Total Wife unpack the making of come back down, their best record yet.
The upcoming Nashville duo talks mixing, self-resampling, DIY collaboration and more.
Music is better when it’s curious—boundlessly stretching into new shapes while gesturing toward the edges of familiar ideas. Shoegaze, in its 90’s heyday, embodied this spirit, obscuring familiar instruments beyond identification and bending sonic landscapes like moldable putty. The results were mesmerizing; with each listen to classics like My Bloody Valentine’s loveless, one’s attention is directed towards undiscovered pockets of the mix, provoking constantly augmented experiences of a “static” recording. Today, unfortunately, these atmospheric aesthetics are relentlessly mined by bands that often fail to conjure the depth and play found in the style’s early days. But every rule has exceptions—acts like feeble little horse and Parannoul innovate under the shoegaze umbrella by bringing novel shades of digital processing and instrumentation into the fold. It’s always a treat to discover an artist rising above the contemporary shoegaze swamp, and my pick for 2025 is Nashville duo Total Wife.
The band’s new record, come back down, is a masterclass of simultaneously catchy and disorienting songwriting and production. Born from late-night work sessions where Luna Kupper would drift in and out of sleep, the music exists in a liminal, half-awake space, endlessly reaching for feelings that are palpable yet formless. Throughout the album, whirlwinds of digitally affected guitar textures collide with anything from frenetic drum breaks (“naoisa”, “(dead b)”) to mellow trip-hop beats (“chloe”), making for an alluring, shapeshifting rock record with a digital sheen. Even many of the guitars themselves are resampled from a few select takes, giving rise to a generative, self-referential body of work. The result is a record that's as diverse as it is mystifying, and as cohesive as it is boundary pushing.
I recently got the opportunity to chat with the duo about their creative process alongside the band’s evolution from the studio to the stage (and back again), and was ecstatic to peel back the world of come back down. Read the full conversation below and be sure to check out the most invigorating shoegaze project of the year.
Part 1: Limitations & Inspirations
David Feigelson: Thank you so much for chatting about the album. I’ve been a fan since In/Out came out a couple years ago, and I think your work is really cool and creative. I'm excited to find out more about what you guys do and dive into the making of this new record. I want to start off by asking about the experience of having to sell all of your synthesizers. I know creative constraints can be useful, but it also can be tough if you get attached to certain gear.
Luna Kupper: Yeah—it kind of worked out, because I had been hitting a wall with synth stuff, feeling like I couldn't come up with anything that felt new. A lot of the sounds I used to make with synths were very inspired by Broadcast and Stereolab, which was cool, but those are things that happened already, sounds that already existed. I mostly needed to make rent, so I sold them all. But it helped force me to use my ear to figure out what makes up the sounds I want to make, and to try to use samples of vocals and guitars to put them together.
DF: Sure. How did that change how you approach listening to sounds or sample sources?
LK: Yeah. I feel like every time I’m recording something new, I'm sharpening my ear more, getting better at mixing stuff which is probably my favorite thing. But it made me realize things like if I want that high, wispy aspect of a synth sound, I can use the breath cut from vocals. A sine wave can kind of be the low resonating part of a voice, or a single guitar feedback sample.
DF: Do you ever hear things outside and wish that you could use them?
LK: Yeah, totally. I'm super inspired by field recordings. I always like putting those kinds of samples in the songs. I don't think we did that too much on this record, but we have a lot in the past. This time I was more inspired by trying to make sounds that I hear; I like orange noise, rumbling low end stuff. I like how everytime you go outside you hear this low frequency.
DF: Yeah that's cool. I think one of you mentioned in another interview that your relationship with art was shaped by your relationship with being outside and growing up in the Northeast. Is that something that’s more passive, like practicing awareness, or will you actively seek out different settings for different kinds of creative work?
