The spectacular new album by Brooklyn indie pop artist Grace Ives, Girlfriend, is out today. After her 2022 breakout Janky Star, Ives took a three-year hiatus during a period of "profound personal change." Girlfriend was made during this time as Ives got sober and let go of the "things that were dulling and smooshing" her. Written and produced with Ariel Rechtshaid and John DeBold, Girlfriend is a triumphant document of personal change, but it never loses Ives signature playfulness and whimsy.

I sat down with Ives to chat about it all.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Andy Steiner @ The Needle Drop: You're in LA right now? How's the heat wave?  

Grace Ives: Oh my god. It's really bad. It's really gross. It's like fucking 95 every day. 

Oh my god. 

I know. It feels really unsafe and everyone here is just like, “Ugh, yeah I know right!” 

Girlfriend comes out tomorrow. How are you feeling? It's the penultimate day.

I know. It's crazy that it comes out tomorrow. It's good. It needs to happen. The alternative is just being like, “It’s so good! I swear!” But yeah, it needs to come out because it's been fucking two and a half years working on it. Three years since I put something out. But yeah, I think I'm excited. My stomach kind of churns every time I think about it, but I think it might be excitement. I'm feeling good. I feel confident. I'm not worried.

I feel like it's so rare in life where you have a mark to date where you know like, my life might change starting on March 20th. 

Yeah, totally. Exactly. It's going to be great. It's going to be what it is. It is what it is. 

Where are you hoping the album takes you? What would be your ideal way for this album to be received? 

Ideally, the people who liked my music for a while – for longer than I can even understand–are like, “There she is! This is great! This makes sense. I get it.” Ideally, they're happy. Ideally, I've reached new people. I want more people to hear it, not just the people who like it. I would love some extreme reactions. I guess I don't want people to be bored. You either want them to love it or hate it. That’s kind of how I'm feeling. Just reaching more people and seeing what that looks like because I don't really know what that feels like or looks like. 

There's this bar in Brooklyn that does like, gay guy music video nights. I was there a couple of weeks ago I was like, “We're listening to Stupid Bitches by Grace Ives." Everyone who heard it was into it, asking me who that was. It was like, “Whoa, okay. She could blow up." Is ‘blowing up’ something that you want or you're interested in? It just felt like, “Oh, this could happen.” 

That's amazing. That's so funny. I mean… yeah, right? That would be dope. The weird thing about me as a musician is that this was never really my dream. I wasn't like, “I want to be a pop singer! I want to be famous or whatever.” I've never felt that way. I feel like this just started happening to me, and I just said yes when I was asked if I wanted to do things, like sign to a label. So I think blowing up would be amazing, right? Because, I guess if this is my life and I'm doing it, I'm going to be okay emotionally no matter what. But it would be amazing for the world to actually be like, “Yeah, we see you. We are letting you do this for real. This is your job.” 

Was there a moment in your career so far when you felt that rewarding feeling of the world being like, “This is what you're doing for your job?” 

I guess. Not to be so depressing but the way that artists get paid–it's just actually hilarious. But, it’s for sure felt like that in the past. Getting asked to open for Robyn for one of her dates is like, “Oh woah.”

Your tour is soon. How do you find going on tour?

I think in the past, I’ve been so anxious, getting sick and not singing properly, leaving my luggage places. In the past it's been fun but I’ve been alone, always, usually. My last tour was just me and a tour manager, and I just went out and pressed play on an Ableton session and tried to do it all myself. It's been a lot of work and a lot of pressure only on me to have a good show, you know? It’s hard. But, now I’m rehearsing with a band–or just two people, which is a band–but, it feels like so much relief already in these rehearsals. The music sounds great. It sounds live and cool. And then I get to not be so worried and glued to touching what comes next. It's pretty freeing. So I think I'm more excited than I have been in the past. And it's fun! I forget that playing a show is fun. Touring maybe is hard, but playing a show is fun. I have to remember.

When you're making your tour set list and you're also in the process of promoting this album and you have to reflect on Janky Star and your earlier work, is that weird? Is it hard to revisit albums and music that you made at a different time and try to find some seamless narrative? 

Yeah, I guess, right? It’s like talking about yourself in 3rd grade rather than 5th grade. You're like, “I don't know. I was just going to school. I’m better at school now.” It’s funny, I'm starting to understand, when you go to see an artist on tour and they only play their new stuff, why they do that. You’re like, “Why won’t they play what I want to hear?” I’m like, “This is the best stuff I’ve ever done.” I’m not like, “Fuck that other stuff” but I only want to think about this. I only want to do this. All the earlier stuff comes from, mainly, me sitting alone and doing it in bed. People say Janky Star and my mind goes to my apartment in Astoria and then COVID and then living in Brooklyn. I don’t understand the full story and see the connecting themes because I’m kind of just like, “Yeah that was three years ago and I was here.”

What do you have on the agenda for the release day tomorrow? 

Tomorrow, I’ll rehearse and maybe get steak or something. 

Awesome. Are you going to get one of those cakes with the album printed on the cake? 

