Q&A: Holding Tenderness At Its Most High, Nara’s Room Induces A Deep Breath With New Album, ‘Glassy star’
AT HOME AND SETTLED IN SOUND — Nara’s Room incredibly encapsulates comfort amidst unsureness in self, spanning joy, overwhelm, and bittersweetness with persistently gorgeous guitar in their new album, Glassy star. In short: a positively emotional and all-consuming rollercoaster that you really want to ride.
Glassy star greets lucky observers with a haunting call to open — crying out earnestly, mimicking the feeling of wandering a dense emerald forest. The band’s final single, “Razorbraids,” is “casual, familiar, and fleeting,” and a slightly blown out closing title track requires listeners to refer to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows to place “anemoia.”
Nara Avakian fronts their group as an exemplar of many mediums, often filming, directing, or editing visual accompaniments for the project and specializing in hi8 tapes.
Keep reading to submerge deeper into Nara’s world — from the cherished makers of this record, sour candies “just to feel something,” gleefully regressing into Y2K listening habits, and starring subversion in a modern digital landscape.
LUNA: Pick one song from the album that’s perfect for playing to your friends, and another that’s perfect for blasting alone.
NARA: I think “Bluebeard” is perfect for playing to my friends. It’s a song I play with the hopes that whoever is listening will understand me in some way. “Like ivory” is great for blasting alone because it is so cathartic.
LUNA: Has exploring isolation through music brought any sense of belonging — if so, is this mostly in-person or digital? How do those styles of connection feel different?
NARA: I think no — as a member of the Armenian diaspora, and descendant of Genocide survivors, the music more so represents survival and preservation. I think a sense of belonging will come with recognition, ceasefire, and the end of genocidal aggressions and regimes.
As a member of the diaspora, I’ll never really belong anywhere, but music preserves my place beyond the in-person and the digital realm, if that makes sense.
LUNA: Is creating necessary?
NARA: It’s the only thing I can ever really do.
LUNA: What color represents Glassy star best?
NARA: A dark gray-blue. I can’t describe it, but it’s how I’ve always pictured this group of songs. I think the feeling you get when you look at the color is the unifying thread between all of the songs.
LUNA: Do you like licorice? Why or why not?
NARA: I think I like it, but it’s definitely not my favorite candy and it’s absolutely not my first choice. I like sour gummy candies more. Sometimes I just want to feel something.
LUNA: If you could tour with any two bands, who would they be, where would the tour be, and why?
NARA: In my dreams I’d love to tour with Linda Ronstadt, playing at the Troubadour in LA in the 60s. We’d make our way over to Tucson, Arizona, and play in small clubs. And then after our tour, Linda Ronstadt would join forces with Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton and they’d perform as Trio and we’d tour all around the United States. Maybe in the Grand Ole Opry, or in Dolly Parton’s childhood Tennessee Mountain Home. Something like that. I just love Linda Ronstadt, and that’s mostly why.
LUNA: What’s the most obscure, unusual, or niche film you’ve seen - what stuck out to you about it? Would you recommend it to others?
NARA: Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates. Each frame is like a painting, and the film is more about ambiance than it is about narrative. The music is gorgeous, and the story of Armenian composer Sayat-Nova is so poetic.
LUNA: Do you have a set process for crafting a body of work? Has the process differed at all in the creation of Glassy star as opposed to Topanga swirl?
NARA: I think Topanga swirl and Glassy star were composed similarly. I wrote the lyrics and music on my guitar, then I brought the songs to the band to arrange it. I was going through intense periods writing both, but I think they differ because I allowed myself to dig deeper when I was writing Glassy star.
With Glassy star, I wrote for the band, as opposed to Topanga swirl, which is mostly songs I wrote before I even thought about starting a band.
In regards to recording, we were more sure of ourselves with Glassy star. We worked again with our producer James Duncan who brought Topanga swirl to life, and we all had a similar sense of assuredness with the songs and how we wanted them to sound.
LUNA: How would you describe your pre-show headspace?
NARA: Before a show, I’m usually in good spirits because I love to play guitar — so I think before a show I’m just really excited to play the guitar.
