Tune Glue 022: Maria BC

An interview with the American songwriter about their relationship with singing, the expectations of performing live, and their new album 'Spike Field'

Maria BC

Photos by Tamara Suarez Porras

Maria BC is an Oakland-based singer-songwriter who has released two full-length albums, 2022’s Hyaline and 2023’s Spike Field. A classically trained vocalist, BC has spent their career finding ways to utilize the most of their two-octave vocal range, crafting intimate works that unfold patiently, hovering in a zone between Grouper and Carissa’s Wierd. Spike Field was released this past October by Sacred Bones and saw BC bringing on a new collaborator in ODAE, who mixed the record and co-produced a few of its tracks, granting the album a wider emotional and musical range than previously explored. Joshua Minsoo Kim talked with BC on September 12th, 2023 via Zoom to discuss their move to California, the difference between writing songs on guitar and piano, the standards of musical ecstasy set by childhood religious experiences, and their newest album.

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Joshua Minsoo Kim: I wanted to ask you a question about the idea of singing. What do you feel like singing has taught you about yourself? Is there anything you would not have learned if you weren’t a singer?

Maria BC: Wow, I love that question so much. I’ve never been asked that. I’ll start by saying that with pretty much everything in music and everything I do, I’m not good at it in a traditional sense—I’ve never had any discipline or technical practice. Singing is the one exception to that. I did grow up taking voice lessons and being taught in a very regimented, prescriptive way how to do it correctly. I over-practiced a lot and ended up damaging my voice for a long time. It’s been several years between my last vocal lesson and now, and I’ve kind of re-taught myself how to sing in a completely different way with the ultimate goal being, how can I do this in a sustainable way?

I think anyone who sings routinely and with the long-term in mind will tell you that the ultimate goal is to figure out how you can sing in a way that feels like nothing. And it takes a lot of effort and strain to get to the point where you can figure out what that feels like for you. All of this is to say, it’s definitely taught me the value of hard work, and it’s also taught me the value of trusting my own instincts, my own judgment, and my own understanding of my own body. Because, with routine classes and having a teacher who’s putting his hands on my body… even though it definitely helped lay the groundwork for understanding how my voice worked, I ultimately had to take time to myself to really think about, like, what is freeing for me? I think that works as a metaphor for a lot of things.

There’s so much there that I want to ask about. Could you tell me about your teacher? What kind of person were they?

He was honestly a cultish figure. I grew up in Ohio, and there were really only a few voice teachers that people knew about if they were in singing competitions or singing with professional aspirations. He was one of those guys, and he had a lot of students. I felt that he really encouraged me to pursue the material that was exciting to me. But I do think he was also just overrun with a lot of students. I just ended up damaging my voice with him.

What was the severity of the damage? And how long was it damaged for? Do you remember what you felt?

Yeah. To be clear, I really can’t place the majority of the blame on him. I was making the decision to practice for hours a day. It was just that I got to a point where my progress plateaued after a few years of voice lessons. Basically for all of high school, I was singing in the same kind of way. In your teen years is when your range is really supposed to open up and blossom, and you begin to hear what your adult voice is going to be. That just didn’t really happen for me. For someone who has been through all that training, I still have an extremely small range, so in some way the damage is still there. I can’t access my head voice and the upper notes that a soprano should have; my throat will just close off at a certain point. But honestly, I feel like it was a great gift. I have this small two-octave range, but I feel so driven to use it as much as possible, and to use it to its fullest extent. I could see a world where I did end up developing my voice to its full potential and I’m doing all of this, like, showy stuff (laughter). Like doing operatic pop or something.

I think with any art, when you understand the limitations of your materials, you’re forced to be more creative. You mentioned that the goal is for singing to feel like nothing. Do you feel that now?

Yeah, totally. At this point, I don’t know how to write a song without keeping my voice in mind, and using the aspects of my voice that feel special and unique to my body, and all without putting myself in an awkward position where I end up having to perform a song live that I can’t perform if I’m not at peak health. The way that music performance is structured, you’re kind of expected to be pushing your body to its limit when you’re touring or playing in new locations. I don’t want to set myself up for failure by having written a song where, if I’m having some allergies, I might not hit the note. But I also want to keep things exciting for myself. I know where my break is, so I’ll try to write melodies with that in mind. If I have a phrase where the emotion of the song is changing into something more frustrated or something with a lot of friction, then I’ll angle the note to go into the break. But ultimately, I think it should be easy, because that’s where the joy is. 

