The cover art for Opaque shows a sculpture you created. What went into making the sculpture?

That is part of a series I did called Seed. I named that piece Seed because it sort of resembles a berry. It’s kind of questioning, is this a feminine or a male form, or is it neither? Is it just a total genderfuck? When I was first making it, I was thinking about taking the idea of breasts and multiplying them to the point of obscurity through repetition, kind of like the idea of Gertrude Stein’s “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”; taking one idea that we think we have a concrete context to, whether that be through our gender lens or sexuality or how we define certain contexts through certain body parts. I was taking that and trying to obscure it and sort of subvert that to the point of making us question what it actually is and blur those lines.

It’s also a really fun and provocative image. I would never ever show my own body parts like that, but at the same time, I think going through the experience of having a human attached to my breasts for their life when I was nursing recontextualized what my body was, what it meant, and how I was using it. My boobs were all over the place. I was breastfeeding without shame. They were not sexualized to me at that point at all. [laughs]

It’s interesting seeing how the body goes through changes in our band. We have been playing with Joan while she’s been going through her gender reaffirming transitions. We ended up playing a show as a two-piece, which was our original lineup, when she had her top surgery. We also made it into a benefit for her care during that time to show our solidarity and support. Boobs are pretty interesting, I think, in our band. [laughs] They have many different symbolisms. I think it’s really fun to play with that idea and not take it too seriously.

I was really grateful and encouraged that my band is so supportive. We’re so fucking supportive of each other. Right now, I’m in the middle of getting my Master's of Fine Arts and Sculpture. Ceramics are my main focus. They were like, “Yeah, put your fucking sculpture on the cover! Do it!” [laughs] I used a letterpress for all of the lettering that was done on there as well. Then the artwork on the inside is from risograph prints that I did.

What do you feel the connection between visual art and music is?

Incredibly strong. Since the inception of the band, John and I always considered it to be a creation of our own universe. We feel like the aesthetics and artwork that go along with the music are just as important. We’ve always given a lot of careful consideration to the artwork that goes with everything that we do. We also do lots of music videos.

For the “Tempers” video, we worked with friends of mine from school, Krista Wright and Theo Garvey. Collaborating is awesome and a lot of fun. When we did the “Spectres” video, we did that ourselves. Just being able to have the opportunity to create our entire world and tone that goes with the music is a lot of fun. If we didn’t do that, it would be a missed opportunity.

With the “Spectres” video, you have the live performance aspect and you have a storyline where you’re trying to get into a closed-off building. How did that story come about?

We played a show with Lydia Lunch and our friend Helen was hanging out. I had this camera in my hand and I knew we had to come up with a video for “Spectres” soon, so I was like, “Helen, can you take some pictures of us or do some video?” And she was like, “I’m totally down to do this, but Joey [Lusterman] here has a huge background in doing video for music.” I was like, “Oh, how serendipitous!” So all of that live footage is from Joey just happening to be there and me putting the camera in his hand. He captured some really great moments from that show, so we were like, “Ok, phew, we can use that!”

Then we had to go to a Pick-n-Pull for some reason, it’s like a junkyard for cars. We were like, “Let’s take the camera and see what happens!” We ended up not using a lot of the footage, but we used some of the great stuff of walking on big piles of rocks and stomping on flowers. Around the entire junkyard was this big steel wall. It’s rusty and imposing, and there was this door that couldn’t open.

When we were looking at the footage, I got very much into the symbolism of this ghostly figure running and searching and trying to open a door, either to escape or to enter and not being able to. It sort of makes me think about how we are haunted by our own ghosts of either the past or the future in ways of depression or anxiety. That need to be present can be so challenging. It definitely brings up a lot of questions around mental health. Also, a ghost could mean a lot of things, whether that’s, like I said, ourselves or memories of people in the past or things that have happened, and looking at how we move past that.

Throughout the album, that’s something you’re talking about with dealing with past trauma and moving towards healing. What has helped you on your journey to doing that?

Making music and art about it. Being able to find those cathartic moments with people I care about, especially my bandmates and friends. Joan and John and I are pretty much chosen family. The three of us have been through a lot of our own traumas separately, but I think also the fact that we made it through COVID together means that we’re pretty trauma-bonded as well. The way I play music is so physical because I’m singing and I’m also drumming at the same time. It’s an entire somatic experience. I’m basically dancing to my own music in a lot of ways and I’m playing with my entire body. I think that’s been the best thing.

I gotta be honest with you, I have tried many things. I’ve done talk therapy, I’ve done EMDR, and I have done Lexapro, which is an SSRI. In the past, when I was dealing with things, I would probably do less healthy things, like trying to self-medicate with various substances. Now, acupuncture has also been really helpful. I think making art and trying to be present in my own body has been very healing. Also, spending time with my kid is really great too and being glad that we’re both alive. [laughs]

When you bring someone into the world with an unexpected emergency C-section, that’s quite an experience.

