The Timeline-Altering Shoegaze of Total Wife
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Photo by Sean Booz
Shopping for vintage clothes is a hobby that I treat more like a sport. Whenever I find myself researching the best places to find garments of the past, I feel like a star quarterback studying game tape. It’s both about the thrill of the hunt and that feeling of discovering a diamond in the rough that’s been repeatedly passed over by onlookers who didn’t realize what they were missing.
Today, shoegaze bands are a lot like going vintage shopping. There are so many different iterations and variations of homogeneous items from the past, but by being patient and dedicated, you will come across that timeless piece if you know exactly where to look. Insert the band Total Wife.
The Nashville experimental shoegaze duo is centered around the creative partnership between Luna Kupper and Ash Richter, though when they play live, their ranks expand to include a bassist, a second guitarist, and a drummer. The group is signed to Julia’s War Recordings, the Philadelphia-based record label founded by Doug Dulgarian of They Are Gutting a Body of Water, which is pushing the genre forward with some of the most exciting music in the underground from Her New Knife, Joyer, Bedridden, and now Total Wife. What makes Total Wife an unmistakable hit is their fearlessness. Both Kupper and Richter create art that feels like it could only have come from them and them alone. Their new record, come back down, has a DIY aesthetic both musically and visually that feels fresh, exciting, and unique to everything else that’s out there today.
Total Wife craft songs that would not only fit in on the radio in 1991, but also feel future-proofed for 3001. Let’s start at that first extreme with tracks like “peaches” and “second spring,” which are good enough to make any My Bloody Valentine devotee blush with excitement. It’s a wet dream for any fans of that style of music; both Kupper and Richter are true students of the game, as evidenced by the way they’re able to slather on countless waves of distorted guitar tones that mend and mold depending on the mood of each song. There’s a sharpness and respect to their craft in how they are able to achieve such a specific sound while also molding their guitar tones into their own entity. It’s an impressive feat considering a shit ton (for the record, I consider a “shit ton” to be the unofficial highest measure of the metric system) of bands that are currently trying to achieve the same sound.
Elsewhere on the same record, we get a taste of what I imagine music will sound like eighty years from now. Songs like “ofersi3” and “internetsupermagazine” are sharp left turns into a combination of breakbeats, hyperpop, and hard techno that inspire Jersey Shore-levels of fist pumping where the speed gets turned up to infinity. The decision to veer into this type of rapid-fire sub-genre expedition feels so fresh, vital, and needed in today’s shoegaze landscape. The result is something I imagine people might listen to while flying to work on their jetpack.
I love it when bands try to test the limits of what musical lengths they can achieve. Total Wife’s reverence for the past while creating music that feels so future-forward makes them one of the most exciting projects I have heard all year. The most exciting part is that the music on come back down has constructed an endless number of doors, each offering different possibilities of where the band could take their sonic excursions next.
I got to chat with Total Wife over Zoom, where we talked about Halloween costumes, first-ever concert experiences, and a sado-masochistic moment on stage in Pittsburgh that potentially left a fan lost in another dimension.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length
SWIM: You just finished touring for your latest record. How did it go?
LUNA: Yeah, it was really fun! All the shows were fun, we love our friends, and there were some really late drives this time, but we made it out. We were doing a lot of late-night driving.
SWIM: Do you have any fun playlists to keep you going when you’re driving at night?
ASH: It’s up to the driver. Whoever’s driving gets to choose.
LUNA: It gets a little manic at times. I feel like it’ll get into nightcore remixes and shit to keep us wired.
SWIM: I read a lot of Stephen King, so whenever I hear the word “manic,” I’m instantly brought back to his work for whatever reason, which leads me to my next question: Are you all excited for Halloween this year?
LUNA: Yeah! We usually have some kind of Halloween show plans, but we don’t this time. There’s one like a couple of days after, but yeah, we have to figure it out. We were The Matrix last year, and that was great.
SWIM: Was anyone Neo or Trinity?
LUNA: We were more vague characters within the Matrix universe. Our own Matrix characters.
SWIM: Do you guys remember your first Halloween costume?
ASH: The first one that I remember was when I did The Wizard of Oz with my family. I was the Scarecrow.
LUNA: I was a pile of leaves. That’s like my first memory. Being a pile of leaves, just a suit with a bunch of leaves attached to me. [laughs]
SWIM: What was your first-ever concert memory?
ASH: I saw Van Halen in 2007 with my dad for my birthday.
LUNA: My first show was in 2012, and I saw Connor Oberst at Carnegie Hall, which is a crazy first.
SWIM: Both of you have crazy fun first shows. Do you remember the first show you guys saw together?
ASH: That’s a good question. I feel like it was the Flaming Lips. We’ve known each other for a really long time. But yeah, they were on tour with Tame Impala in 2013, I think, and The Flaming Lips were opening, so that was cool.