I read an interview where you mentioned how singing is the conduit for saying things that you couldn’t comfortably say in real life. I’m curious if you ever feel like your two-octave range limits what you’re able to tap into, or do you find ways to still get into these crevices? 

I definitely envy other vocalists for certain things that they can convincingly access with their voices that I can’t. One of my favorite living musicians right now is Lingua Ignota, who obviously has an unbelievable voice that is just so flexible and she can access so many different modes. It’s like she has all these different people inside her. I’m especially envious of her ability to channel that kind of monstrous, dark-toned shrieking, enough so that I’ve been thinking for a while about trying to find ways to incorporate that technique into what I’m doing. But it’s been tough because one of the constraints on my work, at least up to this point, has been that I’m working in shared spaces. I’m recording in my apartment or in places where you can’t play really loudly. You can’t scream-sing or people are gonna get mad at you (laughter). But I think I’m starting to get to a point where I want to challenge that, because there is so much rage in my music and I want to be able to express that more in my voice, and I just haven’t gotten there yet.

Is there a specific song on Spike Field (2023) where you feel that you were able to tap into a specific emotion that you hadn’t on prior songs? Did any songs feel like a breakthrough in that way?

Totally. The fourth song on the album, “Haruspex,” really felt like that. I think I’ve tried to get to that point before in other songs and fell short of it, but I felt like I really got there this time. That song is so much about the frustration of being embodied and the frustration of living in a culture where we have to work to survive, and how these things are at odds with each other. I think my resources were such, with this one, that I was able to get a bigger sound. There was this really special moment when I was recording that song. It’s the one song where I was playing into my brother’s bass amp with my guitar, and the whole time I was recording I was getting radio feedback through it intermittently. I struck this one bass note on my guitar and the sound of the radio interference just rushed in. When I put it into the arrangement, it just felt so perfect. It’s that big jangly note you hear in the first verse of the song. I was like, “Okay, I feel like I finally did the thing.” And it was an accident, where the feeling came into the recording accurately.

I really like that song because it’s open to interpretation. You can listen to the song repeatedly and understand it from different angles. I’m thinking about the line, “Is my body right?” You can think about that physically, emotionally, mentally, you can think about in terms of gender, you can think about it in terms of what you’re saying with regards to capitalism. I always appreciate that about your lyrics.

Thank you (laughter). You’re making it sound really good. 

Earlier you mentioned that you were born and raised in a small town in Ohio. How small are we talking?

It’s not like a small town in Ohio. It’s more of a small town in America. I mean, I’m from Cincinnati. So it’s actually one of the biggest towns in Ohio (laughter).

I know you were raised by your mother. Could you tell me what it was like for you to grow up in this household? Do you feel like there are qualities of your mother that you see in yourself? 

Yeah, I think unavoidably. It’s a good thing. I love my mom so much. From day one, she really encouraged me to explore creativity and expression in all forms. She didn’t privilege one form of expression over another, and I really have grown to appreciate that a lot. 

Was there a moment when you realized that about her? Was there anything she said where you really felt that she never privileged one over another?

I just think that, as an adult, I’ve come to realize how special it is that she doesn’t. She doesn’t think I’m crazy for trying to do music with most of my time (laughter). I had all of this time and space growing up to be able to write songs or draw or write poetry. She’s an actress so she really encouraged me to do performance growing up. It was just the two of us in the house. She’s had a lot of struggles with physical illness, so I did have a lot of time by myself that was introspective. And you can’t not hear that in my work, I think.

As in the introspection, or specifically being alone with your mother?

I mean both.

Is there a song on the album where you feel like you had your mother in mind when writing it?

Yeah, totally. I am not gonna say which one it is right now.

That’s fine. When did you move to Oakland? I’m not sure of the timeline.

I moved here in the summer of 2021. Things were just starting to open up. I had been living in Brooklyn before that, basically only during the lockdown. And it was right when New York was starting to reopen that I moved out here.

How has it been living in Oakland for the past couple years?

I love it. What I always say about it is that I can’t imagine any other place where, for two weeks you’re like, “I can’t stand it even one more day. It’s way too hard. It’s way too expensive. I’m leaving tomorrow,” and then for two weeks, you’re like, “I would literally die for this place.” It just evinces such polar extreme reactions. But ultimately, as long as I can manage to make ends meet here financially, I want to stay here. And it’s because of the people I’ve met here. They’re going through the exact same shit and they are so driven to make things happen, in the sense of building community. As I’m sure you know, there are so many incredible artists here. I mean Lucy Liyou has left, but Lucy was here, Cole Pulice is here, and Sally Decker. I could write a list of 3000 names. So there’s that, and also just being so proximate to natural beauty is invaluable.

