Slow Fiction singer Julia Vassallo and guitarist Paul Knepple shared in a recent Zoom interview ahead of their Tuesday night show at the Grog Shop that they’ve always felt a pull towards music. Vassallo grew up learning to play the piano and honing her talents in theater and choir, while Knepple was playing instruments from a young age. But things shifted when the band came together.
“Writing music with the intent of actually trying to make full songs and full pieces of art didn’t really start until the five of us started playing together,” says Knepple.
Vassallo echoes her bandmate’s sentiment.
“I went to college and didn’t do anything with music. I just loved it for me. I just loved doing it for something that I found very soothing,” says Vassallo. “In some ways, it was probably [lack of] confidence, but also just not having the right people. I find creating with other people, specifically music, it’s so much better.”
The New York City music scene gave the band its start. Slow Fiction played its first gig in 2021, beginning as a live-focused band, creating songs specifically to play at gigs around the city.
“Every single city, every single town has its own scene – and something interesting about New York is that it’s like so many towns smooshed into a space,” says Vassallo.
The band soaked up all the energy it could from New York’s diverse neighborhoods. 2023 is called out as the turning point in which the band started to focus more on becoming recording artists and creating fully produced music that could live outside of shows. Now that the band has released music the members are proud of, touring it nationally is a priority.
“It just seemed like once we started writing and recording more music, then everything kind of came full circle,” says Knepple. “Now, we want to play these songs and test them live, especially outside of New York City. So, it’s been awesome in the past couple years to start touring more and seeing new cities, new venues. It injects new life into you as a band to see new places and play for new people.”
The band’s recent travels have served as an expansive songwriting muse.
“I love bird’s eye view. I think about that a lot,” says Vassallo. “It’s like my favorite idea of looking at a situation, even one that you’re in, but not looking at it as yourself. Looking at it from an omniscient kind of third party. And I do feel like, when you’re traveling, you’re transient and you’re in and out of cities all the time, just kind of interloping in these spaces… it does give you a sense of bird’s eye point of view of places and people’s lives.”
This month’s debut album, dollhouse, was created a bit differently than past music, now that the band has found its footing.
“With these 11 songs, we thought about them more as what they could sound like in their final form,” says Knepple. “Envisioning them more in the studio, rather than just a song we could put together to play at a show.”
Vassallo gushes about the band’s collaborative approach. She loves the combination of their five individual energies coming together in the creative process.
“Some of the songs on the record, we didn’t even have the arrangements fully flushed out until we were in the studio, cause there were so many cool instruments to play around with when we were there. And I think the magic of having done it ourselves was just having that childlike sense of wonderment in a space and kind of poking around with it. People trying out different stuff, and if 95 percent of it doesn’t work and five percent of it does, that’s so awesome,” Vassallo laughs.
That 95 percent makes for some good memories. Vassallo laughs as she and Knepple recall going out to the same New York City bar they always go to when big things are happening on album release night earlier this month and playing back old demos.
“We were jokingly toasting to the songs that didn’t make it on the record,” says Knepple.
“Was I like okay?” Vassallo laughs, referencing the demos they poured one out for that night. “What was I saying?”
One old song did fight its way through the cut down process, however. “ninetynine” is the oldest song on dollhouse.
“No small feat,” says Knepple. “We like to cut stuff.”
Much of the album is a slow burn, but that one pulls you in right away with its sharp imagery and up-tempo soundscape.
“Having high expectations of yourself, I think, is always important. Also, you know, of each other,” says Vassallo “It’s always just like, ‘Yeah, that was good, but we could be better, or we could make this more interesting.’”
Another album highlight is ‘bottle episode.’
“A bad one” Vassallo swiftly replies when asked about her headspace while writing the reflective song.
“It was kind of like a double entendre joke with that one,” says Vassallo, explaining how the literal meaning of bottle episode is appropriate for what they are trying to convey, but she also meant bottle in reference to alcohol.
Conceptual writing was a useful tool here.
“Sometimes, it’s more of posing yourself a question, like, ‘What if an experience that someone had, what if you didn’t want it to be part of your season, and you just wanted it to be the thing that is trapped inside of that one episode? But that’s not how life works,” says Vassallo. “You want to detach from something, but, unfortunately, it will circle back around. It’s part of the series; it’s still there.”
Different songs required different circumstances for their genesis. The band was on a writing trip to flush out some existing work-in-progress songs and see if any new inspiration struck, when the title track was born.
“We were just trying to mess around and see if changing environment helped us be inspired, and it worked with that one,” says Knepple. “We had like a jam, little, loose version of it and then, sonically, stumbled on what we hear now on the record; more kind of glide-y. If there are two ends of the record, that is probably one of the furthest on the more shimmery, gliding side of the record.”
The three pre-album singles, “satellite,” “junior year,” and “turning down flowers” were selected to showcase different sides of the songwriting on the record.
“It kind of takes you through the journey,” says Vassallo. “There’s something cool about the first track and then the last track both being singles as well. We were really passionate about ‘turning down flowers’ being a single, for sure, which is hilarious, cause it’s like six minutes.”
The band knew that “turning down flowers” was going to be the closing track on the album for quite some time and think it also works well as a live show closer.
The ending writes itself, as Vassallo starts the track posing the question, “What’s next?” in a whisper. It ties a bow on the story, while inviting listeners to look forward to the next chapter.