INTERVIEW: Catching Up With Brattleboro’s Thus Love Ahead of Troy Tour Date
Photos by Shervin Lainez
“how I feel about Troy is kind of how I feel about playing shows in Brattleboro. I feel super connected to small towns like that.”
Vermont natives Thus Love will return to Troy this February to complete the last leg of their U.S. tour with support from New York-based bands Laveda and Closebye. Their latest album, All Pleasure, is out now on the independent record label Captured Tracks – you may recognize “Birthday Song” in heavy rotation at WEQX. I spoke with drummer Lu Racine and bassist Ally Juleen ahead of their appearance at No Fun on February 19th about what they’re listening to, creating work with those closest to you, and what’s next for them as a group.
Dana Brady: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me! You played No Fun back in March of last year and I’m so glad you decided to make it another stop on this tour. Troy and Albany are not necessarily on every band’s radar compared to places like Brooklyn, for example.
Ally Juleen: It’s nice that we’re close because we’re just in Southern Vermont. It feels kind of serendipitous that we get to end our biggest tour to date at No Fun.
Lu Racine: Yeah, honestly how I feel about Troy is kind of how I feel about playing shows in Brattleboro. I feel super connected to small towns like that.
DB: There’s been a lot of talent to come from in and around the surrounding area. I’m thinking of Hand Habits and, of course, Laveda who you’re playing with as well.
LR: They’re so awesome. Funny thing, we played one of our first shows ever with Laveda at a house show in Bennington, Vermont.
DB: Those little DIY shows are always a hotbed for cool new bands. I’m most familiar with the scene around Burlington.
AJ: Shoutout to Burlington faves. We got Robber Robber, who else we got?
LR: We got Greg Freeman, Zack James, Caroline Rose… all the favorites.
DB: Let’s get into your latest album, All Pleasure! I was really struck by how much range you were able to cover within that one album and still have it sound so uniquely like you. For instance, your song “Get Stable” is very swaggery and has a lot of attitude, but “Face to Face” is almost like a ballad; that’s not so easy to do and you did it!
LR: Yeah, thank you, that’s something we’re all really proud of. I feel like this record really pushed us and I’m excited to explore more as we continue to write together.
AJ: [All Pleasure] feels like a stepping stone; we’re really grateful for how people have been receiving it. It was an amalgamation of all these really awesome songs that we loved and then it was time to release it to the world.
DB: What are some of your musical influences? Was there one particular creative influence for this album?
LR: I think we were all entering our pop-girly era. Echo [Mars, vocalist] and I read Britney Spears’ book, which was cool.
AJ: We all listen to so much music. We were screenprinting our merch the other day and were listening to Machinedrum’s Boiler Room session, like electronic stuff, or we’re listening to Miles Davis or Beyonce or Thee Oh Sees and IDLES… but I think there was a vibe of joy and yacht pop girly mentality.
LR: We’ve also been listening to this band Altın Gün. We’re crazy about this band; they’re based in Amsterdam but they sing in Turkish.
DB: It sounds like what you’re describing is that it’s less about a genre of music and more about a feeling or a value.
AJ: Yeah, we’re a rock band, like a traditional four-piece, but with what we’re wielding we’re just playing what we feel.
DB: I’m really happy that you kept in a lot of the post-punk elements from your last album Memorial. You haven’t always been a four-piece though, right?
LR: Yeah, it was me, Echo, and Nathaniel [van Osdol, former bassist] for a long time. It’s been Echo and I for almost seven years now. We’ve had a bunch of different line-up changes. Me, Echo, and Nathaniel recorded our first record. Even then, it was a reflection of what we were listening to at that time. It’s funny, we were listening to Gary Numan and Iceage and the Pixies and like, Justin Bieber.
DB: How do you think it’s changed the way you’ve made music now that Ally, you’ve joined the band?
LR: Echo and I have a very DIY, scrappy, punk mindset. We didn’t go to school for any of this so we have a different way of doing things. Then with Ally and Shane [Blank, guitar/synth] coming into our lives, they’ve gone to school for a lot of this stuff, so just having that vocabulary puts things into a different perspective for me personally. We’ll be doing something at practice and they’ll name what that thing is. It gives context to what is happening and it’s really helpful for me.