Do you feel like your proximity to nature plays a large role in your appreciation of the city?

It does play a really big role in it. The sunshine. There are all kinds of bodies of water to sit and muse by. Every kind of landscape that you might want to explore. There’s the forest and the cliffs and the shoreline and also big plains and meadows and marshes and mountains. Everything is within an hour’s drive. I really don’t think that there’s any other place in the US that’s quite like that. That’s not the only reason, of course, but it is a really big one. 

Have you ever written any of your songs out in nature? 

Yeah. I actually live really close to Lake Merritt now. I do a lot of scribbling (laughter) by the lake since it’s a few steps away. There’s this line in the song “Tied” that goes, “Through man-made woods that seed in fire,” that specifically comes from learning more about the natural landscape of the Bay Area, and learning about the origins of the eucalyptus trees, which is such an iconic part of the California landscape. But of course, they’re invasive and also incredibly detrimental to the soil and the biodiversity.

I learned that the specific kind of eucalyptus tree that was planted en masse here in the 19th century relies on forest fires to spread its seed and germinate. I couldn’t help thinking about that as I was going for a walk through the hills and smelling the beautiful aroma of eucalyptus trees and reveling in their shade or whatever (laughter). Just thinking about how it’s actually a ticking time bomb. It’s hard not to think about Armageddon when we’re looking at the news and seeing orange skies and everything on fire. Living in California now, I’ve come face to face with that sometimes. Walking through the beautiful wilderness and thinking like, “Wow, these trees are actually making us all so much more vulnerable to that.” It’s hard not to be really overly lyrical when you live in a place like this (laughter).

I love this mention of the scent because it reminds me of your song “Amber.” Something I think about a lot is the way that our sense of smell is not mediated by the thalamus. It’s the only sense that we have that goes directly to the cortex, which is why it’s so tied up with memories. And it’s the only sense that will still be working if you’re in a coma. I like “Amber” because it speaks to that immediacy, without painting the specific memory too clearly. I’m curious if you could speak to your approach to writing that song, the lyrics and the arrangement. They seem to feed into each other, and become more than the sum of their parts.

Thanks. I always write music and melody first, and then write the lyrics second. The music and the melody don’t take too long, and then the lyrics kind of take forever. I’m doing this kind of reverse-engineering thing of trying to make sure the syllables fit in a certain way that brings out aspects of the phrasing of the melody, rather than vice versa. In that one, “Her scent is on me now”—I’m really glad that you pointed it out, because it felt like the turning point of the song to me, and like the part that I wanted to bring to focus.

For me, it’s as simple as, when your lover is gone, you can still feel them with you when the scent of them is on your clothes. That’s definitely a moment that’s been overdone, but I think it’s been overdone for a reason. And I liked the phrasing that I wrote there—“Her scent is on me now”—because it’s also frightening to feel someone else’s presence on your clothes and on yourself. You’re giving some of this self-protectiveness up when you’re letting someone else’s sweat in there. That’s really important to me and my music. Any song that is about love and joy, which I think almost all my songs are, it doesn’t feel truthful if there’s not that underbelly. We’re always feeling multiple things at one time, and I really try to bring that into the sound and words.

You hear that across the album, with the very spare use of electronic glitches. I love that you mention this, because of course any kind of deep intimacy is going to be scary to some extent, because it requires so much vulnerability. I’m now thinking of a song like “Lacuna,” where there are garbled vocals. How do you know when a song is just going to be instrumental?

I think pretty much every song that I write is going to be an instrumental at first (laughter). I’m really drawn to instrumental music. I always want to convert completely over to that, but then something happens where I’m like, “Actually, this doesn’t feel done until it has vocals.” Every once in a while I end up with an arrangement that feels self-contained without lyrics. That one was really simple—the very first version of it felt done. It was like four tracks, I think. It felt like the gated vocal that you hear was expressing a coherent idea that was enough, and it didn’t need lyrics. And I think the title also gestures to the underlying meaning. I’m really glad you asked because lyrics are the part that I really resist the most. 

Why the word “resist”?

