PINK MUST: FREEDOM IN THE UNDEFINED

Discussing how they connected, the two musicians share a contagious enthusiasm for music and take us on a gleeful jaunt through their queer influences from MICA LEVI to pioneering minimalist JULIUS EASTMAN. Collaborating, they say, has freed them to experiment and has liberated them from concerns about defining their project as they look forward together. 

Their new self-titled record, released via vibrant Danish label 15 LOVE, recalls nineties alt-rock through a smeared collage of woozy guitars, glitchy drum loops, and airy, digitized vocal textures. The overall effect transcends its nostalgia and leaves us in a beautiful haze of familiar longing. Oh, they also say it’s great must for smoking weed with your buds.

Read on below for our conversation with MARI and LYNN from PINK MUST. Pink Must is now available from 15 LOVE.

MARI RUBIO: When you imagine audiences listening to the music, what do you imagine they're doing?

LYNN AVERY: Oh, I guess I don't have a very visual imagination. I guess like hanging out in bed and smoking weed. Just like you know, vibing with their friends. 

MR: Yeah. I also feel like it's a big hanging-out record. Yeah. I think about Laura [Brunisholz, friend and photographer] talking about it being a good car record. And so I imagine a lot of people like putting it on while going to Riis Beach, like driving to the beach. I feel like it's very beach-drive music, for sure. 

LA: Beach drive music. But like girls’ road trip music.

MR: Girls’ last tour music. Yeah, exactly. How does it feel now that the record's out in the world? How do you feel about that? Because I don't even think we've talked about that.  

LA: I guess it feels better than other times that I've released music. It definitely is getting me excited to just work on more music. Especially playing live with this four-piece with our friends Ryan [Sawyer] and Jade [Guterman]. That's been really cool to imagine like a new perspective on these songs that we already shared and what the future of Pink Must could sound like.

I'm happy that Pink Must is like a thing in people's minds now. Like, okay, the music is out there, and this is what Pink Must is. Now we don't have to worry about trying to show people what Pink Must is anymore. Now we can just like do whatever the hell we want and like completely change, like keep switching it up.  

MR: Yeah, I definitely second that it feels better than other releases I've done. And it feels like there's more permanence and continuance with this project compared to other collaborations that I've had. With a lot of other collaborations, it's like, OK, the record is done. And then it comes out, and you maybe do some shows but don't necessarily write a lot of new material, or it's just kind of floating out there for a while. That's been really different with this record because we've already collaborated on two songs with different artists since it's come out, which has been great.

I think both of us also have a lot of ideas for new tracks together, as well. And I feel like having it out kind of finally gives us some legitimacy, too. I was even talking to Shane from Chanel Beads about this. There's something very exciting about that future potential to have this be a band, and then I also love the idea that it's just like you and I. I think that having the album out establishes that this is Lynn and I writing songs and having the potential to bring in…

LA: Not ambient music anymore… 

MR: Yeah, there's something really freeing about that, too. I think that's something we both struggle with, being pigeonholed as only ambient artists. Even the music I make that people consider ambient is a lot more defined than what that term usually is, or how it gets thrown around. And I know you feel the same way from talking. 

LA: Definitely. A project that a lot of people don't really consider with my music is Signal Quest, the project that I have that's in gravitational electronic music with Cole Pulice and Mitch Stahlmann that we released two records on Orange Milk. That stuff is not easy listening ambient music. It's more in the world of something like David Toop or something like Anthony Braxton, where it is improvisational. And yeah, I'm playing pads and pretty ambient-sounding patches. But it's a lot of this sort of noisy expansionism that I feel like I haven't gotten to play around with too much until I started messing around with the Pink Must stuff again. Like, oh, we're making these indie rock songs, and I can bring in some of this weird sample mangling and granular synthesis and some of those sounds into this project. And I think that also kind of ties into this idea of what we feel like the project is. 

In some ways, it's a rock band. There is the Pink Must rock band. But at least in my head, it almost feels more like a place for us to experiment. It is a place for us to put these songs that we're writing that are very pop-oriented, and at the same time, I'm very excited to experiment more with working outside of a song structure. 

For example, with some of the songs on the record like “Himbo,” I feel like that was a really great first single for us to release because of the idea of this sort of post-rock experimentalism that we're both extremely interested in. You see a bit more of that again at the end with “Blessings.” That's the stuff that really gets me excited about Pink Must because I feel like it can be both a place for these pop songs, and also a place for our minimalist and post-rock experiments to live and cohabitate in the same project. We get to do whatever we want. And it makes sense within the context of Pink Must, I think. 

