ALI BARTER: A SUITABLE GIRL

Growing up is kind of like a pop song.
The structure is familiar; you know how it goes. But the ebbs and flows — the bold, uplifting highs and softly-tread lows — they’re quite another thing to really feel. Australian musician Ali Barter knows all about those pop-induced moods.
From the heart-stirring catharsis brought on by the anthems of her youth, to her own candid musical outpourings today, the artist understands a thing or two about capturing frank, sometimes messy emotions in memorable song form.
Her debut album,  A  Suitable Girl, is the result. And a new generation of music fans get something they need now perhaps more than ever. A kind of mirror. A voice that says simply and authentically “I get it.” Ali Barter is that voice.
The former choirgirl and triple j unearthed winner has been in no great rush to push out a full-length album. Sin ce 2015’s  AB-EP she’s been busy living, and it was through living that she captured a couple of formative years worth of emotional growth. But the kind of scruffy growth that only comes through raw honesty — imperfect and unfiltered.
On her debut single ‘Girlie Bits,’ it manifests in frustration. Written on her holiday in a moment of beachside insecurity that most people could relate to, Barter says she was thinking “’I’m not skinny enough or not pretty enough’ and it just f*cking pissed me off that I was thinking that way.”
With its wry lyrics on gender expectations and bold, burning rallying cry of “you don’t understand what it’s like to be a man,” (uttered by an ex in a moment of amorous ignorance, apparently) the track is already being blasted in thousands of bedrooms across the country.
The melodic sway of ‘Cigarette’ conjures the puncturing experience of romantic invalidation (“I’m not the girl you wanted me to be”) with graceful command and rattling guitar. Meanwhile ‘Please Stay’ captures the gentle pleading of a woman feeling messed up and craving affection, with an adeptly Nina Gordon-like, almost cinematic affectation — both sweet and muddy.
In fact, those filmic sensations are the curling, pulsating waves Barter rides across the whole record. “I kind of wanted to write an album like a movie soundtrack,” she says. “When I have too much time on my hands I imagine what part of the movie each song would play in.”
The scene in which ‘Live With You’ plays would be right at the film’s climax — a revelatory moment that calls for long, breathy vocal highs and blistering guitar solos. The kind of song that could make anyone burst into a liberating run while out walking.
 
The honeyed crescendo of ‘Tokyo’ on the other hand, showcases Barter at her most vulnerable, emotionally — hurt and even hopeless. Yet there is power even here. With her heart on her sleeve and electric guitar strapped, Barter’s poignant yet common meditations become her listener’s medicine.
And in that sense, the entirety of  A Suitable Girl, with all its nuanced emotional snapshots, becomes one big cleanse. Kind of like the feeling you get when you cry bittersweet tears at the peak of your favourite movie.
Takin g its name from Vikram Seth’s novel, A Suitable Boy, the album is also about the power of self-acceptance. Like rock music, that’s a power that reverberates. It can spread out and touch listeners like a wave. And it’s as simple as “owning the thoughts that go through your head,” says Barter. “I have them, you have them. We can let them go.”
She continues: “I just want a song that makes me feel good. I wanna know that the chorus is going to lift me up, and it’s going to be big and bright. Like a release.”
And if that involves turning up the volume, jumping on your bed and screaming the lyrics, even better.
Ali Barter’s debut album,  A Suitable Girl, is out now.

https://phantogram.komi.io/

Fall In Love Again (Desmond Remix) Out Now
Move In Silence feat. Big Boi Out Now

Sparked by a color or song that recalls the most joyful and tragic moments in your life, a sense memory vaults you into the distant past. These subtle triggers remind us that memory isn’t confined to the mind; it lives in the body, too. Phantogram’s fifth album, Memory of a Day, captures that disorienting sense of time travel. “We put these songs together as a capsule, thinking about how a certain sound or melody can bring you back instantly to a memory of a day,” Phantogram says. 