For someone who talks at length too much (laughter), I really don’t think of myself as a verbal person. I’m constantly reaching for words that I can’t find. Especially in intense moments, I feel like my brain is this cloud and I’m digging through it to find a word. The reason I’m so drawn to music is because I’m constantly frustrated by language as the default vehicle for expression that we have. Music, I think, just touches a more immediate place. It feels silly to me that I have to put language on top of it, but of course the music is painting a general figure, and then the words are giving detail, like leaves on a tree. Anyway, all that is to say that words feel like they don’t come very easily to me, so they’re the last thing I do.

Is songwriting, or writing lyrics, a very painful process for you? 

It kind of is. The very peaceful, freeing part is braiding the chords and writing the melody, but then the lyrics are kind of painful. That’s the part where it ends up taking weeks, and then I still end up with something I’m not totally satisfied with, but I have to just let it go. I read this interview with this songwriter that I really like where he said something like, “The music is just music. It’s the lyrics that end up getting caught in the back of your throat when you’re listening to something.” I think that really stuck with me. I think that’s the nail that drives it through. It’s the phrase—the language—that gets stuck in your head.

You mentioned that when you were younger, you did performance in some regard. Do you feel like that has helped you approach singing in any way? Or writing lyrics?

That’s such a good question. I think I’m much more open to writing songs from the perspective of a character, or really exaggerating parts of myself in order to access some other kind of truth that isn’t just a personal truth. It certainly hasn’t helped my live performance (laughter). I still get really crazy intense stage fright. But I’m really glad that you asked about that, in regards to songwriting, because I hadn’t thought about that before. But I think that there’s really something to that. 

Let’s dig in deeper. Can you name a song on the album where you felt like you were speaking from the perspective of a character? And then is there a different song where you’re speaking more from personal experience?

“Watcher,” to me, feels very theatrical. 

And you have your friends on there, too.

Yeah, G. Brenner and Dear Laika sing on it. Both of them just have godly voices, seriously. But it’s this big choral moment, and it feels structured like a song from a piece of theater where you have a choir coming down to the main character and addressing them.

When I took notes on the album, I wrote that it sounds like a Greek chorus.

Oh, I love that. 

But I kept thinking about this religious imagery, and you singing about the Promised Land. If I recall correctly, you grew up singing in the church. Is there anything there you want to touch on?

I was hoping you would ask about that because I know about your relationship to Christianity growing up, through reading your work. I don’t want to show your cards or something (laughter). Something I’ve talked with my friend Izzy, who makes music as Dear Laika and sings on that song, is how if you grow up singing and performing in church, then your relationship to music is forever entwined with the emotions that you learn and acquire in that space. When I was first hanging out with her, I knew her music really well, I was this huge fan, I was really starstruck by her, but I was like, “Oh, I feel this kinship with you, I feel so seen by your music, and there’s like this darkness in it.” And she was like, “I don’t think of my music as really dark. What I’m seeking is that feeling of transcendence that you feel when you’re a kid in church.”

That totally resonated with me. It’s such a wild thing that we live in this world where it’s so normal to go into this huge, cavernous space, where everyone is singing about this guy who died so long ago, and people are crying. When you’re a kid, you’re just kind of mirroring everything you see and trying to figure out what is normal, what’s expected of you, so of course you’re feeling that welling up in you too. That’s always what I’m seeking in music now, as an adult. It’s that same feeling of like, “Oh my god, everyone around me is experiencing this intensity and we’re all leaving our bodies together.”

I know exactly what you’re talking about. I played in worship bands for over 10 years. I played drums, guitar, piano, and bass.

Oh my god! (laughter).

It’s an interesting part of my life that I don’t really talk about, though not for any particular reason. But yeah, I know what you mean. It’s kind of weird that literally all music has to compete with this insanely high standard now (laughter). I feel like it kind of ruined concerts for me. My church also had Friday night services, so literally twice a week I was going to church and it was insane. When I go to any concert, I’m like, “Man, my standards are way too high from what I experienced as a kid.” How is any standard rock concert with substandard audio quality supposed to be as good as this? It’s a gift and curse that people in this environment have to carry with them. 

That’s so true. It’s so weird to show up to a concert and there are dudes standing still.

I’m the sort of person that when there’s literally any sound playing, I have to move my body. It doesn’t even have to be like a melody or anything. If there’s some random sound in nature, that can be enough for me to move my body. I tell my friends this all the time, but if I could start my life over, I would probably just commit my life to dancing. Maybe I still could, but I’m getting older, and I have other things that take precedence.

