Mona is not the band she was three years ago. Of course, the world is not the same either.
When Mona’s second studio album, “Save the World,” was released in 2019, COVID wasn’t a familiar word, Trump was still president, and in particular, Phoebe Bridgers hadn’t yet launched her own record label. After releasing the self-titled album on Friday, the band — made up of USC alumni Katie Gavin, Naomi McPherson and Josette Maskin — is reinventing themselves with the hope of reaching an ever-larger audience.
Famed as an underground pop act, Mona has been known for her subtle construction of very melancholy music with a penchant for wordplay and weird jingles, for a while now. But since the band was signed to Bridgers’ Sixth Factory Records last year, their messaging has become independent and ironically mainstream. It mostly started with a song released in September, “Silk Chiffon,” a collaboration with Bridgers that reflects on the experiences of getting high and anxious at CVS, skating, and being gay in general. It’s the opening track for the new album, but it’s just a starting point for how far the band is willing to go in deepening their vocal and thematic language, as inspiration includes everyone from the Backstreet Boys to Talking Heads and Shania Twain.
The trio’s new music is bigger than ever, but its contents are more complex (and considerably happier) than the band’s previous projects. Mona embraces contrasts, such as the tug of war and attraction, relationships with sex and the central irony of crying on the dance floor. Talking to diverse A few days before the album’s release, the three bandmates explained why they rejected the term “girl band,” finding inspiration in academia and why Tori Amos has “the ultimate energy.”
I have said that this album is more cheerful and self-confident. Do you think it took more or less time processing real-life experiences and then tuning them to music?
Katie Gavin: I would say it is the last. Our second album was songs that literally reflected my whole life, like “It Gonna Be Okay, Baby”. And this album is so much more in the body, in the world and in relationships. It has that kind of extension that happens when you have experiences and you write from within those experiences. Some of these words contradict each other, and the emotional range of the record is very large and very incoherent. But I think that comes only from writing from any moment we find ourselves.
Regarding what I just said about being more in your body. This album has crazy beats and you just want to dance to it. Is this part of it? Like when you’re writing from that place of the present and you’re in your own body, it becomes full of dancing – does it just happen naturally to you?
Josette mask: I think that was the intent of the music we’ve been making since the beginning of Mona. We definitely come from a swarm trying to do what Robin did for us, from wanting to have the kind of emotional catharsis that can happen in a live environment where you hear drums and cry because you’re hearing the lyrics that make you feel visible. So I think with all the music that we make, we try to embody that spirit.
Do you all collaborate on the lyrics or do you all take different sides of the songs?
Gavin: We definitely take different sides from the songs. I’m the lead poet and the phrase will be at the highest level, so it’s lyrical and melody. I know Naomi and Joe laugh at me saying I’m the lead poet because I write all the songs, but there were exceptions. I also think my lyrics are very inspired by the reactions from Naomi and Jo and the conversations we’ve had about music. Part of what makes us such a good band is that we’re different puzzle pieces. I can only write songs. I’ve always done that and it’s just something I’m really drawn to. But I’m not compulsive about the acoustic world, like finding exactly the right bass drum that matches the emotion I’m feeling in the song or exactly the part I’m playing on the guitar. This is truly the world Naomi and Jo live in. So it is very symbiotic.
Speaking of the collaboration, I got some help from Mitski on “No Idea”. Her album this year has some similar trends toward really sad dance music. What influence has it given you, directly or indirectly, and how do you see the interaction of your musical worlds?
Gavin: I just want to say, first of all, that I have always been inspired by Mitsky, because Mitsky is one of my favorite songwriters, and I have learned a lot about myself from listening to Mitsky. But we talked about the disco when she came. It was in January of 2020. I don’t know how long it took to achieve this record. We haven’t heard any of her music, but we know she’s been listening to a lot of disco. Josette and her links on ABBA. It was funny that we both ended up working on this song together, but she was definitely encouraging us to go down that path with that song and make it really dance and a mix of Daft Punk, Zapp & Roger, and Backstreet Boys.
Naomi McPherson: And kind of like Talking Heads too. It started out like a Backstreet Boys disco, with strings and stuff and then orchestral songs. This song has probably been around for the longest time as a complete idea. The chassis has not changed at all since it was first made. But I guess we were just feeling it didn’t sit exactly inside our general vocal world. It was completely empty and only had bass and live drums and it felt incompatible with the rest of the music. So we had to go on our journey of how to pull it a little bit into the Synth-y Muna universe a little bit more, and that really happened in the middle of the night.
To get into some of the topics you cover on this album, let’s talk about “Kind Of Girl,” because you said, “It was really touching for us as a group, people who had to let others know how we wanted to be seen.” How did you see sex as a storytelling device evolve for you and what did you learn from exploring that?
