Sidney Gish is one of the most creative songwriters to find any amount of buzz since Courtney Barnett released “Avant Gardener” at the beginning of the decade. Her style is hard to place — an obvious comparison is Frankie Cosmos, but she also seems like the natural evolution of a lineage that goes from Regina Spektor to Cosmos to anyone else who’s rooted their music in the time it was created. There are some nods to the recent past — during the interview, she alluded to the Drake and Josh soundtrack as an unexpected influence, and I recognized a melodic similarity to the Sesame Street intro in “Where The Sidewalk Ends” — but as others have pointed out, she’s a firmly 2018 songwriter, taking influence from everywhere but creating something original in her own right.

We’re the same age, and during the interview, it turned out we shared a childhood friend. Yet what Sidney does with her talents is all her own. She’s also very fun to talk to — over the course of an hour, we discussed everything from putting pressure on yourself to create a “Pet Sounds Motherfuck” to the compulsory heterosexuality of Michael Bublé’s “Santa Baby” cover. Even at a time where everyone has a platform and a SoundCloud artist can sound as polished as anything from a major label, it’s clear that she stands out.

photo from http://www.wers.org/bma2017/sidney-gish-2/

When did you decide to start uploading music to Spotify/Bandcamp?

I was really into writing songs — I was putting them on Tumblr instead of Bandcamp or anywhere else` but then I was like “I should put these on Bandcamp since that’s more of a music centric thing as opposed to Tumblr which really isn’t.” Once I put out my first album, I decided to use DistroKid to get it on real stores after I put it out.

Give me a general timeline; so, you release the album, do you send it anywhere? is there an email blast? How did it end up getting such wide coverage?

When I put out my first album, I had never really gotten any press on anything except for like a SoundCloud song once just out of the blue, but like, when I put out my first album and I played shows around Boston I started getting Boston press just because I was playing so much and I had a fresh album out, and I finally had a release I could point to. So I got some write-ups from the previous year [for Ed Buys Houses] and I thought that’s what would happen again when I put out No Dogs Allowed. With [Ed] I sent out a few emails, mainly to local blogs who ended up liking it. But when I put it out it got a bit more attention than I thought it would on Twitter, and through that, more of people who write for larger scale blogs ended up finding out about it.

Before Ed Buys Houses, you did some illustration, and your mom embroidered the illustrations…

Right! I guess my first national write-up was Buzzfeed, but it wasn’t related to music at all it was because of a viral Tumblr post I made in like Freshman year of college, um, so that whole egg thing ended up coming full circle since I sell the egg and the cat… and a bunch of other dumb drawings I did as merch.

Could the egg be a Sidney Gish mascot?

Oh my god, I don’t know, that would be fun [laughs]. The egg went viral on its own, so a lot of people don’t know that I drew it, or like only know one or the other. Somebody got the tattoo of the egg the other day, and I was like “oh my god, this is the best thing that’s ever happened.”

How have parents/family reacted to the success?

They’ve been pretty into it! Even the Buzzfeed write-up [involved] me and my mom embroidering, so they were like ‘oh, it’s cool that she’s doing this!’ They came to the Boston Music Awards, they saw my set there. It’s cute — it’s really nice of them to be supportive.

The album opens and it’s a tape about teaching a parakeet to talk — where did that come from, and why start the album with that?

That came from April Winchell’s MP3 collection on her website and she’s a voice actress with extensive MP3 logs that she has. I went through that a lot my freshman year because I thought it was really funny — there’s a lot of like weird shit in there, and I was downloading things I might want to use at some point. I have this dumb instrumental I hated that I had my vocal on and I was like “oh I can just replace it with something [from Winchell], and then the parakeet ended up fitting, so that’s why it worked out. I wasn’t in search of a parakeet I was just kind of like “oh cool”, you know? The way that it’s delivered is so instructional, and it’s kind of meta too since he’s talking about, like, “this is the album that teaches a parakeet to talk,” so I was like “hell yeah, he’s talking about being on an album.” I don’t know if he ever says that exactly — I just tried to follow the cadence of his voice to the rhythm of the song.

