‘I was high for five years’: bloghouse revivalist Grace Ives on separating partying from pop | Music

Being a burgeoning pop star is a thorny business. In 2019, when she released her debut album 2nd, New York’s Grace Ives was barely working within the confines of the music industry: she had made the album on a Roland MC-505 that she bought after seeing MIA use one; it was released on the experimental indie label Dots Per Inch, best known for bizarro pop acts such as Lily & Horn Horse and Lucy. In that world, everyone is friends, and people put out records for the love of it. So when Ives began shopping her second album, June’s Janky Star, to a slightly higher tier of indie label, it felt the same. “I was talking to my lawyer about deciding between two labels, and I was talking about one and I was like, ‘It’s cool, because I kind of feel like they’re my friends,’” Ives recalls over video from her apartment in Brooklyn. “My lawyer was like, Oh, Grace, no …”

Back then, Ives says, she was “excited and naive and also very impatient” to release Janky Star. “I didn’t realise the business side of music is so … like, you can be wined and dined and made to feel like a rockstar – and it can all be fake. That’s an easy word to use, but yeah, fake,” she says. “You get the support of a label, which is amazing. But you’re on your own, mentally. I didn’t know what it meant to own your masters or anything like that – the whole process of getting signed was so new to me. I thought that it was all lovey-dovey, but it’s business.”

The past few years have been something of a crash course for Ives. Aside from having to work out how to parlay the minor acclaim of 2nd into something bigger without signing away her soul – and fretting about whether she should give up music altogether – she also had to contend with a relationship with alcohol and drugs that was beginning to feel untenable. The gorgeous, cheeky, sensitive Janky Star captures that vortex of emotions, turning them into skewiff pop songs that are bite-size but booming, like bloggy 2008 indie hits that are whispered instead of yelped.

Working with producer Justin Raisen, Ives focused on creating a suite of songs that attempted to untangle her relationship with partying that could still be played at a party, which were larger and more complex than the songs on 2nd but didn’t lose their intimate, collage-y character. Ives describes herself as an “all or nothing person”, and you can hear that within individual songs on Janky Star – they’re prone to jumping from blocky programmed drums into a frenetic breakbeat, or exploding into a chorus of heavenly multitracked Iveses. “I kept it really small in terms of the range of instruments, to not overwhelm the ears of my listeners who are just getting to know 2nd,” she says. “I want to hold on to my fans and have their ears expand with me, you know?”

Ives was raised in Brooklyn, the daughter of a cinematographer and a music industry creative director, and went to college in Maryland before transferring to New York’s Purchase. It was there that she started making songs on her Roland, some of the earliest of which appeared on 2016’s Really Hot EP. Three years later, she released 2nd, which has had the kind of long afterlife you’d expect from such an ultra-catchy but unassuming record. Years after its release, Grimes posted about one of its songs – the ultimate stamp of approval for any DIY, big leagues-aspirant synthpop musician.

It was the period after 2nd that formed the emotional basis for Janky Star. “I finished 2nd, and I was still smoking weed every single day. I was high for five years. And then I developed a sickness, basically an allergy to weed that triggered crazy vomiting,” she recalls. After weed was removed from her diet, Ives turned to drinking – an easy switch in the music industry, where booze flows freely at meetings, dinners, gigs and playbacks. “In the music industry it’s the norm to just get fucked up. I kind of fell into that and developed a pretty ugly drinking pattern, where I was so unsure of what my life was going to be that I was not thinking about my own safety.”

One night, Ives drunkenly fell down a flight of stairs and badly hurt her tailbone, requiring her to take a week off work at the restaurant she was working at. It felt like a sign (“I was just like, what am I doing?”) so she went cold turkey without alcohol or drugs. “There’s this shame and embarrassment that comes with having a problem – I’m very secretive because of my attraction to alcohol and drugs,” she says. “You become a very private person when you think it’s a problem. A lot of Janky Star is about entering this new space in business and trying to make myself a better person.”

Ives says that stopping drinking so much helped both her confidence and her process – not least because when drinking she “would wake up and feel like shit and miss a studio session” – and helped her “take myself seriously.” At the same time, she still finds that there’s something inspiring about partying. Moving upstate during Covid and connecting with nature, she says, helped her navigate that feeling. “I was like, ‘Oh, no, this is cool – like, life is what’s cool. The partying is awesome too, but you can still make cool party music when you’re not so entrenched in the party scene.”

Now, Ives is “not a sober person,” but “not like, that party animal” – even though the 2000s indie bloghouse sound she draws inspiration from, which fetishises a fucked-up, party-heavy aesthetic, is being nostalgised and recreated by a new generation. (“If I hear the phrase ‘indie sleaze’ one more fucking time, I’m gonna fuckin’ kill myself,” she says, laughing her deep, reformed-stoner chuckle.) “Not drinking helps when I’m actually performing my music. I try to create that party vibe. I think people sometimes think I am fucked-up on stage, which I’m never, but you can kind of fake it – that’s what most people are doing at parties anyway,” she says. “I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything in terms of bar-hopping and clubs and the wasted party energy. I can go to a party and be inspired and not feel like I have to mimic that in my music. The playfulness comes from a joy of being alive, which I think I have more of now that I’m a more balanced person.”

