Q&A: Diving Into Intimate Musings, girlpuppy Releases Debut Album ‘When I’m Alone’

Q&AMusic

Nov 14

☆ By Gomi Zhou ☆

DOCUMENTING ALL THE QUIETNESS, MENTAL HURDLES — and dreamlike states of the post-hangout, in-my-room moments, girlpuppy’s debut album, When I’m Alone explores introspection.

Becca Harvey, the artist behind the moniker, uses her songwriting to capture moments and feelings that would otherwise have become too fleeting to be remembered. Tender at the core but at times charged with prominent acoustic guitar strumming that feels like a whirlwind, Harvey’s music is a darker shade of green: idle, but if you look closer, there hides a mysterious mirage.

The few singles leading up to the release of When I’m Alone represent the sonic palette of the album. Dazzled with Harvey’s signature vivid imagery, “Destroyer” and “I Want To Be There” are reminiscent of shoegaze sounds, along with “Teenage Dream” sounding just like its name and “Wish” being a rock-inspired, confident instant cult classic.

A promising newcomer in the indie-rock scene, girlpuppy has spent the majority of 2022 touring with indie darlings, including Matt Maltese as well as Hovvdy, who she will open for in November. In between the chaos of the road and finishing up her debut album, Harvey has been processing the changes and new feelings as a 23-year-old. At the dawn of When I’m Alone, Luna caught up with Harvey on the past, present, and the soon-to-be future.

LUNA: Why is the album called When I’m Alone?

GIRLPUPPY: When we finished the album, I was deciding on an album name. I had always wanted to name my first album 222 — that was my original idea because it's my birthday, like, it’s the angel number or whatever. But when we finished it, I remember we all went out to dinner. It was me, the producer, Sam Acchione, the engineer, Henry Stoehr, and my former collaborator, John Michael Young, who worked on the album and was at the cabin with us. We all went out to dinner at this barbecue restaurant. And I'm like, “Okay, you just have to help me with the album name now,” and for whatever reason I had When I’m Alone, which is the name of one of the songs on the album as well. And that song was called “When I'm Alone” because there was a lyric in the song that says, “When I'm alone, I feel like I've always been.” I wrote that down as a potential album title because I just felt like that's kind of cool. It just instantly hit within all of us. Because I think every song on the album is very introspective. It’s all the thoughts that I have when I'm alone.

LUNA: A lot of the songs feel like post-hangout, post–a situation, and you’re gathering your thoughts in your own room or your own space.

GIRLPUPPY: That's something I didn't think about — that's so true. Yeah, I do think it is that. Like I said, it's very introspective. [They are] the thoughts that I have like after I leave a hangout, after I leave a date, or after I leave a city … [they are] the thoughts [from when] I come home [and] when I'm alone. Those are thoughts that I have.

LUNA: I wanted to bring up another single, actually, the first single that was released. “Wish” is the second song on the album, and a lot of the time the second song is quite an important song in an album. It also feels different because even though it's poppier, it's got a lot of edge to it, and that's in the video too. Tell me more about it.

GIRLPUPPY: For “Wish,” I specifically wanted to make a rock song. I always really wanted to make a cool My Bloody Valentine, shoegaze [track] — that's how “Wish” came about. That was a song I wrote alone in my bedroom and recorded an acapella voice promo just to have an idea of a melody. I think I showed my producer “Sometimes” by My Bloody Valentine … this is the general idea. I wanted it to be cool like this. I also wanted a song that I could really rock out to in live sets. That was important to me.

LUNA: Was that the song you mentioned during the Matt Maltese tour? It was just you and one other person but you mentioned something about [a] song [that] is usually a rock-out song.

GIRLPUPPY: Yes!

LUNA: Ah, okay! I’m trying my best to remember, got it. Then I also want to bring up “Denver” because “Denver,” to me, also has a kick to it.

GIRLPUPPY: Yeah, we want to add a little punchy song in there. “Denver” was funny because it's just a middle-of-the-album, short, two-minute song. I don't even think we intentionally made it to be as punchy or edgy as it is. It just kind of happened. We made that one so fast — we made that in a couple of hours. And then we were like, “Alright, next song.” We made it the same way it was put in the album. It was just like, “Let's do this random one, then move on immediately after it.”

LUNA: I also want to talk about the next track, “Revenant,” because that's the one that absolutely has a story behind it. What is this about?

GIRLPUPPY: So, “Revenant” is about my first relationship ever. I started dating someone in high school, we dated for two and a half years and then broke up after he went off to college because he moved pretty far [away]. It was just a really shitty relationship. I mean, I think — especially in your first relationship — there's so much that you have to learn. And there's the toxicity of that relationship — that's what “Revenant” is about. It’s just like, “Woah, I can't believe any of that happened and that I dealt with that at, like, 17.” Why was I in such a crazy intense relationship at 17? I was a baby! There was no reason for that to happen. I had never written about this relationship before because I was trying to make music back but I wasn't actually making songs. So when I started the album, I thought this was something that I should revisit for myself to write about, just to close that chapter.

LUNA: How did you go about choosing what to talk about and what to include in this album? It spans across a pretty big time jump. Is there a theme that you set out to achieve with what you ended up including?

