Gal Pal
⤏ IN CONVERSATION WITH LIBBY HSIEH
⤏ PHOTOS BY GRACE PICKERING
⤏ PUBLISHED OCTOBER 2020
Top Right — Emelia Austin (she/her) | Middle Left — Nico Romero (they/them) | Bottom Right — Shayna/Shay Hahn (she/her)
Gal Pal is a band that grew up together. Most alluring is their devotion to each other and their community. During an era where fear is woven into the seams of daily life, Gal Pal is daydreaming of the moment when they can reunite. Over the interwebs (duh), we talked about what it’s been like to write an album and just ~*exist*~ since the pandemic crash-landed.
LIBBY: Introduce yourselves. How has your quarantine been going? What have you been learning? Fun skills?
EMELIA: I am the vocalist and keyboardist. During quarantine, I’ve been reading a lot — finishing some Joan Didion books, hiking, and making mood boards on Photoshop. That has been filling my time and been helping me stay aware and happy.
NICO: I’m the drummer and guitarist. I’ve been taking testosterone during quarantine which is a huge deal. It’s a lot of time to think about myself, my feelings, and what I want. Maybe too much time.
SHAY: I play guitar and drums. Quarantine has been a super bizarre experience for me because I’ve been working throughout. I work in mental healthcare, so it’s been a more intense environment there than usual. I’ve been really learning how to best utilize the free time I do have. I started a garden, worked on a stained glass mural, cooked a lot with my partner and housemates, and have been doing different things around the house. I’m super grateful for my backyard. Like wildly grateful.
L: Since y’all are in the midst of writing an album, how has that whole process been?
E: We’re approaching writing in a different way. Luckily, Nico and I live together which is a huge privilege, but we never finish songs because we don’t have Shay or a bass player. Usually, our songwriting is based on so much heavy collaboration. But because of everything going on, we’re forced to work more by ourselves. During this time, I’ve been writing full songs by myself and then bringing them to the band. I’ve had really cathartic moments in finishing songs. I’ll send a voice memo to our group chat, and Nico and Shay will be like, “Wait, that’s great. Let’s do this.”
N: It’s a big shift. I think it’s beautiful seeing what new songs are coming out of Emelia’s bedroom. They’re lyric-heavy and the melodies are more important in the song. It’s really cool to share a wall because sometimes I’ll be working on something and Emelia will text me and be like, “Hey that’s cool. Keep doing that.” It’s okay to not like one of your bandmates songs, but presenting a song to the band is a vulnerable position to be in. It’s nice to hear someone say that they like what you’re working on.
S: I think it’ll be interesting to come back together and try to flesh out some of these songs. I’ve developed this very large pile of different parts of things. I’ve been trying to piece songs together on my own. It’s weird not being able to play music together. We await our reunion.
E: I’ve been dreaming about that moment! I’m dreaming of it every night!
LIBBY: As the dynamics have shifted and you’re forced to be apart, how has it molded the themes of the album? Where are you drawing your inspiration from?
E: It makes me excited because it means the album is going to be dynamic.
“It’s just compromise! Instead of comparing it to a Harry Styles song, I’ll compare it to an Angel Olsen song.”
— NICO ROMERO
N: The [songs] are so vastly different from our previous ones. The new ones are a lot slower and calmer and they just take more time — which is just so representative of the mood.
E: That’s so true! Some of my favorite albums are the ones that are dynamic in that way. They give you breaks and let you taste other flavors. But I’m also not putting pressure on my songs either. If they don’t work out, or make it to the final cut, I’m fine with that.
N: Even if they don’t make it to the final round.
E: Even if they don’t win “American Idol.”
L: How do you feel your style has changed since you started? What has pulled you into the direction of where you are now?
S: We’ve all kind of sourced separately from different inspirations — whether it is personal experiences or different artists. There is definitely some overlap between us, but I think that has changed and grown overtime.
E: It’s cool to think about what we were listening to when we wrote our first album, and then what we’re listening to know. I’ve always been drawn to more oddball, powerful noise music. Palm has been a huge influence over recent stuff. We’ve been kind of playing around with math-ier music.
S: Young Jesus.
N: I absolutely love pop music. We were just listening to Justin Bieber this morning. I like adding pop influences into what we write, definitely. Shay doesn’t like pop music.
S: It’s the biggest dividing factor among us. Like contemporary pop, I can never fully get into.
N: As long as it’s a little bit in there, I’m satisfied. Give me my pop!
L: So, how do you balance those clashes in taste? Or how do you mesh together your similarities?
E: There tends to be a running theme. The 3 of us love to make music that is kind of harsh and powerful and kind of daunting and maybe aggressive at times. We end up channeling those commonalities and uniting all of our styles through that.
N: Personally though, if we’re writing something together and I’ve got a drum beat or a guitar tone that reminds of a pop song, I’m not going to say it. I’m not going to say it! I’ll keep it to myself.
S: I wouldn’t shut it down for that reason alone!
N: But it’s unnecessary to bring it up because it could ruin a tone for somebody. It’s just compromise! Instead of comparing it to a Harry Styles song, I’ll compare it to an Angel Olsen song. I know what you like!
E: Yeah. Collaborating in a band is basically tricking each other into thinking we’re making music that the other person likes. Genres are fake.
L: I just realized I don’t even know how you all got together as a band!
