With the release of her debut, Suki Waterhouse takes caution in the face of the wind.
Despite calling the album “I Can’t Let Go”—released today via Sub Pop—Waterhouse hopes that by launching the 10-track project, she’s liberating not only painful memories, but her own hurdles in fully pursuing a music career. .
Since 2016, Waterhouse has released one single per year—except for 2019, which brought “The World’s Coolest Place” and “Johanna”—each more fully composed and more acoustically enjoyable than the previous one. Slowly building a passionate fan base online, followers of Waterhouse — who is also a model, actor, entrepreneur and was a “cool girl” during Tumblr’s golden age — have been begging for an entire project for years. So what took so long?
“It was something I desperately wanted to do,” says Waterhouse. diverse click zoom. “Probably in the last four years when I’ve been putting together these singles I think I’ve been testing my guts and whether people like it or not. I’ve been slow for sure, just putting out one a year isn’t the best way to run your music business…I’ve been writing it Long ago, but like the fact that it happened, I wasn’t sure about it. And then I decided to do it.”
Each song in “I Can’t Let Go” tells a distinct story, from seducing a lover confidently at the opening of the album “Moves” to grumbling about the modern-day struggles of online presence on “Bullshit on the Internet.” About writing “The Moves,” Waterhouse says she was at a point in her life where she “was in love.”
“It’s like she’s so tired, she’s so exhausting,” she says. “I’ve been on my own for a couple of years and I’ve been totally trapped. I think this song was kind of going back to rebuilding myself, I’m going to go for it this time and I’m really going to have to weaken myself. I think I have something to give this time, rather than trying to fill in and go for something you know That would be a disaster. At the time, I was thinking about how I would perform a song that Thelma and Louise would listen to, which would be on the tape track as they drove off the mountain.”
Waterhouse says all of the songs on the album are about “something or someone,” though she added in fictional elements “that mix of character and fantasy.”
“Most of the time, it was a feeling or an event that I knew would stay inside me forever,” Waterhouse says of the songwriting process. “I was really wondering if I would always be haunted by these memories or not be able to feel like I could move on from some of the things that are still there. That thought was really: these are the things I have stored in my mind and these are the things I can’t touch anymore but I I think about her all the time, will I be able to break free from her?”
Other highlights of the album include the aptly titled “Melrose Meltdown,” an atmospheric ode to a relationship that never was, bolstered by a swinging drum beat. Although Waterhouse says the song “could just be trying to find parking in Melrose,” there is a more complex and adventurous story behind the poem. After both Waterhouse and his friend suffer heartbreak, they decide to travel to Buton, an island in Indonesia, to hike through the mountains with the monks.
“We will be like thousands of feet in the mountains talking to the monks about our son’s problems and the monks will laugh at us a lot,” recalls Waterhouse.
But soon both fell violently ill and were unable to continue, and spent the last five days of the trip recovering and debriefing about their failed relationships. The phrase “Melrose Meltdown” comes from her friend’s breakup texts he dumped.
“I was obsessed with that phrase,” says Waterhouse. “I like to think that this song has a bit of their breakup—there are some other lines from their messages there—that it was based in rural Montreal, then Los Angeles. I love that about the song, because it’s kind of a figurine of both of us and those relationships.”
Ranging from pop to ’70s-flavored rock, Brad Cook has produced “I Can’t Let Go”, which is highly regarded in the independent space for his work with Bon Iver and Snail Mail. Waterhouse reached out to Cook through her TV-on-radio friend Dave Sitek, and recorded the album at his studio in North Carolina during the pandemic, without even meeting him first.
“His approach is, he’s so relaxed and always laughing, he’s a DJ who is confident in the music and depends on the voice,” she says. “I got so lucky, because we just had to play and we had great musicians [are his] friends.”
This included Bon Iver’s drummer, Matt McCaughan, who contributed percussion and all the “synths,” says Waterhouse. “It’s a little unfathomable,” she laughs, “but it looked like an electric vault.”
It wasn’t until after the album ended that Waterhouse brought it to Sub Pop, who “grown up a fan,” citing bands on their roster including Nirvana, Postal Service and Beach House.
“What I really stuck with about Sub Pop compared to other ratings is that everyone has been there for a long time, which is very rare. One of the founders is still there. Nobody feels like they are going anywhere,” says Waterhouse. It’s as if they are investing in you personally and artistically, and they are incredibly encouraging. It’s great to be with a production company that wants your music to remain exotic. If anything, they’re like, “No, weirder.”
And it’s Sub Pop that leads Waterhouse to its next gig – opening to fellow label Father John Misty on his North American tour this summer and fall. Waterhouse had just discovered this opportunity when he spoke to him diverseShe could hardly contain her enthusiasm.
“I’m still in shock. I’m totally in, ‘what?!'” says Waterhouse. “I can’t really think of someone I’d rather go on tour with. I’m obsessed with it. His song “Real Love Baby” is one of the best songs ever, and it’s very special to me. I’ve played it 100 times when I was first stepping back for someone…so in all 33 stops we do, I’m going to listen to him play it. “
Although Waterhouse is fully ahead in her music career, she also has a lot of acting on the horizon, including Jane Austen’s “Persuasion” and Salvador Dalí’s pic “Dalíland.” But the most anticipated is her role in the upcoming Amazon series “Daisy Jones and the Six,” based on the beloved book by Taylor Jenkins Reid, which follows a Fleetwood Mac-inspired troupe in the 1970s.
Waterhouse plays Karen, a fiery keyboardist for the group who finds herself in conflict with fellow bandmate Graham. Waterhouse says she and the band — made up of Riley Keough (Daisy Jones), Sam Claflin (Billy Dunn), Will Harrison (Graham Dunn) and Sebastian Chacon (Warren Rhodes) — trained every day for six straight months and recorded original music for the series.
“I’m really excited about what we did musically. We’re actually a band,” says Waterhouse. [when production is over]. We’re constantly talking about ways to expand our group together beyond the show… It looks like we’ve been in a group for 10 years. “
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