THE UNITED STATE OF MANDY, INDIANA

Berlin-based CAULFIELD muses on the importance of communicating with the audience during the band’s energetic live performances, and their hope for positive change through community and understanding.

”If you take the revolution out of me then there is nothing left,” CAULFIELD says. “I hope that we can try and keep on communicating with one another and find pathways to understand each other, because it's not that fucking hard.”

Read our conversation below.

BEN TOUSLEY: Hello Valentine. Nice to meet you. Thank you for your time. I love your record. Where are you located right now? 

VALENTINE CAULFIELD: I'm in Berlin. Thank you. It feels like such a long time ago. We've just finished the UK tour and we're already really eager to add new material to the set.

BT: I know it can take like a year to make the record and then a year to put it out and then a year to tour it… 

VC: Yeah it's a very kind of dragged-out process. It's interesting.

BT: Is this your first experience with that kind of process on that scale?

VC: I mean, yeah, it definitely is my first experience doing something like that. Most of the music that I've recorded before has been classical music. So definitely, making an album in the way that we did was a first. It was an interesting process. It's also very odd because I feel like I didn't really see it happen because we all did everything kind of separately. But yeah, an interesting experience. Not something I thought was gonna kind of literally suck the life out of me as much as it did.

BT: The recording or everything after?

VC: Yeah. No, everything after because the recording for me was relatively painless. All of the vocals really were done in a studio except for like the little bits that are clipped in and out, which are just random bits of vocals. But then, it just takes such a long time. You have to listen to it so many times to make sure that everything is exactly how you want it to be and then you have to start promoting it. And it's just like releasing an album, song by song, or like single by single, until finally it comes out—it's such a drawn-out process. I had no idea.

BT: Yeah. The music industry... I'm very familiar with that process, the long lead and stuff. I also know a lot of musicians for whom that cycle really wears on them. It's difficult to watch because it shouldn't be like that for creative people, right?

VC: How much of the music industry is actually about the art, though? Or supporting artists. This is our third proper tour. We went on two support tours with two bands that we really love. And then this is our first headline tour and we're still losing money over it. As an independent artist, you are by yourself.

And I keep seeing people on social being like, “Oh, please come to Italy or please come there” and I'm like, it's not that we don't want to. We're hemorrhaging money just doing this thing just because we really enjoy doing it. And it's just the music industry for you. Unless you signed to a major. In which case, I'm sure a lot of people have made like, decent careers out of it. It's just waiting until we can afford to do something else… which is very much the stage we're at right now.

BT: Well, I hope it shifts. Do you feel like you're still having fun with it? 

VC: Yeah. I mean, if I wasn't having fun with it, I wouldn't be doing it. Because once again, it's not bringing me anything else. It is great fun and we are super lucky that we have a great team of people around us. Obviously, I have a great band around me, as well. As much as it is kind of my own personal nightmare having to spend ten days, in close proximity, with three white men… they are actually all right.

But no, it's obviously really fun and we had such a great time on tour and got to meet great people like Slap Rash, the band that was supporting us on this tour. I fucking love them so much. They're the loveliest people and they're so talented. You get to meet amazing people doing this. But yeah, if that wasn't the case, then there would genuinely be absolutely nothing in it for us.

BT: You mentioned wanting to incorporate new material into the shows — are you working on new material right now? 

VC:  I suppose to an extent Scott is always working on new stuff, but at the moment, we are just trying to find some time to go and record more demos. There's a few that are already kind of there and then there's a few ideas already kind of in the pipelines. 

So, yeah, it's just a question of finding the time and the money. I live in a different country and Scott has three kids that he needs to raise and a job

that he needs to work. I also have a job that I need to work and, you know, we're all incredibly busy, the four of us. So it's not easy because it's basically a full-time career on the side of our full-time career.

But yeah, we are, we are definitely working on new material and hopefully it will be out at some point next year.

BT: The latest record is such a melding of different vibes. What do you find you are interested in exploring next? 

VC: In true Mandy, Indiana fashion, it's probably quite hard to define. It always will have that Mandy, Indiana touch because, you know, otherwise what are we doing? I think it's just like going in weirder, slightly different directions, and it’s kind of exploring the limits of all of the things that we enjoy. I really wanna give it slightly more, I wanna say tribal and it sounds very wrong… but like kind of a more pagan vibe that Fever Ray has. Obviously, this is just me being obsessed with Fever Ray. So I don't want to guarantee you that this is something that's going to happen. But for sure, looking at stuff a bit more primal in the way that I perform, sing, or like speak-sing. But I think the new stuff definitely still has that very overwhelming Mandy, Indiana vibe.

BT: How does that translate live for you? What's that feel like to bring to the stage?