I went to the hospital to give birth on the Fourth of July. I had no idea at the time, but the Fourth of July is a very, very busy time at the hospital. They were understaffed and were not able to give me the care that I needed when I was in labour. One thing led to another and I was told by a doctor, who finally showed up, that I was neglected for so long at that point that if I didn’t have a C-section, I would die and the baby would die. So I consented to something that I don’t really feel like I had much choice in consenting to. It was really fucking scary. Everybody is fine now; we survived and my kid was born very healthy. It was a profound experience to feel that type of betrayal in a system where you show up with the best intentions and they just fail. It was very much a betrayal of trust; not feeling safe where I was and not being able to depend on them to take care of me when I needed it the most.

Thinking about it, especially in terms of the album, there’s a lot of abandonment and betrayal that I think is happening in our country right now. People who really need help aren’t getting it and are being abandoned and experiencing all sorts of different types of violence, whether that be state violence on their bodies or different types of hate that people are having to endure right now. It’s one of those things where people always say the personal is political, but I think there are a lot of parallels to be found there. It’s as basic as our right to live and survive. I am a firm believer that everyone has a right to not just survive but also thrive and be able to express themselves and live their best lives.

How can you live your best life under the current circumstances?

I think that is different for everybody. I have always tried to make the most out of what I have. If I had the answer for us to all live our best lives, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. [laughs] But all I can say is we need our community. We need to not isolate. It’s so tempting to just hide because it seems easier. It’s hard to get up in the morning and move through the world, especially right now, and sometimes it’s hard just because.

Depend on your community, be there for your community, and try to stay strong and be patient and keep fighting. We need to keep fighting. That can take lots of different forms and everyone has their own way of doing it. Stay healthy, we need to survive this! There’s also something to be said about joy as an act of resistance and finding those moments of solidarity with people. Joy is beautiful, and to be finding joy in a moment when they’re really trying to kick you in the teeth is the biggest fuck you.

What brings you joy?

Playing drums, working with my hands, and talking with people. I really enjoy getting to work in a studio with other people around and sharing ideas and workspace. That’s why I think I love playing in a band so much, to be able to be in the same room and essentially read each other’s minds and create this swirl of sounds around us at the same time. To all be in step together, our hearts are beating at the same time and we’re all breathing together. It’s just this amazing feeling of creating something that you can’t touch. Sound is totally ethereal, but it moves through your body and touches you. Creating brings me joy.

Earlier, you mentioned, especially with how you play, you experience a lot of catharsis through music. Did you have a song on the album that was the most cathartic to write?

I think “Tempers”. It’s feels so right. It has this very strong drumbeat in the beginning and the end. It’s bookended by this very intense, primal, straightforward beat. It goes into these different parts that sort of weave in and out of each other, that are more tender and personal. For me, it feels like the outside voice and the inside voice of how we talk to ourselves.

A lot of that song is about breaking patience and being frustrated with a situation, like being in the waiting room of a hospital assuming that you are going to get help or assuming there’s some social contract of decency that your rights are being respected and then realizing that they’re not and just ripping the whole room to shreds because being polite and being patient didn’t work. The question is: what are we waiting for? What is the endgame? What is it that we’re entitled to? And redefining what that could be.

That song does feel really cathartic. It feels good to play. It’s funny because it’s not an angry song; it’s more of just this very steady acknowledgment of knowing.

You’re also a sound engineer and you recorded half of this album. Jack Shirley recorded the other half. What was this experience like? Why did you decide to split it that way?

I was a sound engineer for a long time before I decided that I wanted to go to art school. I recorded and mixed our last record, The Envoy, and it turned out exactly how we wanted it. I’m not sure if I want to do that again. [laughs] It’s really nice to have someone else have their ears on it and I’m really fucking busy. Mixing the record is not really what I want to be doing right now; I want to be writing songs.

I did the tracking in my studio, which was nice. That allowed us to take our time. Then we would send Jack the tracks and he would mix them and we’d go back and forth on that. We also went to his studio and mixed it with him.

For the other set of songs, we went into the studio and banged everything out in a couple days. Jack is very strict about his work hours, which I very much respect, so everything was done very evenly and not in the middle of the night after 12 hours of trying to get one guitar part right or something like that. It was very sane. I appreciated that because one thing that’s kind of tough about working in other studios is you’re under time pressure and either you get the song right that day or it just doesn’t happen. What happens if you’re having an off day? There goes all your recording money. [laughs] It was nice to be able to have those different experiences. I think Jack did a really great job and I love working with him.

Both the song and the video for “The Point” reference Interstate 80. What does that highway mean to you?

The song is thinking about the geography of the Bay Area in a romantic way, like thinking about it as a body. When I wrote that song, I was really deep in the conceptual idea of sculpture and I was doing a lot of realism and the human form. I was thinking about that and the topography of the Bay Area and how I’ve lived my whole life here. One thing that runs through the whole East Bay is the 80. It’s kind of like this spine that bisects through all of these different phases in my life and different places where I’ve lived, from when I lived with my parents or when I lived with my sister in San Francisco when I was a teenager and living in and out of Berkeley, Oakland, and Richmond.

