DIY means a lot of different things to different people. Even the participants in this space sometimes have slightly different designs. Some artists throw out the odd single; others are content playing live in their local communities. Then there’s the more traditional ideas of recording albums and playing shows both locally and beyond, which is where Oakland, CA five-piece, Feefawfum, come in.
Formed in 2012, the current guise of Feefawfum is Farley Miller (vocals/guitar), Kevin Sullivan (bass), Emma Greenbaum (Mellotron/ vocals), Kelvin Zhang (guitar) and Theo Slavin (guitar). Having released the self-titled EP in 2013, Feefawfum’s debut long-player, No Content, arrived four years later – both releases seeing the band remit a skittish array of textual post-punk, mangled with playful Deerhoof-inspired noise-rock.
By and large, the project is orchestrated by Miller, whose voice echoes with the kind of raw spirit inspired by David Byrne and Scott Walker, and on the other side of the Covid pandemic, Feefawfum have emerged from the lockdown period as a full-fledged beast with 100: their best album so far.
100 is an urgent, nerve-jangling blast of off-kilter noise, and most certainly one of DIY culture’s flagship releases of 2023. From the razor-wire riffs and crunching choruses of DKA and Appetite to the pulsating rhythm sections that underpin Plucked and Miles Away, Feefawfum whip up immediate maelstroms of noise that are designed for anything from pummelling headphone listens and road trips to a mid-afternoon set at a summer festival.
Feefawfum are an all-purpose concern, their music cutting through the same way whichever mood or environment you’re in, and on the back of 100, there is little doubt that Feefawfum’s jagged bursts of discord will be reaching wider audiences sooner rather than later.
In conjunction with our recent chat with Miller, ahead of tomorrow’s release of 100, exclusive to Sun 13, be the first to listen to the album in full below.
S13: For those out there new to the world of Feefawfum, can you tell us the history of the band?
Farley Miller: “Of course! Feefawfum started in 2012 as a duo composed of me (playing guitar and singing) and Ryan Packard, a fantastic drummer/percussionist (now based in Sweden). We were both new students in the music department at McGill University, and we bonded over a shared love of weird ‘rock’ music like Deerhoof and Hella. I later asked my friend Stéphane Diamantakiou—who I knew as a great bassist, but is also doing excellent work as a composer and bandleader—to join the band. That trio did the first, self-titled EP, and played until 2013 or 2014.
“Ryan later moved out of Canada, and we eventually coalesced into a new line-up with Zachary Scholes playing keyboards and Sebastian Balk-Forcione on drums. Zach really led an effort to build a space that could function as both a recording and rehearsal studio, which ultimately became Concrete Sound Studios. We did a single and our first full-length record (2017’s No Content) there, and Zach’s since done a lot of incredible work with projects like Kee Avil’s Crease and the Live in Concrete series.
“I left Montreal in 2017 and moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area. I spent some time working on new material on a casual basis, but it was really the spare time and end-of-days anxiety created by the COVID-19 pandemic that provided an opportunity to fully focus on taking new steps with the project. I finished most of the work on the new record, 100, during lockdown, and started to work on building up a new band once some of the residual Covid stress had dissipated. The first version of that included me on guitar and vocals, Kevin Sullivan on bass and vocals, and William Bookout on drums. Will moved abroad in 2022, and I decided to switch from guitar to drums to keep the momentum going (good drummers are hard to find and are always already in several other bands). We were lucky enough to find two incredible guitarists in Kelvin Zhang and Theo Slavin, and Emma Greenbaum joined to play Mellotron and sing. And that’s where we’re at today.”
S13: You recently played on drums for Ky’s album Power is the Pharmacy how did that collaboration come about?
FM: “Ky and I met while I was living in Montreal. I don’t remember exactly where, but probably at La Plante, which was a loft space that hosted a lot of the weird, experimental, DIY music then. Ky was playing in bands like Femmaggots and Lungbutter, as well a project called drøm før du dør with guitarist, Alex Pelchat.
“Alex and I had started a punk-ish free-improv duo called *Shining Wizard* around the same time that Feefawfum was getting up and running. We did two albums together, and then decided to start a series of collaborative double-duo records in 2015 with other artists in Montreal. We did one with Sam Shalabi and Alex St. Onge, and t/en one with Ky and James Goddard (who also plays on Power is the Pharmacy). The band with Ky and James was so much fun that we kept playing as a quartet until I moved to the Bay Area. Ky also contributed vocals on two tracks on the previous Feefawfum record, No Content.