Gavin: It’s a really interesting question. There was an opening that occurred. We’ve been in this band for the majority of our twenties, and when we first joined the band, even though we were already out as a queer band, the sex was much more difficult — and in some ways painful — in terms of how people understood it. We have a history of being called a “girl band,” and only in this era did we feel comfortable being like, “Hey, we really don’t get along with that.”
We have definitely moved with the world. There is a lot of awareness about these things these days, but it’s still very rare and very fortunate that there are spaces in which we work where the majority of gay people with a common experience and understanding are located. It’s the little things like hairstyles that help us feel more like ourselves, and it’s different for each of us too, as individuals. But I like to mess with these things. This makes me think of my idol, Tori Amos, a straight woman in the cis. But she does talk a lot about her representation of gender, even if it’s kind of like that… I don’t want to use a very blunt term, but Tori has highest energy when lead. It is a pleasure to be able to play with these things and celebrate them.
You’ve also talked about ownership of Desire on this album, in the song “What I Want” specifically. What does it mean for gay people to have their desire in the ways you explore in this album?
McPhersonQueer society is often seen as hypersexual, and we live in such a strict society that I think we’ve all been taught to be ashamed of our sexual orientation. Shame can be deep-rooted and it can be the task of a lifetime to get rid of it. Trying to act in defiance of this paradigm is what music is trying to do. Much of what our music does is imagine realities that don’t necessarily exist for everyone yet. “What I Want” is a song about power, desire, freedom, sex, sexuality, and all those things we’ve been taught to be ashamed of, as gay people, in particular. Also, it’s just a fun pop song.
“What I Want” sounds like a sister song to “I Know a Place,” because of what it talks about with my eccentric imagination.
McPherson: We took a class with a professor named Shauna Redmond at USC; No longer there. In the chapter we took, which was about black music specifically, she referred to this part of the writing about radical fiction and how much music served as a publication in which alternative realities could be imagined. Perhaps it subconsciously influenced the lyrics of that song. It’s interesting that you said “what I want” is sisters with “I know a place”, and I kind of agree with you. It’s like an evil twin.
Your most recent album contains a song called “Hands Off,” and this album contains a song called “Handle Me.” What would you say about this objective development – not necessarily that they are in conflict?
Gavin: I didn’t even think about it. “Hands Off” was written at a time when I was trying to get away from a relationship that wasn’t good for me. You need to get this empowerment [moment of] “I’ll be alone and you don’t touch me.” But then with that record I’ve been interested in it when I’m in relationships where the person is safe and we have a connection. I was, and still am, having this fear or reluctance to be open, vulnerable, and engaged. It’s funny that I got the idea by reading about pruning different plants, because I was dating at the time, but I was also gardening a lot. I have learned that it is beneficial for the health of a fruit tree if some of its fruits are picked, pruned, and handled by humans. And so I liked the idea: We actually need to deal with each other. This is a healthy thing.
Aside from the album, I did a cover of Britney Spears “Occasionally” at the end of “Fire Island”. [Co-star/screenwriter] Joel Kim Poster said this happened just because he sent you a DM.
McPherson: He DM-d me on Twitter. I am a big fan of his attitude. And we all love [co-stars] bowen [Yang] and died [Rogers] like that. So when he came up with the question, it was like, ‘If we can make it happen, we’ll make it happen. We started the work and converted it really fast so they could include it, and it was a bit of a frenetic race to the finish, but we’re very excited to be in the movie. It’s great to see so many gay people on the creative scene in Los Angeles getting so much sparkle.
McPherson: he did. There was another synchronization in place at that moment, earlier. And I think because they shot a karaoke scene with Bowen singing that song they wanted someone to cover it up. And he was like, “You guys are the first ones I thought of. I’m a big fan of your music. And it would be great if you guys did.” And we were like, OK, let’s do that — you know, “Free Britney” screams. We are smarter.
Where do you see your style after this album?
mask: I really don’t see any limit to genre or what it sounds like because we all love so many different styles of music. We are all now beginning to feel fully capable of making any kind of music we want to feel free. This doesn’t have to look a certain way to be seamless. So let’s take a break and do something and then ask this question. Think. Who do you know?
McPherson: It’s interesting because there’s a part of us that’s like, “We should make an album that’s a popular acoustic album, like the Lilith Fair record.” And then Katie will send this huge pop song she wrote looking like, well, Shit. It’s free to not go to an album or song with a preconceived notion of what it should be and only make good songs, because people love it.
mask: The song always decides. So maybe this is actually the answer. Whatever songs you decide they’re meant to be, that’s what it’s going to sound like.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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