Q&A: Boyish Channels the Tantrums of a Child On New EP ‘Little Demon Boy’
THEY MOVED ACROSS THE COUNTRY AND LOST THEIR SENSE OF SELF — but these growing pains are informing the latest release from indie-rock band Boyish. Little Demon Boy, out now, didn’t come easily to the duo. They began writing it when they moved from their Brooklyn apartment, full of friends and creativity, to Los Angeles. Shortly after, they went on tour, leaving little time to settle into their new home. Without much stability, they each started to experience an identity crisis, and Little Demon Boy acted as the personification of this challenge.
We last spoke with India Shore and Claire Altendahl in 2021 for the release of We’re all gonna die, but here’s my contribution, an EP that captured who the band was at the time. That project was recorded from the quarantine safe space of Altendahl’s childhood bedroom in Minnesota. Since then, the duo has been evolving as producers and writers, releasing the vulnerable and masterfully cohesive My Friend Mica EP in 2022. Now, Boyish has the world-expanding experience of touring to pull inspiration from and build perspective, finally finding the words they’ve been looking for since they were teenagers.
We caught them right before they took to the road again, opening for Claud’s fall tour and sprinkling in some headline shows across the country. We spoke about making each show special, growing up in fandom culture, and the balancing act of being a duo. Read the interview below.
LUNA: It’s been two years since we spoke to you guys last, so let’s catch up with a classic rose, bud, thorn.
ALTENDAHL: My rose might have been touring Europe for the first time, because I had never been there until May of this year. That was the first time I had ever left the country, besides Canada. So that was a big marker — I finally did this thing that I was so afraid to do. I loved Europe so much. It was life changing.
My thorn was the move to LA. It was a tough transition. It was so different from Brooklyn and everything we were used to. We left a community that we really loved in Brooklyn. It was tough starting over in LA. It’s so music industry heavy in LA and I don’t think I was mentally prepared for the stress of that and always feeling like everything you do is related to the music industry.
My bud would definitely be this EP coming out and going on tour with Claud, and touring the US again. We’re covering most of the country so I’m super excited about that.
SHORE: Overall, for the past two years, my rose would be touring. I think when we spoke to you last we had never toured. It’s just been a huge learning curve, and it’s my favorite part of this job. My best memories of these past two years have been doing this. My thorn would probably be moving to LA (laughs). Not necessarily moving to LA, but the process of moving was so traumatic. We left all of our friends. My mom lives in New York and I went to college in Boston, which is like three hours away, so I had never left home. My sister lives there, my dad lives there … everyone lives there. My cousin had just moved down to New York and I was just like, “Oh my god, what am I doing?” That was a tough one, and I don’t drive so that’s another thing in the mix to make it more traumatic.
LUNA: Do you drive now?
SHORE: Oh, no. That’s something we’ll deal with in October when I finally get home. My bud is the Claud tour, the EP coming out, and starting to work on our album. I’m really, really excited to work on an album.
LUNA: You hadn’t toured at all when we spoke to you last, and it feels like you’ve been constantly on the road since then. I’ve been to two shows and they’re truly so energized and fun. How do you keep it interesting after doing it so frequently?
SHORE: It took me so long to figure out how to have fun on stage. I used to be so scared. I would stand at the mic stand and not move.
ALTENDAHL: India would not take the mic off the stand. It was so cute!
SHORE: Now that I know I like doing this, I think I haven’t gotten to a point where I’m bored. I’m like, “Oh, I'm not about to die! I’m having the best time ever!” I think I get so overwhelmed with feeling grateful. You can tell when a show is good. There are definitely shows where I’m fighting for my life up there. Sometimes you’re working for it. Those shows are definitely tougher. The past couple months of shows we’ve done have just been so fulfilling.
ALTENDAHL: I’m a huge gearhead. I put together all of our songs in Ableton. I run our tracks. It’s a passion of mine. My goal is to put on the biggest rock show you’ve ever seen. Once we get a budget I’m getting amps, we’re stacking them, I’m getting flames — we’re going all out. I really love music directing, and it’s funny even saying that now because I don’t consider myself a music director at all, but I guess technically that’s what it is. For every show, I make a new setlist, and I love making transitions.