VC: We were interviewed [recently] at Green Man and I'd had a couple of drinks already and you can tell I'm very enthusiastic about everything… But I just remarked that we started playing “Drag” off the album in the summer. I think by then, we'd played it maybe three times live and [now] it's become my favorite song to play. 

It's obviously one that has a very particular significance to me and it's one that we were so lucky to work with an amazing director for the video. She did such a great job. 

So after we started playing it, and after I started enjoying playing it that much, I went back and rewatched the video because I love it. And I truly don't think that the recording does the song any justice that we started playing it live. It’s taken this completely new dimension, which I think is so much more interesting and so much more visceral and raw. It’s sort of annoying and also speaks to my own limitations as a recording artist. But yeah, the recording is just not as good.

I think it's a totally different experience. There's a level of communication with the audience that just isn't there when you just listen to your record. And I just don't think that I'm as interested in that as I am in just communicating with people.

BT: A song or music is living, right? The recording is a version of it, but it also has a life outside of that. It's cool to hear that it's growing for you in that way.

VC: It is kind of half of what our rehearsals are about is because we write music and then we make sure that it sounds great on record and then we meet up and we're like, “Ok, so how can we try and work out a way to play this absolutely insane thing that we wrote live?” That's just half of the fun is just working out how we're gonna make it sound good and how we're gonna get the emotions through it. I'm actually genuinely really impressed that everything has worked out well for us so far. Yeah.

BT: You had just mentioned something about wanting to communicate with the audience and that is more interesting to you. I'm curious if you could speak more about the experience of sharing your work with audiences out in the world we’re living in right now.

VC: In terms of just communicating with the audience, I think I just get really bored. If I'm just standing there and singing at people, I don't really see the point of that. 

So I think I just really enjoy knowing that there is a line of communication between me and the people around me. And if I feel that I can trust the audience, I'm in. Then I'm always going into the audience and walking around, you know, sitting down just kind of addressing people in a different way. 

I feel like it's not happened to us very often that we've been faced with audiences that clearly didn't care what we were saying. But in those cases, I'm obviously not going to go and put myself in the vulnerable position. You never really know what's gonna happen.

But yeah, the world is a pile of shit right now. I feel like it has been for a while but I think it's been very fucking obvious the last few weeks. And it's hard to kind of look at the powers that be and think that any of them have anybody's best interest at heart other than their own.

I'm someone who was raised in a very politically kind of minded household.

My mum is a trotskyist. My granddad was a communist. I'm not a communist because I'm not stupid but, you know, I think I obviously have this strongly kind of deeply rooted, leftist ideology in me. I truly want to believe that through community, we can actually make the world a better place. And I think it's kind of hard to see right now.

When you look at what's happening and you're seeing people getting together and trying to fucking stop weapons shipments… I think it's so obvious right now that the only thing that we have is other people,
because the politicians—they don't fucking care. They're just gonna line their pockets.

Look fucking, what's her face? Liz Truss, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for 44 days last year. She's getting a pension for life. She's fucking sorted. Why do you think someone like that ever gave a shit about the people of the UK? They obviously don't. The king just gave a speech with a £40 million shitty hat on his head being like, “Oh yeah, cost of living crisis.” They just raised the amount of money that goes to the royal family this year. I don't think King Charles is being hit by the cost of living crisis now, correct me if I'm wrong. 

I think there is always going to be a bit of hope in me that we can all fucking wake up and realize that we're all the same deep down. We have different religions and ethnicities or whatever, but we're all human and we all just want to feed our families and live a good life. And there is more than enough on this planet for this to be the case, but we're just incapable of just looking at someone who's different and realizing that actually, they're only different on the outside. It really breaks my heart.

I think it's really hard, as well, to take a position right now because you very quickly get accused of many things. But, if you take the revolution out of me then there is nothing left. So, I hope that we can try and keep on communicating with one another and find pathways to understand each other because it's not that fucking hard.

BT: A friend recently said to me, regarding feeling like things are getting worse, as we’ve seen recently, it will be a painful experience for the world to face the reality of where we are, but hopefully it confronts those who can help to talk about it finally.

VC: How is it that thousands of people have to be literally blown to bits for us to just be like, “Oh, maybe that's not great.” That just doesn't give me a lot of faith in humanity. I agree with you; hopefully, this changes something. But this is not the first time that something like that has happened and we are seeing, basically, no progress. If anything, like you said, it's just seemingly so much worse. 

But yeah, I want to keep on hoping that we can do better because, you know, millions of people can agree that we can all fucking live together. It's fine. It's fucking fine, right? Yeah. We're all just human and we can all share this planet and none of us have to be above anybody else. It's depressing but let's hope that this time is different.