Ash Richter: I think growing up I just subconsciously knew that a natural space was a good place to create. I used to go into the woods with my childhood best friend, and we would make videos, or just hang out and sing. We started my first band together, a long time ago. I think it is mostly subconscious and ingrained in me, but whenever we have the opportunity on tour to stay in a cabin, or somewhere outside of everything, that always feels really refreshing.
LK: That feeling comes back then, but it is so ingrained, just from growing up in the Northeast and being outside a lot as you start thinking about things creatively. But now I can kind of take it for granted, and we're working all the time and inside so much. When we do go outside, usually on tour because that's the only free time we have, it’s like oh my god, this feels really good, I can see clearly right now.
DF: That makes sense. Are there any unlikely places that gave you that feeling on tour?
AR: There’s this one place, it’s called the Gates of Hell. It’s in Columbus, Ohio and we go there every time we’re there. We'll actually be going back in a few days.
LK: It feels very similar to shit we would do growing up—certain suburban, woodsier parts of the Northeast feel kind of like parts of Ohio in that way, where there are just a bunch of kids that live there who are really bored and have nothing else to do. And there's this sewage tunnel in the woods that has a ditch with a bunch of graffiti, like somewhere people would skate. We go there every time. I love the imagery of nature taking over man made structures. I love that so much.
AR: Yeah. And it has this insane reverberation, so we’ll go in there and all harmonize together, or make crazy weird, dissonant sounds. On one of the new songs that will be on the record after this one, I wrote lyrics about that contrast of the gross human world meeting the natural world.
LK: And the natural world always overwhelms it, no matter what.
AR: Yeah, but I guess we almost have no choice but to enjoy that, because that’s the environment that we all find ourselves in. Natural spaces are few and far between, and hopefully we care for them a little bit more. We also stayed at this cabin in the woods, I don’t even remember where it was but it was so beautiful. It was insanely hot out but we went on a great morning walk.
LK: Just trying to be outside as much as possible on tour.
DF: That's really cool. There's a place I've been to in New Jersey that's also called the Gates of Hell, there might be a few of them. It sounds similar to what you described.
LK: Yeah! Our friend was telling us about it. They said it was basically the same. That’s so funny, I completely forgot about that.
DF: Yeah if you're there you should check that one out. When you're talking about nature usually overwhelming whatever we do as humans, my mind immediately went to Phil Elverum and The Microphones. He describes that stuff so well.
LK: Yes!!
DF: I saw you talked about a show of his at Talia Hall, and I wanted to ask about that, as well as Oneohtrix Point Never, my bloody valentine and whoever else is influencing all of the sounds you have going on.
AR: That Microphones show was insane. We're huge Microphones fans. Obviously the rest of his work is hugely influential as well, but I personally feel very connected with The Microphones. And Microphones in 2020, as a concept piece, is so incredible, you can tell that he's still so in it with creating. I can only hope to have that much still in me at that point.
DF: I know it's so inspiring. Night Palace might be my favorite thing he's ever made.
LK: Yeah, his stuff has been my favorite since high school. I listened to Tests for years. I wasn’t as good about listening through all of an artist's albums, so I just stayed on that one. That and Oneohtrix, like Replica, R Plus Seven and Garden of Delete all the time.
DF: Yeah he’s so awesome. I saw him a few times recently playing what might be the best show I’ve seen in my life. It was a visual collaboration with an artist who made a miniature puppet version of Oneohtrix and overlaid movements with crazy AR stuff.
LK: That's so cool. The way he tries to envelop mixed media is super inspiring. With both him and Phil Elverum, the idea almost sits above the music. And the work just feels like it's of Earth. Like it came naturally. It’s crazy.
AR: Yeah and Phil as a lyricist. He's fucking amazing.
LK: I love how he can say exactly what he's thinking, and it feels like he’s just talking to you. I hope I can get that deep into someone’s brain when I mix lyrics. It’s special to be able to make music that connects in that way.