The show we just did last week, we did this huge introduction. I made this disgusting sounding mock up of it that I sent the band. That’s how I keep it interesting. When we first started we weren’t playing to tracks and I barely had any guitar effects going on stage. Now I’m like, “How do we take this record we just made and bring it to life live?”
SHORE: Claire built us a DIY in-ear rig because we had, like, $2, and we want to use tracks but how? And–
ALTENDAHL: And I was like “Wait, I got this.” I honestly watched so many church players. The church bands have the craziest live setups, and they know it all. The amount of my Youtube search history that’s “Christian rock bands.” It’s so funny, but that’s honestly where I learned how to set everything up.
LUNA: Thank you Christian rock bands for really giving us the show of our lives. It’s cool to know that every transition is crafted specifically for each date on the tour. You guys are typically the sole collaborators on your music, but you brought King Princess into the mix recently on “Kill Your Pain.” Is there anything you learned in that process?
ALTENDAHL: That was a life-changing session, honestly. It changed a lot of the way we record vocals now. She’s quick. She got that shit done fast.
SHORE: It was cool to see someone really sure of themselves. I feel like I torture myself a bit recording vocals. It’s so ugly. And she was just like, “Okay, we got it. Great.” She had really good production ideas that came to her so quickly. She was like, “I want to add this part. Do you want me to play drums? I have a drum idea.” And just hopped on the drum kit. She was such a joy to work with and so in it and excited and creative and made it really fun — and that’s hard to do sometimes. She’s so good at what she does.
ALTENDAHL: She has such a clear vision, which helps. The best example from that song specifically is right before the big drop at the ending, there’s that snare hit. That was not in there and she jumped on the drum set and hit it and we were like, “Oh my god!” Something that simple that added so much. She’s so good at that.
LUNA: I want to talk about fandom because both of you grew up in it. You guys have fans, which is a newer experience for you. How do you view fandom, now that you’re on the other side of it?
SHORE: I was on Tumblr, so I was wild. I was absolutely a Directioner. I wasn’t as crazy as the people hacking airport security to see the boys waiting for a flight, but I was a part of it. I also got crazy about Lana Del Rey. We aren’t big enough as a band to have any negative interactions. Every time I meet someone, I feel really grateful, and it feels like I probably know you because I’ve probably talked to you on Instagram.
ALTENDAHL: Yeah, that’s been really cool. When somebody comes up and they’re like, “My username is this.” It’s like, “Oh, I know you!”
SHORE: It’s really cool, as somebody [who] is such a fan, to know that somebody could maybe feel that way about stuff that I’ve made as intensely as I’ve felt, which is definitely intense. There’s that old trope that nobody likes what 13-year-old girls like, but 13-year-old girls are literally running the world.
At our London headline show, I was worried that nobody would come to see us, and it was pretty much sold out, which was super cool. I looked out to see if anybody had come and I saw that the first two rows were just young kids who had all gotten a zine from the merch stand and were sitting cross-legged in front of the stage reading the zine together. I was like, “I'm going to start crying now.”
LUNA: A theme you explore is not knowing what you want or what’s going on. How are you learning to evolve while experiencing this existential uncertainty?
SHORE: I feel like my existential dread is more that I know exactly what I want and I don’t know how to get there. I want all of the things that so many people that make music want, and it sometimes feels like a pipedream.
ALTENDAHL: Part of the problem is that every time you get a little higher, you realize that the bar of success gets even higher and it feels like I’m in this never-ending ladder sometimes.
SHORE: I try to find some perspective to tell myself that I’m doing everything I wanted to do, and just because I want more doesn’t mean I’m not doing it.
ALTENDAHL: After tours are especially when I start to have these big existential crises, because it can feel like, “Now what do I do?” I came off this month-long adrenaline rush and now I’m sitting here, lost. India said this the other day, because I was having a moment. She was like, “No, you’ve gotta be a knife! All of those thoughts, you’re going to cut through and they’re going to fall to the sides of you. You are the knife. You know what you want. Go get it.” It honestly resonated with me so well.
LUNA: Your new EP is titled Little Demon Boy. What is a little demon boy, and can I be one?