N: My first hangout was with Shay when we were in a dorm room together, and everyone was doing hard drugs. We were the only people not doing drugs. So we were connecting.
S: *Laughs* We were just watching all of our friends tweaking out, and losing their shit. But we all met separately in freshman year and ended up living together our sophomore year.
“Genres are fake.”
— EMELIA AUSTIN
N: That kind of pushed us. We were all hanging out a lot and were just like, “Why don’t we just jam?” It started with just me and Shay. Then Emelia joined in.
E: Our freshman year, Nico and I jammed with a couple of people in our dorm room. I just remember this moment where [we] kind of connected more in making music.
N: We played “The Moon Song” [by Karen O].
E: I was like, “I wanna be in a band with you!” When [Nico’s] partner moved in, I was scheming…
S: Within a few weeks of playing together, we went from casually jamming to playing a show in Nico’s garage. We had some absurd eight band bill.
N: The Litterbox is what I called it! I don’t know why we called it that, but we just got blessed with this big garage. But I don’t think my housemates really liked me because we were so loud and I was just learning how to play drums.
L: You’ve got to learn somehow! What were the qualities of each bandmate that made you want to keep jamming? You always get those people who’re like, “Let’s jam” and it doesn’t work.
S: I was pretty shy before Gal Pal. I just played acoustic guitar in my room. I had never played drums before. But there was something really distinct about our collective dynamic. It has felt really special and powerful.
N: We were not very proficient in our skills as musicians. There was so little pressure to be anything. We just wanted to learn together.
E: We were all yearning to start a project and push ourselves to perform.
S: We were all down for that vulnerability of none of us knowing what we were doing. A good amount of our learning process has happened together.
E: Our desire to play music was so much greater than our experience with our instruments. It’s been cool to just figure it out without having any expectations of who we wanted to be.
L: What is your approach to your outward image/brand/social media presence? Do you think it’s important to your performances?
E: Every band has a brand even if they don’t realize it. Anti-branding is a brand.
N: We have one rule. Do we look hot in the picture?
E: All of us are visual artists as well so we all have a natural eye towards aesthetic. We tend to photograph with the same people. In the past year, a lot of our posters for shows [were] designed by the same people. We kind of developed a brand without intentionally doing it.
S: Trying to “create” some image like that sounds exhausting, and kind of bizarre to me. But different people in our scene create flyers or photograph us, so that forms a distinct aesthetic. Those are the only things that make me feel good about having social media platforms.
N: When we look at our profile, we want to see stuff that we like. It’s an archive of us.
L: How do you balance using the platform as promotion versus using it for community building and connecting with fans? How are you blending that public self with your more private self?
E: We don’t! The personal is political!
S: Authenticity is important. We don’t need to take ourselves too seriously. As long our communication is effective.
N: I give the fans what they want.
“Every band has a brand even if they don’t realize it. Anti-branding is a brand.”
— EMELIA AUSTIN
E: We post a lot of more vulnerable moments, usually just casual moments of us hanging out. It’s not calculated in any way.
N: There’s such little pressure because a lot of our fans are our friends.
L: With having a “public image” — or whatever the fuck that means — do you find that influences the way that you write or perform?
E: It might be a bit of an afterthought because I just go with my gut first. You have to go with your gut. Or else, I don’t know if you can create anything that’s really real or authentic.
S: It’s definitely not a primary thought of mine. It might be different if I was doing more lyricism for the band. Because that’s when it comes down to a critical choice of, “How much of this do I want people to know?”
N: With this next album, I definitely want to share more songs about my personal experience transitioning. I’m definitely thinking about how other people will hear that, or how other queer and trans folks will take it. It’s hard not to think about wanting your experience to be relatable to other people. I want to write a song that I would want to hear. Or a song that I would’ve wanted to hear in high school. But it’s not accessible to everyone because not everyone is trans.
L: How do you hope to see yourselves grow as a band in the next coming months/years?
S: I feel like we’ve been very lucky to do exactly what we want, and be well received. I hope to continue to learn and grow and maintain that aspect of doing exactly what we want to do.
E: We gotta keep the magic in the relationship. Gotta keep the romance going.
N: There are still goals I have. I won't be satisfied until we reach them. Just simple ones. It sounds stupid, but I’ve always wanted to play drums with my shirt off post top surgery. That’s a big personal goal. It doesn’t even have to be a big show or anything, I just want to fucking do that.
L: It’s the drummer way!
S: I have a lot of little things I am excited to do. Like, what if we both played drums at once? Or songs where we’re all harmonizing again. I want to practice singing while playing drums. We all have little things we’re excited to try out. Those little things keep me going. I definitely want to tour again even though it hurts my heart. Y’all are good to travel with.
N: We did one tour two years ago and it’s one of our favorite things to talk about. Even in our sad moments.
E: We all cried except for Shay.
N: They were good, cathartic cries for the most part. I want to tour again. We’re obviously so far from that, but we’re still hopeful.
E: By the time Coronavirus is over, we’re gonna be ready to fuckin’ go.
⤏ BUY THE PRINT EDITION OF JR HI THE MAGAZINE | ISSUE 010 HERE.
⤏ LIBBY HSIEH (SHE/THEY) IS A MUSICIAN AND WRITER LIVING IN LOS ANGELES.