Part 2: Visuals
DF: Yeah it’s really cool and raw. You mentioned the visual side—I know both of you do a lot of visual work and I'm curious how that mixes with the music. I feel like there's been more budding combinations of those things lately, more live VJing happening.
AR: Totally. Because Luna does most of the mixing, a lot of the art that I started making for the band happened as I was just hanging around the studio, listening to her figuring out the sound. So to me it’s completely entwined with the music, because as I'm hearing and processing the music I’m turning it into a visual representation. Whether it’s art for myself or for the band, it’s related to these songs and the reason we make art altogether.
LK: It feels like such a feedback loop with the art. I’m an art school dropout; I got disillusioned with art when I was there and started doing sound installations. Then I realized I could merge the two, or at least take the energy that I was struggling to direct in art school and funnel it into music, including making art for it. You can make a bunch of visual art and have it all relate to the music. Like it can be this one thing. And it felt really good to compartmentalize it and have a focused output, whether it's visual or sound stuff. That's why we've never thought about making different projects to house different sounding music. It feels good to just have this void of output.
DF: Definitely. To linger slightly more on the visual, I’ve seen you mention that you like to have Twin Peaks on while working on stuff, and I’m curious what draws you to that. Is it just Twin Peaks or do you put on other things?
LK: Yeah. I also watch a lot of Office Hours. Pretty much throughout making the record it was that or Twin Peaks on in the background.
AR: That kind of blows my mind, because I can't divert my focus like that. It’s funny, I’ll come home sometimes from work, and she's just got four things happening at once.
LK: I kind of need to. I don’t know. It makes me feel comfortable.
DF: Did you say something about it being easier to be able to hop from thing to thing if you hit a wall?
LK: Yeah. Even in micro ways. If I have something on in the background while mixing and I get stuck, I get distracted for half a second and it clears my head.
Part 3: Resampling, Mixing & Sound Design
DF: That’s dope. Let’s go a bit deeper into the making of this new record. You mentioned feedback loops already, with the music feeding the visuals, so maybe we can start there and unpack your resampling of your own work and embarking on this generative creative mission. As you went down the rabbit hole of making new sounds, I’m curious what the process was like and where you were trying to steer the ship.
LK: Yeah, not having the synths definitely helped me limit myself. I had to be intentional about what I wanted and closely listen to the sounds I had. There’s usually a certain energy that I want the track to feel like. This time I really wanted it to sound like itself and not use too many effects in the studio. It can be difficult to explain, and sometimes people think I was sampling from past albums, but it was all sampled from the album itself. For example, a song would start with one guitar take, recorded both out of an amp and direct, and then I’d send the direct signal back out through the amps over and over, with different EQs, distortions, mic setups etc. Using that to create texture and space, as opposed to reverb and delay. Also, when you're resampling one guitar, you can make it sound big but the notes will be clear, which I really wanted in the walls of guitars. Clear notes but still having space, and the reamping of things creates natural chorusing.
AR: I think a lot of the desire for that came from years of trying different effects and wanting a certain sound that they weren’t providing. We spent years trying to find a reverb that we liked at all. Like, at all.
LK: Especially on vocals, it’s really hard to mix reverb.
AR: I think we're both sensitive to the fake space that it makes. Reverb is a natural thing that happens when you are in a room, and adding reverb to something doesn't necessarily put it in a room. It puts it kind of in a fake room.
LK: Also that chest feeling from one really loud guitar at a show—there’s just so much in how it feels to be in the room that isn’t translated with a reverb.
DF: Have you messed with convolution reverb at all? You can actually put things in sudo-physical spaces. For one, you can go to places with cool reverb, like the Gates of Hell, and take impulse responses so you can later put things in those spaces. You can also get so weird with it and lean into the idea of imaginary space, just by putting in wild impulse responses that would never be generated by a real room.
LK: That’s really cool.
DF: Yeah I think you could get a lot out of that.
LK: That’s great because when I’m recording friends’ albums and they want reverb, I always use this plug in called Space, which has all these options like rooms, cathedrals and even a washing machine. Is that the same thing?
