FEATURE: Spotlight: Nasty Cherry — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Jenn Five for NME

Nasty Cherry

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THE notion of a girl or boy band…

PHOTO CREDIT: Tsarina Merrin

forming for a reality T..V. show is normally something I would avoid! Nasty Cherry are, in my view, much more than a manufactured girl group. Rather than them being akin to a group formed on a show like The X Factor and then launched into the world with rather generic and soulless songs, Nasty Cherry are a genuinely exciting promise who promise stamina, growth and durability! I want to end by quoting from a review of their latest E.P., Season 2 (released last year). I want to start by bringing in a couple of older interviews; where we were being introduced to this intriguing band who many experienced for the first time on the Netflix show, I’m with the Band. DIY introduced the band in 2019:

“A four-piece girl band put together by pop legend Charli XCX, the group – comprised of singer Gabi Bechtel, guitarist Chloe Chaidez, bassist Georgia Somary and drummer Debbie Knox-Hewson – were puppet-mastered into existence a year ago, meeting for the first time the day they also started filming Netflix documentary ‘I’m With The Band’. Literally born to polarise, they’re either a very modern premise, designed to prove, as Charli says at the start of each episode, that these days there’s no clear roadmap to success, or they’re a group who’ve bypassed all the difficult bits and been given a spotlight because of their famous mate and a multi-billion dollar streaming platform.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jenn Five for DIY

What's most intriguing about meeting Nasty Cherry is attempting to work out exactly what they want to be. Gabi insists that “none of [them] are here to be reality stars”, and yet the show is both inextricably linked to and, seemingly, as much of a driving force for the quartet as the music. At one point, Georgia tells us how the normal dynamics of a recording session would be interrupted by the practicalities of having a large crew with them at all times. “We were in tiny studios with these massive camera rigs and they'd literally [have to] clear instruments off shelves because they couldn't turn around.

Still in their formative stages, the band's current output – a sultry, synth-flavoured, Sky Ferreira-esque brand of pop-rock – is promising enough to prove Charli's suspicions correct: no matter what their background, the four members of Nasty Cherry clearly have chemistry, potential and a knack for penning earworms that’ll riddle themselves in your brain for days. Now it's a case of seeing whether, once the hype around their Netflix debut settles, they can continue the momentum and excite without all the behind-the-scenes extras.

How does it feel to be the most polarising new band on the block, we ask, as they head off for another day in their very abnormal new normal? “Haters make me famous,” grins Chloe, with a wink. “Bring the haters on! I want people to talk about it, and I think there's a lot to talk about. A lot of questions!” she chuckles. “A lot of Qs...” There might be a lot of contradictions to Nasty Cherry, but you certainly can't argue with that”.

I have watched bits of I’m with the Band, although I have heard so much of the music they have put out, so I sort of detach the group from the show – or any notion that they are only popular or notable because of the connection to the show and Charli XCX. As we can see in an NME interview from 2019, Nasty Cherry offer much more personality and pizzazz than a traditional reality T.V. show-formed band:

“With the Netflix show dropping next month, the band can expect a whole lot more attention. Given they were assembled by Charli and the process was filmed are Nasty Cherry worried that the band are going to seem like a Simon Cowell-style manufacturing experiment?

“No, and I think based off our first hello to the world as a band being a flute of champagne on Georgia’s ass, I think we started it off being completely ourselves,” says Gabbriette. “It’d be depressing otherwise.”

They pride themselves on their music feeling empowering and authentic. “It’s a natural thing that happens when you’re in a group of people that treat each other like sisters,” Georgia says, “There’s a level of honesty that’s there.”

While Charli has been on hand to offer advice, she’s encouraged the band to make their own choices. “She’ll [Charli] say, ‘You should really go with what you think on this, because you’ll regret it if you don’t voice your opinion’ It’s advising us to advise ourselves, which feels very empowering,” Debbie explains.

“I feel like I’ve learned encyclopaedic amounts from her, honestly,” Chloe adds”.

Not only is the music of Nasty Cherry fresh and not beholden to any formular or precedence; their images and characteristics, far from being honed or directed, is very much the sign that they have something about them. I want to bring in an interview from Harper’s Bazar from 2019. It underlines just how cool they are:

“Then Charli XCX first announced the band Nasty Cherry, she hailed them as a badass “girl gang,” which is true if you’ve ever seen them. They’re a group of four young women with ’70s shags who look tough in leather jackets and sing songs about getting it on with your dad. But beneath the rock ’n’ roll facade, the group is more a “sisterhood” than a motley quartet of musicians. “We definitely feel like a family at this point,” Nasty Cherry member Gabi Bechtel tells BAZAAR.com.

Yet, just more than a year ago, they were a mere group of strangers moving into a house in Los Angeles to make music together for the first time—a process chronicled in Netflix’s docuseries-meets-reality show I’m with the Band: Nasty Cherry. Charli XCX plucked four young talents and, like Simon Cowell did with One Direction and Fifth Harmony, created the girl group she wished she looked up to when she was a kid.

