From Chicago
Recommended if you like Wednesday, Fiona Apple, Giant Drag
Up next European\/UK tour kicks off in May<\/p>\n
A word that Prewn, AKA Izzy Hagerup, often uses to describe her music is \u201cdissociation\u201d \u2013 the disconnected emotional state embodied by many of the Chicago-born musician\u2019s songs. It\u2019s not an impression anyone would be left with from listening to her bitter, potent take on indie-rock. Hagerup\u2019s guitar lines snake as they thrash; her balladry is grimy and expansive, steered by febrile vocals that recall mid-period Fiona Apple and the drone of the cello she played as a kid. Unexpected moments lurk, such as the shadowy slip into trip-hop on recent single Dirty Dog.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing I really value about music is that it\u2019s one of a few ways that I can really connect to emotion, even if the emotion is feeling disconnected,\u201d Hagerup says. \u201cDay to day, I\u2019m pushing those feelings away. Picking up a guitar, you could write about all the beautiful, happy things, but there\u2019s something that pulls your attention a little more sometimes \u2013 you get to release this thing you\u2019ve been holding for weeks, to really find the nucleus of the intensity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Calling from a friend\u2019s place in western Massachusetts, Hagerup is self-deprecating and wildly expressive \u2013 her first espresso has just kicked in \u2013 and occasionally talks in circles around her latest album, System. To write, she says, she has to not necessarily know what she\u2019s writing about: from opening song Easy, \u201cI was sniffing a flower but I snorted a bug\u201d is the kind of emotional trap door she sketches so well. Looking back on what the album might mean now, she sees \u201cmoments of struggle\u201d as well as bird\u2019s-eye views of the challenges of living in intentionally oppressive systems.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Prewn: System \u2013 video<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the moment, I didn\u2019t realise I was depressed \u2013 it\u2019s like watching your hair grow, you don\u2019t realise you\u2019ve gotten to a place that isn\u2019t how you like to feel,\u201d she says. \u201cI would have a lot of shame about feeling so depressed when there\u2019s so much beauty in the world. But then that\u2019s just another way to judge yourself when you\u2019re already low.\u201d<\/p>\n
The making of System sounded pretty painful: Hagerup staying up all night, forcing herself to write until some scrap of muse appeared to her. Looking back, she thinks it\u2019s a result of the \u201cimmense pressure\u201d people put themselves under in their mid-20s as they figure life out. \u201cHopefully as I\u2019m getting older and more comfortable, I can approach music from less of a desperate \u2026 \u201d she mimes wrenching something out of the ground. \u201cA lot of fear got wrapped up in it, but now it feels back to how it used to, like music is for the joy of the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hagerup came of age musically in the famed western Massachusetts scene, where she stuck around after college far longer than she had planned. Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore used to live there; J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr was a regular sight on the bike paths near where Hagerup lived.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wears his helmet!\u201d she says. \u201cI love this area so much. It\u2019s beautiful but it doesn\u2019t have enough going on to be distracting. I hadn\u2019t been in a DIY scene before I moved here. I was like, what, we just get together and make this happen on our own?! Seeing all the work that went into the community was so beautiful. It totally changed the course of my life, and it gave me a lot of courage to do music on a more serious level.\u201d Nevertheless, she moved to Los Angeles in the summer: \u201cI was like, what if I went somewhere that I could never imagine myself?\u201d<\/p>\n
Since releasing her debut, Through the Window, in 2023, Hagerup has become used to her growing fandom seeming shocked by the darkness of her music. \u201cI think the most powerful music is the most honest music,\u201d she shrugs. \u201cIf it\u2019s getting a little dark in here: well, chase that.\u201d But as much as she sings about giving in, System is full of reminders not to fear \u201cthe sound of your broken, beating, dripping, heaving heart\u201d, as she sings on Don\u2019t Be Scared.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s another thing I really value about music,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you\u2019re not going deep into the dark side, I don\u2019t know how you can go deep into the light side.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From ChicagoRecommended if you like Wednesday, Fiona Apple, Giant DragUp next European\/UK tour kicks off in May A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-375736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}