playing a show there, and then that article came up, and I thought, that's serendipitous. I also just feel like people don't talk about Pittsburgh, but it's a pretty awesome city. All these things kind of mishmash sometimes.

Absent Sounds: Do you have a lot of things in your life that happen serendipitously like that?

Liz: Yeah, but sometimes I just think it's my phone tracking me.

Absent Sounds: Someone should do a study on that — how much of what feels like fate is just your phone cracking your algorithm.

Liz: Right, I'm just like, oh, my phone knows I was talking to someone in Pittsburgh. It's funny how much that's changed.

Absent Sounds: Jumping into your music a little — I want to start from the background on Picastro, how you got started. Could you take us back into how it came to be?

Liz: Picastro was a band I started after being in a kind of noisy rock band called Slogan, which I actually still really like. At the time I didn't want to play loud music anymore, and I think I heard Smog on Brave New Waves — that CBC show, which I can't believe existed, but it was amazing. He had a cello, and there was something about the arrangement I really liked. I thought, oh, this would be nice. At the time it was actually really weird to play music like that, because everything was loud and rock-oriented. So I started that way, and everything else kind of happened on its own — there were band members who came out of punk bands, and band members who played classical music, and it never really mattered to me who wanted to play with me, it always just worked out that I got people who were open to anything. I haven't really planned a lot of it out — for the most part I just keep trying to make music that I don't hear and that I want to hear. I'm working on some electronic music now, mostly because I'm trying to learn how to record better, and again, it's just something I don't currently hear, so I try to make it. That's really the whole crux of Picastro.

Absent Sounds: Was that how your relationship with music was when you were younger too?

Liz: No — I didn't really have one. My parents and my sister are Deaf, so I didn't grow up with music in the house. When I first got into it, it was basically the Cure, and some cheesier bands too, like Kiss and Guns N' Roses. Then I got into the weirder stuff, but for a while I didn't even know weird music existed. I didn't know who the Ex were, or Tom Cora, until I met Stephanie, the first cellist in the band, a classical musician who educated me on a lot of things. I knew Smog, and I think the Velvet Underground was the first band where I thought, whoa, what is this? I wouldn't say I gravitated to it exactly — it's more that when I hear music where there's a lot going on and I can't predict what's going to happen, and it sounds different every time I listen to it, that's what pulls me in. Which is sort of, subconsciously, what I wanted for my own music too.

Absent Sounds: I know you played drums in high school and then started guitar — was using your voice, being a vocalist, something you always gravitated toward, or something you grew into?

Liz: That's a good question, because I never wanted to sing. I was really shy, and it took me a long time. Honestly, in early Picastro I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my voice, so I kind of got away with talk-singing — I really liked Lou Reed, so that was the influence, though not exactly. Now I'm a little clearer on what I want to do when I sing. But I never wanted to be a singer — I had to get over myself a bit to make it happen.

Absent Sounds: This is a bit of an off question, but since you mentioned your parents and sister are Deaf — I've read that in households like that, ASL becomes your first language growing up. I'm curious how that translates into how you express yourself through music. Does it change things lyrically, or in some other way?

Liz: I do think it translates, only because Picastro can be a little too blunt for people in a way — even the way I play guitar is just, here are the notes, there's not a lot of flourish. I think in ASL you kind of have to get to the point. You can be expressive, but when you're expressive in ASL it's with your face, your hands, the way your body moves — the actual emotion isn't in the words, it's in everything around them. There's a term for that, I don't remember what it is, but I do think it changes the way I approach things. It's not about just showing or telling someone something directly, you have to show them the stuff around it. It's really hard for me to talk to my family with a mask on, for example — even during COVID, we'd have to pull it down and stand outside to talk, because it just doesn't work otherwise. So something got translated there, even if I can't fully explain it.

Absent Sounds: Going back to using your voice — a lot of your music has this really brash, harsh instrumentation, but the vocals are so tucked behind it. Do you find that you're hiding behind that, or is it something else?

Liz: I think of every instrument as important, as able to be the lead in its own way — the voice is definitely an instrument for me, never the whole point. I've had people criticize me in the past for having the vocals really low in the mix, but that's a conscious choice. It could relate to ASL, in that a lot of people don't think of it as a language, but speaking is just one modality too — your voice is just one way to express something, it's not the only thing, so why should it have to be? The drums — if Germaine is playing a solo and it's this beautiful moment, it should get as much attention as the voice. I don't think I hide behind things, I think I genuinely believe music is made up of all these parts, and they're all equally valuable. I feel like a pretty democratic composer and collaborator — I like hearing everybody.