It chops up a lot, which earned some comparisons to the Avalanches…

Oh, I love the Avalanches! I’m really into using samples, forcing somebody talking to be a vocalist, stuff like that… The parakeet guy was a bitch to arrange and snap. For a phrase like “teaching a parakeet to talk is fun,” I would chop the syllables up and make them each into their own little bubble in this one track [I called] “The Parakeet” and then I would arrange him and snap him to the correct beats and maybe start him a bit earlier if his mouth opens a bit late or something, then I would use the fade tool whenever he talked too close to himself, so he would be kind of smoother and [the audio] would not have blips in it… Even the parakeet guy came from a vinyl recording so his voice was in a range of sonic whatever, but like once I got comfortable with the active rearranging mode in Logic, it made it so much easier than any sampling I’d done in GarageBand before. So, then I was able to just hit play, see what phrase I could cut out for the next parakeet region, and then cut it up into syllables, and that was really fun. I would finish a new section of ‘the parakeet’ every day and play it for my roommates when I got home, so it was great.

There’s a lot of other stuff on the first record with samples, like “Midnight Jingle”, and the “Santa Baby” cover — is that a Michael Bublé interview at the beginning?

Oh yeah, I ripped the audio from a Bublé interview and like put [Logic plugin] Stereo Delay on it, so he’s just in this weird hellscape talking about Christmas. I wanted to cover specifically Bublé’s cover of Santa Baby, because he makes it straight and it’s really weird. When he covered “Santa Baby”, he changed “Baby” to “Buddy” and “Pally”, and all these weird bro-y nouns that like aren’t bro-y at all. I respect Michael Bublé, but I think the way that he chose to cover that song is just so funny.

When you’re listening to [a song you’re writing] and you hear an instrumental part do you immediately reach for a sample?

There’s a cycle of YouTube videos and instructional 60s videos that I have bookmarked, that I can find my way around or related videos. When I’m just on the internet, I’ll find something and I want to download it. Then I’ll figure out — I’ll go through whatever I end up finding and then see what would happen with the song I’m working with… if I want an effect like a plane landing in “Imposter Syndrome” or a door opening in “I Eat Salads Now”, I’ll go to freesound.org or whatever else works. Before the plane lands, there’s ambience that also came from Freesound.

How much do you see yourself as a producer, engineer in addition to a songwriter and instrumentalist?

I see myself primarily as a songwriter, but I like fucking around with different sounds and panning them and like that whole sphere of thing. The producer and engineer’s side of things gives off the impression that you’re competent and whatever — compression and EQ, mixing choices, like the very basic flavors of mixing plugins that you’re comfortable with, so if someone gives you a rock song they recorded you can mix it for them. But I just like trying to find the most efficient way to make something interesting that I’m excited by when I’m in my house by myself, and make sure it’s decent enough quality where I wouldn’t want to get bored or stop listening to it.. If somebody else mixed it, I wouldn’t feel like it was mine, even though I’m just a beginner, borderline intermediate. I just want to have done all of it.

I mentioned the Notes App on Twitter —so I’m wondering about your lyric writing process…

I just write a lot of stuff in the Notes app, like for all reasons, I use it to organize lists, I use it just to write shit down, and if I have a song idea I’ll see if there are any words that bend into the song, or if I have like a song idea with lyrics attached to it I’ll just rewrite them or I’ll just keep the dumb lyrics cause like who cares, and like in “Not But For You, Bunny” the first verse is literally… not making any sense which is like oh, these are vowels, like I don’t even wanna try to have words in this, and then [I kept them in]. But for other songs that were wordier, I want to make sure that they actually makes sense, It kind of depends but I want to make sure that whichever way I end up finishing a piece of noise that I made, so it’s just like panicking and finishing whatever I have going on. I kind of wish I was more intentional about it because I always think of things I want to write, and I never end up writing them, but I write different stuff instead… but I like it anyway.