LUNA: What 2-5 songs would you use to describe this last year leading up to the release of Glassy star?
NARA: Michelle Branch’s “Breathe,” Fleetwood Mac’s early demo of “Planets of the Universe,” The Sundays’ “On Earth,” Samira Tawfik’s “Barda Barda,” and Umm Kulthum’s “Enta Omry.”
LUNA: If listeners were required to choose a physical activity to engage in while listening to this album, what would make the most sense and why?
NARA: During an Autumn evening, on your way home from work, crying on the train during rush hour with your sunglasses on, so no one knows you’re crying. Glassy star is a heavy weight you carry in your bag in many ways.
LUNA: Describe a perfect day foodwise.
NARA: For breakfast, I’d have an iced americano with half-and-half with an Armenian breakfast–eggs, black olives, cucumber, feta cheese, and bread.
For lunch, I’d just go with a deli sandwich, most likely a grilled cheese.
For dinner, I’d have some of my roommate’s butternut squash soup with bread my other roommate would’ve made. I think there’s an element of home in these meals.
LUNA: What’s your favorite shoegaze or shoegaze-adjacent band from the 90s and now? What makes these bands so special?
NARA: I’m not sure if this counts as shoegaze, but The Sundays are one of my favorite bands.
What makes them so special is they made music for a while, and then they just sort of disappeared. I feel like every song they wrote was meaningful because I feel it in their lyrics and instrumentation. Listen to “Cry.”
LUNA: What was your music taste like at fifteen and how would you compare it to now?
NARA: I listened to a lot of Tegan and Sara and I’d play their songs on my guitar in my room all the time. I also really liked early Grimes, like everything from Visions and earlier.
I grew up with older cousins, so they got me really into the music they were listening to when they were in high school. I was really into Hole and The Smiths and all of that. [My music taste] hasn’t changed much at all, because I think a lot of these artists led me to a lot of the music I listen to now.
It’s hard for me to listen to newer stuff because I really like to listen to the same songs over and over again, but I think now my taste has expanded. I really love Linda Ronstadt and Tim Buckley and The Sundays, but now I’m regressing in many ways and returning to the music I loved when I was a child — Britney Spears, Michelle Branch, Hilary Duff, Ashlee Simpson, all the Y2K girls, really.
LUNA: If you could only use one camera for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
NARA: I’d use my Sony Mavica digital camera for the rest of my life. It was one of the early digital cameras, and it takes still images that are saved on a floppy disk. It’s extremely slow and when you take a photo, you can hear the disk inside it turn.
It takes photos that are 0.4 megapixels and they’re extremely pixelated, but I love it. I’m sort of over how nice photos look in our digital landscape, and I like subverting that expectation with outdated digital media.
LUNA: What track on Glassy star took the longest to create from start to finish? What was that like, and what do you love most about this track?
NARA: I think “Teeth” took the longest because we just didn’t know what to do with it. I wanted to rewrite the chorus guitar line, and I also didn’t feel as connected to the song anymore. I almost scrapped it from the record, but our producer James brought in incredible ideas for it. Those ideas were very ambitious so it took us some time to realize them, but I’m happy [we did].
James and I are both very detail-oriented and we’re perfectionists. We’d spend entire sessions watching Radiohead performances of their song “Videotape,” debating where “the one” starts in the song, mapping out the drum machine.
Overall it was the production, overdubbing, and mixing for all the songs that took the longest, because we tracked scratch guitar, drums, bass, and vocals all in one day in the studio so we already had the foundations of the songs ready.
LUNA: Who do you want most to listen to Glassy star?
NARA: My mom, my dad, and my cousins. I want them to listen to “Bluebeard.”
LUNA: What’s one thing you want listeners to take away from this release?
NARA: I want listeners to feel like they are understood, if that makes sense.
LUNA: Anything else you’d like to add?
NARA: I am so grateful for everyone who worked on this record! I love Ethan, Brendan, Trevor, and James so much, and I am so grateful for them. This collection of songs is as much theirs as it is mine.
“Razorbraids,” the final single for Glassy star, is out now. Glassy star will be out October 18 via Mtn Laurel Recording Co.
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