'Beat Boy'/ Interview with California Girls
California Girls talks Neon Genesis Evangelion, the role of hyperactivity in music and his sophomore album, Beat Boy.
California Girls is cutting up tender-love feelings of closeness, sex and identity in his latest offering, Beat Boy and re-stitching them with tons of sweaty, sexy emo feels and clubby punk-blunted distortion.
California Girls is the solo project of Eora/Sydney-based artist Gus McGrath. His second album, Beat Boy is officially out through DERO Arcade.
Cover photography by Tim Hardy
BIG congrats on the album, Gus! I’m very excited for everyone to enjoy Beat Boy. How does it feel to be putting out an album during the apocalypse, hehe?
Thank you!!! It’s pretty weird coming out now because I was so deep in the zone of getting everything ready that I hadn’t thought about it much, but now it’s hitting me a little bit! Seeing all my friends posting about it is making me really miss shows because they were such a fun time to party with everyone and feeling very together. I’m definitely missing that but there’s a lot to be thankful for as well!!! I’m lucky I get to even put out an album at all!
Beat Boy is your sophomore album following 2016’s Desire. Has this release been a long time coming for you?
Oh, it’s been aaaaagggggeeeessssss! I think I was sorta in a rut after Desire, or went down a life route where I ended up kind of lost or listless, but in early 2019 I was like “no, I need to make this album and I need to move to Sydney”. I feel really good about both of those choices, they’re intertwined and necessary course corrections.
You’re re-structuring some pretty expansive ideas around “the performances of identity and sex” in this album. What is your relationship to these particular ‘constructs’ of self? And how is it reflected in the music?
I think I ended up navigating life with pretty little direction or without self-directed motivation? Part of really deciding to make the album and restructuring my life in 2019 was thinking about how I relate to other people and how that informs me. I’m worried I’m exaggerating it a bit cause obviously, life has complex facets, but I really felt like I’d become wrapped in this web and I was thinking about these interactions I had with people, which could be romantic or sexual or even imagined and historical, and I was trying to figure out what part of me was in those connections or how I really related to that? Like, how did those other people make me up? Maybe this is all very lofty and abstract but the music for Beat Boy felt like these small worlds where I could investigate these desires or parts of myself that I wanted to inhabit or understand better. Every song is this trait of myself or little obsession that I wanted to understand or become or work through. One song is about feeling weirdly queer-baited by straight punk boys, one is about being jealous of people who can dance confidently, one is about the possibility of evolving from love as a stronger being, many are about what the sex I’ve had could mean about me, one is about trying to be less cynical while feeling very depressed. Those aren’t super comprehensive summaries but they are some of the kinds of places or selves that I came to the music and lyrics from.
“California Girls is like all my moderation stripped bare and I’m living this Looney Tunes melodrama.”
Loved your feature in The Brvtalist about the Body Work video, especially this idea of costuming and transforming our inner, “monstrous desires''. Curious to know which Gus or ‘characters’ came out in the making of Beat Boy?
Thank you! It’s funny because the self that comes out in Cali Girls is often me at my most vulnerable, but the way I make songs I need them to feel really propulsive, so they’re often this inversion where it’s like my insides have been flipped out but now I’ve found a way to wear it like an exoskeleton. The selves that came out in Beat Boy were parts of myself I already knew existed, but putting them in this small world of the song strips out any of life’s complications. Maybe it’s like cordial without the water to dilute it so it’s a lot more direct and without filters. Also, when I’m playing gigs I find that I can be much more chaotic or cheeky than I ever imagined I could possibly be in normal life. California Girls is like all my moderation stripped bare and I’m living this Looney Tunes melodrama. Ironically, “Grey” is partly a song about how I need to stop thinking about things in such polar extremes and be more moderate.
Photo Credit: Joe Brennan
That kinda reminds me of these lyrics from the opening track Pairing, “maybe I could eliminate myself into others, like wearing your lipstick on my mouth… your head absorbs my head while I’m tracing ridges in your skull”. Probably my favourite bit of writing off the entire album. Can you unpack this? Feels like your personal narratives are disappearing into someone else’s or societies, maybe?