“Like 100, Ky’s new album had its genesis in the pandemic, and the prospect of remote collaboration made a lot of sense. They asked me to record drums for a few songs on the record and couldn’t have been happier to oblige.”
S13: Can you tell us about the process behind 100?
FM: “For better or for worse, I tend to think that a core element of the ‘Feefawfum sound’ is composing a song destined for a full rock band on an unplugged electric guitar. Without volume, distortion, and other effects, I tend to want to seek out rhythmic and harmonic complexity to fill out the space. So, that’s where a lot of the initial ideas come from.
“Unlike previous Feefawfum releases, though, there was no ‘live’ band for this one. Most of the songs started as a single, tightly structured guitar part that I would then build out into a band arrangement in my DAW. This provided me with a lot of freedom to experiment, and I spent a lot of time focusing on small details and effects the way that a sound designer might. Doing things this way also gave me a lot of freedom to write vocal parts without an instrument in my hand, which was a new experience on this record. Re-learning everything after it was complete was a challenge, but I feel that my coordination and independence benefited a lot from working this way.”
S13: You teamed up with Ian Pellicci who mixed 100. Had you worked with him before?
FM: “Ian is a dear friend who I met while playing guitar in a band called Eternal Drag (a band led by Logan Kroeber, the drummer from The Dodos. It was the first musical project that I got involved in after moving back to the Bay Area, and Ian was playing bass in it when I joined). Ian and his brother Jay run a recording studio in Oakland called Brothers (Chinese) Recording. They had worked on records that were formative for me (especially Deerhoof’s Friend Opportunity), so I knew that I wanted to ask Ian to mix 100 early in the process. It was an ear-opening experience for me to hear what a talented mix engineer could do with the same raw files. His mixes were so much better than mine!”
Feefawfum - 100S13: A lot of the record is centred around your type 1 diabetes. Did you find it difficult being so open about your health through your songs?
FM: “Yes and no. I was diagnosed with diabetes as a kid in the late ’90s, and I feel like my primary concern then was to make it as invisible to others as possible. I’m not exactly sure why, but I found it hard to want to bond with other diabetics, to centre diabetes as part of an identity. I have one great diabetic friend from those days—shoutout to Ian!—but that’s it.
“Something changed in my late twenties. On the one hand, I think it was a realisation that one of the best ways to take care of myself was to be open with my friends about what was going on, so that they could help out if needed. On the other hand, I think it started to become more obvious to me that everybody has some shit that I don’t know anything about that they’re dealing with. And at the end of the day, I just think that shit is more common than not-shit. So, while the specifics of life with diabetes were not necessarily shared, it was a way to bond with other people over the struggles that we all work through. That for sure has made me feel more comfortable taking the first steps in writing about my health.
“So, on 100, it’s not so much a detailed recounting of my own day-to-day struggles as it is a way to connect diabetes to other, shared experiences: anger, helplessness, abandonment, and so on (and for sure I should try writing a cheerful song sometime). I hope those stories on the album resonate, especially with people who don’t know anything about the condition.”
S13: National health care is also a big talking point for many countries around the world. If it’s anything like here in the U.K. I’m guessing the U.S. health system is just as broken. What’s your take on it?
FM: “I can only speak from my own experience, but in comparison to the US’s weird public-private patchwork of a healthcare system, countries with properly nationalised programs seem to be doing a better job of keeping costs down. I’d like us over here in the US to lean into this. Medicare For All is the most obvious starting place, and positioning the government as the major purchaser of healthcare services would be great for curtailing spiralling medical bills. And, personally, I would like to go further. We’re good at publicly funding medical research, which is then often used by pharmaceutical companies to develop treatments that are sold back to us at extraordinary premiums. I think we should publicly fund both research and production, with the view that all facets of health care are an integral part of a resilient national infrastructure. And all of that research should be freely available so that other nations can benefit from it, too. American IP law is insane (which is actually what Evergreen is referencing), and I think we all learned from the pandemic that personal health is inextricably linked to public health.”