DF: Yeah it is! If you get super deep into it, Altiverb goes crazy. I digress. So when you're resampling these guitar takes, are you mostly living within individual songs and building up those worlds themselves, or are you ever referencing sounds in other songs and building things across the album?
LK: Yeah, I think the album has some crossover. I’ll try to use the one Pro Tools file out of laziness to see what’s there, and if there’s nothing, I usually know what parts I have in other songs I can take. Like maybe there’s a feedback sound somewhere with a really clear note. I sourced a lot from “(dead b).” There's a couple guitars in there that just really worked, the notes were clear. It kind of spreads across the album, building off of each other, and all existing in one space.
AR: Except there are a few samples from this Elliot Smith cover that we did.
LK: Oh yeah, the vocal samples are all from when we tried to cover “Between the Bars” but never finished it. I took those samples and used them for all the pitched vocal stuff.
DF: Why did you reach for that one?
AR: We were both going to do an Elliot Smith cover, with each of us singing one. We really had no plan with that, just wanted to do it even though neither of us really have done covers before (except when I was a teenager with my acoustic guitar). But I think I chose that song because I felt really connected to it, and the sensation of burnout and worrying if you're not living up to your full potential. And other assorted reasons, but it's a beautiful song.
LK: Yeah, it feels nice to have that somewhere. I like the concept of it, just having some Elliot Smith in there. That’s another oldest influence, with Oneohtrix and Phil Elverum. It was either vocal samples from that or straight one shot notes from other tracks. We do a lot of layering, the vocals are all super multitracked, super dry. Just taking those, something like an “ooh” from a word, cutting that, and putting it in Create.
AR: And “(dead b)” was originally half the speed, so the vocal takes are very extended notes. So it made sense to use a lot of that too.
DF: Yeah, that's super cool. I love when artists resample their own sounds, and when you guys do it, it’s awesome that it’s in a bit more of an explicit shoegaze context. It’s traditionally a genre where obscuring sounds and redirecting attention is super important, and the way you do that digitally is a really fresh way to approach it. In your music it’s often like you’re hearing different things that you might have heard before, but in a different way, and it's all sort of swirling. You said something elsewhere about trying to think about how people are experiencing sound, rather than getting super caught up in making particular sounds or noises. What does that activity look like, trying to put yourself in the ears or the mind of a listener, and having that guide the mixing process?
AR: I think it’s been helpful that we’ve been playing live a lot. When we first started this project, it was a studio project only. We had interest in playing shows, but no concept of what stuff sounded like.
LK: Yeah there was no self awareness. It was super fun, trying to make sounds and learn how to record and write songs. But then it wasn’t sounding how we wanted it to. So it’s useful to have ways of tricking myself into hearing it differently. Part of it is constantly distracting myself when I'm working on stuff, listening to other things like Twin Peaks, but also accidentally falling asleep while mixing is big. You’ll start to forget you’re listening to the song you're working on, and it starts to sound just like a shape in the room or something. It becomes very still and objective. That really helps. Passing away while mixing.
DF: So when you come to, are you left with these fragments of how you recall experiencing it?
LK: Yeah, I’ll be trying to bounce a track down to another, and have to sit through the whole playback, but I really can’t stay awake if I’m tired.
LK: So over the course of the three minutes, I will fall asleep. Then the song will end and I come back to it. And yeah, with the fragments of what I heard, I can piece it together. Sometimes you’ll overcompensate when mixing, or over mix, and it'll help with that. I’ll think things sound natural already and feel like I don’t need to fuck with them too much.
Part 4: Dreams
DF: That's cool. I think you’ve mentioned going to recurring dream places. Does that ever freak you out or fuel creativity? I also have those kinds of experiences.
LK: Yes! That’s something I’ve recently discovered is not something everybody experiences. I thought sleep for everyone was just going to a weird mirror world. But it’s not like the lucid dreaming people talk about.