Absent Sounds: I think that also connects to how there's not much fluff behind your music — it's really out there, you can't hide behind it. I've read articles describing your music as scary, or a little menacing. Does it feel scary to you?

Liz: Just recently it has, actually — I didn't fully understand what people meant, and then I'll hear a song and think, whoa, yeah, that's pretty scary. Maybe it's that I like soundtrack music too. I definitely turned a corner over COVID and started hearing things differently. But I don't think I was trying to scare people — at the time, that's genuinely what I wanted to hear, or what I wanted to comfort me somehow. It wasn't an attempt to be provocative, it's really a sincere thing.

Absent Sounds: So it sounds like you start from a place of making the music for yourself, to comfort yourself, and whatever happens after that just happens.

Liz: For sure. I'm always really happy when people say a song helped them out when they were sad — I love that. But most musicians, if they were honest, would admit it's for themselves first, and if someone else happens to like it, or you make money off it, that's separate. I don't make money from it, so maybe I think about it differently than someone like Taylor Swift would. I almost like that more, because there's no pressure — I only say that because I have friends who make money off music, and I feel like that comes with a lot of pressure.

Absent Sounds: I think that would feel distorting in a way — hard to figure out what you actually sound like for yourself, because you have to consider what everyone else wants you to sound like. I remember an artist, Shayna Lea, who's also a sculptor, talking about how having different revenue streams helps her create better, because she's not dependent on any one thing — if people like a piece too much, she doesn't feel forced to keep making it just to survive.

Liz: That's interesting — I'm sure a lot of musicians have to divide themselves up like that these days. It's not like you just play music anymore, you have to do a million other things.

Absent Sounds: Do you have any other outlets you find yourself drawn to, creatively?

Liz: I'm interested in building a sound sculpture — I actually got a grant for it. It's for Deaf people, and a way for hearing people to maybe engage with music differently. I also started a film maybe ten or twelve years ago that I'm trying to finish — it's shot and edited, it's just the sound that's missing, and the film is narrated by sound, so I really have to get on that. And then there's the sound sculpture installation I need to start this year, which I'm excited about. Almost all of these things come back to me trying to figure out my own understanding of things, as a person, as an artist — if I do something, it's because I need to see it or understand it, or work through something. Other than that, gardening, I guess, if that counts. Cooking.

Absent Sounds: I think that counts. Are you a good gardener?

Liz: I thought I was, but I noticed other people's tomatoes looked better than mine this year. So I don't know if everyone in the garden has some secret strategy.

Absent Sounds: Going back to music, and creating for yourself, but also knowing who you are as a musician — I think that connects to knowing who you are as a person, because artistic ventures are always so deeply personal. I remember reading an interview where you mentioned knowing what you sound like, regardless of who other people might compare you to, or how they might misunderstand you. Are there still things you think people get wrong about your work, or interpret incorrectly?

Liz: I think most people who know me know I'm not a sad person all the time — though I can't really blame people for assuming that. At the last couple of shows I've played, the one word people kept using was "comforting," and I thought, that's it, that's what I'm trying to get across. Maybe it sounds sad to you, or you're just not in the mood, that's fine, but it should feel like — not that I'm hugging the person, but close to that. I think it's obvious I'm a pretty emotional person, which is good and bad, I guess. I just don't love it when someone assumes I'm miserable all the time, because I'm really not. People who make happy music are usually sad about something too, they're just not telling you. That bothers me a little, but I try not to think too much about what people think.

Absent Sounds: When you perform live, are you usually in the mood for it, or is it hard to get into that headspace?

Liz: Lately I've been pretty into it. On tour it can be stressful to play every single night when you're not feeling it, or when the room isn't — I've definitely played bars in Europe that were clearly meant for people to party, and I'm just not that interested in that setting, but you kind of have to go along with it. I try to keep perspective — if I'm not in the mood, it's just one day, I'll probably feel better tomorrow.

Absent Sounds: I always figured it would be hard to put on that face in front of people, to perform. Two-part question — do you tend to fully embody an emotion when you're feeling something, or is it easier to separate yourself from it? And do you ever have to compose yourself before getting on stage, almost like method acting?

