Miya Folick is a firecracker mere seconds away from exploding.
The Californian alt-pop entity glows the morning she meets BEAT, cheery and polite, but at her own admittance a little deflated. Last night, she slept badly and hasn’t been able to turn her neck without making her whole body follow suit for a few days now. Two aspirins later and she’s giddy and good to go.
It’s not far off the way her music paints her: cutting through her pains with glimmers of humour and hope. The title track of her first EP Strange Darling is a bit of a downer sonically, but it presents Miya as madly in love with a weirdo while comparing her feelings to Play-Doh.
Three years on, Miya’s armed and ready with a new record called Premonitions. It’s an ever-evolving collection of pop – by turns vulnerable and incensed – that challenges Miya’s ties to self-worth, her best mates and the dickheads who aren’t good for her. But the way she sings about these well-worn subject matters – the same ones that swathes of others are using (less effectively) as fuel for their work – is minty fresh and freeing.
So with that liberated spirit in mind, BEAT sat down with Miya to talk music, the grotesque nature of heartbeats and why TV shows aren’t off-limits for her inspo.
BEAT: Hello Miya. This record feels like quite a release for you, emotionally. Did you go into writing it with a bunch of pent-up stuff you were desperate to get out?
Miya Folick: I think it was a pent-up amount of love and caring that went into it! Most of my music I had released previously was sad and angsty; a lot of it was about lost and frustrated love. Now, I have all of this fulfillment, joy and friendship in my life. I wanted this album to reflect that, but this album is made up of my kind of happy music, so it’s still kind of sad.
I guess it did feel like a release, but it also felt like a leaching. Some of it felt cathartic and then other times it made me feel sapped of all my life force.
BEAT: There were three years in between your first EP and this, your debut album. Did you always want to take your time with it?
Miya Folick: Honestly, no. I usually work pretty quickly, but I just wanted this to be right since it’s the first one.
BEAT: Did you feel that, “Oh shit, this is how people will perceive me from now on, so it better be great” pressure?
Miya Folick: Oh yeah. It is different to my earlier stuff. Back then, making live guitar music was just the easiest thing to do at the time while I was in the process of figuring out how to make this happen and who to do it with.
I just wanted it to be right. It does feel like, for many reasons, your first album reflects the sound you want it to. If it doesn’t, you have to tour that album and play those songs. If they don’t properly represent you, then that just sounds like torture.
BEAT: The first song on this album is a big, beautiful ballad called Thingamajig. Miya Folick, tell me, what is this “thingamajig”?
Miya Folick: I think there are so many different reasons why that word works for this song, but one of them is, in the song, I never say what I’m apologising for. What the song makes you feel is this very familiar sensation of sorrow that can’t be shaken or rectified, but you can’t ever figure out why — it’s just a “thingamajig.”
I also just, you know, liked the word. Truthfully, the whole song is about Westworld, and the idea of being in a simulation.
BEAT: Woah. You seem really hesitant to admit to that, though. Why?
Miya Folick: Because I want people to have an open mind and apply it to their own lives. In that way, it doesn’t really matter what we wrote it about.
BEAT: How good are you at sniffing out bullshit in other people?
Miya Folick: Not very good. Are you implying that my story is bullshit?!
BEAT: Not at all! I get the impression from your music that you’re very good at surveying situations.
Miya Folick: I think I am very good at it, in all realms of my life — except romantically. Then I’m awful! As soon as I’m attracted to somebody, I have an insane brain and can’t tell right from wrong.
But with my friends, I definitely do. My band make fun of me because if I think somebody lives their life full of shit and they’re coming at me with their weird atmosphere, I’ll not look at them and act pretty rude! Like, you don’t deserve this!
BEAT: So on Baby Girl, you sing the line “I want to see your heartbeat”...
Miya Folick: That’s not the line.
BEAT: Fuck, what’s the line?!
Miya Folick: “I want to see you happy.” Though I like that! Actually, that’s really interesting, because I find seeing people’s heartbeats very disturbing.
It really bothers me; there’s something deeply aggressive about it. If you see an actual heart beating, it’s like a fist. But yes, the line is: “I wanna see you happy. I wanna see you smile!”
BEAT: I’m glad I asked, then. Do you ever like to listen to your own music?
Miya Folick: I listened to our demos a lot when we were making the record. There’s something about hearing yourself reflected back to you in this harmonic, sonic way that’s similar to babies looking at their own reflection in a mirror. It’s comforting. I don’t know why, though.
BEAT: Talking about comfort, could you give me a bit of advice that could help somebody get over a heartbreak? I feel like I’d trust your advice.
Miya Folick: I’m the queen of getting over heartbreak, but I think it’s because I move on. That’s my coping mechanism: not caring anymore. But I don’t think that’s a good method, because you don’t deal with it and then find yourself shattered six months later, trying to figure out why you’re suddenly crying.
I think writing and talking about your heartbreak – making things out of it – is always a better tactic than trying to find solace in going out and getting plastered. Don’t do that – and don’t text them! You’ll wake up in the morning hating yourself and feeling worse. Just have some tea and go to bed.