The Regrettes

Photos and words by Emma Sophia Valles

The Regrettes are frontwoman Lydia Night, guitarist Genessa Gariano, bassist Brooke Dickson, and drummer Drew Thomsen. From appearing on talk shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, to entertaining thousands at festivals like Coachella, the group has enjoyed critical and commercial success over the past few years. For good reason; their 2017 freshman LP Feel Your Feelings Fool! sports an 82/100 on MetaCritic (a score that qualifies as “universal acclaim”), and from July to December of this year, they’ve booked 63 dates in 14 countries. We got to sit down with them and discuss touring and their upcoming album: How Do You Love?

So, I heard the new album, How Do You Love? this morning! It's really really good.

Lydia: Really!? Thank you!

When is it set to drop?

Lydia: August 9th.

In what ways would you say this album is different from previous ones?

Genessa: It’s more mature.

Lydia: I agree, it’s a lot more mature both lyrically and musically. The themes are more mature, but how I construct them hasn’t changed that much. But I mean, the music itself… let’s just say we tried out a lot more.

Genessa: Yeah.

Drew: A lot more.

Lydia: We definitely had more fun with it.

Genessa: Recording the first album, we stuck to drums, bass, and guitar.

Lydia: Super simple.

Genessa: This album, we added a few things. Feel Your Feelings Fool! was like the base of all this. Now, we have our eyes set on this new record.

Lydia: And it’s a concept. How Do You Love? is a concept.

Lydia, do you write all of it? Or is it a group effort?

Lydia: No, not at all. I mean, there’s a lot that I’ve written alone, but this album definitely was more of a collaboration which was so fun. It was our first time making an album with Drew, which was awesome. I wrote with Drew, we all wrote together, we wrote with Mike, our producer, a little bit, and then I wrote some songs just with him. Also, sometimes I just wrote alone in my room and brought to the rest of the band. So it’s kind of it’s a whole mishmash of different writing styles and themes; with a lot of hard work, it all came together.

Drew, how was that experience for you, both coming on this album and writing?

Drew: It was really cool! I toured withthem not a lot, but enough—before recording it. Touring and signing these vinyl’s and everything shocked me a bit; at first, I was like: “Oh, you want me to sign this?” It felt like I was part of the family even before I stepped in the booth, but having a record where I played on the whole thing? Like, it’s me playing it? That feels pretty good.

Genessa: You’re locked in. We put a ring on it.

Lydia: Yeah, we put a ring on it. We locked him down. This album definitely was more of a collaboration which was so fun.

And so for this album, is it a narrative you're trying to tell? Through your eyes or someone else's eyes?

Lydia: I wouldn’t say it’s through my eyes specifically, but it definitely is inspired by my personal experiences. I took a lot of different stories that I had and used them to build this one story that made the most sense from this one character’s perspective. All of the details stem from personal experience, just more exaggerated so that they could fit together and convey a story that makes sense to other people. So, it’s like a cautionary tale.

Hearing the album all the way through, it sounds like a temporary relationship. Is that what you were aiming for?

Lydia: Kinda. Now I think most relationships are temporary unless you’re dying together. But, I do feel like it was a temporary relationship story.

I noticed it because of "More Than a Month".

Lydia: Yes! Yes.

Could you describe what you were intending in terms of creating a narrative with this new record?

Lydia: Well, I think that the tracklist is key—the whole thing is pieced together meticulously and it’s meant to be listened to from start to finish. We created this poem that’s in the beginning, that’s the best way we could set it up for that. It tells all the listeners like, pay attention, we’re about to tell you a story. Get ready and listen. “How Do You Love?” is the conclusion of all of it.

This single you guys dropped, "I Dare You", what was the inspiration behind the music video for that? There was a part where it was filmed horizontally but it looks as if you're going up.

Lydia: Yeah, we wanted to create a visual to show you this other world: a visual representation of what it feels like falling in love with someone and the kind of insane aspect to it. You turn into a little bit of a crazy person. But, it’s also so beautiful. The whole album is based on the idea of love as a lovely disease: the visual to falling into it, being infected, and infecting other people around you. It really does feel like a fantasy world when you’re falling in love with someone. So we wanted to create this video so that when people are listening to the album, they can put themselves in that world.

And for the tour, would you guys be implementing all of these visual ideas into the shows?

Lydia: Yes, and we are so excited.

You're doing two legs, right? The one now and then one in the fall right?

Lydia: Yes, the one now is definitely less extreme because the album’s not out. We don’t give too much away. Our fall tour is our album tour, so that’ll definitely be a more complete experience.

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