Liz: I try to. The first show I played after COVID, I was really, really nervous — it was weird, I felt like I'd forgotten everything, I couldn't really cope. I was also emotional for other reasons that day. I started boxing years ago, and I started sparring, physically sparring, a few years back, and that's actually helped me a lot — it helps you separate your feelings, because in boxing you poker-face, emotions never help you there. It's helped with music too, though I was a little shocked at how much it took me back when I started playing shows again — I'm curious how other musicians felt starting up again after COVID. I pretty much wear my heart on my sleeve, though — if I'm nervous at a show, I'll just tell everyone there, and then they can do what they want with that. I remember once I dropped my passport in the toilet right before a show, and I told the whole room because I was worried it was going to mess up my passport. I don't even remember what I was thinking, but I just say it, because it's weirder for me not to. In the past, if I didn't say what was going on, it would just make everything tenser, and the audience would feel that tension without knowing why. Twice now I've had people close to me die right before a show, and the first time it happened I told the audience I was distracted because of it, and that's why I might seem emotional. Someone said, "thank you for sharing that," and that was it — that's all I really wanted. The show ends up being better, because you tell everybody instead of there being this unexplained tension in the room.

Absent Sounds: I feel like it's the same with relationships — if you don't tell someone what's going on, they'll assume it's something they did, and the tension just sits there.

Liz: Exactly. If you don't tell someone, they think it's them, and you don't want them to think that, so it's just better to say it.

Absent Sounds: And I think people who come to watch you live already care about the musician they're watching — nobody wants to see someone struggle. People are pretty understanding if you're not feeling well, and honestly it just makes it a better experience for both sides.

Liz: My daughter was about two when I was writing some of that record, actually — we still play a few songs from it, I really like that record. It was a bit of a mishmash, with some members leaving and some coming in — that was Brandon's last record, though he's on the EP. I think I was mostly trying to come to terms with being a parent, and figuring out how to be a grown-up. "Statement" is really about my frustration with working, a comment on this whole way of living, I guess. "Endlessly" is very much about my kids, and about being a person who likes to create — it's all about me, I think. That was a tricky time for me, for a bunch of reasons, in various relationships, and I was trying to see them all differently. When a new person gets added to your life, or someone gets taken away, you have to reassess and change everything. So with that record I was trying to figure some stuff out. I think from there it starts to diverge a bit, becoming more about other things — "February," for instance, isn't about me at all. But I really like that song. At the time I didn't think it was scary, but now I listen to it and think, that's a pretty scary song.

Absent Sounds: I think the title of an album always ends up shaping how we read it, whether we mean it to or not. Can you tell us a bit about the title, You?

Liz: It was about everybody in my life — like if someone walked into a room, it was them. I was thinking a lot about what it means to be a creator for that record, and I was watching a Michael Fassbender movie where his character says something like, "I don't create things, I'm a witness." I loved that — a lot of writers get accused of stealing from their friends, people asking, "if I hang out with you, are you going to write a song about me?" When I read that line, I felt like it captured being an observer to something that happened to somebody else, without being implicated in it myself, because I'm not really putting myself in the mix, I'm just watching. I think you almost have to do that when you're creating something — you can't be fully participating, you have to watch. But yeah, it was definitely a mix of friends, my partner, having kids — a mix of people in my life.

Absent Sounds: I recently rewatched Three Women, partly to see what the connection might be. I find it so interesting, always looking for where things start or end — maybe because I'm a twin, and in my head I struggle to know where my sister starts and where I end, how we differentiate ourselves. There's that scene in Pinky where you're not sure where Pinky starts and where the other person ends. I wanted to ask about identity more broadly — how having children, adding people to your life, shifts where you start and where Picastro, or your kids, begin and end.

Liz: Definitely. I've felt like two women all the time, and sometimes I get really resentful about it, honestly — when I go on tour, people ask, "who's watching your kids?" I say this to my male friends all the time: when you go on tour, nobody asks you that, because you're not assumed to be the one who's supposed to be with them. Just being a woman, you're expected to be one kind of person. I definitely felt like two women, and now I don't even know what I feel like exactly. I think I was sorting through that because I went from one kid to two and felt all these expectations land on me at once. I don't understand why people assume that once you have kids, you're not supposed to be a creator anymore, you're just supposed to be a caregiver. I've had other male musicians ask me who's watching my kids while I'm on tour, and I'm like, are you kidding — you play experimental music, why are you so boxed in about this?

Absent Sounds: I know, so boxed in.

Liz: It's crazy to me. I find it shocking sometimes.

Absent Sounds: That reminds me of a quote — "all the women in me are tired." I find it kind of funny, because it's like, the me that's supposed to be the educator, the athlete, the child, the daughter — all those women in me are tired, and I don't always have an identity I can retreat to and take comfort in. I've noticed you play with different points of view a lot in your music, and with a song like "Statement" — is there an identity you take the most comfort in, that you retreat to when you're tired of all those other roles?

