Talking to: tiny deaths
tiny deaths is a Los Angeles based project making moody, dream-pop; the moniker of singer/songwriter Claire de Lune. Teaming up with producer Grant Cutler, their music is an exploration of the middle ground between de Lune's background in R&B and Cutler's experience in the world of experimental music and high-art sound installations. In tiny deaths, bass, lush soundscapes and rich, soulful vocals unite to form a wholly alive and fresh take on the dream-pop genre.
There is no denying tiny death’s new EP is an exciting and special new addition to the genre of dream-pop. Having so far featured in Billboard, Stereogum, The Guardian, Bust Magazine and Bitch Magazine and having performed alongside acts like Sleigh Bells and Glass Animals, tiny deaths is an unstoppable force that you’ll be hearing a lot more from.
Claire has a fresh, honest, open, intelligent voice, much needed in the often plastic and overcrowded pop music scene nowadays. We recently talked to her about her music career so far, the LA music scene, being a female musician in a patriarchal world, and her eclectic upbringing spanning the length and breadth of America, from New York to the deepest mid-West.
Tell us a little bit about where you are at the moment and all about yourself.
I am in LA California, which is where I live and I am the singer / songwriter / brain child I guess of tiny deaths.
What’s your take on the music that you make?
My take on the music, well I think it’s kind of dreamy moody pop music for the most part. There’s a bit of an electronic element to it, little bit of indie rock to it, lots of different influences, but I think I would say the overarching thing is that it is dream pop.
How different is it to the music you were making before? Under your own name rather than under tiny deaths?
Well it’s been a long time since I’ve made music that was not under tiny deaths, I started doing tiny deaths in about 2013. When I was working on the last project I was doing kinda RnB and I think some of those influences definitely made it into the record. I think there’s always some RnB influences from my background; but this is the cool thing about tiny deaths; it’s music that I’m really passionate about, it feels like me in music form, which is really fulfilling.
Have you always been into music and performing? Is it something you grew up with?
Yeah, I started writing songs when I was about 5 years old, which sounds ridiculous but it is actually true. I really don’t have memories of a time before I started writing songs; it's always been the way that I’ve processed the world. I was in musical theatre as a kid and when I was 15 /16 I started playing shows in coffee shops with my guitar, so I’ve been a professional gigging musician for about 15 years, which is pretty crazy.
Did you study music at all or has it all been self learnt?
I went to college with the intent of getting a music degree but I dropped out to be a musician basically, so yes and no. I also went to an arts high school for two years, for junior and senior year of high school, where I studied music. I guess that’s the only place I got a music education like music theory and stuff like that. I'm pretty much self taught; I have tried taking vocal lessons, I’ve tried taking guitar lessons but it’s just not for me. I'm just sort of a fly by the seat of your pants kind of musician I guess!
I like that! Who are your heroes and influences from when you were younger?
My mom raised me on Joni Mitchell and she’s still one of my favourite artists and songwriters of all time. I really admire her work a lot and I think when I'm writing I kind of try and think of the ‘Joni Mitchell standard’. Obviously my music is very different to her music and I would never say that she would write anything I that I would write but I try and hold it up to that standard, like, “what would Joni Mitchell say about this song?” you know? It’s not a very achievable standard, but that’s like the ceiling to me.
It’s funny because my mom was really into 60’s and 70’s folk music; I listen to a lot of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, that kind of stuff. But I was also growing up on my own in the early to mid 90’s in NYC, so hip hop and RnB was huge at that time obviously. So I grew up listening to a ton of 90’s rap like Jay Z, Nas, Biggie, and also 90’s RnB, like TLC, Aaliyah, Mariah Kerry, Whitney Houston , so I think that I’m sort of a hodgepodge. And then later, especially in my teenage years, I really got into some of the indie bands that were bigger in the early 2000’s which is when I was at high school, like Beach House, Grizzly Bear; I think you can hear all of those influences in what I write, for sure.
What took you from LA to New York then? Or was it the other way round?
I sort of made my way across the US slowly! I grew up in NYC, my family moved to Minnesota, which is smack down in the middle of the country. I was in middle school and I lived there for a while, went to high school there, went to college and then came back and I spent about 7 years as an adult in Minneapolis, which has an amazing music scene.
Yeah I imagine! You’re talking to a Prince fan here!
