Cherry Glazerr: "I was in a bad, toxic relationship, for both parties. This album deals a lot with me trying to find my voice again"

Clem Creevy  is trying to remember the name of a song that caught her attention earlier. Sitting in the backstage green room at Whelan’s, the frontwoman and founder of Los Angeles rock outfit Cherry Glazerr quickly bolts through the door to her bandmates in another room. “You guys!” she exclaims. “What’s that song we were listening to this morning?”

An inaudible response comes from outside. “No, not Tate McRae! It’s Irish,” she implores. “It was on the radio in the car earlier, and you were like ‘Oh! That’s a great song. We should play it live sometime.’ What was it?”

Another muffled reply.

“That’s the one!” the singer proclaims, before sprinting back into the room, “‘Haunted’ by The Pogues!”

I’ve only been with Creevy for about five minutes and already it feels like talking to an old friend: disarmingly giddy, chatty and nonchalant. She grabs a Peroni from the fridge and pops the cap off the side of a blue-green table, the veneer eroded to near splinters from broken bottle caps past. I ask how she feels kicking off a European tour in Dublin tonight.

“I’m so excited. We’re going to a lot of cool and exciting places,” she laughs. “I love being on tour here, especially during the summer. The band and I get to have our European Hot Girl Summer! Of course, our summer doesn’t look anything like that in reality. It’s mostly a lot of green rooms with fluorescent lighting, but I’m so pumped for the shows.”

TOXIC RELATIONSHIP

Cherry Glazerr landed in town last night. How did the band spend their day in Dublin?

“My uncle is actually from here and his friend put us up in this amazing Georgian house. However, the toilet wasn’t working,” she laughs. “So I ran around Dublin this morning desperately trying to find a toilet. I finally found one and my bandmates met me there asking to go to lunch. I looked so messy in my sweatpants and shoes with no socks, but that’s kind of the spirit of touring. I’m rolling with the punches.

“We stopped by Trinity College to see the library and then we went for lunch nearby. I had bacon and cabbage, which I absolutely loved. Afterwards, we visited the Phil Lynott statue. Thin Lizzy rock. I love them so much.”  With a clear affinity with Ireland and Irish audiences, Creevy recalls her past Dublin shows with warmth.

The last time she played here was five years ago, on a tour promoting her third album Stuffed And Ready.

“We played Whelan’s in 2019 and loved it so much. It’s such a legendary venue,” she smiles. “The band and I stayed at Marina Guinness’ house, which is just outside Dublin. It was a beautiful place with endless green pastures. I remember spending time in this gorgeous smoking room, with stars painted on the ceiling, where you can light up and play chess. It was a dream. Ireland is so lovely.”

The pandemic of the following year forced Creevy to recalibrate the Cherry Glazerr trajectory. With the newfound downtime, she searched for ways to grow her artistry with a horde of new ideas and experiences to sort through.

“The same goes for a lot of people, but the pandemic offered me a period of introspection to work through my problems,” she offers. “I was touring nonstop up until 2020. The shutdown forced me to stop and re-evaluate everything. I got out of a relationship – and that really opened me up to a better life.”

In September last year, she released her fourth studio album, I Don’t Want You Anymore. Boasting some of her most personal, raw music to date, the songs elaborate on this period of self-reckoning. It’s the first album she produced since Cherry Glazerr’s debut, Haxel Princess, which she dropped as a teenager nearly a decade ago.

“I Don’t Want You Anymore is very much about returning to my roots after a period of losing myself,”  she remarks. “I was in a bad, toxic relationship, for both parties, which I came out of a few years ago. As a result, this album deals a lot with me trying to find my voice again.”

FRANKENSTEIN STYLE

The sonic direction Creevy chose for I Don’t Want You Anymore reflects a reluctance to settle on a defined sound. The driver’s seat proved far more comfortable than the passenger’s, allowing her to explore different routes at will. The change of course was vital, following years of listening to others and feeling restrained as an artist.

“I’ve always been a bit genre-less and this album definitely keeps that up,” the singer explains. “I had a lot of creative control after a long time of having little say in the studio.  “I wanted this record to have an exploratory flow, rather than the factory-line rock song after rock song vibe. Each song occupies its own world, and makes its own unique statement.”

Cherry Glazerr photo credit Maddy Rotman

Creevy tapped a fleet of producers and artists to help facilitate her exploration. LA polymath and producer Yves Rothman (Yves Tumor, Kim Gordon, girl in red) was instrumental to the process, helping the singer till the soundscape herself.

“Yves really listened to me and helped me fulfil the vision of coming back to myself and getting my voice exactly how I wanted it,” she recalls. “I love Yves so much, I couldn’t have asked for a better person to make this record with.”

In trying to perfect her vision, the album went through a number of phases and many of its songs involved a plethora of demos. Creevy started writing one of the album standouts, ‘Golden,’ with Kieran Hebden, the electronic maestro also known as Four Tet.

“I felt super-lucky to collaborate with him. I’m such a huge fan of his stuff,” she imparts. “We’d often work together over Facetime, because he lives in the middle of nowhere among the mountains. Whenever I call him, he answers and I’ll see a waterfall just casually cascading behind him. It feels very appropriate that he’s making music there.

“Kieran helped me start that song and then I took it to another producer – and then another producer helped me finish it,” she adds. “Then Sami Perez, my bassist, helped me record the vocals. It went through a lot of different changes. ‘Golden’ had a very Frankenstein style of songwriting, in that way.”

With the guidance of top level professionals, Creevy remarks that she felt unfettered by creative restraints. That autonomy helped her sift through emotional turmoil and land back on her feet.

“I’ve grown a lot and I think this album is more mature as a result,” says Creevy. “I Don’t Want You Anymore doesn’t have a lot of anger, it’s more reflective and mature. It’s about me looking at my relationship from afar and laying those feelings out in a more assertive, patient and accurate way.  “I laid everything out on the table and tried to be honest with how the past few years have been. This album helped me tap into something totally new and I feel very proud of it.”

• Cherry Glazerr’s I Don’t Want You Anymore album is out now