Equipped with her guitar and loop pedal, singer-songwriter Sidney Gish writes personal songs that anyone could relate to. Between her semesters at Northeastern University, she has released two excellent albums, Ed Buys Houses and No Dogs Allowed, each bursting with personality. Her second album No Dogs Allowed was released on New Year’s Eve. In her home away from home (Pret A Manger), we talk about songwriting, album art, going to Hawaii, meme culture, and definitely not jazz guitar.

By Tim Vallancourt

Rare Candy: Your lyrics are very funny and clever! What is your lyric writing process?

Sidney Gish: I write melodies first mainly. Usually with the melody, I'll have some syllable ideas for whatever matches the melody, so I write those into whatever words are forming. Then, I'll go through my notes app to see if I’ve written anything interesting — I like to write when I'm bored in the notes app or in a journal or something — and I'll see if there's anything in there that I like and want to keep or expand on. If something sticks around for a while that I think is interesting, then I'll keep it. If it's boring, then I'll forget it. Thinking about ideas for a long time usually filters out whatever I liked a lot and I'll put those to the melody. Sometimes I'll figure out something else while I'm recording.

RC: So you have the samples on the new album in "Bird Tutorial," "Sin Triangle," and "Impostor Syndrome." What inspired you to use the 50s sample in “Bird Tutorial”? What made you say "this should be in a song"?

SG: When I was recording "Sin Triangle," it had an instrumental break after the first chorus. I was like, "This is weird. I'm going to put this guy over it to mask that." And my guitar solo, I was like, "This is weird. I'm going to put him there, too, and distract everyone." Not even the month prior, like early December, I had made a Michael Bublé Christmas cover and I took a sample of Bublé and put this delay effect on it where he was spinning. It was like multiple Bublés coming at you in the room. And I was like, "I could put that Bublé effect on this guy in 'Sin Triangle'” and I liked it a lot so I kept it.

RC: You make all of your own album art; you do a lot of your own videos. How do you see the role of visuals in your music?

SG: I love album art so much! When I was younger, if I didn't like the album art for a song when I got the MP3 online, I would make my own in Microsoft Paint. I'd be like, "this sucks! I'm making a better one that I like!" It was whatever I associated with the song as opposed to what the art was originally. If I downloaded a Beatles song that wasn't part of the album 1, which is the compilation of their greatest hits, I would make some other album art that looked like 1 to put it under because I was pissed off that it wasn't on 1. That kind of thing. I just have been making collages on my computer. I was already playing around with stock photos and stuff this year and I ended up with the guy walking the dog of himself. I was like, "Cool, this is going to be it."

RC: And the video for "I'm Filled With Steak, and Cannot Dance"? How was that made? How did that come about?

SG: I've made three videos using this app called VHS Cam. I made one every year until this year, because it's so fun! With "I'm Filled With Steak, and Cannot Dance," the name of the song, isn't in the song. It's just a note that I was using as the project file name and I was like, "Fuck it! I'm not going to change the project file name! I'm going to keep this!" When I downloaded Logic, I got it through the student bundle, so I also got Final Cut Pro. I was teaching myself Final Cut, while making videos the same way I always had in iMovie.

RC: Would you ever not make the album art or videos yourself? Would you give that to someone else?

SG: I don't think I would ever make the album art not my own. I don't have that much experience in videos and especially if I wanted to be in the video, it would be harder to film it. One of my friends - Ethan Judelson - did the "Midnight Jingle" video. He approached me and was like, “Hey! I have this cool idea for a video.” I had been making stuff off of my computer, so working with him was really cool. I'm open to working with directors for videos, but I'm super attached to album art. I think album art that looks like a renaissance painting is cool, but I can't do that. A lot of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra covers are a Renaissance painting of a penguin in a field, so if I wanted something like that, I might try to work with somebody. I'm really into trying to collage whatever I can and do everything myself, so I can make it specifically how I want it