MR: I really agree with all of that. I think there is something freeing about it being a band that feels different than other collaborations I've had, where there's more of this openness, and because I know that nothing's going to really be thrown out for being too weird or not fitting the definition of what it is. I think about how Broadcast would do these albums of crazy synth experiments. And Deerhunter had a whole history of being more of a drone band.  And then, of course, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 releasing kind of like albums of basically noise next to these records of perfect songs. I've always wanted a project that had that kind of potential to sort of be whatever we want it to be. That's something that's very exciting about this compared to a lot of other collaborations, and sort of like just how many directions we could go with it. 

LA: It's already coming up in some of our collaborations where a couple of these upcoming projects do live in a more pop, indie, twee kind of world. And then at the same time, we had this whole performance that we did in collaboration with Lia Kohl last year as a trio. And that ended up sounding more like a free improvisational chamber and electronic record

MR: Totally. Yeah, and we have so many recordings we still have to sift through for that. And we should really... Maybe I'll start fucking with some of them on tour while I'm in the van and then we can start building those up. 

But I think that's the thing that's really cool, is that we have like.. We have those things, and then it's like we like basically just did production for more of a pop artist. And then we did that track with Daniël Paul. That's almost Gram Parsons-y at times, which is sick because I know that you also love Gram Parsons. When I learned that you were really into Gram, I was just like, “Oh yeah, everything's going to be okay.”

LA: I mean, we have all of these influences. It's like, where do we put it in our own music and feel comfortable calling it the same project? And I feel like Pink Must is like a safe place for a lot of experimentalism. Not to say that we're necessarily going to make a country pop record. 

MR: No. I think both of us would get bored with the idea of that. But then, I also think of my favorite band, Ween, having 12 Golden Country Greats as a record. I don't know, maybe it is a good idea. I don't feel like we're really approaching this from the perspective of genre.

LA: Yeah. Like attempting a genre. Maybe when we first met, we were talking about trying to make this sort of like 90s alt-rock record that was inspired by stuff like Woodbine, Bar Italia, and some of these other grungier projects. Pretty quickly, it became evident that that was not what this project was going to be about. Like, I love that music, but even I got bored pretty quickly.  

MR: I think something I miss about some of the early Bar Italia stuff… There was this sense of potentiality and experimentation in the earlier stuff. I remember those EPs would just have crazy choices on them. There's one where it's basically just this 10-minute noise song. And I think that was very exciting to me because it's, again, that idea of this band being something that can go anywhere, which is what I've always wanted out of a band. And I've gotten close a few times, but there's always someone who is trying to rein things in as to what they should be or make it this codified thing. I think that you and I both have distinctive enough voices as producers that whatever we do is going to sound like Pink Must in some way. 

LA: The first record was done mostly individually, as we would write these songs apart and maybe show each other very early versions of them. And then you would be like, That sounds cool. And I'd be like, want to do something? But then I just ended up finishing it in the meantime, and then sending it over to you then you're like, okay, cool. Now I can put something on this. Or vice versa. Which is a fun way to experiment, but it also gives this sort of detached, out-of-space sound that it doesn't really have this sort of roomy, physicality that I feel like is something that I'd really like to bring into the next record a lot more. I've especially been really, really obsessed with the stuff by Able Noise or Eyes of the Amaryllis, Jim Strong. 

MR: Dude, I love those bands. That Jim Strong record is great. I am very stoked to kind of mess with that more, too. The second we started doing overdubs and kind of working on things in person, everything automatically started switching in a way, where it's like there are more contingent parts. When we were recording “Karaoke of The Bends” and we were overdubbing, like we did all the strings… I feel like part of the reason that song is so exciting is because it has this energy of two people in a room actually doing this together. Like the long sustain part at the end was something I remember building together, like in real time. And it totally changed the character of the ending of the track. 

LA: Yeah. It took it into an ethereal place, for sure. Some of my favorite parts of the song are, for sure, the string arrangement, but the ending hum and the pedal steel. I love the way that sounds and the way that the glitching, granular effect I was doing on the piano that sounded like smashing instruments through reverb, happening at the same time as the pedal steel. I feel like in the same kind of range. That's what I want to do more of, like, give physicality to our music.

MR: There's something really exciting about working with the full band, too, and especially the fact that Ryan [Sawyer] is super on board. There are so many things we can have him do on drums. There’s a lot of potential. I was going back and watching clips of our album release show—the way he was figuring out how to fold himself into the beats of the songs was truly blowing my mind. I was like, this is absolute insanity how this guy is doing this right now. 

LA: The last record was my first time experimenting with having rock drums on a record at all. I’ve never played drums. I don't know how to play beyond just creating a simple loop. I feel like having real drums would really breathe life into some songs, but especially it would be so fun to bring in improvisation.