GIRLPUPPY: Not really, I think I just went into it. With songwriting, it's hard because [I] either can choose to sing about what's happening in my life right now or [I can] revisit something that I have never talked about before. And with me, at the time that I was writing the album, I had been in a relationship for four years, so there was nothing new with that. My life had been pretty steady. Nothing crazy exciting or crazy upsetting happened [for me] to write about. So I think I just chose something that upset me in the past that I'd write about now. I learned this from Taylor Swift because Taylor Swift has that song “Ivy,” which is a song about cheating. And she's like, “I haven't cheated, but I was writing a song about cheating on my current partner.” I thought that was an interesting take of, “Oh, I could just pretend; I could just make up stuff to think about.” I was reading a lot of books at the time, too, and watching a lot of movies. I like to go into a song thinking about a movie or thinking about a book. So I guess it's a lot of things.

LUNA: Are there any movies and books in particular that inspired any of the songs?

GIRLPUPPY: “Destroyer” was inspired by Daisy Jones & The Six. It's loosely based on Fleetwood Mac, which is funny. I read that and wrote “Destroyer” shortly after because there was a line in that book. The main character, Billy Dunne, he's married to this woman but he’s in love with the lead singer of his band, but he doesn’t act upon it because he's like, “If I were to act upon this, my entire life would be ruined.” The “destroyer” of your life is the one thing that you could do that would ruin everything else in your life. That's what I wrote about. And Twilight: New Moon, that entire movie was very impactful to the entirety of the album.

LUNA: Why is it now that you're releasing this album? It's a very fall-feeling album.

GIRLPUPPY: Exactly that. I knew that I wanted to make an album in the fall. I released my EP, Swan, August of last year. I thought that, not only was this a good enough timeline in between the EP and the album, but also because while making the album I thought, “This is just such a fall album.” It's very brown. It's very green. It's very dark, stay-in-your-room, and a sweater album.

LUNA: At this point, you’ve collaborated with a lot of cool producers for different projects and this album as well. What do you like the most about working with different artists? Is there any particular day-to-day routine that you have in the studio?

GIRLPUPPY: The thing I like the most about working with a bunch of different artists is that you really do learn something different from every person you work with. Everyone works a different way. Everyone writes a certain way, everyone behaves a certain way. Every artist I've collaborated with is so smart — I feel like everyone is smarter than me, but with them especially I've learned so much from these people because they just have more experience than me.

Day-to-day in the studio for the album was like, wake up, make a smoothie, eat breakfast, go into a room with just me and Sam. We would either start writing something completely blind, or I have an inspiration playlist for the album and I would pick this out and be like, “This vibe, but something very different.” And we would spend hours in a room writing a song. After we finished it, we would bring it to Henry and John Michael, then we'd all flesh it out together. That was, like, every day at the cabin when we were making the album.

LUNA: What was on that inspiration playlist?

GIRLPUPPY: Oh, it was a lot of Big Thief. My Bloody Valentine was on there, Grizzly Bear was on there, Faye Webster was on there. Who else? Well, I put Alex G on there because that was a nod to Sam.

LUNA: I think some of the acoustic guitar really did stand out in this album — it feels very Alex G. I think the way the acoustic guitar sounds on his album just feels very special because you basically use it to rock out, but usually that's the role of electric guitar.

GIRLPUPPY: I think that was probably subconscious for all of us. But yeah, I could definitely hear it now. We go heavy on the acoustic guitar in this album, which I think is a very Grizzly Bear thing. I love Grizzly Bear — that's one of my favorite bands. And John Michael, who plays a lot of the guitar on the album, he's also a huge Grizzly Bear fan. So I think with the combo of us both loving Grizzly Bear and Sam [having played] guitar for Alex G, that’s what made the acoustic guitar really hit.

LUNA: On the topic of guitar, I want to bring up a different song. It's not on this album, but I’ve put it in my Best of ’22 playlist. It's that summer song, “I Miss When I Smelled Like You.” I want to ask about that song because I feel like it's so different from the rest of your discography.

GIRLPUPPY: It is. I made that in New York in April with Doug Schadt. He used to work for Claude and Maggie Rogers. That was a co-write my management had set up for me. And I had never really done a co-write — it was almost like a blind date. [I’d] never met him. I didn't know much about him. I was like, “Alright, let me just try this.” I spent a week in the studio with him and it was so much fun. I was listening to a lot of HAIM at the time and I always really wanted to make a song like HAIM’s before, and I told Doug that. He's just very good at making a pop song and I was so down for it. I knew immediately I wanted it to come out in the summer. We were like, “Oh my god, this was just a song that you’d hear in a beer commercial.” It's just a really fun song. It is so different, but I think that's why I released it in the summer. This is just something for the summertime, and there is nothing else that sounds like this but y'all enjoy. That's my favorite song to play live.

LUNA: Even though it's kind of early, for your next project, is there any particular goal in mind? Is there something that you for sure want to include in whatever you release next?

GIRLPUPPY: Because I literally got out of a four-year relationship at the beginning of this year, I'm full of ideas. This year, especially since making the album, so much has happened out of nowhere. I tweeted the other day and I was like, “There's something so beautiful about being 23.” And this is the longest I've been single since I was 17. I've been learning and doing so much that there's so much in my brain to write, which is exactly what I want to do.

LUNA: If you can use a color palette to describe this year so far since the making of this album, what would those colors be?
GIRLPUPPY: For me personally, I would do lavender, light baby pink, baby blue — very pastel colors.

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We couldn’t be more stoked to have Suriel Hess as our new headliner for our upcoming LA show 🤩 🫶 Not gonna lie, us & Notorious Noise kinda went OFF with this line up & you’re not gonna wanna miss it - ticket link in bio 🎫