That song is pretty specific and literal. I was really moved by this idea that these other parts of a person, even something small like lipstick, could smear onto you in a kiss and you become them in a small way. When you’re mouth to mouth, your hand on the back of this other person's head, it’s like you’re surrounding them. It's like trying to use your tongue or your mouth to understand this other person's whole existence. And maybe part of the song was this reluctance to be my own person, or how exciting it is to see yourself seep into someone you desperately want to be a part of. This song came really quickly and was very very personal. I often reflect on my intimate ideas through other touch points that might seem silly or trivial or less personal, but are very genuine for me. I was thinking a lot about Neon Genesis Evangelion right after I made “Pairing” and it felt similar to little Shinji having the borders of himself blur into the Eva. Loving someone and desperately wanting to be a part of them is like trying to kiss your own little entry pod inside of them. Obviously, like Neon Genesis, it’s not so straightforward and it's scary and hard to be lost inside something else. Marcus Whale is a very close friend and I love his music so much, and the way he thinks about possession is quite similar to this I think.
Also, you mentioned losing personal narratives into social structures, and I had this weird complex for a while after Desire where I wasn’t like scared or weirded out about being a gay man anymore but I was really caught up in trying to understand these queer histories or how I related to them? I don’t know if that totally makes sense, but there’s a complex feeling in all of that :~S
I just saw Give Me Everything on Rebel Yell & Lupa J’s ‘Cry-Dance’ playlist, which feels like a very apt description of the type of music you make. Lots of sexy yearning! Is there a particular vibe or emotional chord you’re trying to hit with Beat Boy? And do you have a favourite song off the album?
OMG yes so sweet of them! There’s no one universal mood I’m trying to hit, but it’s paramount to me that the songs feel earnest and sincere. Even if songs are silly, I still don’t ever want them to be a throw away or jokes. A song like “Disorder” has some really ridiculous parts to it, but I think something can be stupid and deeply affecting at the same time. I hate the idea that to be taken seriously or earnestly you need to be this super dour intellectual or something. People are complex and they can be totally silly and incredibly profound at the same time. We all have the capacity for range! I guess when I’m making work I’m conscious that I can only think from my own place, I don’t know what it is to be anything else, so I hope that the consistency of the emotional chord is that these are genuine feelings or ideas, regardless of how speculative they are. A range of moments but held together tightly close to one another. The album is like a little snapshot at this one place in time, and the different feelings or moments that are contained within that chunk. I hope it feels like an album rather than a random collection of songs though, but I think that hopefully ties together - maybe it’s like little different rooms but in one house or something?
Favourite song though… that’s hard and it shifts a lot, but I think it’s probably “Pairing”. There were so many weird early versions of “Pairing” and originally, I’d planned it as this instrumental baroque giallo but it very quickly came together in quite a different way, and the second half came out of nowhere. That screaming sample in the later section just feels like this massive catharsis. I like that it opens the album too, that feels important.
Beat Boy is a hydra of dystopian sounds, you just can’t slot it into a genre-- which makes it so incredibly special. Loving the darkcore industrial strains in ‘Small Birds’ to the dirty pop cuts dangling throughout ‘Carabiner Boys’. How do you find the ‘right’ space between broody techno and dance-able, sexy club music, production-wise?
I’ve always been someone who gets distracted and excited by things quite randomly and quickly, so the biggest thing in making music is that it has to feel right for me. I hate to keep talking about being “real” as well (because it’s such a loose concept and it sounds like some Jackson Maine-type Star is Born nonsense), but when I’m making music I must feel propelled or something. I don’t really worry if the songs gel together, I just hope that my approach and ideas tie it together. I think if I make them in a way that feels right to me, then it naturally comes together. I’m lucky because the music for “Carabiner Boys” and “Give Me Everything” were made by my friend William Sneddon, and he’s able to make songs that are much more smooth and beautiful than I could, so when I was writing lyrics for them it gave me the chance to approach it differently than I normally would by myself? I’m also bad at making decisions and committing to one single idea, so I want the option of doing it all lol!
You often slip into these darker, intense spaces within pop/electronic frameworks in Beat Boy. Is that intentional? Is it purely exploratory?
I don’t necessarily mean to do it, but Liam who recorded my vocals said that he thinks my music keeps getting darker. Maybe I’m just getting more direct or upfront with myself (lol) BUT I also think it’s that I’m too insecure to write a straight up pop song so I have to do all these extreme things to it. There’s always this pull between wanting the most conventional pop music (which is not a negative, I genuinely LOVEEEE pop music) but then also wanting to be this really turbo all out producer. I don’t like the idea of doing something that already exists though because I don’t see the point, so it’s more trying to do what feels right to me.