You should! I feel like you go so hard for all of your interests, like perfume and avant-garde film and music. I feel like you’re the kind of person where, when you know you’re interested in something, you go all the way. 

Yeah, I’m kind of obsessive like that. It’s also what happens with my romantic encounters (laughter). It’s every aspect of my life. It’s nice because my twin brother’s also like that. I don’t want to go off on a tangent.

I want to go on a tangent.

The thing about being a twin is you have to find your own niche. You can’t do the same thing, especially at the same age, because it’s like you’re competing against each other. So I was really into music and he was really into being an athlete. I was in a band in high school, he did cross country and track. But as we got older, we recognized that we pigeonholed ourselves in these camps. Now, he asks me for music recommendations, and I had a whole phase of rock climbing and pickleball like seven years ago before they both got ridiculously popular, and that was because of him. He finally convinced me recently, or I guess I convinced myself too, to finally go to the gym and start lifting regularly. It’s a whole new era of my life. I told him I was only doing cardio and he was like, “Let’s do some actual lifting.” We go almost every day now. And whenever I go, we go together. It’s been really fun.

Hell yeah. That’s so funny. I just started lifting too.

When I’m in Oakland we’re gonna go lifting together. 

Dude, I can’t wait. It’s gonna be so sick.

I don’t even remember what we were talking about.

Well, I wonder how this relates to what we’ve been talking about, like, how can any concert live up to the church experience where everyone is in ecstasy?

It literally sucks. I love music, but this is why I’m sort of averse to rock concerts as opposed to clubs where people are dancing. People aren’t on their phones there and it’s more involved. When you’re in a church service and it’s really intense, people are involved. I really value this communal aspect in any art form, and I feel like I don’t get that from a lot of concerts. What do you think?

I really only started playing my own music live kind of recently. And 90% of the shows that I’ve done, I’ve been sitting down. A lot of that is because, as I’ve said, I get really bad stage fright, and I have a hand tremor. It makes my hand tremor so bad that sometimes I can’t play guitar at all. But sitting down helps with circulation, so I do it for that reason. But I do have that same feeling that you have. Sometimes, the concert format can kind of let you down. It’s like the artist is literally up on this platform.

I talk about this with my friends all the time. There’s this hierarchy. Why is this an experience where we’re all looking in the same direction to this person who is exalted? This isn’t always true, but it’s often way more exciting if it becomes this level playing field where we’re all experiencing this together. Otherwise it’s so limiting.

No, you literally said it better than I could have said it. That’s exactly how I feel. But the thing is, people have responded kind of negatively to the thing where I’m sitting down. So I’ve been standing up more, because I think people do have this expectation of, you know, “We paid for a ticket, we’re there to see you be confident doing something that is scary. Why are you sitting?” And I get that, but also some of the coolest concerts are when people dismantle that hierarchy in interesting ways. There’s this artist FITNESSS and I saw them do this show where they went into the crowd and all of their lighting design was incorporated into their harness that they were wearing. It was literally like the stage itself was dismantled and put on their body, and then they performed in the crowd. It was really cool. I couldn’t do something like that. I don’t think it will work for my music at all (laughter). But I think that’s an important thing to think about. 

What you said about someone paying to watch someone be confident is such a thing I would never think. That’s not why I’m going to concerts. Why would my expectations dictate what an artist should do? Sorry, I’m such a hater (laughter).

I don’t think you’re a hater. I know what you mean. I’m not into people being like, “I spent my hard-earned money on this so I want what I expect.” But there have been times where I’ve been to shows and the person on stage is clearly so nervous, and the immediate thought that pops into my head is like, “If only this person knew that we all want them to be comfortable.” We want them to do well. That’s what I have to remember when I go on stage. People want you to do well. They’re there to see you have a good time, so they can also have a good time. 

What things would make you comfortable? Or, more broadly, what things in your life provide you comfort?

Wow. I hadn’t thought about it in those terms before. In my life, I feel most comfortable in social settings when it’s like a one-on-one conversation like this, or a small group. I’m trying to cultivate intense intimacy with people. In a concert setting, it’s kind of hard. I really don’t know what else to say about that, but I’m gonna keep thinking about it because I think that’s a really interesting path to go down. 

