After revealing plans for a new solo endeavor under the moniker Georgia Gets By earlier this summer with the release of debut single “Easier to Run,” BROODS vocalist Georgia Nott is formally announcing her debut EP today with Fish Bird Baby Boy scheduled to arrive October 6 via Luminelle Recordings. Having just released her fourth album alongside her brother Caleb as one half of the electropop duo last year, this solo endeavor, as Nott explains, is an exercise in writing songs for herself rather than for the mass audience BROODS has accumulated over the past decade. “To tell myself I don’t have to share it is an important trick I play on myself,” she tells us in a brief Q&A printed in full below. “If I truly believe that, I let go a little more. I keep the intimacy and vulnerability of writing protected from the world long enough to allow the most honest story to emerge.”
Along with the announcement, Nott is also sharing the EP’s second single, “Happiness Is an 8 Ball,” which comes paired with a minimalist music video directed by Silken Weinberg and inspired by the films of Chantal Akerman. The moodily lit visual is soundtracked by a glowing take on dream-pop landing somewhere between the fuzzy-feeling breeziness of Alvvays and the darker shadings of vintage gothy post-punk. “This song is about using unhealthy coping mechanisms in a desperate attempt to make things work with someone,” she shares of the single. “When love doesn’t bind you anymore and only the pressure to live up to the expectations of a relationship keeps you together, you begin to find yourself turning to other means to find the energy to be with them.”
Check out the video below, and read on for our brief conversation with Nott.
What do you feel you can express with your solo music that you wouldn’t be able to with Broods?
It’s less about what I’m expressing and more about how I write a lot on my own with just a guitar. It gives me a chance to take things slowly and take my time with it. What comes out is my more delicate side, and then I go from there—whether that means layering distorted guitars or sending it off to other musicians to play strings, etc. I really just take it as an opportunity to follow a vision that is completely my own.
At what point do the ideas in your lyrics evolve from personal revelations to concepts for songs?
I try to walk the line between the personal and the collective experience. It always starts very specific to what I’m going through and then along the way I bring it to a place that feels more universal. The point is to express myself in a way that will connect with other people. Well, I hope it does anyway. Whether that’s the case, we’ll see [laughs].
Where did the idea for the visual with you brushing your teeth come from?
It was mostly inspired by Jeanne Dielman by Chantal Akerman. Jeanne goes about her daily life in this slow-moving film and everything is under the surface until it’s not. It’s all subtext. The idea of staring yourself down while you brush your teeth seemed fitting. The basic routine plods along while the internal world rages underneath the monotony.
You’ve shared that you wrote “Easier to Run” with the mindset that it would never be released—do you find it easier to write music as a solo artist for this reason? That with no bandmates you may never have to share it with anyone?
After a while of making and sharing music I began to find myself 10 steps ahead while writing. It made me freeze under the pressure and fixate too much on other people’s expectations and perceptions. To tell myself I don’t have to share it is an important trick I play on myself. If I truly believe that, I let go a little more. I keep the intimacy and vulnerability of writing protected from the world long enough to allow the most honest story to emerge. Then I later decide [whether] it’s worth sharing, and that’s when I have to be a little brave. But I can’t think about that while writing anymore. It stumps the song because I find myself trying to hide before I’ve sung a single lyric.
The new moniker “Georgia Gets By” seems to reflect the theme of coping in your lyrics—do you foresee that as being limiting in the future, or do you see this project as being an outlet to specifically focus on these themes?
I think I’ll always be trying to get by. That’s life. It doesn’t really matter what wonderful or terrible things are happening. As a hypersensitive person, the world is always going to be a lot to take in. I’m always going to have moments of wondering whether I can handle anything. Making music has always been my way of self-soothing and accepting my own reality. I always have and always will feel intensely, so I never worry about running out of things to sing about.