While they were recording, the duo fixated on life calendars, a gridded sheet in which each unit represents a single week of a person’s life on the planet. As you fill in the grid, you witness the progression of your life in stark terms. The older you get, the darker the grid becomes, reminding you of how much time you have lived, and how little you may have left. “It’s this exploded view,” Phantogram says. “Like an image of Earth from a distance.” The life calendar is both morbid and nostalgic, a physical representation of our ephemeral time on Earth. 

“Days are only numbers,” Sarah Barthel sings on the chorus of “Come Alive.” That lyric became a north star for the duo as they set forth to make Memory of a Day. At once heavy and ebullient, “Come Alive” distills the lasting impact Phantogram has made on popular culture. Since their 2010 debut, Eyelid Movies, Phantogram has been comparable to no one, futurists who still manage to stay ahead of the curve more than a decade into their career. Their genre-bending approach to pop has led them to work with everyone, from Big Boi, with whom they founded Big Grams, to Subtronics, Future Islands, Deftones, the Flaming Lips, Tom Morello, and Miley Cyrus, to name just a few. A festival staple across the globe, Phantogram has also toured with Queens of the Stone Age, Arcade Fire, the XX, and many more. “We’ve always been proud of that: not being afraid of the experimental.”

Though their music has always been future-facing, to make Memory of a Day, Phantogram looked back. “Recording this album, it felt like how it did when we first started making music together,” Phantogram says. Alongside special collaborators like Mikky Ekko and Dan Wilson, Phantogram was joined in the studio by producer John Hill, who helmed Phantogram’s second album, Voices. The duo experimented in the studio and indulged in the music that brought them together in the beginning, artists such as J Dilla, Prince, Slowdive, and so much more. They reference new wave acts like the Talking Heads, ESG, and Liquid Liquid as influences on the percussive punk track “Feedback Invisible,” which is followed by the wistful burst of color “Attaway.” It’s a shoegaze song so sumptuous “you can almost see the grain in the guitar sounds.” 

Phantogram think in images when they write, drawing on scenes from films that linger with them years on. “Ever since Eyelid Movies, our work has been visually driven,” Phantogram says. In the video for the fuzzed-out waltz “All a Mystery,” snippets of human lives coalesce into a montage of experience. “Erase all the tapes in my mind/ Throw them all away,” Barthel sings, accompanied by a bittersweet swell of synths. “Turn back the tables of time/ Let all those memories die.” A swirl of memories, both triumphant and tragic, surface on Memory of a Day. “Come Alive” was written after Barthel experienced a transformative live show on her own, while the title track recounts the moment Josh Carter had to put his dog down. “It’s what you wanted, but couldn’t say,” he sings. “I’m not afraid of dying or what it feels like”

The album’s penultimate track, “Happy Again,” is a thrumming, bass-heavy rock song with a chorus that sounds like a wave crashing against the sand. “Another empty summer sunset/ Feeling homesick,” Barthel sings ahead of the bridge, her voice catching on the breezy, luminous production. “Can you believe this is your life?” It’s a moment of realization Phantogram compares to the dour scene in Forrest Gump, where Lieutenant Dan, “mega depressed and drunk,” throws a bummer New Year’s Eve party. Still, the song ends with an enlivening mantra. “I can be happy again,” Barthel repeats as guitars careen and crash. If days are only numbers, then how else can a person measure a life? On “Ashes,” the answer seems to be in moments of resilience. Based on the adage “you came into this world alone and you’ll leave it alone,” the throbbing production infused with elements of trip hop, shoegaze and indie accompanies Barthel as she reminds the listener: “Ashes rise, ashes rise.”

When they penned the lyrics, Phantogram thought of the mythical phoenix spreading its wings after catastrophe to take flight. The vulnerable, even despairing moments on Memory of a Day are stark, but they’re buoyed by a relentless optimism that has driven this project from the outset. In the Los Angeles studio where they recorded Memory of a Day, Phantogram often marveled at the distance they’ve come, both physically and spiritually, since they first started making music together in a barn in Upstate New York. “Tomorrow never knows,” Barthel nods to the Beatles on “Come Alive.” The accumulation of days together tell a story bigger than any finite lifetime, and Phantogram’s life calendar is only a fraction full.

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