Photo by Sean Booz
SWIM: I really love the guitar textures on come back down, they sound so lush and beautiful. Is that a style you guys developed over time, or is there a particular era of music that you were influenced by to achieve that type of sound?
LUNA: We’ve always made dense, layered stuff, usually with guitars and synths. The guitar just became more natural and sounded more organic. Just adding more and more guitar layer textures until it was only that. I think it comes from listening to a lot of nineties music and early 2000s stuff over time.
SWIM: I get a little My Bloody Valentine type of vibes, Loveless, which is my type of stuff. It was done so expertly, in my opinion.
I was watching an interview with Pete Davidson, and he was talking about how Adam Sandler is seven years ahead of everyone in fashion, and I thought it was really funny yet accurate. So, to bring it back to you both, I was listening to “ofersi3,” which sounds like it’s a hundred years ahead of where everyone else is right now. When I imagine what people in the year 3000 will be listening to, it’s exactly that. How did you come up with that song?
LUNA: [Laughs] Thank you. The whole first half is just a couple classic breaks that I distorted to create different notes. It’s not any crazy processing other than chopping audio files super tiny to make them tonal. Over time in the song, each beat gets fragmented further and further until they’re tonal and then end up creating different sounds. Those sounds then get chopped up for the second half and mixed in with some of the vocal samples taken from an old Elliot Smith cover that we never finished.
SWIM: Was this a time-consuming process to create, or did it come fairly quickly to you?
LUNA: It was pretty fast. It kind of had to happen all at once because of this one unfolding thought, and I felt like I had to see where it went in that moment or else it wouldn’t be true to itself.
SWIM: Both of your styles are so unique. Did that develop over time? Were you always outgoing and willing to express yourself, or did it mature over time?
ASH: I think it was always pretty unique. When we were younger, we were just trying really hard to be weird at the cost of something listenable.
I think being daring and bold has kind of always been in our repertoire of songwriting.
LUNA: Yeah, but it feels like recently, with this album, and maybe for a couple of years, it felt like enough time had passed that we’ve been doing this, so as long as we stay true to ourselves, whatever we do would sound different. Also, not trying to sound like anyone else. For a while, you’re just inspired by other musicians and trying to learn how to sound like your favorite bands until you have your own mix of whatever you’re trying to do.
SWIM: Did it take a while for you to find your own voice, or was it a quick process?
ASH: I think we always were doing something that was our own voice, but our influences were just so solidly there. I felt like we had to learn how to write songs first before we could sound like ourselves. We’ve been focusing more on the songwriting and structure, then adding all the personality to something that’s already true to classic songwriting.
SWIM: When you’re on stage, do you feel you’re able to get your personality across to the fans while performing? Do you feel you’re able to be your true, unfiltered self up there, or does it help to get in the mindset of a different character, similar to an actor?
LUNA: I’m curious to see what your response is going to be. [laughing while talking to Ash]
ASH: I try to lock into the songs themselves in my performance and really think about what I’m saying, ‘cause the majority of what I do on stage is just singing. Then I have like a few samples I play as well, which are leads.
So, to give my best performance, I usually focus really hard on how I felt when I wrote the words to the songs and try to embody the truest version of that me.
LUNA: I had to learn how to be fully comfortable and myself on stage, ‘cause at first, I was pretty nervous about that stuff. We’ve been recording in a studio for so long, so I had to be the calmest version of myself, which at first was impossible, but I figured it out. So yeah, I feel comfortable with it.
SWIM: I have to ask about a recent show in Pittsburgh where you played an over twenty-minute extended noise jam at the end of the song “make it last.” I read an article Eli Enis wrote, which, I have to quote him here, saying that this instance “felt like a sado-masochistic ritual” and potentially left a 19-year-old man named Carl in another dimension after what he had just witnessed. Can you please describe whether this usually happens during your shows, or was this a one-off kind of thing?
LUNA: Yeah, we always do that. [laughs]
ASH: It’s not necessarily supposed to be sado-masochistic. [laughs]
LUNA: It’s funny to see everyone’s different reaction to that. It’s a thing that happens, and the audience gets to experience it however they want.
ASH: The truth is that we’ve done it in so many different ways, and everybody has a completely different reaction to it. We’ve done it differently in different places, and sometimes it feels like that, I guess.
LUNA: It’s interesting ‘cause people will, I find it either very aggressive or very soothing, which, I think, we’re trying to go for soothing. It’s something I want to exist only in the time it exists, so it’s hard to talk about, but, yeah, it’s definitely supposed to create a oneness with everyone there. I hope it is meditative for some people, you know?
SWIM: Do you have a favorite part of touring?
ASH: Honestly, getting to perform every night is my favorite part. Whenever we have a night off, I’m relieved in part, but also a little bummed. I really enjoy the experience where we’re basically just playing all these local bills with people who are active in their own scene. That is really cool to see how other scenes function because we’re so used to Nashville at this point. Yeah, it’s cool to be inspired by the different ways every scene uplifts itself and try to bring that home.