I was actually lucky enough to sing on a Prince record once when I was living in Minneapolis; that was a really cool experience. Going to Paisley Park was definitely a Willy Wonka experience, going there to record, it was pretty crazy!
So then I moved to LA 3½ years ago, and I feel like I very slowly made my way from east to west, with a very long pit stop in the mid-west.
That must have been quite a culture shock then, moving from New York to the mid-west in your teens, how did you cope with that?
Oh yeah! I was like 12 / 13 moving from Manhattan. I went to a boarding school, like I said, an arts high school in Minneapolis, which was a pretty thriving big city. It’s not New York obviously, but it’s a really cool place to live. But before that, where we actually moved was where we had family, which was in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Minnesota, so I moved directly from the uppermost side of Manhattan to the middle of nowhere, and that was really rough.
But I think it's good, because I’ve lived in so many different types of places; at this point I feel like I can really empathise and understand a lot of different people. I’ve had a lot of shared experiences and stuff in common with a lot of different ways of life and backgrounds, so I think it's helped me, as a human being. Honestly, just to have a greater empathy, but also as a songwriter, cos I have a pretty wide breadth of experience. I think it’s ultimately good; I wouldn’t live in a small town again but I took some good things from it.
How is it living in LA now and trying to get on in the music business there?
I love LA; just as a place to live it's amazing. I mean, it's currently 65 F and sunny. The weather’s amazing, I am a huge nature buff, and I love to go out and shoot [photographs]. I shoot 35mm film, so it's like a dream living in southern California. The natural surroundings are pretty amazing; you have mountains and ocean and desert and forests and pretty much everything you could ever want in that regard. LA is obviously an amazing thriving metropolis when we are not shut down for a pandemic, so it’s a pretty cool city to live in.
As far as the music industry goes, if you wanted to look for reasons to be bummed out about the music industry there’s never a shortage of those anywhere, especially here. Now that I'm older than when I started – I've just found my own path and found my people and found people who I think are really good at heart; genuine people, who I just enjoy working with and enjoy making music with. Those people aren’t necessarily the same people who are the right ones to network with if you were trying to go about it in a really calculated way, but I’ve prioritised at this point in my life and career making music I’m proud of, with people I really like, respect and trust. I am not seeking out shaking the right hand or being in the right room in that way anymore, just because I’ve spent years and years in this industry doing that and its soul sucking.
How do you find it being a female in the music business, because there's no getting around the fact it is still very patriarchal.
Yeah, it’s a microcosm of patriarchal society, so it just mirrors all the same things you’re gonna find in any business. But the thing about the music business, not so much right now cos there aren’t shows and stuff happening, but a lot of it happens in bars and clubs, that are after hours, when people have been drinking and stuff like that – that just sort of shines a brighter light on all the problems that probably exist in any industry. If you had all of your business meetings for any type of industry at a bar it would probably be a mess.
I actually wrote an essay for an online publication about this a few years ago. I think a lot of people expect, when they talk about misogyny in the music industry, they’re picturing something from a movie, or some Harvey Weinstein thing, where it’s like super egregious and very recognisable; but to me what’s been the hardest to overcome is just the stuff that’s really subtle but really pervasive. So, like getting overlooked, or not being the first point of contact or person someone would ask an opinion of, that happening over and over and over.
The example I used in the essay was that I’ve historically had an all male backing band and almost every single time we’d play a show and I didn’t have a relationship of any kind with the promoter or the booker, they would go to my guitarist or my bassist or even my drummer to settle up for the night. Or if they had any questions about our sound set up or whatever, even if I’ve been the point of contact cc’d on all the emails and I’m the first one to introduce myself, when we get to the venue like its just so typical that they’ll ask my guitarist and be like “are you ready to settle up?”
You know, I feel pretty strongly that it would be a good guess that the lead singer of a band would be the first person you’d talk to about that sort of thing - especially in my case, where it’s my product and the guys I play with live are amazing, but actually didn’t play on the records, they’re just there to make the live show come to life. I feel like if I was a man, it would be pretty obviously who to talk to.