You mentioned that you write poetry and for this interview, you gave me your lyric sheet. To me, it seems like you’re writing them as poetry. That really hit me with “Return to sender.” I’m curious how your experience with poetry—both reading and writing it—informs the way you think about lyrics. Is it necessary for you to think about lyrics as poetry?

Totally. I feel so alienated from language if I’m not in the practice of reading poetry, or just reading and writing in general. It feels like language is a muscle that atrophies really quickly for me. So when I go to write lyrics, I’m often looking at whatever books of poetry I have on my shelf or have checked out.

I think I was talking to you about this over text, but I made the decision for this album to format the lyrics like poetry because, with my last album, I was reckoning with the whole bullshit that is genius.com (laughter). Literally any rando can come in and tell you what your lyrics are. I have a lyric sheet for this album that’s part of the packaging. I feel control over the formatting of it. That felt really special and I wanted to take advantage of that. I think both the blessing and the curse of music with lyrics is that the phrasing of melody can bring out things in words that the page just cannot. But then the brain also attaches to melody before lyrics, so sometimes, it’s hard to hear full sentences in a song. It’s cool to have this visual aid available to me now, where I can show how the language was clustered in my head.

At least for me, my brain definitely latches onto melody before lyrics. It takes a more textural form at first, and then I like to write out the lyrics to get a closer and more physical understanding. 

Totally. This artist I admire talks about wanting to collapse the difference between poetry and music. I just fundamentally disagree with that—I don’t think it’s possible. I think the biggest difference between poetry and songwriting as a form is that, for poetry, you have some control over time in that people read things in real time. But everyone goes at their own pace and people have the liberty to ignore punctuation or whatever. But in music, you fully get to dictate the time it’s reaching people’s ears. I think it’s super cool that that’s how you attach yourself to the words in a song, by writing them down as you’re hearing them rather than just reading the sheet. 

That’s so interesting to me. The thing I love about music more than any other art form is that you get to control so much of how you’re experiencing it. You can engage with it so passively, and you can obviously choose to pay close attention and soak in as much as you want. Obviously, you can have a visual component. You can dance to it. I don’t do it as much now, but back when I was writing regularly about pop music, I used to visualize a choreography in my mind.

You are a dancer! (laughter). I’m so ready for this era for you.

That’ll be a whole thing if it happens (laughter). To hear you speak of music in this way, where you as a musician have this control over time is so fascinating because I always view music as this more flexible thing. It’s not that both things can’t be true though.

Yeah, that’s interesting. I agree with you in the sense that if you’re gonna read something, you have to be actively engaged with it, in your hands, in the present. But also, there’s nothing stopping you from accidentally skipping to the last line. If you want to do that with a song, you have to manually do it. I don’t know. All of my adult life has been in the streaming era, so my understanding of how people engage with music is totally dictated by that. I guess that’s taught me to be really frustrated by people who relate to music in a passive way, but I like your perspective on it better. I’m glad that you said that. There’s a lot of potential, and there’s a lot of things to explore within that. People get to choose their relationship to it.

I wanted to ask about ODAE. Can you talk about what it was like to collaborate with them as a producer? 

Yeah, so they mixed everything and they did additional production on “Tied,” “Lacuna,” and “Mercury.” It was so great working with them. I was really nervous going into it because, even though I know I’m not good at mixing and I don’t have the expertise or materials necessary to do it well, it still does feel like such an important part of the art form of recorded music. It was scary to give that up to someone else, but it really didn’t feel like that working with Ruairi. I really could not have trusted someone more. 

I got in touch with them because of Izzy and Gabe, who sing on “Watcher.” Both of their records were mixed by Ruairi and they also did additional production on both. I couldn’t imagine music sounding better. Both of them were like, “Yeah, Ruairi is the most amazing person, you should definitely seek them out.” So I emailed them, sent them a handful of rough mixes, and was like, “Hey, if you would be interested in working on this, let me know.” And they got back to me with this long-ass email where they had all of these really gorgeous emotional responses to the most minute details in the music. I was like, “Okay, this couldn’t be a more perfect person to work with.” It was really like that. I think it’s especially cool because I love their music so much, and also the music that inspires them is just so totally out of my wheelhouse. They’re really into Animal Collective and stuff. It’s not my thing (laughter), but their music is really so touching. I think that’s part of what made this whole experience feel so powerful. They see what I’m not seeing, because they come from such a different musical background.