I’ve driven the whole length of the 80 multiple times to get across the whole country to play music and to either escape or run towards something; it just depends on the time. I got the idea for the song while I was driving back from dropping Joan off at BART after practice. The windows were down and it was a warm night, the stars were out. It was this really romantic feeling of just knowing this place so well and kind of feeling it like a body.

You have some US tour dates coming up next week. What are you looking forward to the most about these shows?

I’m looking forward to the fact that we can get on a plane. There was a little bit of drama as far as getting Joan’s ID situation figured out. She has been in the process of getting her name legally changed for more than half a year, probably nine months or so. They just kept switching up her date and the courts were really difficult and not cooperative, so we weren’t sure if she was going to be able to get on the plane. We had to figure some things out and talk to the airlines. I really felt for the bullshit that she probably has to deal with on a daily basis. That got figured out, so I’m really happy that we’re able to go and be on the plane. That’s why she’s got a band. We lean on each other and we figure it out.

We are going to be playing DC and Philly and Brooklyn and then we’re doing a live set on WFMU, which I’m also really excited about. We are flying back the back that morning and that same day, we’re going to be playing at Great American Music Hall, which is a really special venue in San Francisco that’s really close to our hearts. We’re playing there with Unwound, who are some very good friends of ours. That’s going to be our official record release and it’s gonna be a really special night. I don’t know if I can really pick a favourite of what I’m looking forward to because I have friends in every town we’re going to and the bands we’re playing with are awesome.

Street Eaters are known for our epic tours. In 2017 we were on the road for seven months out of the year, which included two full US tours. This is the first time in a long time that we’ve flown out just for a couple dates. Our friend Marissa [Paternoster] - ex-Screaming Females and currently Noun and Universal Girlfriend - is going to be lending us all of her equipment and her van so really grateful for her, super ride-or-die. She’s a very, very old friend. Speaking of chosen family, she is a very good one. I’m excited to see her and play with all these awesome bands. Also, this is the first time that we’ve gone to the East Coast with a guitar player and our sound and show are different. I’m excited to show off this new phase of what it is that we’re doing with our music.

What would you say the new dynamic is, going from a two-piece to a trio?

It really does take the right person. We didn’t feel like we needed a third for a really long time. Speaking of Marissa, when we were on tour with her, she proposed the idea of joining us on stage to play “Love Like Anthrax” by Gang of Four. That idea just never occurred to us. I don’t know why. I think when you’re doing something that’s so unique, you kind of embrace that difference and what it is that you do. We were always very stubborn and proud of how we would maximize the minimum. We really got a kick out of doing a lot with only two people. I think that was a really good foundation for us, but then when Marissa played with us - she’s a fucking genius on guitar - that opened up a lot of sonic pathways to us that we hadn’t really considered before. She set the bar very high, but opened our minds up to the idea of playing with a guitar player.

We eventually landed with Joan and she is just the perfect fit for us. She understands what we’re going for musically. She’s also really fun to hang out with. For Opaque, John and I wrote the songs and Joan wrote her parts, but we actually just finished recording a whole batch of songs for whatever’s gonna come next. Those songs we all worked on together and it’s really exciting. There’s just a lot coming from it. I think being able to have that other witness to your crime is thrilling and we love it.

Which part of Opaque are you proudest of?

The whole thing, of course! I kind of had a hand in a lot of it, so I have to say that. [laughs] But I think personally, I’m really proud that this record has a confessional, personal voice to it. Our last record was an Ursula K. Le Guin concept record and it was based on two of her books, Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. Even though I put myself into the songs and they became personal, the original inspiration for it was from this text, with it being a concept record and all.

With Opaque, it was much more based on personal experience and some sticky things that happened that are really hard to talk about but need to be talked about and should be talked about. Sometimes when it’s hard to talk about something, it’s easier to play music about it or make art around it. I’m proud that we did that as a band. Also, this is the first record that Joan is on and it’s cool.

The first album of the new era of the band.

Yeah! You gotta keep things fresh. It’s important to always be moving. We are not a band that likes to ruminate or to think about things that we’ve already done. I like to always move forward and try new things because otherwise things can get boring and that’s not how I wanna live my life.

It shows in your discography. It’s so interesting to go back and listen to different things. It’s all under the umbrella of Street Eaters, but everything’s a little bit different and it’s so much fun.

There’s a real beauty to a lot of those older songs. John and I were going through a lot of shit and working a lot out in our music and figuring out what our voices were. You can really see the trajectory of where we were before we started touring Europe and had all of that experience and met all of our friends out there. A lot’s happened and you can hear that in the music and also, you can tell that we’ve been through some shit. [laughs]

Life has been lived. [laughs]

Yeah! What else would you write music about? Because of COVID or having a baby or losing our minds after being on the road for so long, Opaque had a lot of simmering to do. I think that made it very strong.