So that’s not the kind of stuff that would make a movie, it’s not sensational, but when you deal with that day in and day out for years and years it just chips away. I think that’s the stuff that really needs to change on a fundamental level, just [the] assumption that women are an accessory to what’s really going on, and the person really making the decisions is the man. I hear a lot of people just assuming women don’t write their own music; it just boggles the mind. Some of the greatest songwriters of all time, I’m not even talking about Joni Mitchell, some of the greatest pop songwriters of all time, like Dianne Warren, Linda Perry, they are women. The people who are writing songs for people who aren’t writing their own songs; they are also women, you know? So little assumptions like that, and times where we get overlooked, it’s the accumulative effect of that that’s really exhausting.
I can completely see that; as you said, the music industry is a microcosm of real life and yes, I think all women kind of feel that don’t they? No matter what area of life it’s in; little subtle parts of life that make you think “what the hell?!”
And you’re like, “wait, am I crazy or did that just happen? Did I make that up? Am I projecting?”
Yes! And you feel like if you do say something, it’s such a small thing that you think like people are going to look at you and think you’re crazy, or think you’re bitter, or that you’re being a bitch, which is all part of the same thing isn’t it? It’s the names we get called when we speak out.
It’s frustrating, I mean I’ve noticed that men – not all, but many men – seem to have more self-awareness about their behaviour now at least. I don’t think everything has gotten necessarily all better, but I do think in the last few years they’re a little more careful or more self-aware at least about egregious stuff. I do think we have a way to go before they realise how much they’ve internalised, you know?
I agree. Now tell us more about your latest single ‘The Jump’.
Well, that’s funny, ‘cause you just asked me about the music industry and being in LA, and it's sort of about that. In short, it's about how I don’t really trust famous people. But the long version is about this question that I've had for a while, which is that I've noticed a certain level of ruthlessness or corruption in people of a certain level of fame in this industry. I sort of wondered [whether] it is a prerequisite of fame, to have that ruthlessness within you, or is it a side effect of fame? The song is just a sort of exploration of that question; it's not an answer but just an exploration of that.
But there’s also an element in the song where I'm sort of, “do I belong in this world?” Because I'm not that person, that’s not me, that’s not my heart and is there room for people like me here? Obviously I'm still making music, so I ultimately decided that YES, there has to be a place for people like me, and if not, I’ll just make one. You find yourself in an industry where you just watch the people who rise above the surface be the most ruthless people that you’ve met, and you ask “is this where I wanna be?”
Is there anywhere else that you could imagine yourself in life?
I mean not, obviously not, because I'm still here. I think I joke about this but I’m also sort of serious, if I had thought of anything else that would make me even 1/4 as fulfilled as writing songs and making music I 100% would be doing that, because this lifestyle is gruelling and exhausting. It’s a seven days a week, 365 days a year job, so it’s not like a job where you punch in and out, it's all encompassing. If I didn’t love it so much and if I didn’t feel so sure that it was my purpose, I definitely wouldn’t be doing it. The risk:reward of being a professional musician is just not worth it unless there’s just nothing else you could imagine yourself doing.
You’ve worked with quite a wide range of people within the music business, so tell us more about what you enjoy the most. The kind of gigs you enjoy doing, the kind of musicians you like working with or alongside.
The kind of gigs I like doing ... Obviously it's great when there’s a bunch of people there [in the audience], obviously that’s good. I think every tour, at least for me, has tons of people and they all know the songs and they’re really excited; then there’s a random show and nobody will show up and it’s like empty for whatever reason, and it has horrible vibes. I think that’s just the name of the game; every single show you play isn’t gonna be amazing. But I think if people are listening and engaged and excited, that’s the best. It doesn’t matter where you play or what the venue is like; the best feeling is when people are just super stoked to be there.
As far as the people I like working with, I kind of touched on that earlier, but just good people who are kind, easy to work with and creative. Obviously beyond that you have to have a shared creative vision to a certain degree at least. But for me, especially at this point in my career, it's almost more about the person than about what they’re capable of creatively, because I feel like if you really vibe with someone you’re gonna come up with something cool regardless of their skill level or their resume. It’s way more about that sort of trust and empathy for me.
Who’s been your favourite person to work with?
I mean honestly this sounds like such a political answer but everybody has different special qualities that make them who they are and make them special to work with. You know Grant who I’ve written all the tiny deaths records with so far? We just have a really good musical charisma, it just clicks really well, we’ve literally never fought in the seven years that we’ve worked together. We’re just very compatible musically, and as people.
