Q&A: What’s In A Name? Pool Girl Lets Everything Fall Into Place With Debut EP, ‘Trophy Wife’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY SYDNEY TATE ☆
IF YOU SAY YOU WILL THEN IT MUST BE TRUE — The power of the tongue sits on an unreachable golden pedestal in Trophy Wife, the debut EP from LA-based artist Pool Girl. This commemoratory collection of pop-leaning tracks acts as a trustworthy lucky charm-esque confidence builder.
Allie is a natural at following her instincts. The result is a cataclysm of serendipitous happenstance that presents an unforced, marked expression of self-identity and perception. Any comparisons that come to mind are only in reverence — think MARINA’s Electra Heart, Vampire Weekend’s Unbelievers, or Chastity Belt’s track “Seattle Party.”
Each song flows seamlessly to the next, flooding emotions in a charmingly circular pattern that mimics the tone, depth, and earnest faith of a best friend’s pep talk. For those seeking playfulness and eye-opening solo dance parties, Pool Girl is ready and waiting with a vulnerability-kissed invite.
Read on to discover more of Allie’s path to present-day Pool Girl, from her performance-based past, fluidity in what it means to be feminine, and the shared ritual of speaking goals into existence.
LUNA: What's the best thing that's happened to you this week?
POOL GIRL: I booked my first show, and I'm really excited about that. It’s taken a long time to [finalize]. The date had been changing a bunch of times and we finally locked it in, so that’s probably the best thing that has happened this week, but there have been a lot of exciting things going on!
Some weeks it feels like nothing happens, and then other weeks, it feels like a ton is going on — and that's definitely been this week. There’s been a lot of movement. Booking my first show feels huge and actually, “I Liked It” just crossed a million streams yesterday, so that was such a big milestone for me that I'm really excited about.
LUNA: Congratulations, that's huge! When did you write your first song ever and what was it about?
POOL GIRL: When I was little, I would make up songs all the time, but I wouldn't consider them to be full on songs. They were almost like lullabies. I remember coming up with songs when I would see people and it was just a silly song about them, but I feel like in college, [around] when I was 18, was the first time I properly started sitting down with a guitar and writing a full song out.
LUNA: Have you always played guitar?
POOL GIRL: I started playing guitar when I was 11, but piano was the first instrument I learned. I started playing piano when I was six.
I should be better at both of them. I'm very average at both, but I've been playing forever.
LUNA: How would you describe your relationship to femininity growing up and now?
POOL GIRL: I guess when I say that part of the EP is about femininity, it's more about observing what it means to be a woman moving through the world. A lot of the complications that I experience are about feeling perceived in a lot of ways, like when you're in a group or you're around other people. It’s a complicated relationship that I feel with that.
My own femininity, I don't know…I grew up a tomboy, and that was always such a thing for me. I love fashion and I'm quite femme in a lot of ways, but it's also quite fluid.
LUNA: I was curious if the title itself was more of that social commentary, like you said.
POOL GIRL: Trophy Wife definitely is about my experience [with] perfectionism and these unrealistic standards that I have felt, honestly, my entire life. And that's not just because I'm a woman moving through the world, it's also a lot to do with my background.
I grew up very Christian, and I grew up thinking that I genuinely had to be perfect. I think of that, but also a trophy wife is a funny concept to me [and the fact] that exists in the world.
LUNA: Especially in movies, the concept of a trophy wife has been really cartoonized. I have to remind myself this is a real thing that exists in society.
POOL GIRL: 100%. That's why it is me in the cover art, but it doesn't look like me whatsoever. It’s supposed to be a character — this perfect trophy-esque looking person, but she's hidden in the garage, stored away with all your other old trophies.
That’s kind of what the nod is, maybe someone who feels like they have to be perfect, but they're not actually out on display whatsoever.
LUNA: The flow of Trophy Wife is so nice — it’s perfect for me as a listener. I was wondering if you always planned for these songs to be together as one unit, or how they otherwise came together?
POOL GIRL: That's a good question. I did not plan for [these songs] to sit together how they did. I was writing all of them at the same time period, and at that point I didn't even know I was going to release an EP. I didn't even know I was going to launch an artist project! I didn't have any expectations.
