June's Featured Artist - Niloo

Tell us about your new album. What are some of the themes in the music?

My new album, which is coming out in July, is called Sour Cherry. It’s an album that I’ve been writing over the last four years and developing with my band. The songs are a reflection of a distressing few years in the happenings of the world; a time where I’ve sought a greater connection to my family, my Persian heritage and my body.

Sonically, the album is inspired by Persian and Turkish pop and psych-rock from the 60s and 70s. There are also nods to shoegaze, jangle-pop and folk in there. On the whole, I think that although it’s a reflective album that touches on some heavy stuff, it’s still a playful, fun listen and it’s certainly a departure from my EP. I’m really excited to share it!

Is there a track that feels especially personal to you? What’s the story behind it?

Oof! Hard to answer! They’re all so personal in their own way. But I gotta give it to Surrender.

Surrender is about my struggle through chronic pain. In 2021 to around 2023 I went through a really scary couple years of just..ya know, being in pain and thinking about pain every day. For the first 8-9 months I was consumed by getting to the bottom of it, searching for a quick fix or ‘cure’. But, as many people who have or are dealing with chronic pain can tell you, there often are no easy answers. I had to learn to love my body, to ACTUALLY relax, enjoy my life, to manage despite being in pain and to stop being so afraid of it.

In late 2022, I took myself on a lil solo songwriting getaway to Chemainus and wrote Surrender. I remember that trip quite fondly and now everytime I play the song, it makes me think of my weekend in Chemainus instead of the ‘darkest night of my soul’. Yay!

Which song do you most enjoy playing live, and why?

I’ve learned to enjoy playing Sour Cherry Jam live.

I hesitate to share this detail because maybe it could mess with audience enjoyment… but what the Hell: I actually find it extremely hard to play! It demands a lot from me vocally and then I gotta do a guitar solo halfway through? Kind of a wack songwriting decision on my part! I’m usually really friggin tense and focused during the first bit of the song until I get through the solo, and then I (have to) relax because I’ve got a big vocal moment. 95% of the time I fuck up and the band always lies and says no one will notice… I have a rule to never play this song without them, because that’s just too vulnerable.

BUT, it’s a really short, punchy, energetic song, and we always play it last (a total swan song). So it can be really cathartic if I come out of the instrumental without any casualties and get to belt out the final chorus! I love the melodrama of the song and how electric it can be when the band is all locked in; I feel like it has the ability to pull the audience in for a final climax before it all abruptly ends. It’s the perfect ‘period’ for a setlist.

Where did you grow up, and how did it shape your relationship with music?

For the most part I grew up in Fort St. John, B.C. From what I could tell, most of the people around me listened to pop or country music. I didn’t mind the pop but I really couldn’t identify with country and it being everywhere gave me an aversion to it that I’m still working to shake. It was also the days of websites like MySpace and early YouTube, so in my teens I got all my culture online. I got REALLY into alt-rock, emo and hardcore (first, I was an emo-kid, then a ‘scene’-kid; very insufferable). From there, through friends with older brothers in the scene, I got really into metal. There was a small all-ages venue called The Lido Theatre in FSJ, and I went to local metal and hardcore shows there. It was so fun! I’ll never have whiplash like that again…

Anyway, it all drew me to guitar music. I grew up playing piano, but when I moved out I was like ‘No one can make me play piano scales again, I wanna shred!’ (I’m still learning how to shred, and now wishing I had kept up with the piano).

Was there a specific moment or artist that made you want to start making music?

Hmmm. I don’t think I have one specific moment… like I said before I started my proper music journey on the piano. But I was never really THAT interested in learning the songs off of the piano books (unless they were really fun) and was more into just learning songs I liked by ear or, even worse, free-flow playing the piano off of vibes. Naturally, my piano teacher hated my guts. I also got really into reading and writing poetry as a teenager and I do remember thinking: “OK, well now that I’ve written a bunch of poems, I think I should try writing a song”. The first songs I wrote were on piano and were heavily inspired by Vanessa Carlton’s album Harmonium (a seminal album IMHO).

What’s your day job or side hustle?

I have one of those ‘big kid’ jobs. I work full-time in the B.C. Gov as a “statutes revision coordinator”, which means I help keep provincial laws accurate, up-to-date and help with publishing.