There are songs throughout the album about memory, this idea of starting over, your past. I know you had music before Devil’s Rain (2021) that you removed from the internet. But on this record, you have “Still,” which has a piano melody you wrote when you were 16. I’m curious if you could talk about reintroducing this melody into a new era, and what that experience was like. What was that piano melody to you when you were 16, and what was it like for you when revisiting it write this song? 

I just feel so utterly humiliated by all of the work that I made… basically ever (laughter). Basically all of it, Joshua. But especially the music that I’ve since deleted. That piano melody was the arrangement for a song that I put on the internet when I was 16. I don’t really remember the content of the lyrics that I wrote for it at that point. But about a year and a half or two years ago, I was just starting to feel so frustrated by the thing that I just spoke to, where I feel constantly humiliated by everything that I make. Now, I feel like it could be therapeutic to try to reach back and pull something redemptive out of a song I hope no one ever finds or that I hope never resurfaces (laughter). That’s what I was doing. I remembered it through muscle memory, and I hadn’t played piano in a really long time. When I was a teenager, all of the songs I was writing were on pianos. There was this piano in my friend’s house and I found myself playing it, and I recorded it. I then just kept that as a file on my laptop for, I think, a full year while I was trying different melodies on top of it. It was really hard to let go of the melody that I wrote so long ago, at least until I found something that felt true to me now. I do think that was healing in a way. Since making that piece, I have more of a sense of humor about how my work has changed and progressed over time.

I’m happy that happened for you. I love that it was an active decision on your part to redeem this. You mentioned that you would write your songs on piano. How do you compare your experiences of writing a song on piano versus the guitar? Is it a different process?

It’s so totally different. My friend Cole has talked to me about this a lot. They’re a saxophonist, but they have recently picked up guitar. They’ve not really played guitar before and I just love how they’ve talked to me about it, because they are just so visually giddy about it. What they say is like, “It’s so exciting to pick up an instrument that’s new to me, because I don’t have any baggage with it.” I think what they mean by that is, because there’s no muscle memory, that comes with its own sort of freedom. 

I actually just got a keyboard. I bought it as a birthday present to myself a few days ago. I’ve been trying to write on it a bit and I’ve felt so clumsy and bad. But that in and of itself feels really freeing. I’ve just forgotten all of the muscle memory that I developed when I was in high school. It does feel like a different world. To be more specific about the difference between guitar and piano, there’s a specific style of playing with guitar that I’m so attracted to—one where you have a lot of droning notes—that frees up a lot of opportunity and space to make weird harmonic choices. You can do that on piano, but you have to make more of a conscious effort to do it, I think. It doesn’t feel as much like you’re being hugged by sound, you have to work for it.

This relates to the first thing you were talking about, with singing being the one thing that you were actually trained in. I’ll ask you the last question that I end all my interviews with. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself? 

I like that I like to get into it with people. I want to get to that place of mutual enthusiasm with people and go to the deeper place right away.

When was the most recent time you had that experience?

Over the past couple years I’ve really had a reckoning of like, what do I want in friendship? And who do I want to spend my time with? And how do I want to spend my time with them? I’ve had to question that impulse in myself to want to talk about certain things with people, or to reach a certain kind of tenor with people. But ultimately, what I’ve realized is that I love being around people who are really lyrical and romantic and obsessive and intense. That’s just who I am, and that’s what makes me happy. I feel like me and those kinds of people are good for each other. And that’s cool (laughter). 

Have you read this article from The Atlantic called “What if Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?” I think it came out during lockdown. It’s about the hierarchy of friendships versus romantic relationships, and how romantic relationships are seen as so much more valuable.

I talk about that all the time. In that broader perspective, it feels unfortunate that there is a hierarchy where romance is up here and friendship is down here (Maria BC visually represents the hierarchy of these relationships with their hands). But I also feel like in the circumstances of my childhood, I wasn’t socialized to have that psychological attachment to marriage that I think a lot of people have, but I did form this really intense fixation on friendship, and the idea of having a forever best friend. And that still affects me. I don’t really have this compulsion to have a life partner, but I am always like, “Oh god, I wish I got into it more with my friends.” I wish I had what felt like a really long-time, long-term permanent friendship with someone, which does its own kind of damage and breeds its own kind of brain worms (laughter). I don’t want to displace one hierarchy with another, but I think the ideal is to break down the boundaries between these kinds of love.

Maria BC’s Spike Field is out now via Sacred Bones. The album can also be purchased at Bandcamp.

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Thank you for reading the twenty-second issue of Tune Glue. Break down those boundaries.

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