The Seventh Hex (Interview)

By: The Seventh Hex

### Intro

Ontario-based singer-songwriter Nicole Dollanganger is the fascinating and gifted talent newly signed to Grimes’ artist co-op, the Eerie Organisation. Her music and art generate a distinctive, occasionally unnerving world of clips, violence and sex. Nicole’s childlike voice and her stark murky lyrics are at the heart of her music’s charm. Tackling tragedy and triumph over a range of delightful compositions, Nicole’s striking production is refreshingly original and rousing... We talk to Nicole about normalising embarrassment, *Mad Max* and Banjo-Kazooie speak...

### Interview

**The Seventh Hex**: Firstly congratulations on such fine progression to date. How would you sum up your intentions and mind-­state as you were forming the excellent ‘Natural Born Losers’?

**Nicole Dollanganger**: Thank you so much! I knew it was going to be recorded outside of my home for the first time and that proper production was going to make it more accessible than my previous records, so I wanted to make sure it was all encompassing of what I love and what I want to explore musically.

**TSH**: Were there specific primary topics that you felt compelled to cover?

**ND**: A lot of memories from childhood... Growing up both here in rural Ontario and in Southwest Florida, a not-so-fantastic high school experience and some meditation on people I knew in high school but only got to know intimately post-­high school. I was trying to represent the lives of people around me, and my own life, in a way that was honest. Sometimes it was very positive and other times it wasn’t.

**TSH**: Your vocal harmonies throughout the album resonate so infectiously, was there a specific attention to detail in terms of vocal technique or was it organic?

**ND**: Usually when a scratch or demo of the track was done, I’d drive around the backroads in my car listening to it and trying to fuck around with it, sing over it, try out different harmonies. If I got something I dug, I’d record myself on my phone. It was a nightmare to sort through 100+ voice memos of me wailing over a track in my car though.

**TSH**: Let’s talk about the record. Firstly, opener ‘Poacher's Pride’ what experiences do you draw on to write a song like this?

**ND**: I wanted to be confrontational and critical of myself. The song is about wrecking a nice thing and (in guilt) trying to justify those actions.

**TSH**: The excellent ‘Swan’ has such a lush, pensive and ethereal feel. What does this song signify to you personally?

**ND**: I wrote it about a good relationship and a bad breakup. I was channelling the neighbourhood my ex and I had been living in, where I spent a lot of time throughout the relationship. It was all topiary, pink skies, bungalows. I wanted the song to be pretty—I wanted it to sound pink.

**TSH**: What are the key aspects that you bear in mind for your live performances?

**ND**: I have bad stage fright so there are some physical things - I need to bring Gravol to help with vomiting and I need a shot or two to get rid of shaky hands. It’s still a world that’s new for me but I know what really resonates with me when I watch a live performance, so I try and do that. I try to give a performance that I would dig if I was watching.

**TSH**: How do you get over the feeling of sometimes feeling limited with creativity?

**ND**: While working on a record, I’ll also be working on a book, working on a zine or a comic, stuff like that. So if I’m experiencing a creative block with songwriting, or getting frustrated with it, I’ll devote a few days to something else. Then the creative juices start flowing again and I can go back.

**TSH**: Knowing that embarrassments and sadness are tucked away in your songs, do you find it liberating to share such intimacy?

**ND**: Yeah. I’d like to feel less embarrassed in general, so sometimes writing something that makes me feel embarrassed is a way of forcing that feeling on, facing it, getting over it. Sometimes I’ll purposely try and use words that make me embarrassed to say just to try and normalise it.

**TSH**: Was it a pleasant experience to put a unique, soft touch and spin on My Chemical Romance’s ‘Helena’ and Marilyn Manson’s ‘The Nobodies’?

**ND**: It was! Gerard Way is probably my favourite musician of all time and I grew up listening to *Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge*, so it was very fun to do a cover of what I think is one of the greatest songs ever written. I also loved doing that Manson cover. I have to forcibly stop myself from covering like half his discography.

**TSH**: Tell us about your love for *Mad Max*... How many times have you seen the new one?

**ND**: I saw *Fury Road* four times in theatres. *The Road Warrior* and *Beyond Thunderdome* are great as well. You can’t get much better than Lord Humungus. But I liked the different approach to Max’s character in *Fury Road*. He was less of a daddy­cool and more of a mangled tank. It portrayed life in the wasteland in a scarier way (I think)!

**TSH**: Also, for your lovely pug Fred’s third birthday, what surprises did you have in store?

**ND**: Fred hates to be put in clothes so I had to resist the urge to dress him up in a pumpkin costume we got him a year ago! Instead he got a dog treat shaped like a mini doughnut and about a thousand cuddles and kisses.

**TSH**: Talk us through a few of your tweets and what lead to the being put up. Firstly, ‘*Pearl Jam’s ‘Release’ is the prettiest song ever written. I avoid it at all costs now because it makes me want to die*...'

**ND**: It’s the kind of song that’s so beautiful it gives me this horrible feeling in my stomach, like it’s the apocalypse and the angel of death is coming or something.

**TSH**: Also, ‘*the key to getting out of talking to people you don’t like is to gradually speak in Banjo-Kazooie language till they leave*’...

**ND**: That idea came to me after watching my friend Kevin drunkenly combat a conversation he wasn’t enjoying by breaking out into Jonathan Davis Korn-styled scatting mid­sentence until the people around him were like “what the fuck...?” and walked away. All the characters in Banjo-Kazooie speak in this funny bibble­babble so I figured that’s what I’d do when faced with the same problem!

**TSH**: Finally, what means most to you with your musical development as you venture ahead?

**ND**: I’m excited to complete ideas. In the past things have always felt half­baked and now that there are opportunities to see these ideas to their full form and their end. It’s really exciting.