How do you balance work and music? Does one influence the other?

I’m still learning how to balance work and music. Honestly, I try my best to prioritize my responsibilities at work and my physical and mental health first. I say “try my best” because I get serious music FOMO and if left unchecked, I’m inclined to just live my life like I’m a full-time musician. Saying ‘yes’ to all the fun, creative, music stuff gets me so excited!!! But I can’t, I shouldn’t. That’s why I’m soooo slow at putting out music and why I’ve slowed down on playing a lot of shows. I’m a tired girl and I’m often spinning a lot of plates.

Over the last couple years I’ve really had to make peace with the fact that I can’t do it all with music. But I’ve also learned that being picky with which opportunities I pursue protects my own well-being and that of my band-mates! I’ve also learned to reach out for guidance and help from others on the music admin front, because holy shit, I really don’t wanna come home from my desk-job and do more desk-jobby stuff for music! Nope.

I hope that one day, making music can be an even bigger part of my life. And when that day comes, it’ll be over for you bitches!

Who are your biggest musical influences?

That changes with the tides. It’s hard to pin an influence down for too long, even a ‘big one’, ya know? I go through many phases and I go through them quickly. Sometimes I get the chance to share art that responds to the influences but most of the time I don’t. For Sour Cherry the main musical influence is Googoosh. Kourosh Yaghmaei is a close second. But like, of ALL TIME? Sarah McLachlan, Radiohead, Warpaint, System of A Down, Erkin Koray, Dido, Sade, The War on Drugs, Townes Van Zandt, Lana Del Rey, Hayedeh, Kurt Vile, Cocteau Twins, Stevie Nicks, Altin Gun, Jessica Pratt, Amen Dunes, Fleet Foxes, Mirrorring, Phoebe Bridgers, Lizzie Mercier Descloux… I could go on and on. And these are only the ones whose influence I can feel in what I make.

Are there any non-musical things that influence your sound or writing?

Seasons: I pull a lot of inspiration from natural cycles and seasonal occurrences. Wet and gloomy winters, birds chirping in the spring, the sizzling summer heat, the crisp autumn air: these things all inspire my songs and pepper my lyrics. If I can’t think of something to write about, I usually start by observing something in the natural world and weave that into some sort of story.

Scents: Smells have been featuring big in my writing lately, and even my creative process. Our olfactory memory is the strongest memory we have… I love that it’s such a physical and embodied sense of recollection! Sometimes I’ll catch a whiff of something and it’s like a trapdoor opens up underneath me and I’m dropped into an otherwise banal (but still meaningful) memory…. It’s like your body is saying: “you have to remember this too!”. To me, smell is the closest thing to time travel.

Films/cartoons/clips/music videos: I can’t really hear things unless I see them. Visual references help me explore sounds. When I sing I like to close my eyes and imagine the scene that I’m drawing with my voice… that sort of thing. When I write a song, I’m usually scoring a film in my head. Sometimes those films are actual-factual movies or they are just everyday scenes I’ve observed or imagined. Movies that are big visual inspirations are Agnes Varda’s “Vagabond”, Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s “Gabbeh”, Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused”, Abbas Kiarostami’s “The Wind Will Carry Us”, both versions of “Nosferatu”, “Buffalo 66” by Vincent Gallo, “Twin Peaks” and “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” by David Lynch, “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” by Ana Lily Amirpour, “Jackie Brown” by Quentin Tarantino and very very importantly “Secret Ballot” by Babak Payami.

How did your band come together?

In 2019 I was in another project and Jen Yakamovich dropped into our DMs and offered to be our drummer. She was moving to town from Halifax so we’d never met before. That’s the closest I’ve come to being cold-called and I thought it was a pretty sick move. My previous project was on shaky ground at that point anyway and it was nice to collab with Jen on my solo stuff. She did drums for my first single Funny Face, and she played a huuuge part in the EP. I went to Cedar and spent a weekend demoing those songs with her and she played the drums plus a bunch of other instruments on the final recording. I have really fond memories with her during that era.