On the Bandcamp page for “I Eat Salads Now”, you put a link to “I’m 20” by Frankie Cosmos in place of the actual lyric…

I love that Frankie Cosmos song, and I love Frankie Cosmos in general, I think she’s really cool. The first part of her song is like “I’m 20, washed up already,” and I said that, and I was like “oh that’s just straight up a line from Frankie Cosmos”, so I wanted to credit her for it. So, it’s not just be being 20, it’s me being 20 and washed up already. It was an homage to [her], like “hell yeah, I’m gonna put that link in there.”

Do you have any other major influences with regards to songwriting and the way you arrange your music?

I’m influenced by a lot of people, I don’t know who to say is the main influence… I think the Avalanches are really really really good at sampling — like of course they’re really good at sampling but they’re so fucking good at sampling, I love them. And Frankie Cosmos is like the first bedroom-poppy artist I started listening to, so that was cool to see that style of music, and yeah, I don’t know who else would be my mains. There are just a bunch of cool songs [linked] on my Spotify that I listen to and um, I don’t know who specifically.

You’ve mentioned Regina Spektor in the past…

I was really into her when I was growing up I still am really into her, I was so obsessed with her music when I was in 9th and 10th grade, I think it left an impression on me. I don’t listen to it as actively anymore, but when I do I’m like “oh man, I love Regina Spektor so much!” She holds a special place in my heart forever.

Speaking of I’m 20, I connected to the album so much because I’m the same age, so like the lines about meme groups and rebranding as a non-playable character resonated with me. With that in mind, how much do you think about a potential audience, especially now that No Dogs Allowed has been kind of a breakthrough of sorts?

When I started writing, lines like “I’m rebranding as a non-playable character”, I would write in my journal to entertain myself in the future, as batshit as that sounds. It’s funny I was trying to write songs as like Songs instead of writing the way I naturally wrote, which I did in my journals, like every day, and the eventually, started writing whenever I was ranting in a way that would be funny to me in the future. So something to entertain myself in the future whenever I looked back on whatever I was thinking, and so that style of writing I think ended up being something that I wanted to curate…. and then I was writing songs that were like, weird, and not the way I actually spoke or wrote and then I was like “no I’m going to write something like this” and then it was fun. But mainly it’s trying to take up space — I always write melodies first because the lyrics are kind of on top of it but when I started incorporating more of that style of writing I think it’s pretty fun.

With a growing fanbase, do you ever worry about a reference being too esoteric for someone else or is it just not a concern at all?

I’m not really too concerned about it as long as somebody could probably be into it or I could communicate it in a way that makes sense cause like at the core of things I’m like entertaining myself, I’m just sitting in my house like recording something that I think is like stupid, dumb, or fun or whatever. It’s really just to entertain myself, is the whole point of it. Or like if I want to have a song that I think should exist and I want to make it. I can’ t think of any song I’ve wanted to write that I haven’t…

When I first started writing songs in like middle and high school I put them all really seriously and I was like I can’t finish any of these causes it’s not good enough but it’s like ‘who cares’! I’d never finish anything because nothing’s ever gonna be good enough for me. Literally no song I ever write is ever going to meet my standards of what I want to make. And so, by accepting that, I’ve been able to experiment more and kind of find out what I’m capable of just by fucking around and then seeing what comes out as opposed to dreaming about what I want to make and never making it.

Let’s go back to some of the lyrics in the album. Certain lines reoccur, like the “Sweet Instincts” line on “I Eat Salads Now” and “Imposter Syndrome.” I just always like when musicians do that, so when you’re putting a collection of songs like No Dogs together, do you have an idea of what you want the arc to be?

The albums as a whole have been shit that I’ve made that I scrapped together. Before I made Ed Buys Houses, had this really clear idea of what I wanted it to be in my head but that didn’t fucking happen at all [laughs], it was completely different. I had this awesome idea for the OG Ed Buys Houses, I was like making a track list for it, but half the songs didn’t exist since I wasn’t good enough to write them yet.