I have a friend here who I write with, his name’s Jack, we’ve written a lot together and he and I are also very compatible but in a totally different way. He pushes me really hard to be my best song-writing self and I usually want to kill him by the end of a session because he can be so hard on me! I’ll be like “oh I think this line is really good” and he’ll be like “I think you can do better”. But I love having him as a friend and a collaborator because I know he pushes me to be my best self and I do think I’ve grown even just in the couple years I’ve been writing with him. Everyone brings something different to the table so I don’t think I could pick, that’s the great thing about collaboration; you could have all the same inspiration, use the same words, but if you’re in a room on a Zoom call or whatever with four different collaborators you’re gonna come up with four totally different songs and that’s the beauty of it I think.
So who are you listening to at the moment, who’s influencing your current music? Who are you just enjoying for the sake of it?
I actively try not to be too directly influenced by any one artist because I’m not trying to rip anyone off, but in terms of what I’m listening to just for leisure, I’ve been listening to this artist called The Japanese House, they are really good, they have Imogen Heap vibes. Caroline Polachek, she used to be in the band Chair Lift, she put out a solo record last year that is amazing called Pang; I’ve been coming back to that a lot. I really like the most recent Phoebe Bridgers record, I know she just got nominated for some Grammys yesterday. I guess a lot of women, unintentionally! I think women are just really good at music so I often go towards women writers.
What’s coming up next for tiny deaths? It’s quite a hard question I know, because we don’t know from one week to the next what we’re going to be able to do at the moment.
I think we sort of know but we know that it's nothing! It's pretty clear that until our next president gets into office, nothing is going to change here and the [coronavirus] cases are really bad here at the moment, because obviously we have a super incompetent president.
We’re pretty much in the same situation!
Yeah, ours is like yours on steroids!
We’ve got another four years yet though...
Oh.. well I empathise with that, because that’s the only thing getting me by; just knowing that it's just a couple months away! The immediate future in the US is not going anywhere or doing anything, but I am writing a bunch and I've been doing a lot of remote sessions and stuff. I’m also just trying to write songs right now with an open ended destination for them. We just put out an EP two weeks ago so it’s a little overwhelming to think about another release cycle, but I’m writing a lot.
Do you really miss live performances?
I miss them so much! I think the last time I performed was December 2019, so [it’s been] going on for a year now. I had been planning on doing some performances over this spring and summer. This is the longest I’ve ever gone without performing since I was a child, so it feels really weird. I did a couple of live stream shows, just me and my guitar, just some kind of stripped down versions of the record, and those were fine, but not even remotely in the same world as performing in a room with people.
I think a lot of performance is a collaboration between the audience and you, they contribute a lot to the energy, just the vibrancy of the room. I don’t want to just perform to a stream or a wall or whatever, so it sucks. But you know, trying to look on the bright side, this is the longest I've had just to focus on writing, to not be having to travel or play shows, to just be at home working on writing songs, so that’s cool in its own way. I’ve had episodes of creative energy throughout this time, because obviously part of it is just trying to survive and get through it, but when I have been creative it’s been pretty luxurious, because my only job right now is to write songs.
I know what you mean, I write for myself as well as being an editor, and I did nothing in March and April, nothing! I just couldn’t, it was literally just survival.
Yeah, I just took road trips just to drive somewhere and not get out of my car, a lot of that. I think it's good for us to have some time where we have to just focus on feeding ourselves and sleeping eight hours a night, you know, those sort of things. As I said, this is a really gruelling lifestyle, so having a hard reset is a good thing, even if it’s taking place under the worst possible circumstances.
So a new, improved, very well rested Tiny Deaths is going to appear as soon as lockdown is over?
In theory, yeah!
I hope we can see you in the UK some time, have you done much touring abroad?
I’ve only done one tour of the UK; that was last fall. I did a UK and Germany run last year and I loved it and I would love to come back. I honestly love the UK so much, and London felt like home to me; I was like “I could totally live here”. Being from NYC I feel like London and New York have a lot in common in a lot of different ways. I just loved it so I will definitely be back as soon as I can.
Excellent! Make sure you come over to Bristol as well, we’re not far from London.
I love Bristol! Oh my gosh, that’s where you’re based?! Okay so our first stop on the tour was a festival called Simple Things?
Ahhhh do you know what? I was there and missed you!
We played at Rough Trade in Bristol and I had so much fun. That tour was really small, it was just me and my drummer and we both fell in love with Bristol. I will not come back to the UK and not go back to Bristol, I loved it, I really loved it.