There’s lead singer Gabi, a former model and newcomer to the music world who previously worked with Charli on a music video; guitarist Chloe Chaidez, an energetic performer who’s also the lead singer of the rock band Kitten; drummer Debbie Knox-Hewson, who played drums on tour with Charli; and bassist Georgia Somary, one of Charli’s longtime friends who worked in film set design and started playing her instrument only a year before joining the band.

Nasty Cherry have been compared to groups like The Runaways and Spice Girls, but their musical influences stretch beyond that.

Gabi: Growing up, I didn’t really pay much attention to who I was listening to. It was like top 20. And then I started listening through the door of my sister’s bedroom, and it turned into Gwen Stefani, and then exploring that whole world. So it was very much like pop bands.

I think in high school, I started listening to The Runaways, definitely, and people like Suzi Quatro and even The Cramps. I’ve always loved Poison Ivy and just people, women, with really strong voices and visions in whatever band they’re in. Even actresses and everything like that. Nina Simone and people like that, where they just created their own world.

Their single, “Music with Your Dad,” started with the notion that there’s no such thing as “guilty pleasures.”

Debbie: We went to this restaurant in L.A., shout-out to Pergoletta, and we had way too much pasta and wine, then we came home and we had everything set up, but we just started jamming. It started on the idea that none of us believe in the expression “guilty pleasures” because actually, it’s really fucking good. So then everyone’s playing like Hilary Duff and Paris Hilton’s last album, and we’re all just screaming the lyrics at one another. And then got our instruments out and kind of started jamming on the idea.

Charli XCX isn’t just a mentor; she’s also a close friend.

Gabi: We’ve written with Charli a couple times. She does offer us advice, but it’s not like, “You’re going to do this, and you need to sound like this.” It’s like, “What do you think is going to be the best for you, and how are you going to be happiest with this in the end?” It’s really kind of crazy how there she is, how present she is. I can send her a picture of me having a shit day if I’m trying to write something, and she’s like, “Oh, you’ll be fine, just think about this,” or something. She’s perfect.

Debbie: She’s one of the first people to pop up on my phone with ideas, almost every day for the band. She’s so into it, and I remember when we were living together and some days it’d be super intense, she’d be the first person I’d text and say, “Something’s stressing me out.” She was just very, very present and, obviously, really wants the band to do well and believes in it, which has made us believe in it a lot as well.

I might be repeating what has come before and jumping about a bit, but there are a range of great interviews with the group. Last year, EUPHORIA. chatted with Nasty Cherry and asked them about their inspirations and how their music has evolved since the start:

“I’d like to start by sharing with our readers a little bit about Nasty Cherry. Why a name like “Nasty Cherry”?

Debbie: It felt fun. I guess we wanted to something that sounded a bit rude and feminine and fun. That feels like our vibe.

Who are your musical (and doctrinal) inspirations? When I listen to Nasty Cherry, I imagine that La Roux, The Cure, and Madonna had a beautiful sonic lovechild in the 70s that popped right out the womb with its middle finger in the air.

Debbie: We all listen to different music individually. There are some diehard Bob Dylan, Bryan Ferry, The Cocteau Twins, and Prince fans in this band (and Madonna for sure!). I think we all like to take inspiration from other things as well: Decor, heartbreak, partying…

How do you think your sound is evolving in comparison to your debut EP of bangers – Season 1?

Chloe: I think Season 2 is still an EP of bangers, but I feel like the sisterhood between us has grown even stronger, and you can hear that.

My favorite track on Season 2 is definitely “Better Run,” and it’s really refreshing to hear such a vulnerable, softer track from you guys, that still sounds really you. How did you go about honing the signature Nasty Cherry sound?

Chloe: Thank you! It’s really an emotion that leads a writing session… a female perspective that leads the room with ideas. That’s how “Better Run” happened!

What’s on the horizon for Nasty Cherry?

Chloe: More quar[antine] bangers”.

Before ending with a review of their recent E.P., there is a final interview that provides some good information and story. I am not sure what the rest of the year holds for the group. Their music is fantastic, and I know there will be demand for an album sometime soon – perhaps that is in the pipeline and coming this year. In a great interview with The Forty-Five, we discover more about the promotion and recording of Season 2:

“This internal conflict about promoting ‘Season 2’ in the middle of a pandemic currently lies at the centre of the group. To make matters even more difficult, Debbie is currently residing in an apartment in London, over 5000 miles away from her LA-based bandmates. “I’m in the wrong continent for the band!”, she exclaims. “We’d only be lying if we said the distance didn’t didn’t affect us as a group. We work on different time zones, and we have had to get into the swing of how we work, write, and communicate, and that process doesn’t necessarily always take place on a weekly 5pm Zoom call. We’re having to try and navigate it all.”