This entire year, I had this idea for an album called “Acts of Science” that I never made… then I was like “fuck this track list I’m not good enough to write any of these songs since all of them feel weird when I actually play them”, so I scrapped together some bullshit and it was No Dogs Allowed. Then people liked it, and I was like shit this is what making an album is; throwing together some bullshit at the last minute, whatever you’re capable of as opposed to dreaming of your dream Pet Sounds motherfuck that you can’t actually make. I keep learning that it’s normal to just fuck around and have that be a song.

So, like accidentally making a Pet Sounds Motherfuck?

Yeah, that’s what my hope is. [laughs] I don’t know how intentional Brian Wilson was when he actually made Pet Sounds, but idealizing the whole before you’ve made the parts is like the downfall of recording literally anything for my whole life… I feel like it’s so fun to record now that it’s like who actually cares, you can figure it out at the end instead of figuring out shit as you go.

I just have a couple of questions about particular songs on No Dogs Allowed. One of my favorites is Persephone, can you just talk about writing that?

I wrote “Persephone” my freshman fall in college, I wrote it in like 2 seconds in a practice room and it literally didn’t mean anything. It was originally a bit more jumpy but I made it into a ballad and it’s a lot more fun to sing that way. I just made a four-chord piano loop which took me like 2 seconds and just riffed on pronunciations, then put it on Dummy Parade a year later, which is a compilation album that I made on Bandcamp, and then I played it live since I was insecure about my loop pedal and the fact that it only was four chords made it so much easier for me to play it.

I was confident in being able to loop it since it was so loopable since it never changes it’s just the same four chords, which usually I hate in songs, like “this is a four chord song, next, fuck this” but I was like ‘shit this is the only one I can play on my loop pedal since I’m a fucking baby,’ so I played Persephone at all my shows and people actually liked it. I was going to put it on Ed Buys Houses, but I made a project file that sucks so I didn’t include it, and then I ended up putting it on No Dogs Allowed since people still liked it a year later.

Can you talk about “Where The Sidewalk Ends” as well?

It was originally called “Mind Mud”. For the melody, I was essentially trying to write an Oasis song, that’s how I came up with that melody — every Oasis song I know kind of sounds like that. My song has this very wholesome melody [sings a bit of the “WTSE” chorus], and it’s literally in C, and C is the key of a fucking Oasis song!

Any particular Oasis song you had in mind?

I don’t know, it’s just that kind of late-90s sound, or like “It’s All About You” by McFly, which might actually be in C-sharp, like I literally have a playlist dedicated to a variety of songs that all have to be in the same key, but it’s really similar to that, just very optimistic. I borrowed my friend’s melodica for that song — there’s melodica on “Bird Tutorial” as well.

You’re interning at a major label, right? So, there’s that and there’s the major at Northeastern, and now there’s just this increasing musical presence, so are you struggling to get a balance at all?

I’m super excited by everything that’s happening really. The reason why I put out No Dogs Allowed before I started my internship [which takes up a huge amount of my time] was because I didn’t think it would do as well as it did, so I thought I could just sit on the release with the occasional blip about it then I could go back and make another record next year that would take off, and one after that and one after that. I was planning on self-releasing until I was really confident in my mixing abilities to be intense about what I was doing, but this one ended up doing well, which I didn’t expect at all, I thought it would like take slower than this, but it’s been really cool to see it take off!

Has the internship affected your view of the music industry at all?

So I’m doing A&R, it’s a very intern-y internship, so I’m learning a lot about how it functions, what that industry is like, and it’s good to learn about that kind of thing but I didn’t anticipate that my album would do well before I started it so it kind of changed what the experience in New York has been for me so far — in a good way! It’s really cool to see that whole thing happen and how it has been going but yeah, I think it’s just interesting to see how it works.

Is being a full-time musician even on your mind at this point?

It has been in the past month or so, I never thought it would be an option, but I think I could swing it if I tried really hard at this point. I always thought it was too unrealistic, but I feel like I might be able to work something out, even with a part-time job and then doing this. I have no idea what my plans are at all, and whenever I say something it’s immediately untrue, I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I love talking, which is why I write all the time, but I don’t have any idea what I’m doing. I just need to go to work tomorrow and that’s it.