Liz: Maybe I should start doing that. With You, I started drifting toward not wanting anyone to think the music was personal, so I started using male pronouns in the songs — I was tired of the assumption, and it doesn't really matter if it's a man or a woman in the song anyway. I didn't want anyone to feel excluded. And Exit was very much about me, I wanted to take myself out of it entirely. I don't like being pinned down by one identity, so I try to switch it up — I think that's actually pretty common. The more I think about it, PJ Harvey does something like that with every record, reinventing the sound to match a new persona. I'm not that literal about it, but I understand why people do it — you almost have to, to be able to say, I'm done with that person, I've moved on, now I'm this person. A lot of female writers used to do that too, taking on a male pseudonym and leaving it at that.

Absent Sounds: That's such an interesting question, I don't think I'd thought about it that way before. Throughout the album, in tracks like "Timor" and "Judas Claim," the singing is so unique — there's so much dissonance, especially with the layered, wailing vocals in the background. Did you find it difficult to sing that way, or to train yourself into it?

Liz: With "Judas Claim," I asked my friend Alex to sing on it, and I think he was pushing me during the recording to try something else. I did, and afterward I remember thinking, what did we just do? Sandro Perri mixed it, and he found it a bit hard to manage too — he said it was going to stop sounding like a song pretty soon, just because of the way it's arranged. I'd have a hard time singing like that now, but it suited what I was trying to do with the song at the time. And "Timor," I think, is the one with no words, right?

Absent Sounds: There are some, but I can't decipher them — I wasn't sure if it was even English.

Liz: I really like that song too, I should go back and listen to it again. Even now, if I start to lose it during a show — I haven't in a while, but if I do — my voice is the first thing to go, I don't have enough control to reel it back in, and when I'm upset it's really obvious, my voice just tells you. In the early days of Picastro, people actually liked that — they wanted to see someone kind of in the middle of a breakdown, and some people were really into it. Sometimes I think that says something about how covered-up most people are, like everyone feels they have to be slick with everything. It's good to be slick and professional sometimes, but not always. I'm not going to do that again necessarily, but it does make me think about how, when I'm upset, my voice will kind of warble, and I have to try to reel it back in.

Absent Sounds: When you mentioned people trying to be slick — I was thinking about how, in a conversation, you can choose to dive in deep, or stay on the safe, boring side where things feel less dangerous. This is a random thread, but I've been reading The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, and he writes a lot about the boring, mundane parts of life that we're still drawn to. I read that you're also into his work — how did you get through it? It's pretty heavy.

Liz: I haven't read Infinite Jest — I got about a hundred pages in and it felt like he was arguing with me the whole time, like, are you fighting with me right now? He makes you feel like you can't be passive while reading. I had to stop. I read his collected short stories and found him really interesting, but at the time I just thought, I don't want this right now. I should go back to it. Right now I'm reading Octavia Butler, and half of it I find amazing, and half of it I'm just — she has the same birthday as me, actually. I read something in one of her books and thought, oh, we're connected.

Absent Sounds: It's kind of ironic, because with the album I noticed the title track's date — February 10th — and thought, this was made for me. I always thought You felt like a winter album, maybe because of the title, and the track "February." Atmosphere and mood always end up seeping into what you make. Was there a seasonal influence on the record — was it a winter album for you?

Liz: In general, winter's pretty much everywhere in what I make. I lived in LA briefly and remember thinking, I can't even make music here, it's too sunny all the time. There's something about the stillness of winter, something less busy about it, that I gravitate to. I don't know if people in hot countries really have that same feeling — although I realized recently that a lot of people in Spain seem to connect with the record, even though their winter isn't really our winter. But for me, for sure, it's a winter thing.

Absent Sounds: That reminds me of a poem — something like, "take me back to the place where sadness makes sense," because in California, under the eternal sun, that's the only moon you get.

Liz: I really like that too.

Absent Sounds: We're going to wrap up the interview, but we have one last question. We've talked a lot about different identities, especially with you always endlessly creating — the Picastro that's here today, the Liz that's here today. I always like to ask: is there a future Picastro you can imagine, someone different from who you are right now? Or, if you have a message for future you, what would it be?

Liz: I feel like future Picastro is — I'm really into a lot these days, so maybe it's going to be less serious. Not comedy exactly, but I feel like I'm moving further and further away from it being about anything super personal. It's becoming its own other thing, which is good, that's kind of how it has to go — you can't really make the same thing twice. Other than that, I don't have a grand message, other than: stay hopeful. I went through some pretty bad spells during COVID, and there aren't always a lot of people to ask when you're going through it. When you keep playing music, playing and playing, you have a few people you can turn to, but not that many, and that can feel strange. But I feel okay. I think the future will be good.

Absent Sounds: That's a good note to end on. Thank you so much.