DF: Have you done that?
LK: Not intentionally. I’ve noticed full consciousness in my dreams, where I can go up to my friend and tell them it’s a dream. But it’s still just like the real world, where there are external forces fucking with you and destroying you constantly. But I can have awareness of being there. And you can kind of erase what’s happening by talking to a friend like, “Check this out, we’re just dreaming right now.”
AR: My dreams are not like that. I have a couple recurring places, but they're mostly stress related dreams. So my brain kind of says you don't need to see all that.
DF: Do you fall asleep as easily?
AR: No! I have a hard time falling asleep. Sometimes I'll be having full conversations with her, thinking she’s invested, and I’ll find out she fell asleep like ten or fifteen minutes ago.
LK: It’s complicated because someone will tell me I’m asleep and I’ll be like “no I’m not.”
AR: See that makes it really hard to know when she actually is asleep.
LK: It’s that weird in between awareness thing, where I’m totally hearing everybody’s conversations, but maybe things are connecting a little too freely in my brain.
AR: She'll be saying weird stuff too. I can’t think of anything off the top of my head.
DF: That's uncanny. Does it ever generate lyric inspiration?
LK: That's a good idea.
AR: I’ll try writing it down next time.
LK: I’ve definitely woken up knowing something I want to say. Like maybe I worked through a thought in a dream by accident. Because that recurring place is probably some categorization of my life or my surroundings, and I’m trying to understand how to function. It’s this weird practice world I guess.
Part 5: DIY
DF: That's dope. Let's talk more about the live band and how that came into the fold more recently. Also how that affects the songwriting process or the taking things out process.
AR: Our band is awesome. I want to start by saying that all of them have their own projects too, and they're all really fucking good, which is why we asked them to play with us.
LK: Yeah, most of them I asked first if I could play in their band. Then I’m like, do you wanna also help us out, maybe?
DF: So this is a natural growth out of being in the DIY scene?
AR: Yeah. Especially with Billy (Campbell) and Sean (Booz). We met them both when we moved here. And Ryan (Bigelow), who plays bass for us, we’ve been friends since before we were friends. He’s somewhat how we met, in a way. It's crazy when you find people who are as crazy as you are, and actually want to fully commit, put a lot of attention and effort and care into something.
LK: Yeah and being so fine with being so fucking fried all the time. Someone who's down to do as much touring and practicing as we do. It’s kind of the only way you end up being able to hang out with people when you're doing this all the time, because it's other people doing that same thing.
AR: We're really lucky to have them. When we were thinking about moving out of Boston, we didn't have much direction until we came to visit our friends Ryan and Thomas in Nashville. At the time, we had a lot of difficulty getting our music out there. We were actively making music, but struggling to find shows and get people who wanted to play with us. Definitely feeling a little lost. But once we saw the DIY scene here, we started improvising with our friends, visited and did that twice and decided we couldn’t go back to Boston. It was too sick. We have a bunch of random tapes from those two visits that we recorded—just big, improvised jams.
LK: We never had anyone to do that with so spontaneously, or even a space to have a drumkit setup. Living here also gives us room for a practice and recording space in our own house. And then meeting all these people who like the same music as us and realizing we can just play each other’s parts in each other’s bands. Because it was also hard to find people who were down to play the songs that we had already. It was a great mutual thing.
AR: Yeah, it's only been recently where we’ll start playing out a song that's not recorded yet. It’s been a very interesting process, because I'll have long periods where I'm improvising vocals on a new song, experimenting with trying to write the lyrics that way, which isn’t what I normally do.
LK: Yeah, for some songs I just really wanna play a chord progression, we’ll start playing it with the band in practice, and you’ll start singing.
AR: It’s been a cool new way of writing words. My degree is in poetry, so I’m no stranger to the editing and writing process and being very isolated to get that stuff out. But writing with the band and being able to improvise has completely changed the way that I think about lyric writing.