SWIM: Do you guys like to explore the cities you visit on off days?
ASH: Yeah. Sean, who plays drums in Total Wife, he’ll usually look up something on Atlas Obscura on an off day, and we’ll go to a cool cemetery or something.
LUNA: It’ll just show you oddities in whatever city you’re in. Just like weird, strange things that you can usually find for free, stuff that you wouldn’t find on Google or Apple Maps if you typed in ‘local attractions.’
I obviously love the music part of tour, but didn’t realize that touring so much meant that you’re just traveling all the time, which is really good for my brain in a way that I didn’t expect. The way it removes you from the cycle of your everyday life puts you outside of your head for a second, and then you can come back into it. It really does something crazy to my brain that I need. The road can definitely be soothing for different people, like just to travel and whatnot.
SWIM: You both have created a really distinct visual aesthetic —from the album cover art to the music videos —is that a collaborative effort between you two?
ASH: I feel like we just have been making a lot of stuff for many years. For example, need-based flyers for shows. Art for promotion and stuff like that. When I was younger, I kind of overthought making art, and I thought if I’m not some classically trained artist, then what’s the point of making anything? But basically, I started using collage when I couldn’t draw what I wanted. I just had all these conceptual ideas and collages that really lend themselves well—combining concepts and just mashing up imagery together.
A lot of the art is collaborative; we kind of just pass it back and forth.
LUNA: Yeah. It’s a lot of passing back and forth with that stuff, or just making art alongside each other. Just snap reactions to this will be cool; that’ll be cool for that. Also, kind of accumulating different ideas and collages over the years, like Ash said. This project has always been both musical and visual. I think all of our output is just put into Total Wife.
SWIM: How fulfilling is it to tag-team visual mediums, stuff other than music, together?
ASH: Oh, yeah. It feels impossible to imagine not working together. Just because of how long it’s been, it’s such a long, growing process where we’ve worked through a lot of artistic disputes and refined the art we make, using each other as a sounding board.
SWIM: Do you feel you operate creatively differently now than when you first met?
LUNA: Totally. We were just trying to work out how we wanted to make stuff and had no end goal. We still kind of don’t, but it’s much easier to finish things now.
ASH: I feel like we’re much more sure when we’re giving our opinions. We used to know what we didn’t want versus what we did. That helped because it helped us refine ourselves, but it took a while to sort out what exactly felt like us.
Neither of us started with any music theory knowledge or any real background in songwriting. I was in and out of bands, but I never learned to play guitar until last year.
SWIM: Has your songwriting become easier for you now than it was 12 years ago?
ASH: Definitely, yeah. It really started with recording just to have recordings, make songs, and have sounds. And then we were slowly making songs, which was kind of the reverse.
Photo by Sean Booz
SWIM: What do you all have planned for the rest of the year?
LUNA: We just have one more show planned. We’re doing so much touring and the album rollout. We’re both really excited to get back in the studio.
ASH: Yeah, so we’re just taking a little break from shows.
LUNA: We have a bunch of songs written, and the next album has about like ten Pro Tools projects for new songs. That’s been in the sitting stage for so long because this was the first time we decided to do anything with the release other than just upload it the second we had the masters.
SWIM: Is there gonna be a tonal shift with your next project?
LUNA: Honestly, not really. I would like to hear what people think, because in my mind, a lot of these songs could have been on this most recent album.
Starting an album while the other one is being finished means each new record half sounds like the last one. So I think that’ll probably be the case with this one. It’ll be like half of the ideas I wanted to finish up on the last thing, half new stuff, and further trying to mesh everything and sound less disjointed.
SWIM: Is there anything else you all wanna talk about or bring up before we sign off?
LUNA: Nashville is awesome. There are a lot of cool bands here, and I'm just always trying to rep that. There are a lot of weird and fun bands out here, a lot of cool music that you wouldn’t expect.
SWIM: Who are some bands people should know about from Nashville?
LUNA: The members of our band all have their own projects. Celltower and Make Yourself at Home. I play in another band called Melaina Kol. There’s just all these great bands. Sour Tooth, they’re amazing.
SWIM: With you both living in Nashville, have either of you seen Haley Williams walking around?
LUNA: Yeah. She comes to the bagel shop I work at.
SWIM: Oh, no way.
ASH: I wanna meet her so bad.
LUNA: She’s sweet, actually, which is nice to know. She’s a sweetheart. Thank goodness.
SWIM: Thank you again for taking the time. I really appreciate it, and I hope you both have a wonderful day.
Luna and Ash in unison: Thank you! You too!
David is a content mercenary based in Chicago. He’s also a freelance writer specializing in music, movies, and culture. His hidden talents are his mid-range jump shot and the ability to always be able to tell when someone is uncomfortable at a party. You can find him scrolling away on Instagram @davidmwill89, Twitter @Cobretti24, or Medium @davidmwms.
