{"id":35498,"date":"2025-07-30T23:22:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T23:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/35498\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T23:22:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T23:22:07","slug":"rebecca-schiffmans-before-the-future-is-a-low-key-gem-about-careening-through-adulthood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/35498\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebecca Schiffman’s ‘Before the Future’ Is a Low-Key Gem About Careening Through Adulthood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRebecca Schiffman<\/a> is an indie-pop songwriter who\u2019s been on the scene for a couple decades already, making noise in New York in the early 2000s. But she gets deep into grown-up problems with her fantastic fourth album Before the Future. It\u2019s a sly, candid sleeper of an album, where Schiffman sets out her life like a box of snapshots, while narrating the details in her dry, matter-of-fact deadpan voice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tA native Manhattan hipster kid relocated to L.A., she sings anxious vignettes about everyday life, whether it\u2019s grief, romance, or parenting. But it all adds up to a charmer about careening through adulthood with a head full of memories that give you no peace \u2014 so your only option is to translate them into songs, to give them some place to call home.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou can hear that Schiffman learned her chops in the anti-folk scene of artists like Jeffrey Lewis or the Moldy Peaches, yet you can also hear the hushed intimacy of the Softies or the Marine Girls. She soars in the Liz Phair-like pop rush of \u201cBubble of Love,\u201d a tale of 30-something lust where she bristles with neurotic self-doubt (\u201cI thought my married friend would judge me\/But she said you\u2019re not just suited for monogamy\u201d), yet shrugs, \u201cWhen things go badly I can objectify you, like an ancient Roman sculpture in my room.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe made the album with collaborators and guest producers like Deerhoof\u2019s Chris Cohen, Perfume Genius\u2019 Tim Carr, Sasami, and Luke Temple. The pick-to-click is \u201cLittle Mr. Civility,\u201d one of the wittiest and warmest parenthood songs you\u2019ll hear this year. Schiffman sings about the constant surprises of raising a toddler son, debating Lightning McQueen with a two-year old. \u201cLet sunlight in through your long eyelashes,\u201d she sings. \u201cI wish I had long eyelashes too\/It\u2019s funny all my life I\u2019ve been seeking the obliteration of meaning\/But here you are, Little Mr. Civility.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s also \u201cRudy\u2019s Song,\u201d a tender tribute to her late dog. It\u2019s one of the many messy relationships on the album, as she recently explained to Rolling Stone. \u201cI think I just grapple a lot with certain things, like having a dog,\u201d Schiffman says. \u201cI had never had a dog before I met my husband. And then suddenly I\u2019m presented with all these ethical dilemmas, like where she\u2019s sniffing something and I\u2019m in a rush, but I can\u2019t pull her\u2014that\u2019s interrupting reading for a dog or something.\u201d That also applies to motherhood. \u201cIt\u2019s same with having a kid \u2014 \u2018uh-oh, I didn\u2019t know I was going to have to think about explaining to him that this toy belongs to someone else.\u2019 How is everybody dealing with this where I\u2019m just having an internal moral crisis \u2014 \u2018Oh my God, I am corrupting him with these things from our culture?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso a painter and jewelry artist, she brings that artisanal sensibility to her closely observed storytelling on Before the Future. The title tune is an intense 10-minute confession of bereavement, mourning a friend from her teenage years. \u201cI was super into Jawbreaker,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThe guy who \u2018Before the Future\u2019 is about \u2014 his favorite band was Jawbreaker, and he put them on a mix for me.\u201d Other punk bands like Rancid, Operation Ivy, and the Clash inspired her to start writing her own songs as a kid. \u201cI had this four-track, and I had SO much patience back then in high school,\u201d she says. Rediscovering that focus as an adult was a bit different. \u201cI had a six-month-old at home. I remember when we were first tracking, I would have to go home to breastfeed every two hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBeach Vacation\u201d is a vibrant synth-pop reflection on childhood memories of herself as a morbid little girl, gazing out at the ocean and thinking about mortality, veering into early Depeche Mode territory as she sings, \u201cWho knew that this was the most \u2018now\u2019 now would ever feel?\u201d All over Before the Future, she keeps trying to figure out her obsessive need to second-guess herself and over-analyze every move she makes \u2014 like she sings in \u201cBubble of Love,\u201d \u201cWhy do I poke at things that aren\u2019t broken?\u201d That\u2019s a fair question. But that\u2019s the only way great songs like these get written.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rebecca Schiffman is an indie-pop songwriter who\u2019s been on the scene for a couple decades already, making noise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341,26590],"class_list":["post-35498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-rebecca-schiffman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}