Instead, they have gotten into a “rewarding” routine of sending each other lyrics, demos, and song ideas via voice notes and the occasional call. Chloe is eager to point out that this “pretty collaborative” course of action has only further established their ability to work in the face of hardship, proving that “one of the real beauties of this band is that everyone has a voice in it”.

As a group, they have been working towards developing a stronger bond, and within ‘Season 2’’s succinct 15-minute running time, you will find songs that elevate the lived experiences of the band. Take the woozy, warm and gorgeously melodic ‘Better Run’, which grapples with depression, or closer ‘Cardamon December’, a spaced-out meditation on self-reflection that feels overwhelmingly human. Georgia is effusive when she describes how these songs “emotionally affect all four of [them]”, and explains that they were able to make sense of one another’s personal situations through songwriting together as a group.

Debbie also offers her view on how male artists, producers, engineers, promoters et cetera can be better allies to the cause: “Men have to be pushing for this change just as much as women are. If you care about equality not just in the music industry, but in any industry, you have to push for the change as much as the people that it directly affects.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Jenn Five for DIY

Empowering women and non-binary artists – both inside and out of pop’s star-making bubble – will always remain at the top of the agenda for Nasty Cherry, and this has been the momentum behind the group since the beginning. “Music shouldn’t be elitist, the industry shouldn’t be a club where people feel like they can’t get into it,” Debbie elaborates. “Music should just be about expressing yourself and working really hard at it. I think it’s really cool that people have been to watch the show or see us develop as a band and then say, ‘Yeah, I’m going to start a band too’.”

Nasty Cherry may be unsure where the future leads, but above all else, they are proud of how they have built their universe on their own terms. And as for the cynics? “At the end of the day, we have proven that you can just join a band. A lot of people won’t like that, but it’s true, you can just join a band,” deadpans Georgia as she relays Nasty Cherry’s hard-won mantra. She follows with a very pensive pause, before offering a conspiratorial smirk as she doubles down on the no-shit stance of the group. “No one joins a girlband for it to be miserable!”

If you have not listened to Season 2, then I have embedded the E.P. above and advise you to have a listen! I think that Nasty Cherry are going to go on to be one of the most successful girl groups/gangs in the country. I feel, once restrictions are lifted, they will be keen to showcase songs from the E.P. This is what NME had to offer:

“On Nasty Cherry’s debut EP ‘Season 1’ the Transatlantic pop band were still figuring things out. Before forming in 2018, they were relative newcomers to their craft – vocalist Gabi Bechtel had never really sang lead vocals and Georgia Somary was new to her role as bassist. The release’s accompanying Netflix show I’m With The Band gave fans an Access All Areas pass to the struggles, the in-fighting and the uncertainty as the group – curated and backed by Charli XCX – wrestled with hype and expectations. It was all a bit dramatic.

Fortunately they quickly found their feet on the five-track EP, but ‘Season 2’ sees the gang really start to play. Away from the glare of the public eye, the four-piece turn hype into something more permanent with a confident collection of tracks.

The driving anthem of ‘Better Run’ is full of sunshine escapism, all glittering 80’s synths as Haim meets Carly Rae Jepsen, but beneath the flickering streetlights, the band get vulnerable. “All my blood is turning blue, it’s depression. Are you ok?,” sings Gabi. “The more I confess, the more I get scared for you.” It’s a stark contrast to the unwavering strut of their earlier work, but a welcome one. The closing hammer of ‘Cardamon December’ is just as revealing; an atmospheric romp of bristling insecurity (“my confidence always leaves me”) and wistful bedroom regret.

Those moments of fear and self-loathing make tracks like ‘Just The Way You Like It’ that much more jubilant. A dreamy pop number that takes Little Mix’s ‘Black Magic’ to a sleazy dive bar. “Got you by the neck, just the way you like it,” smirks Gabi before knowingly referencing their oh-so-modern beginnings (“We’re so new, our birth was televised”)

On their first EP, they were just trying to survive but with ‘Season 2’, Nasty Cherry are thriving. It’s the perfect kaleidoscopic playground for them to wrestle with matters of the heart and head, while also chasing their stadium-sized dreams”.

On 19th March, the group announced their third E.P., The Movie. It will be exciting to have that in the world. The Line of Best Fit reported the news:

“The Movie will follow Nasty Cherry's 2020 EP Season 2. Nasty Cherry recorded the EP last summer after drummer Debbie Knox-Hewson was able to join the rest of the band in LA.

Tracklist:

Six Six Six

What’s The Deal

Her Body

All In My Head

Lucky

I only came across Nasty Cherry relatively recently. I am looking ahead to their E.P. release and seeing where their music takes. On the strength of what has come so far, what arrives next is likely to be fantastic! Follow and investigate Nasty Cherry as there are…