Grimes Discusses New Album

Photo by Daniel Cavazos

Grimes is on the cover of the latest issue of Fader. In the cover story, Claire Boucher discusses the creation of her new album (which she has said will arrive in October) and some of the ideas that informed its songs. She also clarifies that whole “Grimes scraps album” narrative.

The entire feature is well worth a read. In it, she discusses the creation and aftermath of Visions, her at-home dynamic with James Brooks, life in Los Angeles, her experience writing for other artists, the exhaustion that comes with extensive touring, and the music industry’s intrinsic sexism. 

Boucher says the new album comes from a different emotional place from her previous work.

“They’re not all diss tracks, but there’s a lot of diss tracks. … I think all my other albums were, like, sad. And this time it’s more happy and angry. I live in my own house that I pay for. I bought all this equipment myself. I control my own life now. No one has any say over what I do or where I go or when I do it.”

Here’s what we know about the album:

• There’s a song called “Flesh Without Blood”.
• She wrote a “diss track about male producers,” which is “about a guy who acts like he knows everything and then comes back crawling on his knees, which has happened to me so many times.”
• One song is about being “too scary to be objectified” and will feature three female MCs.
• She learned to play and self-recorded guitar, drums, keys, ukulele, and violin.
• She tracked most of the album at home, though for vocals, she shared a studio with Blood Diamonds (who was working on his own music).

Boucher also says she’s planning on adopting additional alter egos aside from Grimes. One of them is “Screechy Bat”—the “metal one”.

She clarifies that she didn’t scrap an entire finished album and dispels the myth that she started from scratch after fans reacted negatively to “Go”. “There were just hundreds of songs,” she said. “On this album that I’m making now, there’s at least a hundred songs that won’t make it onto this. I think all musicians have songs that don’t make it onto records.”

Read the entire feature.

Watch Grimes perform “Genesis” at the 2012 Pitchfork Music Festival:

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