LK: But we’re still very much a studio project. It will usually end up being just the two of us.
AR: Yeah we need to clarify things in the studio.
LK: There are obviously still limitations to a band, and it’s also fun to use whatever you have to try to get across bigger ideas that you can do later in production. But we were overusing effects all the time, and having a band is cool because the effect of just two distorted guitars playing one chord is so much more exciting. Then it was a whole new challenge to figure out how to record to get the crazy effects that happen naturally. I think that led into this album, I'm realizing that right now. The focus of this album was to figure out how to make it feel like how it does in a room when we're all playing.
Part 6: Writing, Reading & Lyrics
DF: That's super cool, that makes a lot of sense. Can you say a little more about how your approach to writing lyrics changed as you’ve been improvising more?
AR: Definitely. As somebody who's coming from a place of potentially over-intellectualizing in my initial lyric writing process, it's very freeing. One part is that no one can hear me while we’re playing, as they've told me. You can decide for yourself. We mix the vocals so loud live and no one can hear me. I hear myself, but it's fine. That in and of itself is freeing, because now I can say whatever I want to. That helped me let go of some of the fear of improvising, and by losing that worry of judgement I was able to, in a way where I’m still taking myself seriously, take it less seriously. Sometimes when you misspeak, you actually say something brilliant that you didn’t mean to say. That in tandem with writing more Dada poetry, just making collages that involve words and trying to rustle up as much out of my subconscious brain as possible.
LK: You always make it such a succinct emotion attached to something though, which is crazy. You'll be like ‘this is a Dada poem’, and I'll be like ‘but this exactly describes this event going on right now’.
DF: That's cool. I feel like maybe just being less precious about things, not necessarily caring less, can help things come out more fluidly.
AR: Yeah, and it's been good for the writing process, but I also think it's been good for my soul. I've not even let go of any type of writing process, I just have more to try now. If one isn't working, I can always switch to a different one. The variation is what feeds new ideas
DF: Can you talk a little bit about some of your influences in poetry? I know Beat poetry has been big, and I’m particularly curious to hear your reflections on Song of Myself, because I'm about to read it.
AR: Sure. That poem specifically, was given to me when I was very young, seventeen or so, in an English class. But it just stuck with me, the phrasing of everything, and just the simplicity of it all. I could never allow myself that when I was younger, so rediscovering it as an older person was super informative. I feel like over time I've become slightly jaded to Beat poetry, but there's still the honesty of it all that attracts me to it. There’s also a lot of natural imagery in Song of Myself, and I like the way that postmodern writers will bring in nature, almost in the Phil Elverum kind of way. Where it's like man versus nature.
DF: What has been speaking to you more recently?
AR: I've been really binging songwriter stuff. I’ve been reading less physical poems and more lyrics from some artists that I appreciate. I honestly want to pick up a book right now, thinking about it, but I go through phases with reading. I'm definitely in more of an output phase right now.
DF: Totally. Being in groups helps keep me accountable.
AR: Definitely. I think part of it too is the starting to feel jaded thing that I mentioned. There's such a long history of poetry and writing in this country, and it is so skewed male. Now that I’m older, it’s harder for me to connect as well with even the writers that I entirely connected with when I was younger. A lot of the South American writers that I read in college were my first exposure to women writing.
LK: It’s all collectively suppressed.
AR: Yeah, totally. Whenever I try to reread something, I get in my own way of enjoyment with some of the writers that I really used to like. Magical realism is really sick though. As a genre, that's my favorite, and I do keep going back to it. That's a lot of short stories too, it's not as much in the poetry realm. But I appreciate the weaving poetic things into prose that informs the storytelling side of the lyrics too.
Part 7: Farewell & Recommendations
DF: Yeah. That's dope. To wrap things up, one thing I like to ask at the end is if you have any recommendations for readers that made it this far. Any music, movies, magical realism, performance art, or anything that's been getting the gears turning that you want to shout out.