I actually took a solo trip and packed some of my recording gear. At that time of my life, I was feeling pretty lost and had no expectations about making music. I knew that I wanted to take some time to write some songs, and they ended up being all in the same world. I wrote a bunch of songs that didn't actually even make it onto the EP, but they were all written around the same time, so pretty naturally they sounded like the same thing because I wrote them so close together.
It's really cool when this happens — it almost doesn’t feel like I’m making an EP until all of a sudden I have eight songs that I'm like, wait, these are actually making sense together. It's so encouraging, because you actually feel like there's like a flow to what's happening, and it was very natural. It just came from that solo trip and that season of life that I was in.
LUNA: It really does fit perfectly together. I understand that would be so affirming to realize.
POOL GIRL: God, it's been so cool. I was in a band before this, and so I was more used to doing music with someone else. It was so scary to think about being a solo artist. That was terrifying to me. I was thinking of whether or not I could even do a whole project by myself.
I was just scared about trying and the fact that I'm now on the other side of it, and have created something that I feel so so so proud of… [I think] wow, that's pretty f*cking cool. I didn't think I could do it.
LUNA: Does it feel scarier performing alone, or does that also feel more comfortable now?
POOL GIRL: I am so in the weeds right now of prepping my live set, so this couldn't be a more relevant question. I was almost about to cry about it last night, because prepping the live set is so hard. I'm playing with three of my friends, so that's amazing, and I’m going to do it as a band set up at least for my first show.
I don't know what it'll look like in the future, if I'll just perform solo or not, but I'm going to be playing with my friends, so that's definitely going to help ease some of the nerves.
I feel mostly excited for my live set, but right now I'm just in the weeds of having to figure out all of the logistics and it’s very annoyingly complicated.
LUNA: It is a lot, but I believe in you. It’ll be sick.
POOL GIRL: I want it to be the best show possible, so I'm putting a lot of effort into it, but I think it will pay off, definitely.
LUNA: What's your favorite album that feels the most nostalgic to you?
POOL GIRL: There's a couple that come to mind. Tame Impala’s Currents, that's my favorite album. I love it so much, it’s so nostalgic to me. Also Mild High Club’s Skiptracing. I was living in London when I was listening to that album non-stop, so it always brings me back to that time, and I really love Børn’s Dopamine.
LUNA: Were you in any clubs as a kid?
POOL GIRL: Oh, well this is a secret that I don't bring up that often, but I was homeschooled until eighth grade, so I was a part of a lot of weird clubs that were all for homeschool kids. I did art classes and music classes. I always used to do theater growing up, which is really embarrassing (both laughing).
LUNA: I'm only laughing because me too.
POOL GIRL: I was so proud of it too. I would get cast as some random frog and I would be so stoked but it's cute, you know, little Allie was so stoked. I did a lot though. I grew up dancing and any other kind of arts thing.
LUNA: I feel like being well rounded in that way constitutes well to developing your image as an artist and everything else that goes into it.
POOL GIRL: It’s kind of funny, I didn't realize how much that stuff was shaping me and affecting me, but it does come up in my day-to-day all the time right now. I'm doing all of my visuals and I'm a part of everything I'm doing in my creative project. It’s sick because I feel like that is because I was a nerd and grew up doing all the weird stuff.
LUNA: Is there any music you ever make that you don't share with anyone else?
POOL GIRL: There's so much music that I've made that I don't share and for a lot of it, I don't want it to go anywhere. I'll write some classical piano stuff sometimes, and I'm not gonna release a classical piano album ever. Those are pieces I've never really played for anyone.
LUNA: I always think about this, and I always go back and forth for my own life, but some people believe that when you set plans or goals for yourself, you shouldn't tell anyone until it's happened. How do you feel about that?
POOL GIRL: Someone that I worked for once told me that if you write down your goal, you're 50% more likely to do it, and then if you share that goal with someone, you're 80% more likely to do it. I don't know if those stats are right, but that really stuck with me.