S13: Onto the album, and it gets off to such a great start with DKA and Appetite – both such rollicking numbers. At the time of writing both tracks, did you think instantly, ‘we’re leading with these’?
FM: “I’ve really come to love that one-two punch at the opening of the record, but it wasn’t immediately obvious to me that it should be that way. Throughout the writing and recording process I did feel confident that DKA should be the opening track; I like the jarring contrast between the quiet opening guitar melody and the verse, and of course the song’s themes are central to the record as a whole (DKA being short for diabetic ketoacidosis). But, after I had demos for each track, I spent some time listening to the group of songs in a playlist on shuffle. It’s nice to be able to hear those transitions from one song to another happen randomly, to maybe try sequencing things in a way that may not have seemed immediately intuitive. When I heard Appetite follow DKA I knew it had to be that way on the record. DKA is in E and Appetite is in A, and I think there’s a part of my brain that really enjoys hearing one song resolve into the next harmonically.”
S13: With songs like Evergreen and So Capable there feels like a real fresh approach to your songwriting; for me, it stems from this new band. When you were writing these songs, was assembling a new band in your mind?
FM: For me this question is drawing out an important distinction between a band with two guitarists and a record with two guitars. When I was working on this record, I imagined a band with two guitarists. But, since I played both guitar parts in each song, the record only has one guitarist. In many places, I think that leads to a situation where there are two parts that are ultimately too similar and share too much of the same sensibility. I think that the best parts of Evergreen and So Capable (for me: the instrumental middle section of the former, and the verse of the latter) have better arrangements, so the two guitar parts are more independent and don’t compete for the same space in the mix. Kelvin and Theo are both very good at working on complimentary guitar parts together, and I’m excited to hear what they come up with on the next record.
“Also, as a side note, both of these songs have harmonised guitar solos. The sound of two distorted guitars playing harmonised, single-note lines is one of my favourite things in all of music. It is so preposterously silly (thank you, heavy metal!) and is still so, so cool. The Fucking Champs are one of my favourite bands that does this. I absolutely adore them.”
S13: And speaking of, Emma Greenbaum’s addition really takes these songs into exciting places, for me. Had you known Emma before approaching her to be in the band?
FM: “Emma and I met ages ago when we were at the same school in Washington, DC. She’s a fantastic singer with a great ear and has performed in front of way bigger crowds than any of the rest of us. We reconnected when she moved out to the Bay Area for work, and it’s been awesome collaborating with her on this project. I’m usually pushing her to make her voice sound ‘worse’, and she’s pushing me to write songs that do a better job of inviting people in to all of the weird stuff.”
S13: Over the years, what would you say are the key ideas behind your approach to making art?
FM: “Have fun and don’t take yourself too seriously. The stakes could not be lower.”
S13: You’ve lived in Oakland for a while now. Do you think your surroundings played a role into how 100 sounds?
FM: “I’m actually fairly new to Oakland. I was living a few miles to the north in a small town called Kensington from 2017 until April of this year. 100 was recorded during the pandemic, and I think being stuck inside for so long had a profound impact on its sound. I mean, this record was the pressure release; it was how I kept my sanity (mostly) intact. One day I was working on the instrumental breakdown in Plucked, which has these Deftones-y layers of screamed vocals in the background. I had my headphones on while I was doing the vocal tracks, and when I took them off, I heard somebody around the block screaming, ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ I thought I must have really gotten carried away and pissed them off, but then I realised it was 7pm when everybody was doing their pandemic primal scream therapy. So, I think some of the sounds and arrangements on the record were just part of the ambient, emotional texture then.
“That said, the experience did make me cognisant of volume and bothering my neighbours and all of that. So, I wound up recording almost everything for the album DI, aside from vocals. Guitars, bass, and keyboards were all direct in, and the drums, too—they’re actually from an electronic kit. Maybe that, more than anything, shaped the sound of the record.”
S13: You’ve got some shows coming up around the West Coast. Is there any plans to tour over in Europe and the U.K. anytime soon?
FM: “A Europe/UK tour is at the very top of things we’d love to do. The UK has had a ton of incredible, off-beat rock music since forever, and folks there like Marina from The Other Rock Show have been early supporters of our new music. But, we’re a pretty DIY operation and don’t know where to start with it yet. If anybody on the other side of the pond is excited about what we’re doing, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!”
100 is out now. Purchase from Bandcamp.