LK: Sure. One of my favorite things is… let me look up what it's called, I always forget, because you'll forget everything by the time you're done listening to this. Do you know Glenn Branca?
DF: Nope.
LK: Okay, it’s at like ten minutes into “Movement Three” off of Glenn Branca’s album called Symphony No. 1 (Tonal Plexus). Around there, shit just locks in. It's essentially a guitar orchestra from the 80s. That moment in that track inspires me like more than anything. It's just seventeen people playing guitars, to the point where it just sounds like a complete wash. I hate saying dissonance or noise, because it just feels like a large object in the room, that’s the best way to describe it. All frequency ranges all at once. And some drums you can barely hear. That wall of guitar sound is my biggest recommendation for anyone who wants that kind of thing.
DF: That sounds awesome.
LK: That whole record is super crazy. I really like any classical, minimalist stuff, like Steve Reich and things like that.
AR: I’ve kind of been listening to stuff that's very tangential lately. I've been listening to a lot of French screamo, like Daïtro. Also there's this band called The Epidemic, they have an album from 2002 called I Am Compltley Oprationa L. They have a lot of nylon string sounding acoustic guitars, but with earcandy, twinkly stuff. It's like if The Postal Service sounded like Melaina Kol.
DF: That sounds awesome.
AR: Yeah they're really cool. There's also Marina Abramovic, the performance artist.
LK: She's the fucking best. She changed my brain. Huge influence.
AR: I always just think about her pieces. We were able to see one of them live at the MOMA, the one where she has a table full of sand and she's just pushing the sand off, very slowly.
LK: For like a fucking week.
AR: I hadn't seen that piece beforehand, and I haven't even looked it up since, and it was many years ago but I still think about that concept.
LK: Yeah like slow, time based degradation of something. That’s something she totally locks in on, performance-wise. Like physical degradation loops.
AR: Who’s that one guy with the degradation loops?
DF: Oh William Basinski.
AR: Yeah!
LK: And Twin Peaks season three, I recommend.
AR: Can’t recommend enough. We were also watching Breaking Bad.
LK: That show rocks. I recommend Breaking Bad.
AR: I also recommend not writing off Nashville. One funny thing about moving here is it does have this echo chamber effect, where now I’m so Nashville pilled. I want to just shout it out.
LK: Yeah there are so many good bands here.
AR: Yeah my recommendation is to not write off Nashville as country music city.
LK: There’s a big opposition to that for sure, that’s what’s so cool about it.
AR: There's a lot besides that happening. A lot of visual art as well. Touring acts should come through and not go to Memphis.
DF: Memphis is kind of cool, too.
LK: I do love Memphis. I fuck with all of it. It’s hard living in the South, but I really fuck with it.
DF: Yeah I was gonna say, seems like it would be a bit of a culture shock.
LK: Definitely. We never thought we’d live here. You do write it off, living in the Northeast bubble, you don't think about this shit. Moving here was cool, and touring and seeing all these things you wouldn’t expect. Like we love Pittsburgh so much. Playing there is always so fun.
DF: What do you like about Pittsburgh?
LK: Pittsburgh feels and looks like a European city. I love that. It’s so beautiful.
AR: Gooski's. Shout out Gooski's. We recommend Gooski's.
LK: Yeah there's a ping pong table and free shots.
AR: She destroys everyone at ping pong.
DF: That’s awesome, we should play.
As the conversation wound its way into niche pockets like ping pong and Gooski’s, we said our farewells. Kupper and Richter signaled that they were very much in grind mode—they had just thrown a DIY show in their basement the night prior, were already consumed with prepping for the come back down tour and release, all the while simultaneously writing and tracking the next album. The workaholic music lifestyle sounds intense but so rewarding alongside the right community, and Total Wife definitely seem to be among good hands. The future is bright for the budding Nashville band. I hope it brings a West Coast tour.
edited by Madison Esrey.
photos by Sean Booz and Total Wife.