AJ: It feels like we’re all growing as professional musicians. Even though Shane and I went to music school, meeting Lu and Echo who are some of the most talented and inspiring folks that we’ve been able to make music with, I feel like we’re all coming together and vibing really hard. It feels like we’re all hanging with our besties all the time but we’re also making music. Shane and I were in a band called Bat House for ten years and then Lu and Echo were on their own grind for almost as long and right before we all met, I think we were all feeling kind of burnt out from our own journeys and a little defeated… I’m speaking for myself, but when we all came together and decided to start doing the Thus Love thing, it was definitely re-inspiring and healing. Very pleasure-based, which is really cool.
LR: And now we have the opportunity to come together and share wisdom and share everything that we’ve gone through and we now have a really incredible sense of what works and what doesn’t.
DB: Do you do any art outside of making music? I saw somewhere that Echo is a visual artist as well.
LR: My mom is a painter; she’s been painting my whole life. She makes dope-ass paintings so I feel like I’ve been around that pretty much my whole life. But yes, Echo is a true artist in every sense of the word.
AJ: I don't think I realized until they showed me some of their sketchbooks and such, it’s unbelievable. None of their stuff is really online.
DB: As you’ve grown and are more in the public eye, is the attention ever overwhelming? I know you just played sold out shows in both the UK and the US. How do you think it’s been for bands coming up in the internet age?
LR: Something we are learning how to do is just protect our energy a little bit more. I think all of us are very loving and giving folks – we love our community hard and want to show up and be there for each other, but what’s the threshold of giving too much and becoming exhausted? The last couple of tours, especially in the UK, we really had to dial that in. Echo is doing this new thing where after every show they just cannot speak; they need to save their voice. I think emotionally it takes its toll when you want to be there for everyone but we’re super grateful and we try to say it as much as possible.
Dana: How have things changed since the last time you were in Troy? I know you were on a tour. How was it?
LR: Yeah, it’s been almost a year since we’ve been there, so I feel like a lot has changed. The record’s out and we just have more experience playing together and more time meshing together. That’s been an incredibly beautiful thing. We did a tour over the summer, some big festivals, so I feel like that was a good chunk of experience.
AJ: And that was in the UK so we got to put some miles on and stretch our legs far from home, so it definitely feels like we’re leveling up. Also, the first chunk of this tour we’re opening for The Vaccines and probably some of the biggest rooms we’ve ever played in like Brooklyn Steel and The Fillmore in San Francisco…
LR: The Wiltern, the BIC, all of these legendary places.
AJ: …and then we’re ending at No Fun in Troy!
DB: That’s fantastic. And you guys made a bunch of music videos that were extremely cool.
LR: Oh yeah! That was a big chunk of the summer.
DB: I like that even though the songs are all very different, the mood of the videos are pretty consistent.
AJ: Yeah, the first three ended up very forest-fairy-cutesy and playful, which is a reflection of a side of us, and then the fourth music video that just came out, “Get Stable”, really rounded it out. Kind of industrial, sexy, confident, crazy… we collaborated with a lot of really great directors and a lot of the creative direction was in their hands. What they put together for us ended up being really fun, really cute, and showed a bunch of different sides of us.
LR: When you’re super comfortable around a group of people, no idea is too crazy. The directors, Augie [Voss] and Benni [Shumlin], we’ve been working with them for years. Benni and I are from the same town of like a thousand people, so we have known each other for so long. Having that comfortability to just be like, ‘I have this idea, it’s fucking batshit, but we’re all going to sit down and hear it out and we’re going to do it and it’s going to be awesome.’ Nothing is off the table.
DB: Along those same lines of working with others creatively, what were some of your favorite bands who you’ve played with?
LR: Ally and Shane weren’t there for this tour but Echo, Nathaniel, and I toured with this band Dry Cleaning from South London that do spoken word post-punk. That was our first time in the UK. Our first tour together, Ally, we toured with Native Sun, we played with Robber Robber… I think most of the shows we played over the summer, those were festivals so we didn’t really get to meet anybody one-on-one.
DB: So what’s ahead for you guys?
AJ: A lot of live shows, a lot of playing… [after Troy] we go to Europe and the UK, all headlining shows. Then writing music, playing more shows, hopefully going to Asia.
DB: Well, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to speak with me.
AJ: Thanks for taking the time to hang out with us and write about our music!
All Pleasure is out now on all major streaming services via Captured Tracks. Tickets to see Thus Love in Troy on 02/19 are available now via www.nofuntroy.com