[Laughs] That's such a good idea. I understand why everybody does that. 

Every time I see it, I'm like, that looks like good cake. 

Wish I was there! Yeah. That would be great. I'm like, “I have to get to work on that right now.” But we have time.

One thing I wanted to ask about: the pink hair. I love it. It's so central to the cover of Girlfriend. When did you dye your hair? 

What month is it? April? March? I dyed it at the end of last summer, September. It was right after we had gotten back from mixing the album with Dave Fridmann. More like watch him mix it, in Buffalo, New York. I came back and was like, “I don't know what I want anymore.” I saw a picture of myself in high school with this really faded pink hair. And I was like, “Why didn't I just keep doing that?” That's definitely my color. So I think it was to break up the year. Like, next chapter. I had been working on this shit for like two and a half years, I finally got back from the mixing. Obviously mastering has to happen still, but that's remote. So I can stay home and experiment with my hair color. And that sounds like a really fun thing to do. I love nothing more than putting hair dye in, setting a 45 minute timer, watching a dumb show, sitting, eating some crackers. I love it as a little ritual. It just reminded of an old me. And I was like, “What's wrong with that? Let's try that out" because I go back to blonde for the five thousandth time and I'm like, “this looks stupid.” But yeah, I like this. I like it. 

It's such a good way to mark time.

Yeah, exactly. 

I mean, it's different, but I got a mustache like eight months ago and I was like, “This is new! It's different! It's separate! Things are about to change.” Did it feel like the natural thing to sort of put on the cover of the album? 

Yeah, I think so. I wanted something that was exciting and sweet, also something that I could look at and remember where I was at this time. Like, “Oh, that was when I had just dyed my hair. We were in Brooklyn.” I thought of this image of hugging based on a Nan Golden photograph called The Hug that I saw, and it made me start crying. I was like, I want to do something like that. So I did a version of it. When I told my parents the idea they were like, “...It's going to be your back?” And I was like, “Yeah, it's going to be great!” They're like, “Oh, sweetie, no, no. Your face! It has to be the face! I’m sorry sweetie.” But, they were silenced. 

It's interesting that you're looking at album covers as, “This is what I want to use to mark this chapter in my life for me.” And it's not about like, “This is the visual I want to present to others to sell my work.” 

Yeah, that's true. I'm thinking of other artists' album covers now and I wonder what other people's processes are. If it’s my idea, then it will probably look right. Married with the sound of it.

The cover is usually the first thing that, you know, a listener or a fan is introduced in a new album cycle or a new–I hate to use the word but– era. But for you it's like, “No, this is like an endpoint. This is done. And now I’ve got pink hair and now I’m moving on.” Is that fair to say?

Ooh! Yeah! Oh my god. It’s so early. I'm like emotional. I don't know why that almost just made me cry. But it is! Whoa, you just cracked it. You're good at this. It’s so cool to like –

Don’t flatter me, Grace! 

No! But it is cool to hear people be curious and good at following their own thoughts. I didn’t think of it like that because I'm like in my own head. But yeah, you're right!  It is like that. It’s all post. I have some videos and pictures from the studio over the years of making this and it's like, I am different. It is a different person. Maybe I am stronger. It just sounds so corny. But like, I can do this. I can talk about this album. I can be proud of it and show it to people. I’m different from how I was then, which I guess, I do need to remind myself because I – I’m sure everyone can relate – but I get a little scary-gloomy about who I am and who I was. It is nice to look in the mirror and have it feel new.

I think I was probably searching for that after working on this for so long and living in the stories I’m singing about for so long, especially when they do feel so far behind me. Thinking about being a mess. That feels like high school. But it was just three years ago. But it is nice to have a visual marker. I’m out of that. Now we go. You have a mustache. I have my hair.

Girlfriend is out now via True Panther/Capitol.

Grace Ives tour for Girlfriend kicks off in Philadelphia in April. Check out the full tour dates and grab tickets below.

4/17 Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts
4/18 Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz PDB
4/20 Toronto, ON @ Longboat Hall
4/21 Detroit, MI @ El Club
4/22 Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
4/23 Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry
4/25 Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck
4/27 Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater
4/28 Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
4/30 Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall
5/1 Seattle, WA @ Neumos
5/2 Vancouver, BC @ Fox Cabaret
5/5 San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
5/7 Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom
5/8 Santa Ana, CA @ Constellation Room
5/9 Phoenix, AZ @ The Rebel Lounge
5/11 Austin, TX @ Brushy Street Commons
5/12 Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall (Upstairs)
5/13 Dallas, TX @ Club Dada
5/15 Nashville, TN @ Blue Room at Third Man Records
5/16 Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade
5/17 Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle Back Room
5/19 Washington, DC @ The Atlantis
5/20 Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
5/21 Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
6/6 Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound
6/8 Paris, FR @ Hasard Ludique
6/10 Brussels, BE @ Rotonde/Botanique
6/12 Berlin, Germany @ Kantine am Berghain
6/14 Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso (Small Hall)
6/16 London, UK @ Village Underground

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