BT: Do you find personally that the process of making the music or sharing it with people helps you or brings you hope?

VC: There's definitely a lot of stuff that I think is really cathartic to me. Like I mentioned to you, the “Drag” video, which is not only based on very personal experiences, but we were working on it at a time when I was processing the fact that I was raped. I think I kind of channeled a lot of my anger and a lot of my emotions into bringing this to the world. And I think the reception that it's had has been absolutely amazing and it's been a very fulfilling process. 

I think it's pretty obvious to anyone who comes and watches me that like there is definitely a lot of emotion that gets processed through the live show. I would argue that it may not be cheaper than therapy, considering the amount of money that we're losing on this, but, I don't know, probably evens itself out. I think something that is very cathartic to all of us and, if nothing else, just provides us with like a good escape from everything that is happening. 

Someone came to see me after a show and said, “If everyone did what you do, we probably wouldn't be on as many antidepressants.” And I was like, yeah, good point.

BT: What is it like for you now, knowing you're about to go in another stretch of the tour and do that processing again?

VC: I'm actually, really excited for the US tour. I am genuinely probably more excited about [it] than I have ever been about anything else, for the very simple reason that each of us, for this entire tour, is going to sleep in a bed. Not only is it a novelty, it is genuinely making me so happy because of the tour that we've just done, I slept in a bed once, and then the rest were sofas and floors. 

It's also obviously really exciting to kind of go and meet a different part of our audience, as well, because there are quite a few people who are who have been wanting to see us in the US, and the few people that I know are all coming, as well, which is really exciting. So, I mean, I think I'm going in with an entirely kind of positive outlook, which is quite new for me, but I'm very excited.

BT: You can just approach it as an experience and let it happen.

VC: Yeah. I've only been to the US for SXSW, which we did in March. I've never been to New York but I've never been to any of the cities that we're going to. So I'm really excited. It's a first, it's really good. I also feel that I'm less likely to get shot in any of them than when we were in Texas. So I'm like, OK…

BT: I’ve noticed Europeans have that impression of coming to America as if bullets are flying everywhere. Obviously, Americans at large have difficulty comprehending that perspective the outside world may have.

VC: It's funny because it was a completely new feeling for me going to the US for the first time and seeing bars and restaurants that had signs saying “no open carry.” I was like, “Oh, I've never been to a country where that could even be an option.” Obviously, it must seem like such an insignificant thing for most of the US population at this point…

BT: It's a vast place. It's hard to predict what you’ll find, but there will be a lot of beautiful experiences there, too.

VC: I'm incredibly excited about meeting the people because, despite whatever one might want to think of Americans—especially, in Europe, we have a lot of stereotypes—I've never met an American who wasn't a lovely person. Our label is US-based. I absolutely adore the team over there. Everyone that we met in Texas was great. I’m genuinely excited for it all.

BT: Can you tell me about the famously queer music scene in Berlin?

VC: I think there's this sort of weird fascination and adoration for the music, which is something that I really enjoy. I think the mentality around queerness in Berlin is completely different in the sense that everyone is much more open. I don't know that it's the case for all of Germany, but I know it's the case for a lot of Germany, as well.

Since I moved in July, I went to this massive fetish fair that takes place on the street in a very kind of posh residential district and I saw a man getting his dick sucked on the street, which is not something that I expected at 7 p.m., you know. But it's just like, people literally walking around in latex and stuff. I was there with a gay friend and a straight friend, and the three of us were just walking around having a great time; had a few drinks, talked to a lot of people. 

And yeah, I think there's just this openness and this acceptance that is something that I really enjoy but something that I feel countries like France and the UK are going back on at the moment. You know, with this anti, whole conversation of “is there space for Kink at pride” et cetera, et cetera. 

BT: Like, how much do we hide ourselves from the truth?

VC: You know, don't get me wrong. I'm not, in any kind of way, suggesting that the event I went to was child-friendly. It was not—it absolutely was not. I think there was a full understanding of the fact that it was not, but, you know, I think just the ability to kind of be yourself within the spaces in the city is really refreshing and it's good to see that. At least this is something that seems to be holding up in Berlin still.

BT: That is great. Well, I hope you get to see a little bit of that in New York, as well.

VC: Yeah. I'd love to go to like a gay bar in New York. That'd be really cool. It's such a central part of the gay liberation movement, it just feels very silly to not like go to New York and pay homage to all of the beautiful queer, trans, black gay people who stood before me. Thankfully we're going to be in New York with some proper New Yorkers so they can show us around where the good gay shit is happening.

Catch Mandy, Indiana on their US tour this December.
They will play Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn on Saturday, December 2.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.