Artist Interview: Thoughts

This month, I had the opportunity to sit down with Thoughts - an alternative-rock duo based in Philadelphia, to discuss their new singles, “Dangerous” and “Summer Air”, released on May 21st and June 4th respectively. In 2019, the duo released their first EP titled Thoughts, with their EP and new singles available on all streaming platforms. The duo, composed of Angel Leiser (she/her) and Ben Rothschild (he/him), describe their music as “catchy and colorful.” Throughout the interview, we delve into their experience within the industry and what exactly their curated genre of “catchy and colorful” means to them.

Hi Angel and Ben, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me to discuss your new music. Thank you for having us!

To start off, how did you decide to work together and form Thoughts?

We met each other in middle school because Ben’s dad opened the School of Rock – a national and international music school. Within the School of Rock, we were a part of a band titled “Jumbo Shrimp” for 5 years. After School of Rock, we decided to leave our hometown, Florida, and move to Philadelphia, as this was the next logical step in having centralized access to venues and touring. - Angel

What artists/songs have influenced your group persona?

We are always trying to get the Tame Impala sound into our music, whether it be drum sounds or synths, as well as the sound of Young the Giant. With Tame Impala it is more about the audio visual, whereas with Young the Giant, we are inspired by the energy within performances. We would describe ourselves as being more psychedelic than Young the Giant with a combination of being confined and energetic on stage. - Ben

Speaking of your style, how will your two new singles, “Dangerous” and “Summer Air” fit into your colorful style and what inspired each of the songs?

I would think of Dangerous as a colorful song - darker, but I can see color behind it. Dangerous was written when we were making the transition from Florida to Philadelphia and it was a weird period of time where we were living in limbo. Knowing that my six months in Florida were lived to move, I didn’t feel like I was actively moving forward in life. That stagnance made me really uncomfortable and I was trying to capture that feeling. It feels like a song about being lethargic more than anything else, for me I couldn’t be in the current rut I was feeling, despite it being for a positive change, I just felt hustle, hustle, hustle.

Summer Air is the lighter of the two, even though it is mellow, it feels like summer. Summer Air is inspired by our hometown in Florida. In summer it is as hot as it will be in Florida, but it is hot all year long so it has to compensate somehow with hurricane level rains. The song ties together the feeling of being sad from heartbreak with the colorful, breeziness of Florida’s weather. - Ben

In determining your style of music, how big of a part do live performances play in your career and how do you imagine them shaping your brand?

We still work at School of Rock, so we’re still playing a lot, we still teach music, we by default have to play a lot of music. It’s still not the same as going out and playing shows. We definitely are thinking about shows, we miss it often. That was the main thing; we always wanted to be an incredibly hard touring band. - Ben

Essentially, we’re always talking about the live arrangements, even for future songs or covers, and when we write a song and record one, it’s always in the back of our minds, who wants to play what on this song? Especially since we came up here as a three piece, and we parted away from our drummer about a year ago. Which is crazy. With just Ben and I working on a lot of stuff and not having a third member whether it be drums or keyboard player, or someone being part of the liveset, we get to choose what we want to play and go from there but ya know eventually we want that drummer, I’m saying probably a four piece, i don’t know if I want a five piece band. - Angel

Definitely! If you could bring on any producer or drummer onto your team, who would you choose?

Jack Antanoff producing us would be great, get us some Grammys haha. I know we’d both love to be produced by Kevin parker. No question from Tame Impala, I’m sure we’d both love to. For us, if you’re saying add a member to the band, there’s a bazillion drummers I'd take happily, but Ringo on drums is always great, but this band with Stewart Copeland on drums. - Ben

The first person I thought was John Mayer. - Angel

I think overtime Mind Over Matter, the second Young the Giant album has become my favorite, for a while the third album was my favorite, but the producer of [Mind Over Matter], Justin Meldal-Johnsen, is another I would love to produced by. I think that’s a good amount of people, or else we’ll just start saying people we like, and that’s a way longer list.

I think that’s the dream team, so we got two super producers, all of young the giant, Kevin Parker, John Mayer, and Stewart Copeland. - Ben

It’s going to happen before you know it! In regards to producing and navigating the industry, Angel, how has being a person of color and a member of the LGBTQ community impacted your perspective and experience in the industry?

For sure, producing wise, within our high school band I brought a song to like Benny, called “She Walks By”, which was half-way done, which we changed up a bit, but that was about a girl, and at the time Benny was singing in that band. For most of Thoughts until recently, we had Benny sing. So when I did produce a song, or at least the lyrics I would write about stuff that happened to me, and I would just make it more like Benny was singing it. More recently I’ve been open to producing lyrics from any perspective. I think Benny and I both agree that we write about love a lot. I’ve just kind of decided to discuss love in any perspective. Our song “Your Love” I made from the perspective of a man, and the perspective of a girl. I could’ve written it anyway, but at that point, I didn’t think about it too hard, just trying to be more fluid in my writing. Now that I’m starting to sing my own songs, I’m not changing it to a man, most people know I’m gay, and if you haven’t figured that out, that’s mostly on you. I’m not in secret, and I’m not gonna change that about the songs or the lyrics or anything. People break your heart, people make you feel good, and what helps me is writing that down.

Being a person of color in the industry, as of right now at the local level, I haven’t really had anything amazing or super bad happen. I haven’t received any hate, and I’ve found that artists are super welcome, no matter if you’re gay, you’re black, or you’re Asian, or you’re trans. I think we all have sensitive spots, and especially musical artists, if you look at the greats and stuff, something usually happened in their childhood, and that’s a travesty, but they take feelings of compassion and put that into their songs. Within the music industry, I feel very accepted. I have no complaints on the local level. My music career started at School of Rock, where I met kids my age, grew up with them, and still talk to them. We’re no longer kids anymore, but we still talk and do music. We all still connect, and I feel very warm at School of Rock. And even more so since the teachers are working musicians, they brought people into our world that we met at gigs. When Benny and I started gigging, we started gigging with our teachers, then we met people that they knew. It was all very warm.I have no idea what it's like as you go up, and all eyes are on you. For right now, especially being from Florida, and being a part of that cover-gig scene, it’s been very welcoming, and I’ve enjoyed meeting all the musicians I’ve met. - Angel

That’s great to hear! School of Rock sounds like a very welcoming and uplifting community to be a part of.

Nowadays, especially our generation and even younger, are becoming more open. I didn’t hear the term non-binary ten years ago, but that’s a very common word now in my life. Music is a universal language. If you’re talking about something that people can relate to, they’re not gonna care if you’re gay or black. - Angel

And if they do, they don’t have a place at a Thoughts’ show. - Ben

It is wonderful that people are becoming more open and accepting of artists being themselves. Before we wrap up, is there anything else you would like to share?

Our singles are released on May 21st for Dangerous, and June 4th for Summer Air. There’s a bunch more after that, we have a google drive folder with at least like twenty songs in the can right now. We gotta nitpick some things but that’s some more recording from us. We’re almost there. We recorded a bunch of drums last week, more things to come. We’re recording a lot and putting together the live show, which will hopefully be soon. - Ben

Author: Anna Johnson