Doom-scrolling your way through the current digital music scene is a bit of whiplash. Cool teens covering indie-alt bangers that came out close to their birth year, swipe, a pop star headlining this month’s biggest music festival, swipe, a millennial punk band performing in a bowling alley, swipe, girlies moshing to a Top 40 hit.
If the music industry’s upper echelon is currently defined by a golden era of female pop stars, simmering below it is a mid-2000s nostalgia for indie rock bands—two musical forces that would’ve had you laughed out of a record label A&R meeting some six years ago. For Remi Wolf, the 29-year-old singer/songwriter from Palo Alto, California, the connective tissue between those spaces has been at the core of her artistry since her debut in 2019.
Fresh off the North American leg of her Big Ideas tour, we caught up with Remi to learn more about getting into a live music headspace, planning for her next record, her newfound obsession with tennis, and more.
Robby Kelly: It’s been a few weeks since you got off tour and now you’re heading back out for a stretch of festivals. What does this liminal space between look like for you?
Remi Wolf: Every time I get off tour, it’s always a different liminal space because you’re just completely turned around. It’s like, okay, do I spend the time and the effort to reintegrate into society? Or do I rest? Or do I work? It always ends up being a combination of the three, and it’s always really difficult for me. This time I am trying to ground myself by making my own food, making my own coffee, and playing tennis. I’m on a pizza journey: I have a pizza oven in my backyard and I’m channeling all my manic energy into making pizza dough. Those are my grounding techniques currently.
On Big Ideas, there are a lot of subtle moments of brilliance—the production on “Frog Rock”, the one-liners on “Alone in Miami”—that you don’t always catch on your first listen. They feel like Easter eggs. How do you translate that to the stage?
I like to flip the songs for the live show. When I’m in the studio I can be meticulous and intense about these very specific production things that you’re mentioning. The thing with the live show is that it can never be perfect. It’s ever-evolving. It’s alive. It’s literally live.
You can only plan for so much!
The songs take on their own identity when we’re playing live. And at this point, I feel like I’m putting on a rock show. I truly love for these songs to really feel super bold and in your face live. I really wanted to flip a couple songs on their heads. Like my song “Sexy Villain” from Juno, we kind of turned that into like a salsa, bossa nova thing. We flipped my song “Alone in Miami” into this alt, almost math-rock, rock-fusion song.
I like challenging people’s conception of how pop music should sound because I think at the end of the day my music is pop, I guess, whatever the fuck pop means nowadays. I don’t even really know. But I like being able to break the mold and challenge how people go to a concert and what they should expect.
Does that reimagining process for live songs inform how you write for the next album?
It’s so influential to how I’ve begun to think about the next project that I’m going into. I really took a big swing with a big band. I have a seven-person band, which is quite large by today’s standards. That’s been a dream of mine for a long time because I love being surrounded by musicians, and my whole goal for my show and for my music is that I really don’t ever want to play with tracks. I want real live music to have a moment again.
Live bands, like the All American Rejects tour, and live music, especially related to pop, feel like something younger listeners are really yearning for. Is it vindicating at all?
It’s definitely existed throughout my entire career.I think I’ve just gotten closer and closer to what my ultimate vision is. I really, really believe in the live band. There’s so many ways to perform live for me but I love for there to just be real fucking musicians on stage because there’s a danger to it that keeps me alive, excited, and inspired. All of my albums are inspired by how I want to play my next round of tour and I think the next one, I’m going to get even more real with the instruments. I want to make sure that we can play everything, and I want it to be simple, and I want it to be bare bones, and I just want it to shine.
I’ve kind of been on a soapbox about it but it’s so important for live music to exist especially because a lot of spaces where people can gather, they’re just not happening anymore. People don’t want to gather because there’s a whole online world I feel a responsibility as an artist to go out and create that space for people to build community within their cities.
Is there a memory from tour that sticks out to you??
The show that I did this past month in Austin, one of our trucks didn’t arrive We didn’t get any of our production rigged. And it was pouring rain in Austin. I was just like, oh my God, this show is just not going to happen. Or if it does happen, it’s going to be so fucked. We ended up going to Party City in Austin and I bought a bunch of balloons, I bought some cowboy hats for my band and we got up on stage. Everybody was wearing ponchos in the pouring rain and it was amazing. It felt like we were all in this happy wet demon pit. There was mud everywhere and I was having such a good time. It really showed me that the music carries it. If we can get up there and have a good time, I don’t know, fucking sky’s the limit.
How does fashion play into your live performance?
I’m always discovering new facets of my style. I discovered that I like booty shorts. I also never like to repeat an outfit. That’s a big philosophy of mine because I want every show to have some sort of element of surprise and I like to do it with my fashion.
You’ve described Big Ideas as a coming-of-age album. Do you have a favorite coming-of-age movie?
The first thing that popped into my head, and I don’t know if it’s actually considered a coming-of-age movie, is 13 Going on 30. I loved it as a kid so much. I love the style in that movie, it goes so hard.
When you have downtime on tour what do you watch?
Once on tour I’m watching Ratatouille, I’m watching Emperor’s New Groove. I find a lot of comfort in Food Network competition shows. We also watched a lot of tennis matches this tour because we started a tennis journey, which is why I’m now obsessed with tennis.
What do you like about tennis?
I was an athlete as a child and I think part of me has been itching to re-find a sport, and connect back to my competitiveness in a healthy way. It’s so appropriate to be competitive when you’re playing a sport.
If everybody played some sort of sport every day to get that shit out of their system, we’d probably be a better society. I discovered tennis because a couple of my friends were playing and they invited me to play. I was just ignited from the inside of my soul. Three days before the tour, I texted my band, and I was like, everybody get a racket. We played almost every day.
What’s a must-have tour snack when you’re on the road?
This is going to sound lame, but it’s dates and peanut butter. Another one is Gushers, but I had to slow down on the Gushers. Another one is ham, or turkey and cheese sandwiches. I toast them in a little panini press that we got at Target on the bus.
Are there any wellness initiatives you’ve been buying into for the summer?
I think it’s going to be pizza, tennis, and my best attempt at sobriety.
An admirable combo.
I have another one. I’ve been doing this, I don’t know if it’s wellness, but it’s definitely something. I’ve been doing ghee in my coffee in the morning and first of all, it’s delicious. Second, I feel like it actually does something to reduce the jitters that I get from coffee. Me, my brother, and my sister-in-law, we’re low-key starting a ghee company.
Rem-ghee Wolf!
We’re making our own ghee, and it’s really good. I don’t know, more on that later. . .
Photography by Jordan Curtis Hughes
Wardrobe by Kaley Azambuja