I think Jeffrey Ellom and I got to know each other during the COVID lock-down days because his project, Pesewa, and I had been booked on a few of the same virtual shows (remember those days???). Come to think of it, I think Elan Noon (Keenan Mittag-Degala) played on a couple of those bills as well! We all joked that we should just play in each other’s bands. I gave Jeffrey a ride home after a show once and he was like “hey if you ever need a bass player…”. I really love playing music with Jeffrey, it’s good flow, he’s got sick bass chops and it’s nice because we daydream about other music projects together and play some of his guitar songs together as well...

For Keenan I was like… nervous to ask to join the band because I was (and still am) such an Elan Noon fangirl. I also knew I was asking him to play not just keys, but a synth. I knew he was an awesome pianist but wasn’t sure if he’d been into playing synth before. I invited him to join us for one show at Campbell Bay Music Festival, (and even then, I was all “no worries if not”) but the band-hangs were too good and now here we are!

Depending on timing/schedules/logistics, sometimes the Niloo band is a duo, and sometimes it’s a trio. But the quattro-formaggio iteration is the most powerful iteration and thankfully that’s what’s on the record!

Your band does an incredible job of serving the song and supporting your vision without overshadowing it. What advice would you give singer-songwriters starting a band on balancing collaboration while staying true to their voice?

Thank you! I’ve preferred letting my band members bring their own flair into their parts. I think every artist gets to choose what they want to get out of collaboration. For me, unless I have a specific idea for a part, I don’t want to hear my own musical tendencies in the bass-line, the drums or even the synth. I’m curious about my bandmates’ creative vision. Jen, Jeffrey and Keenan are my dear friends, I love them… and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t totally poach them for this project because of their musical abilities and sonic point of view! I feel confident that my melodies, lyrics and arrangements can still ground a composition even with outside additions. I’m also not shy about asking for what I want when a suggested part is really not jiving with the overall direction of the piece. We often explore slight iterations of songs and parts before we settle on something that feels comfy and harmonious for all of us to play together. It’s a cool balancing game that’s different for each song, but that’s what makes it fun! On the whole, it’s nice to be coaxed out of my own ideas by things my band-mates suggest.

My overall advice for collaboration is…. practical. Be thoughtful about who you collaborate with and why. On the flipside, be thoughtful about what kind of band-leader/collaborator you can offer to be!

Great questions to consider are: Who are you collaborating with and why have you chosen them? What are their strengths and their limitations? Do you want more control over artistic outcomes or are you seeking greater creative input? How much time can they offer this project? Can you discuss creative (and practical) differences in a way that leaves everyone feeling respected? Can you stay on top of logistical communication? What are your own limitations as a songwriter/collaborator? Are all involved parties down to clown?

The aim is obviously to have a good time and make art, it’s easier to do that if you and your bandmates are on the same page! You’re also signing up to be extremely up close and personal with EVERYONE in your band. If all goes well you’ll travel together, eat together, lose money on gigs together, be sleep-deprived together... You gotta have each others’ backs, and especially as a bandleader (whose name is on the project), you have to make calls that keep you and your band-members feeling safe and respected.

What are your goals with music right now?

I’d like the opportunity to play music in another band, in another genre! I’d be happy to do some backup vocals or something but I just don’t wanna be the lead. I’d love to learn the bass or perhaps dedicate some more time to getting better at guitar so that I could play either instrument in another project or collaborative group.

I’ve also been really into making ambient music. It started a year ago at a music residency I did with the Ministry of Casual Living. I got to incorporate field recordings and found sounds with compositions I made with my synth. Some of them are pretty silly and others are very relaxing and immersive. Right now those songs are sitting at 90% and I want to finalize them and make some more!

Working on that project has really helped me out of some well-worn composing and songwriting habits. It’s also gotten me into the more technical side of music production, which I’d ideally like to get into. I want to record and produce my own stuff and I’d love to help record and produce for other artists.

What do you hope people take away from your music?

Fair question, but I don’t wish to steer anyone’s takeaway more than I already have. My work can be pretty personal, and so I’ve said enough, I’ve played enough, shaped enough. My two-cents are all there in the music. Beyond that, I want listeners to be free to interact with it and take away what they want or need. That’s the thing with sharing art, you get to let it go; let it live a life of its own without you. It’s obviously not gonna be everyone’s ‘thing’ and I’m pleased with that. It shouldn’t be. But yeah, it’s just nice to think that it might be playing in someone’s car or their headphones or their bluetooth shower speaker at any given moment.