You’ve also spoken about your own hyperactivity which reverberates throughout the album, particularly in tracks like ‘Out The Door’. You’re not here for ‘throw away lyrics’. Has that always been a factor in your music production?
Oh yeah, I’m very hyperactive. I think I just need to feel really personally invested in what I’m making so it’s worthwhile, both for me and people listening. If it doesn’t feel valuable or somewhat significant to me, why should anyone else bother listening to it? I don’t think my gauge was as good as a teen though so the lyrics I wrote back then were at one way too emotionally OTT to the point of being messy but also awkwardly performative and insincerely distanced. It’s trying to strike a balance of being vulnerable and open but also actually saying something with content.
Photo Credit: Joe Brennan
The voicework from Madalyn Trewin in ‘Body Work’ is a treat! Also, loving the homage to her work in ‘Small Birds’ and ‘Spread’. Can you tell us more about her reading and input in these tracks? And how you both linked-up?
I met Madalyn in year 11 because we started going to school together. She was the first friend that I felt like I was really “MYSELF” with (omg this sounds so lame), but we bonded over really tacky indie music and movies and stuff, and we really moved through our teenage years into “adulthood” together. Madalyn is probably the person who has seen me play the most out of anyone in the world and I started California Girls after our little minds melded together. We really were super inseparable as teenagers and used to do lots of random stuff together like the first time we hung out together we tried to spy on a miracle healer who was doing a session in our high school library. One time we spent hours waiting outside a hotel to try meet Ice Cube! She’s probably gonna be embarrassed I’m telling people this, but it’s all from the deepest place of love.
I generally find writing lyrics really overwhelming and with “Spread” and “Small Birds”, I used some rejigged parts of her poems to kickstart my writing as both were super relevant to what I was thinking about. She wrote the poem I used in “Small Birds” to accompany an exhibition of my art which was about wanting to move beyond being a human and treating your body as a functional machine, like some kind of car-being. I made Cali Girls shirts that had her original poem I used in “Small Birds” printed on it, so heaps of the words are there but there’s a lot more I didn’t use. “Spread” uses a poem Madalyn wrote for the flyer of a gig I played and was about the experience of being with people and dancing in a crowd. The sample in “Body Work” is from a sound work/reading she made a while ago that I thought was so incredible, and the way she talked about the dread of embodiment was really moving. It feels incredibly special that I get to have her as a part of my music, and even though we’re more independent now, she’s one of the most important people in my life. We’re very good at understanding each other's brains! My family also invites her to Christmas every year, which feels relevant.
One last exciting thing! You’re playing a show in October with Rebel Yell and a bunch of other mates at The Red Rattler. It’ll also be live streamed I believe--- super BIG! Can you give us the details? Can we be expecting any shows (live/online) for Beat Boy towards the end of the year?
Yessss it’s so exciting! I’m not playing live for this show, but I am DJing. DJing is my true love even though I’m pretty bad at it! I think pre-sale for the Red Rattler show has already sold out BUT there’s 20 tickets on the door and it will be livestreamed on the night here! The show is a launch for Rebel Yell’s stunning new album Fall From Grace and Carla Zimbler is playing these gorgeous videos of Iceland to accompany it, so it’ll be a visual manifestation of Rebel Yell’s sound while you sit comfortably and safely distanced. I’m really excited to see it! Marcus Whale, Ptwiggs, Black Dahlia and Land Systems are playing too which is super sick and all the ticket money is going to the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services!!! So, if you’re tuning in and you can donate too, which is really great!! Marcus Whale who is also playing put out an album recently, Lucifer, which is incredibly moving and powerful and I think has to be listened to along with Rebel Yell’s if you haven’t heard them! It’s so wild that I get to work alongside people who I’m genuinely stunned and impressed and deeply influenced by.
I am loosely planning to do my own livestream soon, probably on Twitch but really just having a party with my housemates and playing the album in full, live. I don’t have any other live plans, so I’m hoping this will be a big special kind of thing! Who knows what will happen in the future <3
Stay updated with California Girls here. Stream/buy Beat Boy via DERO Arcade here.
Words by Angus McGrath. Interview by Lakshmi Krishnan.
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