Me and two of my best friends were so extra about this. We write a whole goals list every year, at the beginning of the year in January. We write down everything we want to accomplish that year and it's a shared note. So we can all see when [someone] is crossing things off. Some of us are a little more detailed and some of us are more vague.
I don’t know if it’s bad to do this, but I do share my goals and I'm pretty specific with them. I only tell only a few trusted people, but they know my music goals that I had for this year, and they’ve been seeing when I get to check things off.
LUNA: It sounds like a form of accountability, in a way.
POOL GIRL: Totally, we can see when someone's slacking in certain goals or a certain area. Like, when are you gonna do that for yourself? I know you wanted to. Sometimes they're funny goals too. One of my friends wanted to DJ a party, so we're like, it's coming up. You're gonna have to DJ a party pretty soon.
LUNA: How did you decide on this project name?
POOL GIRL: The name was so important to me. Years ago, I had songs that were ready to be released, but I didn't release them because I didn't have a cool enough name. I thought that Allie Nixon, my name, was never it for me. I never felt like I could actually market that.
I always wanted to create this persona, so the name came after I had already started making all of the music. The music was starting to come out and it was feeling cohesive. The music all sounded like it went together, but I didn't have the name yet. I named demos random shit all the time, and I named one of them Pool Girl. I sat with it, and pretty immediately I [thought], wait a second, that's a sick name.
It's actually very connected to me. My family on my mom's side are all pool cleaners in the Los Angeles area. They all have pool cleaning services so it’s a slight nod to that, but also when I thought of the name, I could all of a sudden see a whole world, and that’s what felt so important to me. That’s what I had been looking for. I could see the merch and the colors and the videos, I could see all of it, and it felt so true to me. I'm from a small beach town in California, and the Pool Girl name felt it was adjacent enough. It wasn’t in your face, but it felt very me. It was true to the music that I was making and it fit my personality too.
That was a turn of events. As soon as I thought of it, I was genuinely thinking “Oh my God, that's it.” I really knew immediately and I didn’t have any doubts about it, which was really sick. Before that, I was thinking of every variation of my own name to release music under, but none of it felt right.
LUNA: I get that. You want it to be the perfect name, but it's nice that it clicked.
POOL GIRL: The visual side of things is so important to me, and Pool Girl markets itself for me. It makes my job so much easier, because I can feel kind of shy about fully putting my image and myself out there. Since it’s under a different name, it feels like I can almost hide underneath that a little bit. All of a sudden it feels like I'm creating a brand, not that I’m just marketing Allie Nixon, does that make sense?
LUNA: Absolutely, it's parts of yourself that can go into it, but you don't have to feel like this is always me all the time and I'm baring my soul.
POOL GIRL: Totally, yeah. That's exactly it.
LUNA: If you could make or perform music full-time but still pursue another career, what would it be?
POOL GIRL: I’ve always been into ceramic art. I do ceramics, so probably more fine art stuff would be really, really cool. That’s something that I do on the side right now, but I think that that would be really cool to [pursue full time].
I’ve thought about what it would be like to go to art school for my masters and do sound design installations. I'm definitely curious about that, and think that'd be such a cool world. I’ve always wanted to be a therapist too. I studied psychology, so that world is very interesting to me.
LUNA: Do you have a lyric or a set of lines from the EP that either stick out the most or are most special to you?
POOL GIRL: “Translucent” really sticks out to me. It's a very honest song, it feels like it's a page in my diary a little bit. It’s about wishing someone could see through you, and basically be able to understand you without you being able to communicate it, or not being able to use words to communicate something.
Just wishing someone could see through you and be clear, so I think that song in general. I think a lot about what it would be like to be understood through a translucent lens, and that was a really interesting concept to me.
LUNA: I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. Is there anything else that you'd like to add?
POOL GIRL: Oh, thank you so much. I've been a fan of Luna for a long time, so it's really exciting to get to chat with you.
Moroccan Lounge, November 16. It's going to be a special Trophy Wife EP release show. Everyone should definitely come. There will be three custom drinks that everyone can get for free, so it’s going to be really fun.
Trophy Wife is out now.