BOYISH: Yes.
ALTENDAHL: India would tell me I was being a little demon boy. That was my little persona when I was working on something. I think it just felt very accurate to the time, because we had just moved to LA when we started on it and emotionally we were both very chaotic. This EP started to represent that because it was probably the hardest project we’ve ever had to make. We were touring the entire time we were writing this, which I think was the main struggle with it. It’s kinda confusing and extremely overwhelming when you start because you don’t know what to expect. Then dealing with the post-tour depression that you go into [is hard]. Little Demon Boy started in that and represents this massive time of change and uncertainty. I think we both had a bit of an identity crisis in LA, too. I knew who I was in New York. I know who I am at home in Minnesota. Who am I in LA? I don’t recognize myself.
SHORE: I do feel like Little Demon Boy is also childlike, like when you have a meltdown as an adult you go back to being seven and just letting loose. You know in your adult self that you’re being ridiculous, but you just can’t help it. You have to let the little demon boy out. It’s kind of playful. I know this is ridiculous, but I can’t stop. Obviously, if you want to wail on the couch, you have to. It’s drama.
LUNA: Is there anything unexpected on Little Demon Boy?
BOYISH: The last track, “Doomscroller.”
ALTENDAHL: India did not like it when we first made it.
SHORE: For the longest time, I thought the song was odd. It doesn’t feel like a Boyish song. We just kept working on it, and one day we changed something in the production and I was like, “Wait, I love this song.”
In 2021, when we had just started doing well as Boyish, [and] I would have been like, “No, that’s not a Boyish song.” I think that’s kind of cool. There’s growth in what we could sound like and do.
ALTENDAHL: I think we really pushed the production on this. Lyrically, too, it’s very different from everything else we’ve done. Personally, I’ve always really wanted to write about addiction and addicts in your family. I’ve never been able to write about it. This year, somehow it all poured out. So much of this EP is a letter to my 17-year-old self that’s scared and in pain. There was so much going on, and when I listen to it, it’s crazy because all I see is me in that stage. That is Little Demon Boy.
LUNA: After collaborating together for eight years, is there anything you guys know you just disagree on?
ALTENDAHL: I’ve developed this theory: India is always right. This has been a process over so many years. I’ve fought. I’ve been like, “No! We’re going to do this.” Then I try it and it falls apart, and India was right.
SHORE: To combat that, I’ve learned that I’m often very quick to be like, “No. I know better.” And sometimes that’s right, but a lot of the time I think it’s an anxious response. I’m learning that I should hear it out and if it turns out I was right, that’s fine, but I could end up really loving something and never having given it a chance. So, it’s a good balance.
ALTENDAHL: I feel like reverb is the one thing we’ve disagreed on forever. India has always been very anti-reverb and delay, and left on my own, it would be soup. We’d be presenting soup. India does a really good job of reeling that in. India’s a minimalist and I’m more of a maximalist.
SHORE: It’s cool that after all this time, we won’t move forward on something unless both of us agree that it’s cool and we love it. It’s special because you don’t want to put something out in the world with a part that you really didn’t like.
LUNA: Claire, you said earlier that after a tour is usually when you have a bit of an existential crisis. Is there anything you’re grappling with now that you want fulfilled or answered by the end of the tour?
ALTENDAHL: The really nice thing about tour is that I think it does lift writing blocks so well. Sometimes, when you’re in the midst of writing something, you can get so in your head. I feel this haze come over me and it’s hard to snap out of. Touring is so amazing because you get new experiences every day. I’m going to be thinking about tour forever. When I’m old, if I’m in a nursing home and a volunteer comes up, I'll be like, “Listen up, the next four hours I’m going to tell you about being on the road with my friends.” Tour is so cathartic in that way.
SHORE: I’m most content on tour. You are working very hard and you’re tired but it’s fake life. It’s really nice to have that bit of structure where I get up, I drive somewhere, I soundcheck, I play the show, I have dinner, and I go somewhere else. It’s also nice to have that excuse that I can’t deal with this right now because I’m on tour (laughs). It’s brain vacation, and it’s so much fun. I feel very at peace.