Being a burgeoning pop star is a thorny business. In 2019, when she released her debut album 2nd, New York’s Grace Ives was barely working within the confines of the music industry: she had made the album on a Roland MC-505 that she bought after seeing MIA use one; it was released on the experimental indie label Dots Per Inch, best known for bizarro pop acts such as Lily & Horn Horse and Lucy. In that world, everyone is friends, and people put out records for the love of it. So when Ives began shopping her second album, June’s Janky Star, to a slightly higher tier of indie label, it felt the same. “I was talking to my lawyer about deciding between two labels, and I was talking about one and I was like, ‘It’s cool, because I kind of feel like they’re my friends,’” Ives recalls over video from her apartment in Brooklyn. “My lawyer was like, Oh, Grace, no …”

Back then, Ives says, she was “excited and naive and also very impatient” to release Janky Star. “I didn’t realise the business side of music is so … like, you can be wined and dined and made to feel like a rockstar – and it can all be fake. That’s an easy word to use, but yeah, fake,” she says. “You get the support of a label, which is amazing. But you’re on your own, mentally. I didn’t know what it meant to own your masters or anything like that – the whole process of getting signed was so new to me. I thought that it was all lovey-dovey, but it’s business.”

The past few years have been something of a crash course for Ives. Aside from having to work out how to parlay the minor acclaim of 2nd into something bigger without signing away her soul – and fretting about whether she should give up music altogether – she also had to contend with a relationship with alcohol and drugs that was beginning to feel untenable. The gorgeous, cheeky, sensitive Janky Star captures that vortex of emotions, turning them into skewiff pop songs that are bite-size but booming, like bloggy 2008 indie hits that are whispered instead of yelped.

Working with producer Justin Raisen, Ives focused on creating a suite of songs that attempted to untangle her relationship with partying that could still be played at a party, which were larger and more complex than the songs on 2nd but didn’t lose their intimate, collage-y character. Ives describes herself as an “all or nothing person”, and you can hear that within individual songs on Janky Star – they’re prone to jumping from blocky programmed drums into a frenetic breakbeat, or exploding into a chorus of heavenly multitracked Iveses. “I kept it really small in terms of the range of instruments, to not overwhelm the ears of my listeners who are just getting to know 2nd,” she says. “I want to hold on to my fans and have their ears expand with me, you know?”

Ives was raised in Brooklyn, the daughter of a cinematographer and a music industry creative director, and went to college in Maryland before transferring to New York’s Purchase. It was there that she started making songs on her Roland, some of the earliest of which appeared on 2016’s Really Hot EP. Three years later, she released 2nd, which has had the kind of long afterlife you’d expect from such an ultra-catchy but unassuming record. Years after its release, Grimes posted about one of its songs – the ultimate stamp of approval for any DIY, big leagues-aspirant synthpop musician.

It was the period after 2nd that formed the emotional basis for Janky Star. “I finished 2nd, and I was still smoking weed every single day. I was high for five years. And then I developed a sickness, basically an allergy to weed that triggered crazy vomiting,” she recalls. After weed was removed from her diet, Ives turned to drinking – an easy switch in the music industry, where booze flows freely at meetings, dinners, gigs and playbacks. “In the music industry it’s the norm to just get fucked up. I kind of fell into that and developed a pretty ugly drinking pattern, where I was so unsure of what my life was going to be that I was not thinking about my own safety.”

One night, Ives drunkenly fell down a flight of stairs and badly hurt her tailbone, requiring her to take a week off work at the restaurant she was working at. It felt like a sign (“I was just like, what am I doing?”) so she went cold turkey without alcohol or drugs. “There’s this shame and embarrassment that comes with having a problem – I’m very secretive because of my attraction to alcohol and drugs,” she says. “You become a very private person when you think it’s a problem. A lot of Janky Star is about entering this new space in business and trying to make myself a better person.”

Ives says that stopping drinking so much helped both her confidence and her process – not least because when drinking she “would wake up and feel like shit and miss a studio session” – and helped her “take myself seriously.” At the same time, she still finds that there’s something inspiring about partying. Moving upstate during Covid and connecting with nature, she says, helped her navigate that feeling. “I was like, ‘Oh, no, this is cool – like, life is what’s cool. The partying is awesome too, but you can still make cool party music when you’re not so entrenched in the party scene.”

Now, Ives is “not a sober person,” but “not like, that party animal” – even though the 2000s indie bloghouse sound she draws inspiration from, which fetishises a fucked-up, party-heavy aesthetic, is being nostalgised and recreated by a new generation. (“If I hear the phrase ‘indie sleaze’ one more fucking time, I’m gonna fuckin’ kill myself,” she says, laughing her deep, reformed-stoner chuckle.) “Not drinking helps when I’m actually performing my music. I try to create that party vibe. I think people sometimes think I am fucked-up on stage, which I’m never, but you can kind of fake it – that’s what most people are doing at parties anyway,” she says. “I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything in terms of bar-hopping and clubs and the wasted party energy. I can go to a party and be inspired and not feel like I have to mimic that in my music. The playfulness comes from a joy of being alive, which I think I have more of now that I’m a more balanced person.”